Barbara Bush epitomized agreatera

Barbara Bush was the best of a different era. So we were told repeatedly upon news of her death. At age 19 she married the first man she dated, already a war hero himself at the age of 20, and still married 73 years later, she was the matriarch of one of the most successful political families in American history.

Americans, having rashly discarded the monarchy, still have a king-sized hole in their national heart. Consequently they try to fill it up with political dynasties — the Adams, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Clintons. Latterly, celebrity culture has filled that void and so their largest state was governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and now Donald Trump is president.

Barbara Bush was certainly from another generation. Hers was the “greatest generation,” when the men volunteered for war and the women manned, so to speak, the home front. Together with her husband, George H.W. Bush, they were serious people for serious times, committed to the war effort as teenagers during the Second World War and establishing a new order after winning the Cold War almost 50 years later. That generation is now moving offstage. Barbara is survived by her husband, born in 1924 just a few months before another president, Jimmy Carter.

On the night that George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton, late at night while Barbara was already asleep, he recorded in his diary:

“Maybe it’s time for a new generation. He is George (W.)’s age, a generation more in touch, a background more in touch … I’ve never felt ‘out of touch,’ but then I’ve always assumed there was duty, honour, country. I’ve always assumed that was just part of what Americans are made of — quite clearly it’s not.”

“Honour, duty, country — it’s just passé,” Bush’s diary continued two days later, still shocked that a decorated war hero had lost to a draft dodger. “The values are different now, the lifestyles, the accepted vulgarity, the manners, the view of what’s patriotic and what’s not, the concept of service. All these are in the hands of a new generation now, and I feel I have comfort of knowing that I have upheld these values and I live and stand by them. I have the discomfort of knowing that they might be a little out of date.”

Bush did not know that night that Clinton would be the first of three presidents born in 1946. The second would be his son George W., and the third, Donald Trump. The early baby boomers have had a hammerlock on the presidency ever since, with the exception of Barack Obama, who is a late baby boomer. Even the failed candidates for president have been from the same generation — Al Gore (1948), John Kerry (1943), Mitt Romney (1947) and Hillary Clinton (1947).

When George and Barbara Bush left the White House in early 1993, a certain generational decency took leave with them, the nobility of a cohort that accomplished great things but did not insist on being lauded for them. The 25 years since are evidence that history is not a matter of uninterrupted progress.

After the 1992 defeat, George Bush was asked what his greatest accomplishment was. He said it was that all his children still loved to come home. Given that the Bushes had dozens of homes over the decades, and that George was often travelling, it is to Barbara that the credit goes for his proudest boast.

In October 2010, the two presidents, father and son, threw out the first pitch for Game 4 of the World Series hosted by the Texas Rangers. And there was Barbara, in the front row, taking pictures of her husband and son on her own camera.

Partly it was because she was an avid and accomplished photographer, but mostly because she never lost her delight in her family. After all, there were already thousands of photographs of them and no doubt the Rangers had photographers aplenty on hand. But the family was together, and the matriarch was there to ensure it, and to record it.

Barbara Bush will be buried at her husband’s presidential library in College Station, Texas. In 2000, the remains of their daughter Robin, who died of leukemia shortly before her fourth birthday, were transferred to what will now be the family plot. The death of Robin, Barbara would note later, brought George and her closer together. Such suffering often drives families apart. Power, with its attendant stresses and temptations, often does the same. But for the Bushes, it too brought them closer together. No small achievement, that.

Duty, honour, country. Faith and family, too. They not only belong to another era, but were more fruitfully lived in that earlier generation for which Barbara Bush was, for more than 90 years, a model.