The F.D.R. industry started thriving over 50 years ago with the publication of the three-volume Secret Diary of the acerbic Harold L. Ickes (the most influential New Dealer to serve in Roosevelt’s cabinet for all 12 years); it continued to prosper thanks to the deeply schooled Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (still prolific at 88), who produced the definitive Age of Roosevelt volumes. Both writers are reverential, yes, but they’re also tough-minded (sometimes brutal) about Roosevelt’s intellectual depth, his fickle charm, his mastery of the arts of temporizing and deception. (To the young Orson Welles, on a White House visit, F.D.R. confided, “You and I are the two best actors in America.”)

Mr. Schlesinger “wrote the book”—The Coming of the New Deal (1958)—on F.D.R.’s mastery of the economic crisis that shut down the country in 1933 and his trumping of a leader then judged, by many of the cognoscenti, to be abler than he, President Herbert Hoover. Meticulous Roosevelt scholars Frank Freidel and Kenneth S. Davis share front rank with Mr. Schlesinger; Geoffrey C. Ward’s narrative of Roosevelt’s early career, and especially his struggle with polio, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (1989), sits with them. Hundreds of others crowd the shelves. Why bother making a new run at such a well-told story?

Rooseveltiana is a national resource that shows no sign of depletion, even when a writer focuses on a narrow slice of the story. This fact is entertainingly illustrated by Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment.

A senior editor and columnist for Newsweek, Mr. Alter has created what might be called the up-to-date newsmagazine story of F.D.R., focused on the months when he all but seized power from the wreckage of the Hoover administration. Such a version is by no means what was called, until the repeal of Prohibition, near beer. However superfluous newsmagazines are today, there was an era—it ended in the 1960’s—when Time and Newsweek were more comprehensive, more smartly staffed and edited up and down the line, supported by more widely based and talented foreign and specialized reporting, than the U.S. newspapers (which were still in their provincial phase) and the broadcast media.

Newsmagazine style in its great days was fine-tuned narrative. Seamless, smooth and crisp, it relied heavily on anecdote, named faces in the crowd, was seasoned with stray detail but also factoid, and implied swagger about the outfit’s far-flung newsgathering reach.

Mr. Alter’s imaginative and sound idea was to take advantage of the fact that every single person who worked for someone who worked for F.D.R., or exchanged intimate notes and moments with him, or was present when … has been recorded somewhere, somehow. With boundless energy, Mr. Alter has blended new, forgotten and undiscovered sources—from big shot to bystander—with those long on the record. With an eclectic research eye at work, he doesn’t need to overturn Mr. Schlesinger and the others to bring us fresh goods.

Here’s his version of the events in Miami on the evening of Feb. 15, 1933. President-elect Roosevelt had just docked after a “perfectly grand” Caribbean cruise (bonefish the quarry), not quite three weeks before his inauguration. Enter Giuseppe Zangara, a 32-year-old unemployed bricklayer who told everyone “that his stomach hurt. He didn’t intend it as a metaphor for the hunger and despair of the Depression, but it became one ….

“Zangara had wanted to kill Herbert Hoover and had lingered around the fringes of the Bonus Army march in Washington the previous summer. But then he moved south and began plotting to kill the new president. He arrived only an hour and a half before FDR’s appearance, not in time to stand or sit in front. When he tried to push himself there, he was rebuffed by H.L. Edmunds, a tourist from Ottumwa, Iowa, who … told him sternly that he was showing bad manners ….

“[T]hat little lecture on crowd etiquette probably changed history. Zangara settled for the third row, less than ten yards from the back of the Buick” that shuttled F.D.R. from the docks to the waiting crowd. “Zangara got off five shots from twenty-five feet”—they sounded “like the popping of the magnesium flashbulbs still used by news photographers. One hit the back of the car, just inches from Roosevelt.” Another mortally wounded Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago, along for the ride. But “Lillian Cross, a forty-eight-year-old housewife,” and “Thomas Armour, a forty-six-year-old Miami carpenter,” interfered with Zangara’s footing and aim. Each would “later claim to have saved Roosevelt, and they may both have been right.”

Newsmagazine style paints portraits, it captures the moment, but it also loves themes; it loves to strike historic-sounding postures. So it’s an unexpected relief when Mr. Alter calls Roosevelt’s most famous rhetorical flourish (“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) “a specimen of inspired nonsense, no different in substance than Hoover’s jawboning, except for the fact that it came from a different jaw, one jutting confidently.” Tart and true.

But at the end of the book, Mr. Alter reverts to newsmagazine (as distinct from Presidential) style: The “vessel” that was F.D.R. “held not just personality traits but the essential elements of the American character: our faith in ourselves, our spirit of experimentation, and our hope for the future.” If you buy that, you might, in newsmagazine-style logic, see a direct link from F.D.R.’s exorcism of fear in 1933 to his rhetoric of “rendezvous with destiny” in 1936 and “arsenal of democracy” in 1940 to today’s “war on terror.”

Of course, Mr. Alter doesn’t intend that. Let’s just say that the newsmagazine style has its weaknesses as well as strengths.

For strength, here’s the payoff to Mr. Alter’s retelling of Joe Zangara’s assassination attempt:

The Buick swooped off to the hospital with the mortally wounded Mayor Cermak (in fact, a bitter political enemy of Roosevelt’s), a heroic, unharmed F.D.R. at the Mayor’s side feeling in vain for a pulse, murmuring, “Tony, keep quiet—don’t move.” The owner of the yacht on which F.D.R. had been cruising, his old pal Vincent Astor, arrived at the hospital, having heard dire rumors. He found F.D.R. “sitting placidly in a white hospital jacket” and urged him to put out official word that he was safe. From his own unpublished recollections, archived at the Roosevelt Library, comes F.D.R.’s reply: “Your mind Vincent, works very slowly. I did that three minutes ago.”

The only detail Mr. Alter might have added is that months later, to counter the growing influence of Henry Luce’s slick, Republican-leaning Time, Vincent Astor launched a new magazine—it later came to be called Newsweek.

Michael Janeway, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, is the author of The Fall of the House of Roosevelt: Brokers of Ideas and Power from FDR to LBJ (Columbia).

Twice in George Bush's life, when all hell broke loose, he vamoosed. His first disappearing act was during the Vietnam War, when he was a no-show officer in the Air National Guard. The second time he skedaddled was 9/11.

The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the President's movements on that day. What he did and when he did it has been fuzzed over by the President and his operatives, but the facts are out. He said, for example, that on the day in question, "one of the first acts I did was to put our military on alert." But he didn't. Air Force General Richard Myers, then the acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave that order without having consulted him. The reason for the fib was to show George to the voters as a man in control of himself and the situation through shot and shell.

On Dec. 3, 2001, Mr. Bush, who had been visiting a school in Florida when the attack happened, told an audience that "I was sitting outside the classroom, waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower-the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, 'Well, there's one terrible pilot.'" It didn't happen, at least not as Mr. Bush tells it; instead of issuing orders, he must have been making up stories. The television set wasn't on where he was; no pictures of the first plane hitting the tower were shown until 12 hours after he had left Florida, so he was BS-ing. We all like to embellish, but if the President throws bull feces around, it inspires doubts, not confidence.

At four minutes of 10 a.m. on 9/11, the President took off from Sarasota/Bradenton International Airport and headed where? Not back to Washington, but to a stop in Louisiana and then on to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and an underground bunker. Why?

Because Dick Cheney told him there was a plot afoot to shoot down Air Force One. But by noon, there was not one nonmilitary plane aloft over the United States. Thus, making an attempt on Air Force One was impossible. The President was safe, but evidently not safe enough, for the Valiant One remained in his Nebraska bunker until after 5 p.m. Eastern Time, when he climbed back on his airplane and returned to the vacant seat of government.

So it transpires that, throughout this day of crisis and dismay, the President of the United States was not at his post. Rudolph Giuliani and George Pataki became the heroes of the hour. These two men, at their place of duty, were the calm faces and voices of courage and national determination. From leaderless Washington, there was little more than a void.

But what if he had been in danger? What if there had been a plan to attack Air Force One? Was Mr. Bush right to execute his Nebraska skedaddle? Yes, had he been a private citizen. In such a situation, you and I would not be criticized if we high-tailed ourselves off to safety. Do the same standards of discretion before valor hold for a President, for the Commander in Chief, for one who would soon send his young fellow citizens to face the dangers that he hid from?

Is part of the job of being President to risk your life? To expose yourself to danger? Mr. Bush answered no. Other Presidents have answered differently.

Since he cannot be compared to Abraham Lincoln in other respects, it would be unfair to compare George Bush's want of courage to Abraham Lincoln's. Lincoln was repeatedly warned of the nearness of danger, but he understood that a wartime leader must show his face in public.

Lincoln's fate did not deter his successors from moving about among the people. James Garfield was assassinated in a Washington, D.C., railroad station in 1881, and William McKinley-who, like Garfield, had seen more than his share of action during the Civil War-was gunned down in 1901 in Buffalo, N.Y., at the Pan-American Exposition greeting citizens at an open reception. Presidents do that kind of thing, and it is dangerous.

John Kennedy, a World War II combat veteran who knew his Presidential history, nevertheless was riding in an open car when he was assassinated. He believed that Presidents ought not to hide; they should be seen up close, and they should mingle. The perils of doing so go with the territory.

Harry Truman knew that. On the afternoon of Nov. 1, 1950, President Truman was taking a nap. He was living at Blair House while the White House, across the street, was being rebuilt. As he slept, two assassins armed with pistols rushed the building, killing one Secret Service agent and wounding two others. One of the would-be murderers was also killed. After the shooting stopped, it was one of those 9/11 moments when nobody could say whether or not more attacks were coming. But Truman was scheduled to preside at a ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery, and he never gave a thought to canceling. Nor did he give up his daily health walk through the streets of Washington. "A President has to expect these things," said Truman, a man who had fought in France in World War I.

Whatever the misgivings about movie actors, America knew that it had a President when, after Ronald Reagan had been shot and grievously wounded, the country heard about his joking with his surgeons as he was wheeled into the emergency room.

The gutsiest example of Presidential moxie under fire was given us in 1933 by Franklin Roosevelt. On a pleasant February evening, President-elect Roosevelt went to Miami's Bay Front Park to address a crowd of 20,000 people. Roosevelt, who was unable to walk by himself, spoke from the rear of an open touring car. Near his automobile was Anton J. (Tony) Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago. A little after 9:30, a man in the second row of the audience, about 35 feet from Roosevelt, jumped up and began firing a revolver at him. The Mayor, still near Roosevelt, went down, as did a Mrs. Joseph Gill, shot twice in the stomach. Several other people went down as Roosevelt appraised what suddenly had become bedlam. Nobody knew how many gunmen there might be, or what could happen next. What did happen next was that the crippled Roosevelt took command. This is how Roosevelt remembered it, in his own words:

"The chauffeur started the car …. I looked around and saw Mayor Cermak doubled over and Mrs. Gill collapsing …. I called to the chauffeur to stop. He did-about fifteen feet from where we started. The Secret Service men shouted to him to get out of the crowd and he started forward again. I stopped him a second time ….

"I saw Mayor Cermak being carried. I motioned to have him put in the back of the car, which would be the first out. He was alive, but I didn't think he was going to last. I put my left arm around him and my hand on his pulse, but I couldn't find any pulse. He slumped forward ….

"After we had gone another block, Mayor Cermak straightened up and I got his pulse. It was surprising …. I held him all the way to the hospital and his pulse constantly improved. That trip to the hospital seemed thirty miles long. I talked to Mayor Cermak nearly all the way. I remember I said, 'Tony, keep quiet-don't move. It won't hurt you if you keep quiet …. '"

Anton Cermak lived only a short time, but in the gloom of his death, and the Great Depression that F.D.R. would shortly have to contend with, the nation found out it had elected a man who defied danger, who kept his wits and his command of himself and others under fire, who was a leader. A few days later, Roosevelt was inaugurated and told the nation that it had "nothing to fear but fear itself." By his actions, he had made his words believable.

The man who lingered in the Nebraska bunker doesn't have the balls for the job.

Or there is the example of Abraham Lincoln, repeatedly warned not to appear in public, who told his bodyguards that their protecting him could not be allowed to interfere with his connection to the people who had chosen him to lead them and the nation. Courage.

And then, lack of courage. George W. Bush. Four days later, he arrives in New York. Couldn't get there sooner because they were targeting Air Force One. So take another plane. This man is so much the captive of his security janissaries they had a by-invitation-only memorial service at the National Cathedral. Leaders take chances. Leaders expose themselves to dangers. Let's rename Air Force One the White Feather Special.

This panicky escape–from Florida to Louisiana, then a disappearance under a desk in Nebraska–was the flight of a confused, frightened man. At the same time he vanished, the news announcers were assuring us that the Vice President was safe in his cave, the Speaker of the House was safe in his cave, and the members of the cabinet were safe in their caves. For practical purposes, the federal government, with New York and Washington under attack, had become invisible. The highest good was saving themselves so they could live to lead us on another, safer day. Cowardice in the face of the enemy?

For most of Tuesday, the de facto leader of America was Rudolph Giuliani. He was the only elected official in the United States to be seen, the only one giving encouragement, the only one enjoining hope and the only one performing the duties of his office in the face of immediate danger. (George Pataki also was at his post, gaining honor by his conduct.)

So it turns out that as George W. Bush and that shabby bunch he calls his team played the part of the poltroon in Washington, the ordinary people of New York were extraordinary. Our firefighters, our police officers, our men and women from the building trades and from medicine and every occupation showed us what heroes do. In an epoch accustomed to seeing the big shots send the little shots to their death, the fire chief led his people to the immortality which only great deeds and great sacrifice confer. Has there ever been a day like Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, a day of such mass murder, of such grief, of such hugeness of heart? Not in the four centuries since Europeans came to Manhattan island.

When the danger had abated, the politicians, like slugs after a rainstorm, came out from under to resume their accustomed places in front of the TV cameras. The braying jackasses in Congress lined up on the steps of the Capitol to sing "God Bless America" and then, no doubt, went back into their respective chambers to "commend" each other for their "leadership." Seldom have those subprime less-than-mediocrities shown themselves in a worse light.

They were not able, however, to underdo the President, this little man who is too small for his suits. Him with his stumblings, his swarm of meaningless phrases, his make no mistake about it 's. Make no mistake about it, this shrimp, this sea urchin is not up to the job. If he had any stature, he'd quit–but if he had the stature to quit, then he'd have the stature for the job.

Think of the Presidents of the last half-century who might have led us on this day of criminal human sacrifice. The best would have been Dwight Eisenhower, who knew about death and killing. His Presidency was the last during which policy in the Middle East was argued frankly and openly, the last before dissenting opinion became afraid to say out loud what it thinks.

We might have had Richard Nixon. If it takes a wily one to catch a wily one, he'd have snagged Osama bin Laden, of that you may be sure. You cannot imagine a Lyndon Johnson getting on television after 5,000 of our people were murdered and having nothing to say worth listening to. Bill Clinton would have been equal to the job. When the news came in, he'd have told the girl, "Get up offa your knees, I got work to do," and he would have done it well. For that matter, so would Warren Harding, on most historians' lists as the worst President in the last 100 years–but he did have a sonorous kind of vapidity which deceived his auditors into briefly thinking they'd heard real thoughts. You don't even have the illusion with Mr. Bush.

He could speak of Osama bin Laden, the evil genius who has thousands of lesser geniuses around the globe, the full match in power and brains of the United States of America. Who is this bin Laden character who has brought off every ambush, every bushwhacking, every bombing for years? Is he real, or is he the Professor Moriarty of what we optimistically call the "intelligence community"? Moriarty-bin Laden gets away every time, disappearing into the waterfall, a man (or monster) of such wicked talents that not even Sherlock Holmes could catch him. Is this or is this not comic-book stuff? Does Moriarty-bin Laden exist, or is he necessary for politicians who dare not talk plainly about the underlying issues, and for the incompetents in the C.I.A. and F.B.I. whose quotas of drunks, traitors and simple jerks must be protected by weaving fairy tales about the superhuman Old Man of the Mountain who knows all, sees all and kills all.

Let us hope that Mr. Bush will someday talk about this catastrophic defeat which occurred because the responsible people in the federal government didn't do their jobs. The Federal Aviation Administration failed. Anybody who has taken a plane in the United States in the last 15 years knows that the only function being served by the security setup, other than torturing innocent passengers, was to provide leaf-raking jobs for somnambulant and/or rude persons of brief authority.

As for the intelligence–or shall we call it the low-intelligence–community, countless billions have bought us nothing. Whenever challenged, their stock answer is, "You only see the times we failed; you don't see how often we've stopped terrorists." But that ain't good enough, bub. Would we accept the same answer from the people who run atomic-power plants? Foiling nine out of 10 plots is not a passing grade when the 10th results in the death of thousands of people. You could talk about that, President Bush.

And one day soon, our leading people will have to talk about the land which has become the tomb of so many good, dear people. Some will say that the towers should be rebuilt. I hope that there'll be others who say that they should never have been built in the first place, for it isn't only fundamentalist assassins who have long looked on those towers as an assertion of unseemly pride and the shameful hauteur of those who believe money confers virtue. They were as ugly as they were disproportionate, and in their place there should be erected something which speaks of the better America, which is more closely connected to the woman who stands close by in the harbor, her torch still lit in this dark space of time.