Who would have thought we’d be waxing nostalgic over the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush? He was a one-term wonder, a Ronald Regan afterthought who eschewed the “vision thing” and really hated broccoli. Yet, the nation mourns the passing of 41 this week out of a deep longing for those bygone days when our presidents rarely embarrassed us, no matter how mediocre or inept they may have been.
Bush had been destined to join such non-luminaries as Chester Arthur, Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore in the dustbin of presidential obscurity. Then along came Donald Trump who, in a karmic twist of fate, managed to elevate Bush the Elder to near-Mount Rushmore status. And so it is that the late president, viewed through the funhouse mirrors of Trump World, casts an idyllic image of the anti-Donald: honest, humble, caring and knowledgeable. Those are all leadership attributes we once took for granted in our presidents, until they vanished in the 2016 election.
According to news reports, the Bush family secured a creative détente with the Trump White House well in advance of the 94-year-old former president’s death. Trump would be invited to the funeral and the family would insist eulogists refrain from criticizing the current president. It seems the Donald was mighty distressed over the ridicule heaped upon him at John McCain’s funeral and wanted to avoid a sequel in the Bush sendoff. So touched by this gesture from a family he has shown nothing but contempt for, Trump, in a rare moment of lucidity, managed to utter kind words on Bush’s passing. Here’s part of what he said: “President Bush always found a way to set the bar higher.”
That kinder and gentler remark, however, got it wrong. The reality of this moment is that Trump sets the presidential bar so low that George H.W. Bush – along with nearly any Tom, Dick or Mary off the street – rises to the level of revered leaders. Virtually every word used to describe Bush since his death represents a basic human ingredient sorely missing in our current president. Barack Obama called Bush “a humble servant”. Bill Clinton said he was “honorable, gracious and decent”. Jimmy Carter spoke of his “grace, civility and social conscience”. House Speaker Paul Ryan referred to his “decency and integrity”.
Foreign Policy magazine captured the late president with these words: “modesty, integrity, decency, patience, prudence and intelligence”. It then opined: “When he left office in 1993, his qualities reflected well upon him. Today, they are incandescent.” The Washington Post’s obituary observed: “Although Mr. Bush served as president nearly three decades ago, his values and ethics seem centuries removed from today’s acrid political culture.”
So there sat 45 at the Bush funeral on Wednesday. Trump was in the first pew of the Washington National Cathedral as the nation paid its last respects to 41. He had, for the first time as president, taken his ceremonial place next to his living predecessors, secure in the deal he cut that nobody there would dis the Donald. His body language, however, belied any notion of a comfort zone. With pursed lips, a vacant gaze and arms folded tightly across his sternum, Donald Trump looked like a gastro patient about to undergo a colonoscopy without anesthesia.
Alas, what he got was far more painful. Nobody talked about him. His name was never spoken. The no-ridicule pledge meant that Donald Trump was totally ignored. But it was far worse than that for him. The heartfelt praise visited upon George H.W. Bush must have jabbed fiercely at Trump’s psyche and felt very much like the ridicule he so wanted to avoid. No, the Bush-Trump ceasefire had not been violated. The problem was that 41 and 45 became reflective mirrors for each other. Bush’s strengths seemed ordinary 30 years ago, but are now nostalgically prized and mourned because they are tragically absent in the incumbent president.
Although the eulogists were focused singularly on the late president, it was impossible to hear their words without also thinking about Trump’s flagrant inadequacies.
For example:
Former president George W. Bush: “In victory, he shared credit. When he lost, he shouldered the blame.”
Former senator Alan Simpson: “He never hated anyone. Hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in.”
Bush Biographer Jon Meacham: “His life code was: ‘Tell the truth. Don’t blame people. Forgive’.”
Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney: “. . .when George Bush was president of the United States of America, every single head of government in the world knew that they were dealing with a gentleman, a genuine leader. . .”
If those memories of what being presidential once meant failed to connect the dots to our current situation, the officiant, the Rev. Dr. Russell Jones Levenson Jr., Bush’s pastor from Houston, brought it all the way home: “Some have said this an end of an era. But it doesn’t have to be. Perhaps this is an invitation to fill the void that has been left behind.”
And what a void it is. In the morass of our deeply broken political environment, it’s hard to remember that we once took for granted that our presidents would be kind, decent people, folks not deeply invested in hatred or cruelty, leaders who told the truth most of the time. When George Herbert Walker Bush received the Republican nomination for president in 1988, he vowed to make the country “kinder and gentler”. He was mercilessly lampooned by late night comics and editorial cartoonists for setting the bar so low.
The bipartisan mourning we saw and felt this week was America pleading – from far below that bar – not just for kinder and gentler governance, but for leadership laced with honesty, integrity and decency. It’s been said that we can’t fully apprehend the value of something until we lose it. Now that it is gone, America’s first order of business is to find a way to get it back.