Bush hits the road - and Oprah's show - to promote book

WASHINGTON - Former President George W. Bush was conspicuously absent from the midterm election campaign, despite Democratic efforts to resurrect him as a political punching bag.

But just a week later, he is back in the public eye, launching a publicity tour for a new book that includes a prime-time network special and a visit to Oprah's couch.

On the decision to launch a war with Iraq, Bush expressed no hesitation when asked whether, knowing all that he knows today, he would make the same choice again.

"You just don't have the luxury when you're president," he told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview that aired last night. "I will say definitely the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom."

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had a serious clash over the fate of I. Lewis Libby, who was convicted for his role in the Valerie Plame leak case. Cheney wanted a full pardon for Libby, his former chief of staff.

"I chose to let the jury verdict stand after some serious deliberation," Bush told Lauer. He said he and Cheney have repaired their relationship.

Bush acknowledged some missteps, citing the public response to Hurricane Katrina. For instance, a photo showing him surveying the damage from Air Force One was a "huge mistake," he says now.

Bush told Fox News' Sean Hannity that the tea party movement is "a good thing for the country." "It inspires me to know that our democracy still functions," he said in the interview, set to air Tuesday.

He also said he wishes - probably in vain, he realizes - that his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, would run for president.

In the book and interviews, Bush dwells on his heavy drinking earlier in life. He quit drinking at 40.

Once, he said, he was drunk at his parents' dinner table, with his wife. "And I'm sitting next to a beautiful woman, a friend of Mother and Dad's," he recalled. "And I said to her out loud, 'What is sex like after 50?' " That showed he was a "wiseass," Bush told Lauer.

Then, on his own 50th birthday, the woman wrote to him when he was governor of Texas and asked whether he had discovered the answer, he said.