With approval ratings at a record low, President George W. Bush on Saturday stopped for a morale-boosting visit to his childhood home in the west Texas oil town of Midland.
After a closed-door political fundraiser in Midland, Bush made an unscheduled stop at the home on 1412 West Ohio Avenue, now a museum, with his wife Laura, a native of Midland.
"I learned a lot of values that I hold dear here," said Bush after touring the three-bedroom house.
Bush said he told his Midland friends that he was the same person that they knew before he was president. "I'm wiser, more experienced, but my heart and my values didn't change," he said.
Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1946, and moved with his family to the oil boomtown of Midland in 1950.
Future president and oil industry entrepreneur George H.W. Bush -- Bush's father -- bought the single-floor house for 9,000 dollars in November 1951, according to the George W. Bush Childhood Home presidential site website.
On Saturday small knots of onlookers gathered to see the president as he drove through Midland to the fundraiser -- a sharp contrast to his last visit, when thousands met for send-off rally for the new president on January 17, 2001, just days before he first took office.
A CBS News poll out October 1 put the president's approval rating at 22 percent, the lowest ever of his presidency. A Gallup poll out September 30 showed Bush's approval rating at 27 percent.
Bush lived in the West Ohio Avenue home from 1952 to 1956, went to the Sam Houston Elementary and was a member of the local Cub Scouts, according to the website. The family left Midland for Houston in 1959.
It was second of three homes the Bushes lived in while in Midland.
The non-profit group behind the museum plans to open a nearby visitor center about three times the size of the Bush home to accommodate tourists.
Ann Sparkes, a neighbor and the museum caretaker who turned 82 years old on Saturday, joined the first couple as they toured the home. "He was just glad to be here," Sparkes said of the president's visit.
