George H. W. Bush media hagiography

More retrospectives on George H. W. Bush. Here are Tamara Keith and Stuart Rothenberg on George H.W. Bush and the GOP's evolution (PBS Newshour 12/03/2018; Transcript)

The portion of their segment on Bush the Edler, aka Bush 41, is short. But it offers some themes that have been common in mainstream posthumous recollections of him. For example, Rothenberg says:

George W. Bush was born into a family. President — Senator Prescott Bush, who was a Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Cabot Lodge, Nelson Rockefeller Republican, and look at where Donald Trump is today with the Republican Party.

The party has changed has fundamentally in terms of values, language, identity and coalition partners. It's — you can't even compare it. It's really like two different parties.

A veritable antifa activist, was Bush 41!

That argument isn't entirely wrong. Bush certainly wasn't as bad as Trump. But that's almost the definition of "damning by faint praise".

Yes, there are some uncomfortable questions about Granddaddy Prescott Bush's dealings with German companies implicated in Nazi crimes. (Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell, How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power Guardian 09/25/2004)  And, yes, very similar questions apply to Averill Harriman, who was a major Democratic donor also became a distinguished diplomat. Politics is complicated. So is international finance. (Prescott was Bush 41's father and Bush 43's grandfather.)

This PBS Newshour segment is as gushing as the title indicates, Reflections on George H.W. Bush, a man of 'lovely, sweet reticence' 12/03/2018. (Transcript)

It wouldn't have been surprising if the three guests had called on Pope Francis to canonize the WASPy Episcopalian Bush 41 as a saint. Christopher Buckley describes him as "the paradigm of the Christian gentleman."

Admittedly, two of the three guests are loyal former associates. Near the end, the third one, Susan Page (currently working on a biography of Bush 41's late wife Barbara) makes a mildly negativecomment of Old Man Bush's dirty campaigning, symbolized by the infamous Willy Horton ad: "he was also an enormously competitive man about everything. He wanted to win that office. He sought that office in 1980 and again in 1988, and he won it. But he won it in a tough way." If we are being generous, that could pass for a critical comment!

Journalist Craig Unger's two books on the Bush family, House of Bush, House of Saud (2004) and The Fall of House of Bush (2007) provide a very useful perspective of the longer arc of the Bush dynasty's geopolitical role over decades. The former volume frames Bush 41's gentlemanly qualities in a more helpful historical context. Here he is describing how, during the Reagan Administration, CIA Director William Casey enlisted then-Vice President G.H.W. Bush to work on what later became notorious as the Iran-Contra affair. Casey particularly valued Bush for what he what he perceived as Bush's trustworthiness on intelligence matters and his unusually strong talent for keeping secrets secret:

That such qualities went hand in hand with Bush's patrician background won him the highest compliment of all from Count Alexandre de Marenches, the legendary godfather of French intelligence. A crusty Cold Warrior who had nothing but contempt for most players on the world stage, de Marenches found Bush to have the perfect pedigree for covert operations: he was a gentleman. All through Bush's political life, journalists and colleagues have spoken of him as if he were two people. One was the gracious and courtly George Bush who was so acquiescent to those who had higher rank and power. The other was George Bush the ruthless politician, who would go into campaign mode to do whatever it might take to win. Casey confided to his colleagues that he felt that the two sides of Bush were really one and the same. Bush had the capacity to act on the judgment of others, to live within the constraints of their agendas. This philosophy had served him well in the long line of appointive offices he had won. Casey, according to his colleagues, understood that Bush's compliant nature; like his merciless side, served a higher ambition. As a result, he chose Vice President Bush to carry out his secret mission to break the impasse that had stalled the release of the remaining hostages. [my emphasis]

I wouldn't want to recommend Bill Casey as the final authority on anything. But that account of Unger's gives a much better-rounded view of Bush the Paradigmatic Christian Gentleman than the media hagiography of the last few days.