TRIBUTE VIDEO:
ULTIMA CONFERENZA STAMPA 12/01/2009: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090112.wm.v.html Trascrizione IN INGLESE dell'ultimo discorso QUI
«La storia dirà che George W. Bush è stato un grandissimo presidente degli Stati
Uniti. Bush è un uomo di grandi principi, grandi ideali, grande visione, ma
soprattutto uno che ha il coraggio di perseguire questa visione. In lui non ho
mai visto il calcolo del politico, ma la spontaneità e la sincerità di colui che
crede in quello che fa. Mi è stato facile condividere le decisioni di Bush
fondate sull'amore della libertà, la democrazia e il rispetto per gli altri»
- Silvio B.
QUESTION: And I'm not trying to play "gotcha," but I wonder, when you
look back over the long arc of your presidency, do you think, in retrospect,
that you have made any mistakes? And if so, what is the single biggest mistake
that you may have made?
THE PRESIDENT: Gotcha. I have often said that
history will look back and determine that which could have been done better, or,
you know, mistakes I made. Clearly putting a "Mission Accomplished" on a
aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say
something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message.
Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.
I've thought long and
hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like
land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that
and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And
then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have
flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to
expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?
I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04
elections was a mistake. I should have argued for immigration reform. And the
reason why is, is that -- you know, one of the lessons I learned as governor of
Texas, by the way, is legislative branches tend to be risk-adverse. In other
words, sometimes legislatures have the tendency to ask, why should I take on a
hard task when a crisis is not imminent? And the crisis was not imminent for
Social Security as far as many members of Congress was concerned.
As an
aside, one thing I proved is that you can actually campaign on the issue and get
elected. In other words, I don't believe talking about Social Security is the
third rail of American politics. I, matter of fact, think that in the future,
not talking about how you intend to fix Social Security is going to be the third
rail of American politics.
One thing about the presidency is that you can
make -- only make decisions, you know, on the information at hand. You don't get
to have information after you've made the decision. That's not the way it works.
And you stand by your decisions, and you do your best to explain why you made
the decisions you made.
There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge
disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was
a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or
not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.
Anyway, I think historians will look back and they'll be able to have a
better look at mistakes after some time has passed. Along Jake's question, there
is no such thing as short-term history. I don't think you can possibly get the
full breadth of an administration until time has passed: Where does a
President's -- did a President's decisions have the impact that he thought they
would, or he thought they would, over time? Or how did this President compare to
future Presidents, given a set of circumstances that may be similar or not
similar? I mean, there's -- it's just impossible to do. And I'm comfortable with
that.