"Proving that the library is more a monument to Laura’s artful airbrushing than W.’s artless leadership..."

"... there’s a swank Café 43 with fancier fare than W.’s cherished PB&J’s, and a gift shop featuring Laura’s favorite books, from Dostoyevsky’s 'Brothers Karamazov' to Truman Capote’s 'Music for Chameleons.'"

Highlights from the Bush interview: "I'll be dead... our afterlife... assiduously."

I'm watching John King's interview with George and Laura Bush (on the occasion of the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum).

GEORGE BUSH: History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made for Iraq. And I'm just not going to be around to see the final verdict.

KING: Not going to be around. That's an interesting way to put it. You...

GEORGE BUSH (laughing): In other words, I'll be dead....

I don't know why King acted puzzled over the phrase "I'm just not going to be around," but it was hilarious when Bush clarified the term. Lightheartedness at the idea of one's own death is disarming, and coming after King's strange confusion, it made us laugh. Perhaps King was hoping to draw Bush into some deeper contemplation of death. That didn't happen. We get a glimpse of Bush's social skill.

Having said so bluntly "I'll be dead," it was striking when Bush proceeded to refer to the post-presidency period as the "afterlife."

GEORGE BUSH: Democracies take time to evolve. Laura and I believe that women will help lead the democracy movements in these young democracies. And part of our afterlife will be to enable and empower women....

What amused me more than anything else was the one time in the interview when Bush whipped out a higher level vocabulary word. It sticks out, because it's something he almost entirely avoids. In this, he's so different from Obama, whose speaking style feels like the result of a lifetime of positive reinforcement for talking like a professor. Bush was addressing the problem dealing with Katrina, in our system of federalism which places primary responsibility on the state governor.

GEORGE BUSH: ... And the role of the federal government's to be supportive. In this case, the natural disaster was so overwhelming, and the infrastructure was so overwhelmed that I had a tough choice to make. And people would just learn the facts. See, that's all I care about, and that's what I wrote in my book which I'm sure you assiduously studied.

Laura laughs. "Assiduously" is there as a joke, and if you listen to the interview, you'll hear a lot of humor in the way he says it.

And let me throw in the next interchange, about the one way Bush could have moved control to the federal level:

KING: You talk about... the idea that you have a southern governor, a woman governor in a state with a large African-American population. A former governor yourself. And people were telling you, Mr. President, maybe you need to declare an insurrection.

GEORGE BUSH: Insurrection, which would have been pretty difficult. Not pretty difficult. Very difficult. Yeah, so it points out the dilemma.

KING: Do you wish in hindsight you had done it?

GEORGE BUSH: No. Not really. There's no telling how history would have recorded the situation, had I declared insurrection. I can tell you that the decibel level would have risen even louder than it was.

Notice how gently he refers to the vicious criticism he had to deal with. He doesn't say people were awfully cruel to him, which they were. He mentions "the decibel level," and that's only after his stock answer for almost everything: History will judge. And he wants the American people to think and learn. That's the idea of the library, which he refocuses on:

GEORGE BUSH: The point is, is that it -- this helps Americans understand the decisions that I made during a massive storm. But also points out that — the dilemmas that presidents face. Not just me but every president who’s got a series of conflicting advisers. And you've just got to pick and make the best judgment call you can. And hopefully, people will go to the Decision Point Theater and say, "Wow, I didn't understand that" or "I now understand it better." And it's interesting to me, they say, of how a president makes decisions, and hopefully it will help them make better decisions.

There's something very sweet and modest about the expression of hope that visitors to the library will be helped in their own lives as they go about making personal decisions. 

George Bush sent Laura "these very funny stick figure drawings of him in bed with Barney..."

"... 'Good night.'  Then, the active stick figure in the morning: 'Good morning.'"

I showed them to a friend who’s an artist here in Dallas and she thought they had a lot of creativity. George said, “Well, let’s find me an art instructor.” So my friend recommended someone who’s now George’s art instructor and he’s having a really wonderful time painting. George is very determined and he’s very, very disciplined. He paints for a lot of hours a day and it transports him. You know, he’ll go up to clean his brushes and then glance at his watch and he’s been up there for two hours.

New ad includes Laura Bush, Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney expressing support for same-sex marriage.

Laura Bush didn't approve of the use of this video clip (which comes from a 2010 interview with Larry King) and she's voiced her objection to it:



Who knows what she secretly thinks, but officially, she's saying you shouldn't have used me without asking. Of course, the group that made the ad — the Respect for Marriage Coalition — has the right to appropriate this clip and use it in their political message. Imagine how hard it would be to make political ads if you couldn't use clips like this. I suspect that secretly she's happy to influence opinion this way — especially as she's able to hold herself at some distance from politics. She clearly likes to seem modest and completely unpushy, as you can see in the longer clip from the Larry King show:



What a terrible shame that the Republican Party didn't accommodate itself to this idea at least 10 years ago. Really, it's a shame they didn't buy in even earlier, 18 years ago, when Andrew Sullivan's "Virtually Normal" came out. At the time, the left-liberals I knew were antagonistic to the institution of marriage and viewed Sullivan's contribution as an unwelcome conservative intrusion on the gay rights movement, which they saw as belonging within a left-wing ideology that transcended traditional institutions. Back in the 90s, I sat through serious, lawyerly presentations aimed at stopping the marriage equality proponents from changing the focus of the movement. There was a wonderful opportunity then for conservatives to embrace the issue, and they missed it.

The Republican Party saw the advantage elsewhere, and now they're stuck with the result.

UPDATE: The Respect for Marriage Coalition withdraws the ad.