George W. keeps a low profile
Former U.S. president’s absence from race reflects candidates’ reticence to be associated with him
WASHINGTON – First Barbara Bush, then Jeb Bush and now George H.W. Bush has endorsed Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination.
But George W. Bush is still nowhere to be found in the 2012 campaign – and that’s likely just as well as far as Romney is concerned.
The 43rd U.S. president, whose foreign and domestic policies shaped the GOP in the first decade of this century, has deliberately kept a low profile throughout the long Republican primary season.
The decision is in keeping with the former president’s own desire to remove himself almost completely from the political fray since leaving office in early 2009.
But Bush’s almost total absence from active GOP politics also reflects a lingering discomfort among the party establishment, presidential candidates and grassroots members about being associated too closely with the most recent Republican occupant of the White House.
His name is never uttered in campaign speeches or Republican debates.
His legacy is rarely invoked to burnish Republican arguments for lower taxes or fewer government regulations, though those two issues have defined the party during and after the Bush era.
“Right now, people want to be Reagan Republicans,” said John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
“People aren’t quite ready to be Bush Republicans. The bottom line is, George W. Bush left office very unpopular.
“During the course of the presidential campaign in 2008, president Bush hit the lowest rate of approval that any president has ever had ... People running (in 2012) just aren’t going to wrap themselves around the Bush mantle.”
The questions about when, and if, George W. Bush will bestow his blessing on Romney resurfaced on Thursday as his father, George H.W. Bush, officially endorsed the former Massachusetts governor during a meeting in Houston.
A similar endorsement f rom George W. Bush would certainly add to the sense of inevitability about Romney’s nomination.
But it also would be awkward for Romney.
Among the most unpopular presidents in history when he left office in 2009, Bush remains disliked among Tea Party Republicans for his support of the Wall St. bank bailout in the fall of 2008.
Fiscal conservatives, meantime, bemoan the trillion-dollar deficits that began under Bush’s watch, while Republican libertarians criticize him for post-9/11 security policies and the invasion of Iraq.
A Cnn/opinion Research poll this week found 56 per cent of voters say Bush and the GOP were responsible for America’s economic problems, compared to 29 per cent who blame President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
“I think the consensus opinion within the Republican establishment is that the less Bush says, the better during the campaign,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where Bush is building his presidential library.
“I think George W. Bush wants to be quiet and wants to be out of the limelight, and the Romney campaign, I imagine, sees little upside in drawing him out.”
Most recently, Bush has been busy with his eponymous political institute. This week he unveiled an online Freedom Collection video highlighting the stories of prominent democracy activists around the world.
“I think that George W. Bush is still largely shell-shocked from his experience as president,” said Jillson.
“As he left the presidency, we were bogged down in two wars of nearly a decade’s length at that point, and the economy was in collapse. Whatever his leading principles in domestic economics or foreign policy were, they were in disarray if not in disrepute.”
Certainly, Romney has made little effort to burnish Bush’s reputation.
He has frequently criticized GOP rival Rick Santorum for supporting Bush’s No Child Left Behind education legislation and opposed immigration reform policies that the former president championed.
The other Republican candidates – notably Santorum and Newt Gin- grich – have tried to cast themselves as torchbearers for Reagan’s legacy.
On Thursday, Santorum campaigned at a jelly bean factory in California. Reagan’s favourite treat was jelly beans.
Geer said he believes that, sooner or later, Republicans will give George W. Bush his due.
While the 2008 Troubled Assets Relief Program was unpopular with conservatives, Bush “will get high marks in the long run because of it,” he said.
“Bush’s conclusion is that he didn’t want to go down as the next Herbert Hoover.”
Geer said he also expects Bush will be given a prominent speaking slot at the Republican convention this August in Tampa, and that he’ll receive a warm reception.
“People weren’t battling for the mantle of Ronald Reagan as much in 1992 and 1996 as much as they are now,” Geer said.
“It just takes distance to be able to judge people in a better light.”