Through a process of both forgetting and cohort replacement, the unremitting awfulness of the George W. Bush presidency—particularly its early years—has been rewritten in a faction of the liberal imagination as a kind of golden age when political debate was more honest and fact-driven. Things are in some ways worse now, but if that era ever existed, it predated George W. Bush by many years.
Trump is gross. A human being without any recognizable redeeming features. He doesn't even seem to like his kids (I wouldn't like Uday and Qusay either, but he has a young son that he seems to be barely aware of). Bush was human. He at least seemed to like Jenna and NotJenna. But his presidency and all of the people associated with it were horrible. Maybe slightly more competently horrible (some of them, but not the Heritage Kids he sent to destroy Iraq) but still really horrible. Why do we forget this?