Sticking to the Script Is How the Prez Acts George W. Bush came among us yesterday wearing the now familiar look of a man who could crumble upon hearing a mean word. He was guarded by a regiment of New York police, and what seemed to be hundreds of sombre earplugged federales whose hips and chests bulged with pistols. But poor Bush never seemed at ease. In the morning, he was delivered to Ellis Island and read an excellent speech about immigrants that would have taken him a full semester to write himself. A group of new citizens had been assembled as props, and Bush was kind and welcoming to them. He was at his most endearing when he suggested that they join together and recite the "pledge allegiance," which is what we called the pledge when I was a boy in Brooklyn. Still, his face twitched, his mouth moved as if to say something that never emerged, his brain seemed to be saying, "Don't sneer, don't sneer." He managed his trick of inhaling deeply without ever seeming to exhale. For a few minutes, shaking hands with the new Americans, he actually seemed to enjoy himself, but looked relieved when it was over. Then he was heading into the city that had given him only 15% of its vote in the 2000 election, the huge rude anarchic American city that still believes that Bush lost the election by 538,000 votes and won the presidency by two votes (Scalia and Thomas). No Straying From Path On that little journey, the directors of his presidency and his life would not allow Bush a single unscripted moment. He would not see the protesters on Madison Ave. and 51st St., holding signs that said, IMPEACH THE IDIOT and DON'T SEND A GOD TO DO A GOVERNMENT'S JOB and 152+2: WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? Nobody on the street would have a chance to hurt his feelings. Instead, he was hustled toward St. Patrick's Cathedral inside the portable fortress we've designed to keep our Presidents alive. Police cars, motorcycles, ambulances, blue wooden barriers, secret entrances: All managed to separate Bush from any possibility of spontaneous contact with citizens. He had two tasks, each scripted. The short-term task was to present a posthumous (and well-deserved) Congressional Gold Medal to John Cardinal O'Connor. The long-term ambition was to convince Catholics that their future is with the Republican Party. The first task was most easily accomplished in St. Patrick's, which was designed in the 1850s by James Renwick, the city's first great architect (and a Protestant). The great cathedral is a splendid temple of New York memory. O'Connor has a secure place in the city's memory (sometimes called its history), but so far Cardinal Egan has made no durable impression. He is as new at his task as Bush is, and they seemed joined at the cathedral altar yesterday like a pair of first drafts. The novel of each man has yet to be written. There was a blownup photograph of O'Connor to the left of the altar, still as powerful a presence in Egan's new life as Bill Clinton is in the role now played by Bush. The new President rose from a chair placed between Egan and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), laid his typed pages on a lectern, and eulogized O'Connor in all the obvious ways. He avoided all possibility of doing himself any harm. The form insists on platitudes, and Bush seldom speaks anything else. Differences Abound But in life, O'Connor was vastly different from the people who shaped George W. Bush. He had to adhere to certain basic tenets of his faith; that, after all, was his job. But Cardinal O'Connor supported labor unions and help for AIDS victims. He embraced immigrants and the poor. He believed that everybody had the right to a good school and a decent hospital. The basic elements of O'Connor's creed, in short, were the exact opposite of the certainties of the astrologers of the right who shaped Bush as a young man in Texas. All except one: abortion. So yesterday, the script prepared for Bush included at least one reference to abortion, without ever using the word. After several paragraphs of oratory about O'Connor, Bush mentioned a child's "innocence and right to be born." That brought him a standing ovation. No shouts, of course, no whistles, but an ovation. He stood there, exhaling at last, letting the applause beat down upon him, and seemed joyful at the result. Goodbye, Bob Jones U. A speaker before him (Republican Rep. Vito Fossella of Staten Island and Brooklyn) and Cardinal O'Connor's sister (Mary Ward), who followed him, also mentioned "the sanctity of human life" and the value of human life "from conception until natural death." But this was the President of the United States. Nobody had the bad manners to mention that Bush as governor of Texas signed off on 150 executions of human beings and has two on his list as President — the 150+2 of the protest sign. Yesterday was not the time, and St. Patrick's not the place, for a debate on a coherent theory about the sanctity of life. It was a day for ritual. Mostly, political ritual. And in that sense, it was a success. Bush played his nervous part in the ritual, buried his code words in the usual rhetorical mush, and then he was gone, engulfed by the licensed gunmen of the state. Nobody had shouted nasty words at him. Nobody had challenged his beliefs. He had come to New York, at last, and made as much of an impression as a breeze from the west.