After a whopping five months of restraint, former President George W. Bush came out swinging against Pres. Obama yesterday in a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania. Bush reminded listeners that, “I told you I’m not going to criticize my successor,” and then went ahead anyhow, saying, “I’ll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don’t believe that persuasion isn’t going to work (sic). Therapy isn’t going to cause terrorists to change their mind.” No one in Obama’s White House has proposed therapy for terrorists, so Bush’s comment must be in reference to his own administration’s decision to send some terrorists to therapy — a Saudi jihadi rehabilitation camp — which, according to ABC News, had “decidedly mixed success.”
Not content with criticizing non-existent Obama policies, Bush also lit into the new president’s economic programs, saying that “Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.” It is unclear whether anyone pointed out to Bush that not too many people take him that seriously anymore, that his approval rating is actually lower now than before he left the White House, and that his own economic policies were among the reasons Obama is in office today. Then again, Bush always said he wasn’t “a reflective kind of guy.”
This article appears in Jun 16-23, 2009.
