When the Sacramento Bee is this critical of W, it suggests to me that the perception of the president as a deceiver is getting some serious traction among the population.
This editorial lodges a strong complaint about the pattern of deception that has marked this administration. I have posted it here in its entirety.

Budget fudge: President plays 'hide the numbers'
By Sacramento Bee Editorial Staff
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Wednesday, February 4, 2004

Oops, he did it again. And this time it's not just liberal Democrats who are steamed at President Bush for his carefree attitude about facts; conservative Republicans in Congress are fuming that the White House played a game of bait-and-switch on last year's Medicare prescription drug bill.

And who can blame them? During the congressional debate over the expensive new Medicare benefit, the White House and other proponents told Congress that it would cost $400 billion over 10 years.

Now, with the bill passed by the narrowest of margins, the White House has raised the public cost estimate to $534 billion. That extra $134 billion is about equal to adding to the federal budget another NASA or two Environmental Protection Agencies.
According to news reports, administration officials had long been aware of these higher numbers, as had lobbying groups such as AARP. But the White House didn't widely share them with members of Congress or make them public.

It's easy to see why. If lawmakers and voters had known that pushing more Medicare beneficiaries into managed care plans would be as costly as the administration now projects, they might well have asked whether it's the right policy.

Sadly, fudging the facts is becoming standard procedure for Bush.

Deception is the central theme of the president's new budget, which attempts to reconcile Bush's top priority - extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans - with the reality of the enormous budget deficits that priority has helped create.

To that end, Bush is arguing that extending the tax cuts is compatible with cutting the deficit in half by 2009. What he doesn't point out is that most of the fiscal impact of extending the tax cuts wouldn't hit until - you guessed it - after 2009.

If you look in the fine print, you'll find that his tax proposal would add $233 billion of red ink in the next five years, but $857 billion in the five years after 2009. Extending the tax cuts would put the country deeper into debt just as the baby boomers begin to reach retirement age and put enormous strains on Social Security and Medicare. It's bait and switch all over again.

Americans have different views about how the country should deal with a budget deficit that's grown to a half-trillion dollars and is on a path to unimaginable levels over the next two decades. But there's no good case to be made for hiding the facts.

Whether the issue is Medicare prescription drugs or the budget or the war, the first obligation of an administration is to be forthright with Congress and the people, so the country can have an honest debate.

That's a duty this president has failed over and over again.