It is my hope audience questions at the Compelling Perspectives Program focus less on former President George W. Bush’s past sins of commission and more on present Bush sins of omission.
All former Presidents’ words remain influential to millions of Americans. But former President Bush has been conspicuously silent since 2016 on the many dangers and damages to the nation’s norms and institutions by Donald Trump and MAGA.
In a Letter to the Editor of The Brown and White following its coverage of the “No Kings” rally on Oct. 18, 2025, I suggested that Lehigh purchase and distribute copies of the book “The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” written by 50 psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals. Published in 2025, it is readily available for online purchase. Other sources, in particular “Duty to Warn” also clearly explain Trump’s psychopathy and malignant narcissism.
For those who wish to learn more about Bush’s detrimental silence, see the Sept. 1 essay in The New Yorker, “George W. Bush’s Code of Silence.” It was written by Jacob Weisberg, author of the new book “Profiles in Cowardice.”
One of the most common signs displayed by protesters at the “No Kings” rallies has been “Silence is Complicity.” Indeed, what questions need to be asked by the Lehigh community to help Bush re-think his “complicity?”
Dave Zakeski ‘79G
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