G.W. Bush's Speech Hides His Own Complicity In The Ascendancy Of Trump
George W. Bush has the incredible fortune of being followed by Donald Trump as the next Republican President, thus saving him being labeled possible the worst President in a century. Bush’s legacy is, of course, the unnecessary Iraq War, which he created out of a cloth of lies and cost the lives of well over a million people, and whose legacy is still destabilizing the Middle East and spawning terrorism. Included in that legacy is the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, partially created by an enormous and unnecessary tax cut for the rich which squandered a budget surplus. Beyond that, there was the refusal to adhere to the nuclear agreement with North Korea, which, along with Donald Trump’s incompetence and irrationality, is now causing the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to warn of World War III.
But all that can be now apparently be forgotten because George W. Bush made a speech where he criticized Donald Trump while later specifically denying he was criticizing Donald Trump. Said Bush, “We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism. Forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America…Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children…The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them…In recent decades, public confidence in our institutions has declined. Our governing class has often been paralyzed in the face of obvious and pressing needs …. Discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts. Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”
All these are fine and correct sentiments but they are a little rich coming from George Bush. Both Bush the elder and the younger were not above quite a bit of race-baiting, so it’s a little hard to take when he talks about prejudice and bigotry. It is difficult not to remember the lies that got us into the Iraq War when he mentions the decline in confidence in our institutions and the rise of “outright fabrication”. He talks about deepening partisan conflicts but had US Attorneys fired because they would not pursue mythical voting fraud in order to suppress Democratic votes.
Perhaps I can give Bush a pass for not wanting to name Trump directly, even though it is clear that is who his message was directed at. Bush does not want to break the unwritten rule of former presidents openly naming and criticizing the current one. But I can assure you that that particular rule will surely be broken in the next few years.
However, the reality is that Bush is in so many ways responsible for Donald Trump’s ascendancy. Like many of the Republican elites, Bush was largely silent about Trump during the campaign. And even the ones who spoke out forcefully, such as Mitt Romney, they only offered words. None of them were willing to repudiate their party and its standard bearer in the last election. None of them were willing to state the obvious, that Hillary Clinton was a far more qualified candidate that Trump. None of them were willing to state the obvious, that Trump does not represent American values.
And even as Bush was making his speech, he already had plans to have a fundraiser for Ed Gillespie who is explicitly running a racist campaign to be Governor of Virginia. Bush, his father, and the Republican party have played footsie with the racists and other groups on the fringes of American values for years and in the process they have allowed their party to be taken over by white nationalists. By campaigning for Gillespie, Bush is extending that legacy. If Bush and the supposed “moderates”, “establishment”, or “conservatives” – whatever they wish to call themselves – want to retake control of their party, then they need to repudiate exactly the kind of campaign that Gillespie is running. If they aren’t willing to do that, they should leave the party. If they’re not willing to do that, they are just another part of the white nationalist movement.
