George H. W. Bush during his single term in office.
This isn't going to be a lengthy post nor is it going to be a hagiography.
All too often when a former President dies, the recollections of the man turn towards just that. People who thought the President the most vile of men are suddenly his greatest admirers, and he had no faults, political or personal. This post isn't like that. I don't think that George Bush was a great President, which isn't to say that I thought he was a bad one either.
Having said that, when I pondered the passing of the first President Bush, it first struck me that George H. W. Bush was the last American President I actually respected. I pointed that out to Long Suffering Spouse and she in turn said "Not President Clinton?".
I pondered that for a moment, and frankly I have to revise my comment. I did respect President Clinton as President, although his personal conduct was reprehensible, which is something that relates to this post.* And I didn't disrespect his son George W. Bush. So clearly I have to modify my statement to fit what I really was feeling.
So I'll modify my comment. George H. W. Bush was the last Republican President that I respected. President Clinton is the last Democratic President that I respected, and I respect him pretty much solely as an effective President, not as a human being. George Bush was a really admirable human being, it not a really great President. Beyond that, frankly, he was a really admirable man.
I can't claim that he was a really effective President. Clinton was probably better in that regard. But Bush really stands out for two reasons; 1) he entered his country's service as a teenager in a really dangerous role when he didn't really have to and, 2) he was married to his wife Barbara for 73 years.
In those ways, he stands out as a really exemplary person.
So point one.
George Bush entered the U.S. Navy and became the youngest pilot in American service World War Two.**
He didn't have to do that.
He would have had to serve in the military, no doubt, during World War Two. But he didn't have to join the Navy and seek to be a combat pilot, which lead to his being shot down during the war.
The submarine rescue of George H. W. Bush.
But that is reflective of his generation (and no, I don't think they were the "Greatest Generation"). They did things like that.
Now, in fairness, one U.S. President since George H. W. Bush was also a military pilot, that being his son George W. Bush. He never saw combat, but he did volunteer for Vietnam but wasn't sent. I think that speaks well of him.
But, while it will engender controversy or even rage with my conservative friends, others of the post World War Two generation who have floated up to high office don't compare as well as a rule, although some do. Al Gore did go to Vietnam, but he was in the military press corps. Still he went. John Kerry served in the Navy as a SEAL and that's really admirable, but then he came back and became a war protester and I'm not really very impressed with that.
There are other examples of men and women in high office (particularly now that they're entering politics as veterans from recent wars) so my view here may be over broad, but I am speaking of those who have made very high office. Dick Cheney, who is a conservative hero to some and particularly in my state, where its often mistakenly assumed that he's a native (he's not, he's from Nebraska actually) received draft deferments five times. Donald Trump didn't go to Vietnam either. President Obama, whom I credit as being a very intelligent and personally decent man, was obviously post Vietnam War in age, but it isn't as if "community service", whatever that is, amounts to the same thing in any sense.***
Secondly, he was married to Barbara Bush for 73 years.
Barbara Bush, Boris Yeltsin, and the Bush dogs, on the White House lawn. Somehow this reflects all of three of them in a way that we aren't surprised by, but which would surprise us about any post Bush President (except perhaps George W. Bush) and any post Yeltsin leader of Russia.
That may seem like an odd thing to note, but its a sign of his decency. Devotion to a single person, as a spouse, is something that's very significant and which has become sadly lacking in the decades following the 1950s. Barbara Bush herself noted that for a time she suffered severely from depression and her husband George stuck by her side. Now, that sort of things is pretty rare. It shouldn't be.
So, there you have it. as an example, he's a really good decent personal one. And that's why he seems to be to have been the last really admirable man to have served in the oval office. He might not have been the most effective, and I don't agree with all of his political decisions by any means. But in terms of life's tests, he passed them better than most.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Clinton not only had a balanced budget on occasion, he ran a surplus at least once. He also fought an air war in the Balkans nearly without controversy and without drawing in ground troops, a really dangerous situation that turned out well. It's the only example of that being done in history. But personally, he's not very admirable at all, nor his is, in my view, his spouse. He's a good example of a politician being a potentially really good office holder while not necessarily being a really good person. Jimmy Carter was an example of the opposite.
**I'm not suggesting that a person needs to have experience in the military in order to be President. Rather, I'm suggesting that people who have risen to the call of some sort of service are better people in an intrinsic sense than those who don't. I'm not including myself, I'll note, in some sort of special admirable status, even though I do have peacetime military service. But that's different.
Part of that is that some rational call to service has to exist in order for it to be meaningful. I'd give as an example of this Herbert Hoover's post World War One service to the country and to Europe which was of a humanitarian service nature. Highly effective, it also came to him at great personal cost.
FWIW, Bush will be, as has been noted, the last veteran of World War Two to have been President. That there were several is hardly surprising given the size of the conflict.
***President Obama, whom again I'll credit with being very intelligent and personally very decent, both of which are true of his wife Michele as well, shared Woodrow Wilson's belief that speech was action, which it isn't, and turned out to be extremely flexible on certain issues that show a certain lack of a backbone. He strikes me as a person who was a naturally great professor, but not President.
No comments:
Post a Comment