In 2001, soon after George W. Bush’s inauguration, a bit of gossip surfaced from the White House: outgoing Clinton staffers had crept around the place taking the Ws off keyboards, phone wires had been snipped, furniture broken, glue placed on desk drawers and satirical signs hung up directing people to the ‘Office of Strategery’. Not bad as pranks go, but the country was not in the mood for laughing. The Bush presidency was already on the back foot after a botched election and protracted court battle. There was anger and resentment all around even though everyone’s official stance was grace, optimism and moving forward. The plundered Ws struck Republicans as a grave insult to the dignity of the office.
The new White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was solemn. He insisted that the Bush administration, having promised to restore honour to the White House, was not going to dwell on every last Clinton trick. That promise was kept even as the Bushies left the White House: there were no childish antics this time round. Dignity had been restored to the transition at least.
Of course Americans have more pressing concerns than the jokes one group of White House staffers played on another. But Mr Bush’s supporters have a point. Say what you will about the ex-president, but the man has made a graceful exit. There was no last-minute skulduggery. He granted fewer than 200 pardons, a relatively small number, and skipped over controversial convicts like Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff who got himself caught in the middle of the endless, incomprehensible Valerie Plame affair. Bush asked Congress to release the second half of the $700 billion bank bail-out money, which spared the new President from having to make this unpopular request early on. And by all accounts the Bush staffers were co-operative and communicative with Obama’s gang. Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the New York Times, concluded that Mr Bush ‘deserves a big gold star’ for his effort.
Bush, thinking of himself as a wartime president, had special reason to be acutely aware of his final responsibilities. The 9/11 Commission report, reflecting on the troubled 2000–2001 transition, noted that the Bush administration ‘did not have its team on the job until at least six months after it took office’. Of course, two groups of adults should be able to work together on behalf of the national interest under any circumstances. But it hasn’t always worked out that way; there is an unavoidable awkwardness in the ten-week gap between election day and inauguration day. To their credit, both the Bush and Obama teams strove to make things as smooth as possible.
Among the first families, too, everything was amicable. Michelle gave Laura a journal and a pen. The Bush twins wrote an open letter to Malia and Sasha and had it published in the Wall Street Journal: clearly the Bush twins have high expectations of Obama’s 10- and seven-year-old daughters.
On inauguration day, though, the crowd did not take a lead from their outgoing president. Their behaviour was as rambunctious as his was restrained. When Bush emerged from the holding pen, he was roundly booed. Then the half-frozen crowd warmed themselves, singing ‘Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye’, an old pop song typically used during baseball games to taunt the other team’s pitcher. The refrain was clearly audible on the news feeds, and the anchors, subsumed with historical feeling, were taken aback. The moment was even more dramatic than Aretha Franklin’s enormous hat and more shocking than the poem that was read out to mark the occasion.
Obama was kinder than the crowd at first. He obeyed the tradition of thanking his predecessor for his service and for his co-operation during the transition. Then he moved into a fairly comprehensive repudiation of the Bush programmes and policies. As President, said Mr Obama, he would restore trust in government and he was planning to embrace science and data. Mr Bush could do nothing but sit there and squirm, alone in a crowd of two million people ecstatic to see the back of him. After the inauguration, Mr Bush’s supporters complained of sharp elbows and cheap shots. If their feelings were hurt by the speech, they must have been really stung by the first week of the Obama administration.
Even in Bush’s adopted Texas, his opponents weren’t showing him much respect as he left. At a ‘Texans for Obama’ watch party in Austin, as the Bush helicopter lifted, teetered and left, an Iraq veteran boomed at the telly, ‘Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!’ he said. It was a popular expression that week.
Meanwhile, up in Crawford, there was a festive feeling at the Peace House, which is just across the railroad tracks from the handful of Bush souvenir stores that are still in business. The activists had unrolled a ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’ banner, and were planning a small protest for that evening, when George W. Bush was scheduled to drive through town en route to the Prairie Chapel Ranch. True, the man was no longer president, but there were still fish to fry.
Peace activists observed that Bush had looked a bit worried at the Obama inauguration. They hoped that he was worried about the contingency of being prosecuted for war crimes, but allowed that the Bush years had their silver lining: ‘At least, if nothing else, this woke us up,’ said one woman. The Peace House had recently acquired a sculpture of Bush’s head attached to the body of a snake, but decided not to display it: this was a day for celebration, not recriminations.
As for Bush, he is no doubt happy to be back in Texas. A warmer welcome was available in Midland, where thousands of friendly faces welcomed him home. It was quite like his 2001 send-off, also in Midland, when thousands of west Texans sent their slightly ambivalent governor off to Washington. ‘I know the White House does not belong to its occupant,’ he said in 2001, in his send-off speech in Midland, Texas. ‘It is ours to look after for a while.’ That, at least, was one promise he kept.
Erica Grieder is the Texas correspondent for the Economist.