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Former President George W. Bush says every American citizen should vote in the presidential election, though he hasn't revealed whom he plans to vote for. But it won't be Donald Trump. We can be sure of that.
Trump has managed to alienate the Bushes: ex-President George H. W. Bush, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and now the man known to friends as W. The senior Bush is voting for Hillary Clinton. Jeb Bush has announced he won't vote Trump or Clinton.
Trump may not be concerned about this, but he should be. His campaign is paying a price for losing the Bushes, the first family of Republican politics. Their influence is indirect. The Bushes don't command a wing of the party. They haven't urged Republicans not to vote for Trump. But their aversion to Trump has had an impact.
The Bushes have sent a signal to Republicans, especially to those whose allegiance to the GOP is tenuous, that Trump is unacceptable. David Brady of Stanford University's Hoover Institution says this is a factor in Trump's failure to lock up the support of 90 percent of Republicans, the minimum needed to defeat Clinton.
Brady, a political scientist, is an associate in the polling firm YouGov/Polimetrix. Its CEO, Doug Rivers, is a professor of political science at Stanford and a Hoover fellow. In YouGov's polling, Trump is backed by only 72 percent of Republicans. (Trump has fared better among Republicans in other polls.)
The Bush factor in the election is most pronounced among Republicans involved in foreign affairs and national security policy. Dozens of former officials in the administrations of the two Bush presidents have publicly criticized Trump as unqualified to be president and pledged not to vote for him.
Trump made an overture to the Bushes in late May when he met with Karl Rove, the strategist who helped George W. Bush win the presidency in 2000 and reelection four years later. The effort failed. The Bushes have said nothing even mildly supportive of Trump since then.
Given what Trump has said about George W. and Jeb, it's surprising that he thought any of the Bushes might say anything favorable about him, much less endorse him. His many expressions of scorn for the Bushes were bound to prevent any sort of detente.
Trump's dismissive treatment of Jeb Bush during the Republican presidential primaries is the least of their reasons for rejecting Trump. He referred to Jeb by a nickname, "low-energy Jeb." In February, he said Jeb was "having some kind of breakdown" and called him "an embarrassment to his family." Responding to criticism by Jeb, Trump said he's "a desperate person. He's a sad and pathetic person." Jeb dropped out of the presidential race in late February. Far more damaging were Trump's attacks on George W. Bush. In 2007, he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Bush was "probably the worst president in the history of the United States." In 2008, he claimed Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify America's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Trump advocated Bush's impeachment. In an interview in 2013, Trump said: "George Tenet, the CIA director, knew in advance there was going to be an attack, and he said so to the president, and he said so to everyone else who would listen. That came out." In truth, that never happened and nothing like it ever "came out." In other comments, Trump has blamed Bush for the 9/11 attacks. In a GOP debate in South Carolina in February, he said: "The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton [didn't] kill Osama bin Laden when he had a chance to kill him. And George Bush-by the way, George Bush had the chance also but he didn't listen to the advice of his CIA." In 2008, Trump told CNN he was "surprised" that Nancy Pelosi "didn't do more in terms of . . . going after Bush" when she was House speaker. "It just seemed like she was really going to look to impeach Bush and get him out of office. Which personally I think would have been a wonderful thing."
In that same 2008 CNN interview, Trump said Bush "lied" about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction. "Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying. By saying they had WMDs, by saying all sorts of things that happened not to be true." In 2004, Trump told Chris Matthews he liked both Bush and his presidential opponent John Kerry. But he seemed to like Kerry more. "I love Bush's tax policy," he said. Interviewed by Howard Stern, though, he said, "Kerry's a friend of mine. He's a very good guy. He's a very tough guy." Trump has never apologized to the Bushes for any of his comments about them. A political ally said Trump would probably reject apologizing to George W. Bush because it would show weakness. Bush's comment last week on voting was made in a get-out-the-vote public service announcement. "Our future depends upon you casting a ballot," he said. Several days earlier, his daughter Barbara attended a fundraiser for Hil-lary Clinton in Paris.
Fred Barnes is Executive Editor at the Weekly Standard. 