George H.W. Bush’s life and legacy
LEGACY OF ‘STEADY, PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP’
He was the man who sought a “kinder, and gentler nation,” and the one who sternly invited Americans to read his lips — he would not raise taxes. He was the popular leader of a mighty coalition that dislodged Iraq from Kuwait, and was turned out of the presidency after a single term. Blue-blooded and genteel, he was elected in one of the nastiest campaigns in recent history.
George Herbert Walker Bush was many things, including only the second American to see his son follow him into the nation’s highest office. But more than anything else, he was a believer in government service.
“There is no higher honour than to serve free men and women, no greater privilege than to labour in government beneath the Great Seal of the United States and the American flag,” he told senior staffers in 1989, days after he took office.
Bush, who died late Friday at age 94 — nearly eight months after his wife of 73 years died at their Houston home — was a congressman, an ambassador to the United Nations and envoy to China, chairman of the Republican National Committee, director of the CIA, twoterm vice-president and, finally, president.
Bush’s body will lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington between Monday and Wednesday. Bush will be buried Thursday on the grounds of his presidential library at Texas A&M University at the family plot next to his wife Barbara and their three-year-old daughter Robin, who died of leukemia in 1953. President Donald Trump plans to attend, the White House said.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney will deliver one of four eulogies at the state funeral on Wednesday at the National Cathedral. A longtime friend, Mulroney said Bush asked him three years ago if he would speak at his funeral.
“I spent a little time on it. I’m not finished yet, but I think I know what I want to say,” said Mulroney, who added he was “honoured” to do so.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Bush provided “steady, principled leadership” and helped strengthen ties with Canada. With Mulroney, Bush signed the acid rain treaty in 1991 and negotiated much of NAFTA which would be signed in 1994.
The last time Mulroney saw his friend was in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he accepted the George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service. Bush wasn’t well enough to attend, so Mulroney paid the former president a visit at home and read out his acceptance speech.
“I think we both knew that that was probably the last visit we were going to have,” Mulroney said.
But while Mulroney paints Bush as a “friend of Canada,” most assessments of his presidency tend to be tepid.
“Was George Bush only a nice man with good connections, who seldom had to wrest from life the honours it frequently bestowed on him?” journalist Tom Wicker asked in his Bush biography.
Wicker’s answer: Perhaps. But he said Bush’s actions in Kuwait “reflect moments of courage and vision worthy of his office.”
The Persian Gulf War — dubbed “Operation Desert Storm” — was his greatest mark on history. In a January 2011 interview marking the war’s 20th anniversary, he said the mission sent a message that “the United States was willing to use force way across the world, even in that part of the world where those countries over there thought we never would intervene.
“I think it was a signature historical event,” he added. “And I think it will always be.”
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bush quickly began building an international military coalition that included other Arab states — and Canada. After freeing Kuwait, he rejected suggestions that the U.S. carry the offensive to Baghdad, choosing to end the hostilities a mere 100 hours after the start of the ground offensive.
But the decisive military defeat did not lead to the regime’s downfall, as many in the administration had hoped.
“I miscalculated,” Bush acknowledged. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was eventually ousted in 2003, in the war led by Bush’s son, followed by a long, bloody insurgency.
Unlike his son, Bush was a bona fide war hero.
His wartime exploits won him the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery. He was shot down on Sept. 2, 1944, while completing a bombing run against a Japanese radio tower. Eight others shot down in that mission were captured and executed, and several were eaten by their captors.
Bush was born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Mass. His father, the son of an Ohio steel magnate, had moved east to make his fortune as an investment banker and later served 10 years as a senator from Connecticut. His mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, was the daughter of a sportsman who gave golf its Walker Cup.
Young Bush attended Greenwich Country Day School and later Phillips Academy at Andover, Mass. It was there, at a dance, that he met Barbara Pierce. George and Barbara would marry when he left the Navy in January 1945. They were together for more than seven decades.
Out of the service, Bush quickly graduated from Yale, but rather than joining his father on Wall Street, in 1948 he loaded his wife and young son George W. into the family Studebaker and drove to the hot, dusty Texas oilpatch to take a job as an equipment clerk for the International Derrick and Equipment Co.
It was in Houston where he got his start in politics.
Bush lost his first race, in 1964, but won a seat in the House in 1966. He won re-election in 1968 without opposition. In Congress, he generally supported President Richard Nixon and the war in Vietnam.
Nixon appointed Bush ambassador to the United Nations and, after the 1972 election, named him chairman of the Republican National Committee. Bush struggled to hold the party together as Watergate destroyed the Nixon presidency.
Bush returned to private life when the Republicans lost the presidency in 1976, but he quickly began planning his own run for the White House.
He won the first contest of 1980, the Iowa caucuses, but Ronald Reagan, who had led the conservative movement for more than a decade, won the New Hampshire primary and the nomination. They would become running mates and defeat Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.
In 1988, many Democrats assumed Bush would be easy pickings.
The campaign was bitter and muddy.
Bush won by a landslide, with 40 states and a nearly 7 million vote plurality, becoming the first sitting vice-president to win the White House since 1836. He entered office with a reputation as a man of indecision and indeterminate views. A wimp, one newsmagazine suggested.
But his work-hard, playhard approach won broad public approval.
He pledged to make the United States a “kinder, gentler” nation and called on Americans to volunteer their time for good causes. Bush sought to safeguard the environment and signed the first improvements to the Clean Air Act in more than a decade. Bush also banned workplace discrimination against people with disabilities.
It was Bush’s violation of a different pledge, the no-new-taxes promise, and a perceived inaction on a recession that helped sink his bid for a second term.
Bill Clinton sought to take advantage of the nation’s economic fears in 1992.
At a town-hall-style debate, Bush paused to look at his wristwatch — a seemingly innocent glance that became freighted with deeper meaning because it seemed to reinforce the idea of a bored, impatient incumbent.
“I lost in ’92 because people still thought the economy was in the tank, that I was out of touch and I didn’t understand that,” he said. “The economy wasn’t in the tank and I wasn’t out of touch, but I lost.”