WASHINGTON — The son watched his father, vowing not to repeat his mistakes.
The weekend before George W. Bush defeated Texas Gov. Ann Richards in 1994, he stood in the backyard of his Dallas home hitting tennis balls into the swimming pool for his dog to fetch and ruminating about the future with his media strategist, Don Sipple.
"At one point, Bush talked about his father, and he said: 'Sip, my man, don't underestimate what you can learn from a failed presidency,' " recalled Wayne Slater, a political reporter for the Dallas Morning News and one of Bush's earliest biographers.
With that harsh assessment long before he took office as the 43rd president of the United States, Bush had already decided he would do things differently from his father. But as he prepares to leave office after eight years, there are many similarities he might have wished to avoid as part of only the second father-son presidential duo in history.
Both Bushes saw extreme highs in public opinion. The first President Bush won accolades for his handling of the Gulf War in 1990, forcing Iraq out of Kuwait. The second President Bush calmed a frightened nation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, taking up a bullhorn to promise that the world would soon hear America.
And both saw their presidencies swamped by a sea of public dismay. The elder Bush was castigated for being out of touch as the economy foundered and he seemed unable to relate. The younger Bush was pilloried for his handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Later he was criticized for an ideological rigidity that delayed early, forceful intervention as the economy careened into a ditch far deeper than his father's.
As George W. Bush prepares to return to Texas, historians will be judging his legacy in the context of his father's single term as president.
"The likelihood is that the father will be looked upon as a steadier hand and better prepared for the job," said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas who specializes in the presidency.
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, calls the senior Bush "dramatically more accomplished" in both foreign and domestic policy than his son. Still, he said, "They are in fact going to be doing chin-ups on the bottom tier of presidents in modern history."
