Talking points
Sounding the alarm on Trump
“Neither of them mentioned President Trump by name,” said Peter Baker in The New York Times. But last week, two of his predecessors emerged from political seclusion to deliver a bipartisan rebuke “of the current occupant of the Oval Office.” Barack Obama voiced his own alarm at the current “politics of division” and “fear.” But it was George W. Bush’s withering critique of Trumpism that was the “landmark event,” said Brent Budowsky in TheHill .com. In a powerful speech at the Spirit of Liberty conference, the former Republican president lamented the bigotry and “casual cruelty” of Trumpian discourse, and the way nationalism has been “distorted into nativism.” The 43rd president left no doubt that he believes the 45th is to blame. “When we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed,” Bush said, “it is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”
“For this, Bush has gotten and will get plenty of praise, and deservedly so,” said Paul Waldman in TheWeek.com. But before we start “lionizing” Dubya as a representative of “a nobler age and a nobler GOP,” let’s not forget his own record. Bush dragged the country into a “disastrous war” in Iraq, made “torture the official policy of the U.S.,” exploded the deficit with a massive tax cut for the wealthy, and left the economy in shambles. Trump won partly because he capitalized on Bush’s mistakes, said Reihan Salam in Slate .com. He vowed to avoid costly foreign wars, and his popular economic nationalism was directly fueled by Bush’s decision to pursue open immigration and free trade at the expense of the Rust Belt’s white working class. Put simply, “had there been no Bush, there’d be no Trump.”
Given Trump’s bottomless need for validation, the Bush-Obama joint criticism has to sting, said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com. It’s unprecedented for two former presidents to break the traditional “code of silence” and turn on their club’s newest member—an indication they are deeply alarmed by Trump’s divisive rhetoric and erratic leadership. But will their criticism hurt him politically? Probably not. His base, in fact, may see it as validation. After all, what better endorsement could there be of an antiestablishment campaign targeting Washington elites “than running foul of the two previous presidents from each political party?”