THE PRESIDENT / BUSH’S HUMOR : You Hear the One About the Comedian-in-Chief?

Did you hear the one about the President who had planted so many trees during his travels across the Republic that he decided: “I might have to open a branch office?”

If you didn’t, it’s because George Bush tried that line only briefly, at yet one more tree-planting ceremony.

The collective groan it produced could probably be heard clear across Des Moines--and he was in Indianapolis at the time.

“I knew it. I tried it once before and it got the same groan. This one is going out of the speech from now and evermore,” Bush declared. Demonstrating his resolution, he dramatically swept the speech text off the presidential lectern.

Let’s give a warm round of applause, folks, to that star of the mashed-potato circuit, George Bush. Funnymen of the world, you’re safe. But the man is trying. And more often than not these days, he succeeds.

In Century City, Bush even got bigger laughs than Bob Hope when he said Malibu--which is seeking to become an incorporated city--should be added to the list of independence-minded hot spots seeking greater freedom.

“Self-determination is contagious,” the President said. “They even want it in Malibu. People are leaping over their volleyball nets to freedom.”

While the President particularly enjoys a good laugh--”any time there’s a new joke going around, he takes pride in being the first to hear it,” one senior assistant said--it is in his speeches that Bush has recently used more humor.

And so everyone heard about his dislike of broccoli.

“He got it rolling,” a speech writer said of the broccoli jokes, so the writers began working some broccoli jokes into the speech texts--until the President “decided that’s enough, we’re wearing it out.”

You think it’s easy for a President to tell a joke? Just think of all the topics he can’t mention for fear of being offensive. Just about the only topic left is himself.

“He likes humor that is a little bit urbane, a little bit self-deprecating. He likes it to be topical,” a senior aide said.

For example, on the criticism that he lacks a grand vision, he pointed to the Hubble Space Telescope:

“I understand it’s a half a billion times more sensitive than the human eye. You talk about the ‘vision thing,’ try on the Hubble telescope for size,” Bush told the National Academy of Sciences.

Actually, he said recently, he does have a vision for the nation, “and our goal is a simple one--by the time I leave office I want every single American to be able to set the clock on his VCR.”