The oilman who brought a thaw to the Cold War
GEORGE Herbert Walker Bush, who died on Friday, was the US president who managed the end of the Cold War and forged a coalition to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
His life was devoted to his country, prompting former president Bill Clinton, who defeated him in 1992, to say: “Few Americans have been, or will ever be, able to match President Bush’s record of service to the United States and the joy he took every day from it.”
Former Prime Minister John Major was straightforward in his tribute: “He was, quite simply, one of the most deep down decent people I have ever known.”
Born in June 1924 into a life of privilege and a tradition of public service, Bush was the son of Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush.
He went on to become a Second World War naval pilot, Yale athlete, Texas oilman, congressman, pioneering diplomat and spy chief as head of the CIA. At 18, he defied his parents and joined the military after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
He was among the youngest pilots in the Navy and was shot down over the Pacific before being rescued by a passing submarine.
He returned home to marry Barbara Pierce and the couple settled in Texas, where he worked in the oil business.
Incredibly, they were married for 73 years and the day Barbara died in April Bush remained by her side, holding her hand for eight hours before she passed away.
Bush made his first bid for office in 1964, running for the Senate as a Republican and hoping to follow in his father Prescott’s footsteps.
He failed to win but went on to secure a seat in the House two years later and ran again for Senate in 1970 at the urging of President Richard Nixon. Again, he was unsuccessful but Nixon rewarded him by appointing him ambassador to the United Nations. Bush went on to become the US envoy to China before heading up the CIA.
After his own 1980 presidential campaign fell short, he served two terms as Ronald Reagan’s vicepresident before reaching the pinnacle of political power by winning the 1988 election, soundly defeating Democrat Michael Dukakis.
He was the first sitting vicepresident to be elected to the top job since 1836, and only the second person in US history to see his son follow in his presidential footsteps when George W Bush won in 2000.
As president, he was a skilled diplomat who was crucial to helping end four decades of Cold War and the threat of nuclear engagement with his handling of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe.
Bush also had to walk a fine line with China, imposing sanctions after a government crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Months later, he was again tested on the world stage when he ordered US troops to invade Panama after forces loyal to dictator Manuel Noriega killed a Marine.
The US team overwhelmed Noriega’s men in four days and he was later sentenced to 40 years in a US prison on drug charges.
However, Bush’s toughest foreign test came in 1990. He decided to build a diverse coalition, including more than 53,000 UK troops, to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
“This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait,” Bush vowed before the mission that united America and Britain in combat.
It saw him spark the biggest outpouring of patriotism and pride in the US military since the Second World War.
But despite his success abroad, Bush struggled at home amid economic woes. When he was beaten in the 1993 election by Clinton, he joined the dubious club of presidents rejected by voters after only one term in office.
But as time passed, Bush became an admired political elder with his foreign policy acumen coming to define his presidency.
In recent years he grew disillusioned with politics, with much of his frustration directed at Donald Trump. He criticised his son Jeb Bush, for not fighting harder to stop the billionaire gaining the Republican nomination in 2016.
Bush told a biographer that Trump lacked the “humility” required of a good president; he called him a “blowhard” and even cast his vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton – a remarkable gesture for a man who had chaired the national Republican party.
His health, however, blighted his activism in politics.
But despite Parkinson’s disease almost silencing him in public and leaving him unable to walk, his sense of fun remained. He famously enjoyed a tandem sky-dive on his 90th birthday.
In December 2014 he was hospitalised
‘Few will be able to match his record’ ‘Health blighted his activism in politics’
for breathing difficulties and the following July fell at his home in Kennebunkport, Maine, breaking a vertebrae.
In his later years, he suffered further health scares with bouts of pneumonia and infections. But he told worried well-wishers to “put the harps back in the closet”.
Last year he was caught up in the anti-harassment campaign when several women accused him of inappropriately touching them, prompting a statement saying that “on occasion, [Bush] has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner” and apologising to “anyone he has offended.”
HW Bush is survived by sons George W, Jeb, Neil and Marvin; his daughter Dorothy and 17 grandchildren.
His daughter Robin died of leukaemia as a child, a tragedy that affected Bush profoundly late in his life. He will be buried alongside her and the former first lady at his presidential library in College Station, Texas.