Posted on 04/26/2013 4:28:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
As President Obama joined four ex-presidents for the dedication of a facility honoring his immediate predecessor, comparisons were unavoidable.
Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were teenagers during the depression. The childhoods of Bill Clinton and the honoree, George W. Bush, spanned the 1950s.
Generational and political differences jump out from any perusal of these five presidencies. But on a cool, sun-splashed morning in Dallas, there was harmony all around for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
But as soon as the kind words of the morning were concluded, I dove back into the messy remains of a week containing tough, pressing issues: What to make of the Boston bombers? How to fix immigration? And what to do about an administration forcing pain onto citizens to make them fear spending cuts?
And that’s just today.
Who knows what the future will bring in the remaining 45 months of the Obama presidency?
With those prospects wrapped around us constantly, amid a week of revisitation of the Bush years, a diverting exercise occurred to me. What if Bush were president today?
I don’t mean at the beginning of what would be a fourth term. Who knows what Bush policies would have yielded during the years since 2009? (Although I dare say the product would have been preferable to what we have lived through).
No, for the sake of this flight of political fancy, we’re going to roust Mr. Bush from the retirement he seems to be enjoying so profoundly and put him back in the Oval Office right now.
This is made more adventurous by 43’s steadfast refusal to weigh in on meaty issues since he left office. This is a show of consummate class and restraint that is foreign to the likes of Jimmy Carter, who remains embittered by the pink slip handed him by the American people 32 years ago.
So with no archive of articles featuring George W. riffing on events of the last four years, we are left with his record and the handful of quote nuggets he has offered up in interviews this week.
As Vice President Joe Biden returns from a Boston memorial service where he referred to the Tsarnaev brothers as “cowardly, knock-off jihad’s,” the first thing I know is that a Bush administration would not be trying so hard to block any narrative assigning deep terrorist roots to the bombings.
We have much to learn about the brothers’ influences and motives, but as we learned of the jihadist flavor of their lives, it was another example of the term “radical Islam” sticking in this White House’s throat.
Say what you will about the methods and strategies of Bush’s war on terror. At least he waged it, and he never failed to identify the enemy by name.
Obama fans grow frustrated that despite killing bin Laden, keeping Guantanamo open and launching the (brief) Afghan surge, the 44th president does not carry the image of a brave protector of America.
That is because we cannot truly fight terror unless we recognize where it comes from. When Obama wants to protect our lives with the same energy he expends protecting Muslim feelings, we will be instantly safer.
On immigration, I suspect Bush would favor the Rubio-led “Gang of Eight” reform plan. I get that feeling because I have big problems with that plan, and they match up with some of my criticisms of immigration policy under Bush, who was never the border warrior many conservatives wanted him to be.
Nor was he the spending-cutter Republicans supposedly require. This makes me suspect he might work to erode the sequester, which I love more with each passing day.
But if W were to plug back in, even with all of his “big-government conservative” instincts, in no way would he approach the severity of the plunder we have seen under Obama. And if he were to spend more than I would like, at least it would be fueled by the engine of an economy energized by lower taxes.
If the fiscal issues would be a mixed bag, at least the social agenda would be returned to some level of human decency.
There is a reason why Barack Obama knows any remarks he makes to Planned Parenthood are an invitation to a reputational barbecue. He knows-- or should know-- that we are reminded of his Illinois State Senate votes against protecting babies who happen to survive the carnage of abortion. And we are stunned by the silence of this White House amid the ghoulish revelations of the Kermit Gosnell trial.
I don’t pretend that President Bush would be issuing daily Gosnell laments as the trial goes to the jury, but we would regain a President who believes the unborn deserve protection, and who would nominate Supreme Court justices who would see to it that states wishing to issue that protection were not thwarted by the constitutional obscenity that is Roe v. Wade.
But I do not suggest that a reinstalled Bush would seek a national abortion ban, any more than he would seek a federal definition of marriage as one man and one woman.
Much is made of Laura Bush’s quote favoring “the same sort of rights” for gay marrieds. That is not “marriage equality” in its strictest sense, and she made clear to an advocacy group that she does not wish to be joined in an ad with various figures who have boarded the equivalency train.
I believe the Bush approach would be to push for strong abortion limits and unique recognition of man-woman marriage in every state, with the knowledge that states may ultimately do what they wish on those issues.
Would that the current administration respected the states’ right to run their own affairs on matters not specifically described in the Constitution.
In short, a new Bush presidency would probably satisfy conservatives in some ways and annoy them in others, much as his eight actual years did.
But at the dawn of a second term of Europe-style neo-socialism, insufficient attention to global evil and hard-left social leanings, it would be a substantial improvement.
all you can pin on the GOP is medicare part d prescription drug coverage ("great medicare expansion" ) and DHS. the rest of government belongs to your beloved democrat congress locusts who created that government
Gop congress slapped bush's Anmesty down and your hillary care too.
Bush is a socialist in the European tradition.
Obama is a Marxist who hates the United States.
Neither is good for the country. The latter is just worse.
Dubya decided secure borders wasn’t an agenda he wished to pursue. My neck of the woods already suffered as a result of this “policy” BEFORE Zero reached the White House. To this day, he STILL doesn’t get it.
I remember in 1999 how it was noted that GWB had never even been to Europe, or maybe it was one short trip years earlier.
You’ll notice I stayed out of this one... (Hahaha!!!)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/25/w-outclasses-barack-and-bill-without-even-trying/
"..just before we said our goodbyes, I asked her if she’d miss covering President Obama.
“Not at all. He’s an inch deep. Bush is a bottomless chasm, a deep, mysterious, emotional, profound man. Obama is all surface — shallow, obvious, robotic, and, frankly, not nearly as smart as he thinks. Bush was the one.”
Her words, so succinct, have stuck with me ever since. By the way, she’s a hardcore Democrat..."
Reporters waxing nostalgic...kind of funny now, after they helped get their sock puppet elected.
” With the GOP supporting giving full US citizenship (and the vote) to illegals and those playing candidates Rub, Ryan and Paul leading on it, it is getting more and more difficult to find a reason to vote at all anymore.”
Exactly how I feel .
If GWB were still there, I don’t know if much would be different at all. He would still be deferring to his opponents, I would imagine.
Even Dems here hate that idea and GOP AHs like McCain join them to screw you and me,.
This one is big to me.
Well then, how about the Ron Paul worshipers, Sarah Palin worshipers, Newt Gingrich worship threads, the Pat Buchanan worship threads, etc.. There were even Ronald Reagan worship threads, Howard Phillips worshipers, etc..
Now don’t get me wrong, I admired and revered most, if not all of those people above, just as much as you! However, there’s no escaping the fact that there were plenty of shrines on here to all of them, not just Pres. Bush 43. The trouble was: if anyone got on them and said anything with less than veneration, they were accused of being: 1. RHINOS, 2. Socialists or Leftists, 4. told to get off the boards because they were not “true” conservatives!
Really, please, it’s time for all of you Bush bashers to take the political “log out of your own eyes” first!
” Having said that, Bush was a major disappiontment and set the stage for full fledged Marxism to prevail in subsequent elections.”
Correct/
” Well, perhaps, but we’ll never know, because Bush never even tried to fight back. That was unforgiveable...”
Once again, correct. Bush never even tried to fight back.
He did however, fight like mad to ram amnesty down our throats.
” Now, what if conservative activists sit out the next election and the next? “
They DID in the last election. Possibly 4 million in some estimates.
McCain is indistinguishable from a Chuck Schumer, and Romney was a very wealthy liberal Republican Mormon. Off hand, I can’t think of two worse candidates to attract votes. If we run another big government rich guy, we are finished as a party.
” Rubio is apparently an opportunist who ran under a false flag to get elected.”
All the historical information was there on Rubio to expose him as a fraud.Same with Ryan. We FReepers need to quit joking about “low information voters”, and peek at a mirror. Pogo: “ We have met the enemy, and he is us”
Actually, he didn’t even fight that battle very hard.....
Maybe Tokyo Rove worked on it harder than Bush did : )
I wasnt going to go off about GWB on this thread but since you brought it up.
The only one of those you that you list that was also a eight year POTUS was Reagan so the others are not in the same category as GWB, they are very different subjects.
Since you mention Reagan to defend GWB then lets compare.
Reagan left office loved and appreciated by most Americans not just the 10% Bush cult loyalists. He left office with the country at peace and the economy doing pretty well.
In contrast GWB left office disliked and distrusted by most Americans and very low approval rating aqnd trusted less than Dems on every issue including taxes and war and after eight years he left a crashing economy and a country still at war after 7 years.
And so the Bush-bots chant is endless excuses : It all Dems fault, its all the MSM fault, its all Roves fault, its anyone who doesn't defend him’s fault, its all Saddam's fault.
Worshiping a man with endless lame excuses is a cult.
Excuse me, but did I say I worshipped him or anyone of the others? No, I don’t think so. My point was that you were complaining about a thread where people expressed their admiration for Pres. Bush! That’s admiration, not idol worship; and no worse than the near-worship comments on other people in my post.!
When did it become a sin on here to admire and defend our 43rd President? Sure he made mistakes, but in my view, not many. Another thing, while you brought up Mr. Reagan, if I remember right, a number of conservatives tore him down too! If he didn’t do what they wanted, they were all over him, left and right!
He was always talking about how he’d try to get as much as he could out of the “other side”, and he believed it was better to get a little at a time. Conservatives were always scolding and pouting at him if he didn’t get everything they wanted when they wanted it! Now they’re canonizing him!
I yield to the senior senator from FR..
“” Having said that, Bush was a major disappiontment and set the stage for full fledged Marxism to prevail in subsequent elections.””
Sorry dsutah, but when you’re Wright, you’re Wright : )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.