Some of the older, more politically radical gay folks I come across online hold him partly responsible for the death toll in the AIDS crisis. That seems to be the blackest legit mark I’ve seen brought up against him so far.
Bush’s last tweet was praising Susan Collins’s “bravery” for voting for Brett Kavanaugh.
Exactly. When an imperial, totalitarian, superpower with nukes (!) comes apart at the seams, losing numerous ethnic state-components it had forcefully incorporated, and losing all the buffer client states it has carefully nurtured as a protective perimeter, the potential for a disaster is high.
The fact that the USSR successfully came to a relatively soft landing, as the Russian federation and a series of breakaways like the Baltics and the -stans, and the Warsaw Pact nations became independent, without much in the way of bloodshed, was a terrific accomplishment.
Bush, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze all deserve tremendous praise for what they achieved.
^ I would assume Bush’s CIA connections helped with that.
The guy was maybe the last president our country will ever have, originating from the true “patrician” class. He was definitely from the inner sanctum, the “hands on the levers of power” crowd. I’ve never bought into the more out-there theories about the Skull & Bones and shadowy political deals, but there’s no denying that he was part of that echelon, very much unlike his predecessor Reagan and all subsequent presidents. His son was born into that but he did not mature into the same role, in fact he deliberately suppressed it and adopted an aggressively Texan persona.
Eh, the same thing was said when that vulgar boor, Andy Jackson, defeated patrician John Quincy Adams. Somehow the Roosevelts and Bushes scrambled back into power.