At least George W. Bush feels like - and I've heard him say it - "You can't judge me now, because look at Abraham Lincoln. When he was in the middle of that war and 600,000 people died, he was vilified for the Gettysburg Address because they felt it was too short and almost insulting, and now you look back and it's considered one of the great speeches of all time and he's considered one of the great presidents of all time."

Nothing misleads people like the truth.

Regardless of whether there was ballot manipulation or not, you still have 50 million people who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. And why? Because he's fallible? Because he reminds you of us? That's what we do. We are hiring these people. They don't hire themselves. It's irresponsible to disregard this guy as some bumbling, blathering idiot who has no intelligence whatsoever.

In fact, I am so happy to be turning 40 and finally having a reason to take responsibility for my own behavior. It's also worked for me in terms of my physical appearance and emotional make-up and people entrusting me to bring the things a role deserves. I don't know whether that's depth or being a curmudgeon or what.

I remember at the premiere of my second movie I started crying. I thought, I'm so bad that I either have to stop this and do something else or learn what I'm doing.

I do think, from the other side, that George W. ush was somewhat of an innocent in his thinking about what Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War and by bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. I think he believed that he could do the same thing by bringing democracy - or Midland, Texas, really - to the Middle East. I truly think he felt it was possible. "I want to do for the Middle East what Reagan did for the Soviet Union."

I'm really, really lucky. I was given my dad's good genes.