On background: Bushies reunite

Just over a year after he left office, one part of President George W. Bush’s legacy is clearly intact: a code of omerta among his loyalists.

Friday morning brought about 700 Bush administration veterans to the basement ballroom of Washington’s J.W. Marriott for the first gathering of the Bush-Cheney Alumni Association.

The former president spoke about his new life back in Texas and took questions from his former staffers, old friends got reacquainted and promised to get drinks soon, and mediocre bagels were scarfed down.

The planning of The Restoration it was not.

Yet when a reporter ventured into the hotel following the get-together, one may have been mistaken for thinking that the room was engaged with the inside strategy for propelling Jeb Bush into the presidency, rather than hearing jokes about Barney the former first dog.

One former Bush aide and one current Bush aide separately made a point of confronting this reporter to point out that the former president’s speech had been “off-the-record.”

Each seemed skeptical when told that this reporter hadn’t been in the room, perhaps because verbatim accounts of the former president’s address appeared in Mike Allen’s POLITICO Playbook while the event was still ongoing.

Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, one of the few former staffers who would discuss the event at all on the record, said it was a “vintage” Bush performance.

But asked for the former president’s best line, Card said: “I’m not going to quote them.”

When other aides were approached about the event, they expressed concern about being named revealing what Bush said at the gathering, or anything else about it. One senior official wouldn’t even talk on a background basis, growing uneasy when a tape recorder was brandished.

And those who did agree to share information without attribution only did so after requesting assurances of protection for disclosing such nuggets as that Bush discussed his forthcoming presidential library and urged his former charges to “maintain their values” if they went into public life.

Said one aide when asked to discuss the event on background, “Do you promise? You know I'm loyal to the bone to the administration.”

Unexplained was how sharing the upbeat remarks of a president over a year out of office would amount to a breach of loyalty.

Some former staffers even expressed anger that reporters would try to report on an event featuring a former president.

Hours after the breakfast came an email from a Jeff Stephens asking, “So what position did you exactly serve in during the Bush-Cheney administration?”

After being told “none” and inquiring why he asked, Stephens replied: “My understanding it was closed press, a private event with tickets and you attended.”