It seems only natural to look to former national leaders during big or presidential elections. After all, these are men and women who have either held the seat themselves before or were close enough to it to understand what was required. These few have a unique perspective about the job and what makes a good commander in chief.
And so it shouldn’t be surprising that during the controversial 2020 elections, as one of the last living former presidents, Republican George W. Bush, was asked of his opinion, and of course, who he would be voting for or endorsing.
It’s also shouldn’t be surprising that Bush wisely refused to disclose that information.
However, with the election now past and Democrat Joe Biden named our president, Bush has recently decided to talk about his vote in 2020. And it may surprise you.
In an interview that was published this week, Bush told People magazine that he voted neither for Biden or fellow Republican Party member Donald Trump. Instead, he voted for his former, second-term Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. He said he wrote in her name and, yes, “She knows it.”
The former president told the outlet that he told her of his vote, “but she told me she would refuse to accept the office.”
Now, in some way, this is a relief. I mean, at least he didn’t help put Biden, who is now destroying our nation a day at a time, in the White House. Not that anyone really thought he ever would; he’s not precisely the turncoat McCain was.
Neither did he write in a name like Barack Obama, whom he staunchly declined to disparage while the latter man was in office.
Nonetheless, I have to admit it’s definitely somewhat of a disappointment.
For conservatives like my family, we were proud to have a man like GW Bush as our 43rd president. He held to traditional conservative points that mattered to us, and in the atmosphere of the early 2000s, he was exactly what we needed for the time. As we did with Trump, we defended his words and actions ferociously, many of us making some rather serious sacrifices to do so.
And yet, in a time when the nation is moving farther left than ever before, and away from those standards and principles he helped to put or keep in place, Bush essentially wasted his vote. (I have to add, this is meant as no disrespect to Condoleezza Rice. She, no doubt, would make a fabulous president, should she ever run and did an exemplary job of running the state department.)
So why did he waste it?
Well, I have to surmise that he’s simply not a big fan of Trump, but as I said before, he couldn’t bring himself to vote for someone of a differing party.
And history does little but confirm this.
Take the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, for example.
In this election, too, Bush refused to vote for either and even suggested that he would go down in history as the last Republican to ever sit in the Oval Office. Now, this comment, of course, was made before the election and after Trump’s official nomination by the GOP.
Presumably, this would make one think that Bush thought Clinton would win due to Trump’s controversial nature. However, maybe it’s because he doesn’t really view Trump as a true Republican.
After all, the man didn’t come from politics, didn’t always play by the rules, and certainly didn’t follow the establishment’s suggestions. In fact, when he first announced his run, Trump said he would do so as an independent.
Now, of course, since then, Trump’s neoconservatism has become the new standard for the Republican Party, with most conservatives fully supporting his policies and pushing to keep them intact. However, Bush still doesn’t seem to be all that much of a fan.
While he refused to outright blame Trump for the January 6 incursion on the Capitol, he didn’t precisely acquit him of it either, according to a recent interview with CBS News.
But he did blame Trump for America’s divided society, telling Norah O’Donnell that “the country was very divided during that period of time. And, you know, as a result, (Trump) wasn’t re-elected.”
Maybe he would have been if Bush had shown him a bit more support…