FOR George W Bush, life after the White House has meant scooping up Barney the dog’s business on a neighbour’s lawn near his new home in Dallas.

“There I was, the former president, with a plastic bag on my hand, picking up that which I had dodged for eight solid years,” he said last week on one of his first public outings since he left office.

For Bill Clinton, the president he replaced, it meant being called “Hillary’s wife” and the absence of the anthem Hail to the Chief: “All of a sudden nobody plays a song when you walk into a room.”

It was Bush who got the most laughs as the two teamed up for the “Bill and George Show” - Bush’s description - at a Toronto convention centre last Friday in front of a paying crowd of 6,000 people for a reputed fee of $150,000 each. “Clinton and I used to believe in free speech, so thanks for coming,” Bush quipped.

Both received a standing ovation, proving that nothing so becomes a president as leaving office. Friends of Bush believe he is already on the way to rehabilitation, despite leaving office with an abysmal approval rating of 22% only five months ago.

Many years have passed since Clinton’s reputation was in the mire over a sex scandal and the public is now as comfortable with him as with an old shoe. Could the same happen to Bush, who is still perceived as one of America’s most divisive leaders?

Dana Perino, Bush’s White House press secretary, said he was at ease in his political after-life with his wife, Laura.

“He’s so in love with Mrs Bush and he’s enjoying his time with her,” she said. “They are enjoying putting their home together and building their freedom institute.”

In Toronto Bush suggested that Laura, a former librarian, might not share his politics: “Frankly, if we weren’t married I’m not sure she would have voted for me.”

Many of his staunchest supporters also came to wonder if they had made the right choice.

The country voted for change with Barack Obama but it has not been easy to deliver. “At the same time as saying we made a mess of things, the Obama administration has adopted many of our policies,” Perino said. “America doesn’t change as fast as people think it does.”

Obama has copied the Iraq surge and is applying it in Afghanistan. He has revived military tribunals for trying terrorists, after initially suspending them, and has run into the same difficulties as Bush over closing Guantanamo Bay prison and rehousing terrorist suspects.

“The Bush policies in the war on terror won’t have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day,” Charles Krauthammer, a conservative commentator, wrote in The Washington Post. Bush’s approval ratings have been creeping upwards into the 40% range.

The word “moderate” is rarely associated with Bush, but as Obama runs into the same problems of containing the war in Afghanistan, withdrawing from Iraq, restraining a nuclear-armed North Korea and preventing a nuclear Iran, as well as containing a huge budget deficit, the break with the past is becoming blurred.

Perino recalled having a dinner last autumn for Marlin Fitzwater, the press secretary to the first President Geroge Bush, the 41st president who lasted only one term. “We in the 41 administration never believed 41 would be thought of as fondly as he is today. It just takes time,” Fitzwater told her.

With Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, lauding the Bush administration for keeping America safe from terror, anger with Bush is fading. The Canadians had been expecting about 15,000 anti-Bush protesters, but few turned up.

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