A rebuke and reminder

George W. Bush — his frat-guy ribbing and nicknames, easy grin and frequent emphases, pretty good Spanish and occasional difficulty with English — hasn’t changed. His country has.

That was clear from the former president’s appearance Thursday to deliver the latest and most powerful rebuke of the current president from within his party. Bush’s critique followed and superseded those of Republican Sens. John McCain and Bob Corker, not just because he once occupied the Oval Office but also in light of his long refusal to take issue with the Democrat who succeeded him there. That should inspire other Republicans to recognize a “unique moment,” as Bush put it, calling for unusual departures from partisanship and protocol.

Bush’s speech did not name President Trump and was more effective for it, drawing attention not to his outsize persona so much as his violation of American, democratic and, indeed, human values.

“We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty,” he said in one unmistakable reference to Trump. “Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions — forgetting the image of God we should see in each other.”

Speaking at an event organized by his institute in New York, Bush referred to his Christian faith and the Civil Rights movement to counter Trump’s appeals to bigotry against Muslim refugees and Latino immigrants. He pointed out that we’re heirs not just to Jefferson and Madison but also to King, calling white supremacy “blasphemy against the American creed.” He thereby evoked a time, not as long ago as it seems, when a Republican president — one whose “war on terror” provoked vigorous and justified opposition — nevertheless embraced immigrants and rejected Islamophobia, even in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and at a time of much more prevalent illegal immigration.

“We need to recall and recover our own identity,” Bush said, defined by ideas rather than by the “soil or blood” of nativism, the same terms McCain used in a speech in Philadelphia two days earlier.

Bush retains another American characteristic in short supply under Trump: optimism. “The American spirit does not say, ‘We shall manage,’ or ‘We shall make the best of it,’ ” he said. “It says, ‘We shall overcome.’ ”

If enough of our leaders and institutions take such stands, we shall.