President George W. Bush was interviewed by Matt Lauer last night and the result was stunning.  He reminds me of the first time I played golf with a true PGA professional.  I had played golf with a lot of very good players, but I never understood how really good those tour professionals are until I played along side one on the same course.  The contrast between those who think they are great and those who really are great is unforgettable.

The same thing happened in this interview.  George Bush showed that contrary to the myth that he is naïve, dumb and intellectually incurious; he was smooth, sophisticated, informed, eloquent and incredibly convincing.  He oozed competence and sincerity.  Tony Blair wrote that Bush was brilliant at understanding other people and that he was a man of unequalled integrity.  For the first time, watching this interview, I saw that George Bush.

This is going to cause huge problems for Democrats and particularly for President Obama.  After Democrats spent most of the last two years blaming everything on the incompetent Mr. Bush, people finally got to meet President Bush in a way that had never happened before.  I believe that even his critics are shocked at how well he performed.  The problem for Matt Lauer is that he was unprepared for the power of Bush’s personality in a one on one setting.  It is clear that while Bush was President, he could never be that candid with the public.  Now that he is out of office, that problem has been solved and we saw a very different Bush than we expected.  I once heard a Democrat say that it is very difficult to say no to George Bush in a one on one meeting.  Even Nancy Pelosi once said that it was impossible to meet personally with President Bush and not understand that he was sincere about what he said.  That is the George Bush who showed up for this interview and this is drastically going to change the way people think about him.

But what is really damaging is the stark contrast between Bush and Obama.  It was so different to hear a man who understood the issues, and was ready, willing and able to make the tough decisions.   While Obama always lectures everyone, trying to appear professorial and arrogant, Bush never adopts that tone.  He doesn’t need to put other people down to elevate himself.  He zeros in on a question, demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the situation and gives a clear, very believable answer as to how he arrived at his decision.  One may totally disagree with every decision he made, but it is hard to ignore ability of the man himself.  No one, objectively watching this interview, can have any illusions as to how Bush became President of the United States.  There is no doubt whatsoever who was in charge in the White House during the Bush administration.  This is one serious man with a lot of talent.  Bush is very self confident, but he is not arrogant.  He is also not intimidated. 

I think when Bush is done with the round of interviews and his book is released, it will fundamentally change the public’s perception of him and his Presidency.  Bush said that only history will decide if his Presidency was a success or a failure, but I think he got that wrong.  I think the verdict on the Bush Presidency will be very positive and that this will happen faster than anyone can imagine.

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln was scorned by the intellectual elite and he was not a popular President.  He was very popular with the troops, but the Washington Establishment despised him.  When he ran for re-election in 1864, not a single Republican Senator endorsed him for re-election.  His own chief of staff told him in August of 1864 that he had no chance of getting re-elected.  Lincoln was so sure he would be defeated that he wrote a letter to the “next President of the United States” explaining why it was so necessary to win that war.

What changed was not winning the war, but rather the assassination.  When Lincoln was assassinated, for the first time people started to honestly reflect upon the real Abraham Lincoln and they began to pay more attention to his words.  They didn’t realize what they had until he was gone.  In a short period of time he went from being one of our most despised Presidents to being one of our most worshiped.  Lincoln did not change and his job performance did not change.  What changed was that when he was assassinated, people finally saw him for what he really was.

There is a parallel between Bush and Lincoln.  Both were despised while they were in office and both were considered crude and uneducated.  In hindsight, we were fortunate as a nation to have such men in charge during a time of national crisis.  Both were considered incompetent by the cultured establishment.  Bush was obviously not assassinated, but he was vilified by nearly everyone.  Even Republicans were afraid to even pretend that he had done a good job.  In his case, it was his character that was assassinated.  Now, people are going to look at Bush in a whole new way and a lot of them are going to like what they see.  We were lied to, but not by President Bush.  Instead we were lied to by people too hungry for political power to care about the damage they were doing to the office of the President of the United States.  None of the public perceptions of Bush can be reconciled to the man himself.

 There are two kinds of people in this world.  One walks into a room and says “Here I Am.”  Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are those kinds of people.  The other walks into a room and says “There you are.”  George Bush is that kind of person.

 I always admired Bush, but I never really understood the power of his personal presence until I saw this interview.  One thing that changed was the famous Bush sneer that used to show up in his speeches and his press conferences.  That, changes everything.

 TDM