Odd politics, presidential tradition: Bush is back

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — This is a lit­tle awkward.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama can’t seem to stop bad-mouthing the record of for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. But on Thurs­day, Obama is going to wel­come his pre­de­ces­sor and proudly pre­side as Bush’s image and legacy are enshrined at the White House forever.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will join Bush and his wife, Laura, as their offi­cial por­traits are unveiled. The incum­bent is keep­ing up a pres­i­den­tial tra­di­tion typ­i­cally defined by cheer and gra­cious­ness, but not with­out some uneasiness.

Hardly a day goes by with­out Obama or his aides talk­ing about the mess they inher­ited — mean­ing, from Bush.

It was just one week ago that Obama, revving up cam­paign donors, turned Bush into a punch line. Obama depicted Repub­li­can rival Mitt Rom­ney as a ped­dler of bad eco­nomic ideas, help­ing the rich at the expense of the mid­dle class, and then added to laughs: “That was tried, remem­ber? The last guy did all this.”

Now the last guy is com­ing back.

So, too, will his father, for­mer Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush and the for­mer first lady Bar­bara Bush. The Oba­mas will hold forth in the ornate East Room as George and Laura Bush are hon­ored for their ser­vice before an invited audi­ence of Bush friends and for­mer staff members.

It will be a rare lime­light moment for Bush, who has not been back in more than two years.

Obama and Bush have a cor­dial and respect­ful rela­tion­ship, but they are not close. Both are polit­i­cal vet­er­ans who are able to sep­a­rate polit­i­cal tac­tics from what they see as an over­ar­ch­ing com­mu­nity among peo­ple who have served in the Oval Office, accord­ing to peo­ple close to them.

Only 44 men in his­tory, and five men alive, have held the job.

“Pres­i­dent Bush has been around pol­i­tics a long time. He’s been around how pres­i­dents deal with each other for a long time,” said Tony Fratto, one of his for­mer spokes­men at the White House. “He has an under­stand­ing for sep­a­rat­ing the neces­si­ties of polit­i­cal rhetoric from the job itself.”

Bush showed that all through 2008, when Obama assailed his record on war and the econ­omy en route to the White House. It was hard to remem­ber at times that Obama was run­ning not against Bush, who was fin­ish­ing the last year of a tumul­tuous eight-year term, but rather Ari­zona Sen. John McCain.

When it was done, Bush wel­comed Obama to the White House with grace and demanded that his team ensure a smooth transition.

His­tory has marked this moment before, with grudges put aside.

When Bill Clin­ton came back for his por­trait unveil­ing, Bush lauded him for “the forward-looking spirit that Amer­i­cans like in a pres­i­dent.” Never mind that Bush had run for the pres­i­dency to “restore honor and dig­nity” after Clinton’s sex scandal.

And when Clin­ton wel­comed back George H.W. Bush, whom he had defeated, he said to him and his wife: “Wel­come home. We’re glad to have you here.”

“I would be sur­prised if there’s very much ten­sion” this time around, said Cal Jill­son, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­sity who has long fol­lowed Bush’s career.

Obama has enlisted Bush’s help on earth­quake relief for Haiti, and the two stood together in New York City last year in mark­ing the 10th anniver­sary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Amer­ica. They have also spo­ken at least three times at sig­na­ture moments over the last three years, includ­ing the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Still, in the midst of a tight elec­tion year, the Obama-bashing-Bush’s-record sets a backdrop.

“This pres­i­dent is look­ing for some­one to blame,” Rom­ney said while cam­paign­ing in Col­orado this week. “Of course, he started off by blam­ing George Bush, and that worked for a while but, you know, after three and a half years that wears kind of thin.”

The White House points out that Obama praises Bush some­times, too, as he did in March over Bush’s will­ing­ness to take on immigration.

The visit is lay­ered with polit­i­cal story lines.

Bush’s brother Jeb is a poten­tial vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to Rom­ney. Bush’s father has devel­oped a kin­ship of sorts with Obama. And then there is Bush him­self, who has endorsed Rom­ney but is still viewed by many in his party as polit­i­cally toxic.

More than any pres­i­dent in recent mem­ory, Bush has not just inten­tion­ally faded from the pub­lic spot­light but all but dis­ap­peared from it.

“George W. Bush has been remark­ably, and even strangely silent, even once you respect his sen­ti­ment that he did not want to get in Barack Obama’s way,” said Jill­son. “I think part of that is just giv­ing him­self time to recover from what had to be an astound­ingly dif­fi­cult close to his presidency.”

The polit­i­cally impas­sioned issues of that time have faded. The Iraq war is over. The finan­cial sec­tor has sta­bi­lized after a dev­as­tat­ing crash in late 2008. But the nation is still feel­ing the cost of the enor­mous reces­sion, which is Obama’s prob­lem now.

Bush was last at the White House in Jan­u­ary 2010. That was to join Obama and Bill Clin­ton in sup­port of Haiti human­i­tar­ian relief.

Aides to both Obama and Bush are down­play­ing the Thurs­day reunion as a time of pol­i­tics. Bush spokesman Freddy Ford said the for­mer pres­i­dent and first lady are grate­ful to the Obama and look­ing for­ward to catch­ing up with faces from their past, includ­ing staff at the Exec­u­tive Mansion.

“I think there is a com­mu­nity here with very few mem­bers that tran­scends polit­i­cal and pol­icy dif­fer­ences,” White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said. He made that com­ment in the same brief­ing Wednes­day in which he reminded every­one that Obama inher­ited a huge bud­get deficit (from Bush.)

Jenna Bush Hager, one of the George W. Bush’s daugh­ters, said she was invited for the cer­e­mony and that the day will include a pri­vate lunch for the Bushes with the Oba­mas. She told “Fox & Friends” the day will be a chance to “cel­e­brate his work, ‘cause he worked pretty hard so I think he deserves at least a painting.”

As to where it will go, she said: “Prob­a­bly in the very back some­where. I’m just kidding.”

The paint­ing will actu­ally hang promi­nently in the for­mal entrance hall to the White House, the Grand Foyer.

Posted by AP News on May 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.