Poetry

This spirit of nonpartisanship is genuine, but Frum thinks it led Bush astray. He specifically blames it for the “fiasco” of Bush’s half-baked energy policy, bipartisan only in the sense that it infuriated everyone. Hughes reached a similar conclusion about Eisenhower’s bipartisanship. Democrats took advantage of his decency, and bipartisanship undermined his attempts to rejuvenate the Republican party.

For both presidents, however, character trumps political deficiencies. Ike, said Hughes, “gave uncompromising scorn to all temptations of expediency.” Bush, says Frum, has been “dauntless, far-seeing, and consistent” in standing up to terrorism. But up close, again like Ike, Bush is not as pleasant as he seems to outsiders. Frum finds him “tart, not sweet,” a welcome exception to the “White House code of niceness.”

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Poetry

This spirit of nonpartisanship is genuine, but Frum thinks it led Bush astray. He specifically blames it for the “fiasco” of Bush’s half-baked energy policy, bipartisan only in the sense that it infuriated everyone. Hughes reached a similar conclusion about Eisenhower’s bipartisanship. Democrats took advantage of his decency, and bipartisanship undermined his attempts to rejuvenate the Republican party.

For both presidents, however, character trumps political deficiencies. Ike, said Hughes, “gave uncompromising scorn to all temptations of expediency.” Bush, says Frum, has been “dauntless, far-seeing, and consistent” in standing up to terrorism. But up close, again like Ike, Bush is not as pleasant as he seems to outsiders. Frum finds him “tart, not sweet,” a welcome exception to the “White House code of niceness.”