The other day, I found myself thinking G.W. Bush doesn’t look as bad these days as he did before Trump came along.
Maybe republicans really aren’t dumb enough to think Trump is actually a good* choice. They’re just trying to rehabilitate the image of their previous candidate. I’d rather not imagine what they’ll do to save Trump’s image. Maybe a “Gotcha!”, ‘it was all a joke’ resignation?
*good as in “we’ll be better off if his policies go through and he actually does what he said he’d do”, not just a ‘lesser of two evils’ (which is all you need in a two-party system).
Bush isn’t looking better just because Trump is worse. If anything, Trump has reduced whatever stature Bush had left after leaving office. Now, along with all of the things Bush did while in office, we can add that he lowered the bar on the Presidency enough that Trump was able to get elected.
I don’t think there was any sort of conspiracy to make George W. Bush’s presidency look better, but the Republican Party never really analyzed or accepted why the Bush administration was a failure. I believe a lot of people voted for Trump who knew the Bush years were a failure, but they couldn’t accept that they had put the agenda in place that made it a failure. So they voted for Trump who promised more of the same, but cranked up to 11.
Trump didn’t mean to make Dubya look better. He represented an anti-Bush vote, and he may even think he’s superior to Dubya. He makes Dubya look better by accident, by being embarrassing enough that people want to pretend there has ever in their lifetimes been a *non-*embarrassing GOP President. But of course there hasn’t.
Dubya: Iraq, kidnapping foreign nationals, general social obliviousness
Poppy: slightly less socially oblivious, also in bed with Arab kings to the point of adventurism
Reagan: Iran-Contra, voodoo economics, general incompetence
Ford: kind of OK except for pardoning the previous guy
Nixon: cluster-bombing Cambodia, forced to resign for mobsterism
Ike: that coup in Iran, turning the CIA into a tool of (English) imperialism generally
Hoover: I’m sorry, I broke down laughing.
Coolidge: total waste of time, completely unhelpful ass, a tea-tray would be a better head of government
Harding: Teapot Dome, general buffoonery
TR: You’re not that old.
Of GOP Presidents of the USA, I think Chester Arthur is the most consistently well-regarded and non-embarrassing. (Opinions on Lincoln run hot and cold ) But again, not one known in the lifetimes of most present voters, because most voters are human beings, not giant tortoises nor some kind of parrot.
Republicans sometimes try to distance themselves from charges of racism by claiming they’re the party of Lincoln. I wonder if that could be turned against them. Next time southerners get all hot and bothered about the removal of a monument to some Civil War figure, post pictures of the statue and say “you know who led the war against him? Republicans!”
Bush the Elder voted for Clinton. Bush the Younger didn’t vote for Trump. How do these facts square with the conspiracy theory? I think Bush looks better than Trump because he was better than Trump.
) But again, not one known in the lifetimes of most present voters, because most voters are human beings, not giant tortoises nor some kind of parrot.