Viewers looking for a break from the non-stop love fest around recently-deceased former President George H.W. Bush got the treat they were looking for on Monday night’s edition of All In with Chris Hayes, as conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin and Esquire‘s Charlie Pierce went 15 rounds over the 41st president’s legacy.
After several minutes of Kumbayah over how terrible Trump looks in comparison to Bush, Pierce began utterly destroying the former president over a variety of issues, beginning with civil rights and racism.
“He could have beaten Michael Dukakis without Lee Atwater, without Willie Horton,” Pierce said. “He didn’t have to run against the 1964 civil Rights Act against Ralph Yarborough like he did.”
Bush denounced the Civil Rights Act while he was running for Senate in 1964, and vociferously adopted an attack against his opponent in 1988 that his campaign manager later acknowledged “makes me sound racist.”
While crediting him for raising taxes despite a campaign pledge, Pierce went on to slam Bush for changing his positions on abortion and “voodoo economics,” and said that “The primary legacy of George H.W. Bush, as president, is that battlefield courage does not necessarily translate into political courage.”
Rubin, who has become one of the most prominent anti-Trump conservatives, leapt to defend Bush.
“Oh my, I couldn’t disagree more,” Rubin said, adding that “you can pick small things, small mistakes in anyone’s career,” but praised Bush for his handling of the end of the Cold War, his decision not to occupy Iraq after the first Gulf War, the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, and his signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“He bent the knee of fealty to the elements that created the modern Republican party,” Pierce said.
“No, I don’t think so. The far-right was there when Ronald Reagan was there, he just came along after him,” Rubin replied, then took aim at Trump by contrasting Bush’s foreign policy chops with Trump, whom she said is “so disruptive and so at odds with our allies.”
“Donald Trump has never been part of a conspiracy to sell missiles to the Ayatollah,” Pierce blurted out, a reference to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Hayes pointed out that while Bush was not directly implicated in the scandal, he did raise questions by pardoning a raft of Iran-Contra figures, and the incompleteness of the investigation. He asked Rubin what she makes of the pardons, given the current questions around Trump’s possible use of the pardon power.
“We’re not talking about Sheriff Joe here, we’re talking about people who were represented, who made a case for clemency, it went through the process, got a recommendation from the Justice Department, and he proceeded,” Rubin said, but added that “it wasn’t my favorite part of his legacy either, but I think it’s a long ways to go from there to the current state of affairs.”
According to The New York Times, the Bush pardons had the effect of “virtually decapitating what was left” of the independent prosecutor’s investigation.
Rubin returned to Trump, citing Bush’s resignation from the NRA as a contrast to Trump “slobbering over the far right, and they over he. So I think that may have arguably been the last Republican president who was willing to stand up to some of these groups, and to say ‘No, I have a higher obligation, and this behavior is un-American’.”
“He didn’t stand up to them when he was trying to become president,” Pierce said, adding “He flip-flopped on abortion, he flip-flopped on gay rights, he never could get behind the civil Rights bill even in the first race he ever ran.”
“No, he actually did get behind a civil rights bill, he voted in favor of the 1968 Fair Housing Bill,” Rubin said, adding that “in terms of gay rights and abortion, he was never, frankly, on the other side.”
“Oh yes he was,” Pierce growled. Bush held a variety of pro-choice views prior to becoming a vice-presidential candidate.
Hayes ended things on a unifying note on Bush’s civil rights legacy, noting “something… which I think should get a lot of attention in the remembrances is the Americans with disabilities Act, a really remarkable piece of legislation that is very inconceivable to imagine the modern Republican party signing, given the expense that it has produced for folks.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
