While George HW Bush was considered a sub par president who advanced through personal meanness in his life you would think he’s FDR for all the preposterous pomp of the weeklong funeral. When it comes to presidents it seems, the less important the longer the mourning period. Did the country stop dead when Eisenhower died? No one seemed this upset when Dutch Reagan shuffled off this mortal coil.
Could it merely be that Bush Sr just lived so long that there was enough time to re-cast a career and presidency that was seen as a flaming bag of failure in his time? Simply put; most likely, yes.
New World Order and Revisionist History
The current ‘memory’ of the George HW Bush is one of the most successfully “retconned” political careers to date, with new storylines and ‘information’. It’s part Gaslighting and part Mandela Effect.
The two titles he seems to have locked up is “Everyone’s Favorite President Named George Bush” and “most musically sampled president in History at his time” for always relying on so many meaningless Happy-Time quotes that would be sampled and parodied.
George HW Bush talked in such drivel that even Trump was able to work a few laughs out of trashing the “Thousand Points of Light” that Bush often spoke of but could never really explain.
George HW Bush may not have been the meanest guy in DC, but he could get ornery. He famously hounded Alexander Haig out of Reagan’s cabinet over a few poorly chosen words when their boss caught a bullet.
The whole aftermath of the Reagan shooting made Bush look like a nattering, brittle jerk. Most people would have just yelled at Haig in private. The average American knew that the vice president was in charge and that Haig was speaking figuratively and at worst meant he was the guy calling the shots for the next 20 minutes while they grabbed Bush and got him in front of a camera.
Campaigns of Hate Waged by a Perceived Wimp
George HW Bush had run for president a bunch of times and was meaner and more desperate every time. By the time he wins his one term he’s redefined the concept of Gutter Campaigning with the INFAMOUS Willie Horton Ad ( which he borrowed from Al Gore, but was still wrong).
In terms of presidential Intellects he was a step up from Reagan but failed to match the wit and guile we’d seen from previous presidents. He came off as bad as Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman despite an Ivy League education.
George HW Bush was also just not a visionary when it came to solutions. Sometimes he seemed to be looking right at a problem and fail to see it. He was competent but not impressive.
As a speaker few were worse. A bad nasal voice, often derided as ‘wimpy sounding’, a penchant for whining and body language almost as bad as Richard Nixon were a toxic brew. He was an underwhelming Chief Executive, especially when on TV. Adding props, like evidence from a drug buy, only made it worse.
President Bush, on live TV, with a huge bag of Crack.
No one alive will at that time will ever forget his strange Oval Office Address on the ridiculous War on Drugs.
In a moment of legitimately hilarious fake anger he waved a bag of actual Crack around. Like everyone else; I want to know what happened to that Crack. Is it in his presidential library or did he smoke it with his staff? At any rate, all the bad traits were on display. In debates he could usually keep up, but he would look arrogantly at his watch and stare at the floor when not speaking. It looked bad.
While he had a sense of humor he wasn’t exactly bringing down the house with the jokes. The lost references about the Brooklyn Dodgers and an inability to connect with the common American killed his attempts at humor most times.
The best thing you could say about his sense of humor was the guy was a good sport most of the time. Dana Carvey is still alive, right?
Neither a Uniter nor a Divider so much as a sober and steady helmsman at best, he was no friend to women, minorities or the poor. His record dealing with the AIDS crisis should be held in special contempt. It would be wrong to call him compassionate.
Still, as incumbent and having scored a military a win in the pointless Gulf War he should have been a shoe-in, but lost his bid for reelection. Not because he was too darn nice either. It was another brutal Culture War Campaign fought on the Low Road all the way.
It really came down to having a terrible Texas sized rivalry with pint sized Powerhouse Ross Perot. Most Historians think the Perot Campaign was an ego trip and at the end just a way to shaft Bush.
Perot – The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King
If you can’t really remember Perot think of “King of the Hill” Character
Cotton Hill
Cotton Hill. He was surely based on short, intense and emotional Perot. They certainly have similar voices. In his own time Perot was not so very different from Trump. The exceptions being Perot was a self-made man and not a money grubbing Russian Puppet.
It was lost on people at the time that Perot outflanked Bush from the RIGHT and got nearly one vote in 5 (19%) in the election that he and Bush lost to Bill Clinton.
Only the wrong people notice this or when the right people talked about it they were simply ignored.
Bush’s personal rivalry with fellow Texan Ross Perot probably cost him a second term. Perot would pre-sage more organized and resolute Tea Party Types that were fermenting. For his own part, Perot was a little bit of a flake and his vice president pick was worse than Sarah Palin. In fact Admiral Stockdale imploded on TV to the point Dan Quayle seemed wise. That was pretty much the end of that.
When it was past the point where he could win Perot was barely campaigning and the rumor was he just hated George Bush so much and had so much money he was staying in just to spite Bush. If true it worked.
Imperial Japan’s Final Defiant Finger of Failure
We all wish the Japanese had been slightly better Marksmen and spared us all two terrible presidents. They couldn’t have picked a more destructive person to make a war hero. In fact he would one day return to puke on their leader while either drunk or messed up from bad sushi. The image of a half out of it president barfing on another world leader is the first I recall of his presidential “style.”
The scandals and lack of integrity fueled endless negative headlines. Iran-Contra, Oliver North and the tanking of the economy all add up to “this guy was a mediocre president and we’re lucky he wasn’t reelected.”
Still it needs to be noted that while equally brave, George HW Bush was a MUCH better pilot than John McCain. The two biggest differences being that George Bush almost never pancaked onto the deck upon returning to the carrier, even when his plane was damaged; and never crashed into telephone wires with a hooker in the plane showing off in Italy.
At the end the best part of the funeral was how every ex president, even Jimmy Carter, whose not well himself, simply ignored or side-eyed Trump.
Happy Trails George HW Bush. The only person so far I voted FOR before I voted AGAINST as president
Heres a metal song comprising mostly of quotes from the late presidents time in office