The polarizing former George W. Bush speech writer, David Frum was on MSNBC Live Monday afternoon to share his thoughts about Donald Trump attacking his former boss. Frum argued that the GOP needs to reflect on the Bush years, and described the GOP as a repressed mental patient. “And in Freudian psychology, the theory was, you suffered a trauma, you repressed it, but you could never make it go away. The repression exhibited itself in hysterical behavior, and only -- the only way to deal with it was to bring to light what has been repressed.”
During the interview, host Steve Kornacki quoted Frum from a recent publication “For a decade and a half, Republicans have stifled internal debates about the George W. Bush presidency. They have preserved a more or less common front, focusing all their accumulated anger on the figure of Obama. The Trump candidacy has smashed all those coping mechanisms.” Frum’s argument is that the “hysterical behavior” and “accumulated anger” towards the Obama administration policies are only because republicans can’t come to terms with George W. Bush’s legacy.
According to Frum it took Donald Trump to make republicans see the errors of George W. Bush. “Republicans are talking in a way they have not talked, ever. Not in a decade and a half, about what they think about the George W. Bush presidency, what was right, what was wrong. And it's a very painful discussion, especially because it's coming so late. Normally that happens in the first couple of years after an administration.”
I idea that republicans have not openly discussed their dislikes from the Bush years is just plain wrong. The Tea Party got its start in the Bush years when people were protesting the Wall Street bailouts. And recently many republicans have come out against the PATRIOT Act and the domestic spying programs it created. In addition, Trump was not the first presidential candidate to say the Iraq War was mistake. Senator Rand Paul has been making that claim for a long time.
Frum went on to discuss how Jeb Bush thought that his brother would never become a campaign issue. He continued by that Jeb thought he would only have to really compete against Hillary Clinton. A race Frum insinuated Jeb would lose because Clintons are a better “brand” than the Bushes are in American politics. “He thought he would inherent all of the advantages of being a Bush, and yet be able to dispense with all of the passion that his brother's administration raised. And not only in the primary, but he was heading towards a general election, in which he was going to give the electorate a chance to choose between another Bush and another Clinton, when we know that the Clintons have one of the most favorable brands in American politics. They're associated with prosperity and the Bushes have a more challenged brand, to put it mildly.”
Transcript below:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live
February 15, 2016
4:11:03 – 4:14:32 PM EasternSTEVE KORNACKI: All right, Gabe Gutierrez, with Marco Rubio. Thank you for that. And again, less than two hours from now, 6:00 P.M. Eastern time, Jeb Bush will be holding that rally with his brother, former president George W. Bush. The 43rd president becoming a major issue in this Republican race.
And for more on that. I'm joined now by senior editor at the Atlantic and former white house speechwriter for George W. Bush, David Frum. And David Frum writes in a new piece that, quote:
“For a decade and a half, Republicans have stifled internal debates about the George W. Bush presidency. They have preserved a more or less common front, focusing all their accumulated anger on the figure of Obama. The trump candidacy has smashed all those coping mechanisms.”
David, thanks for taking a few minutes. Let me start with this. It feels to me like over the last eight or nine months, however long the trump campaign has been going on, he has just shattered one preconception after another about what really matters and what is really sacred to the Republican party base. So the conventional wisdom is, George W. Bush, still extremely popular with the base. The base doesn't want people attacking George W. Bush. Do you feel like we're about to find out that that conventional wisdom was wrong?
DAVID FRUM: This year feels to me -- those of your viewers who are elderly enough to remember when Freudian psychology was a thing, will remember the phrase, “the return of the repressed.”
And in Freudian psychology, the theory was, you suffered a trauma, you repressed it, but you could never make it go away. The repression exhibited itself in hysterical behavior, and only -- the only way to deal with it was to bring to light what has been repressed.
And that is what happened on that stage on Saturday night. Republicans are talking in a way they have not talked, ever. Not in a decade and a half, about what they think about the George W. Bush presidency, what was right, what was wrong. And it's a very painful discussion, especially because it's coming so late. Normally that happens in the first couple of years after an administration. And Donald Trump has shattered all of those conventions.
KORNACKI: It also feels like, just in terms of a marketing standpoint, you have all of these candidates out
there, whether it's Rubio, whether obviously it's Jeb Bush, who are just instinctively, reflexively, their political instincts tell them, “he's a former Republican president, we defended him, defended his war throughout the last decade, we're supposed to defend him and supposed to defend the war that he waged.” Donald Trump has all of the real estate to himself for Republicans who are questioning that.
FRUM: Right. When George Bush—W. Bush left office, he was polling in the low 20s. A little more than a third of the country are Republicans. So he lost a third of the Republican Party in those last years of his presidency, for a number of reasons. Not just because of Iraq, because of economic conditions, Katrina, all of those things played in.
Since then, there has been a gloss, but that gloss is now being cracked. And that was inevitable. The thing that is really striking to me about all of this discussion is that Jeb Bush did not foresee, when he decided to seek the presidency for himself, that it must inevitably turn into a referendum on his brother's presidency.He thought he would inherent all of the advantages of being a Bush, and yet be able to dispense with all of the passion that his brother's administration raised. And not only in the primary, but he was heading towards a general election, in which he was going to give the electorate a chance to choose between another Bush and another Clinton, when we know that the Clintons have one of the most favorable brands in American politics. They're associated with prosperity and the Bushes have a more challenged brand, to put it mildly.
