Bush funeral reveals lack of decorum in politics
Today, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., you’re going to witness one of the strangest sights in the modern political era: a roomful of politicians, pundits and 2020 POTUS wannabes all acting … normally. How crazy is that? The sitting president of the United States is attending the funeral of deceased predecessor George H. W. Bush. For 200 years of American history, this would have been the norm. Today, it’s front page news.
Speaking of front page, this is an actual headline from yesterday’s Washington Post: “Bush family seeks to steer clear of anti-Trump sentiment at 41st president’s funeral.”
Folks — it’s a funeral, not a Festivus ceremony. There’s no “airing of the grievances.” Why would there be any “anti” sentiment toward anyone? The people who speak at memorial services are supposed to honor and remember the dead, not settle political scores among the living. At least, that’s how it used to be.
But in America, 2018, strange is the new normal.
Remember Meghan McCain’s classless attack on President Trump during her eulogy for her dad, Sen. John McCain? Her com- ments about “cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near to the sacrifice he gave so willingly”?
“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great,” she said. And she was applauded for it.
But not, I’m guessing, by George H.W. Bush. According to media reports, Bush specifically wanted President Trump, who was banished from McCain’s funeral, to attend his. Not to support Trump, but to support the traditional norms of American society that both Trump and his detractors have done so much to destroy.
George H.W. Bush understood the power of the process vs. the drama of the politics. America’s had bad presidents before — Pierce, Buchanan, Carter — and we’ll have them again. The good news is our nation’s founders created a brilliant constitutional system specifically designed with horrible presidents (and senators and congressmen) in mind.
Their solution was simple: Everybody do their job.
If you’re a citizen and you don’t like Trump, then your job is to vote. If you’re a member of Congress, then legislating is yours. If you’re in the media, just report the facts. It’s that simple.
The next step is for the legislature to legislate: Debate laws, cut deals and then send the results to the president’s desk.
“No,” you can hear Trump-hating progressives screaming — “forget a DACA deal or a health care compromise. Impeach! IMPEACH!!” Yes, having another sit-in on the floor of Congress and coming up with cool new hashtags gets a lot more attention. But the lesson of H.W. Bush is that showmanship is not nearly as effective in the long run as just doing your job and letting the Constitution sort it all out.
For all the talk of “No Drama Obama,” the eight years before Trump were fraught with conflict and cultural warfare, due in part to the fact that Obama and his allies didn’t share Bush’s respect for process. Instead, it was “the phone and the pen.” The Trump presidency has taken that rejection of political norms even farther, and his opponents respond by driving the drama ever higher.
When he was running for president in 1988, a reporter suggested that H.W. Bush was a bit, well, boring.
“What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?” Bush replied.
One behalf of millions of Americans, I couldn’t agree more.