In their first public appearance together since leaving office, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney heaped praise on each other, putting behind them the tension of their final days in the White House when they fought over the president’s refusal to pardon the vice president’s ex-chief of staff. In his new memoir, Mr. Bush wrote that he worried that the fight had fractured their friendship.
Addressing a crowd of 2,500 supporters and Bush administration veterans, Mr. Cheney said the response to Mr. Bush’s book showed that the country had begun to re-evaluate him.
“Two years after you left office, judgments are a little more measured than they were,” Mr. Cheney said. “When times have been tough or the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around.”
Mr. Bush responded by hailing his No. 2 and recalling the decision to ask him to be the running mate in 2000. “As I stand here,” Mr. Bush said, “there is no doubt in my mind he was the right pick then, he was a great vice president of the United States and I’m proud to call him friend.”
Until this week, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had seen each other just once in private since President Obama was inaugurated. Mr. Cheney’s attendance was a rare public appearance since his long hospital stay for heart trouble this year. He appeared much thinner in his face and body, more hesitant in his gait, and he used a cane, although he put it aside when it came time to approach the lectern. After the speeches and ceremonial dirt turning, he quickly departed, while other luminaries lingered.
His daughter Liz Cheney said Mr. Cheney, 69, was gaining back his strength. “He lost weight when he was in the hospital this summer, as most people do, but he is feeling great and enjoying working on his book, and hanging out with his grandkids,” she said after the event.
His dry wit seemed intact as he took a poke at Mr. Obama’s recent admission that there were no such things as shovel-ready public works projects. Referring to the groundbreaking, he said, “This may be the only shovel-ready project in America.”
Mr. Bush, on the other hand, left his successor unscathed, as he has since leaving Washington.
“I believe the ultimate responsibility of a leader is to not do what is easy or popular but to do what is necessary and right,” Mr. Bush told the crowd. “The decisions of governing are on another president’s desk, and he deserves to make them without criticism from me. But staying out of current affairs and politics does not mean staying out of policy.”
Mr. Bush plans to use a public policy institute that will be housed at the center along with the traditional presidential library and museum to advance four causes he adopted as his own while in office: human freedom, global health, economic growth and education. He has also started a women’s initiative led by his wife, Laura Bush.
“He’s energized,” Andrew H. Card Jr., his first White House chief of staff, said in an interview. “He’s very much at peace. He’s reliving, but he’s not second-guessing. And he’s not opining. This is not a political event.”
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