Bush 41

President Bush the senior has died. There are many tributes to him and examinations of his life and legacy out there by people who write much better than I, so I will keep my observations short and, hopefully, not too shallow.

It is easy to be conflicted in an analysis of the achievements of George H. W. Bush. Let me start by saying that I consider him to have been a patriot and a decent person. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, at the age of 18, despite being from a privileged family, he enlisted in the Navy, and become one of it youngest aviators. He flew 58 combat missions, was shot down on one of them, returned to action after being rescued by a submarine, and subsequently received the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other awards for his war-time actions. He became a successful businessman, Congressman, Ambassador to the UN, head of the CIA, Vice President and then President. Not too shabby. Quite a life.

I met him briefly once back in the mid-1980s when he was VP and I was a lowly State Department Pakistan desk officer. I had been tasked with writing some talking points for the Vice President for a meeting with the Pakistani Foreign Minister re our displeasure over Pakistan's continued covert efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. For what it was worth, Bush hit the FM hard and showed he could deliver a tough message face-to-face. The Pakistanis, however, kept working on the bomb, knowing that we needed them to make life hell for the Soviets in Afghanistan.

I know from my time working with Maureen Reagan, President Reagan's daughter, while Reagan and Bush got along well enough on a personal level, there was no love lost between the Reagan people and the Bush people. Reagan had "taken" the Presidency from the man most had considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Bush. When Bush won the presidency in the 1988 elections against the absurd and execrable Michael Dukakis, his people wasted no time in flushing most of the Reagan staff out of the government. In fact, a little Diplomad aside, I was called by an outraged and tearful Maureen, who had been unceremoniously thrown out of her office at the RNC within a few days of Bush's inauguration. She had been the Co-Chair of the party and went to her office only to find locks changed and her stuff in the hallway. I was already in Guatemala, and could not fly up to DC to help Maureen move her stuff out. When a year later or so she came to visit my wife and me in Guatemala, she refused to meet the Ambassador, who had been a close friend of Bush at Yale. It was awkward.

Bush had a tumultuous four-year term on the foreign scene: The overthrow of the thuggish Noriega in Panama; the first Gulf War; the death of the USSR; NAFTA; invasion of Somalia. Bush showed that he was not reluctant to pull the trigger and use American power. He, however, did not show that he fully understood the consequences of the use of that power, and we saw a half-finished war in Iraq and the set up for a disaster in Somalia. In Bush's defense re Somalia, however, he did use overwhelming power for limited objectives unlike his successor who flipped that formula and gave us "Blackhawk Down." Re the USSR, neither he nor his successor ever developed a cogent policy for handling Russia and the instability that followed the collapse of the Soviet empire. He showed himself as a tone deaf elitist on NAFTA and allowed Ross Perot to cost him the 1992 elections. He was unable to fathom the revolt that was beginning to brew in the American hinterland. Neither he nor his sons ever understood the Trump phenomenon and found themselves on the wrong side of history on that one.

Anyhow, President Bush, rest in peace.