‘Morally indefensible’ – but George W Bush will not come out against Trump

The MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell this week hit out at George W Bush, the Republican former president, for refusing to weigh in on America's looming presidential election.

"All any decent person wants him to do is to say, 'Don't vote for Donald Trump, and here's why,' and he won't even do that," O'Donnell told the Fast Politics podcast, of the Republican president who was in office from 2001 to 2009.

Increasingly, Bush – and some other top Republicans from his political era – are looking lonely in their ongoing refusal to take a side in an election in which many have warned that US democracy is under threat from Trump's open sympathies with autocracy.

Bush's vice-president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, whose January 6 committee role cost her a US House seat in Wyoming, have endorsed Kamala Harris. So have other senior Republicans, including more than 100 who this week signed a letter declaring that Trump, their party's nominee for a third election running, must never return to the White House.

"We believe that the president of the United States must be a principled, serious and steady leader," the officials said. "We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not."

Big-name signatories included Chuck Hagel, a former senator and defense secretary; Gen Michael Hayden, a former CIA and NSA chief; and John Negroponte, once ambassador to the UN. Robert Zoellick, a longtime aide to both presidents Bush and a deputy to James Baker, secretary of state to the elder Bush, was on the list too.

Missing from the list, however, were Baker, the younger Bush and his own secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice . As perhaps the three most senior Republicans who have not come out against Trump in this election cycle, Bush, Rice and Baker's lack of comment excites growing comment itself.

Bush's office recently said he would not endorse, having "retired from presidential politics years ago", perhaps ensuring that his most lasting comment on his successor will be the one he reportedly delivered on the dais at the Capitol after Trump's inaugural speech in 2017, "American carnage" and all: " That was some weird shit. "

Rice did oppose Trump in 2016. Amid the Access Hollywood scandal, over Trump's boasts about sexual assault, Rice said he should withdraw as the Republican candidate, in favor of "someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth".

She has commented on Trump's presidency too. In 2021, she said his appeal to people who felt let down by establishment politicians was "something that we probably still really need to pay attention to". Earlier this year, Rice spoke out against isolationism, another central tenet of Trumpism. But that drew a rebuke from Adam Kinzinger, the former congressman from Illinois who sat with Cheney on the January 6 committee and who endorsed Harris at the Democratic national convention.

"It's time to speak up and do more," Kinzinger said . "You're not fighting against 'isolationism'. You're fighting against Trump and you need to say this out loud. No more straddling the fence, Republicans. You're for Trump or against him. Pick a side."

Baker has not taken a public position on Trump but in 2020, his biographers reported that though the "myriad ethical scandals surrounding Trump were head-spinning, Baker kept telling himself it was worth it to get conservative judges, tax cuts and deregulation".

"I will vote for the Republican," Baker was quoted as saying. "I really will."

Now 94 but still active in the public realm , Baker has not publicly indicated how he will vote this year. A source close to him said he had been sharply critical of Trump's attempt to overturn the election in 2020. Nonetheless, the former secretary of state's words in his biography ring loud.

"I won't leave my party. You can say my party has left me because the leader of it has. But I think it's important, the big picture."

In most eyes, though, the big picture has only grown more alarming. Trump has incited a deadly attack on Congress; beaten a second impeachment arising from that attack; been convicted on 34 criminal charges with more than 50 pending; been ordered to pay hundreds of millions in civil cases regarding business fraud and a defamation suit arising from a rape allegation a judge called " substantially true "; and launched an election campaign of breathtaking racist invective and lies.

"Taxes go up, taxes go down. Regulations are imposed, they are withdrawn. But a democracy? You can't squander that. Our reputation in the world, the Nato alliance at a time of extreme danger – once those things are gone, they would be exceptionally hard to rebuild."

That was the view of one Washington Republican, a White House official under both Bushes whose job now precludes public endorsements but who was granted anonymity to speak frankly and said they would vote for Harris.

With a laugh, the former official suggested George W Bush "may write in Condi Rice again", a reference to the protest vote Bush said he lodged in 2020, rather than support Joe Biden.

As for Baker, the former official said: "Don't forget, he's from Houston. I think if you spend 50 years around Houston, you just absorb the oil and gas view of the world. Many people in the oil and gas industry are very anti-Biden, very anti-Harris, largely because of the perception that Biden was for the Green New Deal, which is false, and then the natural gas export review ."

For Republicans, the former official said, it is easier to come out against Trump in the national security space and what might be called the democracy space, given the enormity of Trump's election subversion and January 6 and anxious questions about his relationships with autocrats including Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong-un of North Korea.

"There are the Dick Cheneys of the world, who basically say: 'This is about democracy. This is about January 6. Donald Trump cannot be trusted with power.' I would also suspect that in Cheney's case, this goes back to his tenure in the defense department [under George HW Bush], and if you recall the op-ed that all the living secretaries of defense wrote on 3 January 2021, it's all coming out of that."

That column, for the Washington Post, urged all Americans to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Three days later, Trump ensured that did not happen.

The former official continued: "While there have been a number of more moderate Republicans who have endorsed Harris, I do not see this as ideological. I see it as, principally, first stop Trump, then attempt to rebuild the party."

Such ambitions may also motivate establishment Republicans who have chosen to back Trump, among them the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who fought Trump in the primary. All may have eyes on a post-Trump world – either in 2024 if he loses or 2028 if he wins.

If so, the former White House official suggested, it may not prove a wise course.

"I think it would be hugely, hugely difficult to rebuild the party, largely because the Trumpers just have control of pretty much everything in the states, in the state parties.

"But I think that is the task of a generation, and even more moderate figures are going to have to make nods in the direction of Trumpism for the foreseeable future."