This actually should not surprise anybody.
Would George W.'s advice be good or bad for President Jeb? @bpolitics/@dmregister Iowa Poll: http://t.co/YX8JB7mO7D pic.twitter.com/878Dcf1l8p
— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) June 3, 2015
Although it’s not quite a ‘rehabilitation’ of George W Bush; after all, it’s a poll of Republican caucus-goers, not Iowan or national voters as a whole*. Still, this is a trend that suggests that history will be kinder to the former President than a lot of currently sweaty-palmed Lefty pundits and agitators would care to admit. Although, to be fair: I suppose that even if you do think – presumably because you didn’t study the American Civil War (or, indeed, any military history at all) – that the GWOT was the worst military disaster ever you could still think that George W Bush could give his brother good advice on What Not To Do.
And, in fact, I can think of one good piece of advice along those lines, myself. One thing not to do is pick a Vice President who doesn’t want to be President after you. All hail Darth Cheney and whatnot, but if we had had an ambitious person in that slot who was ready to run in 2008 we might have won that election**. We certainly would have encouraged the Democrats to find somebody better than the inarticulate, incompetent pedant that took office in 2009, and then proceeded to set the Middle East on fire…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: There’s also this amusing CNN poll where George W Bush currently outpolls Barack Obama, but honestly? You had to expect that would happen. We tend to forgive our Presidents, once they get out of office (unless they’re named Richard Nixon). In other words, this should only surprise those poor unfortunates who were so foolish as to base their entire political moral compass around their hatred of one, specific politician. Alas, though: such people do exist.
*The same poll also surveyed Democratic caucus-goers, with regard to Bill Clinton and Hillary. Absolutely unsurprisingly, 83% of them think that having Bill along for the ride would be peachy-keen wonderful. I will not be so reckless as to wonder just how many of those Democrats would be happy to drop Hillary if they could still have Bill…
**With the caveat that ‘winning’ in this case means ‘retained enough seats in the Senate to allow the filibuster.’
Well a big issue for GWB was that the left (including most big media) went after him hammer and tongs for a good 80-85% of his presidency. It’s not too surprising that his reputation has rebounded after 7+ years of them mostly not doing that anymore.
.
This also kind of explains what happened in the 2008 elections, when there really wasn’t any Republican candidates that wanted to take up residence at ground zero of the notional anvil.
It also may have helped if W had actually fought back. Polite dignity is good for rehab *after* office obviously, some of which would not be needed if he hadn’t held to it *while* he held office.
Meh. There are only so many hours in the day, and the President never (If he actually cares about the Country) has enough of them. “Fighting back” would have wasted precious time on vanity projects, while people died by the thousands. Obama has done this. Do you think it a good use of his time?
That goes for having his people fight back too. Iraq wasn’t exactly a vanity project. Obama screwed it up, but enough people were convinced to vote for him partly because Bush just rolled over and took it, domestically. I’m still baffled that Rove canned the WMDs evidence.
Ah, the second part answers the first, yes? Pretty sure Rove didn’t “canned the WMDs evidence”. Heck, I saw the evidence years ago. But it’s real hard to get your message out when the Press is not only refusing to report, but is actively lying in the other direction……