The Bush Conundrum
We have had the final press conference - prepare for the Bush legacy programmes.
I have even done one myself (for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Four and the World Service) in which a member of his extended family talks frankly about how upsetting they have found the last few years. Others tell us he got what he deserved.
If you hate him or love him, the fair-minded programmes will be a disappointment. But for the dispassionate, disinterested observer one question seems to me to rise above all the others, and still be worth asking: why is there such a clash between what he appears to believe about human beings and what many of his fellow human beings believe about him.
At the presser he was warm - typically warm - about everyone: the press, Barack Obama, even the "opiners" who have been opining bad things about him.
He threw in some pointed lines about how the Republican party needed to be inclusive and welcoming to immigrants.
And he seemed genuinely to get why Mr Obama's inauguration is such a big deal in America's racial history.
Yet for many people, this man is an ogre whose willingness to gamble with other people's lives and wellbeing is matched only by his cocky inability to understand why people might not approve.
This is the Bush Conundrum: humane Bush versus cowboy Bush. Both exist.
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