Turn on daytime TV nowadays, and if you're not hearing breaking news about the latest Trump tweet, you're likely to stumble on a warm and fuzzy interview with none other than George W. Bush. With Trump's approval rating already at post-Katrina levels, Bush clearly sees an opening to speed up his historical rehabilitation. We shouldn't let him. Here's my argument, with Alex Zaitchik.
(One of the more controversial points we make in the piece is that Bush created the conditions that allowed Trump to rise, by blowing up the Middle East and letting Wall Street blow up the global economy. That doesn't mean he's the sole father of the Trump phenomenon, or that Obama and the Clintons, or the GOP establishment, for that matter, escape guilt -- which is how some people seem to be interpreting that point.)
I also wrote a piece earlier this week with Amanda Terkel looking at how the fierce anger at Trump, which is being transformed into political energy, could help the Democrats break their midterm recruiting curse. Already they have good candidates in Georgia, Montana and South Carolina, though the races still remain uphill climbs.
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George W. Bush Gave Us Donald Trump. Now He Wants To Be Forgiven.
We've all seen the picture. It's the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and George W. Bush is sharing a brief snuggle with Michelle Obama. The first lady, maternal and forgiving, has both arms around the former president, who looks like he wants a tummy rub.
When the hug went viral last September, it triggered a once-unimaginable bipartisan "Awww!" that echoed throughout social and established media. Dubbed "The Embrace Seen Around the World" by The New York Times, the photo seemed to hold the power of magic, or at least the power of the most adorable cat video: It cast a spell accelerating a general public softening toward a man once widely scorned as a historic failure, dismissed by many on the left as a blood-spattered buffoon who belonged in a cell at The Hague.
Humans are nostalgic by nature, and history is full of once-reviled public figures who enjoyed later reassessments. But where reputational rehab used to take a generation or two, Bush is trying to loosen the clutches of market-fresh infamy.
If he succeeds, he will have his own presidency to thank. The immediate context for the "normalizing" of George W. Bush is the rise of Donald Trump. But Bush's policies created the conditions that brought Trump to power, and only in the wake of his own trademarked disasters does he look tame by comparison.
The museum hug and its afterlife showcase the internet's power to turn anything — even yesterday's calamities — into today's cute moments. It's also a worrying sign about our capacity for collective memory. As such, it suggests something deeper and arguably more frightening about America than even the current administration.
Bush's advocates and former officials knew all along that presidential records are inevitably re-evaluated. Years ago, they began working to revamp his image in the eyes of the public. The reassessments started even before Bush left office, with the rise of the tea party and the weakening of the old Republican Party establishment. Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was the first trigger that got liberals thinking maybe W. wasn't so bad after all. (A parallel re-evaluation was underway on the right. Among followers of Palin, who morphed into tea partiers and later into Trump die-hards, Bush was considered little better than Barack Obama.)
These early rehab efforts gained traction with the 2013 release of W.'s oil paintings. The simple portraits — including one that could have been titled "I'm taking a bath and these are my feet" — seemed to confirm old suspicions that the 43rd president was just a confused simpleton in the hands of a Cabinet of wicked Vulcans. During his presidency, this view was just another cause for derision.
During Obama's second term, it helped spawn an ironic reconsideration widespread enough for Vanity Fair to declare Bush "a hipster icon." BuzzFeed went further, describing the born-to-wealth Bush as an "outsider artist" and offering "15 Reasons George W. Bush Should Come Work For BuzzFeed Animals." There was less appetite for, say, "15 Iraqi Children Who Died Agonizing Deaths During The Initial Bombardment Of Baghdad" or "15 Ways Bush Policies Helped Decimate The Wealth Of Working Americans To Benefit The Ultra-Rich."
FULL ESSAY HERE
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