Calling US-friendly despots, torturers and liars:
When a Marine helicopter bore George W. Bush away from the Capitol the afternoon of Jan. 20, the American people turned their attention, and desperate hopes, to his successor. Bush, meanwhile, moved into a new home in Dallas and took up the work of his post-presidency. He had often said that he viewed the Freedom Agenda — his campaign to promote democracy around the world, and above all in the Middle East — as the great legacy of his time in office. And now, even as Obama and his foreign-policy team edge away from the language of democracy promotion, which they fear that the Freedom Agenda has rendered toxic, Bush has begun to shape what he has called the Freedom Institute, a policy center to be housed alongside his presidential library and museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The institute is scheduled to begin operating in the fall; the former president and members of the George W. Bush Foundation are now scouting for an executive director.