the elder Bush

Okay. We’ve heard enough about W.
We’ve also heard lots about Reagan and Clinton.
Whats your opinion on “the other” George Bush?
Was he a good president?
What horrible things did he do?(as president that is. I’m sure as head of the CIA< he did some bad stuff…)

He seems to be much like his father, or any other American president for that matter - is it just me or does every American president feel he has to prove something by confronting Iraq/ Hussein? Every time a new president comes into office, it’s like, time to bomb Iraq or something (I’m a white, American citizen, if that has any bearing).

I don’t view Bush the elder as a terrible president. He just didn’t understand the American people very well. He lacked the speaking skills that Reagan and Clinton had, so people didn’t grow very fond of him. He also would have been more popular if he had distanced himself from religious right figures like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson.

Dubya seems to have learned a lesson from his father’s poor speaking skills. He gives the minimum possible number of speeches and press conferences.

We’ll never know the full extent of his involvement in the Iran-Contra treason, since he pardoned anyone who could be forced to testify about it.

He almost completely neglected domestic affairs to concentrate on hobnobbing with his “peers” running other countries. I still have my “George Bush ‘Anywhere but America’ Tour” T-shirt with his itinerary for 1992 - an election year at that - and it’s covered with fine print.

His crowning triumph, the Iraq war, came despite his and Powell’s initial reaction of attempting to find some way to work with Saddam, as if only the sign over the gas station had changed. Only after Thatcher goaded him into it did the war buildup start.

So I rate him as basically just an office-holder, like so many of his predecessors.

Here’s the tamest post I can do in a non-GD, non-Pit environment:

Bush fils is doing a good job of making Bush père look, well, presidential.