Candygate
By On twitter some people gushed stupidly about George W. Bush sneaking some candy to Michelle Obama. It didn’t go unnoticed and a gate was born.
People’s response to McCain’s passing and his memorial today shows me that we are very bad at nuance.
— Aditi Juneja (@AditiJuneja3) September 2, 2018
Nearly all left critiques of the Bush presidency are fair and I’m 1000% in agreement of them. He presided over a ruinous economy and a horribly-botched response to Katrina. He lied us into a war that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands and Americans. And the cherry on top of this crapcake was his attempt to privatize social security. He was a terrible president, but I’d go further than that in my assessment of his presidency: many of the mechanics that went into getting him elected paved the way for Trump’s election. I’ll never forget the dirty tricks–big and small–the Bush machine used to bully their way into office. I’ll never forget the racist campaign they waged against McCain (and his adopted daughter) in South Carolina. I’ll never forget the lies they told about the “W’s” being stolen from White House computers, the Brooks Brothers riots. In big and small ways, the slimy, cheating nastiness of the Bush campaign and presidency paved the way for the incomprehensible shitshow that is Trump.
BUT…you knew this was coming didn’t you?…I have a sliver of sympathy for the people who saw Bush slip Michelle Obama some candy and thought “Awww, isn’t that nice?” I confess I got a kick out of it, even though intellectually I know I shouldn’t. I’m not sure how to explain myself. I’m not sure how to explain the rehabilitation that we subject past presidents to. I think it has to do with a craving for normalcy, even if “normal” is still very, very bad.
We’re living in a time that is lacking any sense of normalcy. I can’t speak for other people, but to me it feels like at any moment this could all fall apart, the country could fall apart, the world could go to war. I think about the fact that the president unapologetically praised Neo-nazis on television and I feel like running around outside screaming at the top of my lungs. I don’t understand how that–if nothing else–didn’t effectively mean the end of his presidency. A lot of this feels unreal to me. A lot of feels like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. And I’m someone who is largely spared the deliberate cruelty of this administration.
Our president is an illiterate reality TV star with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and can’t stand normally. I’m freaking. People are freaking. So perhaps that explains why some people thought “Hey, that guy gave Michelle some candy. That’s nice.” Trump would never give someone candy; it would never occur to him. Other people largely don’t exist to him except as bit players in his life. It was a profoundly normal moment in a moment of deep, deep, scary weirdness.
I think rehabilitating presidents like George W. Bush is not only bad but dangerous. But a tiny part of me understands the impulse to do so.