Obama Speaks Out. Where is George W. Bush?

Susan Estrich on Apr 12, 2025

President Barack Obama finally did last week what so many of us have been waiting for him -- and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- to do. He stood up and spoke out about the threat to our constitutional democracy posed by Donald Trump.

There is a very nice tradition that former presidents don't step up to criticize their successors, particularly during their "honeymoon" period. It is a nicety that we can't afford when, as now, our very democracy is in danger. Obama asked the question we've all been asking: What would Republicans do if it was a Democrat who tried to do some of the things that Trump is doing so cavalierly?

"Imagine if I had done any of this," he asked his audience at Hamilton College. Imagine he had threatened to destroy law firms that didn't like the Affordable Care Act, or brought litigation against it, as Trump has done with his executive orders targeting firms that once employed lawyers who investigated him, or had pro bono programs he doesn't like. "It's unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me or a whole bunch of my predecessors ... Imagine if I had pulled Fox News' credentials from the White House press corps," as this president has done to the AP.

Republicans, and the media, would have raised holy hell, as they did when Obama tried to block officials from speaking to Fox News. That policy was swiftly reversed because of the backlash. Where is the backlash now?

And where is George W. Bush?

America needs its former presidents to speak out about the abuse of presidential power that this president is engaged in. We need to hear more from Bill Clinton, who Republicans were prepared to impeach for having a consensual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. How can you do that and then sit silently while this president, who has been found liable for sexual assault and convicted of multiple felonies, speculates about ignoring court orders, undermining the rule of law and violating the Constitution by running for a third term?

But most of all, we need to hear from former President Bush. He is, sadly, the only Republican with the gravitas and the standing to say no to Trump and his best friend Elon Musk, to call out J.D. Vance and border czar Tom Homan for suggesting that the administration will ignore court orders, to support Chief Justice John Roberts and the independent judiciary. I didn't vote for George W. Bush, and I disagreed with many of his policies. But I never doubted, as I do now with Trump, that he took his oath to uphold the Constitution seriously.

In his Hamilton College speech, Obama drew a line between disagreeing with the current president on matters of policy, such as tariffs, and standing silent while he tries to intimidate universities, law firms and judges. He called on universities to stand up to the president's intimidation. "If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?" he said. "If not, and you're just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that's why we got this big endowment."

"It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you're for free speech and not have to pay a price for it," Obama said. "Now we're at one of those moments where, you know what? It's not enough just to say you're for something; you may actually have to do something." Obama called on "all of us to fix this," including "the citizen, the ordinary person who says, no, that's not right" and to "possibly sacrifice" to support democratic values.

Ordinary people have been speaking out and have taken to the streets in protest. But we need our "leaders," starting with our former presidents, to speak out. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times require extraordinary action. President Bush: we need your voice.

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