We elect presidents to do a job. Some do it better than others, and the ones we consider the best earned that praise by helping the country endure hard times or getting it out of a tough spot. In any case, they aren't kings, and we shouldn't treat them that way.
Charles C. W. Cooke said it best in We Over-Honor Our Presidents:
Irrespective of whether he was a great man or a poor one, George H. W. Bush was a public employee. He was not a king. He was not a pope. He did not found or save or design the republic. To shut down our civil society for a day in order to mark his peaceful passing is to invert the appropriate relationship between the citizen and the state, and to take yet another step toward the fetishization of an executive branch whose role is supposed to be more bureaucratic than spiritual, but that has come of late to resemble Caesar more than to resemble Coolidge.
George H.W. Bush was a decent man and did a good job as president. But the over-the-top praise after death seemed a bit too much like virtue signaling, especially when it came from those who hated him when he was alive.
Or on another note, Shannon Bream asks if the left’s ‘sudden love’ for Bush 41 is ‘just a ruse’ to slam Trump. Could be. They don't seem to miss an opportunity. And to paraphrase a famous quote: "Never let a tragedy go to waste."
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3:42 PM 12/6/2018
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