WASHINGTON (AP) -- On his 96th day in the White House, President Bush was in no hurry to envision a second term -- "IF I run again," he demurred -- or to dazzle detractors in his first.

Expectations? "I'm doing everything I can to keep 'em low," the president said with a chuckle.

In an Associated Press interview looking ahead to his 100-day benchmark on Sunday, Bush struggled to express his sense of awe at occupying the Oval Office he first knew as his father's.

"I'm here in my office early in the morning because I want to be, not because I have to be. The president, it turns out, if he doesn't want to be here, he doesn't have to be here. Everybody else kind of, you know, shows up where he shows up," Bush said Wednesday.

"I love coming here. I love walking into the Oval Office in the morning. I love walking through the Rose Garden. It's hard. I'm not a poet so I can't describe exactly what I mean."

He said he is committed to helping Republican candidates in the 2002 elections -- but drew the line at luring campaign contributions with VIP invitations to the White House, as the Clinton administration did.

"There's something sacred about the Lincoln bedroom and the White House," Bush said.

Early critics faulted Bush for his lack of foreign policy and diplomatic experience, something Bush said he is methodically trying to overcome.

Just days after returning from a summit with 33 other heads of state from the Western Hemisphere, where he aimed to make his counterparts in the Americas feel like "neighbors," Bush said he believes in "personal diplomacy."

"It requires time to get to know these leaders so that when I discuss issues with them I'm able to do so in a way that's not nearly as formal as a lot of diplomatic discussions generally are."

With a kid's gee-whiz wonderment, he showed off some of the perks of his Oval Office suite: a shaded patio hideaway where a fountain serenely trickled, and a swimming pool steps away along a flagstone path sheltered by greenery.

"When it's warmer ... ," he mused in the morning chill.

Except for the historic paintings that Bush himself chose, the suite inside hardly looks as if Bush has settled in. Gone is the riot of political and historic memorabilia that President Clinton nailed up in the hallway connecting the Oval Office and the private dining room.

Bush's walls there, painted vanilla, are bare.

A towering portrait of President John Quincy Adams looms over the small dining room table where Bush regularly lunches with Vice President Dick Cheney, and where Bush has recently entertained the king of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Bush said he chose the painting because his father, the former president, has nicknamed him Quincy after the only other American son to follow his father into the presidency.

"I want to have Quincy watching over me," Bush said.

At the table, he pushed a tiny red button on a wooden console the size of a paperback. Instantaneously, a steward appeared and the president ordered coffee.

While his political strategists, led by Karl Rove, are already working furiously on a re-election strategy, Bush declined to look ahead to the 2004 electoral map.

"If I run again, I would like to carry California. But that was my aspiration the first time I ran as well," said Bush, who could have avoided last year's Florida recount if he had claimed California's huge cache of electoral votes.

Bush said he feels too honored and excited to be in the White House now to think about the eventual fight to keep it.

"The idea of talking about re-election, with my frame of mind the way it is, it's foreign right now."