and so there s an ideological undercurrent to this alongside the ignorance and incompetence. that strengthens the administrative state because if there is no deputy secretary, if there s no political oversight, then the bureaucracies tend to their own interests. so among other problems with it is it achieves the opposite result of the one he intends and it s perfect trump. nick? look, i m going to come back to the fact, sometimes if you want to repeal a rule from obama you have to pass a new rule. and it s just as much work as the first rule. if you don t have people in place to do it, you can t get it done. so it takes basically two administrations. two four-year terms to have a major impact on the shape on policy. of the government. i thought of this yesterday and we ll get to the final leg of president h.w. bush s sendoff.
to be magnanimous to act presidential. trump opened the doors of blair house to host the bushes. dispatched air force one to carry the late president s body and members of the bush family to and from houston. all the while refrained from publicly reacting to the nearly week-long celebration of bush s life and its contrast with trump s. it s still a story of a stark contrast. and even with this man, my old boss, the 43rd president, who was viewed as an incredibly partisan and divisive figure at the time of his presidency, but trump s presidency to be frank has lifted him up and his father. it s true. i mean, when you looked at those presidents all in a row together, all of them are used to being the center of attention. 99.9% of the time anywhere that the obam as go, that the clintons go, they are the center of attention. michelle obama is filling stadiums all around the country right now. so each of them knows what it is to be, you know, a magnet for
respect for the man, but there was also a nostalgia for a different way of doing business. and with 3,000 people in that cathedral representing so many crucial american and global institutions that president bush 41 revered and strengthened and served that the notion that our institutions are failing us, that public trust in institutions has been declining steadily is something that would be heartbreaking to someone like that president and those who shared his faith that public service and the institutions through which they serve are essential to our collective success. nancy, i want to read something phil rucker reported today. bush funeral, trump sits with fellow presidents but still stands alone. it was president trump who seemed most out of place. for about two hours he sat in silence. the rare event at which the president was not the center of attention but merely an observer. since learning of bush s death late friday, trump has striven
was a moment to me that sort of showed what nancy is describing. when george w. bush walked down the center of that cathedral, he shook the current president s hand, shook melania s hand but his face george w. bush doesn t have an emotion he s capable of hiding, and his face sort of exploded into a big warm smile. he reached with his left hand and took out a candy and handed it to michelle obama. and that wasn t for the cameras. that was just a jefgesture, an inside joke between two families who really, they couldn t have represented more different things from a political or an ideological standpoint, but there is a real and genuine friendship. that seems to be the legacy of the 41st president. there s a quality of grace here that you see that i think is a bit absent from this white house. this president struggles to summon even in these moments. i think that is true. and i m looking at this footage right now and i am thinking a little differently, though, about how this is in some
carters next to the clintons, next to the obamas, there to honor the bushes. all of those men and women represent us. donald trump is barren soil. there s no reason to have faith in him. the evidence is in. but we can have faith in ourselves. so, if we re going to reimagine america, if we re going to reinvent ourselves, it s going to be up to us, not him. you agree? you know, i do, and i also agree with nick. this country has remarkable a remarkable capacity for renewal. and we have gone through periods of social turmoil, loss of faith in institutions, civil war, periods in which civil rights were far more brutally suppre suppressed than they are now. you know, you just can t help but hope and you have to hope that we re better than this. and i think if bush has one final legacy, and an important