VILLAGE IDIOT? AFTER CLINTON, BUSH A REAL PRIZE.

Byline: Joseph Honig

GEORGE W. Bush, that self-described ``pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity,'' continues to honeymoon on everybody's dime.

And many Americans wouldn't have it any other way.

Reporters, endlessly fascinated with the president's banker's hours, turned out in kid gloves for a recent White House Correspondents Association dinner. (The evening's entertainment, ``Saturday Night Live'' comic Darrell Hammond, even dispensed with tradition, throwing not one satirical barb in Dubya's direction.)

Columnists and analysts continue to portray Vice President Dick Cheney as America's chief executive officer, with few wondering whether his prominence speaks to a boss' abilities or lack of interest.

The public, presented with Bushisms rivaling Norm Crosby's malaprops, refuses to turn the president into a laughingstock on the order of former second-banana Dan Quayle.

That George W. Bush has been provided with a Teflon shield against brickbats and broadsides is apparent to any and all viewers of network newscasts - even those who, in Bush II's own parlance, may have ``misunderestimated'' him.

After all, this is a guy many of us like simply because he isn't Bill Clinton. He doesn't play Oval Office spin-the-bottle. As far as we know, he doesn't take gratuities. And his mangled English - exhortations to ``make the pie higher'' and ``vulcanize society'' - couldn't mislead the most dim-witted of prosecutors.

Accordingly, a scandal-overdosed electorate has decided to cut Bush a pass even late-night comics can't cancel.

Any presidential worries of being turned into a Quayle-sized punching bag vanished with Clinton's final hour aboard Air Force One. For it was one thing to have Carson and Letterman skewer the standby equipment - Lyndon Johnson's pithy description of vice presidents - when Dan Quayle was the boob on the tube. We bought it lock, stock and bellylaugh and, as a people, rendered Danny Boy impotent, ineffective and DOA when it came to a political future.

It is quite another proposition, however, to make a sitting president our national village idiot, especially when so many of us yearn for an executive symbol of wisdom.

That Quayle was more unlucky than feeble-minded - and that Bush's faux pas may be the stuff of real ignorance - is a possibility few citizens care to talk about. (As, perhaps, not many of us acknowledged Ronald Reagan's floundering when 3-by-5 script cards went missing and the president botched informal small talk. The commander-in-chief a dimwit? You must be kidding.)

Thus Bush the younger may be a president whose image is sustained by both luck - following Clinton would make just about anyone look good - and the country's strong desire to be led by an earthy, kind-hearted soul whose stumbling may or may not be related to a dearth of intellect.

As a candidate, his lack of experience in public life - even Quayle's political career dwarfed that of then-Gov. Bush - was an issue not a lot of us worried over. Along the same lines, most writers and pundits spent little time reporting the president's early failed business career - he lost millions for family friends who invested with him - or criticizing the old-boy network that helped his $600,000 baseball investment result in a $7 million profit.

(In fairness to the president, it should be noted that Harry S. Truman couldn't make a go of a simple men's clothing store. Then again, high school graduate Truman was a true autodidact, familiar with Greek classics, Shakespeare and centuries of military history.)

But if President Bush is lucky, is he also talented? He just may be, and in a rather canny, under-the-radar fashion.

Because while Bush fils may fall short of Clinton's skills as an actor, given time, he could gain serious ground. This Connecticut-born son of privilege makes it a policy never to mention his New England roots - not even while touring the Nutmeg State with Gov. John Rowland - and he attempts to burnish a west Texas son-of-the soil pose at every opportunity. Trust funds, the security of millionaire parents and Yale, are mentioned about as often as that drunk-driving arrest. He wants to be our plutocrat everyman.

It's working. It's working on the press, fellow politicians and, polls report, a great majority of his fellow Americans. The president who once asked ``how many hands have I shaked,'' who once suggested that ``families is where our nation finds hope,'' is acting the part of Mr. Smith come to Washington, albeit with a southwestern twang.

His audience is ready, eager and grateful for the performance.

Not to mention relieved. The act before him was at times entertaining, but in the end proved far too painful to watch.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo: President George W. Bush is a guy many of us like simply because he isn't Bill Clinton.

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press