Missing George Bush

Yes, I miss George W. Bush, but according to this David Broder piece, so does Barack Obama:

WASHINGTON -- In a conversation the other day with a White House official, I heard something I'd never expected from an employee of Barack Obama's. "I wish," he said, "George Bush would speak up a little more."

In the five months since he left the presidency, Bush has immersed himself in his memoir. He has stayed home in Texas and rarely spoken publicly. The result has been that he has largely disappeared from the news and -- the point the Obama aide was making -- pretty much has been forgotten.

Bush's silence has made it harder for Obama to keep the public focused on Bush as being responsible for our present difficulties -- the weak economy, the unsettled wars, the scandals of Guantanamo and the detainee program.

It is not for lack of trying. Obama regularly reminds the public in his own speeches and news conferences of all the problems he inherited from his predecessor. But to reporters covering the White House, those reminders have become familiar boilerplate. And since Bush won't fight back, they rarely get much coverage.

Five months into his tenure, Obama has become the only president the American people think about. And a series of polls last week showed that when Americans think about Obama, they are becoming increasingly critical.

With one brief exception Bush has remained silent on his successor, and why not? Obama wanted the job and now he's got it. People are less and less interested in what Bush did and more and more interested in (or scared of) what Obama is going to do.