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In one universe, George W. Bush is soaring from victory to victory. His wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, waged with solid domestic support, each ousted unsavory regimes at a cost of relatively few U.S. casualties. He has prodded a historic series of tax cuts through Congress.  

Bush’s approval ratings have steadily topped 60 percent, despite weak support for many of his policies and low confidence in his economic stewardship. Polls indicate that he has transferred a chunk of that personal popularity to the Republican Party. 

And a disciplined team of White House image makers keeps stoking Bush’s winning profile through managed events like Bush’s audacious May 1 landing on an aircraft carrier, where he emerged from a Navy jet wearing a buff flight suit. 

Call this domain Headline Universe, or Head of the Newscast Universe. Watch only the first few minutes of TV news, and this is what you see. 

In a parallel universe, though, the national media have done a diligent job of reporting how all of these superficial victories may be unraveling: 

• Terrorist bombings in Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Chechnya — the last two timed to greet Colin Powell’s arrivals — seemed to validate warnings that the Iraq war could backfire by reinvigorating Al Qaeda. 

• Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and their confidants all remain conspicuously at large. On May 21, Al Jazeera dutifully broadcast Al Qaeda’s deputy chief’s taped call for attacks on Western targets worldwide.  

• Postwar Iraq is in lawless chaos, with everything from utilities to police patrols broken. U.S. occupiers are the target of “go home” demonstrations. Ongoing attacks and accidents are conspiring to kill U.S. troops an average of nearly once per day, the Washington Post estimates. 

• No legitimate or cohesive Iraqi government is in sight, and self-declared leaders of the long suppressed Shiite majority are advocating an Iranian-style theocracy. Afghanistan itself is decaying into pre-Taliban warlordism. 

• Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction are nowhere to be found. Yet the U.S. took nearly two months to respond to United Nations demands to stop the looting of Iraq’s main nuclear research site. 

• Bush’s tax cuts will, according to expert consensus, stimulate little job creation, and will offer scant tax relief to the great majority of Americans who are not rich. Yet they will lock in record federal deficits for years to come, endangering core benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare. 

• Finally, Bush’s “Top Gun” landing provoked Democrats’ criticism that the White House was filming a re-election commercial at taxpayer expense. Word emerged that, to provide Bush’s backdrop, the Navy had delayed overnight the carrier crew’s long-awaited return to port.  

In this parallel universe, the media have — at least at the serious national level — been doing their jobs in covering the untidy backside of a carefully polled and presented presidency. 

Call that universe Boring World. Is anyone much paying attention to these details? None of these criticisms has “bounced” into broad or sustained outrage. Ultimately, the outcome of next year’s elections will depend on the extent to which these two universes collide. 

This administration has taken its playbook from the Reagan administration. In a famous anecdote, CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl recalled the difficulty of working around Ronald Reagan's image makers. 

Stahl had broadcast a story about the contradictions between Reagan’s “compassionate” photo opportunities (visits to the Special Olympics and to a senior citizens’ apartment building) and his policies (budget cuts for disabled and seniors’ programs). 

She worried that she’d antagonized the White House. But, Stahl said, “They loved it.” She quoted a Reagan aide telling her, “They didn’t hear you. They only saw [the] pictures.” 

The current White House communications director, Dan Bartlett, and his team have learned well from their Reagan mentors. That’s apparent from what Bartlett (who is no relation to “The West Wing’s” fictional President Jed Bartlet) said in a May 16 front-page New York Times article on their work.  

“Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don’t have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast,” he told the Times. 

“But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators.”