WASHINGTON -- You won't believe this: The White House is trying to get W. to relax.

Top Bush aides are working hard to chill out the president with a narcoleptic's appetite for napping,
a retiree's lust for vacations and a work ethic as lolling as Oblomov, the superfluous man of Russian literature.
I first heard this 10 days ago from a top Republican who said he had advised Karen Hughes that W. needed to loosen up.

"He looked so nervous and uptight in the pictures of his meetings with European leaders," the Republican said.
"I told Karen he's got to relax."

Then I learned that the Bush inner circle was upset that W. was so terrible on TV, and they were trying to
figure out a way to get him to stop being so rigid before the cameras and show his effervescence.
It took me awhile to wrap my head around this peculiar political pickle.

George W. Bush got to be president in large part because he seemed more fun and natural than Android Al.
And now presidential aides and Republican lawmakers want W. to unwind, just as Karenna Gore and
Naomi Wolf did with their Beta Bore, when they swaddled him in earth-tone casuals.

Relaxing has always been a leitmotif with presidents, of course. The two great naturals of modern times were
J.F.K. and Bill Clinton. L.B.J. stewed over how to be cooler on TV, and Nixon never got past those flop
sweats and wingtips on the beach.

But never has a president who seemed so laid back taking office had such a hard time recapturing that mojo in office.
He used to be casual in scripted settings. Now he's scripted in casual settings.

On Monday his imagists sent him out, sans coat and tie, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow, for a gambol with
Laura to the Jefferson Memorial. The man who is sliding in the polls on the issue of whether he cares about
average Americans and minorities was trying to seem in touch with the hoi polloi, shaking hands and chatting up
tourists, singing out "Happy Fourth of July!"

Asked what the day meant to him, he replied: "It means what these words say, for starters. The great inalienable rights
of our country. We're blessed with such values in America. And I — it's — I'm a proud man to be the nation based
upon such wonderful values."

Yesterday the president took his script to another casual setting, turning a bassinet into a soapbox when he and
Laura visited Desiree Sayle, one of the first lady's staff who had just had a baby, at a hospital in Virginia.

He segued quickly from newborn Vivienne to the Patients' Bill of Rights, saying, "Congress needs to bring me a bill that will help the patients who come to these hospitals maintain a reasonable insurance, and a bill that doesn't help lawyers."

Then, barely taking a breath, he moved on to use the baby to plug his faith-based initiative: "A lot of babies are born
sometimes where the — some babies are born where people just don't love them like they should."
By this time, the friendly baby visit had morphed into what it truly was: a stiff news conference.

"Mr. President," asked one reporter, "do you know when you'll actually make a decision on stem-cell research funding?"

"In a while," he replied.

Afterward, the president struck a Clintonesque pose and hit the fairway midweek.
"I haven't played since I've been president," he said. "I've been working too hard."

He'll continue that tradition of hard work when he leaves for a long weekend in Kennebunkport on Thursday
with his tennis racquet and horseshoes, and spends much of August on the Crawford ranch.

W.'s problem is that it's impossible to seem easygoing when he's finding that all the issues he's dealing with aren't easy at all.

From Election Night on, it has been one headache after another:
the Jeffords defection, peeved Europeans, Karl Rove's ethical problems, polls that alarmingly echo
the fall from favor of his father when he was deemed detached from the electorate.

To make matters worse, the mythic ironclad discipline and unity of his staff is showing signs of rust.

The harder it gets, the more squarely he is confronted with his own limitations. And the more squarely W.
is confronted with his own limitations, the more rattled and unrelaxed he gets. And the more rattled and
unrelaxed he gets, the more rattled and unrelaxed he gets.