President George W. Bush was interviewed by Matt Lauer last night and the result was stunning.\u00a0 He reminds me of the first time I played golf with a true PGA professional.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The contrast between those who think they are great and those who really are great is unforgettable.<\/p>\n
The same thing happened in this interview.\u00a0 George Bush showed that contrary to the myth that he is na\u00efve, dumb and intellectually incurious; he was smooth, sophisticated, informed, eloquent and incredibly convincing.\u00a0 He oozed competence and sincerity.\u00a0 Tony Blair wrote that Bush was brilliant at understanding other people and that he was a man of unequalled integrity.\u00a0 For the first time, watching this interview, I saw that George Bush.<\/p>\n
This is going to cause huge problems for Democrats and particularly for President Obama.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I believe that even his critics are shocked at how well he performed.\u00a0 The problem for Matt Lauer is that he was unprepared for the power of Bush\u2019s personality in a one on one setting.\u00a0 It is clear that while Bush was President, he could never be that candid with the public.\u00a0 Now that he is out of office, that problem has been solved and we saw a very different Bush than we expected.\u00a0 I once heard a Democrat say that it is very difficult to say no to George Bush in a one on one meeting.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That is the George Bush who showed up for this interview and this is drastically going to change the way people think about him.<\/p>\n
But what is really damaging is the stark contrast between Bush and Obama.\u00a0 It was so different to hear a man who understood the issues, and was ready, willing and able to make the tough decisions.\u00a0\u00a0 While Obama always lectures everyone, trying to appear professorial and arrogant, Bush never adopts that tone.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t need to put other people down to elevate himself.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 One may totally disagree with every decision he made, but it is hard to ignore ability of the man himself.\u00a0 No one, objectively watching this interview, can have any illusions as to how Bush became President of the United States.\u00a0 There is no doubt whatsoever who was in charge in the White House during the Bush administration.\u00a0 This is one serious man with a lot of talent.\u00a0 Bush is very self confident, but he is not arrogant.\u00a0 He is also not intimidated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think when Bush is done with the round of interviews and his book is released, it will fundamentally change the public\u2019s perception of him and his Presidency.\u00a0 Bush said that only history will decide if his Presidency was a success or a failure, but I think he got that wrong.\u00a0 I think the verdict on the Bush Presidency will be very positive and that this will happen faster than anyone can imagine.<\/p>\n
In 1865, Abraham Lincoln was scorned by the intellectual elite and he was not a popular President.\u00a0 He was very popular with the troops, but the Washington Establishment despised him.\u00a0 When he ran for re-election in 1864, not a single Republican Senator endorsed him for re-election.\u00a0 His own chief of staff told him in August of 1864 that he had no chance of getting re-elected.\u00a0 Lincoln was so sure he would be defeated that he wrote a letter to the \u201cnext President of the United States\u201d explaining why it was so necessary to win that war.<\/p>\n
What changed was not winning the war, but rather the assassination.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t realize what they had until he was gone.\u00a0 In a short period of time he went from being one of our most despised Presidents to being one of our most worshiped.\u00a0 Lincoln did not change and his job performance did not change.\u00a0 What changed was that when he was assassinated, people finally saw him for what he really was.<\/p>\n
There is a parallel between Bush and Lincoln.\u00a0 Both were despised while they were in office and both were considered crude and uneducated.\u00a0 In hindsight, we were fortunate as a nation to have such men in charge during a time of national crisis.\u00a0 Both were considered incompetent by the cultured establishment.\u00a0 Bush was obviously not assassinated, but he was vilified by nearly everyone.\u00a0 Even Republicans were afraid to even pretend that he had done a good job.\u00a0 In his case, it was his character that was assassinated.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We were lied to, but not by President Bush.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 None of the public perceptions of Bush can be reconciled to the man himself.<\/p>\n
\u00a0There are two kinds of people in this world.\u00a0 One walks into a room and says \u201cHere I Am.\u201d\u00a0 Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are those kinds of people.\u00a0 The other walks into a room and says \u201cThere you are.\u201d\u00a0 George Bush is that kind of person.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I always admired Bush, but I never really understood the power of his personal presence until I saw this interview.\u00a0 One thing that changed was the famous Bush sneer that used to show up in his speeches and his press conferences.\u00a0 That, changes everything.<\/p>\n
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President George W. Bush was interviewed by Matt Lauer last night and the result was stunning.\u00a0 He reminds me of the first time I played golf with a true PGA professional.\u00a0 I had played golf with a lot of very … Continue reading