The Good President [continued] -- Missing Bush

Elizabeth Scalia has a nice way of cutting to the core of the situation. By way of explaining why people miss Bush she writes, quoting a friend:

"We knew that he said what he meant, even if we didn’t want to hear it. We knew who he was, even if we didn’t like him. And we never had to wonder whether he liked us. He always did.”

And continues: 

And that is it, in a nutshell. Bush is missable, because we miss having a president whose affection for his country and its people–even the ones who hated him–was never in doubt.

We miss Bush because he never lectured us or harangued us, and when people disagreed with him, they were not immediately called names in an attempt to simply shut up debate. 

....

[B]ecause Bush never hated his opponents, and he never believed the worst of his countrymen; he believed the best. 

Believing the worst of his countrymen sometimes seems to be President Obama’s default mode.

We miss Bush because he believed that Americans are inherently decent and heroic people who would–even in strained situations–bring thoroughly decent and heroic responses to bear.

Read it here.

As I have said many, many times, George W. Bush was a good man, a far better man than his critics, and a good, possibly a great, president. Time will tell how much he will be appreciated. For my part, I consider him to be the best of my lifetime [and I was born during the Roosevelt administration].