One of his weaknesses, Charlie knew, was that he tended to work on what pleased him at the moment, rather than on what was most important. So he envied President George W. Bush who, faced with a host of important problems, invariably knew just where to concentrate his attention. He could focus on what was important and shove aside what was trivial.

This became apparent in recent months. When scientists at six federal agencies reported the danger to human health and the likelihood that thousands might die because of environmental pollution, President Bush dismissed the report with a contemptuous: "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy."

In contrast, he detected no bureaucracy and dismissed as disloyal, politically motivated and probably unpatriotic any suggestion that the FBI and CIA had failed to respond to warnings, prior to Sept. 11, of a possible terrorist attack. He rejected the possibility of bureau- cratic bungling even though a longtime FBI agent, Coleen Rowley, had pleaded unsuccessfully with superiors, including director Robert S. Mueller III, for permission to check out Zacarias Moussaoui. Sometimes called the "20th hijacker," Moussaoui had aroused suspicion at a flight school in the United States and had been named as a possible terrorist by the French government.

However, the FBI did spring into action later. To learn who may have leaked the news of its possible bureaucratic failures to the public, the FBI demanded that members of Congress take polygraph tests and swear that they were not the source of the leaks. The White House demanded an aggressive investigation of unauthorized disclosure.

The president also found no cause for concern with lapses in security at government agencies responsible for the nation's security. The Justice Department's inspector general reported that some 775 of the department's weapons and 400 computers, some possibly containing national security information, were lost, stolen or missing. Some of the weapons showed up at crime scenes.

When it was disclosed that President Bush himself, as a director of Harken Energy, illegally used inside information to dump his stock before public disclosure of bad news, he brushed the matter aside. And when it was noted that many executives who broke the law were now part of his administration, he paid scant attention. Fortunately, there's a new Corporate Crime Task Force. Larry D. Thompson, formerly a director of Providian Financial Corp., which has been accused of corporate fraud, heads it.

President Bush did find time to speak at an invitation-only celebration of his victory over the economy. He even disclosed that he was saving money for the country by not releasing $5.1 billion in emergency anti-terrorism spending requested by Congress. Perhaps because they had not been invited to the victory celebration, thousands of jobless engineers may have gone unnoticed by President Bush. But Charlie still had his job.