George W. Bush spent the entirely of the Obama Administration in silence. He didn't speak out when President Obama unraveled Iraq and unleashed the disaster that followed. He didn't speak when Obama led us into Libya, from behind. He had no public comments about IRS targeting or the executive rewriting legislation without including the legislative branch. He didn't feel the need to defend his record when Obama or his surrogates blamed virtually every problem on Bush. No, he was quite comfortable to retire from the national stage and let President Obama have his turn.
Today, President Bush decided it was time to speak. He offered a not-so-oblique criticism of President Trump and his treatment of the media. Interesting. He hadn't felt compelled to comment on Obama wiretapping the Associated Press or naming James Rosen as an unindicted co-conspirator so he could really spy on him. No problem with Obama constantly denouncing Fox News. Nope, nothing to say then. Huh.
What could explain this change? George W. Bush is an insider. Like President Obama, he went to Harvard. Like President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, he attended Yale. He is a member of the elite, a member of a dynastic family that goes back his grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush. Heck, his great, great grandfather graduated from Yale in 1844! Though they may not have titles like Baron, Earl, and Duke, we have an aristocracy in the United States and they are extremely unhappy that some peasant who went to Fordham in the Bronx is president! A mere businessman lording over the anointed? The horror!
Trump is a modern day Andrew Jackson. Jackson had a mini-rebellion against the establishment, expanding the franchise and getting far too friendly with the common folk. Like Trump, Jackson was hardheaded and not prone to eloquence. Where John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay - who were rivals in the 1824 election - joined forces to deny Jackson the Presidency, Republican and Democrat elites are determined to protect the prerogatives that have taken more than a century to build.
This is not a left vs. right conflict but an insider vs. outsider one.
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