I did too, pretty much up until he left office. But, then he refused to counter the non-stop lies coming from Obama for the next 4 years, and I felt he had a duty to protect himself and us from that... but he never did, and still refuses to.
I don't know if Obama/Hillary blackmailed him into being silent, or what happened... I still don't understand his refusal to even try and set the record straight.
Re: W. Defending himself against the lies;
I tend to think GWB just simply ‘ran out of gas’ in the second term, and got overwhelmed with the constant sh*t-shower of criticism and coordinated Shark Attacks from the media. This went on day after day after day.
This exhaustion under the crushing weight of bogus attack thing also happened to our friend Sarah Palin. It was simply too much, this bloodsport of media hatred. Thus, she had to retreat for a while.
For GWB, I recall those New York plays openly advertised and performed, depicting his assassination. NO ONE WAS PROSECUTED!! (as far as I know) for what I thought was a Federal Offense! I think since W. began his presidency by having it settled in the court system, he always (wrongfully) felt somewhat unvalidated and unaccepted by the majority of the voters.
This may account to why he and Rove never did aggressively confront these people on their crimes and on their bad manners.