...it's a failing on our part.
For the sake if clarity, I'll start off by making it clear I'm not talking about 24/7 animosity. People are mixed bags. Like many Democrats, I have a laundry list of disputes with John McCain. But from what I know of his history, and what people who I think highly of say from first-hand experience with the man, I'm going to put that laundry list aside for this particular week. And closer to home, I know quite a few conservatives who do wonderful and worthy things in their personal lives, but who embrace the most despicable things politically. They don't see a discrepancy where I see a crystal-clear one.
Having said that, lets get back to the OP.
George W. Bush, like Trump, was a guy who won the presidency -- under a cloud of tampering with the system -- with the electoral vote while losing the popular vote, something that hadn't happened for over a century. Once doing so, he practically pissed on taking a conciliatory, centrist path, and instead went full-bore for pushing through partisan pet-project policies while the pushing was good.
George W. Bush filled his administration with PNAC gallery ideologues who jeered at Clinton for being concerned about non-state actors like bin Laden. His attorney-general's list of priorities for the FBI didn't even include counter terrorism in its top 10. And then, one "Bin Laden determined to strike at US" briefing sneer-at and ignored later, Bush used the anger, fear of more, and desire for vengeance or justice to push through an unrelated slate of pet projects to oust Saddam in Iraq.
And even once he got it, he spectacularly botched it. Every single item on "the surge" should be prefaced with "because Bush botched it right at the start...." George W. Bush is the man who decided to invade Iraq with a quarter of the force the prevailing counterinsurgency doctrine said was needed to maintain order and not let everything fall to shit.
George W. Bush has all the full titles of a president of the United States of America, but he was at best a third of one. He was a wimp and a weakling puffed up by an axe-grinding conservative media.
Forgetting that is an obscenity. Sure, paste a smiley-face on for necessary social functions, but never forget that past that affable, schmoozing exterior is a guy who created a terrorist breeding ground in a dozen places in the Middle-East.
And once he secured the 2004 election, the very first thing on his "to do" list was "wreck Social Security".
George W Bush was a fucking incompetent who would have never been in that position if not for his name and for the very same group of people -- often down to the same individuals -- now known as "Trump's base".
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