THE first primate Insert your own resemblance joke here.

His girls are a little old for the WebKinz craze, so President George W. Bush is probably not aware of the hold these plush toys, juiced by the Internet, have on kids these days. So for the President and the rest of you who have no idea what Webkinz are, some history is in order.

Webkinz are the latest stage of progress in toy companies' continual quest to bring stuffed animals to life. Adults will remember baby dolls that closed their eyes when they were laid horizontal, and others which seemed to drink from a bottle, and subsequently completed the water cycle by peeing in their baby-doll underpants.

"Awww," the little girls said.

"Excellent," the parents said. "This will teach my daughter responsibility. And it will keep her busy for hours."

Dolls have also been made with pull cords which, when released, would play recorded messages, like "I'm hungry," and "I want to play." I don't know whether there is any truth to the allegation that, if you played these backwards at the right speed, they would say, "I saw mommy doing it with a porpoise," or "Daddy pounds scotch like a newspaper editor."

Then came animatronics, applied mostly to stuffed animals. In exchange for the hard lumps of a robotic mechanism stitched beneath their plush skin, they got the ability to grind into battery-powered motion. Doggies could jump and bark. Bunnies could hop and wiggle their ears. Eventually movement and voices were merged in the same toys, even with voice-response software that could tell jokes. Each of these things was novel and effective in its true purpose, which was to persuade kids to persuade their parents to buy more crap.

Whether they actually succeeded in strengthening the bond between the child and the toy is less certain. Likely as not, the ties were severed when the batteries wore down.

In the invention of WebKinz, the stuffed animal industry has taken another leap. A WebKinz toy amounts to an old-school stuffed animal that comes with a name and a code. It also comes with a favorite food, but the code is the key. It's actually a user name and password that enables the kid to enter Webkinz World on the Internet and carry on a virtual relationship with the pet. The owner is responsible for care and feeding. This includes "buying" nutritious food and putting it in the creature's virtual dish, making sure the animal gets enough exercise and sleep, and gets out to go number one and number two.

The virtual connection is exceedingly effective. Each of the cuddly creature's needs is measured in a bar graph, so that the kid can see when her rabbit named Rosabella needs more carrot cake, a walk in the meadow and a snooze. So to buy more food the kid goes to work playing online games - anything from working out puzzles to answering trivia-type questions to more conventional computer games. Scoring points earns money, which in this world is called "kinz cash," which the kid can use to buy carrots, a soft bed or whatever else Rosabella might need.

The convention of playing games to earn money to buy stuff - which in WebKinz world also runs to TVs and home furnishings - may be questionable, but the game hits a homerun in terms of instilling a sense of attachment and responsibility. And it is this fact that brings me to the point: The President of the United States needs a new toy. He needs something called CitizenKinz.

It should be cute. There ought to be several of them, with different jobs, different appetites and different shades of skin. Their needs should be pegged to real citizen needs - food, shelter, education, jobs. And whether the owners can go to work by playing games - thereby meeting their pet citizen's needs - should be virtually linked to the real-world economy.

Further, the CitizenKinz should need a safe living environment and have a bar graph so the president can see when things aren't going so well. This too should be tied to the real-world environment, both in terms of the safety of cities and the pollution of water and air. As certain issues become more pressing - say, as the globe continues to warm - the CitizenKinz might begin to sweat, and their food might become more expensive.

The programmers should make sure the different games the president can play to earn CitizenCash have different effects on these conditions. One game might earn more money and make the globe warm up a little faster, so that while the CitizenKinz may have plenty to eat, he just keeps sweating more and more. Another game - say one involving wind turbines - might enable the CitizenKinz to earn more money while cooling off CitizenKinz's world which, in addition to enabling him to buy food, might have the collateral effect of reducing its price.

It's clear that our president needs a way to reacquaint himself with the well-being of the people. I'd recommend the installation of an entire CitizenKinz population in the Oval Office. This will help at least until the president grows out of it. If it's truly successful, we'll be confronted with another challenge: We'll have to set a timer, and limit the president's computer time.