Four (awkward) presidents and a funeral
● America’s 41st president’s ‘goofy side’ underlies high praise in eulogies
It was an awkward ensemble in the front-row pew at George HW Bush’s state funeral yesterday as US president Donald Trump was seated alongside predecessors Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Mr Trump walked in and greeted Mr Obama, but did not shake hands with either of the Clintons.
George HW Bush was celebrated with high praise and loving humour as the nation bade farewell to the man who was America’s 41st president and the last to fight for the US in wartime.
Three former presidents looked on at Washington National Cathedral as a fourth, George W Bush, read a eulogy for his father.
“To us,” the son said of the father, “his was the brightest of a thousand points of light”.
George W Bush broke down briefly at the end of his eulogy while invoking the daughter his parents lost when she was three and his mother, Barbara, who died in April. He took comfort in knowing “Dad is hugging Robin and holding Mom’s hand again”.
For all the sombre tributes to the late president’s public service and strength of character, laughter filled the cathedral time after time. The late president’s eulogists, son included, noted Bush’s tendency to tangle his words and show his goofy side.
He was “the last great-soldier statesman”, historian Jon Meacham said in his eulogy, “our shield” in dangerous times. But he also said Bush, campaigning in a crowd in a department store, once shook hands with a mannequin. Rather than flushing in embarrassment, he simply cracked: “Never know. Gotta ask.”
The congregation, filled with foreign leaders and diplomats, Americans of high office and others touched by Bush’s life, rose for the arrival of the casket, accompanied by clergy of faiths from around the world.
In their row together, US president Donald Trump and former presidents Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton stood with their spouses and all placed their hands over their hearts.
Mr Meacham also praised Bush’s call to volunteerism –
his “thousand points of light” – placing it alongside Abraham Lincoln’s call to honour “the better angels of our nature” in the US rhetorical canon.
He called those lines “companion verses in America’s national hymn”.
Mr Trump had mocked “thousand points of light” last summer at a rally, saying “What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out? And it was put out by a Republican, wasn’t it?”
Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney
praised Bush as a strong world leader who helped oversee the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union and set the stage for the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, achieved under his successor, Mr Clinton.
Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, regaled the congregation with stories from his years as Bush’s friend in Washington. More seriously, he recalled that when he went through a rough patch in the political game, Bush conspicuously stood by him against the advice of aides. “You would have wanted him on your side,” he said.
The national funeral service capped three days of remembrance in Washington before Bush’s remains return to Texas today for burial tomorrow. He died last Friday at age 94.
Bush will lie in repose at St Martin’s Episcopal Church before burial at his family plot on the presidential library grounds at Texas A&M University in College Station. His final resting place will be alongside Barbara Bush, his wife of 73 years, and Robin Bush, the daughter they lost to leukaemia in 1953.
A military band played “Hail to the Chief ” as Bush’s casket was carried down the steps of the US Capitol, where he had lain in state. Family members looked on as servicemen fired off a cannon salute.
His hearse was then driven in a motorcade to the cathedral ceremony, slowing in front of the White House. Bush’s route was lined with people much of the way, bundled in winter hats and taking photos.