Almost every one of them was elected again, often by wider margins (the only exception losing to another one of them) after deatroying any illusion innthat direction you might argue was produced by their campaign positions, so I don't think you can absolved the American electorate here, even if one agrees that their campaign before taking office met your description.
The parent's claim is effortlessly debunked.
Bush sure wasn't anti-interventionist for the second term after entering the Iraq War 2.0. Even Obama campaigned to persist the "necessary" Afghanistan war.