Farewells

Bushie Exit Interviews

Hadley, Bolten sit down with Washington Post.

Two of President Bush’s most senior aides, who have been with him the entire eight years of his presidency, have sat down with The Washington Post in a last-minute effort to remedy their boss’s reputation. "One of the mythologies," said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (the other interviewee is Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten), "is that it was the vice president that somehow was pulling the strings on foreign policy in the first term and made it very ideologically driven and that somehow in the second term, the vice president's influence is in decline and, therefore, somehow the real Bush has come forward, and we have a more pragmatic foreign policy." Among Hadley’s other frustrations? "This is the one thing that just drives me crazy, that somehow this is an arrogant administration, an arrogant president running an arrogant policy. This guy—one thing he is not is arrogant."