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Enough time has gone by so now right wing bloggers and pundits will try to rewrite George Bush's disasterous presidency. Jennifer Rubin, the Benghazite of the Washington Post--who sometimes reminds me of a conservative comic--omits a few key moments in history to make believe he really wasn't that bad after all in her piece titled, Bush Is Back:

It took less than 4 1/2 years of the Obama presidency for President George W. Bush to mount his comeback. While doing absolutely nothing on his own behalf (he’s been the most silent ex-president in my lifetime), his approval is up to 47 percent according to The Post/ABC poll. That’s up 14 points from his final poll in office. For comparison’s sake President Obama’s RCP average is a tad over 49 percent.

Why the shift? Aside from the “memories fade” point, many of his supposed failures are mild compared to the current president (e.g. spending, debt). Unlike Obama’s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11. People do remember the big stuff — rallying the country after the Twin Towers attack, 7 1/2 years of job growth and prosperity, millions of people saved from AIDS in Africa, a good faith try for immigration reform, education reform and a clear moral compass.

And, it turned out that the triumvirate of Iraq-Iran-North Korea really was the Axis of Evil. Unlike the current president, who’s played politics with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, President Bush took huge political risks to back the surge in Iraq, which worked. He is responsible for one of the most popular and fiscally sober entitlement plans, Medicare Part D. He did not foist a grandiose unpopular and exorbitant program like Obamacare on the public. And then there were his tax cuts, 99 percent of which were approved by the most liberal president in history. Even the TARP program, reviled by conservatives, can be credited with helping to calm the markets and stabilize financial institutions.

Apparently, 9/11 actually happening under George Bush doesn't count to Rubin as not protecting America from terrorist attacks. Yes, she went there. She's part of a long line of new Bush 9/11 deniers. And not a mention about Bush starting a tragic war against Iraq based on lies and deceptions which cost the US military thousands of lost lives and many more disabled vets as well as killing thousands of innocent civilians.

Now let's get to his tax cuts and his unpaid wars, which accounted for a great deal of the federal debt that conservatives whine about all day long. The only reason Bush's economy survived as long as it did was because of the criminal mortgage practices that pumped money into the housing bubble throughout the country until it collapsed, putting most of the world at risk of financial ruin. Millions of people lost their homes to the crash and all their worldy belongings, along with millions more without jobs while the financial barons pocketed nice little bonuses. But those who lost most are the ones now considered moochers by the conservative class of which she is a part. But see, in Rubinland, Bush is just so wonderful because he proposed the TARP bailout. Hahaha.

Hey, he’s not so bad! In fact, to some degree his qualities and accomplishments were taken for granted. Only when we see a robotic, cold president like Obama do we remember fondly the tender, tearful love of country Bush often conveyed and the steely anger directed at our enemies.

She praises Bush because he used the Glenn Beck/Boehner tears of a clown routine to make us believe he loves our freedoms so very much. I can't write any more on this, but some of our friends can.

Lawyers, Guns & Money write:

Shorter Designated Republican Stenographer Jennifer Rubin: “George Bush was the greatest. With notably rare exceptions, there were no terrorist attacks on the American homeland when George W. Bush was president. And hundreds of thousands dead and trillions of dollars spent attacking a country that posed no threat whatsoever to the United States is nothing compared to the horrors of the deficit. And don’t kid yourself, George W. Bush hated deficits. You think there would be unfunded wars or corporate boondoggles* with him in the White House? Please.” *Verbatim Jen Rubin: “He is responsible for one of the most popular and fiscally sober entitlement plans, Medicare Part D.” I swear. This is performance art, right? Almost every line could be a “verbatim” bit.

An honorable mention of quackery goes to C&L Idiot Pundit Ron Fournier for fawning all over Bush because he was nice to him in his post called: Go Ahead, Admit It: George W. Bush Is a Good Man

Go read and find out why we're all saps for not understanding what a great guy Bush was.

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Joe Scarborough did a segment back in 2006 on the former Republican president by asking an obvious question at the time. Is Bush an Idiot?

Scarborough: I remember Eisenhower, hearing how stupid Eisenhower was, which, of course, the guy was about as shrewd and calculated as you could be. And now they‘re saying that about George Bush, but I think George Bush is in a league by himself.

Well, it's almost seven years later and the Dallas Morning News interviewed president George W. Bush as his new Presidential Center prepares to open. Will he say he screwed up by going to war with Iraq?

Asked what he might have done differently — with the benefit of hindsight — Bush listed the same regrets he mentioned upon leaving the White House: the failure to overhaul Social Security and immigration policy. But he also noted that his presidency was shaped by the unexpected, such as the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. “Much of my presidency was defined by things that you didn’t necessarily want to have happen,” he said.

Bush defended his handling of the economy, recalling that he came into office during a recession, albeit a modest one compared with the financial crisis near the end of his term. He touted his tax cuts as the “most sustaining” and “fairest” way to boost economic growth. Though he described the Wall Street bailout as a “painful decision,” he said it had to be done to break the country’s “psychological gridlock” after the financial meltdown. He likewise reiterated his support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying that he’s “confident the decisions were made the right way.”

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(A reporter asks Henry Paulson, 'what blame the Bush administration should take' over the financial meltdown on 09/15/08)

Ross Douthat of the NY Times makes the case that Bush's Iraq war failures brought on the resurgence of liberals in his newest op-ed:

History is too contingent to say that had there been no Iraq invasion in 2003, there would be no Democratic majority in 2012. (It’s easy enough to imagine counterfactuals that might have put Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.) But the Democratic majority that we do have is a majority that the Iraq war created: its energy and strategies, its leadership and policy goals, and even its cultural advantages were forged in the backlash against George W. Bush’s Middle East policies.

All those now-apologetic liberals who supported the war in 2003 are a big part of this story, because without their hawkishness there would have been no antiwar rebellion on the left — no Michael Moore and Howard Dean, no Daily Kos and all its “netroots” imitators.This rebellion divided the Democrats, but it also energized them.

His piece goes on to name many other Bush failures which he says led us to the Obama Era. Not all of his points are invalid---I agree that the Iraq war galvanized the left for sure, but he either carelessly or deliberately left out a very important failure that happened under Bush's watch, can you see it?

The Bush White House’s “compassionate conservatism” was the last major Republican attempt to claim the political center — to balance traditional conservative goals on taxes and entitlement reform with more bipartisan appeals on education, health care, immigration and poverty. And as long as the Republican Party was successfully hovering near the middle, the Democrats had to hover there as well.

But once Bush’s foreign policy credibility collapsed, his domestic political capital collapsed as well: moderates stopped working with him, conservatives rebelled, and the White House’s planned second-term agenda — Social Security reform, tax and health care reform, immigration overhaul — never happened.

This collapse, and the Republican Party’s failure to recover from it, enabled the Democrats to not only seize the center but push it leftward, and advance far bolder proposals than either Al Gore or John Kerry had dared to offer. The Iraq war didn’t just make Obama possible — it made Obamacare possible as well.

He's omitting a key ingredient of Bush's epic failure scope----the global financial meltdown. Many conservatives do the same thing. To refresh Ross's memory, McCain took the lead in the 2008 general election after he named Sarah Palin to the ticket on Aug. 29, 2008. On August 30th, Obama had an eight point lead 50-42 in the Gallup poll and on September 1, the RNC started their convention. On September 2, the lead was cut to four points and then after Sarah Palin gave her speech on September 3rd, the next day the McCain ticket jumped out to a three point lead. A five point turnaround overnight. This lead continued until news started to leak out that the US economy was in dire straits. For McCain to take the lead in September for ten straight days that late in an election cycle was not an easy feat to accomplish especially since as Douthat asserts---George Bush had screwed the pooch really bad. If not for the financial collapse would McCain and Palin have been able to steal the 2008 election away from Obama and Biden? I know I was very nervous during those ten days. I met up with Paul Krugman after the election was over for a lunch in Santa Monica and he voiced some of the same thoughts I had about that period of time also.

Why did Ross fail to include the $700 billion ask by Henry Paulson as a major failure of the Bush administration? Might it be that the only thing the GOP has left to hang its hat on is the economy and conservatives will do anything they can to omit that from the lexicon of George Bush?

Michael Moore describes Bush's seven minute fail pretty accurately in the above video. You've probably heard and seen that Bush didn't show up for the Ground Zero memorial today even after Obama invited him:

The White House says Obama's trip will include a private meeting with family members of 9/11 victims, a meeting with first responders that will be open to some news coverage, and a wreath-laying at the 9/11 memorial. Obama invited former President George W. Bush to accompany him, but Bush declined.

"President Bush will not be in attendance on Thursday," The New York Times quoted his spokesman David Sherzer as saying. "He appreciated the invite, but has chosen in his post-presidency to remain largely out of the spotlight. He continues to celebrate with Americans this important victory in the war on terror."

Bush, whose presidency was defined by the al-Qaida-led Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has largely maintained a low public profile since leaving office.

It's not surprising that Bush wouldn't want to be there since he had a chance to get Bin Laden at Tora Bora, but didn't even though those actions contradicted his bullhorn speech.

Digby writes:

Yes. Actually it's quite easy to picture a petulant and jealous Junior Bush not wanting to be part of a ceremony that highlights his failure to achieve his most cherished desire.
--
Bush froze in the spotlight when told the United States was under attack and that 's the equivalent of deliberate decision making in a military operation. But hey, you can't blame them. When you have to rely on a second grader's interpretation of events you know you're reaching --- that and a bullhorn is all they've got left of their mighty, macho warrior president and it's got to hurt. They really care about that crap.

Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine have gone to great lengths to try and rehabilitate Bush's image after those seven minutes. Now, the wingnuts are pouncing on a news report out by the New York Daily News' Thomas DeFrank: Little Boy George didn't go today because he had a hissy fit.

Little Green Footballs:

This, of course, is delicious red meat for people like Jim “Dim” Hoft (aka “Gateway Pundit”): Bush Wises Up… Won’t Be Prop For Obama’s Victory Lap | The Gateway Pundit

DERPBush wises up.
President Obama was wrong on waterboarding, renditions, the Iraq War, the Surge, Gitmo, military tribunals, and the Patriot Act. Now he wants to take full credit for getting Osama Bin Laden and wants to use George W. Bush as a prop.
Bush ain’t going for it.

Bush policies kept America safe and led us to Osama Bin Laden. (History.com)

The former president feels Obama is ignoring the Bush Administration’s role in the strike on the Osama Bin Laden compound. He won’t be a prop for Obama at Ground Zero today.

There’s just one teensy problem with this idiots’ narrative.

It’s completely false: Wife: Bush skips 9/11 NY event to keep low profile.

Laura Bush told The Associated Press on Thursday that she and her husband were out to dinner Sunday night when they received word that Obama wanted to speak with him. The former president went home to take the call informing him that U.S. military forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a raid of his compound in Pakistan, Laura Bush said.

The former first lady told the AP that her husband declined an invitation to attend Thursday’s event in New York because “that’s for President Obama to do at this point.”

She said she and her husband both felt great pride for military and intelligence personnel after hearing the news.

“It was risky and it was dangerous for our members of the military,” Laura Bush said at a Dallas elementary school where she announced grants from her foundation for school libraries.

I guess they don't believe the former First Lady.

As we are witnessing, the Beltway media are pushing the theme of that we need to cut, cut, cut, so that our national debt can be lowered. They call this "shared sacrifice" -- though it's clear that they won't be sharing in the sacrifice. The rest of us will.

This is a common assumption that news pundits are weaving into their narratives every day. The Democrats and President Obama have also embraced this idea and shifted the goal posts to the right of center. Austerity rules, even though it's proved to be anything but effective. If we look at what's happening in the UK now, and remember what happened under FDR when the deficit hawks stepped in to curtail the federal government, it's clear that this nonsensical approach to budget writing just makes economic recovery regress.

To many of us watching the wealthy thrive in this economy while the working class struggles is very frustrating. I'm starting to finally hear some pundits question the wisdom of why Republicans refuse tax increases and instead push for more tax breaks for the rich at this time when they are already wealthy. Bob Schieffer asked Paul Ryan that yesterday on FTN.

There is one thing certain, though: The Bush budgets, and especially the tax cuts that accompanied them, caused catastrophic harm to our country and to the world. Paul Ryan wants to continue the work that Bush, Cheney and Rove started. Well, here's a flashback to what George Bush told America in 2001.

Via Think Progress:

Indeed, the nation’s $14 trillion debt is largely a result of “the cost of two wars, a runaway defense budget, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, taxes on the richest Americans being the lowest in a generation, and a recession caused by the lack of regulation of Wall Street.” The Bush administration followed wars with huge regressive tax cuts and an unpaid for prescription drug benefit.

But in his first major address to Congress, President George W. Bush promised that his “responsible” budget would pay off the national debt in ten years:

My budget has funded a responsible increase in our ongoing operations. It has funded our Nation’s important priorities. It has protected Social Security and Medicare. And our surpluses are big enough that there is still money left over.

Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.

Of course, the opposite occurred, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion. In fact, conservatives argued in 2001 that the very existence of a budget surplus was a valid reason to enact large, regressive tax cuts. But this is precisely what happens when you have an administration that believes “deficits don’t matter.”

So here we are. Nothing that Bush said came true in 2001 -- except the opposite. Bush's name is never mentioned by the MSM because the Beltway thinks it's not cool to blame him any longer. When you destroy a house and start from scratch you have to know why your house was destroyed in the first place and take precautions to never so it doesn't happen again. Apparently reminding the American people that conservative policies led us into ruin is not newsworthy anymore.

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George Bush has infuriated the Tea Party faction of the GOP when he spoke out January 24 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas against what he perceives is a historic shift back to the olden days of isolationism, protectionism and its demon-seed hellspawn, Nativism.

Laura Ingraham filled in for O'Reilly and was furious at the president she once held so dear to her heart.

Ingraham: Last November President Bush remarked that the Tea Party is good for the country. But why did he attack a key priority for many Tea Partiers, namely, getting our borders under control and preventing mass amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Bush: What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some 'isms' that occasionally pop up -- pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was -- there was an American first policy that said who cares what happens in Europe?...And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and Nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period."

Ingraham: Now as someone who was at the forefront in opposing the 2006 Bush immigration reform effort, I was saddened, but not all that surprised by the President's insulting characterization.... To say that it's all about hostility to foreigners is ludicrous.

To back up her position she uses a Dallas Tea Party poll which showed over 95% in favor of Arizona's hateful SB1070 law. I guess that's irrefutable proof that Conservative opposition towards immigration reform is anything but Nativism, right? Ingraham uses the phony Conservative claim that this is all about "the rule of law" as a crutch to back up her Nativist position on immigration. Jeb Bush also got under her skin when he spoke out against Republicans and called their opposition "wrong and stupid." Laura wasn't happy being tag teamed by the Bush Brothers.

Ingraham: Now that's an interesting way to court future GOP voters given their overwhelming opposition to amnesty, Gov. Bush. maybe President Bush was right. We are suffering from an outbreak of ism's. Elitism comes to mind.

Calling George and Jeb Bush 'elitists' are fightin' words, young lady, since that's the exact opposite of how she viewed them when they were in office. Oh, how times have changed -- because here I am, writing about something that I agree with George Bush on, and here Laura Ingraham is, attacking the president she once defended to the hilt. That's how far right the GOP has moved.

Paul Krugman has been on fire and he's not only taking names, but he's beating back the myths.

First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.

Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.

It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally...read on

He's beating back the people whose policies helped destroy the world's economy when George W. Bush was President. In another column called When Zombies Win, he then highlights the fact that all the people responsible for the meltdown in the first place haven't been shunned, but instead are leading the charge to only make things worse. Simply f*&king amazing.

There was a reason the GOP kept Bush off the airwaves until after the midterm elections: the man was so reviled. I wouldn't doubt that Roger Ailes had something to do with it, but that's just a theory. Anyway, the one and only panel I did with Andrew Breitbart was revolting for many reasons, but one of the biggest lies he told and is one often repeated by the zombies of the Tea Party (which took off after Rick Santelli gave them permission to do so on CNBC) -- namely, that the greedy poor people created the mortgage meltdown because they had the audacity to become homeowners. Krugman explains away that nonsense and Digby reminded me again of Bush's 2004 acceptance speech, where he bragged about his economic handiwork, and begged to turn America into the ultimate "homeowner society."

I've got yer history for yah right here. Here's one of those bleeding heart liberals at the 2004 Republican Convention:

Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security and dignity and independence.
...

Thanks to our policies, home ownership in America is at an all- time high.

(APPLAUSE)

Tonight we set a new goal: 7 million more affordable homes in the next 10 years, so more American families will be able to open the door and say, "Welcome to my home."

(Bush starts his "Welcome to my home" rant at the 3:36 mark of the above video)

Now Americans are either packing their bags and fleeing from their homes without trying to pay their mortgages, or they're trying to get HAMP assistance. Some are still being kicked out even when they follow the rules, or are not eligible for HAMP; others are just are foreclosed on anyway because they can't afford to pay anymore.

Way to go, Mr. Bush.

The Bush fanboys are back, led by Breitbart's Dana Loesch, the Queen of double-talk nonsense. She wrote a post glorifying Bush, who is out on his image-makeover/revisionist-history tour.

I love how his face seemingly peeks out from the black-and-white news columns of the day to defiantly whisper: “PSSST. HEY. Still heeeeere.” His existence may have been obscured by the hubris surrounding the current administration, an increase in terrorist attacks, a movement born partly because of several Bush policies, and an election; the sudden appearance of Bush across all the networks and on the front and cover pages reminds us that even though he isn’t the sort of GOPer grassroots adore, he was infinitely better than the man currently in the White House, a man who bows to anything with a pulse.

The excerpts from his book give insight into the process leading up to the decisions what the rest of the world would see and whether you agreed with him or not (I’ve long been on record abhorring NCLB; also the prescription drug act was neither “compassionate” or “conservative,” and neither was TARP) the man would make a decision and stick with it. Mainly though, I love how fist-in-the-air defiant he is in the book.
---
Defiance on steroids. Balls!

(h/t Digby)

Have you noticed all these conservatives who now say that Bush wasn't a beloved figure? Where were they when Bush was attacking countries that didn't attack us, and torturing terrorism suspects, for starters? Of course, he increased the debt as much as he could while giving all our surpluses to the richest of the rich. Now that he's back and trying to spin his way out of being the worst President in the history of America, the wingnuts are making it up as they go along.

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George Bush's Makeover Tour is currently making the rounds of ConservaTalk, and yesterday morning he stopped by to chat with his successor as the leader of the GOP: Rush Limbaugh.

One of our great C&L readers, King Crimson, sent in some audio from today's gag-fest and wrote a post to accompany it. You may remember his last post, which exposed the false and racist attacks against the impoverished people in Detroit made by wingnut Ken Rugulski:

Rush Limbaugh Uses Innocent Detroiters As Show Pinata

After the Great Depression, programs like Freddy May and Fanny Mac were set up to insure corporations against catastrophic risk to help make sure such a disaster could never occur again no matter how out of whack things got.

When George W. Bush was in office, he created what he called the "Ownership Society" initiative that abused those institutions in order to create an illusion that republican control was affording everyone, even those who couldn't afford it a new home or ridiculous cash advances on the mortgages they already held.

That was the mechanism that triggered the Great Recession of 2008. Republican policies, coupled with the complete lack of any kind of regulation over huge corporations and lending institutions playing fast and loose with mortgages and refi paper. Why not? If anything ever failed, the government would pay the losses! What's not to love? Except that the damages were so colossal that not even Freddy Mac and Fannie May could afford the tab they rang up. Hence the "Troubled Asset Relief Program" or T.A.R.P. It was the biggest government loan in history to try and contain the damage that Bush's regulation free ... free for all ... had exacted on our economy.

Today, former president George W. Bush so much as admits that it was precisely what occurred as he appeared on the Rush Limbaugh program to sell his book. "(There are some) enterprises that have got implicit government guarantee, and they're taking risky stances!" he recalls telling congress. I lived through the Bush administration, watching CSpan and following the news, every scintilla of it ... and I can say there never was a time in 2003 when George W. Bush made overtures to Congress about fears of corporations playing outside the rules...ever. But he insists to Rush that he did. Nonetheless, he admitted that it was indeed Wall Street that caused the recession.

But listen. A short time later, Rush gives Bush succor with a narrative that it wasn't Wall Street, it wasn't deregulation, it wasn't a republican controlled congress sitting on its hands in 2003 letting corporations do what they want because conservatives believe companies being free to do whatever they wish is the best thing for the economy. None of those things caused the Great Recession of 2008. No ... it was the Democrats, and Freddy Mac, and Fannie Mae that caused it. The political party that fought for the last 4 decades to rein in out of control Corporate greed, and creating programs to protect the country from financial shenanigans ... THEY were the ones who caused it.

Despite the fact that Rush's theme was exactly 180 degrees away from what the former president had just gotten through admitting not 45 seconds before, the Decider in Chief blurts, "That's right."

Bush doesn't even have to lie about the damage he did to this country and to our
economy anymore. He just stands there until someone does it for him, and then agrees.

George Bush is on a new "mission" now since he's out of office and is trying to restore his name after he did so much to destroy it. Watching him last night instead was a vivid reminder of how awful a President he was. So much for the image makeover.

I cringed when I heard his tale about the "fetus jar." I wonder if he read most of what was in his own book? In his NBC special called 'Decision Points" he tried to explain away why America tortured people. (Oh, have you wondered why FOX didn't get the first exclusive? Maybe the answer comes from the publishers, but you know Dick Cheney would never have agreed to that.)

Anyway, Cheney knew that if he stacked the OLC with his sycophants like David Addington then he'd get the rulings he needed to do whatever the executive branch wanted, which has been well documented. Jack Goldsmith blew the whistlel on them many times. Matt Lauer asked him about the legality of waterboarding and he replied that he's no lawyer after all. Heck, I'm only a Texan. Hee haw!

There's plenty about Bush's tenure to discuss, but for now let's just stick to the most heinous topic: Torture.

NBC transcripts::

LAUER: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?

BUSH: Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer., but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do.

LAUER: You say it's legal. "And the lawyers told me."

BUSH: Yeah.

LAUER: Critics say that you got the Justice Department to give you the legal guidance and the legal memos that you wanted.

BUSH: Well—

LAUER: Tom Kean, who a former Republican co-chair of the 9/11 commission said they got legal opinions they wanted from their own people.

BUSH: He obviously doesn't know. I hope Mr. Kean reads the book. That's why I've written the book. He can, they can draw whatever conclusion they want. But I will tell you this. Using those techniques saved lives. My job is to protect America and I did.

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