George W. Bush has come out of his self-imposed media blackout to promote his new book, Decision Points, which goes into full release on November 9th.  Oprah Winfrey will air a pretaped interview with the former President on that day, but has a preview of the appearance out already, via The Right Scoop.  In this clip, Bush tells Winfrey that he refrains from opining on Barack Obama’s performance because he wants to treat the current President the way he wished other former Presidents had treated him.  Also, he elects to stay out of the “swamp” of punditry when Winfrey asks him about Sarah Palin.  Click the image to watch:

Classy?  Certainly.  Smart?  Well, yes. Bush immediately went into hibernation after Obama took office, while Dick Cheney initially took a more aggressive public approach to fighting back against Obama, at least until health issues sidelined him.  That allowed Obama to successfully keep painting the Bush administration as the villain and distracted people from Obama’s own failures in leadership.  Once both Bush and Cheney stopped talking, Obama had no foil at his level and had to start looking around for a boogeyman to keep Americans distracted — getting so desperate that he went after Karl Rove and the Chamber of Commerce in the end.

Democrats tried claiming that they played rope-a-dope in the election to wear out the GOP and win in the final weeks of the midterms.  Unlike Democrats, Bush actually knows how and when to play rope-a-dope.