George HW Bush may be the most underappreciated president in my lifetime. For my money, he was among the most intelligent, most thoughtfully connected to world affairs, and most humanly decent – in short, among the greatest.
Some might forget the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell during Bush’s tenure, not his predecessor’s. It was a singular moment in world history. In response, there was no chest-beating, no adolescent crowing from the American president, no showy rah-rah cheers but sincere offers of support and peaceful cooperation. A lesser person in the Oval Office might have used the opportunity for personal aggrandizement, or America #1 hyperbole. Bush was matured beyond that need. He personified the best of American strength: scale, connection, commitment, concern for others, and honor.
Some saw his deliberately measured stewardship of the Gulf War as a sign of weakness. In fact, it was a moment of extraordinary strength. He assembled a wildly diverse coalition to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait and kept it together and functionally effective. When the coalition’s objective was met, it stopped fighting was disbanded. Many in America thought Bush should have pushed on to overturn Saddam Hussein but he resisted, for the benefit of regional and coalition stability.
Some saw Bush’s backtrack on his ‘no new taxes’ campaign pledge as a breach of conservatism. It was, in fact, completely necessary after the blindly spendthrift policies of his predecessor. Bush knew it would finish him politically but took the sacrifice nonetheless, for the benefit of the country.
I had the pleasure of meeting Bush only once (with Barbara) but have met and spoken with a number of people who knew him very well. George HW Bush was, by all accounts, a thoroughly decent human being, a brilliant thinker, a mature self-aware person who personified the best of America – not our bluster but our honor and our human decency.
If, as many commentators have been saying over these last few days, he was a symbol of a political America that is truly gone forever, we should not expect to see his like in the Oval Office again, much to our loss.
May his memory be eternal.
Speaking Plainly 
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On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 11:36 AM Speaking Plainly wrote:
> Brent Andrew posted: ” George HW Bush may be the most underappreciated > president in my lifetime. For my money, he’s among the most intelligent, > most thoughtfully connected to world affairs, and most humanly decent – in > short, among the greatest. Some might forget the Berlin ” >
Well said.
Well done, Brent. The contrast with Trump, while saddening if read as direction, is also something the nation should take pride in as a matter of roots. I would admired the way GHWB kept a modest distance from the trendy and grand. He refused to encourage “legacy” talk. He got ribbed for eschewing “the vision thing,” but I took it as a wise hesitancy to be map his agenda over MegaTrends….as most CEOs were doing at the time. He spoke of “the honor of the thing” to make sure that consideration was weighed, not to headline it in a pandering sense. An elite in the finest sense.
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