I don't often find myself pining away for the days of George W. Bush's administration. For those of us with conservative politics, it seems like every success of those years was met with an equally disappointing failure.
- The inspiring leadership seen in the days following 9/11 - GOOD. The ham-fisted handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath – BAD.
- The courageous effort to reform Social Security by allowing workers to invest a portion of their own contributions – GOOD. The boneheaded nationalizing of education policy through the so-called No Child Left Behind Act – BAD.
- The $1.3 trillion tax cut program – GOOD. The Bill of Rights-averse "Patriot Act" – BAD.
- The incentivizing of private charity and faith-based initiatives – GOOD. The smoldering garbage that was the Bush "comprehensive immigration reform" package – BAD.
- The appointment of Justice Samuel Alito – GOOD. The appointment of Chief Justice John Roberts – BAD.
And the list goes on.
Still, there is an enduring legacy of George W. Bush that couldn't help but come flooding back into my memory as I watched our current president's performance as 13 U.S. service members who were killed by terrorists taking advantage of our country's bungled exit of Afghanistan returned home.
It was far more than Biden's repeated tacky and inappropriate checking of his watch during the dignified transfer ceremony. While someone in as scrutinized a position as president has to know that the eyes of a mourning country are on him in those moments, it's not unreasonable to cut the man a little slack. It's far more likely that Biden's watch check was either a nervous tick, an act of unintentional insensitivity from someone whose mind is not functioning clearly, or perhaps the president was worrying about having time to make his meetings with the families of the deceased soldiers.
But it was actually the reports of those very meetings, the private exchanges with the fallen warriors' loved ones, that make me nostalgic for former President Bush. Consider this account from the explicitly pro-Biden Washington Post:
It's true that some people just have a gift for empathy while others are uncomfortable and awkward. But not having the wherewithal to recognize that it is extraordinarily poor form to tell a grieving father who just lost his son in a preventable terror attack that in many ways is tied directly to your own incompetent planning, that you understand what he's going through because your son died of cancer – well, that's just next-level callousness.
And that's where I miss George W. Bush. Here's one of the most enduring accounts (even if largely unknown) of the Bush years, as told by former press secretary Dana Perino:
When it came to voting for Joe Biden in 2020, one of the most often-cited justifications given by people who had every reason to know better was this: he's a decent man with a level of empathy that's been lacking for four years.
Based on recent days, it seems clear that even at age 78, he has much to learn in that regard.
