Swampland’s Alex Rogers writes:
George W. Bush’s presidential approval rating has risen from 37% in January 2009 to 47%, according to a new ABC/Washington Post poll. It continues the trend of presidents becoming more popular once they leave office.
This is totally normal for a former president, even one as shitty as Bush. And weeks like this one—in which Bush’s presidential library is opening and media outlets will no doubt be reaching for shitty reassessment pieces to cram into the news-hole—don’t help that. Hell, even Herbert Hoover got a reassessment before he died. But I’m convinced that history won’t forget Bush’s sheer incompetence. And one day, when Bush passes on (and based on both the longevity of his parents and his famous obsession with exercise, I fully expect him to outlive me) I don’t think that he’ll get the unvarnished love-fest retrospective that Reagan did. Bush’s failures are tattooed onto his legacy. He can’t escape them, no matter how much Republicans may want to forget.
I REALLY LIKED HIS STUPID FUCKING DOG PAINTINGS!
Compared to a poll from January 2009 that’s no big surprise. That’s when the economic collapse was mostly on the Bush Administration’s shoulders. Now right-wing pundits have made it policy to sarcastically blame Bush for the shitty economy in order to trivialize the fact that the economic crash that we are still recovering from did, in fact, happen under his presidency.