Bush: ‘You Are Only Really as Good as the People You Listen To’

Over at TWI’s sister site, The Michigan Messenger, Eartha Jane Melzer caught former President George W. Bush’s first major domestic address since leaving office yesterday at the Economic Development Club of Southwest Michigan in the small town of Benton Harbor.

Eartha reports that while he refrained from directly criticizing his successor’s job performance, Bush echoed former Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks on abusive interrogation techniques used against terror suspects:

“You have to make tough decisions,” Bush said. “They’ve captured a guy who murdered 3,000 citizens … that affected me … They come in and say he may have more information … and we had an anthrax attack … and they say he may have more information. What do you do?“

Bush was firm and defended his record as president: “I will tell you that the information gained saved lives.”

On the Troubled Asset Relief Program:

“You are only really as good as the people you listen to,” Bush said, adding that then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told him that if he did not approve the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the nation’s economy would have quickly crumbled.

“I can’t prove to you that the measures we took averted failure,” he said. “The major culprit was a lack of responsible regulation.” [...]

“Markets obviously sometimes need restraint and oversight,” said the former president.

Please check out Eartha’s reporting on the event here and here.