For One Big Guy, It’s a Grand Old Party

The TV cameras and news photographers were poised as the safari truck bearing President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush rolled to a stop just 15 feet from four African elephants Thursday.

It looked like a publicist’s dream photo-op. Under a cloudless azure sky on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, the pachyderms were munching on the leaves of an acacia tree, posing for the Leader of the Free World.

But one, Shaka, 13, suddenly developed an altogether different urge.

He approached Thandi, a female, also 13, and engaged in what one game warden later described delicately as “a reproductive attempt.”

For a minute or more, the earth fairly shook.

The president smiled sheepishly and then covered his face with a baseball cap. First Daughter Barbara threw her head back in embarrassment, covering her face with both hands.

Chuckling, the president whispered something to the first lady. She slapped him good-naturedly on the leg.

And then it was over.

“Shaka has been practicing this since he was 5 years old,” Uttum Corea, an animal trainer at the 10,000-acre reserve told the president afterward. “This is how elephants learn about the birds and the bees.”

At another trainer’s invitation, Bush leaped from the truck and approached an elephant, followed by a very concerned Secret Service agent.

“Sir, do you really want to do that?” the agent asked Bush.

Yes, he did.

The president stroked the trunks of several elephants and held on to their tusks as he turned to face the cameras.

“Good boy,” Bush said to one elephant as he patted it.

As it turned out, the agent wasn’t the only person worried.

“OK, darling. That’s enough,” said Laura Bush.

“Bye, Shaka,” the president said as he returned to the vehicle.

Soon the hourlong safari was over.

Afterward, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell recounted with relish the animals he had spotted.

But inquiring minds wanted to know: Had the glorious symbols of the GOP, ahem, wandered off-message?

Ever the diplomat, Powell replied:

“The elephants were on message. We were all on message.”