Wasting little time to score political and rhetorical points, Democrats and some members of the media are using the death of George H.W. Bush to assail a president they despise and who also happens to be Bush’s temperamental opposite: President Trump.
Already, the comparisons, in which Trump is found deeply wanting, are roaring in. The theme is consistent: Bush was reasonable, prudent, bipartisan, decent, honorable, and pursued wise policies; Trump, none of the above.
Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty, handed the job of writing the official Post obituary — which appears in the “news” section — provided an only slightly veiled dig at the current Twitter-happy president: “Although Mr. Bush served as president three decades ago, his values and ethic seem centuries removed from today’s acrid political culture. His currency of personal connection was the handwritten letter — not the social media blast.”
In an editorial, the New York Times wasn’t taking any chances that people might miss the distinction between the 45th president and the 41st:
“Yet, at the moment of his passing, it is difficult not to take note of the profound differences between the 41st president of the United States and the current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump. Beyond a desire to be president — Mr. Bush was more competitive and ambitious than his self-effacing personality sometimes suggested — there is almost nothing in common: the one gracious and modest, the other rude and vain; the one prudent, the other brash; the one steady, the other unmoored.”
While the Obamas where careful in their public statement on Bush’s death not to invoke Trump, other Democrats made clear allusions to the current president in their laments for Bush. “His yearning for a kinder and gentler nation seems more needed now than when he first called for it,” tweeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “President Bush showed the compassion, decency and good humor that is often lacking in our politics today,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a statement.
Suffice to say such sentiments would not have been expressed were Barack Obama still president.
Evan Thomas, writing for Yahoo News, laments labeling Bush a “wimp” in 1987 on the cover of Newsweek, though he acknowledges that Bush let characters like Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, his political fixers, do the dirty work for him. “But it is impossible to imagine him resorting to the petty vindictiveness of a Trump tweetstorm. Bush has been partly forgotten by history, but America’s 45th president may make us nostalgic for the grace and manners — and self-discipline — of our 41st,” Thomas asserts. It wouldn’t occur to him that while Bush acted above the fray, Trump at least performs his own stunts.
Over at CNN, in an article titled, “George H.W. Bush had the spirit this country needs today,” CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer writes: “We need more of George H. W. Bush’s spirit in this country today. We live at a moment in history when the values that he represented seem to have been jettisoned, with a president who often makes a mockery of the institutions he governs.”
The reason the Trump was elected is that voters decided the “institutions,” currently more than $20 trillion in debt, are an albatross ruining the country in myriad ways. The ostensibly sane, temperate, and judicious establishment has not only plunged the country into debt, but involved it in endless wars, a horrendous banking crisis, and two full presidencies — under George W. Bush and Barack Obama — of sub-2 percent GDP growth. A sad economic performance that ended exactly when Trump took over.
Left out of the opinions of our elite, who prosper whether the economy is at 1 or 4 percent and whose jobs don’t get exported overseas, is the will of the people. A quick look at the headlines from 2016 reveals that Trump was elected president, in his only political race. Bush and his brand of “prudent” moderate Republicanism was rejected by voters in presidential elections twice, once in 1980 in the Republican primaries and again in 1992 when he was unseated by Bill Clinton. Bush won in 1988 on the coattails of conservative Ronald Reagan’s successful two terms.
Voters judged in 2016 that the go-along, get-along approach of someone like Bush was not what was needed as the increasingly leftist Democrats expanded big government statism, failed to revive the economy, and diminished America’s place in the world. Voters decided a pugilist was required to combat the pummeling they felt they were getting and change the direction of the country. And so, they elected one.
The establishment is mourning what was lost. What better way to vent their sadness than eulogizing Bush and excoriating the man they see as a mere pretender to Bush’s throne, never mind that voters threw him off it.
