George H.W. Bush, In Memoriam

George Herbert Walker Bush died at age 94 in Texas at the end of last month.  The moderately conservative Republican capped a long career of public service by being elected President of the United States and then becoming the patriarch of a great political dynasty. 

As Commander in Chief, Bush skillfully negotiated the peaceful end of the Cold War on favorable terms to the West and rejected the first major post-Cold War challenge to international order, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by liberating the latter.

Born in Massachusetts in 1924, Bush lived in Connecticut.  He enlisted in the Navy in the Second World War, at one point the branch’s youngest pilot.  Bush, who flew 58 missions in the Pacific Theater in a torpedo bomber before being shot down and rescued at sea, was highly decorated for his service.  His marriage to Barbara Pierce in 1945 lasted 73 years until her death in April of this year, the longest of any presidential couple.  After the war, Bush graduated from Yale University and then worked in the oil business in Texas. 

Starting in 1966, when Bush was elected U.S. Representative as a Republican, he began a political career that included a series of posts in which he was appointed by fellow GOP Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford: Envoy to Communist China, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was credited for boosting morale and for much-needed reforms, and Ambassador to the United Nations.  In between, Nixon appointed him Chairman of the Republican National Committee, where he was loyal to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, but ultimately urged the President’s resignation.  After a failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 1980, Republican nominee Ronald Reagan asked Bush to be his running mate.  After winning the vice presidential nomination, Bush was elected Vice President, serving a full eight years after being reelected in 1984.

In what was regarded widely as politically akin to a third term for President Ronald Reagan, Bush became in 1988 the first sitting Vice President to be elected President since Martin Van Buren in 1840.  He entered office with one of the fullest resumes of any Chief Executive and was the first President with formal diplomatic experience since James Buchanan.

Bush’s first act as President was to lead the American people in prayer.  He appointed conservative, pro-life judges, with the exception of one of his Supreme Court nominations, and enforced a strong anti-drug abuse policy, especially during the peak of crack cocaine addiction.  Bush created the Department of Veterans Affairs and successfully resolved the savings and loan crisis.  In foreign policy, Bush encouraged representative government around the world.  He overthrew the dictator of Panama in 1989, who was wanted by the U.S. for drug trafficking, had nullified a democratic election in which he had lost and had killed an American Marine, in addition to Bush’s successful ending of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in 1990-1991, which broke up shortly afterward, and his 1991 Liberation of Kuwait, which thwarted aggression,.

Bush was re-nominated by the Republicans for President, but lost re-election after Democratic nominee Bill Clinton exaggerated how poor the slowly recovering economy was, and the Democrats portrayed the once- popular Bush, who was responsibly trying to cheer economic growth, as out of touch.  However two years later, in the 1994 Republican wave election against Clinton and the Democrats, two of his sons, George W. and Jeb, were elected Governors of Texas and Florida, respectively, providing a measure of vindication for the Bush patriarch.  Both were re-elected and the former became a two-term President, the first son of a Chief Executive to be elected President since John Quincy Adams in 1828.  One of Jeb’s sons is a statewide elected official in Texas.

The former President Bush was appointed a fundraiser for major disaster relief by Presidents George W. Bush, a Republican and Barack Obama, a Democrat.  The elder Bush, who campaigned in retirement for his family members and many other Republican candidates, did not endorse Donald Trump for President. 

Bush invited the incumbent Chief Executive to his state funeral, but he had included in his funeral plans no speaking role for Trump.  Although Bush’s funeral was not quite as overtly anti-Trumpist as that of Senator John McCain’s this summer, the focus on Bush’s character, morals, decency, dignity and selfless public service was widely recognized necessarily as a contrast with Trumpism and, like McCain’s funeral, was a message of patriotism, duty and unity around the American ideal of liberty, equality and representative government.  

May George H.W. Bush’s example of devotion to God, family, community and country continue to inspire Americans to public service.