Tag: george w bush

Republican Stockholm Syndrome

I have always rather liked George W. Bush. He has seemed to be a decent enough guy who really tried to be a good president. I wouldn’t say that he was one of the best presidents that we have ever had, but he wasn’t the worst either. He certainly didn’t deserve the hatred and abuse heaped upon him by the left and the media. That is why it is sad to see that George W. Bush has come down with Republican Stockholm Syndrome, that mysterious malady that causes Republicans to defend their tormentors in the media while attacking their fellow Republicans. Bush has remained silent throughout the administration of his successor, Barack Obama, but has offered some criticism of Donald Trump in recent interviews, as noted in this article from Fox news.

Former President George W. Bush offered what appeared to be a thinly veiled critique of his Republican successor on Monday, as he defended the importance of the media and immigration policies that are “welcoming.”

Bush, during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show to promote a new book of military portraits, addressed a range of President Trump controversies, specifically when asked about the executive order to temporarily restrict travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries. That order stalled in court, though Trump is expected to issue a new — but similar — order this week.

He doesn’t seem to wholly approve of Trump’s combative relationship with the media.

Until now, Bush largely has remained mum about the policies not only of Trump, but of former President Barack Obama. Bush’s comments Monday stopped short of a reprimand, but highlighted differences between his and Trump’s respective approaches to common challenges.

While Trump has repeatedly lambasted media organizations and termed numerous negative reports “fake news,” Bush applauded the same media that often derided him during his Oval Office tenure.

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” Bush said. “That we need an independent media to hold people like me to account. Power can be very addictive. And it can be corrosive.”

Bush is right in that we do need an independent media to hold people in power to account. Too bad we don’t have such an independent media. What we do have, as Bush ought to know, is a media determined to advance the careers of Democrats and destroy Republicans at any cost, including the use of fake news.

For eight years the media pummeled George W. Bush with fake news after fake news for the express purpose of destroying his presidency. Does he not remember, “Bush lied, the troops died”,  misreporting on Hurricane Katrina to imply that Bush wanted Blacks to die, and much, much else. For eight years the media refused to report on anything that might reflect poorly on their anointed Lightworker, and then praised him for having a scandal free administration. Well, if a tree that falls in a forest makes no noise if no one is there to listen, than a president is scandal free if no one bothers to report on any of his scandals.

Bush is probably the last person to comment on anyone’s handling of the press. He refused to fight back, even when the most egregious slanders were reported as facts. Maybe he was too much of a gentleman to get into such fights. Maybe he thought it was more dignified to remain silent. I think that his presidency would have been more successful and the country better off if Bush had fought back against the purveyors of fake news.

There is a lot not to like about Donald Trump. He is not a conservative. He is only nominally a Republican. Trump’s instincts seem to favor the sort of big government solutions conservatives deplore. Trump can be undisciplined and too inclined to shoot off his mouth when silence would be more appropriate. But Trump has one saving grace that makes me inclined to forgive his many faults. Trump fights. He does not stand silent when he is attacked as so many Republicans do. He fights back. Trump seems to understand that being nice to the mainstream media simply doesn’t work. Trying to be presidential and refusing to dignify media attacks with a response only results in a damaged and ineffective presidency. Trump may be crude and undignified, but he does seem to know how to handle the media. I wish other Republicans would learn from him. At the very least, I wish other Republicans would learn not to attack each other in the hope of a few nice words from the media that despises them.

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Jeb Bush for President

Jeb Bush made his formal announcement of his candidacy for the presidency today adding one more name to the long list of Republican contenders for the office. I don’t think that there is a lot of excitement for the prospect of another president from the House of Bush among the rank and file of the Republican Party, but he seems to be popular with the big spending party elite who despise the rank and file, mostly because he is from the House of Bush. Jason Russell of the Washington Examiner believes that Jeb Bush will be the next president. Well, that makes one of us. He gives five reasons for this belief.

Please no.
Please no.

1. Bush is seeking to grow the Republican Party.

Rather than trying to expand his support among conservative voters, Bush is trying to make inroads with moderate, swing voters. For example, when I’ve heard Bush talk about his education reforms in Florida, he doesn’t just give conservative talking points about expanding families’ freedom to choose the school that’s best for them. He explains how successful the reforms have been in making Florida’s Hispanic, black and low-income students outscore students in other states.

Bush is a true Big Tent Republican. He generally doesn’t attack other Republicans, and when he attacks Democrats, he generally avoids the outraged tone that other GOP candidates employ. This will be an attractive feature to the growing share of voters who are fed up with the politics of perpetual outrage. Conservative voters likely won’t like his moderate approach to immigration or his support for Common Core. But Bush isn’t flip-flopping on those issues; instead, he is working to convince conservatives of his positions while taking his message to moderate voters.

Bush will win because he can appeal to moderate voters. It seems to me that I have heard this before, with McCain and Romney, not to mention Dole and the previous Bushes. The problem with this strategy is that alienating the conservative base in order to attract moderates simply doesn’t work. How many elections do the Republicans have to lose before their strategists understand this? And, it is not as if the mainstream media will ever describe any Republican as a centrist once the primaries are over. Any Republican will be blasted as a far right-wing wacko no matter how moderate and wishy-washy he may be. Any Democrat will be hailed as a responsible, pragmatic centrist no matter how much of a left-wing loon he may be. Since that will always be the case, we ought to nominate a conservative who at least will get the base out to vote.

2. He’s already in the lead.

Bush leads the RealClearPolitics polling average(although Scott Walker and Marco Rubio are very close behind). His drive to attract moderate voters will expand his base of support. Few others are competing for the same voters, leaving Bush nowhere to go but up.

After a shake-up in the management of his campaign even before it launches, many have suggested that Bush’s campaign is faltering. I’m reminded of July 2007, when John McCain’s campaign manager and chief strategist left. The entire campaign was downsized. In the end, McCain’s shake-up was worse than Bush’s, and things turned out okay for McCain. Surely Bush can do the same, if not better.

Except that John McCain lost to Barack Obama. McCain had support from the same sort of people who now support Bush and for much the same reason. John McCain was willing to take on the conservatives in his own party. The mainstream media loved him, until the primaries were over and he was running against Obama. I can foresee something similar happening with Jeb Bush.

3. Other Republicans are shifting to the right.

At one point in the last few months I thought Walker had the best chance of winning the nomination. Then he showed what kind of voters he was trying to attract by taking ultra-conservative positions on national policy issues. Very conservative voters were already impressed by Walker’s record of standing up to intense union opposition, and many would have supported him anyway. By shifting to the right on immigration, foreign policy and social issues, Walker has made himself look more conservative and less attractive to voters who weren’t already inclined to support him.

With other Republicans moving rightward, there’s a vacuum in the middle of the electorate — one that Bush is well-placed to fill.

And just who is inclined to support Jeb Bush? The people in the middle are the most likely to be apathetic, not caring about politics either way. The candidate who excites the people in his base to turn out and vote is the one who is going to win, and that candidate is generally the one who takes firm stands and is willing to fight. A candidate who stands in the mushy middle, trying to be all things to all people is not going to excite anyone.

4. Hillary Clinton is shifting to the left.

Clinton started the campaign with an unprecedented lead against her competitors. With the Democratic nomination all but sealed, it would only make sense for her to stay in the ideological center so as not to scare away moderate general election voters. Instead, Clinton has done the opposite, championing left-wing causes like debt-free college and automatic voter registration.

The New York Times’ David Brooks has called Clinton’s campaign strategy a “mistake” and bad for the country. Meanwhile, Brooks wrote, “Jeb Bush is trying to expand his party’s reach.” With Clinton abandoning independent voters, Bush’s reach into the middle will go uncontested from the left, leaving Bush an opportunity to gain support.

The mainstream media will never concede that Hilary Clinton, or any other Democratic candidate has moved to the left. As far as they are concerned, Bernie Sanders is firmly in the middle. In fact, I believe that Clinton is doing the right thing by trying to recapture some of the excitement that propelled Barack Obama into the White House. She is not likely to succeed because she is just not as exciting as Obama, but trying to stay in the ideological center wouldn’t help her all that much either.

5. No, Jeb doesn’t have a “Bush” problem.

George H.W. Bush failed to win re-election in 1992. I’m sure some pundits must have thought the Bush family name would be tainted forever due to his unpopularity. But Bush’s son won the presidency just eight years later, and was re-elected with more support than in his initial election. Today, George W. Bush’s favorable ratings are above 50 percent, which is more than President Obama and Hillary Clinton can say about theirs.

Hillary’s Obama problem is worse than Jeb’s Bush problem.

The Democratic candidate, no matter who it is, is going to be tied to Obama’s approval rating. Hillary Clinton will be especially tied to his foreign policy, having served as his secretary of state. The ongoing situation in Ukraine will cause her a lot of problems, given her “reset button” stunt.

None of this is an endorsement of Bush or his ideological positions — it’s a simple prediction based on research and the way campaign strategies seem to be developing. If Clinton changes her campaign strategy, or Rubio or Walker start to tailor their messages to moderate voters, Bush will have even more of a challenge.

Nobody knows for sure who will take the oath of office on Jan. 20th, 2017, but I’m getting my prediction in early: Expect John Ellis Bush to be standing on the inaugural stage.

Yes he does have a Bush problem. I have thought that George W. Bush was a better president than has been generally recognized. I wouldn’t number him among the best presidents but he certainly wasn’t the abject failure that his enemies have asserted. I think that over time, as the passions generated by his presidency recede into the past, Bush will be more favorably viewed by historians and the public, rather like Harry S. Truman who was very unpopular when he left the office but has steadily been viewed more favorably over time. That said, I think the main reason that George W. Bush looks better now, aside from the fact that Obama makes anyone look good, is that he has stayed out of the public eye. If Jeb Bush is the nominee, the Democratic candidate, probably Hilary Clinton, will be doing her best to remind voters why they disliked George W. Bush at the end of his administration. The media will be doing everything it canto help her while covering up everything unsavory voters remember about her husband’s administration. Aside from his Bush problem, Jeb Bush also has a Jeb problem. His last election was in 2002 and he hasn’t held any public office since his second term as governor of Florida ended in 2007. He just hasn’t been out there making headlines the way Scott Walker or Rand Paul has been doing. He seems to be reviving the theme of compassionate conservatism used by his brother back in 2000. Jeb is yesterday’s candidate and the Republican Party and especially the Tea Party faction have moved on, leaving him behind. I think that if Jeb is the Republican nominee, Hilary Clinton will be taking the oath of office in 2017.

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Miss Him Yet?

I have always thought that it is unfair that George W. Bush left office with the lowest poll numbers since Nixon and with a consensus by presidential historians that he was a failure as president. I would not say that Bush was the greatest president in American history, or even that he deserves to be rated among the top ten. Still, he was not a failure. If Bush’s media coverage had not been so unrelentingly negative, he might been more popular when he left office. If the media did their jobs and actually covered President Obama, instead of being his lap-dog, it is likely that Obama’s favorability ratings would be even lower than Bush’s. As for the historians, it is obviously too early to make any sort of balanced assessment of Bush’s presidency and I think that his low ranking among historians is more a reflection of their political biases then any considered reflections on his presidency.

I have also thought that over time, the public and historical perception of George W. Bush would improve somewhat. Harry Truman was also very unpopular when he left office, yet many people today regard him as one of our better presidents. I thought that this process might take somewhere between twenty and fifty years. It seems, however, that the public perception of George W. Bush is improving more quickly that I expected. Bush’s presidential library opens this week, and his approval ratings are up, according to the Washington Post.

George W. Bush will return to the spotlight this week for the dedication of his presidential library, an event likely to trigger fresh public debate about his eight fateful years in office. But he reemerges with a better public image than when he left Washington more than four years ago.

Since then, Bush has absented himself from both policy disputes and political battles. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests that the passage of time and Bush’s relative invisibility have been beneficial to a chief executive who left office surrounded by controversy.

Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush’s approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove. Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama’s, at 47 percent, according to the latest Post-ABC surveys.

Majorities said they still dis­approve of Bush’s performance on the Iraq war and the economy, but his economic approval numbers nearly doubled between December 2008 and today, from 24 percent to 43 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. Iraq remains the most troublesome part of his legacy. Today, 57 percent say they disapprove of his decision to invade, though that is down from 65 percent in the spring of 2008, the last time the question was asked.

Much of the reason for this improvement in Bush’s ratings is due to his decision to stay out of the public eye. Bush hasn’t been aggressively promoting himself but has stayed at his ranch. He does make speeches, etc, but he seems content to no longer be at the center of things, and maybe that is not something he ever really wanted. Of course, no matter what happens, the liberals are going to hate George Bush. They can’t live without hatred.

Another reason might be that compared to his successor, Bush’s record doesn’t look at all bad. And, say what you will about Bush at least he didn’t feel the need to apologize for America to every tin-pot tyrant and Muslim terrorist.

I do.
I do.
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Dr. Paul Goes to Washington

I don’t have much to say about Rand Paul‘s filibuster that hasn’t already been said, though I can recommend an article from Reason.com: Three Takeaways from Rand Paul’s Filibuster. Here are some excerpts.

Yet since showing up in D.C., Paul has been exactly what Reason dubbed him: “The most intersting man in the Senate” who has offered specific legislation and made extended arguments for a unified vision of limited government that is not only fully within some great lines of American political tradition but urgently needed in the current moment. Senators who pride themselves on their foreign policy expertise and have free-loaded for decades in D.C. haven’t made a speech as thoughtful and out-front as the one he delivered a while back at The Heritage Foundation, for god’s sake.

Make no mistake: Despite the presence of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), yesterday’s filibuster was a GOP-conducted orchestra. But what was most bracing and ultimately powerful thing about the filibuster was that none of the speakers exempted the Republican Party or former President George W. Bush, whose aggrandized view of executive power still roils the sleep of the Founding Fathers, from withering criticism and scrutiny. How else to explain that hard-left groups such as Code Pink were proud to #standwithrand yesterday on Twitter? The same with reliable Rand and GOP critic Eugene Robinson and many others who up until yesterday thought little of Rand Paul.

The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn’t a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion – why won’t the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? – transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.

The chills started early in the filibuster as Paul said things along the lines of, “If you’re gonna kill people in America [as terrorists], you need rules and we need to know your rules,” and “To be bombed in your sleep – there’s nothing American, nothing constitutional, about that” (these quotes are paraphrases). Those are not the words of a career politician trying to gain an advantage during the next round of horse-trading over a pork-barrel project. They are the words of a patriot who puts his country first and they inspire accordingly.

A year or so ago, we were debating whether the government had the right to force its citizens to engage in particular economic activity – that was the heart of the fight over the mandate to buy insurance in Obamacare. That overreach – and the fear that a government that can make you buy something can also theoretically make you eat broccoli – was at the heart of Rand Paul’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ruled that in fact, the federal government not only has the right to regulate commercial transactions that take place anywhere in these United States, it has the right to force them to take place.

And now, we’re arguing over whether the president of the United States in his role as commander in chief in an ill-defined, barely articulated “global war on terror” has the right to kill U.S. citizens without presenting any sort of charges to any sort of court. In fact, it’s worse than that, since the president won’t even share his rationale for what he may or may not believe with the country’s legislature.

By foregounding the issues of limited government, transparency, and oversight as they relate specifically to the most obvious and brazen threat to civil liberties imaginable, Rand Paul and his filibuster have also tied a direct line to a far more wide-ranging and urgently needed conversation about what sort of government we have in America – and what sort of government we should have.

I am glad to see that somebody in Washington is doing his job. There needs to be some sort of discussion about when and where it is appropriate to use drones to assassinate suspected terrorists, not just their potential use against American citizens in the United States, but our general strategy abroad. I fear we have been too ready to trust the executive with these sort of life and death decisions. We might have had good cause in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, but perhaps it is time to step back and reconsider what we are trying to accomplish in the War on Terror and how we should go about it. This needs to be a bi-partisan discussion, if possible.

Meanwhile, I am starting to like Rand Paul. I understand that John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and some of the other establishment Republicans aren’t too happy with Paul. Well, they are the ones who have been running the GOP into the ground by not standing for much of anything.

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Elton John Praises Bush

I think that Elton John us trying to mess with everyone’s head. First, he tells the world that he and Rush Limbaugh are actually close friends, despite their differences in politics. Now, he praises George W. Bush for his work saving Africans from HIV. As it says in The Daily Caller.

Elton John praised former President George W. Bush and “conservative American politicians” for pledging billions of dollars to “save the lives of Africans with HIV.” He also credited hip-hop artist Jay-Z with starting a “domino effect” in the African-American community to support gay marriage.

“We’ve seen George W. Bush and conservative American politicians pledge tens of billions to save the lives of Africans with HIV. Think of all the love. Think of where we’d be without it, nowhere, that’s where. We’d be nowhere at all,” John said at the International AIDS conference in Washington on Monday.

“Thanks to all this compassion, thanks to all this love, more than 8 million people are on treatment. Thanks to people who have chosen to care and to act, we can see an end to this epidemic on the horizon.”

Fool. Doesn’t he know that Bushilter is an evil man, a war criminal, worse that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin-Laden put together.

Actually, Elton John is absolutely correct. In one of the least heralded US foreign policy initiatives ever, George W. Bush spent billions of dollars helping the people of Africa. Somehow the mainstream media completely missed this story. I am glad that Elton John was willing to give credit where it is due.

Still, he had better be careful. If he keeps this up people might start thinking he is a Conservative.

Elton John made another statement that I feel a bit ambivalent about.

Elton John also said AIDS advocates need a role model.

“We haven’t had one since Magic Johnson. We need people to say it is okay to be HIV positive. Look at me. I’m leading this life. I’m okay. People treat me good. We need to move forward in that respect,” he said.

I understand what he is saying and to an extent I agree with him. Still, it is not okay to be HIV positive. AIDS is a terrible disease that causes long term suffering and eventual death. There is now a very good understanding that HIV is not spread through casual contact but that most cases are the result of actions by the victims, namely unprotected sexual intercourse and sharing of needles. HIV, then is entirely preventable and theoretically there should be only a very few new cases, at least in the developed world. Instead, the number of people with HIV continues to rise, largely because people are stupid. I think that the most compassionate thing to do about AIDS is to try to keep people from getting it. Maybe it might help if every public figure who is infected with HIV came forward and admitted to the foolish and self destructive behavior that led to their infection and urged their fans not to follow their example.

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Money for Thingamajigs

Here President Obama shows off the intellectual acuity that has made him one of the top four presidents and more knowledgeable about Judaism, Polish death camps, and the 57 states than any other president.

I shouldn’t make fun since I know how easy it is to say something stupid when speaking in public, but if George W. Bush or Sarah Palin had made a statement like this, the MSM would be showing it as irrefutable proof of their stupidity.

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Can This Presidency be Saved?

Walter Russel Mead asks the question.

Can the Obama Presidency still be saved?

To some, the question may seem premature or even insulting.  President Obama’s personal popularity remains high and the most recent RealClearPolitics poll average has him at a more than respectable 47.6 percent approval; while the President’s popularity is drifting lower, congressional Republicans have been losing ground to their Democratic rivals in recent polls, and the Republican primary field remains both uninspiring and polarized.  Small government, libertarian and Jeffersonian Paulites, globalist ‘great nation’ conservatives, conservative social activists and Jacksonian hyperpatriots are united only in their antipathy to the Obama administration and it is not yet clear whether a GOP candidate can unify this agitated but inchoate mass of energy into a strong and focused campaign.

Nevertheless it seems increasingly clear that the Obama presidency has lost its way; at home and abroad it flounders from event to event, directionless and passive as one report after another “unexpectedly” shows an economy that refuses to heal.  Most recently, the IMF has cut its growth forecast for the United States in 2011 and 2012.  With growth predicted at 2.5 percent this year and 2.7 percent next, unemployment is unlikely to fall significantly before Election Day.  On the same day, the latest survey of consumer sentiment shows an “unexpectedly sharp” dip in consumer confidence.  The economy is not getting well; geopolitically, the US keeps adding new countries to the bomb list, but the President has fallen strangely silent about the five wars he is fighting (Iraq, Afghanistan, tribal Pakistan, Libya and now Yemen).

The problem is only partly that the President’s policies don’t appear to be working.  Presidents fail to be re-elected less because their policies aren’t working than because they have lost control of the narrative.  FDR failed to end the Depression during two terms in office but kept the country’s confidence through it all.  Richard Nixon hadn’t ended the Vietnam War in 1972 and George W. Bush hadn’t triumphed in what we still knew as the Global War on Terror in 2004.  In all these cases, however, the presidents convinced voters that they understood the problem, that they were working on it, and that their opponents were clueless throwbacks who would only make things worse.

Barak Obama was elected largely because he was a blank slate on which the electorate could project their hopes and dreams. He was a good campaigner who took full advantage of that fact. He has not been so good at actually governing or leading. He seems to be in far over his head, which is no surprise since the presidency is the first job he has held in which he has actually had to manage anything. He is more inclined to blame the country’s problems on the previous administration than to create new policies to resolve them. And, as Mead has been writing, what he calls the “Blue Social Model” has been breaking down and it is not entirely clear what will replace it. The times call for strong leadership and we are not getting it.

Americans are realistic enough to understand that the breakdown of the blue social model is a messy process and that perhaps no president can deliver a pain free transition to the next stage.  But what they aren’t hearing from President Obama is a compelling description of what has gone wrong, how it can be fixed, and how the policies he proposes will take us to the next level.

What they hear from this administration are defensive responses: Hooveresque calls for patience mingled with strange-sounding attacks on ATMs and sharp, opportunistic jabs at former President Bush.  The White House has responded to strategic challenges at home and abroad with tactical maneuvers.

Voters sense that we live in historic times that demand leadership of a different kind.  What does President Obama think about the fiscal squeeze forcing trade-offs between state employee benefits and services to the poor?  How much trouble is the American middle class in — and what changes are needed to save it?

The President of the United States has to own this conversation.  His vision, his initiatives must dominate the political scene.  His opponents may fight him and defeat his proposals in Congress — that is not the worst thing that can happen.  Harry Truman did very well running against a ‘do-nothing’ Congress in 1948.

At a time of historic anxiety and tension like the present, the President of the United States cannot be an administrator, a fence-sitter, a finger-pointer.  He must first and foremost stand for something — and he must be able to make that something resonate with the voters.  The President’s job is to lead.

So, can this presidency be saved? Do we really want to? My answer to both questions is no.

Nancy Pelosi Shows Some Class

I don’t much care for former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. I don’t like her radical left-wing politics and I don’t think she was a particularly good Speaker. Never the less, we must give credit where it is deserved. According to this article in The Hill, Nancy Pelosi called former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to thank them for their role in taking down Osama bin Laden. Good for you Ms. Pelosi! Maybe if more politicians acted this way, American politics would be less of a cesspool.

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