American voters have been demonstrating a lack of confidence in both parties lately. George W. Bush nearly destroyed the Republican Party, but Barack Obama is giving it a chance at resurrection. Karl Rove dreamed that he and Bush, like strategist Mark Hanna and President William McKinley in 1896, would create a generation of Republican dominance. Instead, he delivered both Congress and the presidency to the Democrats.

President Barack Obama’s dramatic trip to Ghana generated the widespread coverage it deserved. Another president’s relations with Africa received insufficient attention—and never mind that that predecessor left Obama a strong legacy on which to build. According to Bob Geldof, founder of Live Aid for Africa, George Bush “has done more than any other president so far” to fight poverty and AIDS in Africa. Geldof even traveled with Bush to Africa to inspect projects firsthand. He wrote about the experience for Time, but Bush’s Africa initiatives otherwise have earned scant attention. Praise from Cokie and Steve Roberts is the exception that proves the rule. Bono, another celebrated activist and rock star, also has lauded Bush’s commitment to Africa.

Why did President Obama personally deliver his administration’s Detroit smackdown—as opposed to having someone else do it? Ever since the modern presidency began evolving with Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter World War I, all Democratic chief exec utives have deliberately promoted one management image, while all their Republican counterparts intentionally crafted the opposite approach.

Herewith some questions about contrasts and double standards—and how the leftists comprising the nameless “they” who rule the world would react to what Barack Obama is doing if Obama were George Bush. For instance . . . If Obama were Bush, what would their reaction be to the president’s failure—even now—to submit a plan to salvage the nation’s banks?

“Somewhere in Africa, a mother loses her baby to malaria every 30 seconds and the suffering caused by malaria is unacceptable.“—George W. Bush Arusha, Tanzania, February 2008 Former President George W. Bush’s extraordinary leadership and commitment to the fight against devastating diseases and poverty in Africa have benefited and will continue to benefit the continent for years.

The left and the media and the ever-expanding blogosphere, and of course the Democrats, never permitted George Bush to recover from the circumstances of his 2000 election. They deemed him unacceptable, accidental, illegitimate, likely a conniver in the national outcome—and so took to lobbing their hateful commentaries one after another without end.

Karl Rove, trying to polish the tarnished image of his former boss, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, “In the 35 years I’ve known George W. Bush, he’s always had a book nearby.“

Republicans as a whole have been reluctant to admit the crucial part played by Iraq in their recent electoral drubbing. The latest favorite theory is that only because of GOP success in engineering the surge did Iraq disappear from the public radar.