A thousand points of lightheartedness
A daredevil cornball & ‘sock man’
Despite his much-parodied admonishment to “be prudent,” George H.W. Bush was actually funny — and sometimes gleefully imprudent.
On summer breaks from the White House, Bush loved speeding full-throttle in his twin-engine cigarette boat, to the white-knuckled terror of passengers, in Kennebunkport, Maine.
And though he first bailed out of a cockpit at age 18 — as a World War II Navy pilot in the Pacific — old age wouldn’t keep him from jumping out of still more airplanes.
Who can forget his birthday-celebration skydives, with their images of a gleeful Bush plummeting earthward?
He took his final jump four years ago, on his 90th birthday — despite being wheelchair-bound and suffering from Parkinson’s.
His endearing quirks were many. He loved colorful socks, the louder the better, and in June tweeted a photo of himself alongside Bill Clinton — wearing socks bearing his successor’s image.
“I like a colorful sock,” he explained in a 2012 interview with his granddaughter, “Today” show host Jenna Bush Hager. “I’m a sock man.”
His humor was often self-deprecating, but never so much as in 1992, when he invited comedian Dana Carvey to the White House — to reprise Carvey’s gently mocking Bush impersonation.
Mostly, though, H.W.’s humor was earnest, even cornball.
After taking office in 1989, Bush banished broccoli from Air Force One and the White House. “I do not like broccoli,” he famously explained. “And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!” he thundered.
“Did you hear the one about the duck that went into the bar?” Ellen Warren, a former White House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, wrote in an appreciation Saturday, quoting one of the president’s more memorable clunkers.
“Bartender looked at the duck and said, ‘Your pants are down.’ ” Bush got nothing but vacant stares when he told the joke in 1992 in Spartanburg, SC, remembered Warren. At which point, she wrote, “The Most Powerful Man on Earth gamely explained: Ducks? Covered in down? Get it?”