I keep waiting for former President George W. Bush to step up his game and tell his party to save America by impeaching Donald Trump. For now, I’ll have to settle for the stinging and patriotic critiques of Trumpism issued by the George W. Bush Institute.
The Bush Institute’s latest edition of The Catalyst features a number of essays from Bush loyalists reminding Americans that we should be far better than the stupid, greedy monster that the current President makes us. Take, for example, former Bush advisor and diplomat Karen Hughes, who recalls a young Turkish father’s question in 2005: “Does the Statue of Liberty still face out?”
Back in Istanbul my answer had been, yes, Lady Liberty does face out. I believe it’s vitally important that our answer always remains yes, that our country resists the temptations of isolationism and protectionism and stays engaged with the wider world.
Unfortunately, our 250th birthday celebration seems to find us in a fit of national selfishness. We’ve shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and eliminated an estimated 85% of our emergency food aid programs, a statistic that sears my soul as I remember the many times I arrived in countries to find large groups of desperate people waiting for lifesaving aid. It always made me so proud of our country that we were there to help in some of the most difficult, darkest circumstances. I felt that way when I saw our aid at work in Kashmir after devastating earthquakes, in Indonesia after a tsunami, in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the U.S. Naval Ship Comfort pulled into ports to provide medical treatment and donated eyeglasses to long lines of waiting people, many of them children. In all those cases, our government partnered with volunteers, nongovernmental organizations, and private businesses to meet people’s needs.
Retreating within ourselves is not fundamentally who we are as a country. As early as 1812, the United States sent five ships with $50,000 worth of wheat flour to feed survivors of an earthquake in Venezuela. We are the nation that rebuilt Europe after World War II. My former boss, President George W. Bush, rallied America to support the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa, saving more than 26 million lives. He did it knowing, as he said, “When we confront suffering – when we save lives – we breathe hope into devastated populations, strengthen and stabilize society, and make our country and world safer.” He also did it based on the belief that “to whom much is given much is required” and understanding that America’s values call us to stand up for “the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”
Our founding ideal that we are “created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” calls us to a high purpose. If we truly believe our rights are given by God, then they cannot be hoarded but must be shared.
From our very founding, America has often failed to live up to our own grand ideals. As the historian Walter Isaacson reminds readers in his recent book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, 41 of the 56 men who signed America’s Declaration of Independence and boldly asserted that “all men are created equal” themselves owned slaves. But even when we struggle, even when we fail to live out our founding convictions, Americans have always aspired to them because we believe every person has God-given dignity, worth, and value [Karen Hughes, “Does the Statue of Liberty Still Face Out?” George W. Bush Institute: The Catalyst, Winter 2026].
As Donald Trump drapes a garish banner promoting himself over the Department of Justice, the last living former Republican President should step out, as his loyalists are doing, to call on America to show its better face to the world. Mr. President, please repudiate Trump and Trumpism, and call on your party to join Democrats is restoring America’s commitment not to the aggrandizement of a dictator but the dignity of every human being.