Minutes after President Bush finished an hourlong meeting with moderate Islamic leaders on the island of Bali on Wednesday, he approached his staff with something of a puzzled look on his face.

"Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?" he asked, shaking his head. He was equally distressed, he told them, to hear that the United States was so pro-Israel that it was uninterested in the creation of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, despite his frequent declarations calling for exactly that.

It was a revealing moment precisely because the president was so surprised.

In his six-day dash from Tokyo to the Philippines to Singapore, Indonesia and Australia, rarely did the searing suspicions of America's intentions — and the intentions of Mr. Bush himself — pierce the president's fearsome security bubble. But when they did, they revealed a huge gulf between how the president views himself, and how Asians view George W. Bush's America. ...

Notably missing from this trip were the big crowds that have almost always turned out for a glimpse of the world's most powerful leader. To some extent, that was planned: Thailand, where Mr. Bush stayed the longest for the annual Asian economic forum, gave workers a holiday and made it clear that protests would not be tolerated.