Remember when we thought George W. Bush was the worst president ever?

Twenty years in the past subsequent month, President George W. Bush stood earlier than the United Nations and warned that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a “grave and gathering hazard,” setting the stage for an invasion six months later primarily based on false premises about super-destructive weapons and purported connections to the 9/11 assaults.

The conflict finally killed 4,500 Individuals and greater than 100,000 Iraqis, and price the USA $800 billion, in accordance with the Council on Overseas Relations.

I’ve been interested by Bush’s legacy as a result of I noticed a e-book in a half-price bin at an area bookstore subtitled “How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq” and I noticed that, frankly, nobody cares anymore. No less than not on this nation. An excessive amount of has occurred within the intervening 20 years.

Bear in mind the Bush years? On the time, many individuals thought he was probably the most terrible president ever. I distinctly bear in mind the cowl of Rolling Stone in Might 2006. Bush was drawn sitting on a stool sporting a dunce cap and a silly expression, and the headline requested: “The Worst President in Historical past?”

Democrats felt a particular loathing for this callow scion of an entitled political household, and for his administration’s ethical failings. The embrace of torture, as an example. The offshore jail at Guantanamo the place suspects have been detained (and nonetheless are) with out trial. The pointless conflict with Iraq that battered America’s status all over the world.

These have been the times when Bush was being in comparison with the least profitable presidents in historical past: James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Richard Nixon.

However these days are over. Lately you’re extra prone to hear that Bush is a surprisingly proficient painter, even a captivating dinner companion. He’s a buddy of Michelle Obama’s — “I like him to loss of life,” she mentioned — and if she likes him, why shouldn’t we? His approval rankings have rebounded dramatically, climbing from a torpid 33% favorable when he left workplace to a sturdy 61% favorable in 2018, in accordance with a CNN ballot. For a Republican, he’s beginning to appear refreshingly rational and cheap.

How did that occur?

Properly, a few of it clearly is because of the passage of time, which heals all favorability rankings. Nixon, who was pushed out of workplace in the course of the Watergate scandal, was extra in style by the point he died in 1994 than when he resigned 20 years earlier. Invoice Clinton climbed again from his Lewinsky lows. Individuals neglect their historical past shortly. Adequate unto the day is the evil thereof, because the Bible says.

However the principle factor that occurred, I’m afraid, was that somebody even worse and extra terrifying got here alongside: Donald Trump, a president so totally transgressive that Bush started to look virtually OK within the rearview mirror.

Sure, it was Bush not Trump who signed the Patriot Act into legislation and mishandled Hurricane Katrina and presided over the beginning of Nice Recession and championed the privatization of Social Safety. He was the doofus who extolled Individuals who have been “working exhausting to place meals on your loved ones” and requested “Is your youngsters studying?” after which dared to insist he’d been “misunderestimated.” His insurance policies led to much more deaths than Trump’s did.

However on the finish of the day, there’s a significant distinction in my thoughts between the wrongs perpetrated by Bush and people attributable to Trump, who for my cash actually was the worst president, actually of my lifetime.

Trump wasn’t simply any outdated unhealthy president.

What made Trump unfit wasn’t his insurance policies and even his beliefs, to the extent he had any. It was his character. He’s a dishonest, anti-democratic, twice-impeached demagogue, a corrupt and irresponsible man with out ideas who couldn’t rise above his personal obsession with self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement and a spot at middle stage.

His refusal to just accept the 2020 election outcomes confirmed that Trump has no respect for American establishments or for the rule of legislation.

Bush made loads of errors and his insurance policies did loads of injury (particularly in case you have been, say, a detainee at Abu Ghraib jail). However I by no means believed he would put his personal ambition for energy over the most effective curiosity of Individuals.

In the meantime, the precedence for now and the foreseeable future should be to wrest management of that celebration from Donald Trump’s harmful palms and to disclaim him and his acolytes a path again to energy, as a result of that will be catastrophic for the USA, its status, its prosperity and its peace and safety.

I’m not saying I need to deliver again George W. Bush or anybody like him. I’m simply saying that Donald Trump is a particular case and poses a novel menace.

Nicholas Goldberg is an affiliate editor and Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Occasions. ©2022 Los Angeles Occasions. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.