I used to like and have a good deal of respect for George HW Bush (president #41) for various reasons, but I’m not as sure how I feel nowadays after George W. Bush’s (#43) presidency. Should history judge one in light of the other?
This seemed to be the main point of the movie “W”.
Bush I might not have been as much of a people person as Bush II, but he actually considered his actions and worked based on reality. If Bush II serves to make people consider the elder in a more positive light, personally I’d view that as a good thing. If it diminishes their view of him for some reason, I’d have to wonder what they’re smoking.
George W. actually got me to raise my opinion of George H. W. a touch. Basically, I thought of GHW as Barbara’s husband and now in comparison to his son I feel he wasn’t as incompetent as I originally thought he was. I mean things like not carrying the first war in Iraq further and not being quite the show horse he could have been on other things.
Isn’t George Herbert Walker at least partly responsible for the kind of person, and thus, President, that George W. turned out to be? In that light, I’d say George W. makes HW look like a bad father. In that sense, GWB’s presidency has caused my opinion of GHWB to worsen.
Agreed. There has always been the idea that we didn’t “finish the job” in the first war, I think the second war showed us that leaving the war where he did was the right move.
WRT his abilities as a father… it’s rather a high bar you set when you demand that someone be a good enough father to have his son be a good president 30+ years after you stopped raising him.
I did not vote for GWHB and was a bit disappointed that he was elected because of his anti-abortion rights stance (actually the stance of his party to which he signed on without much enthusiasm). I remember consciously thinking, in October 1992, when it became pretty obvious that Mikey D wasn’t going to beat him in the election, that the United States would nevertheless be in safe and competent hands. It was.
:smack:
Yeah.
It’s made me re-think some of the opinions and beliefs I had about Bush the Elder at the time and in a much more positive light. While I was happy with Clinton’s presidency, knowing what I know today I probably would have voted for GHWB (I voted for…someone else.) as he was a much better president than I thought he was at the time.
Of course, next to Bush the Junior MOST other presidents look a hell of a lot better. Hell, I’d probably vote for Carter over GWB without too much of a qualm…
-XT
There was a recent poll out that had the present-day approval ratings of several presidents, and many of the unpopular ones (Nixon, Johnson, Carter) had had an upswing since the last time the poll was done several years ago. The author proposed explanation was that almost every past prez looks better in comparison to the current WH occupant.
Deep down I think W disappoints his old man, and that makes me respect Sr. more.
I’ve thought for some time (even before GWB) that GHWB (curses on families that can’t come up with more original names 
) would be viewed kindly by history. His handling of the first Iraqi war looks masterful now that we understand more of the complexities.
The thing I might give him most credit for, though, is raising taxes after his “no new taxes” pledge. Some people could argue that this made Bush a liar but I prefer to think that when the revenue situation changed he bucked up did what he thought necessary. It probably cost him the 1992 election. When was the last time a president faced a hard decision and did the right thing by the country while hurting his own reelection chances? It’s been a while.
I thought well of GHWBs foreign policy since his presidency; he gathered a worldwide coalition to kick Iraq’s ass out of Kuwait. His problem was that he wasn’t engaged domestically and seemed aloof and out of touch in that area, and it hurt him a great deal.
I’ve since lost a great deal of the respect I had for GHWB, based on his son’s tenure. I know Babbs would behead him if he publicly criticized their son, but surely some of the GWB stupidity could have been reigned in had dear old Dad been more privately engaged with his son at certain points in the presidency. Maybe he tried and failed to do so, but it seems likely to me that this wasn’t the case.
GWB didn’t affect my opinion of GHWB, which was quite high to begin with. I’m still not sure how he lost re-election, but I have to give Bill Clinton credit for running an exceptionally effective campaign and appealing to such a wide audience. I think Clinton and GHWB were both excellent presidents, and like almost everyone else I disapprove of GWB.
Ross Perot…
-XT
If they were not related, I’d think that W makes GHWB look better, although I thought GHWB was a reasonably good president, even though I am partisan for the other side.
But if the issue of relation is considered, GHWB should have either raised W better or opposed W’s candidacy from the beginning. W was horribly ill-suited to be President and the old man should have known it. Reportedly Sr and Babs didn’t want W to run for Prez, they wanted JEB, and JEB would probably have been better than W. Hopefully, we will never know.
W is an abominably bad president, making Nixon and even Reagan look statesman-like in comparison. W may be the worst President we have ever had, and certainly put us in the most economic and physical danger, and no discussion of worst president can be had without W as a leading candidate with Harding and Buchanan also in the mix.
Ultimately on my digression, I think Sr. put family loyalty over his misgivings and hurt the country by not stopping W’s candidacy. As a result, Sr. is the worst ex-Prez, and it hurts Sr.'s in office standing too. So worse.
What practical powers does a father have to control what his son does in the government? What father is going to actively try and stop his own son from running for president? That just seems massively unrealistic, regardless of anything.
Telling the man privately that he won’t support him and that he will publicly support his opponent. If W were not a sociopath, and just a normal doofus, I wouldn’t expect Dad to do this. But Sr had to know these things about W and did nothing. Letting him be the 88 campaign enforcer is fine, but W is nothing short of a self-centered nut. And from everything I can tell Sr. and Babs knew it. I’d like to think that parental loyalty has its limits, and ruining the entire country would be one of them.
GHWB pretty much just is a general doofus. He just happened to get caught at a time when a lot of stuff could and did go wrong and subsequently reacted to it all with zero forethought.
Ascribing ill-intent to Bush II is rather extreme. Sure he might be a bit sociopathic towards turbanheads, but I’d venture to guess that a significant portion of the general populace is as well. That makes him be any other general doofus.