A Dog Not Barking by JAY NORDLINGER
April 3, 2016 7:55 PM
There is much talk of the GOP’s convention in Cleveland this summer. Well, I have a wish for that convention, and it has nothing to do with Trump or Cruz. I want to see George W. Bush appear and speak.
He was frozen out of the 2008 convention, while he was still president. The GOP’s excuse was: weather. There was a hurricane somewhere, etc. Convention managers arranged for Bush to speak via an awkward video hook-up.
He said to his press secretary, Dana Perino, “Do you think they know they’re insulting me?” She answered, “Yes, sir. I believe they do.”
Bush did not appear at the 2012 convention either. Later, another ex-president, Bill Clinton, said smugly, “I was the only one at either convention who had anything good to say about George W. Bush.” (I’m going from memory, but I think that quote is right.)
After ’74, Nixon was treated like a pariah by the GOP. Rightly so (or certainly understandably so). If Bush is given the same treatment, that is appalling.
Republicans in general should not succumb to, or seem to endorse, the portrait of Bush painted by the Left, the media, and the anti-Bush Right (to use the politest term I can). They should not blush to have him on stage.
I hope Jeb speaks at the convention. And Mitt Romney too. And John McCain too. And if the Trumpite-Buchananite Right squawks, let ’em.
P.S. I appreciate the Bush family’s tradition of reticence, post-presidency. But a little reticence goes a long way. Sometimes reticence goes too far. When Clinton was dragging the country through the mud in the 1990s, I was longing for 41 to speak out. He was just about the most honorable guy in the country. And when the GOP frontrunner and his folk say that 43 lied us into war and imply a “trutherism” about 9/11 — 43 should leave his easel and let ’em have it.
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