Conservative columnist: ‘I would take Obama back in a nanosecond’

A conservative columnist for The Washington Post on Friday wrote that the current political climate makes him miss former President Obama, saying he would take the Democrat back in a “nanosecond.”

Max Boot was a foreign policy adviser in both of the Republican presidential campaigns against Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Despite his criticisms of the former commander in chief, Boot wrote that Obama’s presidency now “appears to be a lost golden age when reason and morality reigned.”

{mosads}Boot wrote that he gained a “new perspective” on the Obama administration after watching him deliver a speech in South Africa on the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth.

“I was moved nearly to tears by his eloquent defense of a liberal world order that President Trump appears bent on destroying,” Book wrote.

Obama appeared to offer wide-ranging criticism of Trump in the Tuesday speech, saying “those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.”

Boot said Obama’s speech was not full of self-praise or name-calling like many from Trump.

“Obama has a far better claim than Trump to being a ‘very stable genius,’ but he didn’t call himself one,” Boot wrote. “The sentences were complete and sonorous — and probably written by the speaker himself.”

“Imagine Trump writing anything longer than a tweet — and even those are full of mistakes,” he added.

Obama’s White House was also not full of the scandals seen in the current administration, Boot pointed out.

“Can you believe that an Obama-era scandal was that the president wore a tan suit or put his feet up on the desk?” Boot asked.

He pointed to a September 2013 headline from The Washington Times that read “Obama’s foot on Oval Office desk sends shockwaves around the world.”

“Oh, to have those days back again — before we had a president who was involved in indecent relationships with a Russian despot and (allegedly) a porn star,” Boot wrote.

Thinking about the current president can be “depressing,” he said.

“He reminds me that just 18 months ago — can you believe it was so recently? — we had a president with whom I could disagree without ever doubting his fitness to lead. We can have one again,” wrote Boot, who, like fellow conservatives George Will and Joe Scarborough, left the Republican Party over Trump.

He said he wants Democrats to retake control of both chambers of Congress during November’s midterm elections.

The GOP is now a “white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe,” Boot wrote in another column for the Post earlier this month.

“If you’re part of that fringe, what should you do?” he asked.