BUT FOR 9-11...:

Together with Laura Bush, he spent the July 4th week in Africa, where he helped build a wing on a hospital and refurbish a clinic to detect and treat cervical cancer. His jeans splattered with paint and with a baseball cap shielding his eyes from the sun, the former president said his work on global-health issues is a natural outgrowth of the freedom agenda he championed in Washington, noting with his characteristic bluntness: "One aspect of freedom is for people to be free from disease."

This was Bush's second trip to Africa since leaving office (Laura's third), and his emotional ties to the continent reach back to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that he put in place 10 years ago to help stop the transmission of the AIDS virus from mothers to children. It was transformative for Africa--and for also for Bush, who found a cause that he could take way beyond the White House, one that would become a building block in the next chapter of his life. [...]

The Clinton Global Initiative sets a very high bar for what a former president can accomplish. "He has great respect for the things Clinton does with his global initiative, the way he raises money and funds projects," says Tony Fratto, a former Bush deputy press secretary. "But he wanted to have the [Bush] institute be a laboratory and a platform for ideas in the four areas he considers really critical for the advancement of human progress--freedom, education, global health, and the economy." The interest in Africa, and in AIDS, has become a "family affair," says Fratto, noting that daughter Barbara founded a nonprofit, Global Health Corps, which focuses on Africa.

Bush presided this week over the launch of the institute's first book, The Four Percent Solution, an admittedly aspirational goal where various economists weigh in on what they would do in addition to extending the Bush tax cuts. The institute's programs carry forward Bush's signature proposals--there's a team "thoughtfully assessing, not judging" requests from states asking for waivers from No Child Left Behind. And there are the sports events that Bush holds to honor the servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The W-100" is a three-day mountain-bike ride every spring, and in October, Bush will host the second "Warrior Open," a golf tournament that recognizes the importance of golf as a rehabilitative tool. "It recognizes the war in a way that doesn't excite passion about the merits of his policies," says Pitney.

While unquestionably heartfelt on Bush's part, it avoids any re-opening of a policy debate about the wars on his watch. And that's the point. Freed of the office, Bush appears to be modeling his post-presidency after Bush 2000, the compassionate conservative, the reformer with results, the uniter and not the divider. 

Mark McKinnon, Bush's chief media adviser on that campaign, confirms Bush's return to those themes, describing him as "in a state of grace," grateful for the privilege of having served as president "and happy now to be off the radar screen and quietly doing good, meaningful, and compassionate work."

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