As you’ve shown in your piece, it can be argued objectively that Bush was more of a disaster than Trump has been so far.

And yet Trump is vilified much more than Bush. Why?

Because Bush mostly stuck to the norms of behavior that the American establishment expect from their president. Because he had excellent establishment credentials: a elite, patrician lineage; en elite education (Yale and Harvard, even though he played it down in public to appear more folksy); and establishment manners for the most part.

He didn’t pay off porn stars, didn’t say stupid inflammatory things on Twitter, didn’t openly praise racists, didn’t dress like it was still the 1980s, and didn’t express a bizarre desire for own daughter.

So despite getting us into an unnecessary war, implementing policies that further concentrated wealth and power with his fellow elites at the expense of ordinary people, and undermined civil liberties, he is now looked upon as a better president. Simply because the elites knew he was one of them.

Like Bush, Trump is clearly a disaster, but he’s not part of the club so he gets treated worse by the club’s members than Bush.