By turns wistful, aggressive and joking in his final news conference, Bush covered a huge range of topics in summing up his eight years in the White House — the latest in a recent string of efforts to have his say before historians have theirs.

Then the White House said he would do it again Thursday night in a final address to the nation.

Reaching back to his first day in office, he recalled walking into the White House and having “a moment” when he felt all the responsibilities of the job landing on his shoulders.

Barack Obama will feel that next week, he said, his tone gently understanding. [More...]

Indeed, he was full of supportive words for Obama — the nation’s first black president — and talked of being deeply affected while watching people say on television that they never thought they would see such a day, many with “tears streaming down their cheeks when they said it.”

“President-elect Obama’s election does speak volumes about how far this country has come when it comes to racial relations,” Bush said, seeming almost awe-struck.

He brushed off any suggestion that he’d found the job of president too burdensome — or that Obama would find it so. “It’s just pathetic, isn’t it, self-pity?” he said. “And I don’t believe that President-elect Obama will be full of self-pity.”

At the same time, Bush showed his skin is not so thick as all that. “Sometimes the biggest disappointments will come from your so-called friends,” he advised Obama. Bush’s former press secretary, Scott McClellan, released a scathing tell-all book last year that still stings around the West Wing.

Asked one last time by reporters about the major controversies of his presidency, Bush had a ready answer for each:

• On the dismal economy he leaves behind for Obama, Bush said, “I inherited a recession, I’m ending on a recession. In the meantime, there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.” The 2001 recession began in March, two months into his presidency, but economists agree the seeds were sown long before.

Bush also defended himself against economic attacks from his own party on the huge government bailout of Wall Street financial firms. He said, his voice rising, “If you were sitting there and heard that the depression could be greater than the Great Depression, I hope you would act, too, which I did.”

• On the five-year-old Iraq war, the issue that will define his presidency, Bush said history will judge his actions but it is a fact that violence diminished and everyday life became more stable after his decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 American troops into the fight.

• He vigorously took issue with critics of the federal response to Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans. Gesturing and speaking with feeling, he said, “Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there were 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed,” he said. “Has the reconstruction been perfect? No. Have things happened fairly quickly? Absolutely.”

• The president claimed progress toward peace in the Middle East, though any hopes for an accord soon have been dashed by, among other things, a bruising offensive by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

• Most angrily, Bush dismissed “some of the elite” who say he has damaged America’s image around the world. “No question, parts of Europe have said that we shouldn’t have gone to war in Iraq without a mandate, but those are few countries,” he said.

The president’s actions after the Sept. 11 attacks — such as establishing the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, approving tough interrogation methods that some say amount to torture and instituting information-gathering efforts at home decried by civil rights groups — were compounded by global outrage at the 2003 invasion of Iraq, particularly later when the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were the main justification for war turned out not to exist.

“In terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn’t worry about popularity,” he said.

Asked about mistakes, Bush cited a few that he preferred to term “disappointments” — not finding those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the abuses committed by members of the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq, giving a speech two months after the start of the Iraq war under a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier, Congress’ failure to pass free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and the negative tone in Washington that belied his 2000 campaign promise to be a “uniter not a divider.”

But he offered no evidence he takes personal responsibility for any of those failures. The only two areas where he seemed to acknowledge that errors in judgment had been his were his penchant for cowboy rhetoric, such as saying “Bring ‘em on!” to foes in Iraq, and his decision to pursue partial privatization of Social Security immediately after his 2004 re-election.

He said arguing for immigration reform would have been a better use of the political capital he earned through his victory, in part because lawmakers were not yet convinced that Social Security presented an imminent crisis. Over two years of intensive efforts, Bush achieved reform in neither area.

Bush, who watched a Republican drubbing last fall, gave his party advice about how to rise from the ashes. Referring back to the divisive immigration debate, in which conservatives blocked broad changes and raised concern that illegal immigrants would be given amnesty, Bush said the image of his party that resulted was “Republicans don’t like immigrants.”

“This party will come back. But the party’s message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party,” he said.

Bush began what he termed “the ultimate exit interview” Monday with a lengthy and gracious thank-you to his core of usual reporters, calling many by name and saying he respects their work even if he often dislikes the product.

Looking to his first day out of office, Bush appeared somewhat flummoxed but also relieved at the prospect of waking up at his Texas ranch next Wednesday with, by his own admission, little idea what to do beyond bringing coffee to his wife.

Monday’s news conference offered only one bit of news, and — in these times when Bush has seemed to fade from office a little more each day — even that was overtaken by events.

He said he would ask Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money if Obama wants him to — but that Obama had not yet asked. A mere two hours later, Obama had made his request to Bush, and the White House said the president had agreed.

And this President was tested by a lot of different issues and I think he’s taken those issues head on, and we can be proud of how we’ve addressed them. Everybody would like to be popular. You can all remember that back in high school, everyone really wanted to be popular. Some of us just weren’t. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have principles and values that you stay true to. And that’s what this President has done, and it’s what he’s taught a lot of us, including me.

Watch it:

Bush spoke at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but his words were aimed at Iran. Bush warned Iran against dragging out the dispute to run the clock out on his presidency.

“My first choice is to solve this diplomatically,” said Bush, who is rallying European allies to back tougher sanctions against Iran. But he also said: “All options are on the table,” a phrase he has repeatedly used in reference to a possible military strike against Iran, even as a last resort.

Iran, which says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, had a message for Bush on Wednesday too.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Bush’s presidency was over and the president has failed in his goals to attack Iran and stop its nuclear program. Addressing thousands of people in central Iran, Ahmadinejad described Bush as “wicked,” and said that Bush was targeting Iran after dispatching the U.S. military into Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I tell him (Bush) … your era has come to an end,” Ahmadinejad said. “With the grace of God, you won’t be able to harm even one centimeter of the sacred land of Iran.”

Merkel, who appeared with Bush at the German government’s main guesthouse called Schloss Meseberg, said if Iran does not agree to suspend its enrichment program, additional sanctions would be needed.

“If Iran does not meet its commitments, then further sanctions will simply have to follow,” she said.

The U.S. and its European allies are waiting to decide if stiffer sanctions should be levied against Iran until after the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, visits Tehran to present a package of incentives in exchange for stopping its enrichment program. The offer, an updated version of one that Iran ignored a few years ago, was developed by the United States, along with Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China.

Ahmadinejad said pressures and sanctions won’t succeed in forcing Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. “If the enemy thinks they can break the Iranian nation with pressure, they are wrong,” he said.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed three sets of limited sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or materials for bomb. Iran continues to defy them.

Merkel said she favors having sanctions decided through the U.N. Security Council, but that doesn’t preclude any discussion within the European Union about whether there are other punitive measures, perhaps in the banking sector.

At Bush’s final US-EU summit Tuesday in Kranj, Slovenia, the leaders issued a joint declaration that said the United States and Europe “are ready to supplement those (previous) sanctions with additional measures” if Iran does not halt enrichment. It also said they would “work together … to take steps to ensure Iranian banks cannot abuse the international banking system to support proliferation and terrorism.”

Addressing opponents of taking certain sanctions, Merkel said “Let us think of the people in Iran. This is what is essential. I think these people deserve a much more – sort of a better outlook … and we would hope for the leadership in Iran to finally see reason.”

But agreeing to stiffer sanctions, such as taking further steps to squeeze Iran’s financial and business dealings, could be difficult for Merkel. Under Merkel, Germany has cut back trade with Iran; German exports to Iran shrank to $5 billion in 2007 from $6.8 billion in 2006. Washington wants Germany to do even more, but Merkel faces a tough re-election campaign next year and has to answer to German businesses that don’t want to cut financial ties to Iran.

“German business is not happy,” said Julianne Smith, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This is going to have political ramifications. She’s only going to go so far.”

When a reporter asked Bush about the war in Iraq, the president defended the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and said it was the right decision.

“I don’t regret it at all,” Bush said, although he said he wished he hadn’t used some of the tough language he used at the time. He has expressed regrets about using terms like “dead or alive” when talking about Osama bin Laden or “bring them on” when talking about insurgents in Iraq.

Bush predicted that his administration will be able to finish an agreement with Baghdad that would provide for a normal, permanent U.S. military and diplomatic presence in Iraq. The word “permanent” has been a flashpoint for many who oppose the war, but Bush insisted the U.S. is not seeking permanent bases in Iraq.

On global warming, Merkel said she has not given up hopes of completing global trade negotiations being conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. However, the so-called Doha Round of trade negotiations is at an impasse because of battles between wealthy countries and developing nations over such issues as farm subsidies.

Earlier, after a countryside bike ride that seemed to invigorate Bush, he and Merkel had breakfast and then took a choreographed walk for the cameras through the formal gardens next to the cream-colored castle.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.