Can I suggest, in any discussion about the quality of American politicians, that we refrain from using Trump as any sort of measure?
Any suggestion that “Better than Trump” is a valid comparison risks the normalization of a bar so low than any decent society should reject it.
Even more so because he flew Torpedo bombers, which was a whole lot more dangerous. Straight and level and a hundred feet off the deck, while enemy flack is coming right at you.
The Japanese should have some archival footage of Torpedo 8, and older generation of torpedo bombers that showed how brutal that job could be.
His betrayal of the Kurds after Desert Storm is unforgivable.
It was more the Shiites than the Kurds. He thought that Iraq being a Shiite majority country might be able to overwhelm the Sunni minority. I agree, it was pretty bad. The irony is that the little box that the Gulf War coalition put Saddam in increased the suffering of Iraqis manifold. So instead of weakening Saddam’s grip on power and making him humane, it strengthened his power and created an even more monstrous president who tried to starve his minorities into submission.
Although I honor George H.W. Bush for his patriotism and his naval service, and think he was a far better both man and President than the incumbent, I can’t forget his shameless and cynical 1988 campaign - Willie Horton, blasting the ACLU, criticizing Dukakis for vetoing a bill requiring that schoolchildren say the Pledge of Allegiance when he knew it was unconstitutional, and his defense of the shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655. He picked Dan Quayle for VP and stood by him even when Quayle’s inadequacy was made obvious to all, and even kept him on as his running mate for his reelection campaign rather than admit his mistake. In office, Bush vetoed the Family Medical Leave Act which Clinton later signed into law, pardoned Iran-Contra conspirators (and may have been one himself), and gave us Clarence Thomas.
A mixed legacy, at best.
Judging his legacy because he was a politician is problematic. All politicians, at the lowest town level, to the highest federal level make trade offs. By your yardstick above, I’d bet there isn’t one politician that has always voted the way you’d like, and never said a harsh word during an election. He wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t a saint. But as far as Presidents go, I think he was very honorable and above board.
I don’t really recall Quayle. I remember him being picked on for saying “potato” funny or something, but I have to assume that if the issue is his intellect that he still trounces Sarah Palin? Or is it something else?
Come to think of it, I’d put Quayle at about the same level as Palin intellectually, except that he didn’t simply babble embarrasingly quite as much. Quayle jokes were a comedy staple at the time. He was probably a better golfer but a worse hunter than Palin, if you care.
Quayle insisted that the word is spelled “potatoe”. As I recall, it was to an elementary school class.
But he is also famous for criticizing the noted news reporter Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock, with which she had no small bit of fun.
Nuclear disarmament - While initial discussions for reductions in nuclear forces began under the Reagan administration the US position was essentially a non-starter with the Soviets. The Bush administration negotiated a complex arms control agreement with a huge scope, START. The majority of nuclear weapons in the world at the beginning of the Bush administration were dismantled as a result of his work. When START expired the success and framework contributed to the follow-on agreement that has both Russia and the US continuing to dismantle warheads.
Chemical Weapons disarmament - The Bush administration negotiated a bilateral agreement with the Soviet Union to stop production of chemical weapons and begin the destruction of existing stockpiles. While the efforts to ban them internationally had been underway for a long time, during the Bush administration the final language for the Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated.
Bush dramatically affected the current threat presented by weapons of mass destruction.
His “accomplishments” never impressed me when he was in office and I was an ignorant high schooler with far bigger problems than politics, and the sure as hell don’t impress me now. He reminds me of Linda Lingle, whose greatest achievement as Hawaii Republican governor was capitulating to a bunch of granola-munching hippies and getting the Superferry killed. Overpriveleged, a truly warped sense of priorities (if I never hear “capital gains tax cut” again, it’ll be too soon), and an almost pathological need to take any risk whatsoever. Sorry, folks, but it takes a lot more than “not freaking out during the collapse of the Soviet Union” to enter the company of Abraham Lincoln.
In the end, he ran into the wrong opponent at the wrong time (Bill Clinton) and thereafter lost any real purpose. Lefties hated him because he never even attempted to do a thing to revive the economy or help the victims of Reaganomics; righties dismissed him because while he didn’t care about minorities and the needy, he didn’t actively attack them either (that whole never-take-risks thing). Maybe he was a bit unlucky, but it’s not like a man with his meager ambitions ever had a high ceiling.
Me? I admit that he’s a lot more tolerable than the Republican presidents that came after, but geez, that’s not a point in his favor, that’s the most blistering indictment of the Republican party imaginable.
On the plus side, Tom Tomorrow’s distaste for him did introduce me to the wisdom and wonder of This Modern World at a time when I knew next to nothing about alternative comics, so that’s something in his favor. Tangentially. Mostly.
RIP, I guess.
Everyone had a bit of fun, except the Bush administration when fielding questions about why it was bad the Murphy Brown character decided not to have an abortion when contemplating it on the show. So between that and Quayle’s ability to turn every facet of the executive branch into a laughingstock, including foreign affairs, history, even my favorite, science and astronomy:
“Mars is essentially in the same orbit…Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”
So I guess that makes Quayle the template for Sarah Palin, with similar disastrous effects on the presidential election front. Thanks President George H. W. Bush!
“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”
(Vice President Dan Quayle - this was part of his address to the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”)
True, but that is not a high bar to surpass.
Well, Conason’s own long article for Spy also said that he found much of the evidence unconvincing. There were rumors and some anonymous sources, but he spent much of the six pages eliminating them rather than confirming them. The headline “He cheats on his wife” was, according to Conason, not his idea. Spy had a reputation for the dramatic overstatement.
Anyway, whether or not he cheated on his wife would be pretty much irrelevant to my opinion of him as a president. About the same as my opinion of JFK’s actual womanizing.
Final salutes to GHWB, flags are back to full staff today.
Whatever else may be said of him, a look at Shrubya, Jeb and Neil serves as evidence that he and Barbara were absolute rubbish when it came to raising decent human beings.
George Bush Sr. wasn’t a bad president. He was a good man, more successful than say, Jimmy Carter. His major accomplishment was quickly defanging Sadman Hussien who was later removed and the capital gains tax
His notable domestic achievements, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act Amendments were not enough to overcome a recession.
Never an articulate type of man, Bush had the misfortune of being Ronald Regan’s successor and going up agaisnt a very young and charismatic Bill Clinton, who would have been likely never passed go in the " me too ", the social media’s watching everyone type world. The Ross Perot factor might have cost him re-election as many of his positions were similar to the Republican’s, I think. Take Perot out and the election is much closer.
Bush should also be remembered as a good Vice President, a former CIA head, a war hero, and a fine example of a family man.