Bush’s Return

We’re no longer missing him. George W. Bush completely retired from public debate in 2009, not without having given his successor a gracious promise of neutrality. He had told CNN, which hoped to hear him size up Obama’s response to the monstrous banking crisis that started under “W’s” presidency, that “[Obama] deserves my silence.” His discretion was also self-explained by the passive responsibility his administration took at the beginning of the crisis. Now, George W. Bush has published a book, which is in stores on July 17. It is an economics book “looking toward the future”; after an introduction signed by Bush is the lineup of an army of experts and Nobel Prize winners giving their theories on how to return to an annual growth rate of 4 percent. According to The New York Times, these consist of lowering direct taxes, raising consumer taxes, increasing research and free exchange and reforming immigration policies to attract talented [workers] to the United States.

However, it’s in the packaging of the book that is the more important things lie — Bush and his experts want to mark the return of a reasonable Republican sphere of influence in the pre-electoral debate and affirm the credibility of an alternate to the White House. One can appreciate the irony: Today, Bush comes off as a moderate in a party that for months was turned over to extremists. He’s the one rare politician to admit (Mitt Romney only said it once since joining the campaign) that the drastic deficit reduction proposed by tea party fanatics would only bring around an immense recession. … One asks oneself what ideas were brewing at the Bush Institute, the former president’s Dallas think tank, which is publishing the book. We already have an answer. …