Within a minute or so after I catch snippets of Bush's private thanks and reassurance to the CityTeam residents, Bush and his wife come into the billiards room, and his dedication to his evangelical Christianity -- which I found moving just minutes ago -- gives me the willies. He starts again with his standard-issue guy-schmooze.

Laura's "a heckuva pool player," he tells us, before getting serious.

"We just had a powerful testimony next door about this program," he says. "The state ought to welcome programs such as this that change people's lives." He talks about true change and recovery. "Government can't do that," he says.

But how, he is asked, will a group like CityTeam get funding without running into obstacles created by the separation of church and state? Bush says that the church can't be the state, and the state can't be the church.

"The danger is that government causes a program like this to lose its mission," Bush says. "A lot of programs say, 'I don't want to touch government money because the bureaucracy will come in and force us to take the picture off the wall.'"

He motions toward a painting of Jesus.

"What I'm saying is we're not going to let that happen."

Just as Bush is able to engage so effectively with the residents who are fellow born-again recovering addicts, he seems unable to understand why someone who doesn't believe in Jesus wouldn't want tax dollars going into proselytizing Christian activities. He similarly didn't get it when he opposed the recent Supreme Court decision that denied Christian public school students the right to force their prayers into the ears of everyone who attended their Friday night football games. These are not examples of intolerance or cruelty as much as, apparently, just witlessness. A few weeks ago, Washington Post reporter Terry Neal, an African-American, was sitting on the Bush campaign plane listening to his Walkman.

Bush came to the back of the plane and approached him, in front of a number of other reporters.

"Whatcha listenin' to?" Bush asked Neal. "Some rap?"

Neal now will only say that he and Bush generally get along well, and that, no, he wasn't listening to rap. But the issue seemed to speak to a larger ignorance -- the self-contained cluelessness of a man who makes it to 54 without realizing it might be offensive to assume that an African-American wearing a Walkman is probably listening to Snoop Doggy Dogg.

The incident is not unique. About three weeks ago, Ron Claiborne of ABC News was getting off the Bush campaign plane.

"Hey, Bill," Bush said, referring to Claiborne by the name of CBS News' Bill Whittaker.

Whittaker has a mustache, Claiborne doesn't. Whittaker has black hair, Claiborne's hair is gray. Whittaker has been covering Bush for more than a year, Claiborne since Labor Day. Both, however, are black.

These are not stories that damn Bush as contemptible, but they do suggest a man with limited experience with people -- at least people not just like him.

There's also Lynn Novick, a co-producer of Ken Burns' PBS series "Baseball," who had the rare treat of accompanying Bush to a Texas Rangers game in the summer of 1994, before he was elected governor. "He was a very gracious host," Novick says. "He was perfectly pleasant. Until he changed the subject."

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