Bush was political patriarch to the enduring American dynasty
AUSTIN, Texas, Dec 3, (AP): The Kennedys had their New England coastal hideaway in Hyannis Port, a Camelot-like mystique and a political godfather in Joseph P. Kennedy.
For the country’s other political dynasty – the Bushes – it was a summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, and the West Texas oil patch that created a mix of Yale blue-blood and backcountry cowboy, and their own patriarch in George H.W. Bush.
Bush, who died late Friday at age 94 , was a World War II hero, a Texas congressman, the director of the CIA, vice president and eventually president. His son, George W., served as Texas governor and two terms in the White House.
Though another son, former Florida Gov Jeb Bush, turned monster fundraising into an embarrassingly short-lived 2016 presidential run – his campaign eviscerated by Donald Trump – the family’s future political prowess remains intact, including with Jeb’s 42-year-old son, George P. Bush, who is seen as a rising GOP star by Republican powerbrokers nationwide. He currently is Texas land commissioner, leading a powerful state agency that oversees mineral rights critical to oil and natural gas exploration on Texas’ 13 million acres of public land.
“I think when people hear the name George H.W. Bush they think of the word ‘statesman,’” George P. Bush told The Associated Press in 2013. “And I think his career really represents a generation that many Americans now and in the future will consider our country’s greatest generation.”
Some historians regard George H.W. Bush as more-bipartisan than his presidential successors – and his softer-spoken, humbler style is a far cry from Trump. Bush is also remembered as ending the Cold War, though he also invaded Panama and brought America to war for the first time against Saddam Hussein.
But defining an overall Bush family political legacy gets tougher, though, when considering that George W. Bush led the Iraq War in 2003, accusing Hussein of having non-existent weapons of mass destruction. And while the elder Bush’s 1992 re-election bid was marred by his reneging on his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge, the younger Bush presided over a financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession.