The world has fairly erupted with tribute (and a little abuse) for President George HW Bush, who passed away over the weekend after 94 exceedingly eventful years and maybe six months without his wife of seven decades, Barbara.
I have little to add, myself. His presidency coincided with a time where I honestly wasn’t paying much attention to the world around me, and probably even less to what was going on with me.
He had, of course, an impossible job – following The Gipper. He made his mistakes – “Read My Lips! No New Taxes!” – but ran a fairly capable administration that managed to complete Reagan’s work of dismantling the Berlin Wall,
I got one in my inbox over the weekend that caught my attention. Sam Moore – of “Sam and Dave” fame. Moore played Bush’s inauguration party back in 1989:
My wife Joyce and I are personally saddened by the passing of one of the most honorable decent men our country ever had serve as its President.
I had the honor of performing at his 1989 Inaugural concert Joyce co-produced ‘The Celebration for Young Americans’, his and Barbara’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration, where The Oak Ridge Boys helped celebrate them, The Points of Light Kennedy Center Concert & Fundraiser and last year’s One America Appeal hurricane relief concert at Texas A & M in College Station.
Our strength and comfort goes out to the entire Bush family who we’ve been fortunate to know, see and feel their collective love and admiration for Papa Bush who has now gone to join the love of his life, Barbara.
Rest in heaven President Bush with Mama and that beautiful little girl you two lost but never forgot, Robin. God speed sir.
As a related note – Bush’s inaugural concert was an amazing event:
The man volunteered and served his country seeing combat as a naval aviator. That took seeds. I’m old enough to remember when he too was Literally Hitler and a war criminal to boot. Remember the Highway of Death out of Kuwait?
RIP
The successful reunification of Germany within NATO and the overall reconfiguration of Europe were the great diplomatic achievements of the era and much more enduring than the pomp and glory of the Gulf War.
Bush lost in 1992 because of his apostasy on a core principle of the Reagan Model, which is ever lower taxes through tax cuts on the top brackets. The other dimension of the Reagan Model — putting the cost of tax cuts and higher defense spending on the public debt — led to economic lassitude by 1992. The debt buildup itself (300% over the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush presidencies — from under $1 trillion to over $4 trillion) became an inviting target for financial populist Ross Perot.
So foreign policy success was over-shadowed by domestic economic discontent.
Bush’s achievements in Europe in the late 1980s and early 90s are relevant and pertinent to the 2020 presidential election. The United States should strongly re-commit to all aspects of its European defense and economic and trade alliances as well as those to its Far Eastern allies led by Japan and South Korea. The goal should be for the United States to dramatically improve solidarity with all other advanced economic democracies around common interests as a base to negotiate with the other regions of the world on better international trade and efforts to improve the environment and meet the challenges of climate change.
There is an interesting analogy in that both Truman and Bush followed iconic presidents and wound up being great American international leaders in their own rights able to complete great tasks while setting bases for future peaceful progress. Tough minded on the realities and optimistic on the potential.
History is shot full of contingency. In 1989, it could have all gone in other directions. The presence of John Bolton walking the corridors of today’s White House is a stark reminder that it can all go wrong — in a terribly short period of time.