The reality portion of this picture, as Bush continues to reiterate, is that we should not, cannot and will not abandon the Iraqi people to be subsumed by terrorists now infiltrating the country or devoured by the subterranean Saddam and his Baathist ghouls.
Miller's trust in Bush, meanwhile, mirrors that of 56 percent of Americans who are sticking with him despite imperfections, such as that pre-war intelligence was weak to wrong, depending on the item; post-war planning was inadequate; American soldiers' falling to snipers and suicide bombers is distressing and apparently unexpected.
Personally, I find reprehensible the administration's policy of concealing our military dead. On the eve of the Iraq war, the Pentagon issued a directive forbidding "arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel."
Bush as nanny doesn't fit Bush as commander-in-chief. We're grown-ups out here.
As grown-ups, Americans can absorb the reality that the war against Iraq was both legitimate given Saddam's refusal to abide by U.N. resolutions and necessary as a response to Sept. 11, even absent a group hug between al-Qaida and the Saddamites.
We hit Saddam because we could, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote, "and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that (Arab-Muslim terrorist) world. . Every neighboring government - and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen - got the message."
At this point, our future depends on staying on message, as politicians like to say. The next president will be the man or woman Americans trust most to understand that.