The secret George W. Bush book project

George W. Bush worked on the book in secret for two years, without a book deal, without dribbling a word out to Bush alums or other Republicans who would have leaked it in a second. As far as the outside world knew, he was just spending all of that time working on his paintings.

Only his family and friends knew about the secret book project. And, of course, he told the star of the book: his father.

On Thursday, Bush stunned the political world with the news that his next book will be about his father, George H.W. Bush. One president writing about another — 43 writing about 41. And, on a more personal level, a son writing about a father with whom he was supposed to have a tense rivalry — from everything else we’ve read about them.

When Bush’s book comes out on Nov. 11, it’s sure to force a re-evaluation of the Bushes on many levels: the history of the elder Bush’s presidency, the true nature of the relationship between the father and the son, the novelty of one president writing about another, the evolution of the younger Bush in his post-presidential years, and the political future of the Bush dynasty.

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And it promises a unique perspective — it’s not as if there’s a massive collection of presidential biographies by other presidents.

“Look, we have only had two father and son acts in presidential history so far, and to my knowledge John Quincy Adams didn’t talk about his father,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University and the author of a biography of George H.W. Bush.

The book will mark the most important step George W. Bush has taken to re-emerge from the low political profile he’s kept since he left office. Ever since he returned to Texas in 2009, the 68-year-old Bush has largely stayed out of politics, declining to criticize President Barack Obama’s performance even as other Republicans, including his own vice president, Dick Cheney, have had no such reservations. He did promote his memoir, “Decision Points,” in 2011, but otherwise has focused on his presidential library and his paintings.

The timing of the book won’t be ideal for another Bush: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who will have to decide around the release date whether to try to become the third Bush president. He’d be competing for attention with his brother’s book about his dad, and the whole setup might spark yet another round of speculation about the brothers’ rivalries.

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Some top Republicans in Washington are convinced that Jeb Bush will pass on a 2016 bid, so it might be a moot point. An aide to the ex-governor did not respond to requests for comment.

News of the book came as a surprise to the political world, even among people who follow the Bush saga closely. Matt Schlapp, George W. Bush’s former political director and now the chairman of the American Conservative Union, said he had “no inkling” of the project — no talking points to help promote it, or even a heads up.

“The first I heard of it was on the news,” said Steve Munisteri, the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, who recalls meeting George W. Bush several times when Bush was an operative on his father’s presidential campaign in 1988.

Munisteri said he is eager to read it and thinks it’s time for a reassessment of the elder Bush. But the younger Bush has something to gain, too, he said. Bush has already displayed his artistic side with his late-blooming painting hobby, Munisteri said, and “if his book is any good, people might look at him as a renaissance man.”

Here’s what we know about the book: It will be published by Crown Publishers (the book contract came recently), it doesn’t have a title yet and it runs roughly 300 pages. As reported in POLITICO’s Playbook Thursday, Bush got the idea in 2010, did some work on it in 2011 and 2012, and wrote it over the last two years, mostly on his own but with some research and editing help.

“It has 43’s wonderful humor — very familiar to people who know him, but always a surprise to people who just know the caricature,” said a friend of the former president.

It will come at a time when George W. Bush’s approval ratings are slowly recovering from their disastrous levels when he left office, as happens to many immediate ex-presidents (his numbers are still nowhere near as high as his father’s.) By writing the book, the younger Bush can bring himself a bit closer to the story of his more popular, less polarizing father.

How much it affects his own place in history is less clear. Presidential scholar George Edwards of Texas A&M University said the Iraq War and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina have defined the second Bush presidency the most, and "I think writing a book about his dad is not going to be enough to overcome that."

But Bush could be more successful in another goal of the book: to set the record straight with the public that he really does admire and love his father, the World War II veteran who’s still jumping out of planes at age 90. According to people familiar with the project, that's one of his biggest motivations in writing the book.

That could be a heavy lift, given all that has been written about the tensions and rivalries between the two. Among them: the challenge to go “mano a mano” with his dad as a young adult, the determination not to make the same mistakes he believed his father made in the White House, and even the in-your-face nature of some of his decisions as president, like hiring Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary despite tensions between Rumsfeld and his father. All of that drama has Republicans and students of the presidency eager to see what the younger Bush has to say.

Still, Bush insiders insist that his love for his father is genuine, despite everything the public thinks it knows.

“I’ve never seen a son that loves his father more. Absolute and unconditional,” said Mark McKinnon, one of George W. Bush’s former political advisers. During o...