George W. Bush Loves Smiling at Sporting Events

George W. Bush, the former president who is not very well regarded by historians, and was terrible at his job was at a baseball game giving a photo of himself to Derek Jeter. Pudge Rodriguez and Michael Young were there too:

The thing to note here is that Bush, once the most powerful man in the world, is surrounded by dudes who play a game for a living and yet he's the one who looks the most excited to be there. Bush was a managing general partner of the Texas Rangers before becoming governor of the state, so he was obviously around professional athletes, but the magical feeling of hanging out with guys who appear on trading cards clearly hasn't lost its appeal.

It's as good a time as any to remember that Dubya is basically a sports fan at heart, an athlete-idolizing kid who grew up with a famous dad and happened to become president. He's just this guy, you know? In his post-presidential life he hasn't become a globe-trotting elder statesman like Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, or Bill Clinton; instead he's written a couple memoirs, opened a museum dedicated to himself, painted ugly paintings, and, mostly, gone to sporting events and smiled, which is clearly his true calling.

Look how happy he is at the 2013 Presidents Cup:

Or posing with some Southern Methodist Mustangs fans in 2012:

"Retired guy posing with people" is clearly a gig that agrees with Bush, who, again, was a really lousy president, one of the few people who had the power to change world history and screwed it up by starting a terribly planned war in Iraq, presiding over a housing bubble that took down the economy when it burst, and turning a budget surplus into a deficit. Under his administration, it became normal for intelligence agencies to torture people, something he has not expressed regret over in public. Here he is driving around the field at a Houston Texans game with his dad:

At this point he's sort of like Bill Murray—he shows up at an event and everyone goes, "Hey! It's that guy! He's famous!" and there are smiles and selfies all around. Somehow, though, as much as Dubya embraces his role as a lovable goofball with a hint of gravitas, there's something disquieting about him grinning and hamming it up with various sports figures and fans. It's probably that he seems to want to live out the rest of his life as an ordinary celebrity and ignore the eight-year period during which he was in charge of the country, almost as if he wants everyone to forget about that episode. Or maybe it's the terrifying notion that he's going through his days with a clean conscience and is utterly untroubled by decisions that would leave a normal person waking up every night gasping for air and shaking. Well, anyway, here's a photo of him hugging a mascot:

Harry Cheadle doesn't like George W. Bush very much. Follow him on Twitter.