FROM SPYMASTER TO GLOBAL POWER BROKER
Bush, son of a senator and father of a president, led the US to victory in the first Iraq war, only to serve just a single term as economy weakened
The administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States, initially soared with the coalition victory in the first Iraq war, only to nosedive in the throes of a weak economy that turned voters against him after a single term.
The second world war pilot, who led during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the final months of the cold war, died on Friday night, family spokesman Jim McGrath said. He was 94.His wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush, died in April 2018.
The son of a senator and father of a president, Bush rose through the ranks: from congressman to UN ambassador, Republican Party chairman to envoy to China, CIA director to two-term vicepresident under Ronald Reagan.
Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, into the New England elite, a world of prep schools, mansions and servants unchanged by the Great Depression.
His father, Prescott Bush, made his fortune as a banker then became a senator.
Bush enlisted in the navy on his 18th birthday in 1942.
One of the youngest pilots in the navy, he flew 58 missions off the carrier USS San Jacinto.
He was shot down on September 2, 1944, during a bombing run against a Japanese radio tower. An American submarine rescued him.
After the war, Bush went to Yale then the oilfields of West Texas. He helped found Zapata Petroleum in 1953. Six years later, he moved to Houston and became active in the Republican Party.
He was first elected to Congress in 1966 and served two terms. President Richard Nixon appointed him ambassador to the United Nations. In 1972, he was named chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Bush struggled to hold the party together as Watergate destroyed the Nixon presidency. He became ambassador to China and CIA chief in the Ford administration.
In the 1988 presidential race, Bush trailed Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis by as many as 17 points in the summer.
But he soon became an aggressor, stressing patriotic themes and flailing Dukakis as an out-oftouch liberal. He won 40 states and became the first sitting vicepresident to be elected president since 1836.
Bush entered the White House in 1989 with a reputation as a man of indecision and indeterminate views. One news magazine suggested he was a “wimp”.
The Iraq crisis of 1990-91 brought out all the skills Bush had honed in a quarter-century of politics and public service.
After winning United Nations support and a green light from a reluctant Congress, Bush unleashed a punishing air war against Iraq. He basked in a massive outpouring of patriotism and pride in America’s military, and his approval ratings soared to nearly 90 per cent.
After liberating Kuwait, he rejected suggestions the US take the offensive to Baghdad, choosing to end hostilities a mere 100 hours after the start of the ground war.
“That wasn’t our objective,” he said in 2011. “The good thing about it is there was so much less loss of human life than had been predicted.”
But the decisive military defeat did not lead to Saddam Hussein’s downfall, as many in the administration had hoped.
“I miscalculated,” acknowledged Bush. His legacy was dogged for years by doubts about the decision not to remove Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was eventually ousted in 2003, in the war led by Bush’s son that was followed by a long, bloody insurgency.
His true interests were in diplomacy.
“I love coping with the problems in foreign affairs,” he told a child who asked what he liked best about being president.
He operated at times like a one-man State Department, on the phone to Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev, Francois Mitterand of France or Germany’s Helmut Kohl.
He saw his son, George Walker Bush, twice elected to the presidency – only the second fatherand-son chief executives, following John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
Once out of office, Bush was content to remain on the sidelines, except for an occasional speech and visits abroad. He returned to China, where he was welcomed as “an old friend” from his days as the US ambassador there.
I love coping with the problems in foreign affairs GEORGE H.W. BUSH