President George W. Bush and Christopher DeMuth

On December 18, 2008, one month before he is to leave office, President George W. Bush visited AEI for a candid, informal conversation on his presidency, with a special focus on domestic policy and the institution of the presidency. The subjects ranged from judicial appointees to education reform and from prescription drugs to immigration. President Bush's extemporaneous introductory remarks are excerpted here. They followed outgoing AEI president Christopher DeMuth's first question, "Mr. President, what's on your mind this morning?"

First, thanking you for being the leader that you've been, and thanking AEI for generating good thought. People in the public arena need to have support for philosophy--and that's what you provide, so I appreciate all your hard work.

I have found that in order to have good decision-making and a White House that functions well, the president needs to articulate a set of principles from which he will not defer. In other words, a set of principles that are inviolate--such as the universality of freedom. That's the heart of my foreign policy. A cornerstone of my foreign policy is my firm belief that freedom is universal. And freedom applies to Methodists and Muslims, men and women.

I believe in the collective wisdom of the American people. In other words, I believe we ought to trust individuals to be making decisions for their families--it's always a tension [over] who can spend the money better, government or the individual--and that's been the basis of my tax-cut policy. The benefits of the tax cuts have been obscured by the recent economic crisis, no question about it. But when they finally take a look back at whether or not tax cuts were effective or not, it's hard to argue against fifty-two uninterrupted months of job growth as a result of tax policy. And so my hope is that after this crisis passes--and it will--that people continue to write about and articulate a public policy of low taxes.

My health care policy also was all aimed at empowering individuals to make decisions for themselves and an attempt to establish a marketplace for individual policy by changing the tax code or health savings accounts. I've been a firm believer in markets. That may sound contradictory to some of the policies that I have been making recently. . . . But I strongly believe in the principle that markets really do represent a free society. I mean, after all, people produce goods and services based upon the demand of the individual. . . . And I happen to believe a society that is based upon the marketplace will be not only more free, but more hopeful.

I have found that a president should take on tough problems. The temptation in politics sometimes is just kick them down the road, like, it's too hard to do, so let's just let somebody else do it. . . . Finally, the job of the president is looking over the horizon. And sometimes that gets you in conflict with the legislative branch. The legislative branch tends to have a shorter-term horizon than the executive branch. And so Chris mentioned Social Security--it's an example of a president looking beyond the moment and recognizing that this system is going to be bust unless we change it. And I worked to lay out solutions. Rather than just call attention to the issue, I actually used my State of the Union address a couple of times to talk about how we can look at changing the benefit structure, based upon wealth, as a way forward. And I also talked about something that was quite controversial, and that's personal savings accounts. And of course anytime you go from a defined-benefit plan to a defined-contribution plan, and you're the person who gets to define the benefits, you're not likely to want to give up that ability. There, too, is an issue where it didn't succeed, but nevertheless, I used the presidency--the executive branch, the concept of the presidency--to lay out a way forward.

One final thought on the presidency is [that] the institution of the presidency is more important than the individual. And that really makes our country great--presidents will come and go with their strengths and weaknesses, but the ship of state sails on because of the institution being greater than the person.

To read the full transcript of the conversation, visit www.aei.org/publication29090/.