The Media and the Left Beg for the Return of President Bush

Ten years ago, many people thought that the day would never come when the media and the Democrats would beg for the return of President George W. Bush.  At that time, his approval rating hovered in the 20s and the mainstream media hammered him for his handling of the Iraq War and everything else.  At the same time, the media had finally found their lord and savior in a first-term Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama; who would later become the 44^th President of the United States.    

 

However, since the election of President Trump; the day when the media and the Democrats beg for the return of President Bush has finally come.  The media (and the left) have finally found a President they hate more than “W”; as President Trump actually fights back against their attacks while President Bush chose not to address them.  Nancy Pelosi said on “This Week” after mistakenly calling President Trump President Bush, “So sorry, President Bush.  I never thought I would pray for the day that you were President again.”  Ten years ago, many would have thought that the Democrats would not mind a president like Trump; after all he opposed the Iraq War, in contrast to nearly all of his opponents on the debate stage who supported it.  But the Democrats have long since replaced opposition to foreign intervention in the Middle East with opposition to border control as their number one political issue.

 

President George W. Bush really tickled the left’s fancy when he indirectly went after our President in a speech he delivered on behalf of the Bush Institute last week.  The Former President never really jumped on the Trump train; however he has not criticized the President as much as other establishment Republicans such as Arizona Senator Jeff Flake.  Steve Bannon did not approve of Bush’s comments and went after the 43^rd President, saying “there has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush.”  For the left, the speech kept getting better and better as the Former President went on to say “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America”. I have a feeling that parents of those who have lost their lives as a result of crimes committed at the hands of illegal immigrants such as Sabine Durden, Mary Ann Mendoza and Jamiel Shaw would certainly dispute the argument that recent immigration has brought dynamism to America. Many on the right had previously pointed out that President Bush hardly ever criticized his successor President Obama.  He left most of that to his Vice President, Dick Cheney.

 

An interesting tweet summarizes the position the Democrats currently find themselves in.  In 2004, the Democrats compared Bush to Hitler.  In 2012, they accused Mitt Romney of killing a woman with cancer and pounded him for his comments regarding the “47 percent” and “binders full of women.”  In 2017, the Democrats only wish that President Trump could be more like Bush or Mitt.  Well, they had their chance to treat those Republicans with respect and they blew it.  This time, the voters decided to choose somebody who would actually fight back.  

 

The left had more in common with President Bush than they may have realized at the time.  In public, they treated him like crap; stalling his judicial nominees and questioning the legitimacy of his Presidency.  But behind the scenes, they worked with him to advances the cause of globalism and expand the power of the Federal government in ways the founders never thought possible.  To his credit, President Bush did a better job appointing justices to the Supreme Court than any of his recent Republican predecessors. Aside from Chief Justice Roberts’ assertion that Obamacare did not violate the Constitution, both of Bush’s appointments to the Supreme Court have consistently relied on the originalist philosophy when making their decisions.  President Bush also gave pro-lifers a huge victory when he signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.  Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor had previously joined the liberal Supreme Court justices to declare a Nebraska law banning the procedure unconstitutional but thanks to Bush’s appointment of Sam Alito to replace her, the Federal law withstood Constitutional scrutiny when it came before the Supreme Court in 2007.  Finally, President Bush indicated his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment; which would have amended the Constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.  However, Congress did not manage to pass such an amendment despite the fact that Republicans held both houses of Congress at the time of its proposal and many Democratic Senators claimed to oppose same-sex marriage.       

 

Despite his conservative successes regarding the judiciary and abortion, many of President Bush’s legislative achievements could have just as easily been signed into law by a Democratic President.   This should not have come as a surprise since he branded himself as a “compassionate conservative” on the campaign trail.  Early in the Bush Administration, when he boasted a 90 percent approval rating, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act; which massively expanded the Federal government’s involvement in education. The current Vice President Mike Pence was one of the few members of Congress who voted against it.  During his second term, President Bush championed an immigration bill that would have allowed a Path to Citizenship for the millions of people living in the country illegally.  That bill failed to become law thanks to opposition from conservatives in his party.  Fortunately, 80 percent of Senators, including a majority of Democrats, agreed to pass the Secure Fence Act of 2006; which authorized the construction of a fence along the US-Mexico border. The late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) faithfully supported President Bush’s efforts to pass No Child Left Behind and the amnesty bill.

 

While the Democrats generally despise President Trump and want to oppose him every step of the way, they may find infrastructure as one area of common ground.  On the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly talked about how “Our airports are like a third world country.”  During his inaugural address, he promised that “We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.”  A massive infrastructure probably will not excite debt-conscious conservatives all that much but it will certainly electrify the voters in the Rust Belt who carried President Trump to victory.  For that reason alone, the Democrats may stand in the way of an infrastructure bill; something that they have begged Republicans to jump on board with for years.    

 

In the age of President Trump, the media and the Democrats seem to have developed Bush nostalgia; realizing the truth to the lyric from the Counting Crows “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.”  On the other side of the aisle, many Republicans had Bush fatigue; wanting an end to endless foreign wars and tired of Republicans falling for the Democrats’ amnesty and big government schemes.  Establishment Republicans tried to convince their voters that a candidate like Trump would turn out to be suicidal in a general election but he ended up winning with 306 Electoral Votes; a higher total than President George W. Bush received in either of his two elections.  The media and the Democrats have developed a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which has caused them to act far crazier than they did when they were previously infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome.  Expect the symptoms to continue for the next four (and hopefully eight) years.