BENTONVILLE — Former President George W. Bush said Monday that he “gave my heart and soul to the presidency” but doesn’t believe it’s in the nation’s interest to have a former president judge his successors.
He does, however, have a book to sell.
Bush spoke to a crowd of about 850 at an auditorium at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. headquarters and others listening over the Internet.
Mike Duke, Wal-Mart president and chief executive officer, noted that Bush was the second U.S. president to visit Wal-Mart headquarters, the first being Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who presented the Medal of Freedom to company founder Sam Walton shortly before Walton died.
“I don’t want to be in the limelight. I’ve had my fill of the limelight,” Bush said. “I don’t think it’s good for the country, frankly, to have a former president scrutinize his successor, or successors.”
Bush’s memoir is called Decision Points. He joked that “some didn’t think I could read, much less write.”
He described the book as an attempt to say to future historians, “if you’re interested in one man’s perspective, here it is.”
A key decision in his adult life, he said, was to quit drinking alcohol. He said he was asked at one point if he could remember a day that he didn’t have a drink. He couldn’t.
A woman at a book signing, he said, credited Bush’s story with convincing her 37-year-old son to cease drinking.
Bush spoke for only about nine minutes before fielding questions from the audience. Wal-Mart officials used a lottery drawing to select who among the nearly 15,000 employees who wanted to attend the session would get a seat.
Joshua Ramsay of Pea Ridge, who works in training and development, said he came away from the session with an “overwhelming respect for the presidency, what can happen day in and day out.”
Added Bob Mires of Rogers, who works in the food division: “I appreciate his candor. I’m amazed by his recall of detail.”
Asked what he misses most about being president, Bush replied: “Being commander-in-chief, period. I was being pampered.”
On the evening of his inauguration, with 13 inaugural balls under way, he said he went to the Oval Office to see what it was like. “I don’t like to dance that much anymore, ever since I quit drinking,” he said.
He said he was surprised to find that he had two valets.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said his dad told him.
The downside of the job, he said, was the tough decision to send troops into combat, as he did in Iraq in 2003. But he doesn’t regret the move.
“Removing Saddam [Hussein] was not a mistake. The world and the Iraqi people were better off,” he said.
He also defended efforts late in his administration to stem the collapse of Wall Street through the Targeted Asset Relief Program.
“The credit markets were completely frozen,” he said. “Absolutely I would make the exact decision to keep the economy from going into the tank.”
Bush, 64, said life today for himself and former first lady, Laura, “is great.” But he also hopes to regain the comparative anonymity he enjoyed when he was governor of Texas, he said, when he could walk into the Wal-Mart in Athens, Texas, to buy Berkley Power Worms for fishing without attracting much notice.
Bush advised his audience “to love your children with all your heart and soul, unconditionally.”
He said he often told his daughters, Jenna and Barbara, “Girls, I love you, there’s nothing you can do to make me not love you, so stop trying.”
Business, Pages 23 on 11/23/2010