The other President Bush

November 21, 2006

The president’s father has been in the news quite a bit lately, due in large part to the fact that many of his old aides (Baker, Gates, et al) seem to be running to Washington to give the current president a desperately needed hand.

But the rescues notwithstanding, Bush 41 seems to be taking a far more high-profile role than he’s enjoyed in several years. It was Bush pere, for example, who appeared on Fox News last week to blame bloggers for the fact that the current political climate has “gotten so adversarial that it’s ugly.”

And it was the former president in the United Arab Emirates today, defending his son against an apparently hostile audience.

“We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he’s doing all over the world,” a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech.

Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval….. “This son is not going to back away,” Bush said, his voice quivering. “He’s not going to change his view because some poll says this or some poll says that, or some heartfelt comments from the lady who feels deeply in her heart about something. You can’t be president of the United States and conduct yourself if you’re going to cut and run. This is going to work out in Iraq. I understand the anxiety. It’s not easy.”

Are these public appearances some kind of public relations stunt? Did Rove find some poll showing that Americans would have more confidence in Bush 43 if they believe Bush 41 has more influence?

Maybe. We’ve certainly reached a point in which Americans are looking back at 41 — and thinking he doesn’t look nearly so bad anymore.

CNN conducted a poll late last week, asking which Bush was the better president. It wasn’t even close.

Only one in four Americans believe President Bush is a better president than his father, George H. W. Bush, a new CNN poll has found.

Six in 10 said the elder Bush, who served one term from 1989-1993, did a better job in office, according to a poll conducted by Opinion Research Corporation. Twelve percent said both were equally good or bad, and 2 percent offered no opinion.

For what it’s worth, for those of you feeling a certain Bush 41 nostalgia, don’t. Yes, Bush 43 is a stunningly bad president, certainly among history’s worst. And by those standards, sure, his father was a real gem. But Tom Frank had a good piece in TNR a couple of years ago explaining that if anyone’s image shouldn’t be rehabilitated, it’s H.W. Bush. If 41 was better than 43, it’s only because he knew better than to go take Baghdad.

But this is hardly grounds for adulation. If the Bush gang needs an elder statesman to bolster the president’s standing, sending his father out onto the public stage probably isn’t going to cut it. Indeed, it seems to be more embarrassing than reassuring.

Hmmm. Giuliani, McMoralCoward, Rice, Romney…..H.W.Bush in 2008? Tanned, rested and um, “regular”?

  • I really, really, really don’t think it was Dubya’s intent to rehabilitate his father’s reputation. Actually, I think he wanted to outdo poppy Bush, but since he is in general such a failure, he preformed a very successful failure.

    And I do think that 41 looks good only in comparison to 43.

  • “good only in comparison to 43” (ET, #2)

    That’s about it. I still can’t wait till we’re through with the entire Bush Crime Family: 41, 43, jails-for-profit Barbara, Neil, Prescott, Samuel, Consigleri Baker, Cheney, Halliburton, Enron, Abramoff, etc., etc., etc.

  • Well I’ll go against the popular wisdom and state that Bush 41 wasn’t that bad until the day after he signed the tax increase. The day he signed the tax increase he said he was due for a lot of heat for changing his mind on taxes. The next day he whined that Congress made him do it.

    Of course, the whole point of the “read my lips” was that if he felt tax increases were wrong he could and would stand up to Congress and prevent them.

    I knew he was lying when I voted for him in 1988 and I knew he had lied about the lie when I voted against him in 1992. I suppose there are some forms of moral cowardice I can accept (stating an obvious lie about your future actions) and some that I can’t accept (lying about why you reniged on your promise). Hope that doesn’t make me as bad as the people I voted for.

  • Idiots all, if they think this is going to ‘work out’, and if respect translates into ‘getting the job done’. Daddy is still out of the loop, and we begin to see where jr gets it from.

  • My least favorite Bush Sr move was when he sent Eagleberger and Skowcroft on a secret trip to Bejing to tell them not to worry about the American outrage over the Tianamen massacre.

    The man is evil and his son is too.

  • Ed,

    I still can’t wait till we’re through with the entire Bush Crime Family:

    Sadly, the next generation will be with us too. No, I’m not talking about the twins, I’m talking about Jeb’s son. Apparently he is quite gifted and charming.

  • I think 41 had a CIA view of the world. A behind the scenes mentality. As I recall it was more his ineffectualness that made him unpopular. In a sense he may have been the victim of the Reagon pseudo-prosperity. George is the worst presidentever so the point of relative popularity is moot. I “like” everybody better.

    People perform more informal alliances than Vonnegut could ever imagine. Senators have more in common with other senators than they do with the people. Presidents have more in common with other national leaders than they do with “the people”. Cliques within cliques and the public is odd person out.

    It’s actually been gratifying to see George fail to measure up to his dad.That probably bothers him more than all the casualities in Iraq.

  • Compared to Junior? Sure he’s better. Your common or garden stink bug would make a better president. As to Bigger Bush defending “this son” (couldn’t think of the name perhaps?): Exactly like the parent who defends his darling boy when he’s caught with a deep freeze full of human body parts. “How dare you? My little Jeffrey would never hurt a fly!”

    And what does all the talk about not backing down in light of massive public opinion tell us? It never crosses BB’s brain that if truckloads of people hate what you’re doing, maybe you should stop doing it. Nope, it’s all a giant pissing contest to that lot. Never admit you’re wrong. If hundreds of thousands of people die, so be it, just don’t change your mind.

    Methinks that if we’d had a massive terrorist attack when 41 was in office, the results would’ve been much the same. OK, 41 prancing about in a flight suit wouldn’t have been quite so ridiculous but other than that…

  • I’m not a fan of either Bush, but the last time I saw the presidential rankings by a consensus of historians, H.W. Bush came in as the 22nd or 23 best…directly after Clinton. (If memory serves.)

    From my enviro point of view, H.W. wasn’t nearly the train wreck Bush 43 has been. Under the senior Bush, the Feds launched climate change research (via the USGRCP) and on a local level, he signed bills creating wilderness.

    Now we know how much worse it could have been.

  • From Frank’s column (emphasis mine):

    To be sure, Dubya’s values may not appeal to all of us–or at least not to 48 percent of us. But at least he brings a modicum of consistency to his moral outlook. If he has brought unnecessary suffering to Iraq, then he has also brought tremendous hope to what used to be a humanitarian calamity. If he is leading us astray in Iraq, at least his aims are unquestionably good and just. …

    …For now, though, we can at least enjoy the ride of George W. Bush–incompetent, belligerent, and, maybe once in a while, insanely inspired–for what it is and be grateful for one thing: that we know we can get through this. Thanks to four years with his father, we’ve been through worse.

    Gag. This is just some tripe to make W look better, and I disagree that Bush 41 was worse.

  • On one hand, this is like asking whether you’d like to get tossed overboard off of Hawaii or St. Thomas. There are differences to consider and points to argue but neither choice is an acceptable one.
    That said, Papa at least tried to tried to maintain the appearance that he was playing by the rules (he wasn’t). And he had enough sense to listen when others said, “you don’t want to go into Baghdad.”

  • The more support he lends to Asswipe-in-chief, the faster he loses his own credibility. If the strategy is as you say it may well backfire- nobody likes Bush 43, nor do they like his apologists.

  • There is, of course, one and only one good thing about all this “41 was better than 43” stuff. Imagine how enraged Little George must be by all of it. That alone is worth it to me.

  • Let’s stop beating around the bushes; there’s nary a difference between 41 and 43 (and Reagan — “ketchup is a vegetable” — hardly deserves the posthumous resurrection in public opinion, also). Would you rather be gassed? Shot? Lethally injected? Hanged? Electrocuted? Come on in and take your pick….

    As for Papa B improving the image of the Lesser…

    There was a *superb* cartoon by Tom Toles in the Sunday Outlook section of the WashPo (unfortunately, I find WashPo’s search more puzzling than anyone else’s; even if I give it the exact title and page it can’t find it. So, no URL), the Sunday after the elections.

    It had Papa B, sitting in a chair, with jug-eared Son B thrown over his knees, and the word “thump” on SonB (SB?)’s rump. The Tiny-Tom comment in the lower right corner said (paraphrase, since I can’t find either the on-line or the hard-copy of the cartoon): “too late”.

    No amount of Photo-shopping is going to help 43 at this point, especially not in older cultures. In most older cultures, parents are legally responsible for their children’s behavior until those children are 18. And — privately — blamed for that behavior for ever after. As far as Middle East is concerned, 41 ought to have thumped 43 (but good) 50 yrs ago. He hadn’t done his parental duty so *even women* feel free to to criticize him for his lack of responsibility.

  • See, if it weren’t for those pesky bloggers, nobody would be calling Republicans and members of the Bush family the smug sociopathic elitist assholes that they are.

    Hearing that from the guy whose presidential campaign relied on bashing the ACLU and ads about Willie Horton makes me laugh, though.

    (And speaking of adversarial and ugly (which I should stress I mean in a moral, rather than aesthetic, light, given the surplus of sexist looks-based commentary), how *is* Barbara Bush doing these days?)

  • I almost forgot to add this Poppy quote:

    “I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”

    – Vice President George H. W. Bush, 27 August 1988, at a Chicago campaign stop one month after the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 people

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