I have never been that impressed with President George W. Bush, but I was impressed with the way he brought the nation together after 9/11.  This blog is my response to his belated call for unity with the virus outbreak.

In my “SPECIAL: They just knew there would be a pandemic,” April 5, 2020, former President George W. Bush was one of the individuals I wrote about who saw a pandemic in our future.

I quoted from a piece written by Mathew Mosk of ABC News, “George W. Bush in 2005: If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.”  Mosk reported on how Bush had become obsessed over the possibility of a global pandemic.

Bush told his aides to focus on the potential, and saw a comprehensive pandemic plan developed with descriptions of a global early warning system, funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology, and a robust national stockpile to critical supplies, such as masks and ventilators.

He spoke in granular detail at the National Institutes of Health in November 2005, describing with stunning prescience how a pandemic in the U.S. would unfold, what would be needed in the way of supplies and medical expertise.  Among those in the audience that day was Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is now advising President Trump on the outbreak.

Over the years that followed, however, interest by Bush’s cabinet lessened even though they thought the pandemic scenario was possible.  It became difficult to justify continuing funding, staffing and attention.

“In retrospect, those were serious preparations,” writes Yuval Levin in National Review, “though there is no question that if American had faced a pandemic back then, we would also have been overwhelmed and gotten it wrong.”

Quite an admission from someone who was on Bush’s domestic policy staff and executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Levin goes on to say that “one way to interpret a story like this is as a rebuke of the leaders who followed Bush, and didn’t keep up with this work or even retain what their predecessor had done,” but he sees it differently.

“I think it is better understood as a story about the immense array of problems and threats that every president has to face, and the enormous difficulty, indeed near-impossibility, of being prepared for freak events,” Levin writes.

As one of the more junior folks in the Bush administration, as Levin described himself, the focus on pandemic preparedness was hard to understand, as he referenced other dangers they were facing, like counterterrorism, hurricanes.

“There wasn’t a major global pandemic in 2006 or 2007, as we feared there might be.  There wasn’t one until 2020,” writes Levin. “So in the interim, two administrations left the Bush-era preparations to the side and went on to other priorities.  It’s easy now to say that was reckless.”

“More than anything, it’s a lesson in how difficult and daunting the president’s job, regardless of who occupies the office, really is,” Levin concludes.

I have observed the changes in party’s moving into the White House, and would like to think that Bush’s extensive pandemic response structure would have been viewed as valuable to the Obama administration.  Even as Obama was faced with the H1N1 flu, his administration was ill-equipped to deal with it.  And he left the Trump administration with diminished stockpiles.

In a normal first term, one not fraught with Deep State efforts to remove him from office – Russia and impeachment – Doctors Fauci and Birx may have had an opportunity to brief him on our preparedness to handle a pandemic.

President Trump, though initially unprepared, showed his leadership in forming a task force to address the outbreak and a collaboration with all of the governors, while involving the private sector in solving their needs.  The next administration will be prepared.

HOW DISAPPOINTING it was for me to hear on Sunday that Bush produced a Twitter video call for unity amid the virus outbreak.  It’s a little late.

He was right in 2005 that it would be too late to prepare once the pandemic appeared, but where was his call for unity when President Trump was being criticized for banning travel from China and other trouble spots.  Remember the charges of racism?

I have no reason to disbelieve Mosk’s observance that Bush became absolutely obsessed with what an outbreak would do to the U.S. after reading a chilling tale of a mysterious plague by John M. Barry.  However, was Bush’s dislike for Trump so deep that he couldn’t bring himself, as an American, to share his grief with the president now faced with that horror?

AND PONDER THIS – Fox’s Pete Hegseth said, “where was he (Bush) during the impeachment calling for ‘putting partisanship aside’ and issuing his plea for unity.”

May God continue to bless the United States of America.