Bush Emerging for Speech to Kick Off Public Policy Institute

By PETER BAKER
Published: November 11, 2009
DALLAS — Nearly 10 months after leaving office, former President George W. Bush plans to emerge from self-imposed political hibernation on Thursday as he starts a new public policy institute to promote some of the domestic and international priorities of his presidency.
In a speech at Southern Methodist University, home of his future library and museum, the former president will kick off the new George W. Bush Institute as a forum for study and advocacy in four main areas: education, global health, human freedom and economic growth. Advisers said he hoped his institute would be more focused on producing results than many research organizations are.

Mr. Bush will announce the appointment of the first five of two dozen scholars to be affiliated with the institute, which has already scheduled a half-dozen conferences for next year, according to organizers. The former first lady, Laura Bush, will also speak at Thursday’s event to discuss how women’s issues will be injected into all the institute’s program areas, including sponsorship of a conference on the education of women in Afghanistan.

“The president has been working with these ideas for a long time now,” said James K. Glassman, a former top State Department official now serving as the institute’s founding executive director. “He wanted to do something very different from other former presidents, and that is to create a research institute that’s independent, nonpartisan and scholarly and that will have an impact on the real world.”

Although Mr. Bush has given several speeches since leaving office, most have been out of the country, closed to the news media and reminiscent in tone. This is the first event where he has invited reporters to announce a new venture. Organizers expect as many as 1,500 students, donors and others to attend.

The former president’s approach contrasts with that of his vice president, Dick Cheney, who has become a vigorous public critic of President Obama’s national security policies. The institute will be a vehicle for Mr. Bush to re-enter the national conversation and advocate ideas in a less politicized way, advisers said. The goal, Mr. Glassman said, is to “extend principles and work that were accomplished during the administration.”

The institute will be housed along with the presidential library and museum in a building on the S.M.U. campus to be completed by 2013. The Bush foundation has secured $212 million in pledges and contributions toward its goal of $300 million by next year’s groundbreaking, according to two people who were privy to the results but not authorized to discuss them on the record.

Mr. Bush is also completing a book describing some of the most important decisions in his life. He is about five-sixths through with the manuscript, which he is drafting with Chris Michel, a former White House speechwriter, for publication next fall, according to his office.

Former aides said Mr. Bush remained attentive to news developments, even if publicly quiet. “I get a lot of e-mails from him now,” said Michael J. Gerson, his former senior adviser. “He responds to the news. He’s very engaged.”

But the Bushes keep a deliberately low profile. After a shooting rampage left 13 dead at Fort Hood, about 150 miles south of Dallas, the former president and first lady paid a visit in secret to wounded soldiers and family members.