Many Federal offices are closed today for a national day of mourning for the last mainline Republican President, George H.W. Bush.
Bush was many things. His life showed that he believed in duty to his country and service to others. Against the wishes of his parents, he enlisted in the Navy when he turned 18. He was a pragmatist who not only despised ideologues, but he was willing to make a massive political sacrifice for the good of the nation.[1] The 1990 budget deal cost him a second term, yet it put the Federal budget on the bath to being balanced.[2]
Bush was an advocate of volunteerism. He believed in helping those who were less fortunate.[3] He believed in improving the environment.[4] He did not believe in bragging.
Contrast that, if you will, with the current President; a man who has three discernible motivations: Self-interest, vengeance and bigotry. It is patently clear that Trump and Bush had nothing but contempt for one another. Yet Trump put a VC-25 at the disposal of the Bush family to carry Bush's remains from Texas to Washington and back and allowed the Bush family to stay at Blair House.[5]
Trump's history is that he does not have a smidgen of human kindness or consideration for others in his makeup.[6] If he's being nice to the Bush family (and not pitching a Twitter fit over not having a speaking role at the funeral service), one has to wonder: What's in it for him?
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[1] “We’re getting pounded and the right wing is the worst,” Bush wrote in his diary in 1990, after he agreed to a compromise budget bill that included taxes he had tried to avoid. “There is a clump of these extreme extremists that I detest. But I can’t let the bastards get us down. … Push forward.”
[2] Something that was actually happening until his wastrel son blew it up in 2001.
[3] The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
[4] The Clean Air Act of 1990 did a lot to limit acid rain.
[5] These are traditional courtesies to deceased presidents, but Trump has little use for tradition.
[6] I'm not a shrink, but I believe that the term "narcissistic sociopath" fits Trump like a bespoke suit.
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2 comments:
I think the biggest complaint I have about him, aside from the Iran/Contra pardons, is the way he actually knew Reagan's supply-side ideology was garbage, and supported it anyway as veep.
The whole "read my lips" defying tax increase that supposedly sunk his re-election was in response to 1) the hole that supply-side "voodoo" blew in the deficit (which was rather quaint by today's standards) and 2) the fact that he was stuck with a Democratic controlled congress his whole term.
But he recognized reality and acted on it to his own detriment, and for that he deserves credit.
-Doug in Oakland
I guess that he was a loyal Veep doesn't bother me. Being loyal in public and dissenting only when there are no witnesses is the only way to do it. Otherwise, you get to sit in your office in the Senate, waiting for tie votes, and watching dust collect on the chandelier.
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