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He’s not on any campaign payroll, but you could call him an informal adviser. Several of the GOP’s potential 2016 presidential candidates have, over the past few years, sought the advice of former president George W. Bush in Dallas. Although the former president has deliberately kept a low profile since he left Washington in January 2009, his door is always open for ambitious Republican politicians. He has welcomed a succession of likely 2016 candidates to his office in Dallas for private conversations about life, politics, and the all-consuming quest they will confront if they decide to seek the nation’s top...

The catalog of the errors and failures of the administration of President George W. Bush is large and various. In finance, it began with the modifications to the Community Reinvestment Act in 1993-95, which we now know had the effect of encouraging banks, along with the quasi-governmental Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to allow “innovative” mortgages that encouraged people to buy homes they could no longer afford when an economic downturn came. The effect of this was to encourage higher-risk lending, which led to “securitization” of the loans to spread risks. This securitization was a major contributor to the financial...

Like Birkenstocks and ironic t-shirts, blaming Bush has never gone out of style on the left. When Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq became so obvious that even the media, which had been pretending that Obama’s claims about a successful withdrawal were true, could no longer ignore them, their talking points were all lined up and ready. It was all Bush’s fault.Defenses of the war by pivotal figures like Dick Cheney and Tony Blair only enraged them further. “Why wouldn’t they admit it was all their fault?”But the left’s lazy talking points about Iraq, like their talking points about the economy,...

"Rand Paul took, I think, a really wrong-headed step on the immigration issue last week. I mean, he’s not completely where Jeb is, but almost!"

Given that Barack Obama and the Democrats waged his first presidential campaign on the premise that George W. Bush was the worst president ever, and that Hope and Change were just the ticket, the latest Gallup Poll results must be disheartening: Gallup goes out of its way to soften the blow: Americans typically rate presidents more positively after they leave office, so Obama's relatively worse standing than his predecessors is not surprising. However, the current poll represents Obama's worst favorable rating to date. And it explains away Carter’s dismal showing: Though Carter left office with similarly poor job approval ratings, his lower favorable...

Was George W. Bush wrong about the Iraq War? Because of recent events, some in the media have taken pot shots at the former U.S. President by claiming the younger Bush, and not President Obama, is responsible for an unsuccessful “mission accomplished.” In a related report by The Inquisitr, with the ISIS in Iraq having found Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons stockpiles, some people are saying that George W. Bush was right to have pushed for the Iraq War since the original stated goal was to prevent terrorist groups from getting their hands on any WMD materials. Of course, people say...

As Iraq edges toward chaos, Joe Biden is having a quiet I-told-you-so moment. In 2006, Biden was a senator from Delaware gearing up for a presidential campaign when he proposed that Iraq be divided into three semi-independent regions for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Follow his plan, he said, and U.S. troops could be out by early 2008. Ignore it, he warned, and Iraq would devolve into sectarian conflict that could destabilize the whole region. The Bush administration chose to ignore Biden. Now, eight years later, the vice president’s doom-and-gloom prediction seems more than a little prescient. …

Well, here’s some lovely news emerging from the new Iraq. 17.09 Chemical weapons produced at the Al Muthanna facility, which Isis today seized, are believed to have included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX. Here is the CIA’s file on the complex. QuoteStockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there. The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers contents have yet to be confirmed. These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential blackmarketers. Numerous bunkers, including eleven cruciform shaped bunkers were exploited. Some of the...

President Barack Obama, on Dec. 12, 2011, called Iraq "self-reliant and democratic." He praised that country, calling it a "new Iraq that's determining its own destiny -- a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process." Obama said, "I have no doubt that Iraq can succeed." He campaigned to end the war in Iraq. He did -- at least he ended America's military involvement in the war. He pulled out all the troops, without leaving a residual force behind as we did, for example, in South Korea, where we...

Tragically, all we’ve fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing. - Mitt Romney, “Ideas Summit,” 6/13/2014 All we fought for in Iraq. All we fought for in Iraq is on the cusp of vanishing. That’s what Mitt Romney says. We fought for. We fought for. We. Oh, so it’s we now, is it, Mitt? We. I must have missed you over there, but it was a busy place. We. The guy who helped set up “pro-draft” rallies and yet somehow managed to avoid service in Vietnam is...

VFA-87 Slot Check on board the USS George H. W. Bush.

Like clockwork, the Republican noise machine is blaming Barack Obama for the crisis in Iraq. And like clockwork, they’ve got everything wrong again. The man to blame for what’s happening in Iraq is not President Obama — it’s President Bush. Contrary to Tony Blair’s latest protestations, the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq — under deliberately fraudulent pretenses – had a great deal to do with enabling the current emergence of a Sunni terrorist military power in Iraq, but it goes much deeper than that. The recent success of ISIS — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — is exactly what...

President George W. Bush predicted the current meltdown in Iraq – back in 2007. Bush vetoed a Democratic bill to withdraw troops from Iraq. Via Truth Revolt: I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now. To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven...

Six years in, Barack Obama is still battling a Bush hangover. The rising chaos in Iraq — and the blame game over who’s responsible — are the latest reminders that halfway through his own second term, he’s still often more consumed by dealing with the legacy of President George W. Bush than building his own. Obama supporters see a president who found himself so deep in so many holes from his very first day in office that cleaning up the aftermath of the previous eight years was going to take at least eight of his own: getting out of Iraq...

In 2007, President George W. Bush warned that if America withdrew prematurely from Iraq, American troops would eventually have to return: To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready … would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that...

<p>A helicopter jump might not have been the most special part of Former President George H.W. Bush's birthday on  Thursday.</p>

The explosion of bloodshed in Iraq has created the temptation for many to revisit their support for or opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and to ascribe blame for the recent surge in violence to their preferred boogieman. Not all have succumbed to the enticing lure of nostalgia. Not even consistent Iraq War and George W. Bush critic Fareed Zakaria allowed himself himself to take a swipe at the former commander-in-chief for looming over the present crisis. Appearing on CNN on Thursday, Zakaria blamed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for undoing what he said was the good accomplished...

Former President George H.W. Bush can no longer use his legs, but he didn't let that stop him from keeping a vow he made five years ago: to jump from an aircraft on his 90th birthday, which is Thursday. Continue reading Former President George H.W. Bush, left, strapped to Sgt. 1st Class Mike Elliott, a retired member of the Army's Golden Knights parachute team, lands on the lawn at St. Anne's Episcopal Church after making a tandem parachute jump near Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. More on this story "It's a wonderful day in Maine - in fact, nice...

Two years ago, George Bush Sr. made a promise that he aimed to keep when he turned 90 years old on Thursday. The 41st president plans to celebrate the milestone by going skydiving one last time, his granddaughter and TODAY contributor Jenna Bush Hager announced on TODAY Thursday.

Tuesday’s defeat of the sitting House majority leader, Eric Cantor, apparently sent a series of “messages,” which we in the pundit world who missed all of the signs that The Shock Heard ’Round the Campaign World was coming, are beginning to interpret. Among the strongest messages: Incumbents beware. To hear some tell it, this message is bipartisan. Because Democrats apparently are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of low turnout midterm elections in districts drawn to be more partisan than they were, which would be an interesting observation if it were actually true. The reality is that in most states, the rates...