MILWAUKEE – Many Republican convention delegates like to salute the heritage of their party, but few of them these days talk about the next-to-last GOP president, George W. Bush.
And that suits Bush just fine.
For while Bush still keeps up with politics – including the resurgence of Republican successor and fervent critic Donald Trump – he doesn’t like to talk about it publicly.
In paid private speeches, the long-retired 43rd president has been known to joke that both Trump and President Joe Biden are too old for the demands of the office.
“I’m younger than both of the candidates, and I’m too old,” Bush has said in at least one speech, according to a witness who requested anonymity.
Just don’t expect Bush, who turned 78 earlier this month, to say this kind of thing out loud – not even about Trump, the volatile businessman who built his political career in part by trashing the legacy of the Bush dynasty
While people often call on Bush to speak out against Trump and the Republican Party he has remade in his own image, friends and associates said he is standing by his pledge not to critique other presidents and political leaders.
“The job of the president is very hard to begin with,” Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary for Bush, told USA TODAY. “He doesn’t want to make it harder for anyone, friend or foe.”
“It’s very old school,” Fleischer added. “It’s very gracious. It’s very Bush.”
It also has public benefits for the former president – his approval ratings have more than doubled since he left office more than 15 years ago.
Bush has made the rare exceptions on his public comment policy, most recently a statement with former First Lady Laura Bush after last Saturday’s assassination attempt against Trump.
“Laura and I are grateful that President Trump is safe following the cowardly attack on his life,” Bush said. “And we commend the men and women of the Secret Service for their speedy response.”
‘He’s turned the page’
Since leaving office on Jan. 20, 2009, Bush has made his mark as a book author, the head of an institute based in Dallas, and even as a portrait painter – but not a political pundit.
“He’s turned the page,” said Margaret Spellings, a long-time friend who served as Education Secretary during the Bush administration. “He’s interested and he’s connected and he’s informed – but he’s moved on.”
And vice-versa.
When Republican conventioneers gather in Milwaukee next week to nominate Trump for a third time, the name of George W. Bush may never be heard.
Privately, Bush still follows current events. He gives speeches. He paints. Over the past decade-and-a-half, Bush has hosted dozens of fundraisers for favored Republican candidates, all behind closed doors.
Publicly: not much. Instead, Bush has pursued a unique path for an ex-president, all but walking away from political life. This from the grandson of a U.S. senator and the son of a president, the scion of an historic political family.
A few dust-ups with Trump
Bush has occasionally tangled with Trump, but it hasn’t amounted to much.
In February of 2016, the former president stumped for younger brother Jeb Bush in his faltering Republican primary campaign against the first-time candidate Trump. Bush praised his sibling’s qualifications, drawing implicit contrasts with Trump by talking about “faith that reveals itself through good works, not loud words.”
That became a part-time pattern after Trump became president. Bush would not call out Trump by name, but made clear he didn’t like his divisive style, and sometimes getting blowback from Trump in process.
After Trump’s inaugural address in 2017 – the speech in which the new president talked about American “carnage” – Bush nor his aides disputed his reported reaction: “That was some weird s—.”
During a 2021 ceremony in Pennsylvania to mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, Bush made a point of saying that “so much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment.”
Trump, who has often attacked Bush over the invasion of Iraq, said his GOP predecessor “shouldn’t be lecturing us about anything.” He added that “the World Trade Center came down during his watch.”
Bush did leave office with very low approval ratings, sometimes well below 40%, in the wake of criticism of the Iraq war and the financial crisis of 2008. They’ve since jumped above 60%.
After the attempted insurrection by Trump loyalists on Jan. 6, 2021, Bush issued a statement saying that he and Laura Bush found it “a sickening and heartbreaking sight.”
While, again, not citing Trump by name, Bush added: “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic – not our democratic republic.”
In describing Bush’s approach, Fleischer said: “He doesn’t attack, but he knows how to roll his eyes at things he doesn’t like.”
‘Could you do the country a big favor’
Bush has remained quiet during Trump’s re-emergence and march toward the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He did not comment on the four sets of indictments against Trump, nor the hush money trial that made him the first convicted felon to seek the presidency from a major party.
Bush has also resisted a steady string of entreaties for him to “say something.”
On July 6, Bush’s birthday, anti-Trump lawyer George Conway used the social media site X to send a unique salutation: “Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Could you do the country a big favor and urge it not to elect a certain convicted felon and psychopath whom I assume you detest as much as the rest of us? Thanks in advance!”
Friends and associates said there’s no real reason for Bush to engage.
For one thing, Bush is a Republican, and believes that a food fight with Trump would only help the Democrats, they said. Bush probably wouldn’t gain much by it either.
Bush also feels, whatever the provocation, he owes Trump the same respect as all his other presidential colleagues.
“He just doesn’t want to be in the game any more,” said presidential historian Mark Updegrove, who pointed out that Bush uses the same phrase as Trump to describe the political environment: Swamp.
Said Updegrove: “When I spoke to Bush shortly after he left the presidency, he said, ‘the scene is a swamp out there right now, and I don’t want to get in the swamp.’ … Since then it’s only gotten swampier.”
Updegrove, author of “The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush,” said Trump-type Republicans wouldn’t respond to Bush criticism anyway.
“His influence in the party has waned,” he said. “It’s an entirely different party.”
Bush still has a public policy life
Friends and associates said Bush has only withdrawn, mostly, from political life – not public life.
The former president does speak out frequently on policy issues, mostly through his work with the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It houses the Bush Institute, a nonpartisan policy organization, as well as his presidential museum.
The former president and his wife appear at events devoted to subjects that animated his presidency, including education, immigration, and help for veterans and military families. Another frequent topic is “strengthening democracy, and advancing free societies.”
“What he’s wanted to do is to have the institute and the center focus on the issues that were important to him and Mrs. Bush when they were in Washington,” said David J. Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute.
That also means the institute likes to avoid politics as much as possible, especially in these volatile times.
“A lot of things get very polarized very quickly,” Kramer said.
Author, painter
Since leaving office, Bush has performed a more tradition role for former presidents: Book author.
A memoir of his White House years, “Decision Points,” came out in 2010. He also wrote a short biography of President George H.W. Bush entitled “41: A Portrait of My Father,” published in 2014.
The younger Bush has also pursued a non-traditional pastime: Painting. Two books of portrait paintings have touched on Bush-era issues, veterans and migrants.
“Portraits in Courage: A Commander-in-Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors,” came out in 2017. Then came “Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants,” published in 2021.
None of these books include the word “Trump.”
A little politics – in private
Bush also periodically comments on the news. After a private event in October, his office agreed to publicize his remarks about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“Don’t be surprised if Israel takes whatever actions necessary to defend herself,” Bush said at the event moderated by Updegrove. “It’s going to be ugly for a while.”
Over the years, Bush has hosted dozens of fundraisers for favored Republican candidates. This year’s list has included Republican Senate candidates Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Larry Hogan of Maryland. He also has an upcoming event for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who faces her next reelection in 2026 and opted to skip this week’s RNC in Milwaukee to attend, among others, an event honoring the retiring director of her state’s Potato Board.
An event in 2021 drew attention from Trump, as Bush headlined a fundraiser for Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a GOP member of the congressional committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. She is also the daughter of Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, who has criticized Trump several times over the years.
“Bush is the one who got us into the quicksand of the Middle East,” Trump said in a statement that criticized the fundraiser.
Bush did not respond.
Higher approval
Bush’s reticence to inject himself into politics has paid off in terms of public opinion.
His approval ratings are consistently more than 60%, well above what they were in his later years as president, noted Jared Cohen, author of “Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search For Purpose Beyond the White House.”
In the book – which is sold at the Bush museum bookstore – Cohen noted that Bush has prospered with public opinion even though his Republican successor, Trump, rejected many of his policies (and Democrats never approved him in the first place).
“He moved on from politics, and in an age when everything is political, that’s earned him respect.” Cohen said.
For his part, Bush still likes to joke that historians are still debating aspects of “the first George W” – George Washington.
“Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I’m comfortable with the fact that I won’t be around to hear it,” Bush wrote in the epilogue of his memoir. “That’s a decision point only history will reach.”
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