Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that he “didn’t mind” squabbles between his former administration officials, which were set off by former Vice President Cheney’s new memoir. The book is highly critical of former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
“I’m glad members of my family are giving their version of what it was like to serve the country,” Bush during an interview before a charity golf event on “Fox and Friends.” “I did the same thing.”
{mosads}Bush said that he thought the disagreements would one day be sorted out by those who study his administration.
“Eventually objective historians will analyze our administration and draw objective conclusions,” Bush said.
The former president also said that while he would “remain an interested observer” in the Republican primary, he did not plan to formally endorse any of the candidates.
“I also follow baseball,” the former president joked when asked if he would be closely following the race. “I’m not going back into the limelight.”
The Bush administration has been back in the news lately as the political world digests former Cheney’s new memior, In My Time. The book has come under fire from other members of the Bush Cabinet, who argue that Cheney unapologetically paints them in a negative light.
Rice said the book “was an attack on my integrity,” while Powell accused the vice president of taking “cheap shots” at his former colleagues.
“He has taken the same shots at Condi with an almost condescending tone; she tearfully did this or that. And he’s taken the same shots at [former CIA Director] George Tenet, and he has also, in some ways, indicated he didn’t always approve of what President Bush was deciding,” said Powell on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.
The ex-VP defended the book during an appearance Thursday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“I think a fair reading of the book, which I had a strong suspicion Colin [Powell] hadn’t done, there’s a lot more about our collaboration in the Defense Department … than there was in terms of my comment about how I thought he was conducting himself as secretary of State,” Cheney said.
Bush was appearing on behalf of the Folds of Honor Foundation, a veterans’ support group sponsoring a nationwide “Patriot Golf Day” over the Labor Day weekend to raise money for the families of killed or wounded veterans.