#41 George H. W. Bush (1924- )

When I was twelve, I distinctly remember when George HW Bush came on television and announce that the United States had gone to war. Along with a host of other nations thrown together in a hastily-concocted alliance, the US was avenging the invasion of Kuwait by that bully, Iraq. Even preoccupied with the quotidian minutiae of prepubescent life, I was aware that I was witnessing history. It wasn’t everyday that your country went to war and with such a noble purpose. I knew less about the oil fields then and more about the egregious nature of Iraq’s greed but still if there was ever a just cause for war then we were looking at it. Operation Desert Storm was under way.

Little would I realize it then but the war and Bush’s subsequent stratospheric approval ratings were over way, way too soon. A little over a year later, Bush would go down in resounding defeat at the poles and with all the good that he did as president, I’m sure most people were like “golly, how did this happen?” So did I ask as I roamed the library for answers. I turned to my fav—the American Presidents Series—and got down to reading. I chose to consult George H. W. Bush: American Presidents Series by Timothy Naftali (New York: Times Books, 2007) about what exactly went wrong with Bush senior’s presidency.

George Herbert Walker Bush was born to Prescott and Dorothy Bush in Milton, Massachusetts on June 12, 1924. Several years later, the family moved to Greenwich, CT. By 1937, young George joined Phillips Academy in Andover, MA where he was captain of the baseball and soccer teams, he edited the school paper, and he was senior class president. In his senior year, George nearly died from a serious staph infection but on the plus side, he met Barbara Pierce at a country club dance.

After graduation, in 1942, George enlisted as a navy pilot and was trained in photographic intelligence. Before he was sent overseas in the war, he got engaged to Barbara. “After a brief courtship, Barbara would become the ‘girl back home’ that George Bush would write to from his bunk and after whom he would name his airplane, for good luck” (p. 7). In 1944, he was sent to the Pacific Theater aboard the San Jacinto where he participating in bombing runs on Japanese positions around Wake Island. “In November [1944] he went home with 58 missions and 126 carrier landings to his credit” (p. 9).

By January 6, 1945, George and Barbara were married and George was accepted to Yale for college. He was captain of the baseball team, in Skull and Bones, and also a father (George W was born in 1946). After graduation, the Bushs moved to Odessa, TX where George worked for Dresser Industrial and he soon got into the oil business. In 1950, George teamed up with a friend to create Bush-Overby Oil Development Company. Though he was financially successful, these were not happy days for George and Barbara. His young daughter died, in 1953, of leukemia and her death, understandably, put a severe strain on the family.

Once George made his first million (!!), he moved the entire family to Houston for work-related reasons and once there, he became more active in politics. By 1963, he became chairman of the Harris County Republican Party and then ran for the Senate the next year but lost. In 1966, he ran instead for the House of Representatives from Houston’s district and won that. Thanks to his father’s numerous contacts in Washington DC (Prescott became a Senator from CT in 1953), George was placed on the prestigious Ways and Means Committee even though he was a freshman congressman.

While in DC, Bush began to formulate his political ideas…or…er…”tendencies.” “Bush disliked extremism of any kind; he preferred to seek solutions outside of the federal government; he believed in a strong defense and in strong support for the US military; he preferred spending cuts over higher taxes; and he opposed segregation and racial discrimination, but he was uncomfortable in having Washington mandate good behavior” (p. 16-17). Bush decided to use these tendencies as a springboard into the other house of Congress but he lost again when he tried running for the Senate in 1970.

Since he was rather at an occupational loss (having elected not to run for his own congressional seat in 1970), George jumped at Richard Nixon’s offer to become the permanent representative to the United Nations. While there it was his job to deal with the fallout from Nixon’s idea to embrace Communist China. He did as well a job as he could (Kissinger continually kept him out of the foreign policy loop) but was happy to move on in 1972 when Nixon made him the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Unlike [Robert] Dole, who had to balance the needs of his constituents and his Senate office, Bush could devote himself full-time to building the party and collecting chits for a future run for higher office” (p. 26). Bush embraced his task fully but was derailed early on by Watergate. For months, Bush continued to defend his friend the president but as the evidence continued to mount, he found it expedient to leave his post as Chairman. In fact, there was talk that Bush was considered for Gerald Ford’s vice president but when Ford chose Rockefeller, Bush was made ambassador to China instead.

George moved the family to Beijing where he tried to make a good impression at the local level there. “He set a precedent by using bicycles and attending events at foreign embassies, which his predecessor, the patrician David Bruce, had not attended. He also opened the US mission to guests, serving them American fare and treating them to games” (p. 30).

Bush and the family returned stateside when Ford announced that he, Bush, was to be the new head of the CIA. “In his short tenure Bush witnessed the launch of the KH-11, the first spy satellite to transmit real-time photographs via relay stations to Washington, and broadened the key US liaison with the British to include sharing this new satellite imagery” (p. 32). He also created “Team B,” which was an outside panel designed to creatively and truthfully analyze the Soviet Union’s situation. With the realignment that comes with the election of a new president, Bush resigned in 1977 in order for Carter to instill his own men in the system. Bush and his family headed back, once more, to Houston.

The next year, he and Barbara decided to do something different. They went on a grand trip around the world, meeting dignitaries and staying in the thick of things. They even met the Shah of Iran before he was exiled. When they arrived back in the US, Bush opted to come out as a Republican candidate for the 1980 election and so began campaigning. In the primaries, he came head-to-head with Ronald Reagan and even coined the term “voodooeconomics” when he debated Reagan’s economic plan. But Bush was not strong enough to counter the growing conservative majority that firmly backed Reagan and so was tagged as Reagan’s VP instead.

When they won in 1980, Bush embarked on an eight year course as vice president. Unlike other presidents, though, Reagan treated him well and included him in many things. Bush chaired the National Security Council’s Crisis Management Center and the National Security Planning Group. Bush, with the most at stake, also shone after Reagan’s assassination. He calmed everyone down, made sure that business went on as usual, and handed the reins back when Reagan returned. In the second term, Bush attended the morning National Security meetings and chaired the Task Force on Combating Terrorism. Unluckily, he was also involved in the Iran-Contra mess. “When the US Congress placed restrains on funding the counterrevolutionary guerrillas in Nicaragua, the Contras, Bush lent his support to finding private sources of funding” (p. 43). Questioned on his role in future interviews, Bush would always say that he was kept out of the loop.

As the 1988 elections rolled around, no one was surprised when Bush announced his candidacy. He won the Republican nomination and then beat Democrat, Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor, in the presidential elections. He started out on a bad foot, however, when he chose Dan Quayle for vice president without consulting anyone about the appointment and later he would have to deal with his campaign promise to “Read My Lips—No New Taxes.” “On the eve of attaining the presidency, a prize he had pursued for years, George Bush faced a daunting domestic challenge made worse by the manner he had employed to get his prize” (p. 63-4).

Domestically, there was a major crisis on the horizon. Not only was there a budget deficit of an astronomical amount but there was also a toxic Savings and Loan situation brewing. Budget problems would continue to haunt the Bush administration because he felt compelled to not raise taxes as he had promised in his campaign. However, nothing else seemed to be working and the US economy looked to be on the brink of a recession. It also didn’t help that halfway through his presidency several upstart Republicans, including Newt Gingrich, began to openly criticize the president over his budget deal. “The budget deal, as worked out by the parties, initiated a whole range of restraints on federal spending, including on entitlements for veterans, students, farmers, and federal employees. It included an unprecedented enforceable cap on all federal discretionary spending and introduced a ‘pay as you go’ system, meaning that any new congressional spending initiative had to be twinned with a tax increase or a spending reduction to pay for it” (p. 115). There would never be a workable conclusion to the budget problem during Bush’s tenure.

In the foreign policy arena (where Bush was way more comfortable), there was plenty to stay busy with, including all the Central American stuff. First, Congress decided to send humanitarian contra aid to Nicaragua and then the government decided to create a coup in Panama to overthrow Noriega, which didn’t quite work out. “Within a matter of hours, Noriega was back in power, the leaders of the coup were dead, and the United States looked impotent” (p. 72). Then Bush had to decide how to handle Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. “The pause in managing Gorbachev created a bad first impression about Bush’s abilities as president” (p. 78). It was evident that the Soviet empire was crumbling when other political parties were suddenly allowed to be elected in Poland and when Hungary opened its border to Austria. In a truly ironic fashion, the Berlin Wall fell on October 25, 1989 when an East German politician accidently misinterpreted his instructions and announced that all borders were open. After that, like dominos, many other East European nations began falling out of the Iron Curtain.

On June 4, 1989, there was a massacre of students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing while in December 1989, we invaded Panama. Bush began meeting Gorbachev on a regular basis. They met first, in November 1989, in Malta and then in May 1990 in Washington DC. “In one of the most dramatic diplomatic about-faces in the history of US-Soviet summits, Gorbachev changed his mind and his country’s policy on Germany [unification] on the spot and in front of his advisers” (p. 95-6). While Bush was being harshly critiqued at home for the financial situation, he was doing stellar with international issues. “Ironically, this harsh political criticism from American conservatives for showing too much realism at home coincided with George HW Bush achieving one of the greatest foreign policy victories of any US president in peacetime” (p. 99). With a minimum of apparent effort and with agreement on all sides, Germany was reunified within months of the Berlin Wall’s demise.

And this gets us nicely right up to the moment when, on August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Instead of going into the Middle East with guns blazing, Bush handled the situation by instituting a ‘tin cup’ tour. “Doing what’s right was going to be very expensive, so Bush sent Baker around the world, on what became known as the ‘tin-cup’ tour, to raise money from allies for the US deployment in the Gulf. Ultimately the effort was so successful that the United States would make a profit on the war. Thirty-three countries would join the coalition, including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and five other Arab states” (p. 107). To institute Operation Desert Shield, the US military was sent to Egypt to start occupying a defensive position in that area of the world. Despite this unusual alliance, Bush also needed the UN sanction to go ahead with any offensive military maneuvers. “It was a happy accident of history that this former UN ambassador was now a head of state at a time when the United Nations could matter” (p. 110).

Bush also took some time to meet Gorbachev once more for a Helsinki summit in September 1990. He decided to ask if the Soviet Union wished to be included in the decision-making process for the war and even if they wanted to contribute troops. “Bush’s tactic of showing empathy to the Soviet reformers worked like a charm” (p. 112). It was apparent that Gorby and Bush were all but BFFs now. This was good timing because it just so happened that in November 1990, it was the US’s turn to be president of the UN Security Council. The Security Council then passed Resolution 679 which called for January 15, 1991 as the final date for Saddam to extricate himself and his army from Kuwait. Similarly, Congress passed the Gulf War Resolutions giving Bush the final go-ahead. Thus, on January 17, 1991, Operation Desert Storm commenced with air attacks on fortified Iraqi positions. In retaliation, Iraq bombed Israel but Bush was able to convince Israel to not get back at Iraq alone but to allow the alliance forces to do so. In late February, Iraq began to withdraw but only after the ground troops were activated. “The ground war began with the invasion of Kuwait by the US Marine Corps” (p. 125). By February 28, there was a general cease fire, thereby ending the Gulf War. Afterwards, there was a bloody civil war in Iraq when many factions tried to oust Hussein and failed.

At this time, Bush found out that he had a rare illness, called Graves’ Disease, which gave him problems with his thyroid. Once this was under control though Bush went full force into dealing with the imminent 1992 elections and began to campaign. Unfortunately his approval rating, which had peaked after the Gulf War, slowly began to ebb. “A closer look at Bush’s approval numbers shows that the Gulf War—when foreign policy seemed to matter again—had given an artificial bounce to what had been a steady erosion of the presidential popular support since the end of his first year in office” (p. 133). There were still foreign policy matters to consider however. In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was voted in as President of Russia and then systematically dismantled the Soviet Union. Serbia, Croatia and the other former Yugoslavia nations began to fight over their land and in July 1991, Bush and Gorbachev met for the very last US-Soviet summit. Finally, issues in Somalia in November of 1992 led Bush to send American military units there (see the movie Black Hawk Down).

Bush passed the 1990 Clean Air Amendment and then the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 but nothing seemed to help his approval rating. It didn’t help either that this was the moment that the Clarence Thomas scandal hit and while Thomas was eventually sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, the whole situation seemed sordid. As 1992 wore on, the country slid into a bonafide recession and Bush looked silly when he vomited on the Prime Minister of Japan. There were also the Rodney King riots that tore apart Los Angeles and the Hurricane Andrew debacle that left thousands of people without food, water, or shelter in southern Florida.

Needless to say, Bush was soundly defeated by Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton in the November elections. Bush, bitter and uncomprehending, flew back to Houston to embark on the long post-presidential retirement (he was only 68 years old). Instead of sitting around though, he traveled to the Middle East and then came home to help his sons campaign for various governships (Jeb for Florida and George W for Texas). Both sons would eventually become governors of those states. Bush senior would try not to rile the political waters during his retirement, a la Jimmy Carter, but sometimes he would speak out against certain things like Aristide in Haiti. In 1995, he took a trip to Hanoi and then in ‘97 he dedicated his presidential library, housed at Texas A&M University.

He also wrote a couple books. He co-wrote A World Transformed with his former Secretary of State, Brent Scowcroft and then he published a collection of diary entries and letters in style:italic;">All the Best, George Bush. In 2000, he campaigned in the presidential election for his son, George W and was proudly able to witness his son’s victorious election to the presidency over Al Gore. Bush senior then visited China and spent years working with former president Bill Clinton on behalf of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief. Recently, he won the NIAF One America Award for his work on behalf of all Americans and was present at the commissioning of the USS George H. W. Bush, a supercarrier of the US Navy.