How fast they fade. Poor George W. Bush decided that an unannounced visit to a Dallas hardware shop last weekend would be a fun way to emerge from a month of post-presidential purdah and make a splash with his new neighbours.
But the greeter who met him inside, a pensioner named Henry Long, didn't recognise him.
It could be that Bush looks smaller in real life than he does on TV. That, at least, was the observation of Andrea Bond, the marketing director for Elliott's Hardware, who was there the moment the 43rd President of the United States pushed open the door and asked Long where he might find a torch and batteries. It probably didn't help that Bush was dressed not in a suit but, says Bond, "sweatpants and a windbreaker".
No one will fault Bush for having kept a low profile - mostly at his Crawford ranch with his wife, Laura; it is just polite since someone else is in charge. But sweatpant obscurity is not something he can afford to contemplate.
There are memoirs to sell - no luck so far - and lectures to give and he already has the serious handicap of having left office with some of the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern history.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10559237&ref=rss
