Alex Wong / Getty Images

First lady Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama, former first lady Barbara Bush, former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush on April 25, 2013 in Dallas.

Giving a broad-strokes defense of his eight years in the White House, former president George W. Bush celebrated the dedication of his Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas on Thursday.

“We expanded freedom at home by raising standards in schools and lowering taxes for everybody. We liberated nations from dictatorship and freed people from AIDS,” he said.

And he added, alluding to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,  “when our nation came under attack we made the tough decisions required to keep the American people safe,” he said. 

“My deepest conviction – the guiding principle of the administration – is that the United States of America must strive to expand the reach of freedom,” he declared.  Freedom, he said, “sustains dissidents bound by chains, believers huddled in underground churches and voters who risk their lives to cast their ballot.”

In the audience were the nation’s three other former living presidents – George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter – as well as current commander in chief Barack Obama. Also in attendance were pivotal figures from the Bush era, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 

To no one’s surprise, the ex-presidents’ remarks -- and Obama's too -- generally shied away from re-litigating the controversies of Bush’s presidency. Alluding to those events, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush said, “One of the benefits of freedom is that people can disagree. It’s fair to say I created plenty of opportunity to exercise that right.”

Bush singled out Cheney for praise. “From the day I asked Dick to run with me, he served with loyalty, principle, and strength,” Bush said.  

Bush ended his speech with tears in his eyes.

Obama used his speech to promote his top policy goal at the moment – persuading Congress to pass a bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws.  

He lauded Bush for trying to enact an immigration bill in 2006 and said “I’m hopeful that this year with the help of Speaker (John) Boehner, and some of the senators and members of congress who are here today, that we bring it home.”

And if an immigration overhaul becomes law this year, Obama said “it will be in large part thanks to the hard work of George W. Bush.” 

Obama praised Bush for “reaching across the aisle to unlikely allies like Ted Kennedy because he believed we had to reform our school in ways that helped every child learn, not just some.”

Obama portrayed Bush as a man of compassion and generosity, a man who “is comfortable in his own skin” and who “takes the job seriously but doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s a good man.” 

Clinton also touched on immigration, thanking Bush for working to revamp the nation’s immigration policies – “and I hope the Congress will follow President Obama’s effort to follow the example you set.” 

And Clinton delivered some wry humor in his remarks. He called the Bush library “the latest grandest example of the eternal struggle of former presidents to rewrite history.” 

He noted that he’d had phone conversations with Bush “a couple of times a year in his second term ... just to talk politics.”

Then he added “A chill went up and down my spine when Laura (Bush) said that all their records were digitized. Dear God, I hope there’s no record of those conversations in this vast and beautiful building.”

Carter, the first former president to speak, praised Bush for appointing a special envoy to help end a prolonged war between north and south Sudan.

It was a gathering of men whose political careers stretch back to 1963 when Carter was elected to the Georgia legislature and 1964 when the elder Bush ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate.

Alluding to the possible future of the Bush political dynasty, former First Lady Barbara Bush skeptically told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday, “There are other people out there that are very qualified and we’ve had enough Bushes.”

When asked whether she expects former Florida governor Jeb Bush to seek the presidency, Mrs. Bush said, “It’s a great country. There are a lot of great families and it’s not just four families.”

The dedication of the Bush library has spurred a wave of retrospective analyses of his presidency, reviving the debates over his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and his decision, with a congressional vote of authorization, to invade Iraq in 2003.

Obama’s election in 2008 was at least partly due to the electorate’s war weariness after five years of military entanglement in Iraq.

But Obama has continued some of Bush’s counter-terrorism policies and greatly expanded Bush’s use of remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, to kill terrorist suspects in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Related stories:

• Mix of tax dollars, undisclosed private financing raises questions about presidential libraries 
• A look at how George W. Bush's presidential library stacks up
• As Bush re-emerges on public stage, a mixed legacy takes shape
• Matt Lauer to interview George W. Bush on Thursday
• PhotoBlog: Rare gathering of five presidents at Bush Library dedication

This story was originally published on Thu Apr 25, 2013 11:20 AM EDT

When the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is dedicated on Thursday, President Barack Obama, all the living former presidents, dignitaries and thousands of visitors will descend on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas to see the largest and most expensive of all the presidential centers.

Opening to the public on May 1, the library will showcase some of the most trying moments of the 43rd president's time in office, including the bullhorn he used when he spoke to first responders working at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terror attacks, and one of the maps showing Hurricane Katrina's damage with "The President has seen" stamped in red lettering across the top. 

AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Docent Patricia Flynn demonstrates an interactive with information about conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq during a tour of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Wednesday. More than 8,000 people are expected to attend Thursday's invitation-only dedication of the center.

Though it will crowd out the others in the headlines this week, the George W. Bush Presidential Library is but the 13th of the presidential library and museum facilities. Here's how it stacks up.

Least popular
Last year, only 44,549 people visited the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Among the exhibits at the facility in West Branch, Iowa, are 440 embroidered flour sacks — gifts from the people of Belgium as thanks for establishing the volunteer-driven relief program during World War I that distributed food to the war-ravaged country.

Most popular
With well over 300,000 visitors in FY2012, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark., is the most popular of the presidential libraries. Clinton's library includes a full-scale replica of the Oval Office, set up just as it was in the Clinton White House. It's "always a draw for young and old," says Clinton Foundation spokesperson Jordan Johnson. 

Danny Johnston / AP

The Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., seen in November 2009.

Smallest space
Every president since Herbert Hoover, who served as commander in chief from 1929 to 1933, has been awarded a presidential library. At 47,000 square feet, Hoover's measures smallest of all. Compared to the Clinton Presidential Center, "our footprint is smaller than their glass front," says Hoover archivist Matt Schaefer.

Biggest space
George W. Bush's entire facility, which includes a library, museum, policy center, and institute, takes the cake at 226,560 square feet in total space across all building floors . As the saying goes: Everything is bigger in Texas.

Larry Stoddard / AP file

Former Presidents Herbert Hoover, right, and Harry Truman walk through doorway of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, on Aug. 10, 1962. The two took a short tour of the library during a dedication ceremony in Hoover's birthplace on his 88th birthday.

Smallest collection
The Hoover Library — the facility is filled with 6,600 cubic feet of traditional archive material, 140 cubic feet of audio and video, and some 9,000 museum artifacts. By contrast, the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum boasts 28,000 cubic feet of materials on display, including the telephone Nixon used to call Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon to congratulate them on the first successful lunar landing.

Despite its relatively small stature, the dedication of Hoover's library in 1962 began the important tradition of having living presidents attend. Crossing party lines, former President Harry Truman joined Hoover, saying, "I wouldn't miss it." Eisenhower was invited but didn't attend.

Most expensive
Once again, the honor goes to the George W. Bush presidential library. The project was designed by Robert A. M. Stern, the dean of architecture at Yale. The price tag? $250 million, according to architecture firm spokesman Christian Rizzo.

Least expensive
At the opposite end of the spectrum sits the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library. Adjusted for inflation, FDR's facility cost about $6 million. 

Most famous architect
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, ever the trend-setter, chose I. M. Pei to design the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum before Pei was a household name.

Steven Senne / AP file

Boston's John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Least famous architect
The least-famous architect was one of the presidents himself. Among Roosevelt's many passions was architecture and the final version of his library hewed closely to a Dutch Colonial sketch he drew envisioning the project, which no doubt saved a hefty chunk of change in design fees.

Slideshow: Bush's legacy

Timothy Clary / AFP-Getty Images

George W. Bush entered the White House after one of the closest and most contested elections in U.S. history. The two-term president served during some of the nation's most turbulent times. Take a look at the pivotal images from George W. Bush's presidency.

Launch slideshow

Related:

• Who foots the bill for presidential libraries?
• As Bush re-emerges on public stage, a mixed presidential legacy takes shape

With its dedication set for Thursday in Dallas, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is about to join an impressive collection of institutions which commemorate the nation's former commanders in chief. These libraries -- now 13 in all -- cost taxpayers $75 million to operate in the last fiscal year.  

In the era of sequestration, almost all spending is under increased scrutiny, but of particular interest is the private financing that helps pay for these presidential libraries.

They are built initially with private funds collected even while presidents are still in office. And some lawmakers have taken issue with the way that cash is raised, fearing special influence in the White House for those who open their checkbooks.

David J. Phillip / AP

Busts of presidential pets Barney and Miss Beazley are seen during a tour of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on April 24, 2013.

The presidential libraries are public-private hybrids designed to preserve the papers, and to some extent, burnish the reputations of all the presidents since Herbert Hoover.

After their privately financed construction, they are turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to be operated with a mix of private and public money. In the past year, nearly two million people visited these institutions.

Federal law dictates that when a new presidential library is turned over to NARA, an endowment must be provided by the foundation to offset some of its operating costs. The amount of the endowment provided by the George W. Bush Foundation for the new library is nearly $9.8 million.

But the fundraising for these institutions begins before a president even leaves office, and that's where the real questions begin.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, songwriter and Democratic donor Denise Rich pledged $450,000 to the building of the Clinton library. In his final hours in office, Clinton issued a pardon to Rich’s ex-husband, fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, who had fled to Switzerland in 1983 before being indicted on fraud and tax evasion charges.

Lawmakers from both parties condemned the Rich pardon, with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saying it “makes a mockery” of the U.S. justice system.

Clinton later portrayed his pardon of Rich -- a prominent supporter of Israel -- as mostly a response to urgings from former Israeli officials like Ehud Barak and from Jewish community leaders in the United States. And Clinton aides, including John Podesta, denied that there was any quid pro quo in the Rich pardon.

Danny Moloshok / Reuters

Denise Rich is seen in this 2012 file photo. During Bill Clinton's presidency, she pledged $450,000 to the building of his library.

Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., has re-introduced a bill he first offered in 1999 which would require any organization that raises funds for a presidential library to disclose the sources and amounts of that funding. The legislation would apply to foundations that receive $200 or more per contributor per calendar quarter while the current president is in office and during the period before NARA takes possession of the library.

Duncan said he proposed his bill in 1999 after hearing that foreign governments were making donations to the planned Clinton presidential library. “However, this is not a partisan issue. I introduced and have supported this legislation under both Democratic and Republican presidents,” Duncan said last month.

“There’s a significant problem here,” said Daniel Schuman who is the Policy Counsel for the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group which advocates greater government openness. “Donations to presidential libraries are kind of the wild, wild West of influence,” he said. “Presidents often start raising money for these libraries while they’re still in office, usually two or three years before they leave office, and money can come from anywhere – from foreign governments, from foreign officials, from lobbyists, from anywhere.”

He added, “You can give millions and millions of dollars to someone who is currently in office to create a mausoleum, and we will never know that a donation has been made.”

While a commander in chief is still at the White House, his allies will set up a non-profit foundation and begin raising money for the construction of the soon-to-be ex-president’s library. Generally donors do not need to be publicly disclosed, so in theory a foreign government or person with interests pending before the federal government could chip in money.

David J. Phillip / AP

Cowboy boots commemorating the time George W. Bush served as general managing partner for the Texas Rangers, are seen during a tour of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on April 24, 2013

But a 2007 law does require disclosure of contributions to presidential library foundations from registered lobbyists who contribute $200 or more. According to a 2010 Congressional Research Service report, the disclosure requirements also apply to organizations employing registered lobbyists and political action committees (PACs) maintained or controlled by lobbyists.

When reporters asked White House spokesman Jay Carney this week about Duncan’s disclosure bill, he said he wasn’t aware of the legislation and that Obama has said nothing about his future library.

“He’s not focused on his life after the presidency,” Carney said, adding that he did not know of anyone inside or out of the administration who is working on plans for a library.

When he ran for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Obama watched his rival Sen. Hillary Clinton during an NBC debate in New Hampshire having to field questions about donors to her husband’s library in Little Rock, Ark. She that she’d co-sponsored a bill to require disclosure of donors to presidential libraries.

Obama followed her comments by saying, “I think it's important not only that all this information is disclosed, but I also think that we need to have a situation in which we are disclosing the funneling of large donors.”

In late 2008, after Obama nominated Clinton to be secretary of state, the Clinton foundation agreed to voluntarily disclose names and donation ranges of its contributors. That information can be found on its website.

Related stories:

• A look at how George W. Bush's presidential library stacks up
• As Bush re-emerges on public stage, a mixed legacy takes shape
• Matt Lauer to interview George W. Bush on Thursday

This story was originally published on Thu Apr 25, 2013 3:52 AM EDT

As former President George W. Bush steps back onto the public stage, he’s facing both criticism from detractors who point to his lingering unpopularity and divisive impact on the GOP, and praise from supporters who cite the importance of “compassionate conservatism” to the modern Republican Party.

While the former two-term president has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office in 2009, focusing on private speaking engagements and his burgeoning painting hobby, he will be back in the spotlight Thursday for the dedication of his presidential library in Dallas, Texas.

His re-emergence at this week’s event – which will feature all of the United States’ five living presidents – arrives just as his lasting political legacy comes into focus.

Mladen Antonov / AFP - Getty Images

The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas will be dedicated on Thursday.

The controversies of the Bush administration – including the conflict in Iraq, the waging of the “global war on terror,” the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis – saddled the former Texas governor with staggering unpopularity by the end of his presidency, which helped give way to President Barack Obama’s ascendancy and an ongoing identity crisis within the GOP.

The library dedication offers Bush loyalists an opportunity to highlight what they see as the positive legacy of his eight years in office. But even among supporters, there is a sense of resignation that he won’t win the kind of historical vindication that once seemed assured.

“I’m increasingly doubtful, just because I think the lens of history is not changing,” said Ari Fleischer, Bush’s former press secretary. “A lot of us used to say President Bush will look good and he’ll be vindicated in the public eye. But realistically speaking, I don’t see a lot of the people who write history all of a sudden changing their mind about George W. Bush.”

The persistent focus on those controversies has made it difficult for Bush to repair his public image since leaving office. Thirty-five percent of Americans expressed a favorable opinion of Bush in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted at the beginning of this month; 44 percent of Americans said they viewed Bush unfavorably. (A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday featured rosier numbers for Bush – 47 percent approval vs. 50 percent disapproval.)

“He's had a little uptick in the polls, but I think in terms of historians, he'll rank near the bottom of mediocre presidents,” said strategist Bob Shrum, a top adviser to the two Democratic presidential nominees who lost to Bush, Vice President Al Gore and then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. “I don't think the Iraq War can be redeemed. What was done to the economy and budget will be permanently part of his legacy.”

Benny Snyder / AP

Letters written from around the world and sent to the White House offering thoughts and prayers after the 9/11 attacks are displayed at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

And while Bush might have shied away from the spotlight in the four years since leaving office, his effect in American politics is undeniable. The specter of Bush was a constant presence during the 2012 campaign, when Obama warned that his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, would return the country to the “failed policies of the past.”

A further study in contrast came during last summer’s Republican National Convention, where Bush was nowhere to be found in Tampa. Former President Bill Clinton, rather, was one of the featured prime-time speakers at his party’s confab, a stark reminder of the popularity gap between the two.

For Bush supporters, the economic collapse in 2008, along with Katrina and the extended conflict in Iraq, are blemishes against him – but they do not believe that he deserves to shoulder the primary blame. And for those allies of the former president who have toured the library (and continue to defend their former boss), they describe the new library as a blunt and forthright assessment of the Bush presidency.

“I think visitors are going to be surprised to see a frank discussion of what was done and why it was done,” Fleischer said. “It doesn’t shy away from controversy. The museum takes on the biggest issues for which the president was criticized.”

For all of the baggage that continues to surround Bush’s eight years in office, many of his supporters argue that the unpopular former president’s record offers Republicans more clues about their path to resurgence than cautionary tales.

Bush, for instance, unsuccessfully led a charge for comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, an initiative which conservatives are now revisiting amid the GOP’s slide with Hispanic voters. (Bush won 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004.)

And following some of the harsher conservatism of congressional Republicans in the 1990s, Bush tried to put a somewhat softer face on the party – much as the party is trying to do now – during his 2000 bid for the presidency.

“He established the idea of compassionate conservatism, which is a concept that most Republicans realize was a winning message and one the party needs to return to in order to win,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior political adviser to Bush’s two presidential campaigns.

Benny Snyder / AP

An exhibit is shown in the museum area at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

Those aspects of Bush’s political strategy are what helped make him such a formidable opponent, according to Shrum.

“The attempt he made with Kennedy and McCain to do immigration reform was right on the merits, but also right on the money politically as well,” he said.

But as the party he helped cleave continues to search for a path forward, Bush himself said that he did not think the GOP is so hopelessly moribund that it’s beyond repair.

“The party ought to nominate somebody who can stand by principles and explain why conservative principles are better for the vast majority of the citizens,” Bush told Parade Magazine in an interview published last Sunday. “I’m not one who believes that the Republican Party is doomed forever.”

The person to do that might end up being Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and the brother of George W. Bush. Of his younger sibling’s future potential ambitions, Bush said: “I hope he will run.”

Related story:

• Bush is back - but not his popularity

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 24, 2013 4:37 AM EDT

When President George W. Bush made the decision to invade Iraq, there was no way to know the lasting ramifications of his choice. But a decade later, it's clear that the conflict not only transformed his own political party, but all of American politics.

Republicans found their edge on national security matters eroded, laying the groundwork for President Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House. The Iraq War, which was waged for nearly nine years, changed Washington by empowering the Democrats to take on the role of the party of counter-terrorism and defense.

On the night of March 17, 2003, in a nationally televised speech, Bush said he was giving Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave their country or else face an American invasion.

Saddam had “harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda,” Bush said. “The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”

To the Iraqi people, Bush pledged, “The day of your liberation is near.”

Two nights later Bush was back on the air at 10:16 p.m., telling the American people that the invasion had begun. But he warned that the campaign “on the harsh terrain” of Iraq “could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.”

Ten years later, Bush’s warning has a haunting resonance for Americans, perhaps especially for those in his own party.

Preemptive invasions and wars of national liberation have gone out of favor with Americans, including many members of Bush’s party. Some of the disenchantment is due to the cost of Iraq operations which, as of Jan. 2012, the Congressional Budget Office estimated to be $767 billion.

Edge over Democrats destroyed
A new generation of House Republicans, many of them elected after Bush left office in 2009, has voted for spending cuts – even in the face of warnings that they will hurt Pentagon operations. The post-Bush Republicans put debt reduction ahead of overseas engagement.

They’re wary of any “sustained commitment” of the kind that Bush called for in 2003. Some, led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, are fearful of the concentration of power in the presidency that the Iraq War and the war against al Qaeda have brought about.

In the 2004 campaign, Bush conflated the danger of Saddam Hussein with the danger of terrorist attacks on the United States. Exit poll data from the 2004 election showed that more than seven out of 10 voters were worried that there would be another major terrorist attack in the United States. Of that group, Bush won 53 percent, while Democratic opponent John Kerry won 46 percent.

Fifty-five percent of voters in 2004 considered the war in Iraq to be part of the war on terrorism, and of that group, four out five voted for Bush.

Bush had an 18-point advantage over Kerry on the question of whom voters trusted to deal with terrorism.

By 2006, the cost of the Iraq insurgency had destroyed whatever illusion of post-9/11 Republican electoral ascendancy there may have been. Conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru said last week at a debate at the American Enterprise Institute on the future of the Republican Party, “You could make the argument that the beginning of the end of Republican dominance in Washington was the Iraq War, at least a stage of the Iraq War, 2005-2006.”

The outcome of the 2006 midterm elections was a disaster for Bush’s party, as Republicans lost 30 seats in the House and six in the Senate, losing control of both chambers.

The exit polls from the 2008 and 2012 elections showed how thoroughly the Iraq War had destroyed the GOP edge over the Democrats on national security and foreign policy.

In 2008, more than three out of five voters disapproved of the Iraq War. Although 2008 Republican candidate Sen. John McCain was critical of Bush’s conduct of the war and especially of Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, McCain was identified with the war and was the foremost proponent of the Iraq troop surge in 2006. His Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, won 76 percent of those who disapproved of the Iraq War.

In the 2012 exit poll, of the relatively small group of the voters – only 5 percent – who chose foreign policy as the most important issue facing the country, 56 percent voted for Obama and only 33 percent for Republican Mitt Romney.

When asked who they’d trust to handle an international crisis, 42 percent said Obama, 36 chose Romney and 13 percent said both.

By losing the 2008 and 2012 elections, Republicans in effect handed responsibility for national security to a Democratic president for eight years, giving Obama the chance to show that a Democratic commander-in-chief can be just as or even more assertive than Bush was in using drones to kill suspected terrorists. Having Obama in charge means that it’s now a Democratic president who invokes the White House's inherent constitutional authority to wage war, with minimal consultation from Congress. Whether Democratic presidential contenders in 2016 will continue this robust assertion of presidential war-making power is unclear.

Ron Edmonds / AP file photo

President Bush holds a press conference in the Rose Garden with members of his Cabinet. From left to right, Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John E. McLaughlin, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller Monday, Aug. 2, 2004, in Washington.

'War weariness'
In the wake of the GOP defeats in 2008 and 2012, the party is defined at least partly by Rand Paul, whose father Ron was one of only six Republican House members to vote against the Oct. 10, 2002 authorization to use military force against Iraq.

Former Bush administration official Peter Wehner, who described himself as part of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party, said at the AEI debate last week that there is a concern in his wing of the GOP about “a kind of war weariness because of Iraq and Afghanistan … and I think Rand Paul tapped into it in a very creative and politically intelligent manner” with his filibuster against the possibility of Obama using drones to kill American citizens who may be terror suspects in the United States.

Paul also rails against U.S. aid to Egypt, where anti-American protests have taken place.

Wehner said he disagrees with Paul’s foreign policy views, but predicted a spirited intra-party debate over U.S. role in the world. “It may up being an acrimonious one because I think there are a lot people – including sort of traditional conservatives and a lot of people on talk radio – who had been strong supporters of President Bush and the Iraq war and the effort in Afghanistan – who spoke quite favorably about Rand Paul. I think that symbolized a kind of shift in thinking.”

Joining that debate the morning after Paul’s filibuster was McCain. Paul’s speculation about Obama using drones in the United States had “done a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them believe that somehow they are in danger from their government,” McCain said. “They are not. But we are in danger from a dedicated, longstanding, easily replaceable leadership enemy that is hell-bent on our destruction….”

Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, potential 2016 Republican presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida warned that Americans “need to engage in the world…. We can't be involved in every armed conflict. But we also can't be retreating from the world….”

A divided party might have a hard time winning the next election. But divided as Republicans are now, so Democrats were at the height of the Bush era, and yet they won the 2008 election.

The weekend before American troops invaded Iraq, Kerry, then a contender for the 2004 Democratic nomination, faced a heckling reception from some of the activists at the California Democratic Party’s convention in Sacramento as he tried to minimize the importance of his vote for the resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq.

“It’s disappointing to me that he gave President Bush preemptive war power without really having it be an issue,” said one of the Democrats heckling Kerry, Tim Steed, who was then 22 and chairman of the Orange County Young Democrats, who supported Kerry’s rival Howard Dean. Iraq “is a very divisive issue for our party and that is a shame,” Steed said.

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 3:43 AM EDT

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says that the public will view his older brother, former president George W. Bush, more favorably as time passes. 

"In (my father's) four years as president a lot of amazing accomplishments took place," said Jeb Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush, during an interview on NBC's Meet the Press.  "So my guess is that history will be kind to my brother, the further out you get from this and the more people compare his tenure to what's going on now."

The 43rd president has largely stayed out of the spotlight since leaving office. After presiding over broad public discontent over the Iraq War and a flailing economy, George W. Bush left the White House with poor approval ratings and was notably unpopular even within his own party. 

Jeb Bush said he hasn't yet spoken to their famous parents about the idea of his own 2016 run. 

"I don't want to begin the process to think about it until it's the proper time to do so," he said. 

Jeb Bush was interviewed on NBC as a part of a media blitz to promote his new book, 'Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution." 

He has come under fire this week for failing to include a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants in his proposed immigration plan, a turnaround from his previous embrace of that proposal. 

He acknowledged Sunday that he could still back a plan that includes a path to citizenship but said that his book was intended to offer a reform plan that conservatives strongly opposed to "amnesty" could still support. 

"If they can find a way to get to a path to citizenship over the long haul, then I would support that," he said of ongoing bipartisan negotiators on the reform effort. "But this book was written to try to get people that were against reform to be for it.  And it is a place where I think a lot of conservatives should feel comfortable, that there's a way to do this and not violate their principles."

Asked whether or not he thinks he is more likely than his fellow immigration reform advocate and Floridian Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to end up in the Oval Office, Bush poked fun at "addicts" of political journalism. 

"You guys are crack addicts," he told host David Gregory. (He later jokingly corrected that characterization to "heroin addicts.")  "You really are obsessed with all this politics."