So disappointed was president Roh Moo-hyun with the Korean people that he said within two months the presidency was “too much.” In President Lee Myung-bak’s case, by contrast, the public cooled toward him first. His approval ratings were around 80 percent in the wake of his election, fell to the 50-percent range after his inauguration and plunged to 38.1 percent on March 31, slightly over a month later, according to a Gallup Korea poll.

Even during the sweet honeymoon period, the newlyweds sometimes confront problems they were not aware of. They quarrel even during the trip and, in the worst case, get divorced. Unfortunately, Lee, like his predecessor, is embarking on his new marriage not on Cloud 9 but in discord and trouble.

Five years ago Roh and the people in effect got divorced instead of enjoying their honeymoon. But even then, the president and people have to live under the same roof for five years. Cue more tedious discord. We witnessed to a sickening extreme how they disrupted the chief executive's mind and heart, exhausted the public and undermined the nation's potential. Nobody would wish to see another quickie divorce.

A double whammy for Lee were his mistakes in appointing key government officials and the Grand National Party's troubles in the nomination of parliamentary candidates. There is a common denominator between the two: that the president failed to pay the attention and make the effort required in politics. The lineup of the new administration's first Cabinet included faces who would startle the public by their asset declarations alone, never mind whether they had acquired the assets legally or otherwise. There was no surprise there. That is the political judgment the president should above all have thought about, and all the evidence suggests he did not.

Lee was baffled about the controversy surrounding the appointment of his chief of staff. "Why does the public pay so much attention to one who will work inside?" He is said to have wondered. Well, the presidential chief of staff is one of the most important government posts. That the president should even be asking why the people are interested suggests he won’t admit that his personnel decisions constitute a highly political act with a significant impact on public perception.

What the public feels about the difficulties the GNP encountered in nominating its legislative candidates, meanwhile, is that the president's camp thrived while his rival Park Geun-hye's camp perished. To be sure, the sentiment is somewhat exaggerated. But there are good reasons why the people think that way. Politics demands preempting alienation of the public. Lee, while being so concerned about the outcome of the upcoming general election, appears not to be performing that important task.

I cannot fight the impression that Lee hates politics. He seems to feel that politics means fighting among politicians and is therefore inefficient. Ordinary citizens may think so too: that is why the CEO president earned the maximum popularity. But what faces the chief executive and the public once the election is over and reality kicks in, is not a business but the state. As someone said, a corporate entity of whatever size cannot become a state. A state is moved by politics. Otherwise. there would be no need to pay attention to election results.

For the president, politics means leading the country in a certain direction by reading the mind of the people and coordinating their interests. It's politics when the president, understanding the minds of parents with kids, rushed to a police station to upbraid officers for not doing enough to fight child abductions; it was politics when Lee, as Seoul mayor, successfully coordinated tough conflicts among many businesses great and small when he revived the Cheonggye Stream. The presidency demands putting politics before the economy. If it means that Lee now couples his working skills with a political attitude, his honeymoon trouble could make a bracing tonic for the duration of his five-year tenure.