Quote of the Day: Doing Nothing is George Bush’s Strong Suit

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From Dan Drezner, listing reasons why George Bush’s legacy may improve over time:

First, he’s been a great ex-president. For such a polarizing political figure, it’s remarkable how successfully Bush has receded into private life.

Can’t argue with that! There’s not much question that doing nothing puts Bush in his best light.

(Reason #2: The Republican Party has gone so crazy that Bush looks almost good by comparison. I’d buy that one too if Bush himself weren’t substantially responsible for this shift.)

(Reason #3: Bush responded halfway decently to the 2008 financial collapse. I guess so, though as near as I can tell, Bush himself played almost no role in this. He was clueless about what to do and just let his economic team run the show.)

Drezner admits that this is all pretty thin beer. His final conclusion:

At best, George W. Bush was a well-meaning man who gave the occasional nice speech and was thoroughly overmatched by events. At worst, he was the most disastrous foreign policy president of the post-1945 era.

Am I missing anything?

Nope. He’s still the Frat Boy President and always will be.

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DEFEND THE TRUTH. DEFEND JOURNALISM.

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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