Bush Assessed

The assessments of George H.W. Bush have started to roll in, and perhaps not surprisingly they are all over the place.  Bush was apparently guilty of the same sort of handsy behavior that ended Al Franken's political career.  He tended to grope and grab women at various times.

He also signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act, a true landmark piece of legislation that continues to provide protection and possibilities to millions of Americans.

He also pardoned the main figures in the Iran Contra Scandal, including ones that could have implicated him in wrong doing.  Iran Contra is easily the worst government scandal between Watergate and the myriad and on going crimes of the Trump Maladministration.  It involved a direct conspiracy by important figures in the White House to violate the law and cover those crimes up.

There were the numerous foreign policy victories, like the subtle management of the ending of the Cold War, the impressive coalition building of the Persian Gulf War.  (A friend of mine argued that Bush tacitly let Saddam invade Kuwait and then let him stay in power afterwards.  That doesn't make much sense.  I think 2003 proved the folly of going to Baghdad.)

But there was the abject cravenness in the face of the Tiananmen catastrophe.  There was the hypocritical invasion of Panama, done at least to help cover up Noriega's role in Iran Contra and various drug schemes.

There was the moderate stance on immigration and taxing and spending.  These positions have become impossible for Republicans in Washington to embrace.  Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 all either embraced immigration reform or tried to, yet the Republican Party has moved so far to the White Nationalist right that those positions are anathema to the party now.  Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge means that once again a Republican Congress has shredded fiscal discipline in pursuit of tax cuts to the rich.  HW did not do that.

But any assessment of Bush has to address the extraordinarily racist and cynical campaigns he ran in 1988 and 1992.  Bush's campaigns were prime examples of the Republican movement to "otherize" the Democratic Party.  His graceful note to Bill Clinton during the transition is held up as an example of how we don't have to be nasty in our politics.  But this stands in sharp contrast to every campaign he ran.  As I said yesterday, I was taken in by his attacks on Dukakis.  The "Tank Ad" was what what convinced me: vapid, cynical and shallow.  "Willie Horton" remains shorthand for racist demagoguery.

There was David Souter.  There was Clarence Thomas.

Bush was a complicated Republican, back when Republicans allowed themselves to be complicated.  Today, they have become a party of orthodoxy and deference to ideological authority.  His contest in 1992 with the odious Pat Buchanan gave him a sheen of respectability when it came to some issues that perhaps he didn't deserve.  He was a much better president than his son, and any comparisons to Trump are almost pointless.

Bush was the last pragmatic Republican, but he was also the progenitor of our nasty, divisive, racist politics.  You can't simply blame that on Lee Atwater.  They were his campaigns.

UPDATE: This is fair.