President who promised a ‘new world order’ failed to command domestic stage
In the spring of 1991 President George HW Bush, who has died aged 94, enjoyed approval ratings of about 90 per cent, the highest on record. In the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait the previous summer, Margaret Thatcher felt compelled to warn Bush: ‘‘This is no time to go wobbly, George.’’ However, he had risen to the challenge, assembling the largest international military coalition since World War II to reverse the invasion. After five weeks of intense bombing, Iraq’s army was routed in a ground offensive lasting scarcely 100 hours.
The ghost of Vietnam was laid to rest. The United States
George H W
was indisputably the world’s sole
Bush
superpower, the
Berlin Wall having fallen 15 politician
months earlier. b June 12, 1924
Bush even spoke d November 30, 2018
of creating a
‘‘new world order’’ after four decades of Cold War. His re-election the next year appeared such a formality that no leading Democrat was willing to stand against him.
In the event Bush’s approval ratings fell faster than those of any previous president. He failed to combat a painful recession, and lacked any inspiring strategy when it came to domestic affairs – indeed he mocked what he called ‘‘the vision thing’’. He was seen as elitist and out of touch by an electorate fed up with Washington and hankering for change. Bush lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas who spent much of the campaign fending off allegations of womanising and draft evasion.
Yet Bush will be remembered fondly. The last president of the World War II generation, his personal integrity and political restraint were appreciated all the more when Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes tarnished the Oval Office and Bush’s son George W ordered a reckless invasion of Iraq with none of his father’s patient preparation.
George H was the president who would not eat broccoli, who mangled his syntax (‘‘We’re enjoying sluggish times, and not enjoying them very much’’), who loved to play horseshoes or golf or ride his boat.
He was in effect a caretaker, sandwiched between two transformative two-term presidents – Ronald Reagan and Clinton. He served as Reagan’s vice-president for eight years, but inherited little of his aura. The Soviet Union collapsed on his watch, but the process had begun well before. The Gulf war apart, the 41st president is likely to be remembered primarily as the father of the deeply controversial 43rd.
Too often his views were determined by political expediency, not least on abortion. He moved from firmly pro-choice to staunchly pro-life as the religious right steadily gained strength. Another administration insider wrote: ‘‘Nobody, including the president, knew what Bush believed.’’
One observer noted that he ‘‘never failed in any job, but he has never left a mark on one either’’.
George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Massachusetts, the scion of an affluent family with a history of public service and a strong sense of noblesse oblige. A political rival once quipped that Bush was born with a silver spoon so far down his throat ‘‘that you couldn’t get it out with a crowbar’’.
Bush attended the exclusive Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, and won a place at Yale, but the war intervened, so he signed up instead. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his wartime service.
Weeks after returning from the Pacific in 1945, he married Barbara Pierce, with whom he had six children: George W; Pauline, who died in childhood; ‘‘Jeb’’, who became governor of Florida; Neil and Marvin, both businessmen; and Dorothy, an author and philanthropist.
Instead of following the family tradition by joining Wall Street, he moved his wife and young children to Texas and learnt the oil business, before winning a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1966.
President Richard Nixon appointed him US ambassador to the United Nations, the first of a string of high-level jobs he held over the next 12 years. One observer noted, unkindly but not entirely unfairly, that he ‘‘never failed in any job, but he has never left a mark on one either’’.
He ran for president in 1980, losing the Republican nomination to Reagan, and spent the next eight years loyally serving as Reagan’s deputy. His reward was to enter the battle for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination as the frontrunner, but he was a poor campaigner. He pandered to the Right by offering one unequivocal pledge that would return to haunt his presidency: ‘‘Read my lips – no new taxes!’’
Bush won the presidency, but seemed uncertain what to do with it. He was caught between his instinctive pragmatism and the ideological demands of Reagan conservatives.
By the end of 1991, Time magazine named ‘‘the two George Bushes’’ as its Men of the Year – the foreign policy president who was a ‘‘study in resoluteness and mastery’’ and the one whose domestic policy was ‘‘just as strongly marked by confusion’’.
He was out-campaigned by Clinton the following year, winning only 38 per cent of the vote to Clinton’s 43 per cent.
Bush retired to Houston where, in 1999, he and his wife became the longest-married presidential couple in US history. – The Times