You know you’re in trouble when you’re looking for some of that George W. Bush glow.

The last two “businessmen” to serve as president: Herbert Hoover and GW Bush. And we know how those worked out. nyti.ms/x2iMGi — Steve Sanders (@SteveSSanders) January 16, 2012

Mitt Romney received some encouraging news last week. His favorable/unfavorable rating improved to +1, 44/43. That leaves him only 8 percentage points behind George W. Bush is +9 at 51/42. The President is currently at +14, 56/42.

For most of us, George W. Bush was the worst president imaginable until Sarah Palin came along: Hoover x Nixon + Johnson on Vietnam. But for America, apparently, Bush the II is still much more likable than the current GOP frontrunner.

Thus you’ll likely see much more of the unabashed Bush revisionism that we’ve seen from Romney and, now, from the new Sarah Palin—Marco Rubio.

“I think that presidents serve in different times with different challenges. And so I think that George W. Bush, in my opinion, did a fantastic job as president over eight years, facing a set of circumstances during those eight years that are different from the circumstances that a President Romney would face.”

Don’t forget that Mitt wants you to thank George W. Bush for preventing a Great Depression, much in the same way we should thank John McCain for keeping Sarah Palin from becoming Vice President.

Greg Sargent nobly explains that this argumentation is crucial for Romney’s case. Romney needs you to believe that what Bush left wasn’t that bad at all. What’s bad is Obama’s attempts to fix it. It’s the only argument possible when you’re running on a complete U-turn back to Bush policies but this time, instead of growing the government, they can mow it down and replace it with trillions more in military spending.

It’s a formula for a banana republic. An oligarchy of financiers, industrialists and lobbyists who pay almost nothing in taxes for the right to have complete control over a military machine so awesome it will have to invade somewhere again.

Republicans love trickling down so much that they’re slowly trickling away any memories of what George W. Bush did wrong.

Mitt Romney will tell you that a factory closed under Bush is Obama’s fault. Then he’ll go to the thousands of factories still open because we rescued the auto industry to attack the President for not clawing healthcare away from union workers. If something is clearly better now, Romney has to go at it twice as hard to explain that fixing it the way Obama did is un-American or something.

Mitt Romney refuses to see the inherent cruelty of the massive redistributions of wealth that have been made to richest 1 percent since 1979—even as he enjoys them. He thinks that the only reason that every American doesn’t have a job is because workers have rights. He thinks banks and Wall Street need more freedom to take risks. He thinks we can invade our way into Middle East peace.

Everything he thinks has been proven wrong by one man—Marco Rubio’s hero—George W. Bush. Because if this election is about personality, Mitt Romney is going to have borrow one from George W. Bush.

[CC image by Beverly & Pack.]