It was nice, wasn't it.
But more than just saying things well in the video, when he was president, the federal government was prepared for a pandemic and would have operated efficiently, as you would have expected from the US prior to Trump.
Bush may have done dreadful things like torturing people and putting them in Gitmo without hope of a trial or release. But no one criticised him for doing them incompetently. Aircraft carrier captains weren't dismissed for warning people about a contagion on their ships.
Bush 2001 relied on Cheney. But Bush 2009 was a chastened, wiser, more likeable man, who had adopted new policies when his old ones had failed (eg after Katrina, with the Iraq surge and following the 2008 collapse). I imagine he even regretted the lie to start the Iraq War, although he never admitted it.
Those were my conclusions then. Which is why I am not so surprised he made that video, which was very well done.
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