Bush Image Rehabilitation Begins in Earnest

March 17, 2009— -- Less than two months after President Bush left office, his aides and associates have fanned out to accentuate what they view as the positive aspects of his administration.

The attempt to frame history before history frames them has extended to the top tier of the Bush administration.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino have both given extended interviews of late, issuing extensive defenses of the president's approach to national security and economic challenges. Karl Rove is a regular contributor to the Fox News Channel and writes a column for The Wall Street Journal, where he has often defended Bush administration actions and tweaked the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Today, the former president will give a speech -- his first since leaving office -- about his years in the White House.

It's unusual for ex-presidents to launch a coordinated image repair campaign, according to presidential historian and ABC News consultant Richard Norton Smith.

"Presidents don't lie awake at night worrying about these things. Presidents think they did a pretty good job," Smith said.

Yet invitations for today's speech in Canada by the former president, which were obtained by reporters, show Bush plans to discuss topics that seem perfect for the kickoff of an image repair tour: thoughts on his eight years in office and the challenges the country now faces.

The issues on which the Bush camp is talking up the record -- the Iraq War and the economy -- are some of the ones that the public has given the Bush administration low marks for. But those issues, analysts say, define the Bush administration's eight years, and so it makes sense that Bush supporters would try to accentuate the positive.

Bush has said repeatedly that he doesn't worry about his legacy and says it's always hard to fully understand the breadth of an administration and its impact on the world until some time has passed.

But the man who left office with a 33 percent approval rating -- one of the lowest approval ratings of any president in history -- is expected to reflect on his years as president during a private speech today in Canada to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

The location and the group selected for this first time out for Bush is not insignificant. Alberta is a conservative Canadian province and the expected audience of 1,500 should be welcoming to a Republican ex-president. Bush's free trade policies made him popular among the business community in Canada.

The appearance for Bush, albeit in private, is like a testing of the waters. If the speech goes well, Bush might hit up the speech circuit more often.

Cheney, Perino Weigh In On Economic Crisis

Aides to the former president have been mute about Bush's speaking fee. Former presidents can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for their speeches. In the years after his presidency, Bill Clinton brought in tens of millions in speaking fees. In 2006, one of his best years, he earned $9 million to $10 million.

Since the speech is private, the world may not immediately know the substance of what Bush said when he dons his historian-in-chief hat. One person from the Bush world who is happy to talk about the past in public is former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney used a Sunday television appearance on CNN to claim that the Bush administration is not at fault for the current economic mess.

"There's no question that what the economic circumstances that [President Obama] inherited are difficult ones," he said. "I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances."

Cheney pointed the finger at congressional Democrats, saying they blocked reforms to lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The economic argument continued Sunday when former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said that the administration deserved some credit for the last week's uptick in the stock market.

"Can all the credit go specifically to President Obama? Well, I would say no," she said. "We are just going to have to take a while to let all of this settle down and let the policies that our administration and the new administration are trying to put in place have a chance to work."

With the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War coming Friday, Cheney argued in his CNN interview that the Bush administration has not received proper credit for the progress in Iraq.

"We've accomplished nearly everything that we set out to do. Now I don't hear much talk about that. But the fact is [with] violence levels down 90 percent, the number of casualties of Iraqis and Americans is severely diminished, there's been elections, a constitution, they're about to have another presidential election here in the near future. We have succeeded in creating in the heart of the Middle East a democratically governed Iraq, and that's a big deal," he said.

Bush Believes Time Will Validate His Stance on Iraq

Republicans have been making the case that President Bush's 2007 troop surge in Iraq created the current environment in Iraq, which will allow Obama to make good on his campaign promise of withdrawing all U.S. combat troops from the country.

Before leaving office, Bush said he believes in time that he will be validated on Iraq. He pointed to his surge decision as the turning point in the war.

"And so that part of history is certain, and the situation did change," Bush said in his final news conference as president Jan. 12.

The scope of Cheney's weekend comments went beyond just Iraq; they extended to the entire war on terror. He suggested that Obama, by reversing Bush administration terrorism policies and practices, has made the country less safe. The comments echoed what Cheney told Politico in early February.

They are extraordinary comments, many say, for a former vice president to make about a sitting president. There's an unwritten code that administrations give their successors time before they attack them.

Cheney is working on a memoir, and Bush has said that he would like to write a book. Presidential memoirs have always been a way for presidents to clear the air.

While Cheney shoots from the hip, the former president, on the other hand, will likely be much more measured in his tone as he begins to speak in public and private about his record and the new administration, said Smith, the historian.

"My sense is you will not hear George W. Bush making any harsh criticism of his successor anytime soon, and I think it reflects his reading of history, and I think it's a family tradition of the Bushes," Smith said. "I think Bush is shrewd enough to realize that at this point and time it would be counterproductive."

Presidents can improve their public images after leaving office, and they can even grow close to their successors, as was the case with Bill Clinton and Bush's father, George H. W. Bush.

"He's seen his own dad's reputation rise because today it isn't as if George W. Bush is running against himself. He's being judged by how his successors dealt with some of the same issues facing them. A president's performance doesn't exist in a vacuum."