A Study in Contrasts

Toby Harnden of the UK Telegraph notes that Obama was elected because of Bush, but today Bush's image has been rehabilitated largely because of Obama:

Say what you like about former President George W. Bush, but his sense of timing is impeccable. Just after his successor Barack Obama took a self-described "shellacking" at the polls, Dubya was back, mocking the current occupant of the White House by his very presence.

For the 43rd President, the return must have been sweet.

Obama was elected in large part because he was the unBush: biracial not bluebood; silky tongue, not foot-in-mouth; reflective not impetuous; cool rather than hot.

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama slammed Bush at every turn. Since then, the 44th President has almost ceaselessly blamed his predecessor for everything, even stooping to lambast Karl Rove, Bush's long-time aide, by name during the recent mid-terms campaign.

But the anti-Bush shtick soon wore thin. Two years after Obama was anointed, the halo around his head seemed distinctly tarnished. In his post-defeat interview with 60 Minutes, Obama was at his most listless and meandering, projecting all the certainty of a Hamlet on the Potomac.

Right on cue, Bush entered, stage Right, clutching a copy of his 497-page memoir Decision Points, a tome full of breezy certainty.

Did he order the waterboarding of terrorist suspects? "Damn right."

Did he ever have doubts about pre-war intelligence on Iraq? "I really didn't." Boring of Mr Nuance, Americans lapped it up.

Whereas Obama was glum, wondering aloud whether 9.6 per cent unemployment might be "the new normal" and griping that as US president "you're held responsible for everything but you don't always have control of everything", Bush used his interviews to display an almost giddy insouciance.

On the Oprah Winfrey Show, Bush charmed the woman who had proclaimed Obama as "the One" and hailed his "tongue dipped in unvarnished truth" in Iowa back in 2007.

"When it [the presidency] was over, I knew I'd given my heart and soul, I'd poured everything I had into the job and was grateful for the opportunity to serve," Bush said.

Read the rest of it here.