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(CNN) – Former first lady Barbara Bush on Monday said she was not a fan of the current presidential race.

“It’s been, I think, the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life. I hate it,” Bush said at a conference at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “I hate the fact that people think ‘compromise’ is a dirty word.”

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Her comments, recorded by CNN affiliate WFAA, came during a conference on the impact of presidents’ wives.

With her daughter-in-law, former first lady Laura Bush, sitting by her side, Mrs. Bush argued the level of political discourse has declined over the years.

“I think the rest of the world is looking at us these days and saying, ‘What are you doing?’” she said.

But her apparent disgust with the race hasn’t kept the feisty former first lady out of the 2012 presidential cycle.

On Sunday, robo calls went out to voters in Vermont and Ohio featuring her voice and endorsing Mitt Romney.

“We have known the Romneys for years and believe Mitt is the best man to lead the country for the next four years and Ann will make a great first lady,” Mrs. Bush said on the call.

Her husband, former President George H.W. Bush, officially endorsed Romney in December.

– CNN National Political Correspondent Jim Acosta contributed to this report.

Also see:

Poll: All tied up in Tennessee

Romney gets backing from key Republicans

Barbara Bush robo calls for Romney

Romney, Santorum tied in Ohio

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New York (CNNMoney) – No one ever said tax reform would be easy. But the failure of the super committee points up just how hard it will be in the next year.

Both Democrats and Republicans have said they want to overhaul the tax code.

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Does it seem the worse our federal budget woes become and the more bad news we get regarding our economy the more smiles we see on the face of Republican politicians and pundits?

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The big lie about the Bush tax cuts is that they cut taxes the most for the rich. The truth is very different.

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This may sound perverse but what makes the race for the Republican presidential nomination so interesting right now is that not a whole lot is happening. Remember, four years ago on Thursday, Barack Obama announced he was running for President. Hillary Clinton, the overwhelming front runner for the Democratic nomination, had already announced that she was in [...]
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Washington (CNN) – Former President George W. Bush is landing a stinging jab at his former longtime aide and press secretary, Scott McClellan, saying the man who served as the public face of his administration for three years was irrelevant.

In an interview with CSPAN scheduled to air this weekend, Bush says he deliberately didn’t include McClellan – who held the high profile post longer than anyone else during the administration – in his memoir, “Decision Points.”

“He was not a part of a major decision. This is a book about decisions,” Bush told CSPAN. “This isn’t a book about, you know, personalities or gossip or settling scores.”

“I didn’t think he was relevant,” added Bush.

McClellan had been by Bush’s side since his days as Texas governor and, in his role as press secretary from 2003-2006, spent the bulk of his time vigorously defending the decision to wage war in Iraq.

But two years after departing the White House, McClellan authored his own memoir, “What Happened,” that constituted a scathing criticism of how the Bush administration was run.

In one of its most critical passages, McClellan stops just short of suggesting the administration deliberately deceived the American public in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, writing, “his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.”

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Washington (CNN) – Appearing on CNN Wednesday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was reluctant to blame himself or fellow Republicans for allowing the federal budget deficit to double during the eight years of the Bush administration.

Daniels, who served as Bush’s budget director from 2001 to 2003, said instead that “the nation went into a deficit then because the bubble burst and we had a recession.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered what policies you tried to implement, that we were going to have a great big reversal,” Daniels said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “You know, beyond that, I would just say that in every fight I ever had on the president’s behalf with Congress – and there were a lot of them – there was never one where I was suggesting spend more and they were suggesting spend less. It was always the other way.”

The governor, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, was responding to a recent New York Times column suggesting that the tax cuts implemented by Bush and written into the budget by Daniels blew a hole in the federal budget, which was in the black when Bush assumed office.

Daniels said “there’s plenty of blame to go around” for deficits created during the Bush administration, and said that some of his “biggest fights” were with Republicans in Congress.

“We could spend the next couple of years trying to apportion it and assign it between Republicans and Democrats and the economy, in which two bubbles popped and led to a plunge in revenues,” he added.

The budget hole left by President Bush was “dramatic,” Daniels said, but “we’d love to be back at that level today.”

The federal budget deficit stands at .3 trillion.

“I will just say that the choices that were made in those years were not all accurate, not all good ones. But far better than what we’ve been doing the last two years,” he said. “And the numbers show it.”

Daniels has said he will not make a decision about running for president until after the Indiana legislative session wraps in April. He remained coy about his intentions.

“I’m not saying that I won’t under any circumstances, only that for the moment I’m not,” he said when asked if he’s running.

Daniels hinted that the late start to the presidential horserace gives him some breathing room to mull it over.

“All I can tell you, Wolf, is that when people first started bringing this idea to me over a year ago, at that time, they said it’s already late, you’ve got to get going and that turned out not to be true,” he said. “I think in an act of mercy, somehow we’re going to have a shorter election this year. I think we all can be glad for that unless possibly political reporters.”

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