Goodbye to an Era

This week, we said goodbye to George H.W. Bush.  Unlike John McCain’s funeral, which was a veritable Trump bashing conference, Bush’s memorial was about Bush.  George W. and James Baker delivered appropriate and emotional eulogies.  Perhaps the most poignant moment came when 95 year old fellow war hero Bob Dole had an assistant help the crippled Dole to his feet so he could salute the former president.

It was quite an emotional few days and I think that in addition to mourning Bush, the nation mourned the end of an era.  Bush presided over “a new world order” that lasted almost 30 years. 

 He oversaw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and managed it with real aplomb.  With James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, there was no high fiving as the former Eastern Bloc broke away from Moscow.  He built a coalition to forcibly eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in a spectacular show of U.S. led force that mercifully had less than 200 casualties.   Bush wisely broke off hostilities after the mission of ejecting Iraq from Kuwait was accomplished (I admit I was wrong and Bush was right as I criticized Bush for not going to Baghdad and getting rid of Hussein).  Bush’s popularity soared at the end of that war and I remember Bob Dole chirping, “Bush has a 90% approval rating and the other 10% don’t know who the president is.”   In a few short months, America had seen redemption after Vietnam.  But alas, after the war, the economy weakened, Bush’s popularity evaporated quickly and he was voted out of office.  

But Bush took the loss as the individual he was, and left Bill Clinton a magnanimous note and sunk into the background as American ex-presidents are supposed to do.  Bush passed off to Clinton a growing economy that was ushered in by Bush, along with a military that the world was in awe of, and a Cold War that had been brought to a successful conclusion.

Bush was an understated, gentle man, an avuncular, yet firm person that had a difficult job—following the giant of a beloved and enormously popular president—Ronald Reagan.  As someone once said, “I never want to follow a legend.  I want to follow the guy that follows the legend.”  Yet Bush did it quite well and in his own style.

It is fitting that the Bush tributes ended just as the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack began.  Bush was part of that Greatest Generation.  With all our present turmoil and divisions, one wonders if the American people could today do what they were asked to do in 1941-45.

The passing of George H.W. Bush also invites the contrast with our current president.  Although attacked by the media, Bush was reserved in his response.   His 73 year marriage contrasts with Clinton’s escapades with Monica and Trump’s multiple marriages and his Stormy troubles.  A lookback at Bush’s character—selfless service in WWII, a lifetime of public service, an enduring marriage begs the question of whether we will ever see a leader like him again or whether our politics have gotten so divisive and nasty that we are doomed to living in a Maury Povich era, where only the nasty sluggers survive.

Yet another question of George H.W. Bush’s legacy leaves some unanswered questions.  John Mersheimer’s new book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities argues for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy, that U.S. ambitions to “democratize” the globe have dragged us into near constant wars since the end of the Cold War.  Did Bush’s intervention to liberate Kuwait and the lightening victory lure us into more than we could do?  What if Bush had simply fortified the Saudi oil fields and considered Saddam’s adventure to be a regional matter? Did Bush kick off a series of unwinnable conflicts?   Donald Trump definitely has more isolationist instincts.   We know that his moral fiber does not measure up to Bush’s, but I am going to be a bit contrarian and assert that we will see if Trump’s foreign policy approach is more beneficial to Americans in the long run.