On the Media: Aw-shucks, George W. Bush

“You’re trying to get me to make news,” George W. Bush chuckled, deflecting a question about the battle to renew his tax cuts. “And I’m trying to sell books.”

The 43rd president gently rebuffed his old pal and golf buddy, Rush Limbaugh. He might have been outlining the strategy for the extended tour he has just launched to promote his memoir, “Decision Points.”

Bush’s onetime spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said in one interview before Tuesday’s roll out that her old White House boss is “not interested in having a debate about the policies.” He’s also not interested, he’s already made clear, in commenting in any depth about current events or his successor in the White House.

In a series of interviews — Monday with NBC’s Matt Lauer and Tuesday with radio giant Limbaugh and daytime TV giant Oprah Winfrey — the former president has broken 22 months of virtual silence, yet succeeded almost entirely in staying out of what he calls “the swamp” of politics.

Instead, he’s been able to give an only lightly challenged version of his eight years in the Oval Office, including the launch of two wars and the onset of what’s come to be known as the Great Recession. He has said a fair amount about the emotion and unforeseen complications in the world’s toughest job. He has shown humor and been allowed to linger on the best moments of his presidency, only passingly touching on the worst.

In short, Bush 43 (as he’s known within the family that Winfrey presented in a homey feature Tuesday) has been winning on his comeback road show. And there’s no reason to believe he will be knocked off his earnest, just-folks game, given the friendly media venues (several on the Fox News Channel) he’ll be visiting from here on in.

Bill Clinton might be wondering, about now, why he didn’t get the EZ pass in 2004. Instead, Clinton spent a good portion of the tour for his memoir trying to shake off the topic he least wanted to discuss. But everyone and everything, including CBS’ ” 60 Minutes,” Winfrey’s daytime juggernaut and the BBC, seemed to have little interest in anything but the Monica Lewinsky affair.

One could argue that Bush put himself in a stronger position to control his profile by saying so little after leaving office (unlike Clinton, the inveterate chatterer) and carefully controlling the interview lineup. The winners of the media access derby tend toward Bush’s ideological soul mates and those not known for packing a heavy punch.

Bush also wrapped himself in a layer of insulation from relentlessly political queries by striking a determinedly apolitical stance, notably eschewing chances to comment on the performance of President Obama. Even regular detractors and critics on the left might be slower to rekindle their old fury, as Bush pointedly declines to attack the man who followed him in the White House.

Understanding Bush’s successful strategy is not the same, though, as forgiving the media for doing so little to pierce the former chief executive’s Bubble of Certainty. Lauer, in particular, failed to take several opportunities in his Monday night special to knock Bush off his speaking points or to challenge his cocksureness.

(Lauer and the public get another crack at Bush on Wednesday morning when he appears as a guest on NBC’s “Today” show, where Lauer is a host.)

Bush stuck to his familiar defense of the Iraq war, for example, framing the war as positive, despite the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction that were cited as the reason for fighting in the first place.

Lauer wondered if Bush thought of apologizing after no WMD were found. The former commander in chief seemed puzzled by that and said, “I don’t believe it was the wrong decision.

“I will say, definitely, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power,” Bush asserted, “as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom.”

Anyone who has spent more than a moment in Iraq has to wonder — and Lauer should have asked — whether Iraqis feel they have been handed a great opportunity. This is a country ravaged by seven years of combat, continuing sectarian murder and the death of an estimated 100,000 civilians. A peaceful conclusion appears nowhere on the near horizon.

Lauer didn’t ask anything, though, about the Iraqis future. Instead he described the “enormous support from military families” that Bush received and asked how heartening that must have been.

The host similarly let Bush assert that lack of regulation didn’t contribute to the financial meltdown. In other interviews aired Tuesday, Bush focused on haphazard lending by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but received no prodding to go beyond that facile explanation.

Lauer finally bored in when it came to the issue of waterboarding, asking about the possibility that the torture precedent would later be turned against Americans. That seemed to exasperate Bush, who curtly declared that viewers should buy his book to learn his true views. “I am not going to debate the issue,” he harrumphed.

When Bush faced criticism at the start of his book tour, it was mainly right out of the pages of the book he just wrote. He shouldn’t have stepped on the “Mission Accomplished” aircraft carrier with the Iraq war still in full swing. He should have put Air Force One down, and met with distressed victims, instead of flying over the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. If he should have done anything differently in Iraq it was get tougher — with an earlier start to the surge.

George W. Bush’s harshest critic on his tour appears to be the one he sees in the mirror, the one he can’t help but think is a pretty darned good guy.

The former president told Winfrey the story of one chance post-presidential encounter. “Does anybody say you look like George W. Bush,” one average American asked him. “Happens all the time,” Bush replied. Said John Q. Citizen: “Sure must make you mad.”

james.rainey@latimes.com

Twitter: latimesrainey