https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2009-01-13/bushs-bye-bye/

Bush's Bye-Bye

By Richard Whittaker, January 13, 2009, 11:33pm, Newsdesk

For the longest time, President George W. Bush was nicknamed Shrub. After yesterday's farewell press conference with the White House press corps, possibly that should become Shrug, as he shrugged off any criticism. Not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? A "disappointment." Torture? His lawyers said it was fine. Recession? The economy was broken when he got it. The infamous Katrina fly-over? Standing on rubble in New York after 9/11 good, standing in water bad. Every failure of his administration, just shrugged off.

But possibly the most remarkable moment of shruggage from the latest president from the Lone Star State (Sorry, Texas, but for all the claims that he's a carpet-bagging Yankee, Connecticut never made him governor) was a seemingly throw-away comment about why politics got so bitter under his administration.

"The rhetoric got out of control."

"Why?" asked a reporter.

"I don't know," said the outgoing incumbent. "You'll have to ask those that used the words they used."

Oh, really? And who could have approved such rhetoric?