So the morning newspaper tells us President Bush “sympathizes” with the protesters outside his Crawford, Texas, ranch, where he’s on yet another vacation. (Bush may be no record-setter when it comes to achievements in office, but according to one eagle-eyed reporter, Bush has spent almost 20 percent of his presidency on vacation.)

Anti-war protesters have joined Cindy Sheehan of California, who lost a son in Iraq and is demanding a meeting with Bush. Although the president sent two top aides to meet with her, he’s declined to invite her inside Prairie Chapel for a talk. Bush says he has “heard the voices of those saying, ‘Pull out now.’ I’ve absolutely thought about their cry and their sincere desire to reduce the loss of life by pulling our troops out. I just strongly disagree.”

Strongly disagree with what, Mr. President, the sincere desire to reduce the loss of life or the call to pull the troops out?

Bush would lose nothing — and perhaps gain a great deal — by inviting Sheehan into his ranch for a talk. He’s boasted in the past about comforting the loved ones of those who’ve died in Iraq, so why not do some more comforting? Of course, it will not be comfortable for the president, who will have to explain to Sheehan why her son is dead. And that, we think, is why the president really doesn’t want to meet with her.

It turns out that “strongly disagreeing” is the end of it: Bush has no good answer to give her, or anybody else who has lost a loved one in Iraq. In wars, people die, which is why you do everything in your power to avoid war before it happens, and then do even more. Presidents who go to war having truly exhausted all the alternatives (think Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Harry Truman, not LBJ or Nixon) don’t have a perfect answer for the Cindy Sheehans of the world, but they at least have an answer.

Bush doesn’t. And hence he sits inside his ranch, while Sheehan sits outside, a gulf of pain and anguish and grief separating them, and never the twain shall meet.