[AP] WASHINGTON (AP) ‐ Former presidents are shedding a traditional reluctance to criticize their successors, unleashing pointed attacks on the Trump White House and the commander in chief ‐ but without mentioning him by name.
Remarks on the same day by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama raise the prospect that more dissenters will follow in defiance of President Donald Trump and his policies.
"What they are doing is laying down a marker for acceptable public discourse," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of political communication and rhetorical theory at the University of Pennsylvania. "They’re saying, ’We don’t stand for that kind of language and behavior. These are our values, these are our principles.’"
Bush and Obama themselves were preceded by other prominent figures. In recent weeks, Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Arizonans John McCain and Jeff Flake have taken swipes at a president who has pushed the limits of polite political discourse and has seemed to relish public fights over sensitive subjects, including nuclear war, race relations, immigrants and, this week, the war dead. |