George H. W. Bush

George H. W. Bush served honorably  in World War II, had plenty of physical courage, stayed married to the same women for his entire adult life, raised a family with her, and did well in business.  Based on what is publicly known, he seems to have led a decent, respectable,  and successful private life in which there was much to admire.

He also had a career of over a quarter of a century as a politician and bureaucrat.  He came from a wealthy and influential New England family and was a typical example of what was once called a Rockefeller Republican.   There are reasons one of his obituaries used the term “patrician”.  (As with most politicians he tried to put on a man-of-the-people act, but his seemed especially  weak, pork rinds or no.)

He ran for the senate from Texas in 1964 and lost but was elected to the house in 1966.  After leaving the house and losing another race for the senate in 1970,  he had several appointed jobs in government including director of the CIA. Ronald Reagan selected him as his running mate in 1980 – perhaps to placate the Republican establishment - despite their many disagreements and a rough campaign for the nomination in which Bush called Reagan’s economic ideas voodoo.  After eight years as vice president, Bush was elected president in 1988, mainly on the basis of Reagan’s successes and as someone under whom the government would continue in the same  direction.  Some called it an election for Reagan’s third term. It turned out to be nothing of the sort.  Bush double-crossed his benefactor, announcing that his would be a kinder, gentler government than that of his presumably unkind and ungentle predecessor, ended  the Reagan revolution, and governed  as a big government Republican. Reagan had made a serious mistake in  failing to endorse as his successor someone who shared his ideas and would continue his work.   Bush  double-crossed his voters by reneging  on his emphatic promise to oppose increases in taxes.  He frittered away both the political capital he inherited from Reagan and his own from a successful war over Kuwait and lost the presidency in 1992 in a three way race where enough usually Republican voters abandoned him for a strange but seemingly sincere amateur to give the presidency  to a little known southern Democrat with a shady background.   

Bush had a well known disdain for ideology and what he contemptuously called the vision thing. This was his worst failing.  An ideology is just  a set of political principles. ( When he made obligatory statements about principles, his insincerity and discomfort struck people as obvious. He seems to have been a person to whom such things are not seriously or operationally important.)  Without one  it is hard for a politician to have moral courage,  steadfastness, or reasoned convictions or to do much good.  That showed with him. He was the wrong person for the job in 1988, and the country suffered for it.