Reality and television are mutually exclusive terms, but when it comes to this particular White House, the further it can position Bush from reality and the closer it can keep the president to being a TV star, the better.

Presidents all the way back to Eisenhower have tried to manipulate television for political advantage, but the lengths to which this administration has gone to sculpt Bush's image are beyond propriety.

Never mind the shameless "Top Gun" scam, in which the president gleefully executed The Full Hollywood, landing on an aircraft carrier in flight gear to announce the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq. White House media experts, many of them recruited from network production backgrounds, timed the show to bathe Bush in a perfect golden sunset, positioned in front of a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.

The image was glorious, but the reality of our dubious accomplishment, displacing brutality in Iraq with destruction and chaos and clueless attempts at re-organization, won't be getting much White House production time.

Last week, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported that in the staging of a presidential address on a tax cut there, White House aides asked people in the crowd to remove their ties to look more common, like the kind of people Bush laughably contends will benefit from his economic initiatives.

The image was neopopulist, but the reality is that the tax cut shamelessly benefits the wealthy and will create deficits so large it will only make it harder for people who don't wear ties to work to negotiate a tanking economy.

But image comes first, which is why protesters at last year's Bush visit to Neville Island were herded behind a fence like animals.

This administration is getting ready to slash Medicaid, but it had no trouble coming up with a reported $250,000 to build the perfect telegenic "set" at Central Command in Qatar for the big war show. It has no trouble shipping Musco lighting, the kind used to illuminate sports events, around the world to light Bush speeches. It has no problem designing and positioning the exact backdrops necessary -- such as the perfect juxtaposition of Bush's head along the stone row at Mount Rushmore -- to keep perception ahead of reality.