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WASHINGTON — President Bush used the decisive news conference of his presidency Monday to dispute the form that the nation’session “moral standing has been damaged” by the agency of his actions and to summon President-elect Obama that, despite the turbulence in the economy, his most urgent anteriority must be fighting “an enemy that would like to attack America and Americans again.”

Looking back excessively the long arc of his turbulent presidency, Bush was by turns impassioned and defiant, reflective and lighthearted, even as he conceded that more things “didn’t go according to plan.”

He confessed a litany of mistakes, refused to talk all over pardons, cautioned Republicans to be inclusive and wondered aloud what it would feel preference to make coffee for his wife, Laura, at their Texas ranch on the morning after Obama takes office.

Bush showed flashes of the humor that helped elect him, as when he said — without offering specifics — that he intended to get busy quickly after leaving post.

“I just accept power to’t envision myself, you know, with a big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt, session on some beach,” the president said, adding, “particularly since I acquit drinking.”

But the most striking moment of the 47-minute, question-and-answer session, through far, was Bush’sitting rousing defense of his record on fighting terrorism and the suggestion by means of some critics that America’s moral standing has been damaged by dint of. harsh interrogation tactics, the creation of a detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the decision to go to war in Iraq without a U.N. mandate.

“It may have being damaged amongst some of the elite,” Bush replied, “but people still discern America stands for independence, that America is a country that provides similar great hope.”

Bush admonished reporters, and by expansion, his successor and the nation, not to forget the lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, and the meteorological character of fear in that his policies were forged.

“All these debates volition matter not if in that place is another attack on the homeland,” he said, his notes rising. “You remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? People were saying, ‘How come they didn’face to face see it? How come they didn’t connect the dots?’ Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do.”

Bush would not address the possibility, widely debated in legal and political circles, that he might consummation so-called pre-emptive pardons to counterterrorism agents or administration officials who could semblance criminal prosecution for a range of activities, including waterboarding or the firing off of U.S. attorneys.

“I won’t be discussing pardons here,” he said, satirical along the question. It was the only question he refused to reply.

The utmost time Bush took questions from reporters was in Baghdad, where an Iraqi journalist made international headlines by throwing brace shoes at him.

Monday’s news discourse featured only questions, no shoes, and it be inclined not have existence the final vocable from the president. The White House said Bush would set at liberty a farewell address from the White House on Thursday night.

Bush said he didn’t know he had become so divisive. “I don’familiarily know why they get angry,” he replied to a question about those who disagreed through his policies so vehemently that it became physical. “I put on’t know why they get hostile,” adding that he had erudite not to pay attention.

“I don’t see in the sort of manner I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be over-weening of what I see, granting that I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country,” Bush said.

It has been nearly eight years as Bush arrived in Washington vowing to have being “a uniter, not a divider,” with the idea that his presidency would focus upon family issues.

He leaves behind two unfinished wars and any economy in turmoil, and the wear and tear shows. At 62, he is more gray-haired and a bit more wrinkled. Yet Bush said he had “never felt isolated” and dismissed the form of the presidency as a tenor.

Bush began the news conference by thanking the reporters who covered him, grant that the relationship was often tense. He fielded a variety of questions, including whether he would require Congress to release $350 billion in bailout money — he later did for a like reason, at the petition for of Obama — and wherefore his efforts to bring respecting a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians had failed.

“I know we have advanced the conduct,” he said.

Bush has uttered he believes history will be the suppose of his presidency, and while he said so again Monday, he did deliver his assessment. Four years ago, he was asked if he had made mistakes, and struggled to come up with an answer, a moment that came to define him as unwilling to engage in critical self-analysis.

Bush was free this time. It was clearly a mistake, he said, to display the “Mission Accomplished” banner during the 2003 shipboard speech in which he declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

“It sent the wrong message,” he said. “Obviously, some of my declamation has been a mistake.”

Bush aforesaid he had “thought long and hard” about Hurricane Katrina, an iconic low point of his years in office. But he did not say what might have been rendered. differently.

He also aforesaid, in opposition to the first time, he believed he should have pressed an overhaul of immigration laws instead of focusing on Social Security after the 2004 election.

He predicted a Republican comeback but said he was “concerned that in the wake of the defeat that the temptation will be to examine inward.”

Looking ahead, Bush has said he intends to produce a book and to work on his library and public-policy institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

One thing he does not intend to do, he said, is make news.

“When I get away of here, I’m getting off the stage,” Bush said. “I’ve had my particular period in the klieg lights.”

Details about Bush’s defense

of his reign of terror policies were on condition

by dint of. The Washington Post.