Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, has emerged as one of Obama’s toughest critics and the staunchest defender of the Bush administration’s policies after the
Sept. 11 attacks. But Bush, saying he had hated it when former presidents criticized him after he took office, said, “Anything I say is not to be critical of my successor … (there are) plenty of critics in American society.” Bush, who has stayed mostly out of the public eye since leaving the White House in January, said he was enjoying the freedom of being a private citizen but thanked the Toronto organizers “for giving me something to do.” The two-term Republican president from Texas said he had been taking on chores dictated by his wife, Laura, and had discovered the challenges of cleaning up after pets as he walked the family dog, Barney, around their Dallas neighborhood. “There I was, the former president, with a plastic bag on my hand, picking up that which I had dodged for eight solid years,” Bush said to laughs from the 6,000-strong audience. Bush said he had phoned his mother to tell her about the event and she responded that Clinton had been spending so much time with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, in charity efforts that Clinton was “like my son.” Turning to Clinton, Bush joked, “So brother, it is good to be with you.”
For his part, Clinton, a Democrat who was Bush’s predecessor in office, said his new challenge was not saying anything that would get his wife, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in trouble.