WASHINGTON — By offering a wistful and introspective closing argument to the American people who elected him twice but then lost confidence in him, retiring President George W. Bush is attempting to write the first draft of his own history.
First came a sober public confession of mistakes and disappointments in his final news conference Monday -- a remarkably personal moment for a president never prone to self-examination or questioning under the klieg lights. He also offered a robust defense of his administration, including its response to Hurricane Katrina, and a defiant insistence that he waged a necessary war in Iraq and should not be judged too quickly for it.
On Thursday he is to make a prime-time address from the White House, which Bush's spokeswoman said was planned to "reflect on his time in office and the ways our country has changed these past eight years."
But that televised farewell from the East Room is unlikely to echo the list of mistakes Bush acknowledged to reporters in the West Wing on Monday: prematurely declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq; failing to find the weapons of mass destruction cited as the reason for the Iraq war; the abuse of Iraqi prisoners; and his own campaigning for Social Security reform after reelection instead of trying to change immigration policy.
And he expressed regret for talking, sometimes, like a cowboy -- "mission accomplished" being a prime example.
Bush seemed to make peace with fate.
"I believe this -- the phrase 'burdens of the office' is overstated," Bush said. "You know, it's kind of like, 'Why me? . . . Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?' It's just . . . it's pathetic, isn't it, self pity."
He alluded to the dire advice he received from his economic advisors and to some of his friends' objections to his solutions:
"I chunked aside some of my free market principles when I was told . . . that the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression."
Bush said that he's told those friends:
"Well, if you were sitting there and heard that the depression could be greater than the Great Depression, I hope you would act too."
Bush argued that a fair view of his administration would emerge only over time. "There is no such thing as short-term history," he said. "I don't think you can possibly get the full breadth of an administration till time has passed."
