The devolution of the GOP
Former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara Bush, left. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
Friday started as it usually does: an early wake up call, an interview with the next president of the United States and a hateful personal attack from Donald Trump. Such is life during these dog days of August in a nasty presidential campaign not even near its ugly end.
These days, a rudely out-of-bounds Trump attack surprises Mika and me about as much as a puppy relieving himself on a living room rug. We’ve figured out by now that it does no good to lose your cool with the puppy or Donald Trump, since neither have and control over their bladder or mouth.
As Aristotle famously said, “It is what it is.”
Donald Trump was once seen as being a little too cozy with "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. The Fix's Callum Borchers explains how the relationship went downhill. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Fortunately, things became a bit more interesting by the time we rolled into Kennebunkport for a speech on the 2016 campaign and made our way to Walker’s Point to visit President Bush and Barbara. Pulitzer Prize winning historian and Bush biographer Jon Meacham was already inside the family home along with Nicolle Wallace when we arrived. Bush chief of staff Jean Becker joked when we joined the conversation that “all we need is Barnicle to complete the Morning Joe set!”
George and Barbara Bush were the same gracious and welcoming hosts Friday night that they had been when my family last visited Kennebunkport five years earlier. Mrs. Bush even asked about my youngest children, who she remembered remarkably well considering the countless guests that have streamed through their world since that summer’s day in 2011. But her human touch is the kind of thing the family always seems to manage with ease. They make others around them feel special despite the fact that they have lived the most remarkable of lives, serving in Congress, running the Republican National Committee, heading up the CIA, being the UN Ambassador as well as the US Ambassador to China, serving as Ronald Reagan’s vice president and then leading America as the 41st president of the United States.
But good luck getting George or Barbara Bush talking about themselves. They just don’t do it and they never will. First of all, their parents didn’t allow it. And besides, that kind of thing wasn’t done in the world from which they came. It is just one small way that the ethos of Walker’s Point is so radically different from the mindset that infects Donald Trump’s garish corner office high above 5th Avenue in Trump Towers.
As Meacham and I walked down the driveway after saying goodbye to the Bushes, Jon lamented the fact that the same Republican Party that nominated a man like Bush, who rarely spoke about himself, would a quarter century later select a reality TV showman who obsessively talked about little else. Meacham paraphrased Henry Adams in saying that the historical devolvement from Bush to Trump proves that Darwin’s theory of evolution was less compelling when applied to American politics.
We soon drove away from Walker’s Point and into the night knowing that the world we had just departed would soon be fading as fast as the dying sunset over that rocky Maine coast.
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