It was in February 2010, on Interstate 35 in Wyoming, Minn., according to Wikipedia, that the billboards first began to appear: “MISS ME YET?” ran the message over a picture of George W. Bush.

“Kind of,” say today’s Democrats.

With Obama out and Trump in, the mental malady known as Bush Derangement Syndrome has finally begun to recede, and the 43rd president is enjoying an unlikely renaissance. Progressive journalist David Corn approvingly quoted Bush on Inauguration Day. Time magazine, Slate The Atlantic and the op-ed page of The New York Times have all run pieces in which left-wing writers favorably compared the second President Bush’s rhetoric to President Trump’s.

Then, last weekend on “Saturday Night Live,” host Aziz Ansari praised Dubya in his monologue, noting that “George W Bush made a speech after 9/11, and it really helped. Things changed . . . He said Islam is peace.” Bush’s speech was met with overwhelming, bipartisan approval, Ansari noted: “It was about basic human decency and remembering why the country was founded in the first place.” Then the comic caught himself thinking, “What the hell has happened? I’m sitting here wistfully watching old George W. Bush speeches?’ Just sitting there like, ‘What a leader he was! . . . He guided us with his eloquence!’ ”

Well, yes, Bush actually was an eloquent president who gave many stirring addresses and proved to be a steady hand in time of crisis. Bush’s grace and humility were evident from the earliest days of his presidency, when he invited Ted Kennedy over to the White House to seek common ground, as well as at turning points such as when he announced the capture of Saddam Hussein without taking credit for it in any way.

His only mentions of himself at the time were incidental, as when he said, “I have a message for the Iraqi people: You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again.” Contrast President Obama’s remarks upon the assassination of Osama bin Laden, in which he repeatedly interjected himself into a raid he had little to do with by using phrases such as “I directed,” “I determined” and “at my direction.”

The divergence between Bush’s style and President Trump’s is even more stark. It’s impossible to imagine Bush trolling the media with Trumpian vulgarity. Yet his relative steadiness and grace were treated with equal vituperation by everyone from high-ranking public officials to comedians. As early as 2003, Howard Dean (then the leading contender to be the Democratic nominee for president) suggested Bush might have been tipped off about 9/11 in advance, while comics furiously worked to cement the perception that Bush was a moron. When he fell off a bike, comic Craig Kilborn said, “Doctors concluded that the president’s fall hadn’t done any damage when he appeared confused and disoriented.” Kanye West suggested Bush was a racist on national television.

Bush’s decision to invade Iraq is now held up as his biggest blunder. Yet for being on the same page with Hillary Clinton, Bush was rewarded with the Bushitler meme. It wasn’t just random protesters who made the fascist comparisons: Keith Olbermann, Naomi Wolf and Chris Matthews all invoked Hitler and or/fascism in discussing Bush.

The Bushes’ way of doing things looks better and better every day

At the end of his presidency, Bush was blamed for a financial crisis that had nothing to do with him and was blasted for what turned out to be the wisest decision of his presidency: a bailout that stopped the bleeding, restored order to the markets, set the stage for a stock-market recovery and in the end cost the government nothing. All told, as of Jan. 17 of this year, the bank bailouts have returned to Washington a profit of $75.8 billion, according to ProPublica.

In another 10 years, Dubya might be remembered as fondly as his father, George H.W. Bush, who was deluged with well wishes after his hospitalization in Houston this month. Bush 41 even managed a wry note to the current president, apologizing for missing his inauguration: “My doctor says if I sit outside in January, it likely will put me six feet under,” he wrote to Trump. “Same for Barbara. So I guess we’re stuck in Texas.” After all the nasty things Trump said about Jeb Bush, the senior Bush was remarkably courteous.

After eight years of Obama and one week of Trump, it’s becoming evident that Dubya and his dad really did have a more mollifying, less combative style than what we’ve seen lately, yet a relentlessly hostile media refused to grant them credit for it at the time. Now the Bushes’ way of doing things looks better and better every day.