A Presidency Defined by Deadly Lies, Incompetence, and Corporate Fealty

Bush’s presidency began with a terrorist plot whose early warning signs he ignored during his vacations. Bush’s tenure ended with an economic meltdown whose fuse was lit by his administration’s financial deregulation and lax enforcement.

Between those bookends on this sordid shelf of history were other volumes of disastrous malice and epic failure — and Bush hasn’t shown any remorse about any of it.

There was Bush’s Iraq War, based on lies, which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, destabilized an entire region, and cost America trillions of dollars — a preemptive invasion that was one of the most extreme, radical, dishonest, and destructive acts of any commander in chief in all 250 years since the founding of the republic. And Bush wasn’t some innocent bystander — he actively and repeatedly lied, over and over again, and strutted around with bravado slogans like “mission accomplished” and “bring ‘em on” as the bloodshed increased.

There was Hurricane Katrina, in which Bush’s incompetence and personnel decisions effectively allowed a city to drown — all while he defiantly praised his political appointees as the casualties mounted and the disaster worsened.

There was also Bush obediently shilling for the oil and gas industry, playing a pivotal role locking in a climate cataclysm that could kill millions.

A Divider, Not a Uniter

If all that carnage wasn’t enough, Bush insisted he was a “uniter, not a divider” — much like he is depicting himself as a unity figure today. But Bush and his political apparatus polarized politics in the most divisive ways.

This is a guy who presided over a political party that routinely impugned the patriotism of those who spoke out against his policies.

He suggested that Democrats were not sufficiently supportive of efforts to protect Americans from violent terrorism.

He ran a scorched-earth reelection campaign that sought to stir up right-wing bigotry by demonizing gay marriage.

He evaded the military draft and yet stood atop a political machine that vilified a legitimate war hero.

His government trampled the constitution by not only creating a surveillance panopticon, but also a system of actual torture.

This is the dude who got reelected and then immediately launched a polarizing campaign to turn Social Security over to his pals on Wall Street, who had already been enriched by Bush’s own previous two regressive tax cuts.

Rehabbing Bush’s Reputation Exemplifies the Pathology That Got Us Trump

I wish Bush as president had been the compassionate voice of reason that he suddenly sounds like in the video. But he wasn’t that president. He was the opposite, and no video — no matter how slick — should allow him to whitewash those facts away.

We shouldn’t care more about platitudes and stagecraft than about history and reality. We shouldn’t care how many times Bush appears with Ellen or the Obamas. We shouldn’t care about his paintings or his folksiness. Simply put: we shouldn’t allow Bush nostalgia and hagiography to be a thing — and we absolutely shouldn’t respect preening pundits and celebrities who think wistfully longing for Bush is a way to brandish their bipartisan integrity, civility, and anti-Trump bonafides.

The understandable loathing of Trump, and the desire to negatively compare him to other presidents, must not prompt us to flush the facts of the Bush years down the memory hole. That kind of historical revisionism and immunity is part of how we ended up with Trump in the first place.

Trump was the scion of a wealthy family who failed in business, became a reality TV clown, was accused of fleecing investors and sexual misconduct — and won the presidency, anyway.

He is, in other words, the human personification of how our society has come to never hold rich powerful elites accountable for anything. His electoral success was the culmination of a nihilistic impulse that says a political candidate’s record, actions, and behavior should have nothing to do with how we perceive them, and what rewards we are willing to give them.

Praising and normalizing George W. Bush is not a way to fix that deeper societal pathology that birthed the Trump presidency. On the contrary, rehabilitating Bush exemplifies and intensifies that pathology.

Bush and Trump are both monsters. If you want to criticize Trump — which I encourage — find a way to do it without touting or pining for the other monster. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.