Former president defends son's Cabinet choices

WASHINGTON - Former President Bush says it's only logical that his son, President-elect Bush, is building an administration with those served under past Republican presidents, including himself.

''If you are looking for a Republican who has had experience in agriculture or in defense or whatever it is, then in all likelihood, that person probably would have served in the four years in one way or another in the Bush administration or certainly the Reagan administration,'' the elder Bush said in a taped interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's ''This Week.''

At one point, he jokingly referred to George W. Bush as ''my boy Quincy,'' after John Quincy Adams, who in 1825 became the first son of a U.S. president - John Adams - to win the White House.

''We're bursting with pride,'' Bush said. ''It's so hard to describe, to quantify, but it's strictly the pride of a father and, in Barbara's case, a mother, in a son.''

Bush said he wasn't concerned about talk that the second Bush administration looks a lot like the first. He noted that before serving as his defense secretary, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was chief of staff for President Ford and was a congressman from Wyoming.

''He was everything, defense secretary for me, but long before that, he had had an established reputation,'' Bush said.

''So I am not concerned about that, and when they look at the totality of George's Cabinet, they will see new faces and they will see some very experienced people which ... will send a very calming message not only in this country, but around the world,'' the former president said.

Bush has filled six of 14 Cabinet positions, and has chosen a new chief for the Environmental Protection Agency. Some of his nominees worked for earlier Republican presidents.

For example, Ann Veneman, his designee for agriculture secretary was a deputy at the agriculture department during his father's administration. Condoleezza Rice, the president-elect's choice for national security adviser, also worked in the elder Bush's White House.

Paul O'Neill, nominated for treasury secretary, was a deputy budget director under Ford; retired Gen. Colin Powell, chosen to be secretary of state, was the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under Bush; and Andrew Card, the likely White House chief of staff, was a deputy chief of staff and then transportation secretary in the first Bush administration.