Democrats have a shockingly high opinion of former President George W. Bush

(Image credit: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

published 25 October 2017

Fifty-one percent of Democrats have a favorable view of former President George W. Bush, a surprising new Economist/YouGov poll has found. Among people who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, 54 percent have a favorable view of America's 43rd president.

Last week, Bush spoke out against "discourse degraded by casual cruelty" in a speech many interpreted to be a thinly-veiled knock on President Trump. A spokesman for Bush denied that the president was the target of the speech.

Still, liberals overall have a much rosier opinion of Bush now than they had eight years ago. Gallup found that in January 2009, a mere 6 percent of Democrats approved of Bush. As Paul Waldman writes for The Week: "[T]his story also demonstrates … that you can be a decent person, which Bush certainly is — friendly, engaging, even kind — and do terribly indecent things, like lie repeatedly to the public to get them to support a disastrous war that winds up killing thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for no good reason."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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