At the end of May, US President Barack Obama invited former US president George W. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush, to the White House for the unveiling of their portraits. During the ceremony, Obama praised his predecessor and thanked him for the help both he and Laura had given the Obamas before they moved into the White House, thus ensuring a smooth transition.
Obama said: “We may have our differences politically, but the presidency transcends those differences,” adding that they had both worked hard in the US’ best interests.
Obama went on to say how he would never forget the photograph of Bush standing on the rubble of the collapsed towers of the World Trade Center in New York after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said that his administration could not take all the credit for eliminating former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and that the Bush administration had made a considerable contribution to the planning and groundwork of the operation.
He also pointed to the continuity between their administrations, saying many of the government officials serving him had previously worked under Bush.
When it was Bush’s turn to speak, he began by politely thanking Obama and his wife for inviting him and his family to return to the White House for the unveiling ceremony.
Pointing to a portrait of the first US president, George Washington, he noted that the row of portraits now began and ended with a “George W.” He spoke about the time when UK forces set the White House alight in 1814. During the fire, the very first thing then-US president James Madison’s wife, Dolley, saved was that portrait. Bush joked that he hoped Obama’s wife, Michelle, would save his portrait first in any emergency.
He continued by saying that he agreed with Obama that being a president was not easy. There were so many complex issues to juggle and conflicting advice to heed. No matter what you end up doing you will be criticized, in some cases pilloried. No wonder, he said, that their hair grayed so quickly.
Bush added: “I am also pleased, Mr President, that when you are wandering these halls as you wrestle with tough decisions, you will now be able to gaze at this portrait and ask: ‘What would George do?’” The room erupted in laughter.
Signaling to his wife, Laura, to take the stand for her own speech, Bush referred to her as the wisest first lady ever to grace the White House, before turning to his mother, Barbara Bush, first lady during the administration of former US president George H.W. Bush, “No. 41,” and apologizing.
Michelle responded to Bush’s joke about rescuing the portrait by assuring him that she would certainly go for his first. Obama noted how the value of democracy lay in the peaceful transition of political power.
Then there is Taiwan. One president finishes his term, next thing he knows he is thrown into jail. Where is the peaceful transition of power?
Now that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has consolidated his power, one hopes that he will find it within himself to show some presidential magnanimity and pardon former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in the interests of national harmony.
In the US, presidents bear in mind the importance of what Obama called at the unveiling the “American priority.” During his campaign for this year’s presidential election, Ma kept assuring the electorate that his policies were based on “Taiwanese priority.”
Ma needs to assure the public that he is committed to this priority if he wants people to trust him, and if he wants his reform program to succeed.
Tsong Tien-tzou is a research fellow at the Academia Sinica.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs