Bush Relaxes, Aides Appear to Be on Edge : Republicans: The President banters with the press even as campaign tensions seem to provoke waspish reactions from some of his close advisers.

Even as the normally frenetic President Bush is projecting a relaxed aura, his White House and traveling campaign organization are not.

Irked by a growing number of news accounts that have portrayed the overall Bush effort--his speeches, his crowds--as lackluster, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, often a mirror of the President’s emotions, tried to strike back on Friday.

“I’m sick of all you lazy bastards,” the normally placid Fitzwater exploded as he ordered the White House Communications Agency to disconnect a nearby press room from a live audio feed of the President’s remarks at an enthusiastic rally at the fundamentalist Oklahoma Christian University.

Fitzwater did the same at a campaign stop at Louisiana State University, before relenting at the end of the day at another rally in Jackson.

His objective was to force the few reporters working in the press area to drop what they were doing and attend the rally themselves if they wanted to hear Bush’s remarks. His complaint was that news stories could not accurately reflect the feel of the crowd if the writers neglected to attend each of the rallies.

The rallies Friday were among the best of recent days for Bush, who had faced tepid receptions at several earlier stops.

Ironically, most of the reporters traveling with Bush missed the Fitzwater explosion because they were already at the rally. Fitzwater later apologized.

The event also stood out in contrast to the apparent mood of Bush himself. At the end of a 12-hour day of campaigning Thursday, Bush returned from a steakhouse dinner feeling good. Now that he was more relaxed, he was asked, what about Patrick J. Buchanan?

“That’s why I’m more relaxed,” Bush called back.

He is also joking with the press. At a fund-raising luncheon in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday, he offered Newsweek photographer Larry Downing a trade: a presidential tie for a Downing key chain.

The next day, Fitzwater delivered the tie--a garish red, green and black number Bush had been given at a strawberry festival he visited in Plant City, Fla.--to Downing, in the back cabin of Air Force One. Fitzwater collected the key chain for delivery to his boss.

But minutes later, having inspected his new key chain, the President feigned anger and stormed to the back of the aircraft with a complaint.

“You ripped me off,” he told Downing. “It looked good when you held it up yesterday. You talk about getting reamed in a deal.”

Downing upped his offer, throwing in a luggage tag. The President went away happy, disappearing toward his private cabin while calling out, “Good morning, fellow Americans.”

Such shenanigans aside, the campaign and the traveling White House are trying hard to turn the public’s attention to the election in November, rather than the fight with Buchanan this spring. They contend that the one-third of the voters in Republican primaries who have refused to support the incumbent Republican President will eventually be persuaded to return to Bush’s side in the general election.

“The economy will turn around. We’ll make some headway with Congress eventually--keep trying. And people will see that I’m the person to lead this country, now as I was in the past,” Bush said Wednesday.

Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) seemed to signal a general election campaign theme Friday as he presented Bush to the crowd at Oklahoma Christian. In a backhanded way, he evoked the image of Bush running against Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who has encountered problems explaining his efforts to avoid the draft and questions about marital infidelity. Nickles said that Bush, “a war hero,” did not “try to evade the draft.”

“It’s important to have a President with high moral character,” Nickles added.