The White House has sent top US officials a series of guidelines on how to discuss the eight-year legacy of President George W. Bush.
Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials have received a two-page memo titled “Speech Topper on the Bush Record”, The Los Angeles times reported.
A copy of the memo was obtained by The Times’ Washington bureau provides ‘a few helpful suggestions’ for discussing Bush’s tenure during public speeches.
The talking points state that Bush “kept the American people safe” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained “the honor and the dignity of his office.”
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“The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success”, the newspaper said.
The memo however falls short of mentioning the collapse of the US housing market and major financial services companies.
It is also quiet on the flawed intelligence prior to the Iraq war, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
In a section on the economy, speakers are reminded that the President’s tax cuts after 2001 resulted in years of job growth.
The President has responded to the economic crisis in the US “with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown,” the memo claims.
This is while the economic downturn has claimed 533,000 jobs in November alone.
Last week, the US National Bureau of Economic Research declared that although the Bush administration tends to avoid the word ‘recession’, the US economy has been in recession since December 2007.
