Outgoing US President George W Bush has given his final press conference, defending his record but conceding he made many mistakes. You can watch the whole thing here, or read the transcript here. This is how the pundits saw it:
Marvelously out of touch. President Bush’s farewell press conference was classic: Not merely was he out of touch with reality, but he was angry that reality was out of touch with him. — Robert Schlesinger, US News
Exit stage left. President Bush had his last bout with the White House press corps, and I thought he gave as he good as he got. The White House press corps, like a lot of Americans (if the polls are any indication), liked the president personally, but didn’t think he was up to the job and hated his policies. — John Feehery, The Hill
Isolated, but self aware. I think even people who oppose the Bush Administration’s policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance — rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years… Even though he defended his tax cuts and his other policies and even the execution of the Katrina response, everything in his posture, expression, and body language — even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results — indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well. — James Fallows, The Atlantic
Bush has a peculiar way of admitting to his mistakes. Bush, we know now, was determined to invade Iraq and “take out Saddam” no matter what. His disappointment, as he tells it now, clearly was not that he relied on deliberately skewed intelligence that told him what he wanted to hear, but rather simply that Saddam didn’t have the damned things. — David Neiwert, Crooks & Liars
Bush’s Non-Mea-Culpa Tour 2009. George W Bush the wise and somber presidential veteran. Spare me. But as Bush prepares to leave office, he’s trying to strike that sort of tone. I suppose it’s easier to pontificate about the office of the presidency than to say, “Boy, did I screw up, I’m outta here.” — David Corn, MoJo Blog
Redefining success, one rooftop rescue at a time. Still-President George W Bush, looking this morning like most of America now feels, stood before the White House press corps one last time to express his undying gratitude for their p-ss-poor performance during his eight years in office. From groggy start to rambling finish, it was a jaw-dropping performance. — Gregg Levine, Firedoglake
The Centre of Everything. – Andrew Bartlett’s piece on The Centre of politics brings into focus my memnbership of the Australian Democrats. Together with Andrew I dispare at the undemocratic activity of the Majors. I remain an AD because I fervently sought The Centre with a group espousing democracy at party level. After some seven rounds on the hustings I discovered there is no “Centre” – people seek a believebal end to their casting of a vote. If the result is undemocractic political charades they just shrug their shoulders and wait for the fallout. Don Chipp gave a lot of people some enthusiasm to embrace the democratic process, however they went on to waste it, right of Centtre.
I read a puff piece recently that W had a book reading competition with Cheney or similar and read some 50 books in a year. I don’t know if I should be more worried it it’s true than if it’s not. Who has the time to read so many books in such a serious job? And if he thinks it’s good spin then he even more didn’t understand his work.
Overall I would say the West has been conditioned to very low expectations of this president as if it’s almost normal. He makes Obama look good, and brilliant. When I cast my memory back I think Mike Moore really probably had it right with the footage of this non-leader at that primary school on hearing the dreadful news of the plane into the WTC. That looked bad, and it was bad. And it was pretty real.
I heard the ABC Law Report this morning how about $7 billion was paid to buy off the victims to avoid litigation against the airlines, against the Government, which apparently would have led to a US recession if all the 3000 cases had gone to litigation. 7 families apparently were so grief stricken they didn’t even apply for the on average $2M payout every family got, despite urgings of the administrator in the interview.
George W Bush gets an F for failure.
Criticising a President for the amount of books they’ve read in office may be a little misguided. Considering Barack is quite the Policy Wonk I would imagine he’ll be reading an enormous amount of books in his time in office. Bill Clinton was also a voracious as a reader.
GWBush had a reputation wanting his policy briefings condensed into 1-pagers. That is more disconcerting and a fair point of criticism.
As far as “time wasted”. Much has been said of Bush “clearing brush and going bike riding”. Conservative bloggers recently highlighted how the Media used Obama’s daily Gym workouts as an analogy for discipline and betterment. Whereas Bush’s workouts were considered negligent.
Obviously It all comes to context. It’s easier to critique a person’s use of downtime when their performance on the job is so lacklustre. If the downtime was informing and strengthening their job performance it might be seen as an asset.