The Rehabilitation of George W. Bush

Why is it, you may ask, that in almost every photograph of George Bush painting he seems to be adding some finishing touch to the very top edge of one of his paintings--almost as if he's afraid to mar the work of the actual artist?

The paintings themselves are designed to look like the work of a talented amateur--for the sake of verisimilitude--because even in America, most would never believe the dumbest president before Trump could be a really good painter. It's just too far-fetched. Many of these talented daubs are of wounded Iraq War veterans, purportedly to show he cares something about the soldiers he sent into his fabricated war against Al Qaeda in defiance of all the evidence. Bush has the kind of choir-boy charm that leads many to never suspect our daft but lovable president could have done anything so heinous as help plan, then cover up the 9-11 bombing of the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and Shanksville flight.

The painting scenario is part of a larger rehabilitation effort including things like Architecture Digest discussing the design of his ranch, Popular Mechanics, and many other articles portraying our favorite Arab terrorist as a lovable, if fatally flawed past-president and debunking his role in 9-11. No such effort is underway for Dick Cheney who, though he said 'torture works' has spared us any artistic fakery, or Don Rumsfeld, who makes the Boston Strangler look somewhat tame by comparison.

George W. Bush has become the poster boy for mediocre but courageous political bungling. I don't doubt that the Trump presidency has been planned at least in part to take the heat off the axis of evil--Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld.