It’s official: Unnamed White House sources are telling reporters that President Bush will use his State of the Union address tonight to advance “his bold reform agenda.”

How bold is it? Several commentators and Bush publicists have used the word “breathtaking” to describe Mr. Bush’s political to-do list.

Their breath must be taken away pretty easily; maybe they’re asthmatic. Because when you think about it, so far the president’s bold agenda mainly consists in the twin assertions that (1) he has an agenda and (2) it’s bold.

All the essential components of the Bush domestic wish list – particularly his call for tax simplification and his hopes for reforming Social Security – exist solely in the realm of the hypothetical.

His Social Security reform, considered the boldest of the bold and the most breathtaking of all, isn’t a proposal so much as an earnest expression of a desire to do something. Pummeled by political reality and hardened into actual legislation, Mr. Bush’s desire will likely end up as only a symbolic alteration of the status quo.

Reality will prove even more perilous for tax simplification. Those who stand in awe of Mr. Bush’s bold attempt to reform the tax code ignore recent history. For the last four years, the administration and Congress have used the code as their primary means of executing domestic policy.

They’ve governed, in other words, by complicating the tax system, not simplifying it. What are the chances such a deep-seated strategy will be reversed?

The incongruity was made plain the first time Mr. Bush voiced his passion for tax reform: in his speech at the 2004 Republican convention.

It was an ambitious speech; breathtaking, you could say. In it, Mr. Bush advanced the notion of an omni-competent state – a government that would “give you tools” to go to college, adopt a child, pay for day care, buy a house, rebuild slums, become less dependent on foreign energy, you name it.

Meanwhile, early in the speech, the president lodged an unexpected complaint. The tax code, he said, “is a complicated mess – filled with special-interest loopholes.” Therefore, “in a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the tax code.”

In making this pledge, Mr. Bush sailed over its manifest contradiction: All the tool-giving the president pledged in one part of the speech was to be accomplished by filling the tax code with the “loopholes” he vowed to eliminate in the other part of the speech. Breathtaking indeed.

Yet the president’s convention speech presented his domestic agenda only in skeletal form. The meatier version was found in the party’s platform.

I got a copy and read through it the other day. It, too, complained about the “dysfunctional tax code.”

“Instead of being simple,” the platform states, “the tax system is needlessly complex.” It called for bold reform.

At the same time, by my rough count, the document calls for nearly 40 credits, deferrals, exemptions, or other “loopholes” in the tax code in order to accomplish the party’s policy objectives – from a tax credit for marketers of fuel-efficient vehicles to tax-free Personal Re-employment Accounts for workers who’ve lost their jobs.

If you want to further gauge the GOP’s appetite for a simple tax code, consider the tax bills Congress passed last year.

The Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 involved such complications as an Indian employment tax credit and a first-time homebuyer’s credit for residents of Washington, D.C. The American Job Creation Act of 2004 created, among much else, the tax credit for biodiesel fuel mixture and a new deduction for legal costs stemming from lawsuits against discrimination.

There are reasons, both philosophical and practical, why Mr. Bush and the GOP have chosen to complicate the tax code so extravagantly.

The practical reason is that the Republican party has spent a decade cultivating the lobbyists of Washington’s K Street, filling their ranks with former congressional staffers and ex-congressmen who charge clients enormous fees to manipulate government policy. The easiest way to earn that money is to persuade Congress to adjust the tax code in a client’s favor.

A radically simplified tax code would put a lot of those Republicans out of business – and drain an important source of campaign financing.

But the philosophical reason is just as crucial. The last great tax reform, in 1986, was a creature of Reaganism, which disdained what Republicans back then called “social engineering” – manipulating the behavior of citizens for government-approved ends – and envisioned a tax code that was as neutral as possible.

By plugging loopholes, broadening the pool of taxable revenue, and reducing rates, the 1986 reform aimed to remove power from Washington policy-makers and place it in the hands of actors in the marketplace.

As a governing ideal, however, Reaganism is as dead as its namesake. Republicans no longer disdain “social engineering.” They have embraced it in the guise of “big-government conservatism,” through which government encourages citizens to arrange their lives in ways that conservatives favor.

And the instrument by which this behavior is encouraged, and its opposite discouraged, is the tax code.

Mr. Bush is the quintessential big-government conservative, and he has remade the party in his image. The proof of the transformation is the baroque, endlessly complex tax code he and Congress have created since 2001.

Why, it’s enough to take your breath away.

Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.