Life of service: Bush earns place in history
George Herbert Walker Bush was reared in the cradle of America’s economic aristocracy. Yet he refused to ride the coattails of entitlement.
As he prepared to graduate from Yale in 1948, he was offered a job at his family’s Wall Street investment firm. He turned it down. Whatever his destiny, he vowed it would be fully earned.
So began a remarkable journey from the estates of New England to the dusty plains of West Texas, from the leafy precincts of Houston’s nicest neighborhoods to foreign capitals and ultimately to the White House.
Bush, the 41st president of the United States, died Nov. 30 at his home in Houston. He was 94.
His life was one of public service, including a single term as president in which he dealt with the collapse of the Soviet Union, war in the Middle East and economic difficulties at home.
“The legacy of George H.W. Bush will be forever etched in the history of America and the world. It is a lifelong record of selfless patriotic service to our nation,” said James Baker, a close friend of Bush’s who served as his secretary of state and White House chief of staff.
“He was the youngest Navy pilot in World War II, a Texas congressman, U.N. ambassador, America’s first envoy to China, CIA director, vice president and president,” Baker said. “In each and every one of these positions, he led with strength, integrity, compassion and humility — characteristics that define a truly great man and effective leader.”
Bush’s long life encompassed the full arc of the 20th century, beginning in an era of steamships and a new ideology called communism and ending as spaceships explored distant planets and the hammer-and-sickle was a fading emblem on old flags.
He was the last president to have served in World War II and the last whose worldview had been shaped by the imperative to contain communism.
His experience in international diplomacy served him well as he dealt with the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the rise of China.
As restrained as he was in foreign affairs, Bush had an inclination for personal risk-taking that showed up early in his life, when he became a carrier pilot — one of the most dangerous jobs in the military — and then struck out on his own at war’s end, eschewing a comfortable New York job to become a Texas oilman.
Likewise, when his interest turned to politics, he was more than willing to give up the executive suite for a chance at public office.
Presidential aspirations
Steeped in the importance of public service, Bush always felt the lure of political life.
It finally snared him in 1962 when he was chosen to head Houston’s fledgling GOP. He spent the next three decades in the political limelight. His roller-coaster career saw more defeats than victories, yet improbably landed him in the White House.
Bush was elected president in 1988 as the successor to Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon against whom he ran in 1980 and for whom he served as vice president.
Unlike Reagan, he was a pragmatic leader guided by moderation, consensus-building and a sense for problem-solving shorn of partisan rhetoric.
Like his father, who served in the U.S. Senate, he swore no allegiance to orthodox tenets. That put him at odds with a take-noprisoners attitude of a new breed of Republicans and helped do in his re-election bid.
Most of Bush’s political career was spent in appointed jobs, where he demonstrated loyalty and a quick-study competence, rarely making headlines.
When he became president, many in his party hoped he simply would follow in Reagan’s footsteps.
Instead, he quickly distinguished himself, as the postwar order began to undergo dramatic changes.
Bush was put to the test shortly after taking office. Surging movements in Eastern Europe saw opportunity to free themselves from the Soviet yoke, thanks in part to the liberalizing influence of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Bush’s measured response allowed events to unfold without triggering catastrophic responses from Soviet hard-liners.
Bush again displayed his diplomatic skills in summer 1990 when he coordinated a multinational response to the invasion of tiny Kuwait by neighboring Iraq and its dictator, Saddam Hussein. The victorious Operation Desert Storm brought high approval ratings that appeared to guarantee a second term.
Domestic matters proved a different challenge.
Plagued by inherited budget deficits and a Congress under the control of Democrats, Bush was pushed into a tax increase that belied his explicit promise to allow none.
The political damage was severe. His re-election bid fell short, causing him to wonder whether history would regard him as a failed president. It hasn’t. “I think over the years he fares well,” said historian Henry Brands, author of seven presidential biographies and a professor at the University of Texas. “If voters have a referendum and they vote you down, that automatically puts you down a rung. It’s unfair. Bush always was rated very highly by historians more than he was by the public. I think that is changing.”
Bush was to be the last president of his generation, which came of age during the Great Depression, participated in a cataclysmic world war and ushered in unprecedented American power and prosperity.
Turning away from the preordained comfortable life, Bush struck out for Texas and found success, first as an independent oilman and later as a congressman from Houston.
The misfortune of bad timing hurt him occasionally in his pursuit of higher office, yet a string of high-profile appointed positions reflected the faith others had in his ability and kept alive his dream of fulfilling his father’s prediction that someday he would become president.
“The world was fortunate to have his background and instincts at a turning point,” said Robert Gates, who served as Bush’s CIA director and deputy national security adviser. “The collapse and end of the Cold War look sort of preordained in hindsight, but for those who were there, it was not clear how it would happen.”
Gates, who served in eight presidential administrations, suggested Bush never received the credit he deserved for quietly “greasing the skids” that saw communists slide from power in the Soviet Union.
“There is no precedent in all of history for the collapse of a heavily armed empire without a major war,” Gates said. “He was a figure of enormous historical importance.”
Though Bush came to be widely respected by foreign leaders and diplomats, his political profile at home was different.
He’d long been dogged by assertions that he was a bland and hazy character, aloof and dilettantish. The image baffled him and many who knew him. He was chided for a lack of apparent vision, yet it was not his nature to view himself as a visionary.
“What’s wrong with trying to help people?” he once asked. “What’s wrong with trying to bring peace? What’s wrong with trying to make the world a little better?”
Reagan’s maxim that government was not the solution to a problem but the problem itself wasn’t Bush’s view, which might explain why his single term arguably resulted in more significant legislative achievements than Reagan’s two, among them the Americans with Disabilities Act, a bolstered Clean Air Act and an increased minimum wage.
Bush’s career from start to finish, especially as president, largely was free of scandal or great controversy, with one exception — his role as vice president in the Iran-Contra scandal.
His ethical standards rarely were questioned. His judgment was the product of studied deliberation and ample give-and-take with advisers. He regularly entertained Democratic leaders at the White House and made a great effort to develop personal relationships over drinks and a game of horseshoes, just as he had in the diplomatic world.
“President Bush was inclined to forgive and forget past slights, defeats, and even outrages,” longtime aide Chase Untermeyer said. “Thus did he offer rides to Maine for Sen. George Mitchell, make the daughter of Sen. Sam Nunn the head of the Points of Light Foundation, and — to clinch the case — become buddies with Bill Clinton.”
Bush was defeated in a threeway contest with Democrat Clinton and Texas billionaire Ross Perot — a sour coda to a stellar career.
Though he had been ambivalent about even running for reelection, the loss would gnaw on him. He believed he left the job he signed up for unfinished.
Even years later, Bush recalled the sick feeling he carried inside for having let down the people who believed in him.
“That was the sad part for me,” said, “and I felt very strongly about that. I still do.”
Political beginnings
Bush had first scratched the political itch the early 1960s, wading into a successful race for Harris County GOP chairman to make sure it did not fall into the hands of members of the John Birch Society.
Perhaps because his father had just left the U.S. Senate, Bush then brashly decided to take on incumbent U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough in 1964. Though little-known outside Houston and Midland, he campaigned vigorously as a different sort of Republican, less in step with the northeastern wing of his father and closer to the politics of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace.
He went full-tilt conservative, opposing, among other progressive initiatives, the pending Civil Rights Act.
Yarborough portrayed Bush as an extremist and won easily, gaining 56 percent of the vote as Lyndon Johnson swamped Goldwater in the presidential race.
After his defeat, Bush struggled to reconcile his moderate views with an election that had seen him embrace, however tentatively, an anti-progressive tone and a segregationist posture.
“This mean, humorless philosophy which says everybody should agree on absolutely everything is not good for the Republican Party or our state,” Bush wrote to a friend after the loss. “When the word moderate becomes a dirty word, we have some soulsearching to do.”
In November 1966, Bush ran for Congress and won, becoming the first Republican from Houston and the star of the growing Texas GOP.
Bush was in his second term when President Richard Nixon asked him to take on Yarborough again.
But a former Texas congressman named Lloyd Bentsen had the same idea. When Bentsen knocked off the liberal incumbent in the primary, Bush found himself in a race he hadn’t anticipated, running against a candidate who looked much like himself: smart, centrist, attractive to a new generation.
Bush lost again and was out of a job.
Since Nixon had pushed him toward the Senate bid, he responded by appointing Bush to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
What followed over the rest of the decade was a series of appointed posts. Nixon named him chairman of the Republican National Committee, his tenure coinciding with investigations into the Watergate affair, which resulted in Nixon’s resignation. Although Bush survived untainted, new President Gerald Ford knew it was time for a change and appointed him “envoy” to China — the two nations didn’t yet have full diplomatic relations, so Bush couldn’t be called an ambassador.
In Ford’s final year in office, Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which was in disarray after years of scandalous revelations. Though he was only there a year, he was credited for restoring the agency’s morale, and he was well thought of by longtime hands.
When Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976, Bush found himself once again unemployed.
As the decade was closing, Bush saw an opening to run for the office to which he had long aspired — president.
Carter’s hold on the office was not strong. Bush’s knowledge of Washington and of the demands of geopolitics were immensely greater than his opponents as campaigns ramped up ahead of the 1980 election. Yet once more, he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
His chief opponent for the Republican nomination was Reagan, the rising power in the party.
Bush claimed an early win in Iowa, and he scored big primary wins in a handful of important states.
Reagan remained in front, however, and as the campaign approached the later months he had to win California, and that seemed unlikely. Longtime friend and campaign manager James Baker finally convinced him the numbers would not add up, and Bush dropped out.
Bush dutifully showed up at the 1980 Republican National Convention skeptical that Reagan would offer him the vice presidency. As the convention dragged on, no obvious choice for running mate emerged.
Just before midnight, as the convention’s final day loomed, Baker picked up the phone in Bush’s hotel suite, then handed over the receiver. He had his reprieve.
Over the next eight years, the relationship between Reagan and Bush grew increasingly warm and cordial. Bush would prove a loyal second to Reagan, never pursuing his own agenda or separating himself from White House policy. He was relied on to carry out key assignments. One involved secretly selling arms to Iran, which was contrary to American policy.
Unknown to most in the administration, the proceeds from the sale were being diverted, in violation of U.S. law, to the Contra “freedom fighters” who were attacking the leftist government in Nicaragua. When the so-called Iran-Contra scandal became public, Bush claimed he had been “out of the loop” with respect to the details.
Investigations failed to establish any clear wrongdoing on Bush’s part. Ultimately, Reagan accepted responsibility for the entire operation.
There was little doubt after Reagan’s re-election in 1984 that Bush would follow on with another campaign of his own.
As the GOP moved toward a defiant brand of ultra-conservatism, Bush had become a tougher sell. Most of the new movement conservatives who had backed Reagan never trusted or believed in him. Then again, they had no strong
“You don’t have to go to college to be a success. … We need the people who run the offices, the people who do the hard physical work of our society.” – George H.W. Bush
“No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit.” – George H.W. Bush
candidate of their own. And he was by any measure preferable to the candidate who emerged from the Democratic primaries: Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis.
Trying to convince middle Americans that he was on their side, he agreed to utter the words he should have been smart enough to avoid. “Read my lips: No new taxes.” Bush carried 40 states and claimed more than 53 percent of the vote. And so a day that he’d long imagined had dawned.
International diplomat
Bush had not been in the White House long when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a principal signal that the Soviet bloc was in its final days and that his administration would soon see its first big test.
Displaying considerable judgment, Bush refused to dance on the rubble of the communist empire, lest he complicate the task of Kremlin leaders in managing their crumbling universe or the West German government in moving to reunify the nation.
Central to his desire to bolster a new relationship with the Soviet Union was his personal contact with its reformist leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The two met formally in 1989 at the Malta Summit, where they announced a formal end to the Cold War.
Bush’s cautious posture as the Soviet Union was beginning to unravel was a highlight of his presidency.
“The way he avoided giving the hard-liners in the Kremlin any pretext to for a launch a coup was crucial,” said Gates, who also served as Secretary of Defense for presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “They finally did, but if they had launched it in 1989 instead of 1991, they might have been successful. Gorbachev’s reforms would not have had time to weaken their hold on power.”
The end of the Cold War did not mean an end to international trouble. When the Chinese government violently put down a dissident student movement, most notably in a 1989 confrontation at Tiananmen Square, Bush used his personal relationship with the premier to allay fears of American intrusion into Chinese matters.
In summer 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and hovered menacingly on the northern border of Saudi Arabia.
Bush declared the occupation would “not stand.” With the consent of Saudi leaders, he sent U.S. troops to the desert kingdom. He also enlisted the support of more than two dozen nations, including eight Arab countries, and waited for an international consensus before moving forward.
A five-week air assault that began Jan. 17, 1991, was followed by a 100-hour ground offensive.
Facing the full onslaught of Desert Storm, Iraqi troops quickly scattered or retreated northward. In one of the most controversial moves of his administration, Bush decided not to send U.S. ground forces to pursue the fleeing units into Iraq, arguing that doing so would go beyond their U.N. mandate, fracture the coalition and dangerously destabilize Iraq.
That set up a decadelong international stalemate and a decision by his son to mount a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In his own hemisphere, Bush’s presidential term saw negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.-led coup to overthrow Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges.
The last campaign
All that Bush accomplished internationally, however, was slowly overshadowed by a lingering economic malaise. The need for a dreaded tax increase loomed.
He might have been able to finesse a few fee increases or small, and less obvious, tax boosts. This was more than that, and it hit him head on.
“It did destroy me,” Bush later told biographer Meacham. “It was a mistake (to make the pledge), but I meant it at the time, and I meant it all through my presidency.”
As his re-election campaign came closer, it seemed apparent that the polls showing trouble were accurate. Even worse, it was obvious that his candidacy lacked a theme or focus.
His last campaign could have been an opportunity to reconnect with voters, to assure them the presidency was in the hands of an able captain, not a rookie with character issues. Yet it felt much more like an odious burden, lifeless and out of synch.
Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s press secretary during the campaign, said Bush never warmed to the need for a strong sales pitch.
With the election loss came intense pain, physical and emotional, that he fully acknowledged.
In his final personal thoughts about his time in the Oval Office, Bush wrote that he had tried to serve with honor, to do nothing that “would tarnish and hurt the presidency.”
Coming back to Houston, Bush felt a pervasive sadness. There was much more to do that would not get done, he said. Convincing voters had been his responsibility, and he had failed.
His spirits were buoyed in 2000 when son George was elected president. It was only the second time in American history that a father and son had served in the White House.
The fatherly pride of Bush 41, as he came to be known, was tempered by his son’s second term, by the end of which he was pilloried for a long and costly war premised on bad information and for the coming of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
Unlike Clinton, the elder Bush was far from a ubiquitous figure in retirement. He did emerge for a different sort of campaign in 2004, joining his old rival Clinton to spearhead fundraising efforts for victims of a tsunami that hit 14 Asian countries. The odd couple hit it off and reprised the charity work for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Bush occasionally was seen at ball games around Houston, at numerous charity events and at funerals of old friends. He rarely gave interviews, though eventually he was convinced to cooperate on his biography. He made a final parachute jump after turning 90, but age and disease began to take a toll.
When he lost the ability to walk, there were few public appearances.
In 2010, Obama awarded Bush the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor that Bush himself had bestowed on Reagan.
“I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are. … I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.” – George H.W. Bush
“I plan to put something back into society, and not at the head table, not always in the glamour, certainly not with a lot of news attention.” – George H.W. Bush