George w. Bush
Former President George W. Bush basked in the glow of a friendly audience Tuesday as former Vice President Dick Cheney and others praised his legacy during a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of his future library in Dallas.
Cheney, slimmed down and walking with a cane, said public sentiment is already starting to shift on Bush’s eight years in the White House.
Former President George W. Bush speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the George W. Bush Presidential Library at SMU in Dallas. The center is scheduled to be completed in 2013.
“When times have been tough and the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around,” Cheney told Bush during an hourlong program at SMU Tuesday morning.
The George W. Bush Presidential Center will include a museum, a library and a policy institute. Officials expect the 225,000-square-foot Texas limestone and red brick building to draw as many as 250,000 visitors annually.
Bush thanked Cheney for coming to the ceremony and said he had been the “right pick” to be his running mate 10 years ago. But Bush, who has given many interviews during the past week while promoting his new memoir, continued to avoid speculating about his legacy.
“I believe that the ultimate responsibility of a leader is to not do what is easy or popular but to do what is necessary and right,” Bush told the invitation-only audience of about 3,000, gathered in a giant tent for the ceremony.
The former president also made a point of not criticizing President Barack Obama, saying, “The decisions of governing are on another person’s desk, and he does not deserve criticism from me.”
But Cheney, who spoke before Bush, drew laughs when he said the Bush library “will be the only shovel-ready project in America” – an apparent allusion to the term used by Obama to describe projects funded through his economic stimulus program.
With information from the report of LORI STAHL
lstahl@dallasnews.com
