By Dana Milbank
Thursday, July 6, 2006; A02

When the going on the Korean Peninsula gets tough, the tough go on a doughnut run.

President Bush, making his first public remarks since North Korea test-fired seven missiles in open defiance of the United States, boarded his motorcade yesterday for an unannounced trip to a doughnut shop in Alexandria -- to talk about immigration.

"The president went to the Dunkin' Donuts," White House press secretary Tony Snow said in the first item of business at his daily news conference. A few of the reporters laughed, perhaps thinking Snow was joking about the trip to the land of French Crullers and Munchkins.

He wasn't. After interpreting every gesture of Saddam Hussein as a casus belli , a changed Bush administration is taking the opposite approach with Kim Jong Il. Officials were determined not to give the little man with the big missile the attention he craves.

In Foggy Bottom, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could have been channeling French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin when she spoke of "the wisdom of the six-party framework" and "a diplomatic infrastructure that can be used to resolve problems of this kind."

In New York, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was saying things -- "We think we can proceed in a calm and strong and unanimous signal from the [Security] Council" -- that could make a neocon throw things at the television.

At the White House, Bush huddled with his National Security Council to talk about, er, Cuba. And Snow struck the tone of militant multilateralist. "It's been our policy all along," he lectured reporters, "that we do not act unilaterally." Further, he chided: "There are attempts to try to describe this almost in breathless World War III terms. This is not such a situation."

A few years ago, the administration was using breathless terms to describe Iraq. "We cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," Bush said then. The president said sanctions and isolation had been a failure, while Vice President Cheney described the U.N. Security Council's procedures as "a prescription for perpetual disunity and obstructionism."

Now? The administration finds itself before the Security Council, working on sanctions and isolation for North Korea. Bush could have been reading Kofi Annan's speech when he spoke yesterday about "acting in concert," about how "we must work together," and about why "it is much more effective to have more than one nation dealing with North Korea."

Administration officials sounded less like a superpower's spokesmen than parents worried about a badly behaving child. All but ruling out corporal punishment, they searched for a remedy: Calling a timeout? Withdrawing privileges? Negotiating? Ignoring the bad behavior?

"It is really a matter of the region saying to North Korea that it has to change its behavior," Rice said.

"This kind of behavior is unacceptable," Bolton said.

Snow called it a "question of how you get through and how you influence that behavior."

"At the very least," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack proposed, "insist upon the fact that they do not engage in such further provocative behavior."

Bush, meeting in the Oval Office with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, spoke of sorrow at Dear Leader's acting out. "It's their choice to make," he said. "What these firing of the rockets have done is they've isolated themselves further. And that's sad for the people of North Korea."

Saakashvili tried to lift his host from sadness. "I'm sure that North Korean missiles will never reach the United States," he said.

This did cheer Bush a bit. "One thing we have learned is that the rocket didn't stay up very long and tumbled into the sea," he said later with a smile.

The studied calm began even as the missiles were firing Sunday evening and national security adviser Steve Hadley got on the phone with reporters to say that this "is not a threat to the territory of the United States."

By yesterday afternoon's briefing, Snow had all but removed the military option. Asked about administration claims that "all options are on the table," the spokesman rushed to say that "we leave all options available in all circumstances, because that is the way you do this." But, he added, "the United States is interested in a diplomatic resolution here."

Clearly. Snow managed to say the phrase "six-party talks" five times.

"You anticipated this launch for a month," ABC News's Martha Raddatz pointed out, "and yet you still don't have a clear idea of what options there are. Why not?"

Snow tried to explain that "the parties through the six-party talks are now working to come up with something in unison."

"What's the response?" Raddatz persisted.

"The U.S. response is we're working with our allies to figure out how to try to get North Korea back to the table, back to the six-party talks," Snow maintained.

Unilateral or multilateral, the administration is reliably single-minded.