George W. Bush delivered a humdinger of a speech carving up fellow Republican Donald Trump last week. Applause rang out from all quarters, marking another step in the rehabilitation of one of the United States' worst presidents.
The speech properly pilloried the current Oval Office occupant. It weighed in on how he was turning nationalism into nativism, emboldening bigotry across the land, spurning free markets and other American ideals.
The only thing missing from the Bush oration was an "Oh, by the way," line. As in: "Oh, by the way, I helped create the guy. It was my warped governance that set the stage for a Donald Trump."
A couple of years ago, when Mr. Trump began campaigning for the Republican Party's nomination, conditions had become ripe for a populist rebellion on the right. Mr. Bush's work on war, on trade, on the economy and immigration stirred the appetite.
One could start with his war, the one based on fake news, those non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the primaries, it gave Mr. Trump an opening. While other candidates supported the war, he made hay out of the fact, although it was a dubious claim, that he was opposed it. The Iraq war convulsed the region, spurring the creation of extremist organizations and terrorist groups. It created a market for U.S. Islamophobia that Mr. Trump has capitalized on with his anti-immigration position.
On the economy, Mr. Bush's deregulation agenda created a climate that helped enable the 2007-2008 financial meltdown. The crash bled away faith in globalization. Open trade and open immigration policies were targeted. New nationalist passions arose. Mr. Trump came along to stoke them.
On the trade file, Mr. Bush was soft on China, giving it relatively unfettered access to the World Trade Organization and standing idly by as the Middle Kingdom engaged in wide-scale currency intervention. An America being ripped off by China became a major Trump calling card.
On Mr. Bush's watch, opposition to the North American free-trade agreement in the so-called rust belt states gathered force, leading to opposition to the deal by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their 2008 Democratic nomination fight. Campaigning against NAFTA, Mr. Trump won the rust-belt states.
To his credit, Mr. Bush was open-minded on immigration. He sought amnesty for unauthorized immigrants, an expansion of green cards and created new guest-worker programs. But if this was in the spirit of American ideals, it created conditions, as Mr. Trump argues, in which low-wage immigrants were taking American jobs.
Mr. Bush's speech rightly decried the culture war this President has triggered with his approach to Muslims, Mexicans and black athletes. Absent from the address was any mention of his own bigotry as per his reactionary positions on gays and same-sex marriage.
On the environment, Mr. Trump is as anti-green as they come. But Mr. Bush served well as a forerunner, withdrawing from an international agreement (Kyoto) while pleasing climate-change deniers with other policy initiatives and standing by haplessly as Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans.
À la Mr. Trump, Mr. Bush played to the rich with his tax policy initiatives. Like the leader he thrashes, he ran an anti-intellectual government in which his gut, as prodded by his troglodyte vice-president, Dick Cheney, took precedence over empirical research.
While Papa Bush was a more moderate old-school conservative, the cocksure son moved the party to the right, opening the door to fringe elements. His work gave rise to the Tea Party and now to the even greater reactionary fervour of Trumpism.
You don't hear much about his record any more. Mr. Bush is working hard at his image makeover. He does good work with veterans (his war killed 5,000 American youth) and other civic deeds. He is a likeable, slap-you-on-the-back schmoozer, and even Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi are now saying nice things about him.
It's the Trump effect. He makes predecessors look good, even one with a record like that of Mr. Bush, even one who was his harbinger.
Lawrence Martin