Words of hope
Bush carries baggage from time as president, but his message of unity is still worth hearing.
Not that we needed more evidence of how deeply divided this country has become, but the reaction last week to former President George W. Bush’s call for unity in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic was illuminating.
Bush, who has remained mostly out of the public eye since leaving office in January 2009, reemerged to narrate a threeminute video as part of “The Call to Unite,” a group that also includes former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and describes itself as “a growing collaborative ... dedicated to addressing universal challenges we can only solve together.”
The message was the opposite of divisive.
“In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God,” Bush says as images of regular folks and a child holding an American flag pass by. “We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise.”
Along with encouraging physical distancing to protect “the elderly and vulnerable among us,” Bush also urged Americans to “remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat” and that “empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery.”
It’s the kind of inspiring, comforting talk that we used to expect from our leaders in times of crisis, tragedy and war. There was Ronald Reagan after the Challenger explosion, Bill Clinton following the Oklahoma City bombing, Barack Obama’s moving words after the Charleston church murders and Bush himself in the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11. They brought us together.
We haven’t seen much of that in our battle against this coronavirus.
Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, all Republicans, have undercut local leaders, mostly Democrats, while President Donald Trump has indulged in similar partisan feuding with state governors.
Mistakes have been made by leaders of both parties, and there’s no doubt that Trump and Abbott have at times made the right calls and said the right thing. But neither has fostered a united effort, and the bickering has sewed public confusion and a lack of focus that will only delay recovery and cost lives.
Instead of endorsing Bush’s uplifting message to bring people together, Trump decided to make it personal, tweeting that he appreciated “the message from former President Bush, but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside? He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!”
Some conservatives piled on Bush with disdain for what they called his appeal to “stupid civility, bipartisan, unity politics.” Yes, we have come to this: Civil, bipartisan outreach is now considered stupid.
And not all the vitriol was coming from the right. Although not from elected officials, a New Republic piece titled “Why Do Democrats Keep Embracing George W. Bush?” channeled general Democratic unease by warning readers not to “turn to the person who was widely considered the worst president in recent memory before Trump came along.”
In a similar vein, “Late Night” host Seth Meyers called Bush’s effort “a lovely video” but said that voters should never forget what the nation’s 43rd president did during his two terms in office.
“Yes, things are bad now,” Meyers said. “But let’s not forget Bush gave us the Iraq War, torture, the financial collapse, the Katrina disaster.”
This is an understandable hurdle for many. Bush dragged the country into war with Iraq under false claims of weapons of mass destruction, authorized torture and abuse under a broad umbrella of the war of terror and was late to respond to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The financial meltdown has many fathers, but Bush was in charge when it happened.
The Texas governor who ran for president in 2000 claiming to be a “uniter, not a divider” left the country more fractured than he found it and will be judged by history for those failures.
Still, his message of unity last week was both important and deeply heartening. It recalled the time after 9/11 when he urged the nation to remember that our fight was against the terrorists who attacked us but not against our “Muslim brothers and sisters.”
We haven’t forgotten his record. It was just good to hear someone “sound presidential” again. Liberals and conservatives alike should welcome his message.