Current views of the president, in fact, remain harsh. For more than 2 1/2 years, more Americans have disapproved of his job performance than approved of it, according to the Gallup Poll.
The news conference capped a string of interviews in which Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney defended the administration's record -- part of an orchestrated effort in an outgoing president's final days to salvage his battered legacy.
The White House website features several documents enumerating the administration's accomplishments, such as preventing additional terrorist attacks, advancing missile defense and fighting AIDS in Africa.
Bush "just thinks he's getting a bad rap, and he's also determined to put his side of the story on the record," said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas government professor who has followed Bush since his early days in politics. "He is a guy who prizes being liked, even though he would never admit it."
Buchanan and Princeton University presidential scholar Fred Greenstein suggested that Bush's unusual remarks might have been inspired by the poll numbers and policy failures the retiring president faces.
"The remarks today were not characteristic of what we have seen of Bush over the past eight years," Greenstein said. "There was no swagger. . . . There was a more reflective, more chastened feeling to it."
Buchanan said he could think of no other president who granted so many interviews and sought so much television time in his waning days.
"His group has clearly concluded that things are so bad, they have to respond," he said.
But despite Bush's sinking public approval ratings -- less than 30% in the most recent Gallup Poll, down from a high of 90% after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- he said he never felt isolated in office.
"In times of war, people get emotional. I understand that," Bush said, insisting he "never really, you know, spent that much time, frankly, worrying about the loud voices."
In retrospect, he said, some of his choices were wrong.
"History will look back and determine that which could have been done better," said Bush, volunteering his own review:
"Clearly, putting a 'mission accomplished' on [an] aircraft carrier was a mistake," he said, referring to the banner strung across the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, where he landed several weeks after the invasion of Iraq to declare that major combat operations were finished.
