Dubya Entertains Crowds At Miami Book Fair
Former President George W. Bush revealed a lighter side of himself Sunday afternoon before a crowd of hundreds at the Miami Book Fair International at Miami Dade College.
He spoke about his book, "Decision Points."
It's not a memoir, but Bush's way of recounting his decision to run for office and the tough decisions he had to make during his 8 years in the White House.
"I wanted people to understand what it was like to be President during a consequential time," Bush said. "I made a lot of controversial decisions and I wanted to give the reader the chance to understand the process by which I made decisions."
He talked about a lot of the pressure points of his tenure, including weapons of mass destruction, Sept 11th and his decision to invade Iraq.
"It's a painful experience to... I'm certainly not equating the pain that people feel when their child is sent into combat and gets hurt or loses their life," Bush said. "It's a difficult decision for the President and no President should ever commit our troops without serious thought about the consequences."
He also remembered one of the few times he ignored the advice of the Secret Service. Just hours after the planes crashed into the Twin Towers, Bush said the secret service told him not to return home to the White House.
"I damn sure wasn't gonna give a speech to the country from a bunker in Nebraska," he said. "I did not want to give the psychological advantage to seeing a President on the run."
It was Bush's psyche that seemed to be hurt when he recalled the moment when rapper Kanye West went on national TV days after Katrina ravaged New Orleans and accused Bush of being a racist.
"You know you can call me names, which they did, but being labeled a racist is something I couldn't stomach then, I can't stomach now. It's just really unbelievably unfair," Bush said.
Candid and laid back Bush seemed to even surprise his crowd of supporters by describing the human points of his life. He even shared stories that some would argue revealed a little bit too much.
He said the biggest political mistake of his life was in 2000 when he was running for president and did not reveal that he had been arrested for a DUI when asked by a reporter.
"I had been up in Maine and John Newcombe and I went to a bar and he taught me how to drink beer out of a mug with no hands, which means you bite the edge of the mug," said Bush as he motioned tilting his head back to drink.
The audience erupted in laughter, but the former President didn't seem to mind it was at his expense.
