The Afterlife of George W. Bush

They spent 90 minutes together. And when the teenager went home, he told his grandmother all about it. She was Republican, as were many of the folks in the neighborhood. In the following days, she saw her grandson getting chummy with the Secret Service agents on the street. One day she called Jake to dinner. He came in, a little upset. "I was just about to learn Laura Bush's Secret Service code name," she heard her grandson say.

Bush has always been friendly. And maybe, after years of being cordoned off by security, his face time with others carefully choreographed and his days scheduled to the hilt, it's refreshing to him just to have the chance for a spontaneous chat with a neighbor. But Bush's choice of conversational companions may speak to something deeper. He lived in a bubble during much of his time in Washington; having left office with a disapproval rating of 73 percent, he might be forgiven for being a bit hesitant about what awaits him on the outside. He's declined to give a major interview since leaving office (he and his aides declined to cooperate with this story). So Bush seems to be easing into life back home in Texas, reaching out quietly to reconnect with old friends, stalwart supporters—and the occasional teenage fanboy, who may or may not yet be fully aware of the harsh public judgments, even in Republican circles, of the guy who just moved in next door.

"He is in home territory for sure, no question about it. And that's where he wants to be," says Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. "He doesn't enjoy naysayers and critics and opposition. Never has. And right now, he needs that nurturing cocoon that he is in. He is not calling people who didn't support him. He is calling people who supported him, those 14-year-olds."

"But we will see how serious he wants to get in being a participant in the debate over his legacy, beyond writing his side of the story," Buchanan continues. "He may decide, forget it. Or he may decide to become his own version of the Jimmy Carter model. Or he might just stay on the lecture circuit and make money. He has all those options."

And he's exploring them, to be sure. Bush made his first foray into the lucrative post presidency speaking circuit last month, cracking up an audience of Calgary oilmen for a reported $400 a ticket. He's got more talks ahead, including one with former president Bill Clinton in late May. He's busy writing a book and aggressively raising money for a $300 million library, museum and think tank on the campus of Southern Methodist University. And he's trying to find his place in Texas, a land where he once was king.

When Bush flew home from Washington Jan. 20, he made a very safe bet. He landed in Midland. His friends are among the most prominent figures in the small, affluent west Texas town. It's where he was raised, where the family name carried serious weight. It's where Laura Bush, whose approval ratings were nearly twice her husband's when they left Washington, comes from. "They turned out 30,000 people here," says his longtime Texas accountant, Bob McCleskey. "And that's without giving out food and beer. Most people in Texas, by and large, hold him in high regard because he made a decision and stuck with it."

Those Texas friends say Bush seems remarkably unchanged by his eight years in Washington. "Every time I talk to him or have been around him, he has been very upbeat," says his buddy Nolan Ryan, the baseball legend Bush has described as his "hero."

Ryan helped orchestrate one of the rare public appearances Bush has made since leaving office. In April, Ryan, now the president of the Texas Rangers, invited Bush, once a limited partner in the team, to throw out the first pitch of the season. "He was well received," says Ryan. "It was a very positive day."