Since leaving the Oval Office, President Bush (43) has avoided the limelight. Choosing to spend time writing memoirs, perfecting his painting skills, and visiting soldiers, W. hasn’t weighed in on his predecessor’s decisions.
Thursday, Sean Hannity interviewed Bush and asked him why he made the decision not to criticize President Obama, saying, “I’m sure you have a lot to say.”
Still actively aware of what’s happening politically, W. explained, “I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former President undermine a current President. I think it’s bad for the presidency for that matter.”
“I really have had all the fame I want,” Bush said. “I really don’t long for publicity and the truth of the matter is that in order to generate publicity, apart from this, I’d have to either attack the Republican party, which I don’t want to do or attack the President, which I don’t want to do. And so I’m perfectly content to be out of the limelight.”
President Bush is currently promoting his latest book, 41: A Portrait of My Father.
(h/t Mediaite)
Follow Kemberlee Kaye on Twitter
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Why should he criticize Obama? He welcomed illegal aliens through our southern border too.
His family seems not to comprehend the lives of average Americans, or to care. They’re comfortable. They don’t have to compete for entry level jobs at $8 an hour.
OK, how do these issues grab ya:
Fast and Furious, with illegal coverup
Corrupt Porkulus with hundreds of millions kicked back to donors
Green energy boondoggles
Illegal debt restructuring as part of GM ‘bailout’ along with union reach-around
Obamacare…the corrupt way it was passed, plus the steaming turd that is the law itself plus the 30 some illegal changes by diktat plus the inept andministration of it
Benghazi and all the bald faced lies
NSA And other forms of press intimidation
IRS targeting of conservatives and the bald faced lies and coverup
Is that enough for you?
he grew up middle class moron … he earned his money …
The Presidency is just so much more important than the nation that Bush just won’t comment.
Homeland Security, Patriot Act, TSA, No Child Left Behind and TARP are only parts of the Bush legacy. It seems to me that Bush agrees with Obama in many ways. As does, I might add, Romney, Jeb Bush, Kasich, Cristy, Rubio and many others from the Republican party.
You go ahead and “protect the Presidency”, Shrub. In the meantime, we’ll watch our country fall apart.
Thanks for nothing.
In 2000 he wouldn’t say one word to suggest that he would not allow the same corrupt practices of the Clinton administration to occur under his watch. So I didn’t vote for him then or in 2004. And a lot of conservatives who had been criticizing the corrupt Clinton behavior turned around and defended it under Bush.
Read my lips. No new Bushes.
He is a good and decent man who, like Harry S Truman, is likely to be judged a better President in hindsight than he was by his contemporaries.
Gore’s arrogance and Gore’s stooges in the media helped poison Bush’s Presidency from the start. Then the world changed for all of us in a matter of minutes on a beautiful September day. Yet Bush recovered with a good deal of grace and much resolve. He also helped the nation recover from a serious lose of economic confidence.
There were things I didn’t like in Bush’s policies, but much of the overspending can be laid directly at the feet of the Congressional leadership already in place. House Speaker Denny- don’t ask me about my land deals-Hastert was always a member in good standing of the same corrupt Illinois Combine that helped produce Barack Obama. Senators Trent Lott and Bill Frist weren’t much better. In a war one takes one’s allies as one finds them until the bigger enemy is rendered harmless.
As for Bush’s many critics on line, it appalls me that while they proclaim to be conservatives they often reek with the stench of a degree of class envy the bitterness of which would make the most avowed Marxist proud. I usually find little insight and no wisdom at all in their words, only the blind hatred of those who choose to remain willfully ignorant. I suspect few of them have ever entered any of life’s arenas. They remind me of the people Saul Alinsky held in particular contempt. Alinsky called them “vestal virgins” the hand wringers who don’t vote and don’t act but who complain about all sides.
I’m not sure W’s reputation will be rehabilitated to the extent that Truman’s was.
Truman’s domestic policies, for which he was so unpopular, are virtually forgotten. W’s policies that made him so unpopular, likely won’t be since they’re long term affect is greater.
And Eisenhower didn’t spend eight years blaming Truman for every problem he faced.
Truman was not rehabilitated until the actor James Whitmore started performing Steve Gallu’s play, “Give ‘Em Hell Harry”. At that time, Truman’s populist, anti-establishment style played well with a post-Watergate America.
Sadly, the modern tendency of the press to be openly contemptuous of a “stupid” president began with Truman. In many ways, he and Bush were similar in that some perceived them to be “accidental” presidents, and due to their folksy manner, to be less than bright. Truman’s dust-up with MacArthur earned him the animus of many who believed that he still looked at the world through the eyes of a WWI Field Artillery officer and not a president.
Through the perfect lens of history, many things become clearer as events judge past decisions and figures. Hence, the Left’s need for “revisionist” history.
it’s funny if you watch video of W speaking contemporaneously he is very quick and articulate, a good communicator. it was behind the lecturn where he struggled, reading from a telepromptor was obviously not his thing.
compare that to Obama, who is “smooth” when reading the TP, but reveals himself to be a stuttering moron when he steps from behind it. but the progs still drop fiendishly to their knees before “the smartest man in any room.” they are pathetic.
AMEN, N.C.Great Smoky Mtns. Girl!! Little snipping turds not worth one drop of W’s sweat which he expended in large quantities as Wartime LEADER of our country. Sometimes, particularly in his second term, his refusal to answer his domestic pygmy-enemies could make me crazy with frustration. But, he, like Harry, is a great man with true grit and belly muscles. It’s nightmarish to contemplate Al Gore at the helm when the vast axis shifting blow of 9-11 came. Thank God for President Bush.
And what would it do for him to criticize Obama? Simply put him on par with Jimmy Carter and allow our enemies to further gloat.
The time for him to criticize Obama and other’s like him was when he was President. He needed to defend his policies, the Iraq and Afghanistan war, etc. at the time he was being criticized. He didn’t and I do feel that was a serious mistake. His chance at that has passed.
To criticize Obama publicly now , I agree, would simply degrade the office even more than Obama has managed to do.
I think it’s pretty classy of Bush to keep his mouth shut considering that Obama blames every problem in his own administration on Bush.
I think you *have* to criticize Obama to protect the presidency. He’s making a mockery of the office.
Not a mockery; he’s transforming it into dictatorship. Ruling by decree?
But he did have to admit in the same interview that he hadn’t chosen to meet Obama’s plane when he traveled to Texas even though his father had. Guess there’s just so much ‘respect’ you can show to one despicable man.
The more Bush talked against Obama the stronger his base would become. Think the media would stand by silently while Bush talked? Every time he criticized something Obama did, HE would be the story for days on end. It would have been a media dream. He is right to keep his mouth shut.
Yup. Exactly.
I understand that President Bush wants to keep the tradition alive of former presidents not criticizing the current President of the United States. But he has got to understand that while Obama wants to protect the presidency, Obama, by his actions and policies, is not protecting it. Criticizing Obama (and by extension, policies Obama is trying to ram down America’s throat)IS protecting the presidency.
It’s reverse logic, but it is the correct logic.
Former tradition. Ex-Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton broke that one.
Accidently hit the down thumb trying to click on reply…
Unwilling to stand up for America. FOR SHAME
W. hasn’t weighed in on his predecessor’s decisions.
You mean “successor’s”.
Both Bush and Obama wrote books about their fathers. In Bush’s book its all about his father … in Obama’s book its all about himself …
His remarks speak louder than any criticism of 44 ever could.
With this simple statement, he just rubbed 0bama’s nose in every criticism ever leveled at him by that petulant dweeb. Ditto for all the criticism of Clinton and Carter.
AMEN, Trooper. A resolute, muscular, steadfast, HUMBLE Leader who Led. A Giant among simpering pygmies.
“A resolute, muscular, steadfast, HUMBLE Leader who Led. A Giant among simpering pygmies.”
The battlefield is littered with the bodies of friends and allies of Bush who were stabbed in the back by him. He’d let his supporters stick their necks out for him on TSA employee unionization, social security reform, or whatever. Then, when the left was fired up to its maximum hate setting, he’d pull back. He didn’t just accept defeat and position himself to fight another day, but gave in with words designed to ensure that his reforms would never be attempted again. (Bill Clinton had the political skills to always position every defeat as a staging ground for a future victory. Bush did the opposite.) And Bush didn’t want a China inbox, so was willing to leave Taiwan twisting in the wind.
Yes, Bush was resolute, muscular, and steadfast when it came to betraying his base. I’d rather be ruled by the first hundred simpering pigmies in the phonebook than by him and his Valerie Jarrett (Karl Rove).
TrooperJ: Did I mention “little snipping turds..” and “simpering pygmies..”..?? And a plu-perfect poster child appears with a,”Here I is..Here I is…HERE, HERE, HERE I IS, Y’all!!” Poifecto Timing, Bro!!
Cannot possibly make this s**t up. ((-:
Im done with all the Bushes. He won’t criticise? He is the reason we have Obama. The Bushes belong to the CFR. Bush backed down with Muslims over “crusade” remark. brought us an unregulated Homeland Security that has wrecked this country. As President he spoke like the village idiot. Bush1 gave us Clinton, Bush2 gave us Obama. Look at Bush now yucking it up with Bill Clinton.
The man, and his dad for that matter, had so much going for them that to have witnessed their failures of leadership, their faux “kinship” with the progressive enemies of America, their embracing of RINOlogy, their sanctimonious cowardliness about “protecting the presidency” from the savages that are now in control of our government, is disheartening.
Shame on both of them for their epic failures to LEAD a nation.
GW Bush lost me when he twice said I couldn’t be a real American, once because I didn’t share his religion, and again for not supporting his desire to expand entitlements. Presidents (and candidates) need to be real damn careful declaring who is and isn’t a real American, given that it’s a matter of law and their opinion is irrelevant.
Our Enemies feared us and our friends and allies trusted us. We broadcast American Strength and it was noted by all.
And, now for 6-years, we see what is reaped on the world stage by the scrawny weakness of the successor. His Infantile Majesty hasn’t WORKED or LED one full day during that sad period.
Dubya, you took it on the chin for eight years without ever pushing back and where did that get you? This is the problem that you have with those who supported you before you ever got into office. Maybe it is the gentlemanly thing to do, but your compassionate side bit you in the rear once and it continues to show weakness, IMO.