George Bush Criticizes Trump

Ace of Spades

One thing that strikes me is that Bush was pretty ignorant of the press as president or at least posed as being ignorant of them. On one hand, I guess, he was trying to float above them.

On the other hand, he very rarely rebutted the actual opposition party in the country, the national media, and I know many of his supporters pulled their hair out begging for him to actually do some presidential communications on this front. (And trying, futilely, to do for Bush what he couldn't or wouldn't do for himself.)

Strange to me that guy whose Administration was hit by a thousand Grim Milestones and cooked-up scandals (Valerie Plame, for example) would be so kind to the media.

My theory is that both the Democrats and the semi-deposed Establishment GOP have few hands at the levers of power -- except for their friends in the media and the permanent DC bureaucracy, so both have some investment in cultivating those power centers and pushing for them to have continued power.

Or even expanded power: Bill Kristol tweeted he favored the Deep State over the Trump state.

In the Democrats' case, it's just more of their same strategy of 60 years. In the Establishment GOP's case, it's making peace with an old adversary to destroy an even more dangerous, existential-threat adversary.

It just surprises me -- in a way that perhaps it should not -- that so many "conservatives" are now taking the media's side, as it's tottering and wounded in a way that it has literally never been in my lifetime.

For some, it seems, the leftist media isn't the hero they deserve, but it's the hero they need.

One thing became clear to me after reading Bush's book about his father is that he is thoroughly Establishment, as is every member of his family.  He's not going to fight to change things for the American worker because they are cogs in the machine.  He and his class are very much a feudal aristocracy.  Noblesse Oblige and all that but Noblesse above all.