The 43rd president of the United States has been conspicuously silent this election season. He has given no national interviews since the primary season picked up, and was the only member of the Bush clan not to endorse Mitt Romney ahead of the Wisconsin primary in March.
Former President George W. Bush broke his silence this week to deliver a rare post-term policy address. The architect of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan said that he wishes the supply-side tax cuts that bear his name were attached to some other figure.
Bush suggests that, “If they were called somebody else’s tax cuts, they’d probably be less likely to be raised.”
Eloquent as ever.
Then-President Bush enacted his namesake domestic policy between 2001 and 2003. The controversial cuts are set to expire at the end of 2012 and are a likely to become an issue in the presidential campaign this fall.
In the recent speech to a New York crowd, Bush 43 addressed his low profile since leaving office in 2008. He said: “I don’t think it’s good for our country to undermine our president and I don’t intend to do so.”
That didn’t stop him from going on to attack President Obama’s fiscal agenda.
“If you raise taxes on the so-called rich, you’re really raising taxes on the job creators,” said Bush.
The Obama White House has indicated it intends to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans. The president’s top political advisor, David Axelrod, reiterated this point to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough:
"You may not believe it Joe, but the president's going to win in November and we are not going to extend those tax cuts for the wealthy and I'm looking forward to coming back here in the future and taking a big 'I told you so.’”