For President and Predecessor, a Chill Returns

WASHINGTON (By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, NYTimes.com) — On his first visit back to the White House after leaving the presidency, George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office with his successor, President Obama, for a briefing on the earthquake in Haiti. It was January 2010 — nearly a year to the day after Mr. Bush left office — and it seemed, at the time, like a door might be opening between the two men.

But the door, it seems, has remained closed. Seven months would pass before they spoke again.

That conversation took place on Tuesday, hours before Mr. Obama strode into the Oval Office and informed the nation that he was ending America’s combat mission in Iraq, the war he had opposed since Mr. Bush started it. The conversation was brief and perfunctory, former Bush aides said. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, called it “a cordial discussion.”