CRAWFORD, Texas — A meeting would have taken half an hour or less, and might have lowered the temperature on a month's worth of searing publicity.

When Cindy Sheehan showed up outside President Bush's ranch on the fourth full day of his five-week working vacation to talk about a son who had been killed in Iraq, he declined to meet with her — a widely second-guessed decision, even by some Republicans.

The way that choice was made, and the reasons, provide a vivid illustration of several hallmarks of Bush's style, including his insistence on protocol, his concern with precedent, his resistance to intrusions and his aversion to hand-wringing.

By the accounts of several advisers, Bush and his aides concluded it would be a mistake to yield to Sheehan's demand for a second meeting with Bush to discuss the death of her son, Casey, killed in Iraq at age 24 last year when his Army battalion was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. The president has made it clear, going back at least to a California rail swing during his 2000 campaign, that he does not care to see protesters, or to reward them.

White House officials maintain that Sheehan may have discredited herself with statements about impeachment, her insistence on a withdrawal from Iraq, her mixing of her cause with that of the Palestinians, and her accusation that Bush "killed" her son. If Sheehan has lost credibility with the public, the "peace mom" might turn out to be only a summer sensation.

But if Sheehan provides the catalyst for a muscular anti-war movement, Bush's handling of the matter will turn out to be not only characteristic but also consequential.

Before leaving Thursday after her mother suffered a stroke in California (Sheehan says she will return to Texas "if it's possible"), she had spent 13 days camped out in Crawford and had galvanized liberal activists at a time when a spate of American soldiers had just died in Iraq, Iraqi leaders were flagging in their effort to finish their constitution, and polls were showing a notable souring of the public view of the war. The resulting "Camp Casey" has provided the biggest platform for the left since last year's release of Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Satellite trucks jockey with tractors on the narrow roads around Bush's ranch, animal-rights activists are handing out grilled "meatless riblets" in 100-degree heat, and liberal radio shows are holding live remote broadcasts.

"I'm just going to set my butt down on the ground if they tell me to go," Sheehan said on a conference call for bloggers. When MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted all the media attention and asked if it wasn't "really better if President Bush doesn't meet with you," she replied: "I would think so, yes. I think it's great."

The question of whether Bush was insensitive or out of touch, a flash point in the 2004 campaign, was back, and commentators again were talking about presidential naps. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., said on CNN the next day that it would be good to invite Sheehan in "just as a matter of courtesy and decency."

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said Friday on CNN that "the wise course of action, the compassionate course of action, the better course of action would have been to immediately invite her into the ranch."

In Australia, a headline taunted, "Awkward facts intruding on the Bush 'bubble.' " In an Indian newspaper, Sheehan was "the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement." On ABC's "Good Morning America," George Stephanopoulos said "a lot of Republicans would say that this is the president's Swift-boat moment," a reference to John Kerry's tardiness in responding to attacks on his war record during last year's presidential campaign.

Beginning tomorrow, Bush aides said, the president will try to bolster support for his Iraq policy by giving three speeches in military settings over the next two weeks. They say he will argue that just as "the greatest generation" saw World War II through to victory, the nation must be patient as today's military combats terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pointing toward the approaching fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush will contend that the ideology of terrorism and willingness to kill innocents link the insurgency in Iraq to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and to last month's bombings in London.

Some Bush aides acknowledge they did not anticipate the reaction to turning Sheehan away, but they are not expressing regrets. These aides maintain that one of the strengths of this White House is a willingness to resist "what appears to be the easy PR route," as one aide put it, and have the discipline to stick to long-laid plans.

A former White House official said the Sheehan verdict reflected a policy that Andrew Card, chief of staff, has enforced for five years, on everyone from donors to governors to top aides. "If you want a meeting with the president, you will never get it," the official said. "If you need a meeting with the president, you will get it 100 percent of the time. Otherwise, he'd have a thousand meetings a day."

With Sheehan, the advisers explained, there were additional considerations, most notably that Bush had met with her — at Fort Lewis, in July 2004, as part of occasional private sessions he holds with families of fallen soldiers.

Aides also said they knew she was a fierce partisan, exemplified by her appearance at a Democratic event on Capitol Hill in June to call attention to the "Downing Street memos" on the allied preparations for the war. The aides said they also took into account the fact that a meeting might lead to a flood of similar demands, and they said they thought it was possible that any meeting would fuel attention to Sheehan rather than head it off.

"If five mothers replaced her, what have you accomplished?" a senior administration official said. "That was a huge part of the decision."

Aides said they discussed Sheehan several more times in subsequent days, and Bush said while meeting reporters with his national-security team: "I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I've thought long and hard about her position."

Two days later, Bush explained his approach to journalists invited to ride bikes on his ranch. "I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say," he said. "But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush's focus on the long term rather than the immediate is "part of what to his supporters is steadfastness, and to his critics is stubbornness."

"If you allow those who are the most vocal and most antagonistic to get a meeting with the president for fear that publicity will hurt you if you don't, you're creating incentives for your critics to become even more antagonistic and more vocal," Fleischer said. "Then, you're forever stuck in: Will you or won't you meet? You'll no longer lead. You'll just wrestle with meetings."

Information on Sheehan's future plans was provided by Seattle Times archives.