Is GW really viewed as a joke? I don't feel sure about that. If there's one thing Trump did, it was making GW look great by comparison. Yeah he wasn't well-spoken, but Biden isn't particularly known for that either. His 9/11 reaction was considered a gaffe/problematic, but in retrospect it was a very human reaction of shock. And "Mission Accomplished" is the kind of gaffe Trump has done routinely, multiple times a day. I get that I'm setting the bar real low for the leader of a superpower, but that's kinda the point I'm making. At the end of the day I felt like Bush cared about America and wanted to do good, just a whole lot of people disagreed about how he went about that (including me). Agree with you that I only hope the shameless, lying narcissists like Cruz & Graham are forever tainted by association, because Trump is literally insane. I don't think it's fair to even put GW in the same sentence with Trump. It's like comparing a traffic violation to a killing spree.
W was not Trump bad but ... W turned a budget surplus into a tax cut for the top 1%. W de-prioritized terrorists attacks and discounted planes flying into buildings warnings, which to 9/11. W knowingly started a trillion dollar war in Iraq on bad intel. W showed a lack of regulation enforcement and legislative initiative leading into the Great Recession. W generally made bad executive decisions. Easily in the bottom quartile of Presidents. After both W and Trump got elected, I thought the country would be OK as long we did not have a major crisis.
