If you haven't sen the video, its very PRESIDENTIAL which is exactly why Trump attacked Bush . . further making Bush's (and Biden's) point:
"But the 3-minute video Bush released on Saturday points to something that I thoroughly took for granted during his presidency (and during every other presidency in my lifetime). It's a quality I've come to appreciate, admire, and miss terribly through the civic desert of the Trump administration: the capacity of a president to rise above partisanship to speak from and to the nation as a whole."
"This isn't just some idle quality that sentimental Americans like their presidents to possess. It's one of the two fundamental responsibilities of the presidential office — to serve both as head of the executive branch of government and head of state. The second of these duties is as essential as the first — and for all of Trump's difficulty handling the managerial and policy challenges of running the executive branch, his inability to speak in high-minded terms about the good of the nation as a whole, about the need to rise above factionalism, and about our capacity to feel a part of a whole that's larger than ourselves is total, is one of his greatest failings as president. And it's been even more glaringly obvious since the pandemic took hold in mid-March. As much as anything over the past three years, Bush's video helps us to recognize this shortcoming for the fatal flaw that it is."
"THE FATAL FLAW THAT IT IS"
"THE FATAL FLAW THAT IT IS"
"THE FATAL FLAW THAT IT IS"
"This [BEING A UNITER] is part of the job that Trump is thoroughly incapable of performing. Instead of aspiring to unity, he exudes divisiveness and provokes antagonism with everything he says. That's how he does politics, and it's been incredibly effective for him. But it is incompatible with serving as the American head of state. Instead of binding the nation together with his words, his constant vituperation tears it apart."
"Examples of Trump falling short of the dignity of his office are legion. It has never ceased to be appalling. (This includes Trump's typically petty and self-absorbed tweet in response to Bush's video.) But only since the pandemic took hold have we really begun to sense the full consequences of having a president who cannot perform one of the vital functions of his office — which is to ennoble and console the country in a wrenching crisis as only a head of state can. In all the hours Trump has spent speaking to the country since mid-March, how much time has he devoted to expressions of condolence or sympathy for the nearly 70,000 people who have thus far died from COVID-19? Five minutes? It's outrageous.
But it is also our reality — in a country without a head of state. This is the glaring absence that George W. Bush's video helps to highlight. Whatever Bush's flaws as a president — and there were many — he was nonetheless an effective head of state. Hearing familiar presidential cadences spoken by the voice of a man who once held the office cannot help but bring into sharp relief what we have lost — and what, in a time of national crisis, we sorely lack."
OUCH
"a country without a head of state"
