It’s time for President Bush to endorse Joe Biden over Donald Trump for president
An amazing number of prominent Republicans have lined up to support Joe Biden and put this nation out of its Trump misery. After watching Jill Biden speak to the Democratic National Convention from her classroom with such a personal story of overcoming adversity and building a loving and caring family and hearing Colin Powell and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich add their voices to the growing chorus of Republicans supporting Biden, I wondered why Laura Bush wouldn’t turn to George as they watch this display of decency and bipartisanship and ask why he doesn’t rise above party and endorse Joe Biden for president.
It would be an opportunity to add a historical dimension to a presidency that will not stand the test of time very well. But as Jimmy Carter has shown in his post-presidential career, it is possible to rescue your legacy from a presidency that history will not treat with great respect.
It’s impossible for me and Kathy to consider the presidency of George W. Bush without thinking of our visit to New York on 9/11. We were visiting our son in New York that week, taking in all the sites, with tickets to the observation deck of one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center the afternoon of 9/10. With rain pouring down as we approached the elevator for the ride to the top, the guard suggested we might come back early in the morning on 9/11 around 9:15 when the skies will be clear for excellent viewing.
That next morning we were running late and would not make it to the towers by 9:15. On an early morning walk in Greenwich Village near where we were staying at our son’s apartment, I saw a large plane fly overhead on a flight path I had seen in previous visits. When I arrived at the corner of 10th Street and Sixth Avenue, a gentleman pointed down the street toward the twin towers so I could see what appeared to be small hole in one of the towers. We both commented from the long-distance vantage point that apparently a small plane had crashed into one of the towers. It did not at that moment occur to me that the plane causing that burnt hole in the side of one of the towers was the large plane that had just flown overhead.
Back at the apartment, Kathy and I watched TV as the towers fell, killing thousands of Americans who had just arrived for work. Had we taken the subway that ended its run under one of the towers at the time the guard suggested, we can only imagine the consequences. It was our delayed morning start that saved us from the devastation.
We spent the next three days stranded in New York City, standing in lines at grocery stores concerned that food and water would not find their way to the island, visiting firehouses with mounds of flowers for fallen firefighters. We walked the streets of a deserted midtown and visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Handmade paper signs and photos of those unaccounted for adorned every lamppost and street pole, families hoping against hope their loved ones were not buried in the rubble. We showed up at St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village to give blood, only to see a sign that no blood was needed. There were too few survivors who would require blood. We took the subway until someone warned us there could be another attack and the underground was hardly a safe place, especially with rumors that whoever blew up the towers were going to flood the island of Manhattan.
Eventually, we found seats on Amtrak out of Penn Station to Baltimore where we were able to rent a car and drive home in Kentucky. The two tickets to the observation deck are still in our possession as are the memories and the questions that linger about how this could have happened in the first place and why we were spared that early morning ride on the subway to the towers.
When I heard Jill Biden speak to the Democratic National Convention last week and saw this nation’s potential for a president and first lady of class and decency, I thought of another first lady of class and decency, Laura Bush, and the presidency of her husband. I was reminded of the 9/11 Commission’s findings that both the Clinton and Bush administrations had not taken the warnings of an al-Qaida attack on America seriously enough.
I will always believe from the various reports and research on the subject that the Bush administration was particularly culpable in ignoring the threat. Among many instances of red flags thrown the way of President Bush and his senior staff is the Aug. 6, 2001, CIA presidential daily brief warning that an attack was coming to America, and numerous reports show that it was not taken seriously.
I have little doubt that Laura Bush watched Jill Biden deliver her remarks, sitting there with her husband who will go down in history for not only missing the warnings about 9/11 but also falling victim to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s misguided advice to invade Iraq. That cost thousands of lives and energized new terrorist movements still a threat today, not to mention the fact that they were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction.
What would a good spouse do at this moment in our history? I would hope that mine might find a way to suggest, as our nation is crying out for leadership, that there comes a time in a person’s life and career when you have the opportunity to serve your country in a way no one could have predicted. I would hope that Laura Bush could help President Bush understand how offended she is at how Trump has debased our politics, our culture and history, not to mention how Trump has publicly disparaged President Bush.
She might say, “Isn’t now the moment, George, for you to step up, just as Jimmy Carter did as he left behind a one-term presidency and fought for human rights across the globe? It’s time to fight for human rights here in America, and you can do so with a legacy in history as the first ex-president to endorse a candidate for president from the opposing party.” That may be the making of history, but, more importantly, it would contribute to the remaking of an America crippled at home and abroad by Donald Trump.