We're all getting to know ya, Dubya

MARY DEJEVSKY marks President George W. Bush's first 100 days in power by listing how he's made his mark.

WASHINGTON - United States President George W. Bush is on the verge of a milestone in his short tenure: his first 100 days in power. In honour of the landmark, achieved on Monday, here's 100 things we've learned about Dubya.

1. When the chips are down, he can sometimes string together a full sentence as in: "We demand immediate access to our crew." during the China crisis.

2. He could do with some etiquette training: French Canadians tutted last week when he drank his mineral water from the bottle at an official dinner, ignoring the crystal glass provided.

3. He doesn't speak Spanish as well as he had us believe during the election campaign.

4. He enforces a "no-jeans" rule at the White House. The casual garb of the Clinton Administration is a thing of the past.

5. He believes he can get the job of President done in a 9 to 5, four-and-a-half-day work-week.

6. He tells his staff to do likewise, unless there's a big crisis playing out in another time zone.

7. He has stopped taking his pillow everywhere. But then he hardly spends any nights away from home now.

8. He has stopped taking his parents everywhere, though they were at Camp David for Easter weekend.

9. He is a master of the political feint, loudly announcing "concessions" to one constituency or other (an end to US aid to charities that condone abortion, renouncing the Kyoto global warming treaty), that leave US policy utterly unchanged.

10. The White House offers a better class of barber than the Governor's Mansion in Texas ...

11 ... and a better class of tailor, too, though the cut of his dinner jackets still needs work.

12. And the less said about Laura Bush's dinner-garb the better. A non-cling slip might be a wise investment.

13. George W. is bilingual: American English and Texan. His wife speaks gritty Texan only, which has its charm, but may not be comprehensible abroad.

14. The last time George W. wore a stetson for an official event was when he said farewell to his home town of Midland, before boarding the plane to Washington for his inauguration.

15. His favourite brand of cowboy boots costs $US600 ($1400) a pair.

16. He is still scared of his rival in last year's primaries Senator John McCain (who called him "all hat and no cattle"). McCain seems happy to keep it that way.

17. McCain's law reforming the political finance system may be the first major legislation he signs as President, if he can bear to.

18. Like father, like daughter? Jenna Bush, aged 18, was taken by official car to rescue her boyfriend from the de-tox cell of a local prison after police raided a party last month.

19. George W. can't sweet-talk Washington Democrats like he could Texas Democrats: the Washington kind are real.

20. Ditto the US Congress: it isn't like the Texas legislature: it meets more often and the President isn't the only one twisting their arms.

21. The China fracas justified his view of "abroad," as in his pre-primary remarks: "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."

22. He's not as tall as Bill Clinton.

23. In fact, he's not like Clinton at all. He goes home to dinner with his wife each evening.

24. He and Laura sleep in the same bed. We know this because he turned over to tell her the US crew had been released after receiving the phone call, according to his aides.

25. He has had the films shown to guests and reporters on Air Force One censored to remove the x-rated sex and violence.

26. As the first President to hold an MBA, he is taking flak for trying to run the Administration like a business, with hands-off delegation of functions.

27. Sometimes he runs it like the baseball team manager he was, fielding his variously skilled stars - Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice etc - as required.

28. But he can't pitch a baseball: it fell embarrassingly short when he pitched the first ball to open this season in Milwaukee.

29. He introduced T-ball - kiddies' baseball - on to the south lawn of the White House and invited local teams to play.

30. He won't take the White House furniture when he leaves; he has a more sumptuous abode to return to: his new ranch-house at Crawford, Texas.

31. He earned $US900,000 last year.

32. He has a lot of richer friends, and many are now in Government. Vice-President Dick Cheney earned $US36 million last year.

33. He's not as dim as you think. Or how would he have earned all that money?

34. He's not as bright as he thinks - or he would have made it to the White House sooner.

35. He doesn't hang around when he spots a loser: his first choice for Labour Secretary, Linda Chavez, was dropped like a stone when it turned out she may have employed an illegal immigrant.

36. He's impatient - but his wife says he's "working on it."

37. Those Bushisms - the "terriers and bariffs" and "is our children learning?" - are not the liability they seemed. They've become his humorous trademark.

38. The charm he hoped to work on "abroad" has so far brought spats with Russia, China, South Korea and Taiwan. That's for starters.

39. His trip to China when his father was ambassador didn't teach him much about Chinese sensitivities: he spent most of his time in the embassy compound.

40. He is not into "the special relationship" with Britain. Prime Minister Tony Blair has been to Camp David, but Britain is missing from his European tour in June.

41. He uses Colgate toothpaste.

42. He's been teetotal since he was 40, and he ends most work days with a couple of non-alcoholic beers.

43. He still hankers after real Tex-Mex food. The White House chefs haven't got it right yet.

44. He had a cat that was too wild for the White House and sent it to friends in California. After running away, it was found strolling up the Avenue of the Stars in Hollywood. Well, that's the official version, anyway.

45. He also has three dogs, including the grandson of Millie, the parents' White House dog and a new Scottie puppy.

46. He's been able to wind the White House press corps around his little finger: it doesn't want to be cut out of the loop so early in a presidency.

47. American voters are tougher to convince: after traversing the country, he has still not convinced them that tax cuts are needed.

48. His sense of humour does not stretch to That's my Bush the new satirical TV soap opera from the creators of South Park.

49. He had the Oval office redecorated in subtle, more "feminine" tones.

50. Like Clinton, he uses JFK's desk.

51. He still hasn't held his first State Dinner, but told the Mexican President that he would be the first guest.

52. If he has a foreign policy, beyond the definition of "abroad," it is concentrated in the western hemisphere, with Mexico a priority.

53. He has visited 25 states so far since becoming President, including the far-flung Dakotas ...

54. But California, the biggest and richest state, isn't among them. He lost badly here to Al Gore and - the cat notwithstanding - isn't the Hollywood type.

55. He is expert at "spinning" the facts: he did not actually get the tax cut he wanted through Congress, but you wouldn't know that from the official rejoicing.

56. His Vice-President's heart condition turned out to be a lot more serious than presented during the campaign.

57. The continual lauding of his senior cabinet members, such as Cheney and Powell, threatened at first to put Bush in the shade.

58. To say that Bush is just "one heartbeat away from the Presidency" may not be far from the truth.

59. Denying that Cheney had had a heart attack in February was the one time Bush was caught lying.

60. Not a lot of the Sixties rubbed off on him: he was having too good a time as it was.

61. He won't be going to the anniversary gathering of illustrious alumni at Yale - he declined even before he knew that Hillary Clinton would be one of the speakers.

62. He will not be concreting over the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve to drill for oil, after all - not because he thinks it's a bad idea, but because Congress won't let him.

63. In fact, he has left more of Clinton's environmental provisions in place than he has rescinded: including plans for expanded national forests and tougher clean-air regulations, appliance standards, etc.

64. He still doesn't understand why Europe created such an fuss over his renunciation of Kyoto. He thinks it was just common sense (and worth a few votes at home).

65. Feeling people's pain is not his thing. He did not go to the ceremonial return of the US air crew from China lest he "intrude."

66. But he's learning; he said "We weep for the families of the US missionaries shot down in Peru last week."

67. He has a thing about Bibles: the book that most changed him, he said, in an election debate; and he asked whether the air crew had Bibles.

68. He really does go to bed before 10 pm.

69. He may be working 9 to 5, but he's already aged five years or more in the job: less hair, more wrinkles.

70. He hasn't had a day off sick, though.

71. His voice doesn't yet carry authority as the voice of the American people. but then, maybe that takes a national disaster, such as the Oklahoma bombing or the Challenger space shuttle accident.

72. He really is a conservative, a southern, Christian conservative.

73. He is still engaged in post-election fence-mending: courting Catholics (pending visit to Notre Dame university; Jews (a visit to the Holocaust museum) and blacks (numerous meeting with black clergy).

74. He doesn't buckle under pressure, just squirms and changes tack.

75. His approval ratings have held steady since the election; but disapproval ratings have soared. Not a recipe for re-election.

76. He did win in Florida, really he did. All the media-sponsored recounts so far find that he would have won under current rules.

77. Still, he will probably never be made an honorary Floridian, not even by his brother, the Governor.

78. He flies off the handle if a mobile phone rings when he's speaking.

79. He doesn't like people trying to butter him up - which is why he spends most weekends en famille at the ranch or Camp David, his wife says.

80. He paid $US240,342 in income tax last year. No wonder he wants to cut taxes.

81. The Bushes gave $US143,300 to churches and charitable organisations, half of that was from royalties on Bush's political tract: A Charge to Keep.

82. He has so far got away with bringing a crowd of Texans on to the White House staff, but he has kept them pretty much under wraps.

83. He got his introduction to the Washington A-list, the Georgetown set, over early, at a dinner in his first month of office, and he hasn't been back.

84. He knows how to salute, from his time in the Texas national guard.

85. He is learning the art of fine print, dropping "fast track" to refer to a President's authority to negotiate trade deals, in favour of "trade promotion authority" which sounds less threatening to Congress.

86. He wages a clean political fight - but only by getting others to do the dirty work, starting with Karl Rove, his political adviser.

87. Rove is already planning the re-election campaign.

88. The man who brought you "You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test" is making education his presidential priority. No wonder.

89. One of his twin daughters - he won't say which one - disagreed with his decision to execute Karla Faye Tucker, the "born again" Christian murderer, when he was Governor of Texas.

90. He gave up e-mailing when he became President, because of the security problem. Lessons learned from Monica Lewinsky?

91. He still exercises, but is running less, and may be putting on weight.

92. He retreats to his ranch and clears brushwood and brambles when he's under stress.

93. His ranch has been built to be ecologically friendly: including a super-efficient underground heating and cooling system.

94. He personally told Congressional Republicans to drop their inquiry into the Clinton presidential pardons because it was keeping his presidency out of the headlines.

95. His grand military reform plan is apparently producing exactly the same priorities as the Clinton Administration identified. (But don't tell anyone.)

96. In total, he has more women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians etc in his cabinet than Clinton ever did.

97. Though there have been brief trips to Canada and Mexico, he hasn't yet ventured outside of the Americas as President.

98. In June, he will become the first incumbent American President to visit ... Sweden.

99. As a character, he is really pretty boring and that's how he likes it.

100. One hundred days down; another 1351 to go.

- INDEPENDENT