At the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, President Obama and former President Clinton took to the podium to praise Bush – and in the process, stump for their version of immigration reform. Trying to leverage Republicans into handing over their principles by suddenly singing odes to the president he labeled the root of all evil, President Obama gushed over Bush “reaching across the aisle to unlikely allies like Ted Kennedy” with regard to his immigration reform effort.
He continued: “Seven years ago, President Bush restarted an important conversation by speaking with the American people about our history as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And even though comprehensive immigration reform has taken a little longer than any of us expected, I am hopeful that this year, with the help of Speaker Boehner and some of the Senators and members of Congress who are here today, that we bring it home.”
By using President Bush as a model of executive policy leadership, Obama betrayed what conservatives have known all along: on a vast variety of issues, Bush was closer to Obama’s position than to the conservative position.
But Obama wasn’t the only occupant of the Oval Office to spontaneously rediscover the greatness of a president so detested by the left that professional Bush-hater Michael Moore once sat in the presidential box with another former President Jimmy Carter. President Clinton used his opportunity at the lectern to praise Bush for his push for immigration reform. “I want to thank you for your efforts, when president, to reform our immigration system, and keep America a nation of immigrants, and I hope that Congress will follow President Obama’s efforts to follow the example you’ve set,” he drawled.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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