Why George W. Bush Won’t Go to the Republican National Convention

For the second elec­tion cycle in a row, former Pres­id­ent George W. Bush won’t at­tend this sum­mer’s Re­pub­lic­an con­ven­tion in Clev­e­land—but this time it’s per­son­al.

Since leav­ing of­fice in 2009, the 43rd pres­id­ent has made it a point to keep a low pub­lic pro­file and re­frain from com­ment­ing about Pres­id­ent Obama, Hil­lary Clin­ton, or the 2016 Re­pub­lic­an con­tenders.

But the emer­gence of Don­ald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz as fi­nal­ists for the GOP nom­in­a­tion made it an easy choice for the young­er Bush to stay away from the Ju­ly con­ven­tion—and to an­nounce that he won’t have any­thing to say about Trump’s re­sound­ing vic­tory, much less en­dorse him.

It’s one of the worst-kept secrets of the Bush clan, in fact, that neither Pres­id­ent Bush has much use for Trump.

George W. Bush “was nev­er go­ing to the con­ven­tion any­way,” a prom­in­ent GOP of­fi­cial closely al­lied with the Bush camp told Na­tion­al Journ­al. “The key is no en­dorse­ment—that says it all.

“They’re loy­al Re­pub­lic­ans and don’t want to see Hil­lary Clin­ton in the White House, but ob­vi­ously this is not the out­come they would have pre­ferred,” the of­fi­cial ad­ded.

“They just don’t like him and he doesn’t like them. It would be hy­po­crit­ic­al for them to be en­thu­si­ast­ic for him.”

From a policy stand­point, the 43rd pres­id­ent is known to be es­pe­cially irked by Trump’s broad­side at­tacks on the Ir­aq War that the young­er Bush launched in March 2003. He’s also ir­rit­ated that Trump has ac­cused the Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion of ly­ing about the ex­ist­ence of weapons of mass de­struc­tion to jus­ti­fy the war.

”We should have nev­er been in Ir­aq,” Trump said in a Feb­ru­ary de­bate in South Car­o­lina. “They lied, they said there were weapons of mass de­struc­tion. There were none and they knew that there were none.”

Both Bushes were even more out­raged that in 2008, Trump called 43 “prob­ably the worst pres­id­ent in the his­tory of the United States” and ad­ded in a CNN in­ter­view that “it would have been a won­der­ful thing” if Demo­crats had im­peached Bush.

Trump has played down the I-word this year, but con­tin­ues to call the Ir­aq War “a hor­rible mis­take” (even though he was on re­cord in 2002 say­ing he sup­por­ted the in­va­sion).

It’s not sur­pris­ing that the Bushes also don’t care much for Trump’s smash-mouth cam­paign style. George H.W. Bush worked over­time throughout his pub­lic ca­reer to keep his ego in check—when a speech draft was too ef­fus­ive in self-praise, he’d kick it back with a tart “too brag­gado­cio.” George W. Bush labeled him­self a “uniter, not a di­vider,” and con­siders Trump the op­pos­ite.

Both Bushes—not to men­tion former first lady Bar­bara Bush—were of­fen­ded by Trump’s re­peated be­littling of former Flor­ida Gov. Jeb Bush as a “low-en­ergy” can­did­ate. “Be­low the belt,” Bush 41 has told friends.

As for Cruz: “I just don’t like the guy,” Bush 43 told a group of GOP fun­draisers in Den­ver last fall. He’s known to be­lieve that Cruz’s polit­ics are di­vis­ive and takes vig­or­ous ex­cep­tion to Cruz’s at­tacks on the Re­pub­lic­an es­tab­lish­ment—in­clud­ing the Bush fam­ily