Bush riding lonesome into the sunset

 

On Oct. 10, after weeks of former President Trump riling up crowds and dominating news cycles with lies about legal Haitian-born immigrants eating neighbors’ pets in Ohio; lies about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris being a Marxist, apparently because her dad taught Marxism at Stanford; and yet more lies about the 2020 election being rigged against him despite scores of court decisions, audits and recounts to the contrary, another former president finally seized the spotlight to set matters straight.

Maligned during his own presidency as a foreign-born infidel by Trump, then a loud-mouthed reality-TV star and flamboyant business tycoon, Barack Obama highlighted the latest bizarro act of the traveling Trump circus in the 2024 presidential campaign: how Trump, in the Hurricane Helene aftermath, “just started making up stories about the Biden administration withholding aid from Republican areas and siphoning off aid to give to undocumented immigrants, just made the stuff up,” to score political points.

“And this has consequences,” Obama argued, “because people are afraid and they’ve lost everything and now they’re trying to figure out, ‘How do I apply for help?’ and some of them may be discouraged from getting the help they need – (and) the idea of intentionally trying to deceive people in their most desperate and vulnerable moments. And my question is: When did that become OK?” He then asked of any Republicans within earshot: “When did that become OK? Why would we go along with that?”

Like him or not, America’s only black president, 63, remains by far our nation’s most eloquent present-day champion of American virtues and values. His remarks in Pittsburgh on behalf of the Harris-Walz campaign showed he had lost none of his keen insights about America at its finest, even as he sought to push back against what some of us believe to be America at its worst: the Make America Great Again juggernaut and its employment of conspiracy theories, racism and hatred to divide and incite.

Yet Obama’s address not only begs overdue reflection by introspective and informed Americans at this critical juncture in our history but invites a legitimate question, especially for those of us who have long lived in the stretch of Central Texas once known as “Bush Country”: Where is former President George W. Bush, 78, amidst what by all accounts is the most pivotal presidential election of our times? Will he too lend his unique influence, one way or the other, as a past president to guide fellow citizens?

Or would his post-presidential influence even matter to anyone?

For newcomers, it’s impossible to convey the swelled pride Wacoans once had in President Bush, whose 1,600-acre ranch near Crawford transformed that town into a tourist mecca, complete with souvenir shops. The ranch was known as the Western White House where the president hosted international dignitaries, then met with local and national press. Nearby Waco welcomed entourages from all over. Baylor University launched an ambitious campaign to land the Bush presidential library.

Upon settling in Waco in summer 2002, I found many residents hoped the presidential aura would end the city’s close identification with Branch Davidian cultists whose crimes sparked a deadly shootout and standoff with federal agents in 1993 some 10 miles east of Waco. All ended horribly in a tank and tear-gas assault that saw the cult’s apocalyptic, Bible-quoting prophet and his gun-toting flock killed in an inferno, fueling an anti-government movement nationwide arguably culminating in the Age of Trump.

I also concluded over time that the president’s officials understood the public relations perils of any close association with Waco, which back then conjured crazy religious fundamentalists, self-styled messiahs and supposed federal overreach. In press releases and news events, they identified the Western White House with Crawford, a mostly white town that better fit the ruggedly individualistic, Reaganesque, riding-the-range, sunny, outdoor persona that Bush clearly preferred.

In those days, Wacoans – particularly Republicans – took a dim view of any criticism of Bush. The only time my ordinarily gracious neighbor, former Waco mayor and decorated war veteran J.R. Closs, ever cross-examined me about my association with the Waco Tribune-Herald was after the editorial board endorsed Bush’s challenger, John Kerry, in the 2004 presidential election. I tactfully explained that I headed up the news department as city editor and had nothing to do with political endorsements.

Since then, the pride has flown. Paralleling the Republican Party, what was once Bush Country is now unrepentant Trump country. On the advice of Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Trump selected Waco to formally launch his 2024 reelection campaign. And during the March 25, 2023, rally at Waco Regional Airport, Trump publicly debuted a big-screen video of his reciting the Pledge of Allegiance while the disembodied voices of January 6 insurrection detainees eerily sang the national anthem.

Since then, the campaign has employed darker and darker imagery.

When asked by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Oct. 13 about thousands of Chinese nationals living in the United States, criminal elements among immigrants in America and the prospect of violence on Election Day 2024, Trump, 78, insisted the “bigger problem is the enemy from within.” He made clear he wasn’t referring to illegal immigrants but “sick people, radical left lunatics.” However, he added reassuringly, “it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military."

"We have the greatest military in the world, but you have to know how to use ’em,” Trump said at an Oct. 11 rally in Colorado. “You have to know how to use ’em. But I protect you against outside enemies but, you know, I always say, we have the outside enemies – you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say Kim Jong Un – but if you have a smart president, no problem. It's the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That's a bigger enemy than China and Russia."

Such statements, coming from an unprincipled figure who tried to invalidate 2020 presidential election returns through a phony electors scheme, who did nothing to stop Trump rioters after they attacked the U.S. Capitol and brutalized police, who has vowed to be a dictator on Day One of his next presidency, who has argued for terminating the U.S. Constitution, all culminating with the notion of using military force to quell or corral fellow citizens with whom he differs, is unprecedented in U.S. history.

In a CNN interview, retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner said many Americans don’t comprehend the low threshold for an unhinged president intent on dispatching armed forces against fellow citizens he deems his enemies: “There are so many things that could be done because these are areas where sane men don’t go. It’s basically the guardrails of our democracy, the rule of law, that prevents civilian leaders from going where they should not go. But President Trump is not like any sane leader.”   

Retired four-star Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, recently signaled concern to the New York Times: “Well, I'm looking at the definition of fascism. It’s a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”

And who are Trump’s “scum”? In a Fox News town hall, Trump cited Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff, who led investigations into Trump’s politically motivated dealings with Ukraine, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who singled out Trump as a “threat to American democracy,” as examples “so sick and they’re so evil.” During this leadup to the election he also cited Jamaican-born District Judge Tanya Chutkan, presiding over his long-delayed federal election interference trial, as “the most evil person.”

Such tirades – including Trump’s labeling of his political opponents as “Marxists and communists and fascists” – reflect a disturbing theme Republicans have pressed for a while now. I recall the Oct. 25, 2020, Faith & Freedom Coalition rally at Waco's Church of the Open Door where Republican state Sen. Brian Birdwell, a 9/11 survivor whose district includes Waco, suggested those allied against President Trump did not love their country. I was shocked a military veteran could say such a thing of fellow citizens.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to reject any suggestion that he bore at least some blame for the violence committed in his name and literally under his banner on the Sixth of January. In an Oct. 20 interview on Fox News with media expert Howard Kurtz, the former president not only stubbornly justified those who marched on the U.S. Capitol as legitimate protesters – “they came because they thought it was a rigged election” – but said of the mob, “there was a beauty to it and a love to it that I’ve never seen before.”

As Obama somberly lectured young black Harris-Walz supporters in Pittsburgh of an inertia he sensed among some about a woman president, one could hardly imagine in turn justifying someone of Trump’s racial temperament and character being in charge of anything. “I didn’t mean to get so serious, but when I hear about this stuff, I start feeling like we don’t have enough of a sense of what’s at stake here,” he said at one point. “These are not ordinary times and these are not ordinary elections.”

Obama has been criticized as patronizing in his remarks to young black Harris supporters, but such criticism invites scrutiny of what we then behold in Trump’s rhetoric, including the spectacle of using military forces to suppress Americans whom the president deems enemies of the state, talk that evokes the deadly totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin. Given that half the United States seems to embrace such madness or overlooks it, sage counsel – however patronizing – may be not only relevant but overdue.

And where is Bush?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Cynthia Allen in an Oct. 2 piece argues we should all just let Bush be. “There's something undeniably refreshing about a politician who recognizes that his or her role as an influencer should have a shelf life. And after carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders for so many years while receiving mostly criticism for it in the media, it doesn't seem unfair or unpatriotic for Bush to wish to live out his post-presidential days in apolitical peace.”

Maybe, though blaming media for what historians and even Trump sycophants now conclude of the Bush presidency is a little rich and hints at Allen’s political leanings. To build on what she argues, Bush might also be exactly the wrong one to join Americans of principle ranging from former Congresswoman Liz Cheney to Barack Obama in their mission to defeat Trump. While the Bush presidency was not without its triumphs, it displayed a jarring lack of insight, competence and focus in times of immense crisis.  

In pursuing the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an elective war based on questionable intelligence, the Bush administration further inflamed the volatile Mideast by failing to grasp the intense 1,400-year-old religious polarization of Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. His administration’s employment of political cronyism to select leadership for the Federal Emergency Management Agency ultimately exacerbated bungled relief and recovery efforts along the devastated Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Nor did the Bush presidency end well after wildly unregulated markets; irresponsible loans by banks to corporations and consumers brimming with toxic risks; an overheated housing market; and politicians’ failure to discern complicated economic dynamics contributed to the disastrous Great Recession of 2008. Even the Trib recognized trouble early on, blaming Bush in 2004 for “unsound fiscal choices at home, particularly leaning on unnecessary tax cuts in wartime that have driven the nation deeply into debt.”

And there’s the issue of whether Bush misread or mishandled Russian President Putin, including during the latter’s celebrated visit to the town of Crawford and nearby Bush ranch in 2001, two months after the 9/11 attacks that subsequently colored so much of the Bush presidency, including the torture of Muslim prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison. Bush famously declared he looked into Putin’s eyes, finding him “very straightforward and trustworthy.” Such words now strike many as hopelessly naïve.

Bush’s eventful presidency also revealed telling strains in the Republican Party between those who recognized disagreement and debate are part of a clangorous democracy and those contemptuous of civility and mutual respect. For some of us, this became evident during anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's month-long peace vigil near Bush's ranch in summer 2005, inspired by the 2004 death of Sheehan’s son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, killed in battle with Shiite militia near Baghdad.

As supporters and opponents of the Iraq war “rallied, marched and simmered in the 101-degree heat” (to quote the Trib), a Richardson, Texas, man carried a sign into an Aug. 27 pro-Bush rally that read: "How to wreck your family in 30 days by bitch-in-the-ditch Cindy Sheehan" – an unnecessarily cruel allusion to Sheehan’s summer divorce from her husband of 28 years. When an event organizer protested the sign for its profanity and malice, a fight erupted between the two Republicans. Police were called.

In her Star-Telegram column, Allen argues “it is rather fun to imagine Bush in his library offices housed on the Southern Methodist University campus, characteristically chuckling to himself as he reads the daily paper, delighted to not be one of its regular subjects.” Bush has “said nary a word about the election, instead keeping his head down and his focus on the good work of his Dallas-based foundation and library.”

Rather fun? Good work? A key aim of presidential libraries is spinning presidential legacies into a more pleasing light to benefit their honorees. Thus his library busies itself in such exhibits as one on “Dining and Diplomacy” that offers a look at what Bush served to visiting dignitaries, including Putin at the Bush ranch on Nov. 14, 2001: guacamole salad, mesquite-smoked peppered beef tenderloin, southern-fried catfish, fire-roasted potatoes with poblano peppers and grilled sourdough bread with onion butter.

For the visiting king and queen of Spain, we are informed that the Bush Western White House served free-range turkey, Prairie Chapel bass, mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup and chipotles, pan-roasted root vegetables, cornbread stuffing and Port & Hall Hyde chardonnay. And we learn that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, during his visit to the ranch with wife Cherie, at one point “borrowed a guitar and strummed and sang along with the San Antonio band Daddy Rabbit.”

True, Bush’s center in 2023 did participate in a mushy joint statement by 13 presidential libraries: “Each of us has a role to play and responsibilities to uphold. Our elected officials must lead by example and govern effectively in ways that deliver for the American people. This, in turn, will help to restore trust in public service. The rest of us must engage in civil dialogue; respect democratic institutions and rights; uphold safe, secure and accessible elections; and contribute to local, state or national improvement.”

And the Bush Institute certainly tackles timely policy questions in its publication, The Catalyst. Yet in a Q&A in the winter 2024 issue, when asked about the raging divide in America, including “one party in the thrall of a self-declared dictator,” Bush proved evasive, even naïve in his attempts at bothsidism: “It’s not an attempt to seriously solve problems. To me, it seems like our politics have become about self-preservation – anticipating some popular movement and either leading it or trying to head it off.”

The Bush Institute also expresses concern over rapidly multiplying “news deserts” in populated cities in which daily newspapers have dried up, yet Bush is mum about Trump’s attacks on legitimate news media. “They’re the enemy of the people, they are,” Trump said on Oct. 24 to cheers in Tempe, Arizona. “They’re the enemy of the people – I’ve been asked not to say that, I don’t want to say it – they’re the enemy of the people, and someday they’re not going to be the enemy of the people, I hope.”   

Bush’s approach is certainly different from that of Obama, who in Pittsburgh suggested that many of us as rational citizens might normally distance ourselves from a co-worker or client who told malicious lies: “And yet when Donald Trump lies or cheats or shows utter disregard for our Constitution, when he calls POWs ‘losers’ or fellow citizens ‘vermin,’ people make excuses for it. They think it’s OK. They think, ‘Well, at least he’s owning the libs, he’s really sticking it to ’em. It’s OK as long as our side wins.’”

Perhaps Allen and others who revel in Bush’s staying above the national furor are right. After all, many Bush associates have already made sufficiently clear their sentiments on Trump, including former Vice President Cheney: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again."

Scores of former national security and foreign policy officials who served in the administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump or as Republican members of Congress have made clear they “expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not.” They continue:

“Donald Trump's susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior and chaotic national security decision-making are dangerous qualities – as many honorable Republican colleagues and military officers who served in senior national security positions in his administration have frequently testified. He is unfit to serve again as president or indeed in any office of public trust.”

And during a February 2024 forum at the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in California, Bush political consultant Karl Rove acknowledged his distaste in a Democratic president. “But we’re facing as a country a decision – and everybody gets to make it – as to what kind of leadership we’re going to have, and to me it is a mistake on the part of the Trump campaign to allow the president’s impulses to identify himself with the people who assaulted the Capitol rather than people who stand for law and order.”  

“I worked in that building as a young man,” Rove said. “To me, the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a jewel of the Constitution. And what these people did when they violently attacked the Capitol in order to stop a constitutionally mandated meeting of the Congress to accept the results of the Electoral College is a stain on our history. And every one of those sons of bitches who did that, we ought to find ’em, try ’em and send ’em to jail.”

Such fiery words sit awkwardly with images of Bush enjoying an SMU volleyball match two weeks before the 2024 election, conjuring Samuel Adams’ observations as the revolution of 1776 ensued: “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Delivered in a rousing speech in Philadelphia, Adams’ words might also be deemed “patronizing.” How dare he? Yet insights from those who have held or hold positions of responsible leadership can serve as useful guideposts in times of crisis and confusion. An early October Pew Research survey of 5,110 adults shows 72 percent of voters say if Harris loses, she will bow to law and tradition and acknowledge Trump’s electoral victory. Just 24 percent expect Trump to concede if he loses; 74 percent say he will not.

For the record, former President Bush is certainly capable of championing American values. Of all the 9/11 addresses held across the nation on the 20th anniversary of the Islamist terrorist attack in 2021, of all the remarks appealing to our patriotism and better angels and demanding deeper reflection about the state of our union, Bush’s ranked at the very top – appropriately, considering he was president at the time of the attacks and initiated two wars in its wake.

Bush fittingly spoke at the national monument erected in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed after its passengers, mostly strangers to one another, voted on a plan, then forcefully prevented hijackers from crashing the airliner into its reported target – the Capitol. Nimbly addressing the “anger, fear and resentment” of today’s politics, Bush stressed “growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from violence that gathers within.

“There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home,” Bush said, referring to Mideast terrorists who plowed airliners into symbols of American power and commerce and Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol and sought to overthrow American democracy. “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”

And that means ordinary citizens. During that same 9/11 observance near Shanksville, Gordon Felt, a special education teacher and the brother of Flight 93 victim Edward Felt, suggested the question was not so much how reverently we honor the fallen of 9/11, the brave passengers of Flight 93 and those who lingered in the twin towers at their peril to help strangers and co-workers, “but rather the question to be considered is: Are we worthy of their sacrifice? Are we worthy?

"Do we as individuals, communities and as a country conduct ourselves in a manner that would make those that sacrificed so much and fought so hard on September 11th proud of who we have become?” Felt asked. “Do we share the same willingness to sacrifice for others in little ways as well as large, to act when necessary for no other reason than to accomplish a noble goal, egoless and without other motivation than to do what is right?”

Those of us who fondly recall Bush’s “compassionate conservativism,” who recall his noble efforts to condemn threats leveled at Americans who are Muslim after the 9/11 attacks, who recall his efforts at comprehensive but humane immigration reform (with Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy as allies) now wonder if Bush’s speaking out to safeguard democracy and head off the carnage and chaos of another Trump reign might prove a redeeming final act or a massive waste of everybody’s time.

For better or worse, at this late date the prospect is likely not even on the menu.

Bill Whitaker spent nearly 45 years as a reporter, editor and columnist in Texas journalism, including a dozen years as Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor. He retired in 2020.