For the first time in ten years, more Americans like former president George W. Bush than dislike him.

This is great news! Though I wonder: Is it due to the effect the passage of time has on our memories? Or is it because the world has learned W. is painting portraits of dogs? He has painted fifty! Maybe more! He has also painted a self-portrait of himself naked in the shower. But fifty dogs! Or more! God, now I like him.

Unlike other former presidents who similarly left office as crashing failures (like Jimmy Carter), W. did not throw himself into creating some do-good foundation like Habitat for Humanity just so he could be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. No, Bush’s prize was leaving office with the lowest approval rating of any president in thirty-five years. Good luck beating that! Even his dad, George H.W. Bush, two-term VP under Reagan and one-term (ha ha) president couldn’t do that.

Another bonus, after what he did to this country — from rocking our faith in the political system by “winning” the election despite losing the popular vote in a constitutional coup aided by brother Jeb; to barely escaping big time trouble for his administration erasing nearly two million emails on the RNC’s private server — W. left office comfortable in the knowledge that there wouldn’t be another Republican president for a good long while. It was good to be (as W. himself put it) the “decider-in-chief.”

Maybe seeing all of W.’s dog paintings (fifty or more dogs!) reminds us how much the entire Bush dynasty loved dogs: the elder Bushes, former president H.W., whose Secret Service code name was “Timberwolf,” and his first lady Barbara; all those darn kids, including W. (code name “Tumbler,” no doubt for pratfalls and whiskey glasses); and all them Bushie grandkids rolling around like puppies, including “Jebby’s kids… the little brown ones,” as George Senior so lovingly referred to the half-Mexican offspring of his favorite son. Or, dang it, maybe we’re just wistful because the entire country was crazy about their jowly spaniel Millie who “wrote” that best-selling White House tell-all page-turner, Millie’s Book.

Maybe we’re longing for a political dynasty that’s all about simple: Simple men. Simple women. The days when the most shocking thing a first lady like Barbara Bush — in her Mrs. Claus sweater and ping-pong-ball pearls — could do was refer to the Democratic VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro as “something that rhymes with witch.” Whoa, Babs, take it easy. Or when we looked in the eyes of First Lady Laura Bush — an immobile grin pinned to her face like a second-grade substitute teacher addicted to painkillers — and were reminded that the wacky Bush family was just like our own.

Maybe we’re nostalgic because the photo of first lady-hopeful and ex-model Melania Trump — in a thong and boots, with a gun at the ready, posed on the wing of a plane like she’s hijacking it to Bikini Wax Island — is just too much (Editor’s note: ex-model Melania — in a thong and boots, with a gun at the ready is NOT too much for us!). Too much and too soon, perhaps, after the unspeakable scandal of First Lady Michelle Obama baring her beautifully ripped black arms in a sleeveless sheath dress. Of course her critics weren’t being racist, they just didn’t think flashing those guns was appropriate behavior for a first lady.

“The Bushes are regular people, and we regular people don’t always do the “right” thing.

Or maybe we just miss the Bushes, particularly W., because Barack (code name “Renegade”) Obama — with his mastery of the English language, talent for eating snack foods without hurting himself or others, and ability to save the economy — is simply an overload.

There are some Republicans who look back at the Reagan years with stars in their eyes, longing for the glamour the GOP possessed in the 1980s — the days when “GOP” stood for Grand Old Party. Granted, the GOP of today isn’t very glamorous or fun. This GOP party, the “Get Out, Pedro!” party with its wacky tea-bag-festooned hats and American-flag tube tops, is frankly a bit tacky. Even though we love those made-in-China “Hillary for Prison” T-shirts, they look cheap. What this country needs is old money and old values and an old family. The Bushes’ “Good Old Pig-in-a-Blanket” party.

The Bushes are regular people, and we regular people don’t always do the “right” thing. Of course, Senior got bored during those stupid debates — jeez, how those guys could gas on? — and check his watch. He just couldn’t be sure if the VCR was going to actually record that night’s episode of Dynasty. And of course he wanted to please everyone, so he said, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” promising he wouldn’t raise taxes while uncomfortably making us think about his mouth. But then he raised taxes, and look what that got him: one term.

Sure, W. was razzed for supposedly misspeaking — “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” — but how many of us home-schooling parents haven’t asked ourselves that exact same question?

And so what if W. can’t eat pretzels? Pretzels are, if you look at them, an intricately twisted snack food. They’re downright dangerous. And we like the fact that Senior, while attending a dinner for 135 diplomats, barfed in the lap of the Japanese prime minister. (Earlier that day, Japan’s emperor badly beat Bush at tennis. He won’t do that again, will he!) 41 is still the only U.S. president with balls big enough to vomit in the lap of a foreign dignitary.

Of course W. was equally at ease with world leaders and luminaries — always with something cute to say. Like when he responded to a speech Pope Benedict made, saying, “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech.” Or when he gave German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, a light-hearted grope.

“At the end of his two terms, W. had spent 32 percent of his presidency on vacation.”

Both George Senior and W. served their countries. Senior served with distinction as a Navy pilot in WWII. When it was W.’s turn to serve (in Vietnam), he wasn’t an idiot: He let his dad get him into the Texas National Guard. Wisely, instead of wasting his God-given potential, W. cut out two years before his service ended. While some may call it “deserting,” “going AWOL,” or “stepping out for a beer,” I call it “knowing one’s limits.” And he had clearly reached his.

Sure, some people raised a ruckus about W.’s lack of service, but nobody cares anymore. Obama registered for the draft when he turned 18. Did you know that? No. Why? Because no one cares. What matters is that there’s photographic evidence of W. looking very snazzy in his military garb.

Thankfully, the fact that W. never served in the real live military did not hamper his desire to engage in war while in office. Always a thoughtful military tactician, Bush said, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

It’s important for a president to keep his or her (just kidding!) priorities straight. One of them is his health. It would be hard to imagine another president with the kind of stamina and chutzpah required to vacation as hard as W., who, in eight years, logged approximately 1,020 vacation days, the most of any president, including Teddy Roosevelt, who served for 12 years. W.’s epic five-week-long staycation in Crawford, Texas, “the Western White House,” was the longest any president had taken in the previous 35 years. Some paper-pushers would have you believe that Bush’s trips to Crawford cost the American people somewhere around $20 million, but who can count that high? And who can put a price tag on sleeping in your own bed? With your own pillow? At the end of his two terms, W. had spent 32 percent of his presidency on vacation, or about the same ratio of his studying-to-partying at Yale.

You know what else we’ve missed for eight years? Hair. Obama’s silver-cropped hair is just fine, but it turned gray, like, what, overnight? W. had a great head of hair. Real go-ahead-and-tug-on-it hair. Coming straight up out of his head! Nay, W. didn’t need to call in the hair-equivalent of David Blaine to conjure up a full head of orange follicles, unlike some people.

Every day of his presidency, you’d see W. out and about, jogging, clearing brush, his hair blowing gently in the breeze. Sometimes you’d see him at rest, sitting down, kicking back, relaxing, and there was his hair. It didn’t scare you or make you question the existence of God. You never see Trump relaxing, you never even see him sit down, except in his airplane. And after seeing pictures of him sitting in his airplane (not the one Melania was pretending to hijack), it’s clear from the elaborate network of bobby-pins-and-hairline (what experts point to as evidence of a scalp transplant) why Trump prefers — wattle be damned — to be shot standing, and from below.

It’s time to ditch the comb-over — we want a comeback!

“Leading” was always the George Bush way. How wonderful that both W. and 41 were not only presidents of the United States, but presidents of their fraternity at Yale! Unfortunately, while W. was president, the fraternity took some flack in the Yale Daily News for their light-hearted hazing and degrading of pledges. Nothing too bad, just beating them senseless and branding a “D” on their asses with a red-hot coat hanger. As W. patiently explained to the New York Times when they broke the story (what a bunch of hysterical pantywaists), those brands were, in his words, nothing worse than “cigarette burns.” And as you well know, once you start cracking down on the light-hearted fun of beating and burning people, you’re liable to call waterboarding “torture.”

You can’t say W.’s presidency was boring. Or that he didn’t work hard. Do you think that Clinton-era surplus just spent itself? It’s not Bush’s fault that the 22 million jobs created during the Clinton administration went away. Many overseas — literally. Wars cost money! And, yes, at the end of eight years, he’d lost four million jobs, but it could have been worse. Imagine if all the Taco Bells in the U.S. moved back to Mexico! It took a whole lot of work to further deregulate the banking industry and cut taxes for the top one percent. “You bet I cut the taxes at the top,” W. said. “That encourages entrepreneurship. What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy. We ought to make the pie higher.” Of course we should. Anyone who has eaten hash brownies knows that.

On the gains side, it was the Bush SCOTUS that turned corporations into people. (Yay, Citizens United!)

Do you know how much work it takes to dismantle a century’s worth of environmental protection laws in order to benefit the oil and coal industries? Do you know how hard it is to convince people that global warming isn’t real? (Actually, it’s not as hard as you might think once you muzzle those yappy government climate scientists and have the Big Oil lawyers rewrite their reports.) Let them eat coal! Let them drink lead! Let them burn! People can gripe, but no one can say W. didn’t consider the long-term effects of his reckless short-sighted energy policies: “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully,” he said.

People act like the Iraqi invasion was just something that magically happened after 9/11. Perhaps because the 9/11 terrorist attack wasn’t really the work of Saddam Hussein, but Osama bin Laden, and Bush’s army killed Saddam, not bin Laden, Obama killed bin Laden… it’s confusing. The point is that it took a lot of time, energy, and lying to gin up fake intelligence so the invasion could get off the ground! It would be great if searching for WMDs was as much fun as searching for Margaret Thatcher’s panties during a Skull and Bones scavenger hunt.

The Iraq invasion began in March 2002, and that May, Bush, in his spiffy Top Gun flight suit and aviators, stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier, smirking triumphantly, in front of a banner declaring, “Mission Accomplished"! It was a beautiful graphic.

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” W. crowed. “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” This would have been true if “prevailing” meant just knocking down a statue of Saddam Hussein–like the Iraq invasion was little more than a game of Capture the Flag.

“The seeds of democracy W. hoped to plant and water with the blood of Saddam did not bear fruit.”

No, the Americans weren’t greeted as “liberators,” as administration officials had predicted. The seeds of democracy W. hoped to plant and water with the blood of Saddam did not bear fruit. Of course, the invasion would rage on for eight more years, with 4,500 Americans and half a million Iraqis dead, and all of this fun for the cost of around $2 trillion. This wasn’t a result of poor planning, or bad intelligence, or soaring egoism, as brother Jeb explained when asked about his brother’s record. It was simply “bad luck.”

People seem to forget — because so many people died in Iraq and Afghanistan — that Bush really did have a big heart and was a great problem-solver. Explaining the way he reached out to ordinary folks who wanted to get involved in the peace process, he said, “People say, ‘How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?’ You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in’s house and say, ‘I love you.’” I ask you, how many people would think to fight hatred against the USA by liberating a shut-in — whether agoraphobic or diabetic or just really unfriendly — with proclamations of love?

It’s not easy to stand up to foreign leaders when they speak your language but you don’t speak theirs. It’s like they’re always speaking in code! But you know the world got the message when Bush said (and we’re paraphrasing here), “Sayonara, Kyoto Protocol! We made those greenhouse-gas emissions, and, heck, we’re gonna keep ’em!”

The Bushes were true-blue and loyal to a fault. Bush’s reaction to his old pal and FEMA director Michael Brown’s staggering failure to manage Katrina relief was to throw an arm around his shoulders and proclaim, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!” Decider-in-chief, denier-in-chief, call it what you want.

According to a poll conducted by Healthline, 76 percent of Americans think it’s of utmost importance that the leader of the free world be able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting dizzy and passing out (sorry, Chris Christie), as well as have healthy eating habits (sorry, Mitt Romney, whose perverse love of ice-cream sundae bars and addiction to Rocky Road is no laughing matter).

Senior Bush is, let’s face it, not in the kind of shape needed to run again. But W…W. is widely considered to be the fittest fitty of them all. Not only does he have the body of a fifty-year-old — he runs, lifts weights, cuts brush — he has lightning-fast reflexes. Witness the scene of W. ducking a shoe thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. Sure, Obama could grab a fly out of the air, but how often does a person need to do that? And anyway, real men (or men who are used to dealing with piles of shit) don’t mind flies.

Donald Trump attributes his boyish figure to playing golf — “very pleasurable exercise” — a few times a week, and rarely eats on the campaign trail, instead finding the rush he gets speaking before large crowds to be food enough. That said, in 1992, Spy magazine published an investigative report that concluded Trump was hooked on a diet drug called Tenuate Dospan, whose side effects include a “false or unusual sense of well-being,” “confusion,” and “hallucinations.”

That could explain a lot of things. You won’t see HRC in a sports bra on the treadmill — but that’s because she’s got a personal trainer. Just don’t ask to see the records of her workout sessions, they’ve been deleted.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if presidents were chosen on the basis of winning various feats of strength? Running, jumping, kicking. How much more entertaining would campaign season be if it played out over one season of American Ninja Warrior? Well, one can dream. And if W., at this time in his life, doesn’t want to get back into the sweaty, nasty political arena — which really has become all about show business — maybe he’d prefer to boldly go forth and take the next logical step of picking up the mantle as America’s Foremost Painting Instructor (a post left behind by the late, charismatic American painter and Joy of Painting TV host Bob Ross). Can’t you hear W’s voice in your head right now? So soothing, so encouraging, so positive: “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” Fifty dogs!

PHOTOS: Getty Images / Dirck Halstead / Charles Ommanney ; Shutterstock / Tim Sloan