[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ush began the speech by rightly noting that the current wave of nativist populism engulfing the western world is rooted in the failures of globalization. “We should not be blind to the economic and social dislocations caused by globalization,” he said. “People are hurting. They are angry. And, they are frustrated. We must hear them and help them.” Yet what is Bush’s solution for these people hurt by globalization? A return to the tired bromides of compassionate conservatism: “The first step should be to enact policies that encourage robust economic growth by unlocking the potential of the private sector, and for unleashing the creativity and compassion of this country.”

It’s not at all apparent how this proposed solution is any different than the very privatization policies that created greater economic inequality in America, leading many to embrace Trump’s populist rhetoric. As a practical matter, “unlocking the potential of the private sector” is exactly what Trump claims he’s trying to do with tax cuts and deregulation. Indeed, the speech raises the question of what separates Bush from Trump. Trump’s agenda is to implement a plutocratic economic policy under the cover of a cultural war, the very formula that Bush and adviser Karl Rove mastered.

To be sure, Trump’s cultural war is largely racial, marked by attacks on Muslim immigrants and black athletes. Rove and Bush targeted LGBT people instead, using marriage equality as a wedge issue by appealing to conservative homophobia. During the 2004 campaign, Bush ginned up homophobia by calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, which, had it passed, would have been the first constitutional amendment that restricted the rights of a group of Americans. In effect, Bush was willing to make gays a special constitutional class—one with less rights than other Americans. When it comes to cultural wars, the main difference between Bush and Trump is their choice of targets, not any fundamental ethical divide.

Further, Bush seems unbothered by racial demagoguery from other Republicans today. He’s currently raising money for Ed Gillespie, the GOP nominee for Virginia governor. As Paul Waldman notes in The Washington Post, Gillepsie might be trying to separate himself from Trump as a politician but is running a positively Trumpian campaign fueled by anti-immigrant xenophobia:

Gillespie has all but centered his gubernatorial campaign on fear of the MS-13 gang, alleging that because his opponent Ralph Northam does not condemn “sanctuary cities” — of which there are none in Virginia — that Northam is practically indifferent to the prospect of MS-13 coming to kill you and your family. And of course, the rape.

Bush’s denunciation of Trump’s “isolationism” also rings false. It’s hardly clear that Trump, who has threatened North Korea with nuclear extermination and who has ramped up Barack Obama’s drone war, is an isolationist. More accurately, Trump is a unilateralist. So was George W. Bush, who withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, generally scorned international agreements, and sidelined the United Nations before invading Iraq. Trump’s disdain for NATO is not unlike the contempt for “Old Europe” shown by Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s secretary of defense. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush himself offered a blunt message to the nations of the world: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” This is as severe a bullying of allies as anything Trump has done.

Bush was a precursor to Trump another key way: He was a gleeful anti-intellectual who scorned expertise. One of Bush’s beloved jokes, often told when he met someone with a doctorate, was about the unimportance of education. “I remind people that, like when I’m with Condi [Rice] I say, she’s the Ph.D. and I’m the C-student, and just look at who’s the president and who’s the advisor,” Bush quipped. If Republican voters were willing to take a chance in 2016 with a candidate who clearly had only a cursory knowledge of policy but a lot of attitude, they surely did so because Bush had already lowered the expectations for the intellectual capacity required for the office.

Bush was a decider, but his confidence was not matched by his intelligence. His deep ignorance of policy made him vulnerable to manipulation by his staff and inner circle, not least Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush didn’t ask his advisors tough questions, and he was convinced to embrace disastrous ideas, most famously that invading Iraq would help spread democracy in the Middle East. Steve Bannon had it right on Friday when he told a crowd in Anaheim, “There has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s.” But the new decider in office—Bannon’s boss until recently—also combines macho arrogance with proud ignorance, and is no less than Bush does he shift to the prevailing winds of his staff. Trump may yet be a more destructive president, but in terms of sheer human toll, Bush still holds that ignominious distinction.

“So, do I applaud?” Pierce, of Esquire, asked about Bush’s speech on Thursday. “Do I marinate in my cynicism and remember that this proud defender of American democracy lied the country into a foreign policy debacle that is still ongoing, and that is now overseen by someone who couldn’t find Iraq on a map … of Iraq? Of all the strange places that the last election has taken this country, this has to be one of the strangest. You have to watch every step. The past is clutching your feet here like poison vines camouflaged as the comforting tendrils of citizenship.”

The simple answer is: No, do not applaud. Do not let Trump move the Overton window. Do not let his presidency inspire a revisionist history of Bush’s.

Nostalgia is not a harmless vice. It clouds our ability to understand how the past is shaping the present. Trumpism is a powerful and pernicious force because it has deep roots in American history. To defeat Trumpism, we not only have to fight the sitting president himself, but also address the causes that made his rise possible. Every time we extoll George W. Bush, we drift further from the sober and painful reckoning we need, and further yet from solutions to prevent a Trumpian or Bushian presidency from ever wreaking such havoc again.