Another scene in the book hasn't received as much attention. It's a small one, to be sure, but equally telling about the President. In 2007, my dad had come with me to the White House Christmas Party and we stood in line to get our picture taken with President and Mrs. Bush. As we stood getting our picture taken, President Bush leaned over and told my father, “You should be really proud of your son.” My dad was so startled to be in the White House that it was clear he didn't hear what Bush had said. The President noticed that too. He knew what a special moment it would be for me, so he tapped my dad on the shoulder and tried again. "You should be very proud of your son," Bush repeated. My dad beamed. "I am," he said. It is one thing to tell people that George W. Bush could be a generous and thoughtful man. But it is quite another to tell a story that demonstrates it.
Perhaps most telling for me and many other conservatives was the scene I chronicled in which the President expressed his separations from the conservative movement that the rest of us believed in. "I redefined the Republican Party," he told us. With a shrug, he seemed to look at the Goldwater-Buckley-Reagan movement as a relic of the past. That doesn't make him a bad person. But it does explain why many conservatives were uncomfortable with his presidency. He never really thought of himself as a member of the base conservative movement. And as we begin to weigh the Bush record, and what it meant for the Republican Party, that's something Americans need to know.
According to those who actually read my book, President Bush comes off as smart, funny, quick-witted, tart-tongued, occasionally offensive, sometimes playful, keenly self-aware, uncomfortably edgy, deeply compassionate, politically insightful, and blunt (sometimes to a fault). In fact, he was all those things. He was a far more complex and interesting figure than people usually saw on their television screens. Reading what he said in his own words gives him a weight and fullness. a certain realness, that people have a right to observe and measure on their own.
So when I'm asked how I feel about revealing a behind-the-scenes look at President Bush, my answer is I wish I'd revealed even more. Thankfully, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and many others will be publishing their own memoirs, providing their own glimpses of truly historic times and their own behind the curtain looks at a momentous presidency.
I can't wait to read them.