Bush back in spotlight with new book, TV appearances (Feature)

By Mike McCarthy Nov 10, 2010, 3:46 GMT

Washington - Former president George W Bush re-entered the spotlight of US politics with the publication of his memoir and a series of television interviews, his first major public role since he left office nearly two years ago.

His memoir, Decision Points, focuses on his eight years in the White House. It debuted Tuesday in US bookstores. Unlike other presidential memoirs, it does not go into the details of everything he dealt with as president, but is defined around the key decisions he made.

Bush has mostly kept quiet and stayed in the shadows since he left the White House in January 2009, unpopular in the United States and abroad.

He has made some appearances at business conventions and teamed with Bill Clinton to raise money for Haiti following the January earthquake, but has otherwise a low profile.

When Bush departed the White House and handed power to Barack Obama, Bush had one of the lowest job approval ratings of any US president in more than three decades, with the economy teetering on the brink of collapse. He was deeply unpopular abroad over the war in Iraq, allegations of abusive treatment of terrorism suspects, and for what was seen as an overall hardline foreign policy.

The former president's re-emergence was timed for after the mid- term congressional elections, where his Republicans made major gains and dealt a severe blow to Obama, in part by managing to keep Bush's name out of the campaign and aiming their criticism at his successor.

He kicked off his book promotion with an hour-long interview with NBC's Matt Lauer that aired Monday night, followed by a Tuesday appearance on Oprah Winfrey's popular afternoon television show.

A book tour is to follow as Bush takes his case to the nation and world for why he undertook the decisions he made in office, in an effort to set the record straight and give historians a basis on which to ultimately judge his presidency.

Bush steadfastly defended his most controversial actions, namely the decisions to invade Iraq and to authorize the use of harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.

'I will say definitely the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom,' Bush told Lauer.

He said the interrogation techniques, such as water-boarding, were necessary tools to get information about potential terrorist plots.

'I will tell you this - using those techniques saved lives,' Bush said, urging people to read the book and draw their own conclusions. 'My job was to protect America, and I did.'

In the 477-page book, Bush recalls telling the CIA 'damn right' when the spy agency sought his approval to water-board Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the September 11 attacks who remains in US custody in a military prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bush's critics argued that water-boarding, a practice that simulates drowning on its subject, amounted to torture, while Bush maintains that it was legal. Obama explicitly forbade water-boarding shortly after taking office.

Bush acknowledges some mistakes.

He said it still sickens him that weapons of mass destruction - the main basis for invading Iraq - were never found. Bush said he regrets the failure of the federal government to respond more quickly to Hurricane Katrina, which sparked devastating flooding in 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

'I should have recognized the deficiencies sooner and intervened faster,' Bush writes in the book. 'The problem was not that I made the wrong decisions. It was that I took too long to decide.'

Bush recalled comments by rapper Kayne West, who suggested - in a then-shocking outburst during a live telethon to raise money for Katrina relief - that the slow response to Katrina showed the president's indifference toward the suffering of black people. Bush took the comment as a 'disgusting' accusation of racism, describing it as a low point of his time in office.

On Winfrey's show Tuesday, Bush shrugged off the criticism that he received while president, most of which continues to this day. He told Winfrey that it largely bothers his wife Laura and their daughters, Barbara and Jenna.

'But it didn't hurt me, because I knew what I was doing,' he said.

'I felt so strongly about some of the decisions I was making, and I felt that history would understand them ultimately. If I had allowed the critics to affect me during the presidency, all this name calling and stuff, I don't think I'd have done my job as a leader.'

Read more about Media

Read more about US Politics