News of President George H. W. Bush’s death was not a surprise—he was 94—but Americans are saddened by it all the same. He was a competent leader, a dedicated and unpretentious public servant, and among the most upright and decent men ever to occupy the White House.
Bush left office 25 years ago, but in some respects his presidency feels as though it were from a different epoch. He was the son of New England privilege: His father, Prescott Bush, was a U.S. senator; he attended Phillips Academy and Yale; and he conducted himself with impeccably good manners and a marked tendency to downplay his own role in the great events of his life.
He joined the war effort in 1941 as a Navy pilot, and flew scores of combat missions in the Pacific theater. On one of those missions his plane was shot down; he bailed in the Pacific and was rescued by an American submarine. Bush won the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other medals, but in the political sphere he was reluctant to talk about his war record. It sounded, to him, too much like boasting.
After the war, Bush matriculated at Yale, where the lanky 6-foot-2 aviator was a talented first baseman. He was a humble man in key respects, but he was also a fierce competitor, as any man must be who goes as far as he did in government and politics. He served two terms as a congressman from Texas, was appointed by Richard Nixon to be ambassador to the UN, chaired the Republican National Committee during the Watergate debacle, served as the first envoy to the People’s Republic of China, and served for one year as Director of the CIA.
Bush ran for president in 1980 and won the Iowa caucuses, but he lost the nomination to Ronald Reagan, who in turn chose him as his running mate. The vice presidency is famously the last stop for many a would-be president—before Bush, the last serving vice president to run successfully for president was Martin Van Buren in 1836—but in 1988 Bush easily defeated Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis to take the presidency. A career of honorable public service was, in this instance, deservedly rewarded.
The first President Bush frequently disappointed conservatives. In 1990 he agreed with Democrats to increase marginal tax rates—he had memorably called Reagan’s supply-side economic views “voodoo economics” in 1980—and so violated his own famous campaign pledge: “Read my lips: no new taxes.” In 1990, seeking to avoid a rehearsal of the 1987 fight over Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, he tapped the unknown David Souter, who quickly “grew” on the Court and became one of its reliable liberals. (He partially atoned for his mistake with the nomination of the great constitutionalist Clarence Thomas a year later.) Bush signed a variety of onerous regulatory bills—the Americans with Disabilities Act, for one—and his Points of Light initiative, a federal program celebrating volunteerism, was rightly thought footling and silly.
Yet on the largest matters, the 41st president was a wise and dependable leader. He presided over the fall of the Soviet Union with quiet strength; he allowed others to boast that the Reagan-Bush era had brought an end to the Cold War. He negotiated the North America Free Trade Agreement, reinforced old alliances (Israel), and forged new ones (Japan). A weaker, less principled leader would have allowed Saddam Hussein to take Kuwait on the promise that he take nothing more, but Bush understood the need to check the Iraqi dictator with a firm hand—and skillfully assembled bipartisan support at home and a multinational coalition abroad to oust Hussein’s forces.
Democratic nations frequently do not reward good leaders as they ought, and in 1992 voters denied Bush a second term on the grounds that the economy had faltered, the Cold War was over, and his opponent, a centrist Democrat from the South, had all the charm Bush lacked. Bush had always come across as a kind of grandfatherly figure, and the news media mercilessly emphasized his age and stiffness—as when they pretended his glance at his watch during a debate with Bill Clinton was somehow a “gaffe” that reminded everyone of his advanced age. The voters were similarly unforgiving and chose charisma over character.
Bush’s magnanimity of spirit was just as evident after his presidency as during it. Unlike certain other former presidents, Bush was satisfied with the influence he’d had, and sought no more. (That sense of propriety was handed down to his son, the 43rd president, too.) Bush spoke little in public, and virtually nothing about politics. He wasn’t ashamed to join his old foe Clinton in charitable work. Another man might have taken shots at President Barack Obama for taking shots at the elder Bush’s son, but “41” showed nothing but respect for Obama.
Bush’s acceptance speech at the 1988 convention contained the phrase “kinder and gentler,” for which he was justifiably ridiculed: “I want a kinder and gentler nation,” he said then. But he repeated the two adjectives in his first and only inaugural address, and used them far more suitably. “America is never wholly herself,” the new president said, “unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.” In his own understated way, George H.W. Bush furthered that purpose beautifully.
