They never even called him by his name
by Tom Sullivan
Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama spoke publicly yesterday in rare appearances since leaving office. Both commented on the toxic nature of American politics under our sitting president. But as David Allan Coe famously sang, they never even called him by his name.
The Washington Post reports:
“We’ve seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty,” Bush said during a 16-minute address at “The Spirit of Liberty” event. “Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone and provides permission for cruelty and bigotry. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.”
[…]
The scene was remarkable in part because Bush has largely remained out of the political spotlight since leaving office amid low popularity in 2009 and had made a point not to criticize or second-guess his Democratic successor, Barack Obama. Just hours after Bush completed his speech, Obama also made a veiled critique of the Trump era, calling on Democrats at a New Jersey campaign event to “send a message to the world that we are rejecting a politics of division, we are rejecting a politics of fear.”
Bush wasn’t done. “Bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed,” he said. The Bush family is not fond of the sitting president, and neither George W. Bush nor his father voted for him, the New York Times observes.
On the stump again for Democratic candidates, Obama was less direct.
“”If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later,” Obama told a campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia for Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. At a rally earlier in New Jersey for gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy, Obama told the crowd:
“Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed,” Obama said. “That’s folks looking 50 years back. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century.”
The past presidents’ comments follow on the heels of those by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) Monday at a ceremony where he received the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. His target was clear, although McCain too never even called the sitting president by name:
“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
Those words got McCain on the sitting president’s fighting side. He warned, “… people have to be careful because at some point I fight back,” he told a talk show. “But at some point I fight back, and it won’t be pretty.”
Good luck with trying to intimidate people who won’t be, Mr. President. Maybe that’s why he’s so sensitive about the size of his “hands.” He’s shooting blanks.
* * * * * * * *
Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.