Recently, Mr. Bush has been allowed to rehabilitate his image, particularly on Reddit. My belief is that this is happening because of younger generations commenting in a contrarian way on his presidency, perhaps some of which is influenced by the absolute state of the Republican Party today.

For most of those of us who lived through his presidency, it was always clear that Bush was a religious and sexual bigot, but not a racial one.

It was always clear that the evidence for invading Iraq was scant at best. The war was protested by the biggest international collaboration of protesters ever.

Days after 9/11, there were plenty of us ACLU types decrying the USA PATRIOT Act. Many of us felt that Pelosi, Clinton, etc. had few inviolable beliefs about civil rights at that time. Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders voted against it.

Bush was the worst possible president, so I had thought.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    3 months ago

    There’s a fair amount of nostalgia for him simply because of the next Republican president. Trump is such a fucking train wreck he makes W look like a buffoon rather than someone with actual malicious intent. Especially for Gen Z folks I think they can’t fully remember just how awful civil liberties were eroded under him… he was an awful president, Trump is certainly worse, but he was a real piece of shit. Lastly, he did get one of the biggest approval spikes in recent history due to 9/11.

    Also, this is an aside, but to the point of “the candidates are so old” - Trump is actually like a month older than W.