Until he roared back onto the scene with his sure-to-please declaration that a free press was “indispensable to democracy,” George W. Bush hadn’t said too much since leaving the public eye in 2009. During the Obama years, we’d heard more from Will Ferrell as Bush than from Bush himself.

But Bush’s defense of journalism isn’t the only thing we can gain from him. Bush’s record was extremely bipartisan. And his signature, pre-9/11 achievement, No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—though it’s without a champion today— is a blueprint for how legislation should be made.