You call this hard work?

You can say many things about George W. Bush. Here's just a few.

* He has the speaking skills of a left tackle who played three seasons of Big 10 football without a helmet.

* His head is so far up the butt of the Christian Right, the back and forth movement of his shoulders puts a shine on the rear of Pat Robertson's pants.

* Every Memorial Day you expect him to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown service record.

But one thing you can't say about the 43rd President of the United States is the man needs some sleep. He looks very well rested, and I'm thinking for good reason. Even his wife makes jokes about his penchant for hitting the hay around 9:00, which is about an hour before I even start work. For crum's sake, who goes to bed at 9:00? I don't care what time you get up, that's three hours of sleep before midnight. As a small child was he frightened by the moon?

This is a total 180 degree turnaround from Bill Clinton, who used to stay up till 3:00 in the morning talking policy with staff and visitors. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: With Clinton, the emphasis in "policy wonk" was definitely on the wonking. But to say George Bush is not a workaholic is to say Nebraska is not known for its suspension bridges.

It's not just his early-bird-eats-worms lifestyle, but also his work habits that have me as confused as a chameleon on a kilt. When exactly does he work? Whenever news breaks, we always hear he was notified while working out in the gym or falling off his mountain bike or clearing brush on his ranch. Sure seems to be a lot of brush there. Is that what he raises on that ranch: brush?

Mountain biking in Maryland is where he supposedly was during the airspace incursion and partial evacuation of Washington, D.C., in May, which the Secret Service neglected to tell him about. I guess his people thought it prudent to wait until he was back safely playing in the sandbox.

Later this summer, Bush is scheduled once again to go on his customary thirty-five-day vacation to his Crawford, Texas, ranch. People, five weeks is not a vacation: it's a retreat, a sabbatical. Must be why everybody wants to be President. Nice gig. "Dude, the job doesn't pay much, but the perks are egregiously righteous." The only people who get five weeks vacation are German trade unionists, Parisian waiters, and Santa Claus, and arguments can be made that the last two are fictional.

Not to mention five weeks dead solid summer in Texas has to be as enchanting as a herd of gut-shot armadillos tied to your ankle. The dew point down there is normally shaking hands with triple digits. So we may be talking cumulative brain fry here, which could explain a lot.

If you figure, eight to ten yearly trips to Crawford, every other weekend at Camp David, he goes to bed at 8:00, that means he's actually at work, what, about a week? That must be what the W stands for: "Whooaaa!"

Like George W. Bush, political comic Will Durst gets tuckered out just being near the vicinity of real work.