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.
Bush’s 2000 campaign is largely responsible for mobilizing the evangelical Christian voting block in the US. So in no small way, we have him to thank for the rise of Christian nationalism that we’ve seen over the past 20 years.
I won’t judge him as a person, but there’s no rehabilitation possible for his presidency.
He also actively rejected reality in his Presidency, making a direct line ( with a Sharpie, no doubt) to today’s “alternative facts”. He wasn’t the first politician to lie, of course, nor to make people believe the lies. But his administration was totally open about what they were doing, and how it’s all OK.
There’s a famous article Ron Suskind wrote for the NYT Magazine 20 years ago, summarized here. The key bit is this quote from an anonymous Bush WH official widely rumored to be Karl Rove:
Let’s not forget Reagan. GOP has been racing to the bottom for decades and they’re getting close now