International   

Bush fishes and feeds the dogs

Los Angeles: George Bush planned to take it easy in his first full day out of office. He was planning, he told a crowd of 20,000 gathered at Centennial Plaza in Midland, Texas on Tuesday night on having a “relaxing morning in Crawford”.

He would get up, make the former first lady Laura coffee, look at the newspaper, make some telephone calls, read a book, go fishing, feed the dogs and go for a walk. “By that time, I figure it will be eight in the morning,” he said. “That’s what happens when you’re a Type-A personality.”

The Type-A former chief executive had not lost his humorous side, despite opinion polls showing him to be one of the least popular outgoing Presidents in history. “I told Laura I was excited about her cooking again — kind of,” he said. “She told me she was excited about me mowing the lawn ... and taking out the trash. It’s my new domestic agenda.”

Mr. Bush planned to stay out of sight in Crawford for a few days as the couple prepare to move next month into the $2.1m house they recently bought in an upmarket area of Dallas, a house Mr. Bush has yet to see. “I delegated that decision to Laura,” he said. “She bought a fine place in Dallas. I think. I haven’t seen it yet. You might call that the first faith-based initiative of the post-presidency.” Mr. Bush did raise the question of the new life he might lead after eight years in office. “Now we’re back home, we have a few things to figure out,” he said. “Like what exactly we’re going to do.”

The plans are fairly grandiose. There is the book he plans to write, a memoir of his years in power to help people “understand what it was like in the Oval Office”.

There is the $300-million presidential library planned for Dallas; and the George W Bush Presidential Centre, a thinktank.

“This is not going to be a ‘George Bush is a wonderful person centre’, or ‘the centre for Republican party campaign tactics’,” he said. “It’s going to be a place of debate, thought, writing, lecturing.”

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

10 die in U.S. strike in Pakistan
Delay in delivery of a Russian n-submarine
Efforts on to heal Palestinian rift
Pakistan is ground zero for terror threats: Kerry
Shanghai group to hold meet
Stop LTTE from using civilians as shield: Japan
News on U.S. economy not good: Obama
Editor assaulted
Bush fishes and feeds the dogs
Scientists pin hope on Galileo DNA test
Caroline Kennedy ends Senate seat bid
New York state jobless rate soars

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu