It's possible to be friends with adversaries. George H W Bush showed us how
In 1953, George HW Bush lost his daughter Robin to leukemia when she was just three years old. An intimately familiar and heartwarming exchange between father and daughter, some of Robin’s final words to her dad were, “I love you more than tongue can tell,” to which he replied, as ever, “I love you more.”
Sixty years later, Patrick, the twoyear-old son of Jon, a member of Bush Sr’s Secret Service detail, had lost all of his hair due to leukemia. In an act of solidarity, more than 20 members of the Secret Service unit, dubbed Bush Protective Division, shaved their heads.
Shortly after, Bush Sr made headlines for following suit. When his granddaughter, Jenna Bush Hager, asked him in an interview with Today about the decision, Bush Sr explained that his Secret Service agents were like family to him and that he hoped to identify with Patrick and bring him a little happiness.
Thoughtful gestures such as this one are among many that inform my qualified admiration of Bush 41. As an African American from a disadvantaged background, raised by a progressive family of committed Democrats, I part company with Bush Sr on many issues.
I take exception to his approval of harmful policies such as the 1033 program, which armed local law enforcement with military-grade weaponry. I disagree vehemently with his decision to escalate funding for his predecessor’s war on drugs, reinforcing disproportionate incarceration of minorities with severe sentencing for minor drug offenses. I loathe his decision to appoint
Clarence Thomas, an opponent of affirmative action, to the supreme court in place of Thurgood Marshall.
Most significantly perhaps, I reject the cynical way in which he exploited racial anxieties during his 1988 election campaign. His infamous campaign ad that featured a mug-shot of Willie Horton, an African American man who raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend while released from prison on a furlough program, became one of the most criticized campaign ads in US history. It is widely seen as having given birth to a new style of racial dog-whistling in presidential campaigns. As Michael Nelson, an author of a book on Bush, argued: “In some ways, the Willie Horton ad is the 1.0 version of Trump’s relentless tweets and comments about African Americans.”
These moments reveal one of Bush’s greater shortcomings: the ease with swinging below the belt. It is for these reasons and others that I sustain mixed feelings about his legacy.
Yet, at his best, Bush Sr exemplified two virtues sorely lacking in our present moment: grace and civility. One example from which we all can learn is his remarkable relationship with his successor, the man who defeated him in 1992, Bill Clinton. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, Clinton wrote of Bush, “his friendship has been one of the great gifts of my life. From Indonesia to Houston, from the Katrinaravaged Gulf Coast to Kennebunkport, Maine … I cherished every opportunity I had to learn and laugh with him. I just loved him.”
As Clinton explains, “many people were surprised at our relationship.” The opportunity offered by George W Bush to Clinton and his father to “jointly spearhead American relief efforts in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 and again after Hurricane Katrina in 2005” brought them closer. Despite their “considerable differences” and history as political adversaries, they have become extremely close friends over the years.
Nancy Gibbs, author of The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, even noted that, “Bush would go so far as to suggest more than once that he might be the father that Clinton had always lacked.” Above and beyond bipartisanship, Clinton and Bush’s friendship attests to the potential for human beings who were once opponents to find common ground.
Bush’s gestures of goodwill towards other Democratic presidents didn’t stop at Clinton. When Obama visited Texas on a trip in 2014, his predecessor, George W Bush, didn’t go to greet him on the tarmac. Bush Sr, however, did. “Dad’s there at the foot of the stairs [in his wheelchair] to meet him … typical of 41,” George W Bush remembered in an interview. It was his willingness to go beyond what protocol demanded, in order to set a good example, which is missing in our political culture today.
While I take issue with a number of Bush Sr’s policies and strongly dislike some of his objectionable tactics on the campaign trail and in office, I admire his ability to befriend his opponents. It is for reasons like that that many Americans of various ideological stripes hold him in high regard. And I am one of them – and I hope all of us can follow his example.
Zachary R Wood is an assistant opinion editor & columnist at the Guardian US