George H.W. Bush - Classic or Dud

Cue the media nostalgia for the days of the “good” Republican Party.

Barbara kicked it last April, so there wasn't much propping him up any more. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter outlived them both. A small justice. I can do without the media hagiography that will surely come now, as it did for McCain.

which will surely be even more lachrymose now with concurrent Trump/Mueller news

surprised he lasted 7 months after Barbara tbh. he looked like a bag of bones and jelly getting wheeled out at the Superbowl in 2017

Grabbin' Ass In Heaven Hell Now.

when this thread got revived I thought he'd died and the cockroaches flew out

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 25, 2017 9:48 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah he got MeToo'd lmfao

too late to do anyone any good

could've at least won in '92 and spared us Billary

It doesn't help that no decent bios exist (a shock actually).

is this still true, Alfred?

I had no use for him

I have no real perspective on him. I’m not American, and I was a tween during his presidency, so he was basically Dana Carvey’s SNL impersonation, for me.

The first thing I ever read about him (in The Final Days, cited by pplains above) remains the most memorable: "He broke out in assholes and shit himself to death."

oh yeah he got MeToo'd lmfao

In the end, his bio will be: one errant sperm of his led to the worst presidency of our lifetimes.

― Zero Dark 33⅓: The Final Insult (Eric H.), Thursday, December 27, 2012 3:23 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how optimistic we all were

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9-V7A4NIys

https://media.popculture.com/2018/08/john-mccain-george-hw-bush-getty-20043580-1280x0.jpeg

missing u

My moderate-liberal mom always liked this guy for some reason. Can anybody (e.g. Alfred) explain the fuck why to me?

I was 10 when he left office - literally the only things I remember firsthand are that he barfed in Japan, spoke in my town during the '92 campaign, and had the "No New Taxes" pledge thrown back at him at about the same time.

I wonder how Jennifer Fitzgerald is feeling right about now...

Heaven and Hell on baited breath, will he be bringing the coke with him?

IT was just emerging that he had helped out Spiro Agnew when he was in trouble. Tried to suppress word that was getting out or something to that effect. Or was it conceal evidence.
So seem sto have been far from good from an early stage.

rip big man, heaven needed a former cia ghoul whose family line includes both an attempt at a fascist coup in the usa and an illegal middle eastern intervention which killed hundreds of thousands of people

good morning!

"not the worst, in retrospect"

have to be honest id take that on the gravestone if twas offered now to me

https://www.nydailynews.com/resizer/KLSEJUQudqs4OkNnIm7rkcWopH0=/1400x0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/GTFH3FNN3XG5HQL6OPOTFR7PIU.jpg

rip dag man

illegal middle eastern intervention which killed hundreds of thousands of people

Rest in piss. Keep 'em coming

Here's the notorious Willie Horton ad. Before the norms eroded. https://t.co/hXSzI0MdAW

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) December 1, 2018

Last sane Republican, before the evangelical brainrot took over.

I voted for him in 1988 a few weeks after my 18th birthday. I was recovering from Ayn Rand-y delusions at the time, and its the last time I voted GOP.

Bush could have supported the 1989 Panamanian coup attempt against Noriega, and prevented the hundreds of civilian deaths caused by his intervention two months later.

Bush could have vocally intervened as intel and the ambassador to Iraq announced Saddam massing to invade Kuwait, and prevented tens of thousands of civilian deaths caused by the 1991 Gulf War and its aftermath in the suppression of Sh'ia / marsh Arab insurrection. In doing so, he would have also preserved the Iraq/Iran balance of power that had been a goal of U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s. Instead he created the preconditions for the still ongoing Saudi-Iran proxy war.

So, contrary to popular conceptions, he wasn't that good at foreign policy. OTOH, James Baker was probably the most effective secretary of state in the last 70 years.

Weird how this pic is the one where I finally see the resemblance between HW and Jr.

https://i.imgur.com/ZOADQtW.jpg

He wasn't the last sane Republican so much as one of the old guard's most conspicuous victims of the Reaganist brain rot.

My God, they are going to hold Bush up as John Adams. Trump won't be let in the door and he'll crack up.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) December 1, 2018

I am taking a group of Italians round London today and have just realised why the flag on Buckingham Palace is at half mast. They had better not do that when trump dies.

He was relatively tough on Israel? at least to a degree you'll never see again

I read and reviewed When the World Seemed New about six months ago: a thorough study of Poppy's stewardship of the end of the Cold War. The scene that stays with me: the forty-first president guzzling two martinis on Air Force One in response to a kind of war-induced postpartum depression.

It won't happen, but I'd be interested in hearing from Ross Perot today. He had such a hate-on for Bush in '92--I think the general consensus is that Clinton would have won anyway with no Perot, but maybe not.

As president, George H. W. Bush unilaterally reduced the US nuclear arsenal by about half, without ill consequences. RIP

— Graeme Wood (@gcaw) December 1, 2018

Bush once again with the ill behaviour.

Gore Vidal called William F. Buckley's family the Sick Kennedys, but the Bush family better fits that role.

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) December 1, 2018

Thomas Mallon in The New Yorker: "George H. W. Bush is likely to be remembered as the last President of the republic not to have been intensely despised by a significant portion of its population." Not sure I believe it.

Worth a read. What boggles is that these men served in two GOP administrations and lost their fucking minds.

xp

That sounds right to me. Before that, Eisenhower? (Not counting ford)

Intensely being the key word

I will say that he was the last competent Republican president of my lifetime, and set against Ford and his two successors he looks like FDR.

This has probably been posted before somewhere on ILX (can't see it on this thread). Great photo:

http://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/babe_ruth_george_bush.jpg?w=776&h=1024

His stats at Yale for '46/'47/'48

G - 76
AB - 263
H - 59
R - 43
RBI - 28
BA - .224

I hope he was Keith Hernandez with the glove.

http://sabr.org/research/complete-collegiate-baseball-record-george-hw-bush

His son was Keith Hernandez with the blow.

This is a major part of Bush’s legacy. It’s what his War on Drugs did to just one person. But it shows the human costs of that war in miniature detail. A high schooler was lured to the WH to sell crack and spent 7+ years in prison, so that the President could make a point on TV.

— Joshua Clark Davis (@JoshClarkDavis) December 1, 2018

Reagan-esque!

I think history is gonna judge every member of the 'sensible-gop' by whether or not they came out publicly against trump. the bushes could have used their stature to do something that was actually in the best interests of 'their legacy' and the long-term of the gop and they didn't.

I'm not sure, given his age and exile by the GOP, what strings Poppy could've pulled to stop Trump, but then he would know what it's like to have one's strings pulled.