As the clock ticks down on his days in the White House, President George W. Bush is taking part in one of his last presidential rituals — helping to shape the perception of his years in office.

In an interview conducted earlier this month by his sister, Doro Bush Koch, Mr. Bush said he wanted to be remembered “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process.”

“I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values,” Mr. Bush said. “And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values; that I was a President that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them. I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.”

In excerpts of the interview released by the White House, Mr. Bush did not explicitly mention the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the war in Iraq, which many would consider to be the defining moments of his presidency.

But he said he wanted to be known “as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor; that led an effort to help relieve HIV/AIDS and malaria on places like the continent of Africa; that helped elderly people get prescription drugs and Medicare as a part of the basic package; that came to Washington, D.C., with a set of political statements and worked as hard as I possibly could to do what I told the American people I would do.”

The interview, which will become part of National Public Radio’s StoryCorps series, was broadcast in part on Thanksgiving, and will be archived at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.

First Lady Laura Bush, who also took part in the conversation, said that what had been most rewarding for her to witness was the liberation of women in Afghanistan — a development that she hoped would have ripple effects across the region:

I worry about Afghanistan, but I will always have a special place in my heart for the women that I’ve met there, both on my visits to Afghanistan and then the many women from Afghanistan who’ve traveled to the United States on scholarships or with the Afghan American Women’s Council, or with a lot of other ways that American citizens have opened their homes to women in Afghanistan so they can be educated quickly, because they missed their education when they were children or young women, because they weren’t allowed to learn anything. I think that’s really important. I think as we look all around the Middle East, we’ll see that women can be the ones who really lead the freedom movement, and that American women are standing so strongly, I think, with the women in Afghanistan and other places.

President Bush discussed his signature education initiative, the No Child Left Behind law, which he called “one of the significant achievements of my Administration.” He also covered more personal topics — the influence of his parents and the role that faith has played in his life over the last eight years: