By Sheryl Gay Stoberg

Updated: 11:47 p.m. ET Aug 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - There are times in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd, that people, perfect strangers, come up to him and say the harshest things — words intended to comfort but words that wind up only causing pain.

“I love you, sir, but your son’s way off base here,” they might say, according to Ron Kaufman, a longtime adviser to Mr. Bush, who has witnessed any number of such encounters — perhaps at a political fund-raiser, or a restaurant dinner, a chance meeting on the streets of Houston or Kennebunkport, Me. They are, he says, just one way the presidency of the son has taken a toll on the father.

“It wears on his heart,” Mr. Kaufman said, “and his soul.”

These are distressing days for the Bush family patriarch, only the second former president in American history, after John Adams, to see his son take the White House. At 83, he finds it tough to watch his son get criticized from the sidelines; often, he likens himself to a Little League father whose kid is having a rough game. And like the proud and angry Little League dad who cannot help but yell at the umpire, sometimes he just cannot help getting involved.

The official line from the White House is that 41, as he is known in Bush circles, gives advice to 43 only when asked. But interviews with a broad range of people close to both presidents — including family members like the elder Mr. Bush’s daughter, Doro Bush Koch, and aides who have worked for both men, like Andrew H. Card Jr. — suggest a far more complicated father-son dynamic, in which the former president is not nearly so distant as the White House would have people believe.

They talk almost every morning by phone, and Mr. Bush studiously avoids saying anything critical of his son, close associates say. But he has privately expressed irritation with some of his son’s aides. At times, he has urged White House officials to seek outside advice, and he has passed on his own foreign policy wisdom to the president, even as he makes a point of saying his son’s administration is not his.

He views himself, in Mrs. Koch’s words, as “a loving father, first and foremost,” but as he himself suggested to a group of insurance agents at a recent dinner in Minneapolis, loving fathers find it tough to stay away.

“Any parent in this audience knows exactly how I feel,” Mr. Bush said in response to a question about what it was like to have a son as president. “It’s no different. You’ve got to look at it strictly as family — not that anyone is a big shot, even though he’s president of the United States. It’s family. It’s the pride of a father in his son.”

This weekend, the elder Mr. Bush will preside over his clan’s annual summer gathering at Walker’s Point, their grand seaside spread in Kennebunkport. There will be the usual horseshoe games, fishing trips and speedboat rides, plus a visit from the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy — a classic Bush family tableau, but one that does not capture the delicate course the elder Mr. Bush has charted in playing the roles of father and former president at the same time.

It is a balancing act. The former president keeps up his contacts with world leaders — last year, for instance, he invited President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to spend a night at Kennebunkport — but is discreet. Once, during an intimate dinner with the king of Morocco, he called the White House and got the president on the phone.

“He put the king on, just like that,” one startled guest recalled. “No national security advisers, no nothing, just the president talking with the king of Morocco.”

He is a frequent visitor to the White House. He still loves eating at the White House mess and has breakfast or coffee with Karl Rove, the president’s chief political strategist, whenever he comes, mostly to chew over political gossip. From time to time, he picks up the phone to talk policy with Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff. He called Mr. Bolten’s predecessor, Mr. Card, about every other week.

Mostly, said Mr. Card, who was transportation secretary to the elder Mr. Bush and views himself as “a bridge” between the generations, the father was simply checking on his son. But sometimes the ex-president would raise a foreign policy question, or suggest the White House reach out to those “in his circle,” like James A. Baker, the former secretary of state, or Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, who has been openly critical of the war in Iraq.

“He made sure that I knew there were experts around that we should be reaching out to or listening to,” Mr. Card said, adding: “I never felt that the former president was trying to meddle in the responsibilities that the president had. But he cares deeply about his son.”

Recently, the White House has cast the elder Mr. Bush in a new role as foreign policy facilitator. In addition to the coming Sarkozy visit, the former president was host to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at Kennebunkport for a White House summit meeting in June. It was the current president’s idea, but the father was happy to return Mr. Putin’s hospitality; a few years ago, when he and his wife, Barbara, were traveling in Russia, the Putins met them at the airport and invited them to their country retreat.

In a sense, the elder Mr. Bush is traversing uncharted territory. The first President Adams died 18 months after John Quincy Adams was inaugurated, and 28 years separated their administrations. By contrast, just eight years separate the Bush administrations, and the men themselves are only 22 years apart in age.

Their relationship is undoubtedly the most scrutinized father-son bond in Washington, especially given the well-publicized foreign policy rifts between their two camps.

Tensions between aides to 41 and 43 ran especially high when Mr. Baker was co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. When President Bush rejected the group’s recommendations, some in the 41 camp viewed it as an outright rejection of the father. When Mr. Scowcroft spoke out against the war, some thought the father was sending a message to the son.