RIP, George H. W. Bush
The 41st president of the US, George Herbert Walker Bush, has died.
There’s no surprise there. He was 94 years old, had been in failing health for many years, and had lost his wife of 73 years, Barbara, just eight months ago. He’d lived a long, fulfilling, and very full life.
When he was president I wasn’t particularly involved in politics; I was involved in being a mother raising my family. I was also a Democrat and Bush was a Republican. But when I look back now on that time I think of him as a president from another era entirely, one that took place much longer ago than that, and I find that I get more nostalgic about it than I would have thought.
Polite, patrician, and moderate, if he inspired little love from the public he also inspired little hate. But I’m not going to write a summary of the high and low points of his presidency or his life; I’ll leave that to others. I’ll just point out this quote from the NY Times:
Admonished by his mother against self-promotion, Mr. Bush, an inveterate note writer, in his clipped diction avoided the first person singular pronoun.
That one sentence tells us how much the times have changed since then. The last two presidents have certainly not “avoided the first person singular pronoun”—au contraire. And I’m going to assume that will be true of presidents from now into the foreseeable future.
RIP, George H. W. Bush.
The last veteran of WWII to serve as President and probably the last male WASP of the patrician northeast establishment. His wife was a direct descendent of President Franklin Pierce and his grandfather’s name appears on the Walker Cup. His modesty and reticence is in marked contrast to the last two Presidents.
We could call Obama the “iPresident.”
I remember thinking at the time, that when G.H.W. is out of the Whitehouse, he will be the last WWII era person or WWII veteran to be president. Yay! How silly and stupid of me. But let’s lower the voting age to 16, because the youth are so wise.
He oversaw a big increase in the FICA taxes. If only he’d been able to bargain just one more year added to the retirement age, in return for the tax increase, in order to put the gov. on a more sustainable path.
Bush was a fine man but not a politician and Reagan made a mistake naming him VP. Much of that was a reaction to the persistent impression by the GOP that Reagan was a “radical.” In 1976, that led Reagan to choose a real leftist type, Richard Schweiker, for his VP candidate. Bush was marginally better than Schweiker but was clumsy enough as a politician to lose to Bill Clinton, an obscure governor with serious ethical issues. Bush, who had been appointed, not elected, to most of his positions over the years, could be considered the Deep State ambassador in Reagan’s administration.
The taxes pledge, which he ignored and which the Democrats may have exacted as a promise (to ignore) to support the Gulf War (although he denied it), sunk him. Ross Perot was a reaction like Trump was a reaction and might have been elected if he had not had his meltdown that summer of 1992. You might recall that Perot was railing against NAFTA as “The Great Sucking Sound” of jobs to Mexico.
George Mitchell blocked a capital gains tax cut that sent the economy into a brief recession that was over by the 1992 election but Bush was so clumsy that he could not get a message across to the voters.
When i read about the letter Bush left for Clinton when he assumed office, I couldn’t help thinking about Clinton’s staff removing the keys from WH computers when 43 moved in.
Two quotes sum up the man for me;
“I want a kinder, gentler nation.”
“Read my lips, no new taxes!”
MikeK,
One other factor was the ABC (?) report falsely claiming that Bush was totally unfamiliar with grocery scanner checkouts. It portrayed Bush as fundamentally out of touch. That swayed me to reluctantly vote for the vacillating Ross Perot.
I was ready to vote for Perot for the same reason I voted for Trump. His meltdown over his daughter’s wedding was too much for me. The Deep State had plenty of warning about what was coming. The Tea Party was a shot across the bow but they ignored it and, with Obama’s IRS help, squelched the Tea Party.
Rest in peace.
His modesty and reticence is in marked contrast to the last two Presidents.
He didn’t make much of a point of his military service. However, he wasn’t a modest or reticent man generally. Whether selling oilfield equipment or selling himself to voters, he was at home with a certain amount of ballyhoo. A student of him once said he’s the sort who actually likes being the center of attention while he plays tennis. As for his reticence, his wife once said that most people who lose a child divorce ‘because one doesn’t talk to the other; he did not allow that’. He was a chatty man and something of a whirligig in his public presentation.
Probably one of those very decent human beings that should never have been President…much like his son (although I held my nose & voted for both). His service before then is honourable.
IMO He gave away his credibility more after he left office by making nice with the Clintons than he did with his “lips” broken pledge.
I do hope there is a measure of peace in the Bush home now…illness, age, infirmity…politics…it’ll all kill you. Here’s hoping there are no more legacy candidates from that lineage.
A kind man with patrician manners. He performed competently as ambassador to China and head of the CIA. He had great personal; courage, but did not have the inner steel that Reagan had – very necessary to be a successful GOP President what with being continuously assaulted by the progressives.
He was President when the USSR collapsed. Most pundits of the day believed that capitalism and democracy would sweep the world. He and W both accepted that idea and believed it was the role of the U.S. to spread democracy and freedom to the benighted unfree/undemocratic world. Twenty nine years later that idea is now questioned by many. Especially the Trumpists.
He did what he thought was best and was a virtuous man. Though his Presidency was mediocre, he lived an admirable life. R.I.P.
Bush was a fine man but not a politician and Reagan made a mistake naming him VP.
He did too well as a politician to say he was something other than a politician, and he did well in inclement circumstances. Starting out as a Republican in Houston in 1963 and speaking to Texas audiences with that reedy New England voice and prep school diction is an activity for a man who likes a challenge.
His problem, really, was that he had a zest for competition but (unlike Reagan or Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul) no fixed set of principles and programmatic preferences. He had some biases and boundaries, to be sure, but to a great extent for him issues were fungible; it was a simple matter for more committed actors to shift him around.
He was an abnormally good man. He had setbacks but he never thoroughly failed at anything he ever did – military service, schooling, family life, business, or politics. As with all of us, though, there were some missing pieces.
He gave away his credibility more after he left office by making nice with the Clintons than he did with his “lips” broken pledge.
No clue why you fancy his ‘credibility’ is injured by that. He was a very pleasant man. Jimmy Carter has had enough asperity to tell the Clintons to get lost. The Bushes couldn’t manage it. A weakness, to be sure.
the last male WASP of the patrician northeast establishment.
No, such people are still around, but they don’t tend to be prominent in public life. See, for example, his nephew Alexander (‘Hap’) Ellis, who runs a private equity firm. See another of his nephews, Johnathan Bush, who until recently ran a software company. See a third, Josiah Ellis, who runs the holding company which owns the Denver Broncos.
He was President when the USSR collapsed.
Gorbachev credited Bush with the collapse. I’m sure he would rather die than give Reagan credit.
Bush was a good man, sort of in the way that so many upper class British were good men. Lord Curzon or McMillan. Not a Churchill but then Churchill was considered a cad by his class. Halifax was far more to their taste and Bush had a bit of Halifax in him.
Wasn’t GHWB one of the guys who killed Kennedy?* That’s why they made him head of the CIA, after Watergate and the Church Committee, to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Wake up, sheeple!
*Along with Ted Cruz’s father, of course.
I’ve heard it said Bush was a mastermind when it came to the nuts and bolts of running the federal government.
If so, he was the last President like that we’ve had. Clinton, Bush 43 (to some extent), Obama and Trump were all outsiders when they got to the White House.
I used to think that kind of expertise was important. Now I’m not so sure.
MikeK,
I think what Gorby was referring to was how Bush reacted after the wall fell. He did not go to Berlin (or later Russia) to brag about our victory. Bush was smart enough to be more modest and let let the affected countries decide for themselves how to proceed.
George H. W. Bush was the resume president — U. S. Navy, Congressman, Ambassador, Special Envoy, Vice President, President. Campaigning for president, he famously promised, “read my lips: no new taxes.” Politicians make all kinds of promises, but this one was so up-front and unambiguous, that I thought I could actually believe him.
Then he came to the American people with “have I got a deal for you: we’ll agree to raise taxes (thereby shredding his and his party’s credibility), but they’ll agree to cut spending. I couldn’t actually believe it when put that way, and although I was naive in paragraph 1 [above], I was right on in paragraph 2 [right here]. Sure enough, as day follows night, we got the new taxes, but did we get the spending cuts? Bwahahahahaha.
Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football.
George H. W. Bush was a model Republican: he knew exactly how to cater to the more conservative base, and then, once assuming office, cater to the all-important establishment. (Do note that the media despised him even more after that generous taxes-for-spending-cuts compromise.) But! — the man was very civil.
RIP President Bush, who sadly threw away his opportunity at a second term, which might have changed the dynamics down the line and spared us Bill Clinton and Bush-take-two (although I liked GWB as a person, I certainly did not agree with all of his policies).
Although he was civil in public, as were most of his generation, he was true to his Navy roots in private (if one of Reagan’s biographers can be believed, though his credibility is in some doubt because of the format he used for “Dutch”).
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/03/wtf-did-biden-just-say-a-brief-history-of-bad-language-in-washington.html
“People of a more sensitive nature might disapprove of this language, but it is a fact of politics. At times, it is necessary.”
Don’t bother going there, as it is an apologia for Biden’s profanity on an open mic, so as not to tarnish the Anointed One’s administration; the defense was ditched summarily when Trump ran in 2016.
Since I was already aware that none of our presidents had a particularly tight rein on their emotional locutions, Trump’s did not bother me as a qualification for President; all he did was say out loud what all of them said in private (except for Reagon, it appears).
Personally, I thought getting Barbara and Laura as First Lady was the best part of both their husbands’ tenures.
A cousin in the sports world shared this post; it affirms his essential civility, generosity, and humility, and just plain good old fashioned manners.
https://www.mlb.com/news/george-hw-bush-dies-at-94/c-301335482
“Garner’s daughter, Bethany, attended Texas A&M, and when the Bush Library opened there in 1997, she was part of a welcoming party for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“When they get there, Barbara Bush says she wants to say hello to the students who were helping with the event,” Garner remembered.
“Here they come down the receiving line, and Bethany is panicked and doesn’t know what you say to the former president of the United States. She’s looking at the floor as he approaches, and out of nowhere, she sees his boots and says, `Those are great looking boots, Mr. President.’
“He says, `I bought these boots especially for this occasion, and nobody has noticed until now. Thank you very much.’ He immediately picked up on how nervous she was and tried to make her feel at ease. Regardless of your politics, he’s a great man.”
…
Byrne has another point to make.
“When the president and Barbara came to a football game, they insisted on arriving early and leaving early,” Byrne said. “Because they have Secret Service protection, they didn’t want to disrupt traffic.
“There were times when the game was tight in the fourth quarter, and we’d ask them to stay. No, they didn’t want to disrupt anyone else from getting home.”
Longtime Texas A&M sports information director Alan Cannon was at an Aggie softball game one afternoon when the telephone rang. It was Rod Thornton, a Bush staffer, asking if it would be OK if the former president came over.
And that’s how Cannon got to spend an afternoon watching an Aggie softball game with the 41st president.
…
For Slocum, one moment stands out.
“We were at a course in New Jersey having breakfast before going to play,” Slocum said. “We were sitting there talking about our game, and you could tell the woman waiting on the table was a little nervous.
“President Bush stopped the conversation and said, `How are you today? We really appreciate you taking the time for us.’ He just turned his full attention to her and made her know she was important. I don’t know where that woman is now, but I promise you she’ll remember President Bush for the rest of her life.
“Of all the people I’ve met, there’s no one who better exemplifies the qualities you’d want in someone — integrity, kindness, humility, strength. When you’re around him for very long, you tend to put aside all that he did for our country, not just in public service, but in the military, and you just see one of the best men you’ll ever meet.”
I will never forget his “One lonely guy “speech.
A commenter at Powerline reported an extremely moving story regarding Bush:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/george-h-w-bush-rip.php#comment-4220510596
Click on “Show/Post Comments”, the first one should be this story from a commenter calling himself “Pointless Comment Generator”. However the story is far from pointless.
You are right, FOAF. Thanks for the link.
A few odd comments.
I cannot think of a better choice for Reagan to have made; and I certainly dispute that he lacked Reagan’s inner steel.
The tax comment was successfully turned against him, because he trusted that everyone was as honest and trustworthy as himself.
Bush was very much loved by a great segment of the public. The significant statement would be that he was loved by those who knew him.
Much has been made over the course of his life about his privileged birth; and I am sure it will be noted by some now. The truth is that none of us has responsibility or control over the circumstances of our birth, and often virtually none over our formative years. G.H.W. Bush did not let those circumstances govern his life.
RIP noble Sir.