His was the Presidency of my college years, and the first election I voted in. So there's a lot of significance in this for me looking back at what I recall (more than the Character review I made about five years ago).
- I voted for Bush as President. Yes, in hindsight voting for ANY Republican feels blasphemous. But in 1988 as a college freshman I couldn't really recognize the damage - on social issues and public health issues like the AIDS crisis and the Drug War - being done. And a lot of the REALLY BAD stuff the Republicans would get into came during the 1990s under darker leadership by Newt Gingrich and others.
- Bush on foreign policy was one of the more competent Presidents we had, overseeing a serious transitional moment with the collapse of Communism, the opening of Eastern Europe, and political power shifts across every continent.
- Bush *was* quick on the trigger finger when it came to troop deployments, border clashes, and straight-up war. People seem to forget we sent in armed forces to overthrow Noriega in Panama in 1989 on what turned out to be sketchy reports. There was also the first Persian Gulf War/invasion of Iraq in 1990-91 where U.S. mishandling of Saddam - our government saw him as a useful opponent against a hostile Iran throughout the 1980s - allowed that dictator to invade Kuwait and disrupt the local balance of power. Towards the end of his term, Bush sent troops into Somalia as a peace-keeping force to help the citizenry during a famine caused by civil war... but doesn't leave in place an agenda or pull-out strategy, leaving it to Clinton.
- Bush did attempt bipartisan dealing with a Democratic-controlled Congress... by agreeing to tax hikes that went against the Supply-Side dogma of many Republicans who came to power during the Reagan years. It actually triggered an intraparty revolt by Newt that drove out moderates (RINOs) and led to the current monstrous party leadership running the GOP now.
- As a political campaigner, Bush was a nasty piece of work, relying on slander and mudslinging even in the 1960s as a Texas Congressman. The Willie Horton attack ads of the 1988 Presidential campaign was a new low - even compared to the harsh "Daisy" ad LBJ ran against Goldwater in 1964 - and essentially opened up a new era of dirty campaigning that has darkened our electorate since (and it's a tactic his own sons Dubya and Jeb rely on far too often themselves).
- Bush *did* preside over major achievements such as the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a major Immigration Reform act (something the modern GOP would never touch), a key Civil Rights Act protecting workers from discrimination, overall reductions in nuclear weapons across the globe...
- Oh, and he gave Dana Carvey good reason to earn a paycheck on Saturday Night Live for 4 straight years.
Seriously, message received.
3 comments:
I'm reading a lot of words about how Poppy Bush hearkened them back to a time when Republicans weren't so damn toxic and crazy, and maybe that is somewhat true: we did get here somehow, and we were indeed somewhere else before we were here, but I just can't get that from his memory, however much better his "kinder, gentler" approach to Republican governance may look on paper to Fergus and his felons, or even his own son.
No, what I get from his memory is the toxic seeds that enabled the rise of Fergus and his assault on facts and reality: Poppy went right out and said what he thought of Reagan's supply side bullshit on the campaign trail so we knew for certain that he knew it was bullshit, but he went right ahead and supported it anyway as veep, as though it didn't matter that it was harming the country as long as it kept them in power.
And then there was the "read my lips" quote that they say sunk his re-election: He raised those taxes because of the deficit Reagan's voodoo left him with when he was elected, so at least he was still answering to reality in that sense, again highlighting the eight years of fawning hypocrisy he displayed in order to get elected.
I did like the fact that he did a parachute jump on his 90th birthday a little, though.
But you can't get from wherever else we were politically before Poppy to Fergus without Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes, and he happily employed both of them.
-Doug in Oakland
That's all true.
I also forgot to mention how Bush the Elder had questionable involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, which he wiped away by pardoning nearly every player in a way to end the ongoing Special Prosecutor (sound familiar?) investigation. The Special Counsel on that matter spoke often of thinking he was close to finding Bush's ties, but without that evidence couldn't bring up Obstruction charges.
Iran-Contra was a major scandal that not a lot of media or historians keep track of. It was a major abuse of Executive authority that only reinforced the Republicans' belief in authoritarian policies.
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