When President-elect Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama were seen happily chatting with one another at former President Jimmy Carter‘s memorial service earlier this month, it got people talking, and lip-reading experts went into overdrive.

But there was one other former president there at the Washington National Cathedral, George W. Bush, who seemed to be enjoying himself and having as much fun as his two direct successors.

Bush shook a few hands (not Trump’s), patted a belly (Obama’s), bonked his father’s vice president, Dan Quayle, on the head with his program, and went back to Texas. The fun and folksy behavior was reminiscent of the bond he has seemingly struck up with former first lady Michelle Obama, which has been on display several times.

Bush’s post-presidential public persona is all the more striking because he was once among the most hated men on the planet and was constantly used as a punching bag for late-night comics for his “Bush-isms.” That’s the difference between being a Republican president in office and being a Republican president who has left the White House.

His controversial election, his aggressive international policies, especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his unsuccessful efforts to push for a privatized element in Social Security, and his tax cuts divided the public and made him a lightning rod for controversy. 

He posted a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier. He did not succeed in reforming immigration. His was a long list of failures.

While Bush’s snub of Trump during Carter’s funeral didn’t go unnoticed — former Trump adviser Steve Bannon ranted about it on his War Room podcast, calling Bush “the worst president in the history of the country” — there has nonetheless been a softening of opinion when historians and the public look at Bush’s complicated legacy. 

“Ex-presidents tend to be more popular over time,” Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told the Washington Examiner. “The conflicts and the tensions and the decisions that were unpopular at the time start to recede, and the salience in the public mind, and what Americans are left with, is an image of someone who tried to be president and tried to do the best they could under the circumstances.”

Rhodes added that, like Carter, Bush has spent his post-presidency involved in charity work and supporting uncontroversial causes, which affects his “retrospective evaluation.”

Most presidential scholars and academics to whom the Washington Examiner spoke said the legacies of Bush and Trump are intertwined whether they like it or not. 

“Not only have conflicts and the unpopular things Bush has done receded in importance, but in comparison, with many Republicans today, in particular President Trump, he seems very measured and statesman-like and reasonable,” Rhodes said. 

Ronald Schurin, associate professor emeritus of political science at the University of Connecticut, told the Washington Examiner he credits Trump with Bush getting “a better shake from history.” 

“Bush is now perceived to have been a responsible Republican,” he said. “He is criticized still and intensely for Iraq and for the initiation for the war in Afghanistan that seemed to go on without end, but in terms of domestic policy and in terms of other aspects of foreign policy, he is perceived as a center-right Republican of solid credentials and solid achievements.” 

Meena Bose, executive dean of public policy and public service at Hofstra University, told the Washington Examiner that while she believes history’s verdict on Bush’s legacy is still to be decided, with “the passage of time, with declassified records, with an assessment of long-term effects of policies, we see shifts in both public and scholarly assessments of a presidency.” 

But even though time has softened some views of Bush’s more polarizing decisions, they deserve a closer look. Hanging over it all is the question of whether old-school Republicans such as Bush have a place in today’s GOP, which has undergone a massive transformation, first with the Tea Party and then, even more, with the arrival of Trump.

9/11 legacy

Millions of Americans watched in horror on 9/11 when terrorists attacked New York City and Washington, D.C, and were deflected from Congress to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, only by the heroics of passengers. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered by terrorists that day, and thousands more were injured. 

Bush, president at the time, took immediate action. 

He signed the Patriot Act, which created new rules on surveillance that many now see as permanently undermining traditional freedoms in the name of security. The debate over how to balance national security with civil rights, as well as the politics of the “war on terror,” has led to long-term cultural, ideological, and political polarization.

Bush also signed the Homeland Security Act, which created the Department of Homeland Security, a new department of the executive branch of the federal government.

The Bush administration havered about what to do with al Qaeda members captured in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Sept. 17, 2001, Bush signed a classified action memo giving the CIA the go-ahead to detain terrorists at black sites, or secret prisons, around the world. 

The CIA experimented with harsh interrogation techniques that went far beyond what had been used in the past. On July 24, 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft approved the use of 10 techniques that included slapping faces, wall standing, stress positions, cramped confinement, attention grasp, sleep deprivation, the use of insects, and the use of diapers. On July 26, he verbally approved the use of waterboarding. These techniques ignited disputes over what was and what was not torture.

Bush was slammed in the press by human rights groups and liberal lawmakers for going too far, and for spending billions of dollars on wars that some people thought unnecessary and unwise and in which many Americans were being killed.

As president, Bush was vilified every day, and his every move seemed only to add fuel to the fire. Historians will still probably judge Bush harshly, but not as harshly as he was excoriated at the time. And there may be a silver lining for him, Schurin said. 

“9/11 and the response, including some of the incursions on civil liberties, will be something long remembered,” he said. “The fact is, the country did not suffer another 9/11, and some of that may be given to the credit of George W. Bush.”

Privatization of Social Security

Bush made waves for trying and failing to privatize some of Social Security. After he was reelected in 2004, this reform was his top domestic priority. Even at the time, it was a wise move — the United States is far behind other developed nations in taking this move to secure sovereign finances — but it created a firestorm on the Left, and it was demagogued to death, especially as other matters went badly.

In a postelection press conference, Bush claimed he had “earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” He wanted workers to be able to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts, giving them the option of then investing the money into stocks and bonds to save for their retirement. 

He devoted a chunk of his State of the Union address to selling this to the country. Few seemed interested. The more he spoke about it, the less popular it became. Public disapproval jumped 16 points from 48% to 64% between January and June, according to a Gallup poll, although this was probably exacerbated by other areas of policy going wrong.

Congressional Democrats said a hard “no” to any element of privatization, and Republicans never came together on it, fearing that it was a “third rail” that would kill them electorally. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, creating scenes of squalor, death, and incompetence, Bush’s political capital vaporized. By October 2005, the then-president admitted his push for privatization had collapsed. 

Schurin, however, believes Bush should get credit for “touching the third rail of politics.” 

“It didn’t go anywhere, but it was something that needed to be discussed and brought public attention to the impending problems of the Social Security system,” he said. 

Hurricane Katrina

Bush was on vacation when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005. He had been on vacation at his 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, for 27 days. His staff had not informed him of the impending hurricane or of the multiple warnings issued by meteorologists. 

When it made landfall, the monster storm spread across 400 miles with winds up to 125 mph. Storm surges rolled across levees and drainage canals, flooding wide areas and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, and Florida. There is no death toll, but it is believed more than 1,800 people perished. The financial damage hit more than $100 billion, and relief was slow. 

News footage from the devastated areas showed people begging for help. New Orleans, where more than 67% of the population was black and 30% poor, was in shambles. 

The city became a flashpoint and created the impression that Bush and the federal government did not care about helping minorities or those less fortunate. The president was lambasted, called a racist, and appeared more concerned about playing golf than doing his job.  

Rapper Kanye West got in on the Bush-bashing, much to the dismay of Austin Powers actor Mike Myers, with whom he was sharing the screen, and went off-script during a telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina by telling the country, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Ten years after Katrina, the former president returned to New Orleans. He and his wife were given a standing ovation when they visited Warren Easton Charter High School. He told students and staff he would never forget the heartbreaking images of “misery and ruin” from the Category 5 storm. Bush spent most of his speech reviewing his role in the disaster and focused his remarks on praising the city’s public schools that had become privately run charters. 

“Isn’t that amazing,” Bush said. “The storm nearly destroys New Orleans, now New Orleans is a beacon for school reform.”

“Ten years ago, the idea that President George W. Bush would receive several standing ovations in front of a predominantly African American audience in New Orleans, might have been unimaginable,” the BBC reported.

Is there room for Bush in Trump’s Republican Party?

Bush has been careful not to make direct or explicit jabs at Trump. Others in his orbit, who might be regarded as surrogates, have done so.

“Trump inspired an unprecedented degree of pushback from Republicans who were associated with Bush because Trump is very self-consciously attempting to depart from and criticize Bush’s legacy,” Rhodes said. “Trump was very critical of Bush engaging the United States in what he viewed as unnecessary foreign wars and also … Trump views Bush and his cronies as too soft on immigration.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others close to Bush “are very sensitive and very frustrated about Trump’s effort to write them out of Republican Party politics.”

Bush is the poster politician for the old Republican Party, and there is robust debate over whether he and other establishment types have a home in Trump’s revamped GOP.

Schurin believes there is no place for them. 

“It’s very difficult and somewhat painful to say that because we need two strong parties that move towards the center,” he said. “One from the Left and the other from the Right, and Bush was one of the center-right leaders that was typical of what would have been a strong Republican Party. I think Trump has succeeded dramatically and magnificently in taking over the Republican Party to the point where there is virtually no one that I can seriously think of that has any strong position in the … party that is not subservient to Donald Trump.”

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Rhodes, however, believes the next four years will tell whether “Trumpism” solidifies as the Republican Party’s identity or whether the Right will remain “fragmented and factionalized.” 

“There’s a lot riding on the extent to which Trump is perceived as being successful, to the extent … he is perceived as popular,” he said. “Right now, he is obviously riding on a high that benefits Trumpism, but speaking realistically, very soon, things will become much more challenging for him. … You can’t do everything, and the choices that he makes inevitably will create tensions in his coalition.”