Bob Woodward got three and a half hours alone with President Bush while writing his new book. The president spent far less time with the Sept. 11 commission, and only in the company of vice presidential chaperone Dick Cheney.

Anyone else think there’s something wrong with this picture?

“To govern is to choose,” John. F. Kennedy said famously, and two of the most critical choices a president makes are how to spend his time, and how to raise and spend the nation’s money.

The Woodward choice tells us something important about the president’s view of time. But fresh proof has come in recent days that the president’s view of money is equally indefensible.

The New York Times reported recently on the appalling situation facing thousands of reservists, whose extended tours in Iraq are impoverishing their families. These men and women left jobs and businesses behind to answer their country’s call. But as the expected six-month or 12-month deployments have turned into 20-month or two-year stints in Iraq, the economic toll is mounting. Employers can’t hold positions open that long, and for small businesspeople, it’s a wipeout.

The Times profiled Jay Johnson, a member of the Tennessee National Guard, who has a small mobile catering business. He’s been away in Iraq now for 18 months. The business he spent seven years building is down to one lunch truck from three. His wife and two kids are scraping by on half as much money. “If he doesn’t come back soon,” Mrs. Johnson said, “we’re going to lose it all, and he’ll have to start all over again.”

So George Bush is choosing to send families of modest means who supply most of the Reserve toward bankruptcy as their reward for serving the nation. Hold that presidential choice in your mind.

Now consider new reports by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Tax Policy Center that tally who really got what from the Bush tax cuts. The contrast is shocking and shameful.

While Jay Johnson’s business is evaporating because he’s in Iraq, Americans who earn more than $1 million a year are getting tax cuts that average $123,600 this year. People in the middle of the income spectrum will get tax cuts of $647.

That’s quite a Republican rallying cry: “$100,000 for the millionaires – six hundred bucks for the reservists!”

During earlier debates over the war’s funding, I humbly suggested an “Adopt-A-Soldier” plan, under which high earners would forego part of their tax cuts to pay for Iraq. I didn’t find any takers in the White House, but I want to give the president another chance because I’m worried about the state of his soul. (Sure, Bush looks good – but so did Dorian Gray!)

So why not an “Adopt-A-Reservist” plan – under which America’s 257,000 millionaires could give up some or all of their $30 billion in tax cuts this year to help ease the economic plight facing countless reservists and their families?

That might get us back to mid-19th-century political morality, when wealthier families at least had the decency to pay to avoid military service. This 21st-century Bush morality – where the best-off both avoid service and get big tax cuts at the same time – is really going to smell bad when the kids and the historians figure it out.

As Karl Rove will surely see, I’m only proposing this in the president’s interest.

The cynical icing on the cake comes when affluent Bush supporters take a sliver of their $100,000-plus annual tax cut and return it to the president’s campaign as a gratuity, via the higher contribution limits of $4,000 per couple (up from $2,000) that the president signed into law.

Ka-ching!

That’s the sound of the pocket change from the tax cut as it gets recycled into the president’s campaign. Meanwhile, Mrs. Johnson hears the ka-ching on the checkout line and wonders if she’ll have enough cash left this month to pay the bills – and when Jay is coming home.

Matthew Miller is a syndicated columnist and author. Reach him on the Web at: www.mattmilleronline.com.