THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PRESIDENTS
Apr. 29th, 2013 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogEmergency commentary from Team Def Political Voodoo Analyst Lucky Bensonhurst
George W Bush is popular again, I am told.
Well, relatively speaking. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll claims that Bush’s overall approval rating has gone up from 33% since he left office to 47%. Approval of his economic policies have risen from 24% to 43%.
Context is important here. All this is coinciding with Bush emerging back into the public eye with the opening of the George W Bush Presidential Library And Museum, one of those events where even the guy who replaced you thanks to the terrible job you did has to say nice things about you.
Somewhat more predictably, Junior’s comeback has been accompanied by some probably sincere but unseemly gushing from the likes of Jennifer Rubin, Dana Perino and Karl Rove, who have been going on about how nice it is to have him back and wasn’t he a much better president than that awful Obama who took a perfectly good America and ruined it for everyone?
Etc.
Typical as this revisionist history is for the GOP base, there’s also a reason for it, besides the library opening – namely, Jeb Bush has a 2016 campaign to run (reportedly), and that’s going to be hard enough without everyone bringing up Junior’s legacy.
Certainly some Republican dingbats will use Junior’s improved ratings as evidence of growing discontentment with Presidente Obama. That’s probably true, but only with Republicans who were so disgusted with Bush II that they turned on him in 2008. On the other hand, the same poll claims Bush’s favorability among Demos is up from 6% to 25%.
Which is why I suspect the improvement in Junior’s ratings is more comparable to the fading of trauma over time. As James Madison once said: “Someday we will all look back on this and laugh.”
Ha ha, Jim.
Longtime followers of this blog have a pretty good idea of how I feel about Dubya and his “legacy”. And if you don’t, I will refer you to this collection of charts about his presidency. They are mostly not very flattering.
I’ll also direct yr attention to this bipartisan report released earlier this month on whether or not the US ever tortured anyone during Junior’s heyday. (Hint: we fucking well did.)
If you really want Junior Bush’s legacy spelled out for you, for my money you could do worse than the sociopolitical aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Not five minutes after the bombs went off, conservative dingbats blamed Muslims, illegal immigrants and Obama (who is both), and liberal dingbats blamed the Tea Party. A bunch of innocent people (all of them brown foreign-looking people) became suspects on Reddit, and now that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody, everyone is scrambling to find someone to blame for all of this besides the actual bombers. Especially Republicans, who I promise you will spend every day between now and 2016 claiming loudly that this is all Obama’s fault JUST LIKE BENGHAZI and that those people would all still be alive (except for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his fucking Miranda rights) if Mitt Romney was president.
All that hyperpartisan dithering and fear and general paranoia and Constitutional shreddery and desperation to pin it all on That Other Party That Hates America So Much? That’s the Bush legacy in action.
To be fair, much of that is the product of cable TV news, talk radio, Andrew Breitbart and Daily Kos. Bush himself never really actively encouraged such things, apart from his “yr with me or against America” spiel.
But that slogan did set the tone for the next 12 years, and his neocon cabinet (and their fans in the punditry) ran off the goddamn end of the Earth with it. Bush let them do their thing, then defended them afterwards. The Left responded in kind, and now it’s basically impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone about whether Bush was a good or bad president. Or Obama, for that matter. Because it’s about what you believe and what yr afraid of, not facts.
And so much for the Bush legacy.
As for his library, it will be interesting to see how many visitors it racks up, and how many of them are only there to see if the library includes a copy of The Pet Goat. Or a FEMA manual. Or John Yoo’s “torture is legal” memo. Or …
Well, I could go on all day. The secret is knowing when to stop.
L. Bensonhurst
George W Bush is popular again, I am told.
Well, relatively speaking. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll claims that Bush’s overall approval rating has gone up from 33% since he left office to 47%. Approval of his economic policies have risen from 24% to 43%.
Context is important here. All this is coinciding with Bush emerging back into the public eye with the opening of the George W Bush Presidential Library And Museum, one of those events where even the guy who replaced you thanks to the terrible job you did has to say nice things about you.
Somewhat more predictably, Junior’s comeback has been accompanied by some probably sincere but unseemly gushing from the likes of Jennifer Rubin, Dana Perino and Karl Rove, who have been going on about how nice it is to have him back and wasn’t he a much better president than that awful Obama who took a perfectly good America and ruined it for everyone?
Etc.
Typical as this revisionist history is for the GOP base, there’s also a reason for it, besides the library opening – namely, Jeb Bush has a 2016 campaign to run (reportedly), and that’s going to be hard enough without everyone bringing up Junior’s legacy.
Certainly some Republican dingbats will use Junior’s improved ratings as evidence of growing discontentment with Presidente Obama. That’s probably true, but only with Republicans who were so disgusted with Bush II that they turned on him in 2008. On the other hand, the same poll claims Bush’s favorability among Demos is up from 6% to 25%.
Which is why I suspect the improvement in Junior’s ratings is more comparable to the fading of trauma over time. As James Madison once said: “Someday we will all look back on this and laugh.”
Ha ha, Jim.
Longtime followers of this blog have a pretty good idea of how I feel about Dubya and his “legacy”. And if you don’t, I will refer you to this collection of charts about his presidency. They are mostly not very flattering.
I’ll also direct yr attention to this bipartisan report released earlier this month on whether or not the US ever tortured anyone during Junior’s heyday. (Hint: we fucking well did.)
If you really want Junior Bush’s legacy spelled out for you, for my money you could do worse than the sociopolitical aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Not five minutes after the bombs went off, conservative dingbats blamed Muslims, illegal immigrants and Obama (who is both), and liberal dingbats blamed the Tea Party. A bunch of innocent people (all of them brown foreign-looking people) became suspects on Reddit, and now that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody, everyone is scrambling to find someone to blame for all of this besides the actual bombers. Especially Republicans, who I promise you will spend every day between now and 2016 claiming loudly that this is all Obama’s fault JUST LIKE BENGHAZI and that those people would all still be alive (except for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his fucking Miranda rights) if Mitt Romney was president.
All that hyperpartisan dithering and fear and general paranoia and Constitutional shreddery and desperation to pin it all on That Other Party That Hates America So Much? That’s the Bush legacy in action.
To be fair, much of that is the product of cable TV news, talk radio, Andrew Breitbart and Daily Kos. Bush himself never really actively encouraged such things, apart from his “yr with me or against America” spiel.
But that slogan did set the tone for the next 12 years, and his neocon cabinet (and their fans in the punditry) ran off the goddamn end of the Earth with it. Bush let them do their thing, then defended them afterwards. The Left responded in kind, and now it’s basically impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone about whether Bush was a good or bad president. Or Obama, for that matter. Because it’s about what you believe and what yr afraid of, not facts.
And so much for the Bush legacy.
As for his library, it will be interesting to see how many visitors it racks up, and how many of them are only there to see if the library includes a copy of The Pet Goat. Or a FEMA manual. Or John Yoo’s “torture is legal” memo. Or …
Well, I could go on all day. The secret is knowing when to stop.
L. Bensonhurst
