Party animal

"It's the cat," Freeman says. "I have the cat."

Actually, Freeman has spent more than a few nights in the Lincoln Bedroom. He was named to a minor presidential commission. He is reportedly invited to White House parties and Bush birthdays.

But he has few straight answers about that -- or much else. He'll offer that he hasn't attended church in 30 years but says his prayers every night, "no matter how much I drink."

Tuttle attempts an intervention.

"You're going to be roasted," he warns. "You're going to be sent as ambassador to Antarctica."

Freeman lights up with feigned eagerness: "Do they have an embassy there?"

It's like trying to rein in a Jack Nicholson character. Freeman starts narrating his own profile ("He sowed his wild oats in France when he was a student there in 1962") and shrouding simple biographical details in apocryphal legend, claiming to have gambled away his money in Vegas on the way to college and worked his way through Stanford playing poker. "You've got to know when to hold 'em," he sings. "Know when to fold 'em...."

He offers some unfettered opinions on current affairs: The California Republican Party "has been dysfunctional," with a primary system that favors gubernatorial candidates who are too conservative to win the general election. Maverick Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain? "He's not a Republican." On liberal satirist Bill Maher: "When he comes on, I have to turn off the TV set or shoot it."

When Tuttle says he believes the U.S. "democratization" of Iraq should be expanded to other Middle Eastern countries, Freeman is dismissive. "We're not liberating Iraq. We're doing a preemptive strike," Freeman tells Tuttle. "You've been out of touch too long, Bob."

Freeman is the first to admit that Karl Rove, White House senior political advisor, is reluctant to have him near the press. During one phone disagreement, Freeman says, he told Rove, "Karl, fire me," and Rove abruptly terminated the call.

In January, Freeman says, Rove took exception when Freeman told NBC that Bush had grown in office.

"Karl went crazy. He said, 'What was he, a midget?' " Freeman says. "I said, 'Karl, if he didn't grow in office, you're not doing your job.' "

"You stood up to Karl Rove," Tuttle says, his expression suddenly serious. "Good for you, Brad."

A few years ago, Freeman jokingly told a reporter he was so upset at losing the president's cat that he was on "heavy medication," and the quote ran in Newsweek. "I told him I was on Valium, lithium -- and he took me seriously," Freeman laments.

Freeman is still the keeper of the rogue presidential tomcat. But if he is close to the Bush family, he holds many of the socially tolerant views that place some California Republicans far from the public positions of the White House.

Freeman said he supports legal abortion and, like Nancy Reagan, favors efforts to expand stem cell research.

Some might say -- in the donor-rich hills where Friends of Bill and Friends of George share common ground as Friends of Arnold -- this Bush Pioneer has gone a touch native.

Freeman lights up with the idea of another little prank, this one on Rove.

"Tell Karl you're doing an article on me," Freeman says. "Say, 'Oh, he was reluctant at first. But then he gave me all these great anecdotes about Bush.

"He'll go crazy."

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Times staff researcher Robin Mayper contributed to this article.