COLLEGE STATION, Texas – George W. Bush never went to Vermont as president. Eight years in office. Hit 49 other states. Skipped Vermont. Not a lot of fans there.

Barack Obama, by contrast, doesn't have the luxury of ignoring Texas. He wrote it off in the general election, focusing time and money on states more realistically in play and, predictably, he lost Texas big time in November.

As president, it's a tough place to ignore, though. It's too big and growing too fast.

Still, it wasn't clear how to work Texas into his schedule without looking overtly partisan or wasting precious commander-in-chief time. Remarkably, it was the elder George Bush who solved that problem, inviting Obama to Texas A&M on Friday for a celebration of community service – a cause to which both have devoted considerable energy.

Obama repaid the favor with lavish respect and praise as they shared a heartwarming hour of bipartisanship, if you don't count the hundreds of protesters outside denouncing Obama with pointed speeches and signs like "Lying Marxist Usurper."

"I'm afraid of our president. I think he is destroying our country, him and his outfit. They're all socialists," said one protester, Rita Petro, 77, a retired antique dealer who piled into a bus from Sun City in Georgetown, north of Austin, with a handmade sign that read "Barack – why do you hate our country?"

Inside, Obama lauded Bush for choosing public service over a "life of comfort and privilege," and for working with Bill Clinton on behalf of tsunami and Hurricane Katrina victims.

There are times, Obama said, when "the R or D next to your name is irrelevant. ... Certain moments call on us to stop the back-and-forth, and the bickering, to forget the old rivalries, and embrace a common purpose that is bigger than our differences."

Bush was among the thousands in Rudder Auditorium clapping.

"I was thinking over the last couple of weeks, the need for something just like this – a statement to America that we're better than any divisions, that we are best when we are united. That we can be united," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said afterward.

She didn't point fingers, but just in the last few weeks in Congress, a GOP lawmaker heckled Obama, calling him a liar during a speech to Congress, and a Democrat accused Republicans of rooting for sick people to die quickly, to save on health care.

To be sure, Obama isn't post-partisan, though he kept it light in Aggieland.

A day earlier in New Orleans, he blamed George W. Bush for the flawed response to Hurricane Katrina. In San Francisco that evening, he took Democratic donors on a "walk down memory lane," reminding them of all the problems he inherited from the younger Bush.

At A&M, staying above the fray scored no points with protesters like Justin Thompson, 20, from Gruver, a tiny town in the Texas Panhandle.

"I find it odd" that Obama even bothered coming to Texas, especially to A&M, Thompson said, "considering how conservative we are. ... He's not going to wake up until his Congress is gone in 2010."

He speculated that if the Bush/Obama event had been focused on anything more controversial than volunteerism – if, for instance, Bush had invited Obama to deliver a speech on foreign policy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service – the protest would have swelled to many thousands.

But Obama isn't George W. Bush, and Texas isn't Vermont.

Many Texas Democrats, including Jackson Lee, have been urging the president to spend time in the state to drive up interest, support candidates and raise money. His reception at the Bush event, she said, reinforces Texas' importance and "gives me a great platform to encourage more visits to Texas."

It's still Bush territory but, Democrats say, give it time.

Todd J. Gillman is Washington Bureau Chief of The Dallas Morning News.