I was driving back from lunch with Seattle friends I hadn’t seen regularly since 2003. One of them prodded the other to ask how I felt about President Bush. They’re a west coast/blue state/liberal to moderate group and wondered where I stood.
In the intervening years I went from Bush supporter to apologist to feeling totally disenfranchised. It was the Harriet Miers nomination that pushed me over the edge (he’s gone crazy!), but Bush had long since left the reservation, selling-out conservative principles in a gambit
that lost many within his constituent base.
Alan Greenspan, discussing The Age of Turbulence with Tim Russert this morning, summarized my discontent wonderfully:
MR. RUSSERT: You said this: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Republican?
MR. GREENSPAN: I’m sure he doesn’t like that joke, but if you look at his record compared to what I think appropriate policy ought to be, he’s for free trade, he’s for globalization, he was for welfare reform, fiscal restraint and—true enough, he’s not a Republican. I’m sorry, President Clinton, I didn’t mean to say that. But I must say, I had to follow an awful lot of your particular guidelines and found them very compatible with my own.
[…]
‘My biggest frustration remained the president’s unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending. Not exercising the veto power became a hallmark of the Bush presidency. To my mind, Bush’s collaborate-don’t-confront approach was a major mistake. The Republicans in Congress lost their way. They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither.’”
Who knew that at the end of the Bush presidency that those in the Republican fold would honestly feel Clinton nostalgia?