Obama And Dubya: Soulmates?

Jon Meacham of Newsweek, who is working on a biography of the elder Bush (41), says President Obama and his immediate predecessor have much in common. In fact, Meacham implies all presidents move toward the center amid the complexities of achieving the highest office, and that is the great equalizer.

There is a presidential character intrinsic to the office. Part of this is because what seemed black and white while you were running looks a lot grayer once ultimate power is yours, and part of it is that the country changes presidents more frequently than the country changes itself. We are a center-right nation politically and culturally, which means we value moderate governance—and we punish those who stray too far one way or the other. (See Clinton in 1993–94, or George W. Bush between roughly 2003 and late 2006.)

My head explodes when I hear that we’re a “center-right nation.”  And Meacham offers more head-exploding text:

Like Bush 41, Obama seems temperamentally incapable of extremism. Now, since the foregoing sentence will make conservatives’ heads explode, here is a final point likely to drive liberals to distraction: from Guantánamo to the bailout of the financial system to antiterror tactics, Barack Obama is a lot more like George W. Bush (or at least the George W. Bush of his later years in office) than almost anybody involved—including, I suspect, Obama or Bush 43—would readily admit. At their best, both of them have worked to govern as presidents, not as partisans, which is the way good men have always conducted themselves in that office.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.