Whether to Bury or Praise

There is something fortuitous in the historical placement of George Bush in wherever he happened to be in the course of his long life. He was fortunate in being born privileged, he was fortunate in surviving a brutal war. He was fortunate in politics, after a fashion. He married the love of his life, and one of his sons followed him in the White House. As lives go, it wasn't half bad. He was surrounded with admiration and love at the end of his life, and that's nothing to scoff at. We could all hope to do so well. 

He also benefited by being neither so wretched as Nixon or crass as Trump, and the halo of his dedication was in part burnished by the haplessness of his son's time in office, and the bar of doing politics had dropped to where service and decency, just by being part of one's make-up, were all that needed to be present to gloss over really harsh truths. But his record was mixed, and a pretty damn comprehensive blog post of the not-great bits was served by Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, so I'd say check that out for the stuff already said, and better than I would have, by him. 

As for me, I still simmer over 1988. This was the first presidential election I paid attention to, occurring after Iran-Contra, and in some way, my innocent soul thought Republicans should have been over, for at least this round. How in the world does a country accept Bush was "out of the loop" as a former head of CIA, and not think his principal job in taking office in the White House was to tidy up loose ends? I was all of sixteen and livid at the "pledge of Allegiance" nonsense and the entire crock of referring to Dukakis as an "ACLU card-carrying liberal" as if sticking up for the Bill of Rights was something to sneer at. Stupid wedge issue content (and maybe not the most competent campaign waged by Dukakis and Bentsen) dictated a win, and a pardon for several folks who participated in that debacle of literally extralegally arming a country that we considered a supporter of terrorism, to also extralegally support a faction in a war that wasn't any of our business. And cite the reason for these pardons as "patriotism". 

I still to this damn day don't know what American principles or interests were served by this thing. As with Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, it sits poorly with me as a violation of the concept that no one should be above the law. 

And the nomination of Clarence Thomas, whatever we think of his qualifications today or his sexual harassment concerns, was a slap in the face of civil rights legend Thurgood Marshall, whose seat he filled. As if this bland patrician looked on this black conservative, and gave no fucks for the vast difference in viewpoint but saw a certain blatant commonality, and rolled with it. 

I do not know the family or personally, any friends of George Bush. I knew I was slipping as a blogger when I tried to silver-lining the life of his beloved spouse. The War on Drugs,  and whatever crap example he set that made George W. Bush and Jeb Bush the politicians they were,  his poor response to the AIDS crisis, his feints to hardcore conservatism to try and obviate the claim he was a "wimp" which in some ways proved it--all stay in my memory as things that were part and parcel of his legacy, that should not be forgotten. 

And yet, in retrospect, he could have been so much worse. And he wrote lovely notes, and his family doesn't all suck, and his friendship with Clinton and Obama....? 

He was human, and we are all a mixed lot, and have redeeming features. He did his thing for charity, and I will allow I consider some of what people say about Carlyle Group and the defense industry and drawing arrows here and there from Halliburton/Dressher to the exploits in Iraq seems a bit paranoid. I can't dispute that the end of the Cold War would have been something difficult for any president to navigate. 

His family will bury him, and they can praise him as well. As well as can any of his loved ones. I am not in that circle, and I will tell the truth if I please. His civility was admirable. But we should not hurry to polish the reputations of those who have died when their legacies are still ongoing. And the stupid political postures of 1988 still resound in 2018. I can't shrug that off, or forget that Roger Ailes, who made Fox News, was one of his campaign advisors back in the day, and of course, the episode of peak Les Atwater--the Willie Horton ad. 

I am dry-eyed and unromantic about his legacy. We are here in it. And my Trump obit will definitely be even worse, come the day. I wish peace of mind to his surviving loved ones. (But not without clear memories.)

UPDATE: And just one other damn thing--he was for Brett Kavanaugh, and fuck him and his son and Brett Kavanaugh. But not the all the way, because none of them deserve the satisfaction. 

The Bush Family Drama

It seems like a little bit of family business worked its way out in public as some of the senior Bush's opinions have been related by Jon Meacham in his biography of George H. W. Bush. It seems that "41" had a bit of criticism for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a little criticism for "43".  The elder Bush described his son as having been badly served by Rumsfeld, and described Dick Cheney as becoming a more hardline and "iron ass" guy (possibly with the encouragement of his wife Lynn, and daughter, Liz). Bush "43", for his part, sticks up for those who served in his Administration. Say what you like about W.--he's loyal to a fault or a hundred.

There's nothing in that necessarily that makes me go "OMG!" about either what was said, not the source and direction of the opinion. I got a good enough sense that "43" didn't seek his father's advice when he said as much himself; when asked if he sought his father's counsel on things, he said he had a "higher father" that he relied on. This kind of statement, when it was not signifying theocratic holy war scary-times, was in line with the idea W. projected of being "the Decider". Nevertheless, in the midst of making claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, programs to build same, and relationships between Saddam Hussein and terrorists that couldn't possibly have made sense, the one thing I thought rang true was when Bush justified his invasion with "This was the guy who tried to kill my dad that one time."  This was family drama as war. Unless Bush's real reason was some crazy End-times shit--we will never really know, right?

Now, presuming that Jon Meacham is a Beltway remora and Poppy Bush still has his wits about him, that particular message slamming Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney has a couple of familial interests behind it. Knowing that Number 2 son is in need of distancing himself from the foreign policy disasters of Number 1 son, he establishes a narrative of distance by setting out that the reason for the disaster was a Team Effort, giving Number 1 son opportunity for plausible deniability and Number 2 son running room. He was trying to do a mitzvah for his boys like they understood how this worked. I guess he never told them though, or didn't think he had to.

43 hugged Dick Cheney like they were still testifying behind closed doors for like an hour that one time in front of the 9/11 commission. And Jeb, like the stunning political performer he is, also totally sided with Team Cheney. This is the guy we last saw being lashed by Donald Trump with his brother's foreign policy, and then like a mook stood in front of a mirror and straightened out the knots.

When 83-year old reptilian Donald Rumsfeld was warmed up enough by the sun, he mentioned that GHWB was "getting up in years" but that W. made his own decisions. He sure did. I'm not saying I'd make any kind of president, but after the Abu Ghraib revelations, I'd have been asking for Rumsfeld's resignation the first damn thing to show I treated this stuff as a top-down disaster.

But the insinuation that Bush "41" isn't still mentally sharp is a lie. He is. He was jumping out of planes when folks his age couldn't jump out of bed. Sharp as he ever was. The people around him, though, are only sharp as they ever were, too.

Jeb: Dead Candidate Walking?

First, we were hearing that the Jeb! campaign was making cutbacks to staff and payroll, then we heard he was meeting with donors and his family. Some could say it's a little early for the pre-post mortems, but, as I've been saying, even if he had the money to hang in there, he's kind of an awful candidate and it might be a good idea of he just didn't hang in there. The US News pre-post mortem I linked to has a beautiful line in it--"he can't ad-lib a fart". Of the cuff, Jeb! is kind of a clod. The sad thing is, with preparation, he's just not much better.

When the family gathers round him to square with the facts, I have the feeling his mom and dad might just tell him that his campaign is going off to live on a farm in the country, where it will have plenty of room to run around, and Jeb won't see it anymore--but won't the campaign be so much happier? And maybe Jeb! will understand.

Jeb!: I, Clod-I-is

I just want to direct my readers' attention right here.

Jeb Bush said out loud, where people could hear, that he was offering "hope" to African Americans, instead of "free stuff".  Having paid attention to what Bushes do to the economy, you don't mind if I think white people should also think "free stuff" would be a better deal than what these idiots think "hope" means?

That's just clod-ish. This is supposed to be the "smarter brother". And he still isn't showing any signs of it. For one thing, you can't pretend you're not divisive, but then talk about a group of people as "the other" so naturally. And then, wow, welfare queen stereotype much? That's just kicking it Reagan-era. Is this a thing he thinks is okay in the 21st century?

Yeah. Well--maybe he thinks he will survive the primary from hell if he plays it dumber? You know, like Claudius from the popular PBS series I, Claudius, based on the novels from Graves, downplays whether he understands what's going on? Is it possible that he is pretending to be an actually super-thick nonsense shake because if the straw fits-?

I am going to both posit this theory, and then completely reject it. He's not playing dumb. I think the mistake with GWB was thinking he was playing dumb. I am doing to come out and say, this dude is actually kind of dumb. When the guy with the Mexican wife says "multiculturalism is bad"--dumb. When he says he's his own man and then embraces everything his father and brother did, including relying on their aides and advisors, dumb. When he calls rejecting the XL Pipeline "environmental extremism"--he's just being a clod. What are we really getting out of it? What is our pay-off? How is this beneficial to us and not an ideological fetish?

He doesn't know. He doesn't think he's supposed to know. He's a clod.  He's really as dumb as we might suspect he is.