Former President George W. Bush owes America an apology for former President Donald Trump — and he'd better deliver it before Election Day, a Washington Post columnist argues.
Political commentator Matt Bai on Wednesday demanded Bush end his silence on the Republican presidential nominee and echo the warnings of conservatives coming from his own daughter and that of his vice president, Dick Cheney (R-WY).
"Bush owes it to the country to condemn Trumpism in this moment because, of all our former leaders, he did the most to create it," Bai wrote. "He ought to take this chance to get right with history, because history will almost certainly get rough with him."
Bai blamed Bush administration policy for the unraveling of the Republican party he argued fueled the radicalization of the conservative media and its activists.
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Bush’s reliance on faulty intelligence to launch a war in Iraq, his widely criticized response to Hurricane Katrina, and the economic collapse fueled by reckless deregulation all contributed to a deep-seated mistrust of American government, Bai argued.
"Trump didn’t spring from nowhere,' Bai wrote. "He was, and is, a vehicle of fury and lost faith. If compassion doesn’t work, then maybe cruelty will. If governing in a democracy means inventing wars and bailing out banks at the expense of soldiers and laid-off workers, then maybe the democratic system itself needs to be demolished."
Bai cast Trump as an opportunistic entertainer — with an instinct for capitalizing on his audience's fear, ignorance and mistrust — and Bush as the retired failure well aware it was he who raised the curtain and focused the spotlight.
"Bush must know on some level, too, the verdict history will render," Bai concludes. "That his failures led us to the brink of dissolution, that from the swamp of his presidency sprang the twin-headed monster of nativism and isolationism."