Bush talks about the aging process a lot too. "Let me start with the second, then you can refresh my 62-year-old memory for the first," he said trying to remember two questions from a reporter just before his trip to Asia last summer.

While Bush's personality may not have changed much, his image certainly has.

In 2000, he was the likable governor from Texas. As he leaves office after two terms, some 70 percent of the country disapproves.

"We were very optimistic — I think maybe I was a little naive — about how people would treat him (in Washington)," Jenna Bush told People Magazine. "But he's never wavered in his decisions and he's the same as he was when we were little — his ethics."

Critics read that certainty differently. They say Bush's steadiness and consistency obscured his flaws, making it tough for his advisers to realize that his presidency was veering off course.

Talking to victims of heinous atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, learning about Afghan women freed from the Taliban regime and sharing tears with the victims of fallen soldiers he dispatched to war changed him in a "very personal way," former White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, adding that Bush's faith has grown ever stronger.

But in a critical book that earned him bitter ostracism from Team Bush, McClellan lists Bush's weaknesses, saying he has a tendency toward self-deception if it "suits his needs at the moment," is an "instinctive leader more than an intellectual leader" and lacks the kind of self-confidence that makes him able to acknowledge when he's been wrong. McClellan said he hopes Bush will someday take a step back and be more forthcoming about the shortcomings and missteps of his administration.

"He is a decent person, but he became so trapped in the White House bubble and poisonous Washington environment," he said.

Loyalists claim that type of criticism is overstated.

"This idea that he's just an instinct guy — that 'My first gut instinct is what I always go with' — that's never been an accurate portrayal of his decision-making," Bartlett said.

Karen Hughes, a longtime adviser to the president who says she can track her son's growth by looking at photos of him at Bush's gubernatorial events in Texas, said she doesn't know whether Bush could have given his 2005 State of the Union address — the one about ending tyranny and freedom being God's gift to every person in the world — when he arrived in Washington in 2001.

It's not that Bush didn't believe in human freedom in 2001, she said, but learning firsthand about the Taliban and tyranny in Iraq shaped and ordered his beliefs, she said.

Bush himself has become more reflective in exit interviews. But he hasn't lost his distaste for navel-gazing.