Maureen Dowd: Escape From Bushworld
When Poppy Bush ran against Bill Clinton, he simply assumed that the public would not choose a draft-dodging womanizer over him. “His ambient reality was that a president was above all a figure of dignity and decorum,” Bush senior biographer Jon Meacham said. “Clinton went on Arsenio Hall. Bush 41 probably thought Arsenio Hall was a building at Andover.”
.. Despite all the talk about civility, the Bushes threw out the red meat whenever they had to, from Lee Atwater and Willie Horton in ’88 to W.’s supporters whispering in 2000 that John McCain came home from Hanoi with snakes in his head, to the W. 2004 campaign strategy of encouraging gay marriage ballot initiatives to rile up the evangelicals, to Jeb spending a fortune on ads this winter eviscerating the character of the man he deemed the disloyal protégé, Marco Rubio.
.. Trump stunned everyone by pointing out the obvious: W. and Condi were not on the ball before 9/11, when W. was mountain-biking and ignoring memos headlined, as Bill Maher drily put it, “Osama bin Laden is standing right behind you.” Then, after 9/11, they played right into Osama’s recruiting plans by invading and occupying two Muslim countries, instead of simply going after the guilty party, as W. had promised to do when he yelled through the bullhorn at ground zero.
.. The country is now aflame with anger and disgust about politicians and bankers who conned trusting Americans and never got punished for it. That fury has led to the rise of wildly improbable candidates in both parties. As the Bush dynasty falls, it must watch in horror knowing that it is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.