Exit Interview 2: Bush on Larry King

Still does not get what a failure his term of office has been.

Of particular note:

KING: We're back in the library at the White House with President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, with a week to go and then back to -- to Texas.

Reagan once asked this, so we'll ask it -- are we better off today than we were eight years ago?

G. BUSH: One thing is for certain today, we understand the real dangers that we face. Eight years ago, it looked like the world was peaceful and everything was just fine in the economy. And then we had a recession, then we had an attack and now we've had this financial meltdown. Everything looked like, on the international front that, you know, radicalism might be, you know, a problem over there, but not here.

And so one thing is for certain, that there's a lot of clarity now on the threats we face.

KING: Are you a victim of that?

G. BUSH: I'm not a victim. I'm the president of a great country that dealt with the problems that came our way. And I...

KING: What part is cause and effect?

In other words, what part in the economy's failure does -- is the president to blame?

G. BUSH: You know, it's -- in this case, not to blow my own horn, but I recognized the dangers inherent with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and asked Congress to regulate them, because I was worried a government -- an implicit government guarantee in the mortgage industry and that they were getting a little overextended. And -- but, look, I mean...

KING: And Congress didn't listen?

G. BUSH: No. There's too much -- there's too many special interests here that were protecting Fannie and Freddie.

KING: You were known as anti-regulatory.

G. BUSH: That's what they said in the campaigns. But the truth is...

KING: What is...

G. BUSH: ...the facts are that I actually asked for Fannie and Freddie to be regulated. And I'm sorry that, you know, the purveyors of truth didn't step up and say, well, George Bush was for that. But nevertheless, it's true.

KING: So are you saying you saw this coming?

G. BUSH: No, we didn't see it coming. We saw that there could be dangers in an unregulated Fannie and Freddie and that they needed a regulator and they needed to be reigned in.

KING: Was it waking up one morning and Lehman Brothers, Citicorp -- what's going on?

G. BUSH: Yes, that wasn't very pleasant. It was a very difficult late summer/early fall.

Maybe now, all of a sudden, he "does nuance." An honest man of his word would have just admitted "No."