The Odd Couple

It's kind of late in the game, but Mr. Clinton finally has the father he always wanted:

Family and friends who say the improbable love fest between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton is totally genuine still can't refrain from occasionally rolling their eyes.

Barbara Bush, the 41st president's tart-tongued wife, calls them the Odd Couple. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush now refers to the Democrat who ended his father's political career as "Bro."

A close friend of the Bush family spoke for many partisans on both sides of the political divide last week by musing, "It's a good development for the country - but it sure is a strange development. I'm a little speechless."

And President George W. Bush, who created this tag-team mismatch by naming his immediate predecessors joint envoys for U.S. tsunami relief efforts, brought down the house at Washington's A-list Gridiron Club dinner last month by mentioning Clinton's recent surgery.

"When he woke up he was surrounded by his loved ones: Hillary, Chelsea and my Dad," Bush deadpanned.

It's a sweet story- don't pick at it; just enjoy it.

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The emerging warm friendship between the Oscar and Felix of American politics, who now call themselves Bill and George and have even begun telephoning one another for advice, is that rarest of commodities: a good-news story amid the partisan rancor of an increasingly polarized capital city.

"I'm enjoying the relationship, and to be honest with you I didn't think I would," Bush recently told the New York Daily News.

Once bitter political foes with minimal regard for each other, the 80-year-old Bush and 58-year-old Clinton have forged surprisingly close ties, a who-would-have-thought development helped along by a parallel thaw between Clinton and the current President Bush.

"This is definitely for real," a top aide to one of the exes said. "We thought the relationship would come to an end with the tsunami. It certainly didn't."

That's an understatement. Clinton has rearranged a busy West Coast schedule to appear with the elder Bush in Houston next month, and more joint events are in the works. The two talk regularly, and their staffs are in almost daily contact. They've golfed together, sat side by side at the Super Bowl, and cut TV spots appealing for tsunami contributions.

The News also has learned that Clinton will speak at the Bush library at Texas A&M University this fall. A reciprocal visit to the Clinton library will surely follow, and last week Clinton told The News he's looking forward to golfing with Bush in Maine this summer.

"They really have been having a great time together," Sen. Hillary Clinton told The News.

Aides and friends to both admit being confounded by the relationship. Except for graduating from Yale and sharing a secret fondness for ribald humor, there is little in their DNA to suggest such chumminess.

A former Clinton assistant thinks their membership in the country's most exclusive all-male club is at the core of the thaw. "This is a fraternity even more exclusive than Skull and Bones," the aide noted, referring to the mysterious Yale society that counts both Presidents Bush among its members.

It's a sign of their mutual affection that the elder Bush has resorted to what he usually derides as "psychobabble" to try to explain the relationship.

"Maybe I'm the father he never had," Bush recently speculated, referring to the fact that Clinton's father died in an automobile accident before the future president was born.

Advisers to both men scoff at cynics who allege the relationship is politically motivated, yet concede that the former leaders - as well as President Bush and Hillary Clinton - benefit from their detente.

"They're trying to move Hillary to the center for 2008, and this helps de-demonize her and her husband," a longtime Bush confidant said.

Similarly, a veteran of the Clinton White House argued that reaching out to Clinton helps the current President Bush by softening the perception his policies have divided the country.

"It gives Clinton back some legitimacy," the source said, "but Bush knows Clinton is still popular and has a lot of international goodwill that can be helpful to Bush. It's good all-around PR."

Several sources say this mutual-inoculation society began building below the political radar last June, when the younger Bush - who ended every 2000 campaign speech by vowing to restore dignity to a scandal-tarnished Oval Office - made extremely gracious remarks when Clinton's portrait was unveiled at the White House.

More recently, the elder Bush has told friends he appreciates that Clinton refrained from blasting his son's Social Security reform plan and strongly supported U.S.-backed elections in Iraq.

By all accounts, the friendship blossomed on their whirlwind March visit to Asian nations hammered by the tsunami. Clinton insisted the octogenarian Bush take the stateroom, with its full-sized bed, on their 757 government jet.

Touched by Clinton's deference, Bush stretched out while Clinton slept on the floor - on a comfy Tempur-Pedic mattress Bush brought along for his younger predecessor.

"President Bush's energy and stamina really impressed me during our travels together," Clinton reminisced to The News. "Thanks to my own health problems, I was the tired one after a long day of work! Now that I've had my surgery, maybe I stand a better chance of being able to keep up with him."

Since the Asian trip, the two former leaders of the free world have often seemed joined at the hip. Only the most rabid Bush and Clinton haters could object.

"Here we are in one of the ugliest times in American politics, and something good like this happens," a former senior government official said. "It sends an awfully positive signal."