43
A Study in Comparisons …
When he peacefully passed his presidency over to his successor, George Walker Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, became an immediate comparison point between what was and what would come.
At first blush, it was assumed that the comparisons would promise to be dramatic. After all, Barack Obama was America’s first African American commander-in-chief, not to mention a more liberal politician. A Democrat.
Mr. Bush was an avowed Republican. Conservative. A former Governor of Texas. A National League baseball club owner.
Little did we all know that George Bush would also become the obvious comparison point when Donald J. Trump took the keys to the Oval Office in 2017.
Time has revealed that George Bush is more like his immediate successor and previous occupants of the West Wing than his fellow Republican, the 45th president.
In temperament, Mr. Bush was more like Obama, than Trump. More like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry S Truman, actually. More like his father, George H.W. Bush, and his father’s boss, Ronald Reagan. Not a hothead. Not a complainer. No absence in a crisis, a pandemic, or a hurricane.
