Makulski says that P. "appreciates all the positive stuff" about him in the media, though some of it, like the People spread, is "a little dizzying."

He's less enthusiastic about articles like the Houston Press story, which Makulski says "made him look opportunistic, things like that he finds really frustrating and aggravating." But then, P.'s not exactly a babe in the woods: "He's seen how the press has handled his grandfather, his father and his uncle, as well as some of the negative reports about his mother."

According to Makulski, however, the goodness and the commitment P. projects in his interviews is genuine. At Rice, the two participated in "Houston One-On-One," a mentoring and tutoring program for at-risk Hispanic youth sponsored by the Catholic Church. Each Saturday for two years, they'd spent an hour tutoring the kids "and then an hour playing games with them, and talking to them about morals and values," Makulski says.

Other than that, it was all pretty normal. Their gang of roughly a dozen guys would go to the campus' undergraduate bar, Willy's Pub, on Thursday nights. They'd attend Rice football and basketball games, watch sports on the dorm's big-screen TV, play dorm sports. He was a freshman walk-on on the baseball team, but he didn't get much playing time and so eventually quit. He was a fair student, but he buckled down a bit during his last two years and even made the dean's list his last two semesters. All fairly standard.

"Once people stopped treating him like someone to come and stare at, I think he was a real fun guy," says Allen, laughing. When asked what he's laughing about, Allen says, "I was just thinking about some of the George stories," but he won't share any. "Not all of them are fit for print, certainly. He's a great guy and a very loyal guy and I think anything I might say would get him in trouble -- so I think I should just keep my mouth shut."

As for girls, well, Makulski says that P.'s "not the Casanova he's being made out to be." Freshman year, Donovan says, P. was "a little bit wild," but then "once he got a girlfriend [during his sophomore year] he kind of settled down." The couple went through the normal ups and downs, and broke up only recently.

"He was just one of the guys, struggling on a budget, living off Domino's," Makulski says.

There was the one time -- Halloween of 1994, their freshman year -- when P. took the boys over to his grandparents' new house to trick or treat. It was George H.W. and Barbara Bush's first time back in Houston for almost a dozen years. But even that, Makulski says, was just P. making an effort "to get his Gramps to know his friends."

Some of the guys dressed in drag; President Bush "had no problem with it," says Fide, "but his grandmother was a little taken aback. She looked at us like, 'So! This is what they do up at Rice!'"

P. would often spend Sundays having brunch with his grandparents, at a local Mexican restaurant called Molina's. His friends would often get a laugh when the former president would leave messages on P.'s answering machine: "P., it's Gampie," sounding quite like Dana Carvey's famous imitation. Eventually, "Gampie" wanted to meet them all, so P. began bringing some to brunch at Molina's; it became a routine.

"He's very, very charming," says Voss. "It's been quite interesting to see him work his magic" on the rest of the country. "We give him a lot of shit for being on the cover of the [New York] Times and being named one of the most eligible bachelors. I think he likes some of the attention, but I don't think it goes to his head."

It'd be hard for it not to. Few in the world of politics are afforded such unquestioning adulation. The media giveth and the media taketh away, but right now for P. it's just giveth giveth giveth. ("Isn't it true that a lot of young, Latino Democrats are starting to look at the Republican Party and someone like you, who brings a lot of important emphasis, can get them more involved?" one questioner asked at the Arlington event, verbatim.)

He's gotten a pass on the rougher questions he could eventually face. No one asks him about South Texas's colonias, the poorest region in the nation, where an estimated 400,000 Hispanics live in third-world conditions. Nor does anyone mention last year's charge by Enrique "Rick" Dovalina, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens -- the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization. Dovalina, who has been critical of Gov. Bush's position on a number of issues, said that "we're very disappointed with the way [Gov. Bush is] parading around with his taco politics," posing for the cameras in Mexican restaurants without really addressing issues of importance to the Latino community.

And it looks like he'll disappear before the questions can really heat up. "I really play a minor role," P. says. "Personally, I'm going to end -- unfortunately -- my involvement with the campaign after the convention because I'm hoping to start a legal career. So we'll see how it turns out."

Having been rejected by the law schools at Columbia, Harvard, New York University and Yale, P. will begin studies at the University of Texas law school in the fall, and for the time being, he says, his political life will end. His normal life can may even go back to being, well, almost normal. The guys saw P. just a few months ago, in April, when Fide got married and P. served as a groomsman. The bride's teenage sisters were aflutter at the sight of the superstar. Fide laughed when he later heard P. had asked for his 21-year-old stepsister's phone number. "Same old George of six or seven years ago," Fide says he thought at the time.

"He was the same old George, except now most people in the world knew who he was," Voss says. "He was the same guy we all knew back then. Though he was probably dressed a little nicer."

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