lots of people hated W. they said he was a bumbling idiot I thought his eulogy was excellent. I am wondering if Bush haters could give him credit for this
I'm one of those folks who called him a bumbling idiot. I like W; I respect W. His whole family are decent people, so there's nothing not to like about them in that regard. I can say that of many folks whose politics to greater and lesser degrees don't meet with my approbation. Policy and personality aren't the same things, not even close.
Is W a brilliant man? No. He'll tell you so. He is, however, smart enough to learn from his mistakes, willing to "own" his strengths
and weaknesses, and he's smart and humble enough to work to overcome his weaknesses and not let them lead him to make mistakes that are reasonably foreseeable, thus avoidable. But that's not intellectual brilliance. That's somewhat above average brains + a good deal above average character.
Even though I differed with him on some of his, and his father's and every other POTUS' for that matter, policies, I knew his POTUS decisions weren't personally motivated. Because he made those decisions fully believing they were right for the US, regardless of whether it was good for him, is part of why I respect him. The other part is that he didn't and doesn't say things he knows or should know are untrue at the time he's saying them. He can be trusted. He, like most POTUSes and high office holders (public or private sector) may be later made a liar, so to speak, but he's not generally going to lie from "jump." Those are the reasons why I respect him and every other former POTUS from Ford onward, except Trump. (That Trump cannot be trusted is why I have no respect for him. His policies don't feature in my misprision for him.)
As for my having called him "bumbling." Relative to the high bar a POTUS must meet, he was. He didn't stay that way, but he sure 'nuff started out that way. His early years were disconcerting because of his governmental naivete, but he worked at correcting that. He didn't much change his policies, but then they weren't the kinds of policies that augured to ruin the country. Some might have loved them and some might have hated them, but the country was going to survive them largely unscathed, regardless of whether they were/weren't, in the abstract, the best policies.
