by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Why We Suddenly Miss Bush<\/strong><\/p>\n Various polls report that George W. Bush in some states is now better liked than President Obama. Even some liberal pundits call for Bush, the now long-missed moderate, to draw on his recognized tolerance and weigh in on the Ground Zero mosque or the Arizona anti-immigration legislation. Apparently, the erstwhile divider is now the healer that the healer Obama is not.<\/p>\n As President Obama\u2019s polls dip, as Congress is widely disdained, and as the economy slumps, suddenly George Bush is missed. Why so? Let me list ten likely reasons.<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0The Obama record<\/em>. We naturally compare Bush to his chief critic and successor Barack Obama \u2014 and find the latter increasingly wanting as time goes by. Obama turned Bush\u2019s misdemeanor deficits into felonious trillion-dollar annual shortfalls. He will pile up more debt than any other prior president.<\/p>\n Indeed, if reelected, Obama will borrow more than all previous administrations combined. Bush was tarred in 2004 for a \u201cjobless recovery\u201d when unemployment hovered near 6%. It is now almost 10% and Obama still harps about \u201cjobs saved.\u201d Scott McClellan may have been singularly inept; we are not so sure after Robert Gibbs. For every Brownie there is a worse Van Jones or Anita Dunn. For Katrina we have BP. Bush\u2019s NASA did space; Obama\u2019s seems to prefer Muslim outreach. Bush\u2019s prescription drug benefit was an unfunded liability; ObamaCare is a trillion-dollar financial black-hole. I could go on, but Obama\u2019s lackluster record is improving Bush\u2019s legacy every day.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0Obama as Bush<\/em>. Senator and then candidate Obama demagogued Bush on a variety of issues, which, as president, he simply flipped and endorsed. Remember Bush\u2019s gulag at Guantanamo? Or how about the terror-producing Predators? Or the need for an immediate pull-out from Iraq? Or those terrible renditions and tribunals?<\/p>\n In case after case of national security, Obama dropped the cheap rhetorical one-upmanship, and, when invested with the responsibility of governance, simply adopted, or even trumped, the Bush protocols. General Petraeus, whose testimony Hillary once suggested required \u201ca suspension of disbelief\u201d and whom Obama cut off and did not allow to speak during his infamous 2007 Senate hearing, suddenly is to be Obama\u2019s savior general.<\/p>\n Candidate Obama claimed the surge failed and all combat troops should be out of Bush\u2019s Iraq war by March 2008. President Obama now calls Iraq a \u201cremarkable chapter\u201d as his vice president claims it as one of the administration\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievements.\u201d In short, almost daily, Obama is following the Bush anti-terrorism policies \u2014 the irony made worse by petulance and ingratitude in not acknowledging his debt.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0Bush Did It<\/em>. It is a uniquely American trait to shun whining and petulance. Rugged individualism and can-do optimism used to be ingrained in our national character, and even in our 11th hour have not wholly disappeared. So the public is tiring of Obama\u2019s Pavlovian blaming of Bush. After 20 months, it is time for the president to get a life and quit the \u201cheads you lose\/tails I win\u201d attitude about presidential responsibility. If he now takes credit for calm in Iraq without crediting the surge, then Obama can surely take blame for the anemic recovery \u2014 brought on by his own bullying of business that has frightened free enterprise into stasis. Note that Bush, unlike Clinton, has not engaged in emeritus tit-for-tat recrimination, and has kept largely quiet in dignified repose. Obama serially goes after Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck by name; Bush let the slander of a Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann go unanswered.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0Who is the real yuppie?<\/em>\u00a0The media tried to paint Bush as the privileged yuppie, masquerading as the Texas rancher, idly chain-sawing on his spread. But at least Bush went to the Texas outback for vacation and got his hands dirty. Obama\u2019s problem is that Axelrod and Emanuel could not stage a chain-sawing task for Obama if they tried \u2014 severe injury would surely follow. The bowling moment in the campaign was as disastrous as the later Obama girlish first pitch. From 2001-3, presidential golf was proof of aristocratic disdain and laziness. Suddenly from 2009-2010 \u2014 given that Obama has hit the greens more in 20 months than Bush did in eight years \u2014 the Ministry of Truth redefined the game as necessary egalitarian relaxation. Given the choice, the public would probably prefer a little overdone Texas \u201csmoke \u2018em out\u201d braggadocio to worries over the price of arugula.<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0Michelle is no Laura<\/em>. Remember the narrative: conservative women are elitists who decorate, buy nice clothes, and play Barbie; liberal first ladies are doers who are independent feminists that can\u2019t be bothered by inanities like fashion and play. But Michelle this summer enjoyed a movable feast from Marbella to Martha\u2019s Vineyard, in designer clothes and shades. Laura Bush used to vacation at the national parks. Laura Bush often disagreed with her husband and sometimes offered a liberal \u201cOh, come on, George\u201d to her husband\u2019s occasional flight-suit strutting. Michelle, in contrast, is the second half of the partisan Obama tag-team, perennially whining that \u201cthey raised the bar.\u201d After \u201cdownright mean country\u201d and \u201cnever before been proud,\u201d we miss Laura Bush\u2019s common sense and nonpartisanship. Ga-ga media talk of Michelle\u2019s biceps, not the earthy decency reminiscent of a Laura Bush.<\/p>\n 6)\u00a0UN first; US second<\/em>. If Bush was a supposed \u201ccowboy,\u201d there at least was never doubt that his first and foremost interest was the US, not the \u201cinternational community.\u201d One Obama bow was okay; one apology about genocide tolerable; one smug cast-off line that we are not exceptional understandable; one\u00a0mea culpa<\/em>\u00a0sent to the corrupt UN human rights crowd I suppose forgivable. But add them up and we sense that our president is embarrassed about America\u2019s history and culture \u2014 but not quite embarrassed enough not to enjoy its material bounty to the fullest.<\/p>\n 7)\u00a0Who will criticize the critics?<\/em>\u00a0American elites crucified Bush. Vein-bulging Al Gore called him a liar. John Edwards and John Kerry tag-teamed him in vicious attacks. Alfred A. Knopf published a novel imagining his assassination. The Toronto Film Festival gave first prize to\u00a0Death of a President<\/em>, a 2006 docudrama about killing President Bush. I could go on again, but you remember the times, in which everyone from John Glenn to Garrison Keillor played the Bush Nazi\/brownshirt card.<\/p>\n And now? John Edwards imploded in scandal. John Kerry was exposed as a tax-dodging elitist hypocrite. Al Gore, if not a sex poodle, at least is a green-con-artist of the billionaire sort, who both hyped a world-ending crisis and then profited from his rhetorical overkill by selling supposed green snake oil in the fashion of medieval penances. CBS, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, and\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0now totter near financial insolvency, after showing both poor judgment and questionable ethics: from the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2019 offering a discount for the MoveOn.org \u201cGeneral Betray Us\u201d ad to a\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0senior editor declaring Obama a \u201cgod.\u201d Suddenly bad things have happened to most of Bush\u2019s loudest critics. (Note I\u2019ll pass on the post-Bush Letterman or the post-Bush Rangel).<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0Bush\u2019s disasters proved not quite disasters<\/em>. Take the two most famous: Iraq and Katrina. Iraq is calm and can make it as a consensual state. Kurdistan is booming, not on a genocidal watch list. We killed thousands of al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar province. That helped to keep us safe from another 9\/11-like attack. Libya gave up its WMD. Dr. Khan shut down his nuclear franchising. American troops left Saudi Arabia. Syria got out of Lebanon. Iraq neither attacks four of its neighbors, nor does the government there give shelter to the likes of Abu Nidal and the architect of the first World Trade bombing attempt. Understandably, Biden and Obama now see something to claim and hope we forget their own assurances that it was either lost or to be trisected.<\/p>\n The BP mess (oh, how Nemesis likes to strike in the same locale!) reminded us how the federal government is inept under any president, whether during a man-made or nature-induced calamity. Shutting down oil drilling in the Gulf may be the worst legacy of the spill. Much of Katrina\u2019s mess, in retrospect, can be attributed as much to anemic local and state responses and an endemic New Orleans culture of dependency as to Brownie\u2019s FEMA incompetence.<\/p>\n 9)\u00a0Bush was not corrupt and ran an especially ethical administration<\/em>. Before Obama even started, we had the Blago mess (of which the final story is not yet in) and the Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, Tim Geithner, and Hilda Solis ethical lapses. Bush condemned Republican malfeasance and kept his distance. But suddenly the culture of corruption is not so corrupt when Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, and others prove as compromised as Duke Cunningham and Larry Craig. The Chicago crowd makes the Crawford crowd look like pikers. Bush said not a word about Obama and BP; Obama viciously attacked Bush as incompetent during Katrina. You decide.<\/p>\n 10)\u00a0Bush was authentic<\/em>. He mangled his words. A liberal industry grew up around both \u201cnuclar\u201d and its sometimes corrective \u201cnucular.\u201d He strutted and talked Nascarese-like \u201cbring \u2018em on.\u201d Much of this was excessive, but we knew at least Bush meant it. We got worried when he extemporaneously expounded for long riffs about freedom at press conferences, as his eyes rolled and he drifted from topic to topic. He put his arm on Angela Merkel and cried out \u201cYo Blair.\u201d The media told us he was a yokel; we might add: albeit an authentic one who could duck properly when under shoe attack.<\/p>\n But Obama? He cannot really speak off the teleprompter without pauses, repetitions, and constant self-referencing (as in \u201cme,\u201d \u201cI,\u201d \u201cmy,\u201d etc.). He is stiff and not comfortable with himself off the court or golf course. Bush made decisions and stuck by them; Obama the professor offers a perennial \u201con the one hand\u201d\/\u201don the other hand\u201d mish-mash and a sorta, kinda, almost answer. Americans would prefer to be in a foxhole with George Bush, who would swagger and announce as decider-in-chief at H-hour, \u201cOkay, pard, we\u2019re going over the top together on this one.\u201d They wouldn\u2019t want to be with Obama, who would stutter and give a long-drawn out exegesis why race and class had condemned us to such an unfair predicament, whose only solution is to go into a fetal position and condemn \u201cthem\u201d who did this awful thing to us.<\/p>\n Who knows? At this rate America may play Brandon DeWilde to Bush\u2019s Shane: \u201cBush \u2014 Come Back, Bush, Come Back!\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Why We Suddenly Miss Bush Various polls report that George W. Bush in some states is now better liked than President Obama. Even some liberal pundits call for Bush, the now long-missed moderate, to draw on his recognized tolerance and weigh in on the Ground Zero mosque or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[515],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-kF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1251,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-george-bush\/","url_meta":{"origin":1281,"position":0},"title":"Rethinking George Bush?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Former President George W. Bush left office with the lowest approval ratings since Richard Nixon. In reaction, for nearly two years President Barack Obama won easy applause by prefacing almost every speech on his economic policies with a \"Bush did it\" put-down. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2010"","block_context":{"text":"September 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/september-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-george-w-bush-fixation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1281,"position":1},"title":"The George W. Bush Fixation","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama remains fixated by George W. Bush. 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It is popular now to suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2274,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dr-barak-and-mr-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":1281,"position":4},"title":"Dr. Barak and Mr. Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Voters learn that Obama is not the man they thought. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online No one imagined that Barack Obama, during his first nine months in office,\u00a0would be falling in the polls even faster than George W. Bush did prior to 9\/11. 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