"Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake," said the president, who has said previously that he regrets calling for Osama bin Laden to be captured "dead or alive" and taunting the nation's enemies to "bring them on."
"I've thought long and hard about Katrina," Bush said of the hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005. "You know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge?"
Soon after the hurricane, Bush flew over the area in Air Force One but did not stop. A photo of the president looking out the window at the devastation below contributed to a sense that he was detached from it.
But Bush disputed the widespread contention that his government was slow to respond. "Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there were 30,000 people pulled off the roofs right after the storm passed," he said.
In addition, Bush said, he should have pushed for immigration reform soon after his 2004 reelection, not for changes in Social Security. Congress, he said, was not convinced that a Social Security crisis was imminent and was reluctant to act.
On world affairs, Bush acknowledged that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the American military "obviously was a huge disappointment."
So was the failure of prewar intelligence indicating that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, he said.
Yet Bush maintained that the United States has not forfeited its standing in the world. "I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged," he said.
Scott McClellan, Bush's former press secretary who published a critical tell-all book last year, said the president and his aides were simply convinced of their righteous place in history.
"He is clinging to one last hope that history will vindicate him, that Iraq will turn out to be a thriving democracy," McClellan said in an interview Monday. "It's putting a lot of hopes in one basket, and he's convinced himself rightly or wrongly that it will."
McClellan said he was struck by the president's failure to concede any substantive mistakes -- saying that Bush's only contrition was reserved for tactics and communication errors.
"The one thing missing was candor," McClellan said. "Until he acknowledges a single policy mistake, I think it's going to be hard for him to get people to tune in and pay attention to some of the notable policy achievements."
