Former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney took turns defending each other Tuesday at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Bush library.
Appearing on the same stage at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Bush said he had “no doubt” that Cheney was the right pick for vice president, and Cheney said history is starting to judge Bush more kindly.
“As I stand here, there is no doubt in my mind he was the right pick then,” Bush said of Cheney. “He was a great vice president of the United States, and I’m proud to call him friend.”
Cheney returned the favor, praising Bush for empathizing with average Americans and for preventing another terrorist attack similar to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“Judgments are a little more measured than they were,” Cheney said. “When times have been tough and the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment. And history is beginning to come around.”
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will chair the advisory board of the library’s adjoining policy center, said Bush was often mischaracterized as an idealist.
“But I would say that President Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush were more than that,” Rice said. “They were optimists and idealists, but they were realists, too, because they realized we have seen so many times — even in our lifetimes — when the impossible one day seems inevitable the next.”
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is slated to open in 2013.
