But Words Will Never Hurt Me

If George Bush took the insults personally, he didn't let it show. On Oct. 23, John McCain, who once stood by the president despite a tense personal relationship, let loose with an unsparing rebuke of the Bush administration's failures. He chastised the president for the "conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government" and for ignoring the will of Congress. "We just let things get completely out of hand," McCain told The Washington Times. McCain's attack read like a Barack Obama ad, only angrier.

That same day, Bush invited a group of women from the Middle East for an informal chat at the White House. He posed for photos and answered their questions, part of his effort to show that the war on terror is not a war on Islam or the Arab world. "When it comes to my views on Muslims, I believe that we pray to the same God," he told the women, according to a person at the meeting who, like others quoted in this story, asked for anonymity speaking about private conversations. "I believe we share in the same beliefs. I believe Muslim mothers want their children to grow up in peace." But at one point, Bush's thoughts turned inward. He told the group he understood why so many people had an unfavorable view of him—and his presidency. "I know I have got an image," he said. "I don't live in a cocoon."

As his presidency winds down, Bush has seeded his calendar with more of these informal, non confrontational events in which he can showcase his softer personal side before appreciative audiences who are proud, even thrilled, to be in the presence of the president. Outside the White House, they are not easy to find. Bush, whose poll numbers now hover in the 20s, will leave office in January with perhaps the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. Bush bashing is nearly as popular among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Obama has made Bush's record the central theme of his campaign. One of Obama's aides' principal lines of attack against John McCain has been to lash him to the president's policies, labeling him "McSame."

Yet those who know the president well say he has withstood the attacks with characteristic equanimity. Bush has never been one to torture himself with doubt or punish himself with what-ifs. Even in the darkest moments of his presidency—the bloodiest months of insurgency after the invasion of Iraq; the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina—there were no hushed stories of a distraught president talking to the portraits in the West Wing. The opinion of the American people matters to him, and close friends and aides say he is not deaf to the fact that he has become an object of ridicule. But they say he also remains unshakably convinced history will see his decisions, on Iraq especially, as the right ones. The same air of self-confident resolve—reassuring to some, maddening to others—that allowed Bush to claim, during the 2004 campaign, that he could not name a single mistake he had made as president, now girds him in his final, difficult and somewhat lonely months in the White House.

The president's aides are not always so philosophical, or forgiving. Several of his closest staffers were furious that Bush was not given a prominent speaking role at the Republican convention in September; they privately groused that Bush, who was originally scheduled to speak on the first night, was later disinvited by the McCain camp. In the end, Bush appeared only by video. Some of the president's friends and aides complained directly to him about what they saw as an unforgivable insult. Bush tried to calm them. "I understand," Bush said, according to two people involved in the conversation. "I had to somewhat distance myself from my own father in my own campaign." In 2000, George H.W. Bush had awkwardly tried to reassure voters that W was ready to lead. "This boy, this son of ours, will not let you down," he said. That was the last time Bush 41 spoke on behalf of his namesake during that campaign.

McCain aides deny that they banned Bush from the GOP convention. But the McCain team's palpable resentment toward the president comes through in their version of what happened. The president and Dick Cheney were originally slated to speak on the first night to get "the old guard" out of the way, says a senior McCain adviser, who asked not to be named so he could speak freely about the relationship between his boss and Bush. But when a hurricane threatened the Gulf Coast that day, the party postponed the start of the convention, and with it Bush's speech.

"The last thing this party needed was for people to be reminded of every dumb mistake this administration made with Katrina," the McCain adviser says. "It was a nightmare." The adviser says they didn't try to keep Bush away, but admits that finding the president a new time slot was hardly a top priority. "The guy has the lowest approval ratings of any president in history, and they are complaining?" the adviser says. "Bush understands the political environment we're in. Or, hell, maybe he doesn't."