The Brutalization of Richard Clarke is a reminder that, whatever weak points Mr. Bush may be faulted for, putting out a hit is not one. Not since Richard Nixon dispatched flying monkeys with names like Colson and Liddy after his many enemies has a White House so fully mastered the art of political kneecapping. Mr. Clarke has joined a string of Bush administration critics to be mugged with almost effortless precision.

Martin Amis wrote that "there is only one rule in street and bar fights: maximum violence, instantly." It is a lesson the Bush team has applied to politics, as Mr. Clarke has said he was prepared to experience: "These are mean and nasty people," he said on Nightline .

"If smear and slander can be an art form, they've perfected it," said John Weaver, the Republican-turned-Democratic adviser to Senator John McCain, who saw the Bush team's cool savagery firsthand during the 2000 primaries, when Mr. McCain was suddenly made out to be a half-cocked, corrupt Washington insider. "This is not their first smear rodeo."

Certainly not.

A series of departed aides have had the temerity to tell what they saw at the White House, only to be mowed down. Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who revealed the phoniness of Mr. Bush's uranium-yellowcake Niger claim, saw his wife's C.I.A. cover blown as punishment. Paul O'Neill, Mr. Bush's first Treasury Secretary, who cooperated with an unflattering book on the administration, was rewarded with a government investigation. And John DiIulio, the brilliant academic who weighed in on the hollowness of the White House's domestic-policy operation, wound up issuing a humiliating, Maoist-style forced retraction.

We've seen this enough times, in fact, that it's possible to draw up a rough playbook based on the White House's character-mauling tactics as displayed over the past three years. Think of it as a modern political version of The Art of War , in which Sun Tzu advised fellow warriors, when confronting an enemy, to "rouse him, discover the springs of his actions. Make his form visible." Making the enemy's form visible-that is the first rule of Karl Rove warfare. Here are some of the Bush team's preferred methods:

1) Ridicule the enemy: The day after his 60 Minutes interview, White House officials were already sneering at "Dick Clarke's American Grandstand." Joe Wilson's C.I.A.-backed mission to Niger was quickly lampooned by influential Republicans as an amateurish adventure. Writing in The Wall Street Journal , Caspar Weinberger, a former Defense Secretary under President Reagan, mocked this "sloppy tea-drinking 'investigation' from … a retired ambassador with a less than stellar record."

2) Make him look corrupt: White House allies-most notably Bill Frist, the courtly Senate Republican leader-began threatening last week that Mr. Clarke may be open to perjury charges if his public testimony is found to clash with the private account he gave the Congressional 9/11 commission in 2002. After Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary, gave reams of notes and papers to author Ron Suskind for his book The Price of Loyalty , the Treasury Department ostentatiously opened an investigation into whether Mr. O'Neill had divulged classified government documents. The investigation found that the fault lay with the department itself, not Mr. O'Neill.

3) Expose his "petty motives": The White House rushed to note that Mr. Clarke's "best buddy" is Rand Beers, another former administration counterterror official who now advises John Kerry, and suggested that Mr. Clarke is sucking up for a position in a Kerry White House. Speaking on the Senate floor last week, meanwhile, Mr. Frist, a close ally of the White House, called Mr. Clarke's book "an appalling act of profiteering." White House officials also say that Mr. Clarke was resentful about his career path. "Mr. Clarke has been out there talking about what title he had," added White House spokesman Scott McClellan, as if that was Mr. Clarke's chief complaint. Likewise, Mr. O'Neill was derided as a crotchety old grouch settling scores. "He was mad and quite bitter … and, you know, bitter people tend to write books like that," said Lawrence Lindsey, a former top economic adviser to Mr. Bush, speaking to Fox News. After Mr. DiIulio, the former director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, aired his complaints about the shallowness of Mr. Bush's domestic-policy operation, the White House's reliable conservative columnist, Robert Novak, was quick to acid-dip him in his column as "a registered Democrat who voted for Al Gore."

4) Get personal: Bush officials are trashing Mr. Clarke as a phony who acted warmly toward Mr. Bush and his aides when he was in government and now savages him when it's convenient. Both Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Novak have subtly implied racism-suggesting, as Mr. Novak put it on CNN, that Mr. Clarke has "a problem with this African-American woman, Condoleezza Rice." There have also been insinuations about the personal life of Mr. Clarke, who is unmarried. The conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, for instance, has taken to calling Mr. Clarke a "drama queen." Mr. Wilson's C.I.A.-backed mission to investigate claims of an Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger was also quickly lampooned. Then someone in the White House went directly after his wife, leaking her name to Mr. Novak and blowing her cover at the C.I.A.; the leak is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation. "Joe Wilson told the truth, and they took a baseball bat to him and his wife," said John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and now president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. "When they can't explain the facts, they beat you personally."

5) Make him an offer he can't refuse: It's still not clear just what White House officials may have said to Mr. DiIulio, but the conclusion to his saga had the feel of a Communist show trial. Mere days after their White House press secretary Ari Fleischer denounced Mr. DiIulio's charges as "baseless and groundless," the Philadelphia academic released a terse statement calling his own highly detailed allegations about the White House, well, "groundless and baseless …. I am deeply remorseful," Mr. DiIulio added, sounding a bit like a purged Bolshevik headed off to the firing squad.

6) Accuse him of opportunism: Of course, the White House surrogates have suggested that Mr. Clarke wrote a sensationalistic book to make a fortune, despite the fact that departing members of every administration ever have attached themselves to the biggest book advance they could find and proceeded to unload. They also said that he timed the publication of his book to match the 9/11 hearings. Nobody who knows the New York publishing industry could have taken the notion of this kind of precision planning seriously.

So far, these techniques have served Mr. Bush well. His various critics have managed to blast his bunker, but suffered far more damage to themselves in the effort. The efficacy of the Bush White House impresses even veterans of the Clinton administration, which, by the way, wasn't averse to lethal hit tactics itself against the President's former and alleged girlfriends-Juanita Brodderick, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky-when they showed up ready to rock Mr. Clinton's Presidency. (They tended to appear in front of television cameras with lawyers and were rewarded with brutal, immediate assaults on their very personhood.) But the Clinton people say there's a difference, that the Bush targets are being punished for dissenting on policy.

"If they can't put duct tape over your mouth, they lower the public boom on your head," said Mr. Podesta.

But it's been Mr. Clarke who has felt Washington's latest, biggest boom, and with the trademark tactics of a martial-arts-trained anti-P.R. crew. The retribution has been fast and the wounds instant, partly because his charges uniquely go to the vital organs of Mr. Bush's political identity: that he is the unquestioned defender of America from terrorists. When Mr. Clarke suggested otherwise, the White House responded by turning their turrets toward him and leaving a charred mass of discredited ex-aide-it's their trademark.

And it works. The debate surrounding Mr. Clarke has moved from his contentions about anti-terror policy to the size of his book advance-the subject of recent complaints by talk-radio host Don Imus-and whether he resented working for Ms. Rice because she's a black woman.

"This was overwhelming and to the quick," said an admiring Grover Norquist, the conservative activist closely allied with the White House. Per Mr. Amis: "Maximum violence, instantly."

On Monday, a CNN– USA Today –Gallup poll affirmed the success of the approach: More people said they trust Mr. Bush over Mr. Clarke by a 46-44 margin-meaning that Mr. Clarke had failed to break through the nation's red-blue partisan divide and change any minds. "I think his credibility is shot," said G.O.P. consultant Charlie Black, who works with the current administration. "The average voter never heard of Dick Clarke two weeks ago. Then he comes up and says things that sound sensational. But then you get people they know and trust-like Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld-to say he's wrong. They trust those people. The best case for them is that it's confusion."

For President Bush, confusion means victory. Confusion means that Mr. Clarke's most important charge-that the Iraq war and patchwork homeland-security system leaves us vulnerable to terrorism right now-has become shrouded by the fog of the political war.

It's not clear just who the author of this attack manual is. Mr. Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, is typically assumed to be the master orchestrator. In an odd bit of disclosure, Mr. Bush's officials revealed that the President himself had personally approved the attacks on Mr. Clarke. Mr. Weaver, the former adviser to John McCain, finds that entirely plausible. "Karl Rove gets too much credit and too much blame for everything that happens in this administration," he said. "Campaigns and administrations take on the personality of the officeholder and the candidate. Period."

It's true that Mike Kelly was empathetic-and as much toward cab drivers and carpenters as toward his fellow scribblers. He was genuinely humane. Given his reputation as a sword-wielding columnist, people often found this strange: He seemed so gentle in person for someone so hard-edged on the page. After first meeting him, many remarked on his unpretentiousness, and indeed on the unlikeliness of the entire package-this intrepid war correspondent, this he-man career man, this relentless politico. He was elfish, affable, open-faced, bespectacled, curly-haired, rumpled, distracted, often thoughtful and endearingly disorganized. When he didn't show up for lunch dates or follow through on plans, you knew it meant nothing at all. His apologies afterward were sheepish and good-natured. He was just a very decent guy.

But those who decided that he was modest or shy got him wrong. He was not merely very capable, but utterly certain of it: In his inner world, he was not modest at all. As he gained experience, his life became an exercise in self-confidence, a loop in which his certainties begat successes, which begat further certainties. It's no wonder then that he rejected the liberal culture of self-doubt, and that his politics turned right-wing-how could they have turned otherwise? He achieved financial success, but he never became a selfish man. Quite the opposite. Money obviously meant little to him, and his conservatism remained purely of the self-confident kind. All this came out in conversation with him, hours upon hours of it, during which he delivered his thoughts and opinions as if they were absolute truths, enjoying himself hugely, as inevitably his companions did, too. Whether people agreed with him or not, his confidence was infectious. It swept aside the cautions and fears that might have diminished the writers in his stable, or the staff of the magazine as a whole. To the question of "Dare we proceed?", his answer was so often "Yes" that people learned not to ask. It's true that Kelly's "Yes" was usually tempered and shrewd, but his deep-seated courage was more important still. He was like a furnace on fire. His flame burned for his work, for his country, and most fiercely for his two young boys and his wife. He went to Iraq because he believed in the war, and knew he could cover it well. That does not make this end any easier for his friends to accept. It still seems impossible that our dear Mike Kelly has died. He has left an unfillable emptiness behind.

-William Langewiesche

For those of us hanging about the Kuwait Hilton and the military briefings in the past weeks, and paying the occasional easy-does-it visit to the frontier zone or to the safer bits of southern Iraq, the name of Michael Kelly was a frequent and somewhat guilt-inducing reference. In the first place, we had all read or were engaged in re-reading Martyrs ' Day , his enviable account of the last Gulf War. In the second place, we knew that he was miles up the road ahead of us, at the sharp end with the Third Infantry Division. I don't approve of "embedded" journalism myself, but nor was I pretending that I'd have had the discipline or fortitude to go that way. So, as we fiddled with gas masks during mostly false-alarm air-raid warnings in Kuwait City, one would say facetiously to another: "Mike must be within commuting distance of Baghdad by now." There had already been enough reportorial casualties to make this a respectful understatement.

The longest time I ever spent with him was very different. He heard that I was going to a Farrakhan rally at the Howard University campus a few years back, and asked if he could keep me company. We ended up as the only white guys present during an especially lurid harangue from the late Khalid Muhammad. The atmosphere wasn't all that menacing despite some efforts in that direction, and afterward we spent a good deal of time talking to the organizers and the members of the audience. The rest of the night, we sat up forever while he told me of growing up in D.C., of being by family origin a member of the opposite Irish-Catholic faction to Pat Buchanan, and of going with his mother to early civil-rights rallies. His curiosity and his humor, and his quick impatience with bullshit, were all of a piece. I often thought he was wrong, but I never knew him to be wrong for an ignoble or cowardly reason.

One tries to avoid sentimentality on occasions such as this, but Mike saw the essence of the conflict over Iraq very early on, and never relaxed his hold on the point. The advocates of regime-change have now lost a real champion and-this is where I dare to take the risk of sentimentality-the people of Iraq have lost a friend who would never have deserted them in the rugged times that they are passing through and that lie ahead. Everybody who cares about the survival of tough-minded journalism has lost an ally, too, even if (like the Iraqis) they may not have had the opportunity to know him.

-Christopher Hitchens

Mike Kelly was one of the happiest smart people I've ever known-continually amused (as well as outraged) by the world, mischievous, conscious always of living exactly the life he wanted to lead, but never smug about it. If you knew him only though his column in The Washington Post , which was often bellicose, you might think he was an ill-humored sort. Those of us who worked with him, and remembered that experience as singular in our careers for its high-spiritedness and sheer fun, its sense of being with Mike on a madcap but meaningful ride, know better.

I met Mike when I was on maternity leave with my first baby, and he had just been chosen as the editor of The New Republic , where I then worked. When he called to propose that we meet for lunch, I was feeling particularly milky, sleepless and disheveled. The prospect of squeezing myself into acceptable business attire, heading downtown for the first time since the baby, and making intelligent conversation with the famous journalist who was my new boss, seemed hopelessly intimidating. Maybe Mike noticed my moment of hesitation; maybe he just intuited how I felt because he and his wife, Max, had a new baby, too. But the next thing I knew, he was proposing bringing lunch to my house in Bethesda, and the next day he was there, bearing pâté and a baguette and the ingredients for a lovely simple pasta, which he cooked for me while keeping up a riveting patter about all the things he wanted to do at the magazine. He never made a big deal about instituting a "family-friendly" policy at The New Republic, where the staff was young and childless; he just said that, if I preferred, I could work at home a couple of days a week when I came back.

Mike was deeply courteous, and he managed to make the various accommodations he offered on behalf of my family life feel like a natural extension of that courtesy-just something you did to make somebody's life easier, without making a fuss about it or boasting about what a progressive employer you were. But part of it was that Mike delighted in his own children, in a way that made him generous toward and bemused about all children. He was the only male colleague I've ever had with whom I could exchange what-our-kids-did-last-night stories without feeling that it bored him, or pigeonholed me. He was a great and close, but unneurotic and noncompetitive, observer of his kids. There are so many ways in which the public Mike will be remembered and deeply missed-as an extraordinary war correspondent, a charismatic editor, a passionate columnist and a beautiful writer. I will remember him as my beau ideal of a working father.

-Margaret Talbot

I met Michael Kelly when I was an intern at The New Republic in 1996 and he was the magazine's incoming editor. I wrote to him asking for a staff job. He responded by taking me to a nice lunch in downtown Washington. Our lunch confirmed everything you'll hear about his kindness toward aspiring young writers whom other editors might impatiently brush off. At the time, I had a mere handful of short and rather insubstantial clips to my name, and came to lunch nervous and slightly intimidated. After 10 minutes, I felt completely at ease. Michael complimented my writing more than he needed to, showed a sincere curiosity about my interests and goals, and described his plans for the magazine with the enthusiasm of a man about to renovate his dream house. He never once condescended. I was still just a punk, but he treated me like a serious person.

But that lunch was less interesting than the second conversation we had. Michael had offered me a job as a TNR fact-checker, with a chance to write on the side. I had another offer, to write about politics for an alternative weekly in Boston, and decided I couldn't turn down a full-time writing job. Not only did Michael understand my decision, he seemed to turn a bit wistful. He began to offer me advice with a fatherly air that suggested that he envied a young writer setting out down the open journalistic road. He painted a romantic, admiring picture of Boston as a place where politics can be seen on its most primal level. He gave me names and numbers to call. A great mentor himself, he urged me to find "wise men," detached from the biases of daily political skirmishes, who could explain how the city really worked. (He recommended one man in particular, a Machiavellian political operative whom he described, with a hint of admiration, as "a real rat-fucker.")

He was most passionate in urging me to devote myself completely to my work. Go to every last campaign event and city council meeting you can, he told me. If you have a girlfriend, drag her along. Work hard, he said. "You don't have as much time as you think you do."

-Michael Crowley

Michael Kelly had so many things, but I will miss him most for what he lacked. He had brilliance, humor, stature, energy, generosity, taste, guts, vision. He lacked arrogance. He lacked the genetic code for smugness. He lacked the presumption, which so many vastly less gifted people carry around like change in their pockets, that something was true because he said it, or deep because he thought it. In a world full of people who never miss a slot through which to drop a name or a point of flattering self-reference, he lacked any particular urge to enlighten one that he had, oh, driven across a desert as it was being bombed in the Gulf War, or earned the fear and loathing of both Clintons. In short, he lacked that whole link between success and self-worship. This made him both a great guy and a great example.

It is generally vile, and particularly untrue to Mike Kelly, to overstate one's relationship to the celebrated deceased. I was miles away from the center of his life; just one of many writers lucky enough to have appeared in his line of vision. But that's just it. There are scores of us; underlings and aspirants of one sort or another who feel deadened by this death.

My memories of Mike are like my college diploma: very special to me, even though lots of people have them.

I remember the second I knew, before we even met, that I liked and trusted him completely, because he couldn't even smooth-talk me. It was the very end of 2000, and he was calling me in New York to talk about a job.

"Have you ever thought of moving to Washington?"

"No."

"Well, you should; it's really a very stimulating city, and just as vibrant in its way as New York and … oh, what the hell, you'll hate it, it's one big law firm-but you should come anyway."

I remember that when I did come anyway, it was inauguration week, and all the hotels were triple-booked. He sent me to stay at the Victorian manse on Capitol Hill where he was brought up-and where I could clearly see, in the sharp, sweet, much-loved parents, the origins of the sharp, sweet, much-loved son. I remember the time that I wrote an Atlantic piece that was an absolute disaster, and he wrote a rejection note that was an absolute gift: straightforward, to be sure, but so full of kindness and encouragement that I still have it. I remember thinking, pretty much every time I spoke to him, that I had drawn the long end of the straw.

When I left my job, to head for the war that claimed him, Mike called me up. With typically amazing grace, he wished me luck and offered me everything: useful friends, credentials, advice, ideas, editorial support. Even then, I choked up at what he said last, although he said it lightly. He said he wanted to keep me "in the gang."

What I wouldn't give to keep him there, too.

-Tish Durkin

"People ask me, 'Do you wish you were back at the White House?'" Mr. Donaldson said. "And I say, 'No, not really.'" But, said Mr. Donaldson, inflating his supersized larynx up to indignant, mega-bass proportions, "there are moments like Thursday night when- yeah -I want to be there!"

It wasn't just Sam. Somewhere Mike Deaver, Ronald Reagan's media-fixing P.R. king, was smiling. But reporters on-site were alternately flabbergasted, flailing and embarrassed by the experience. None seemed to have the legs to get into the game. Mr. Bush ran out the clock on his hour of prime time, using it with the focus of Jimmy Dean selling sausage, snubbing tough reporters while calling on buddies, issuing one-size-fits-all talking points to all comers, giving the answers he wanted to the questions he didn't. He even openly taunted one correspondent, CNN's John King, for daring to ask a multi-part question.

"I don't think he was sufficiently challenged," said ABC News White House correspondent Terry Moran. He said Mr. Bush's hyper-management left the press corps "looking like zombies."

Mr. Bush worked from a podium-pasted pre-determined list of acceptable reporters to call upon. USA Today 's Larry McQuillan, on the White House beat since Jimmy Carter, said Mr. Bush's homeroom-proctor sheet of preferred questioners managed to insult those didn't appear on it-and make those who did seem like Karl Rove's brown-nosers, the camp kids who got the best desserts. "The process in some ways demeaned the reporters who were called on as much as those who weren't," Mr. McQuillan said.

"They completely played us," added a correspondent for a major daily newspaper. "What's the point of having a press conference if you're not going to answer questions? It was calculated on so many different levels."

But to what extent where the reporters themselves to blame? Although some asked reasonably pointed questions, most did with a tone of extreme deference-"Mr. President, sir …. Thank you, sir …. Mr. President, good evening"-that suggested a skittishness, to which they will admit, about being seen as unpatriotic or disrespectful of a commander in chief on the eve of war. Few made any effort to follow up their questions after Mr. Bush's recitation of arguments that were more speech-like than extemporaneous: Saddam Hussein is a threat to America, Iraq has not disarmed, Sept. 11 must never happen again.

It was a missed opportunity. From the media's perspective, the purpose of a press conference is to hold a President accountable, to see him work on his feet, to understand his priorities, to give viewers insight into his character, to make a little news, or to allow the President to speak to the people in a responsive and human voice that a formal address doesn't allow.

That didn't happen. On Thursday night, Mr. Bush reinforced an image of a scripted man on a tightrope who followed his handlers' cue cards:

Here's a synopsis of the event:

Question: Why not give Iraq more time to disarm?

Bush: "This issue has been before the Security Council … for 12 long years."

Question: Why don't our allies want war?

Bush: "Saddam Hussein has had 12 years to disarm … Saddam Hussein is a threat … Sept. 11 changed the strategic thinking … Sept. 11 should say to the American people that we're now a battlefield …. "

Question: Why has world opinion turned on you?

Bush: "Saddam Hussein is a threat … 12 years of denial and defiance …. "

Question: How is your faith guiding you?

Bush: " … the tragedy of September the 11th … the lesson of September the 11th …. "

Question: How much will war cost?

Bush: "Three thousand people died."

And so on. One suspects the reporters could have informed the President that his daughters had appeared on Girls Gone Wild! and still gotten some answer interchanging the lessons of 9/11 and Saddam's years of defiance. Former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart later called the event "a perfectly acceptable performance for a re-election press conference."

In other words: They … wuz … used! The press corps seemed mainly to serve as a prop, providing Mr. Bush with an opportunity to deliver another pro-war speech while appearing to bravely face the music. The White House sprung it on them at the last minute: The press conference was announced that very day, giving reporters little time to prepare.

That's fair; after all, if it's a game, and Mr. Bush is in charge of the playbook, he doesn't need to reveal it. But nevertheless, there was still a faint whiff of Marshall Tito about the whole thing. When the time came, reporters were escorted into the East Room in pairs, apparently to ensure they adhered to a careful seating chart. During his appearance, Mr. Bush answered what he wanted, no matter what the questions were, and there were no follow-ups. When Mr. King of CNN asked a somewhat multilayered but utterly reasonable question about the costs of war, Mr. Bush scoffed in the midst of his response: "The rest of your six-point question?"

In fact, the event's only moment of candor may have come when Mr. Bush admitted during the conference that he was calling on reporters according to his pre-arranged list of names, which his press secretary, Ari Fleischer, later copped to preparing.

"This is scripted," Mr. Bush joked.

Strangely, many reporters laughed at this remarkable joke, which had the additional benefit of being true.

They then buckled in for a happy hour of snubs. Correspondents there were particularly startled by two. Mr. Bush failed to call on Washington Post White House correspondent Mike Allen in the front row. Given that it was the second straight news conference in which the hometown paper of record-both Mr.Allen and the other Post White House correspondent, Dana Milbank, have particularly irritated the West Wing-was chilled and chopped, it was hard not to see it as punitive.

Mr. Bush also passed over Helen Thomas, the 82-year-old Hearst News writer who has customarily asked the opening question at White House press briefings since John F. Kennedy was President. It is true that Ms. Thomas has become something of a crank in recent years-Fox News' Brit Hume recently referred to her as "the nutty aunt in the attic of the Washington press corps"-and that she may have made the impolitic mistake of telling one newspaper that Mr. Bush is the worst President in her lifetime or American history (whichever, as Ronald Reagan said, is longer)-and that, as the White House notes, she is now a columnist and no longer a wire reporter.

Nevertheless, plenty of people-including Mr. Donaldson-considered this a particularly gratuitous break with tradition. "If I'm the President and I can't handle reporters' questions, I don't have any business being in the office," he said.

A call to Ms. Thomas found her uncharacteristically subdued. "That was his privilege, I guess," Ms. Thomas said. "I think he had a right to do that." Ms. Thomas' prepared question: to ask Mr. Bush "if there's any way to preserve peace and not kill thousands of people in their own country."

Those granted the opportunity to ask questions seldom seemed to raise the President's blood pressure. For every pointed query, there were several softballs that could have been capably handled by a press-office deputy. There was a question about Mr. Bush's faith, which allowed him to hold the floor on the topic of prayer-a good topic for another day-and another reporter asked whether Mr. Bush would allow journalists and arms inspectors time to get out of Baghdad before the hostilities began, a question that allowed the President to assure the public that his war plan would not cause the death of Hans Blix or Geraldo Rivera. It should also be noted that no one asked Mr. Bush about anything besides Iraq and North Korea-crucial topics both, but a question about the struggling economy might have taken Mr. Bush at least temporarily off-message.

A lack of follow-ups was also problematic. "In that room, one of the things a questioner has to do is create a moment, a confrontation with the President," said Mr. Moran, who got in a question about world opinion-but now regrets not following up more forcefully. "Not to showboat, not to draw attention to yourself, but to bring the President back down to what he is: a citizen President who needs to be engaged in a normal, ordinary conversation about these issues. So you almost have to issue a challenge to him up there. The point is to get them to answer questions, not just to stand up there and use all the majesty of the Presidency to amplify his image."

Some correspondents said they had a fear, for all their desire of "the moment," of appearing disrespectful-even unpatriotic-by confronting a President about to lead troops into battle. Reporters also said that Mr. Bush, for all his locker-room jocularity-referring to reporters by last names or nicknames-subtly intimidates them on a personal level. His aides let it be known that Mr. Bush sneers at the way reporters sculpt their hair and apply makeup for their prime-time appearances, a disdain that shows. "He'll laugh at your questions," said a White House newspaper correspondent who has suffered that fate.

Others said Mr. Bush will glare at a reporter whom he likes personally for asking an unexpectedly tough question, as if it were a betrayal. Viewers of Alexandra Pelosi's 2000 campaign documentary, Journeys with George , will recall Mr. Bush icily, if briefly, turning on her after a grilling about the death penalty.

Of course, Mr. Bush is not the first to exploit press conferences for his own ends. Even when Franklin Roosevelt was gathering reporters around his desk for freewheeling chats, he was buying their good will. John F. Kennedy began to have press conferences televised at least in part to show off his looks and charm.

But Ronald Reagan set the previous standard for demeaning White House reporters. His media adviser, Mr. Deaver, tried to phase them out. And he infantilized the press corps by instituting the so-called Deaver Rule, which held that anyone jumping up and down with his hand in the air would be passed over for the polite correspondent quietly awaiting his turn.

Mr. Reagan's conferences were so scripted, Mr. Donaldson recalled, that he would choose questioners based on a seating chart. "One night he called on someone who wasn't there-Joe Ferguson," Mr. Donaldson recalls. "He didn't come, and someone had taken his place. 'Joe, Joe Ferguson,' the President said. Well, of course it wasn't Joe!"

But it's not as if a leader on the eve of war can't risk departing from his script. Just look at how British Prime Minister Tony Blair does it across the Atlantic. At a Downing Street presser in January, Mr. Blair took one blunt question after another, including this killer: What he would say to a mother who has just waved her young son goodbye, knowing he may never return from Iraq? Yet rather than retreat into dogma, the Prime Minister spoke like a real-yet intelligent-person. "I understand, of course, my people think it's a very remote threat, and it's far away, and why does it bother us…. Now I simply say to you, it is a matter of time, unless we act and take a stand, before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together. And I regard them as two sides of the same coin." Mr. Blair was so intellectually honest that he even raised the complicating question of North Korea unprompted. Mr. Bush probably would have insulted the reporter.

But in keeping with tradition, Mr. Bush's conference last week was of a piece with his Presidency, which has always been a masterful exercise in message control.

"They're very strict and disciplined," says one wire-service reporter who was present. "But it's not normally that galling."

Mr. Jackson stared across the gym parking lot with his familiar look of practiced stoicism. "The Knicks, " he said firmly.

But of course. The previous night, Mr. Jackson's new club had been routed by the miserable New Jersey Nets at Madison Square Garden in an ugly display of laziness and ineptitude. The Nets' Johnny Newman, an aging N.B.A. gypsy, torched the timid New York defense for 26 points. The Knicks' leading scorer, Allan Houston, missed an almost comical 18 of 22 shots. The night was capped when net rookie Soumaila Samake grabbed a missed free throw and laid it back in, unmolested. Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy looked as if he'd witnessed a plane crash.

But it was a typical night in a frustrating season for an erratic 2000-1 Knicks team, which begins its playoff campaign on Sunday, April 22. Retooled and relaunched sans longtime center Patrick Ewing, these Knicks have tormented New York fans, rising to vanquish mighty rivals only to fall apart against J.V.-quality squads like the Nets. "Our approach obviously doesn't work," head coach Jeff Van Gundy complained the day after the Nets debacle. "How we go about our business does not work."

Mark Jackson, of course, had been brought aboard to improve business. The Knicks' February trade with Toronto for the aging, trick-passing point guard was a calculated effort to repair an unimpressive season. The hope was that a crafty veteran like Mr. Jackson could rekindle the stale club's fire, reengage disenchanted fans–and throw some wicked-cool no-look passes along the way.

There was a compelling local storyline, too. Mr. Jackson was a hometown product, a former St. John's star who had broken in with the Knicks in 1987, won the N.B.A.'s Rookie of the Year award, and captured the city's heart, only to be cruelly traded away in 1992 (to the L.A. Clippers, for, of all people, the infamously flaccid Charles Smith). He had flipped around with three more clubs, most notably the rival Indiana Pacers, but now had returned as a wizened veteran to try to lead his hometown club to their first championship since 1973.

But to date, the experiment hasn't worked. Like some amorphous blob, this Knicks team has absorbed Mark Jackson into its uninspired world of lethargy and blandness. After nearly a half season in New York, Mr. Jackson looks like just another bored N.B.A. nomad who plays as if he's not sleeping well. Far from being a savior, Mr. Jackson looks like another part of the problem.

As a result, the Knicks–also plagued by injuries–are stumbling into the playoffs, destined, it seems, to be obliterated. To the south lies a resurgent Miami Heat club rejoined by its All-Star center, Alonzo Mourning, who had been presumed out for the year with a kidney ailment. Closer by are the mighty Philadelphia 76ers, with Allen Iverson's answers and Dikembe Mutombo's rejections. There are also improving clubs like the Milwaukee Bucks. Should the Knicks somehow make it to the finals, they will face one of a long list of superior Western Conference clubs.

But first, as Mr. Jackson noted, the Knicks must face the Knicks, a team whose roster is talented but defective. Take your pick. There's Mr. Houston, he of the gorgeous, preternatural jump shot, who still reverts to an underconfident 13-year-old at crunch time. Then there's Latrell Sprewell, a dervish of energy and speed, who lately forsakes his prodigious slashing and dunking talents for sloppy jump shots. There's Larry Johnson, who plays with determination and a decimated lower back, and Glen Rice, a pure shooter with a gimp foot who has specialized in missing open three-pointers. There's Marcus Camby, a dynamic young leaper with the durability of tin foil.

Such problems are not new. The Knicks have traditionally been a flawed club, one that compensated for its shortcomings by playing passionate, dogged and sometimes brutish basketball. Though New York has featured many stars, from Bradley to Frazier to King to Ewing, New Yorkers have reveled in the team's image as a bunch of scrappy underdogs battling the N.B.A.'s slicker, more gifted Goliaths (the rest of the country just thought the Knicks were thugs, especially in the 1990's). Fans always identified closely with the team's role players, vagabonds and head cases like Charles Oakley and John Starks, who played with emotion and bravado and were, at least at heart, true New Yorkers.

Today's Knicks, however, play as if they were assembled for a PlayStation video game–technically adept, but cold and emotionless on the court. They occasionally make dazzling plays, but they rarely display the fire of their predecessors, that hell-or-be-damned Starks-ian abandon that at times blew close games but made fans bleed blue and orange. This may be a question of tenure: Only point guard Charlie Ward has called himself a Knick for more than five years. There's also a sense that this is a transitional season, a biding of time until next year, when New York will almost undoubtedly try to land Chris Webber, the Sacramento All-Star and soon-to-be free agent. And it also may be an issue of priorities: Many of the current Knicks are deeply religious, a devotion that Mr. Van Gundy fears is distracting.

Absent an emotional core on the court, today's Knicks suffer from a disconnect with their fans and, by extension, with their city. While it's fun to watch Mr. Sprewell go coast-to-coast or Mr. Camby slam home an offensive rebound, there is something naggingly soulless about this bunch. These days, even dedicated Knicks fans may feel, as Jerry Seinfeld once observed, that they're simply rooting for laundry.

We brought it upon ourselves, of course. For eons, the proud Patrick Ewing was New York's Sisyphus, an epic, often ailing figure laboring furiously, making absurd promises to win titles even when everyone knew hope was lost. Mr. Ewing was great in his prime, but by the end of his Garden run, almost the whole city had turned upon him, believing the slow-footed center was holding his younger, faster teammates back. The day after Mr. Ewing's exile to Seattle was announced (it actually took a second try before the trade became official), the headline in the Post read, "GOOD RIDDANCE."

The Ewing-less Knicks proved themselves to be something less than fury unleashed. Messrs. Sprewell and Houston had co-existed before, but now they were joined in the rotation by Mr. Rice, who had come to the club in the Seattle trade via a side deal with Los Angeles. A struggle for minutes and shots ensued. The team was also weak at point guard and vulnerable in the middle, where the valiant but brittle Mr. Camby struggled to do battle with the league's top behemoths.

Mr. Ewing, no doubt, had outlived his usefulness as a key player. But with his removal, the Knicks lost more than a big body down low. They also lost his stubborn, irreplaceable (if deluded) sense of Manifest Destiny, that all-or-nothing, total-war attitude that he imposed on his team and New York. For 15 years, there was no better sight in the Garden than an animated Mr. Ewing flapping his monstrous arms upward during a close game, demanding more noise.

It was hoped that Mr. Jackson would restore the will to win. A smart, careful and methodical player who spent most of his nine years out of New York with a Pacers team that caused the Knicks nearly as much grief as Michael Jordan's Bulls, Mr. Jackson took winning extremely seriously. Like Mr. Ewing, he was prone to bold predictions and tough talk about his rivals. Almost immediately, Mr. Jackson's arrival brought an air of drama to the Knicks, as he taped a menacing Biblical passage above his locker: "NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST ME SHALL PROSPER."

At times, Mr. Jackson has shown flashes of his old genius and delivered on some of the trade's initial promise. When he distributes crisp zip passes to the team's panoply of jump-shooters, Mr. Jackson can look like a soldier feeding the ammo belts to his machine gunner. As Mr. Houston told me, Mr. Jackson "gets it to you right on time, when you're ready to shoot it. He takes a lot of the thinking out of it. He just makes the game easier."

But more often than not, Mr. Jackson looks like a piano player without a song. In a disorganized Knicks offense, he is often dumping the ball to players calling for it in the post, or passing it around like a hot potato at the top of the three-point circle. Without the intelligent cutters of his past–players who knew how to move without the ball, like Reggie Miller or Chris Mullin– Mr. Jackson appears out of his game, unable to take hold as a leader.

Mr. Jackson has failed even to outshine the pedestrian Mr. Ward, whose job he commandeered upon his arrival in New York. Statistically, Messrs. Jackson and Ward are performing at roughly the same level. But Mr. Wardis younger and quicker and less likely to tire, and has responded to his demotion with extra effort and better shooting. As the regular season comes to a close, Mr. Van Gundy now tends to let Mr. Ward, not Mr. Jackson, run the team in the fourth quarter of tight games.

What's more, it's not even clear that Mr. Jackson has outperformed Chris Childs, the point guard for whom he was traded. Mr. Childs was error-prone and childishly temperamental, a whiner and committer of stupid fouls. Still, he ranks among the best defensive point guards in basketball, and many disciples of the team agree that Mr. Childs hit as many clutch baskets as any other player. (My father, a Knicks season-ticket holder for some 30 years, often insisted–perhaps with some hyperbole, but not humor–that Mr. Childs was secretly the key to the team.)

No one, it should be noted, expected an aging player like Mr. Jackson to come in and dominate, to display Charlie Ward's quickness or to glue himself, as Mr. Childs did, to an offensive hurricane like Mr. Iverson. But less understandable is how Mr. Jackson has also failed to provide the Knicks with the on-court leadership and gusto he showed so often in his career.

Remember, Mr. Jackson was an insufferable opponent. During the Knicks' regular meetings with the Pacers in the mid- and late 1990's, he often bullied smaller Knicks point guards with his plodding but effective post-up move. He was a trash-talker (he once called Walt Frazier a "pimp") and a showboat, goading fans with his absurd chest-and-shoulders "shimmy shake." The Sporting News wrote that Knicks fans' hatred for Mr. Jackson surpassed their hated for Reggie Miller. After stealing the ball from John Starks late in a 1998 playoff game at the Garden, Mr. Jackson paused from dribbling up-court to rub it in with one of those absurd little wiggles, which elicited a lusty chant of "Jackson sucks" from the rafters. (I was there that afternoon, and recall enthusiastically joining in.)

The current Mark Jackson hasn't shown any of that verve, that willingness to excite and taunt and channel crowd anger. Instead, he appears emotionally detached from his surroundings, unwilling to buy into the comeback story so many New York columnists are eagerly waiting to write. To date, his misplays have been more memorable than his contributions. In the late moments of the Knicks' disturbing 89-82 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday, April 15, Mr. Jackson helped snuff New York's last hopes at a comeback with a sloppy pass that bounced off Mr. Houston's fingertips and out of bounds.

In conversation, Mr. Jackson still recites all the right bromides. ("I hope to finish my career here," he said to me. "This is home.") But more often than not, he sounds like a tired hired gun. When we talk, he professes to barely remember the days of being denounced on the Garden floor. "Really?" he says flatly when I remind him of the most-hated-Pacer designation. "I was just trying to accomplish something, which was winning. We had some great wars, great rivalries, but that's over."

The reality is that Mark Jackson is not a savior, but a journeyman, and while New York is his city, this is not his team. To have expected him to step in and hold up a passionless team, ripped of its emotional leader, was to expect too much. Perhaps once the playoffs begin, Mr. Jackson will rise to the task. But right now, he doesn't look like the missing piece; he's just another mismatched part on a screwball team. Once considered a storybook tale of New York, Mark Jackson and the 2000-1 Knicks seem destined for a drab and unhappy ending.