He’s back.
Former US President George W Bush returns to the political stage this week with a promotional book tour consisting of numerous “virtual conversations” and TV and radio interviews, including a late-night talk show.
The media appearances, focused on immigration reform, will confirm Bush’s unlikely journey, from the insulted architect of the devastating war in Iraq to an older statesman even honored by some liberals. Republican approval has risen since he left office in 2009 and he has been praised by his Democratic successor, Barack Obama.
However, not everyone is comfortable with the rehabilitation of a leader whose “war on terror” has yielded water boom and other forms of torture. They argue that Americans with short memories have become too eager to embrace Bush (74) as a foreign and remote national treasure.
“I hope there will be a setback here, because I think it’s an absolute scandal that humans need to be rehabilitated and become progressive in any way,” said Jackson Lears, a cultural historian.
Lears added: ‘This is a man who works with [vice-president Dick] Cheney, of course, has inflicted more permanent and long-lasting damage on the presidency and the U.S. government system than probably anyone before or since. ”
Bush’s new book, Out of Many, One, fits his new image. The 43rd president painted 43 portraits of immigrants he got to know and wrote their stories. Its purpose, his office says, is to put human faces on the important debate surrounding immigration and the need for reform.
Bush’s publicity flash will be reminiscent of what Obama undertook last November to publish his presidential memoir. It features a virtual conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the immigrant Hollywood actor and former governor of California, hosted by the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Sunday.
There is an opportunity with his daughter, Barbara Bush, via Barnes & Noble and further virtual conversations offered by other bookstores. Media appearances range from an opinion column in the Washington Post newspaper to a three-part CBS interview in which anchor Norah O’Donnell visits Bush and his wife, Laura, on their farm in Texas.
Bush tells O’Donnell that the immigration system was one of the biggest disappointments of his presidency. “I campaigned for immigration reform,” he says. “I made it very clear to the voters that this is something I intended to do.”
But Lears, a history professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey and editor of Raritan Quarterly magazine, finds Bush’s idea of a champion of immigrants as ‘self-parody’.
He said: “It is almost unconditional that he would be celebrated for any human gestures of inclusion and tolerance.”
‘He was a man who wrapped his very narrow nationalism, his chauvinism and militarism in the rhetoric of justice. He was an evangelical Christian and to me it is in many ways more offensive than Trump’s style, which was open, offensive and repulsive. ”
Bush’s broadcast interviews will also include Fox News, National Public Radio, Telemundo and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – a late night show hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel. His NBC counterpart Jimmy Fallon had a setback because he was too soft on Donald Trump and playfully stroked the candidate’s hair a few weeks before the 2016 election.
The promotional tour, and direct intervention on immigration, will seal Bush’s return to the public stage. After Joe Biden’s inauguration, he made a joint TV appearance with Bill Clinton and Obama who introduced the trio as guardians of democracy following Trump’s scorched Earth attack on institutions.
For some, however, it was difficult to reconcile this arrogance with the man who had earlier filed for prosecution for war crimes due to the use of ‘improved interrogation techniques’, or torture, at’ CIA ‘black spots’ in the aftermath of 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks.
Bush’s legacy includes the illegal invasion of Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. He opposed LGBTQ + rights, overturned the response to Hurricane Katrina and presented the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Lears also criticizes Bush for an unconstitutional expansion of the executive that applies today. “This man has committed more impeccable offenses than you can shake a stick for and he is now being celebrated in this thoughtless way,”
‘I see it as another unintended and catastrophic consequence of Trump’s disruption syndrome: the feeling that he was not that bad after all, because he and Laura and Barack and Michelle still love each other. This seems to be the mentality we are dealing with. ”
‘It’s now a huge blind spot and it’s perfect that an airhead like Jimmy Kimmel would take part in this rehabilitation. I can imagine nothing better to indicate the depth to which our public conversation has fallen than what George Bush is celebrating about Jimmy Kimmel. ”
But even many of Bush’s critics have acknowledged some successes of his administration, such as the president’s emergency plan for Aids relief, or Pepfar, a historic global health initiative that has saved or improved millions of lives in Africa. But they object to the way his long list of failures is being whitewashed because at least he is not Trump.
Dan Kovalik, A writer who teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law said, “America is the land of memory loss. This is not a country where people remember what happened yesterday, much less what happened in the Bush years. Because Trump was so bad, at least in terms of his personality, everyone else looks good in comparison. ”