Among the countless blessings that Providence has bestowed upon America, the most consequential has always been the availability of the right leaders at the right time. Our Founders, perhaps the greatest collection of intellectual talent in Western civilization, were the forerunners of an uncanny precedent where just the right person would emerge when our nation needed them most. In George H.W. Bush, America found such a man.
With the exception of George Washington, no man was better equipped to be president. In the 64 years before he took the oath of office, George Bush’s life reads like a veritable instruction manual on how to prepare for the challenges of the presidency. Wartime naval aviator, entrepreneur and business owner, Congressman, UN Ambassador, RNC Chair, US envoy to China, Director of the CIA, and two-term Vice President to one of the titans of American history, Ronald Reagan.
But resume alone doesn’t make the man. What gave this vast and consequential experience relevance was the unique character of George Bush. He was first a man of deep integrity and honor. His word meant something if it was given. He was modest and humble almost to a fault, raised by a code where boasting was bad form. His generosity and kindness were legendary. What was too often seen as a bland public persona obscured a keen intelligence, and a steely determination. He was a man of courage, on and off the battlefield.
George Bush was a patriot, in the original construction of the word. While he was a lifelong Republican and moderate conservative, these ideological blinders did not define his highest calling. Bush’s first, and most important title was citizen. Though his rhetoric sometimes failed to match his passion, he was a life-long student of American greatness and its wellsprings. Bush was steeped in our history, and in our values, and through a lifetime of service, he uniquely internalized how the day-to-day mechanics of politics, government, and diplomacy worked in the service of continuing the great American Experiment.
The election of 1988 was truly the marriage of a man and his moment.
To understand how indispensable George Bush was in those pivotal four years, one need only consider the potential, alternate outcomes. The conceit of history is its sense of predetermination; the causality that because an event occurred, it was destined to happen. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In 1989, the world was in upheaval. Nearly half a century after WWII created the Cold War, the bipolar international order was fracturing beyond recognition, creating deep uncertainties. In world history, the decline or collapse of world powers has been the catalyst for conflict. Until that point in history, no empire has ever gone down without a fight. It fell to President Bush to guide the nation, and the world, through the next steps.
Consider Germany, which was at the heart of the Cold War. Divided at the end of WWII, the US and Soviet Union nearly went to war twice (1948 and 1961) over the status of divided Berlin. When Bush was sworn in, a divided Germany was still an armed camp along whose border nearly 800,000 troops from NATO and the Warsaw Pact faced off, with thousands of nuclear weapons. However, the breach of the Berlin Wall, and the later collapse of the East German government in 1989, created enormous uncertainty and risk.
Public statements to the contrary, no European country, with long memories of Germany in the early 20th century, was in favor of German reunification. But Bush was unafraid of a united, democratic Germany, and saw reunification as making good on an American promise to the German people.
Through Bush’s determined efforts, and some of the most intense and skillful diplomacy in modern history, the four parties to the division of Germany, the US, the USSR, Britain, and France, ultimately agreed to a reunited Germany as a member of NATO, all just under a year after the Berlin Wall came down. It was a stunning accomplishment that represented the true, if belated end of WWII. Today’s prosperous and peaceful Germany, with its capital in a united Berlin, owes its modern incarnation to George Bush’s leadership.
Consider the nuclear arms race. In 1989, the US and USSR possessed a combined 23,000 strategic nuclear weapons, not including tens of thousands of smaller, tactical nukes. Through Bush’s direct engagement with Gorbachev, the START Treaty was signed in 1991. For the first time in history, both nations agreed not simply to limit strategic forces, but to cut them by 50 percent. In the years since, the momentum from START has cut 80% of the warheads deployed in 1989, greatly reducing the nuclear threat.
A few months later, Bush and Gorbachev agreed to remove tactical nuclear weapons from naval ships and aircraft, and to redeploy all land based tactical nuclear weapons to their respective countries, further reducing tension and the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Bush ended nuclear testing in 1992.
No challenge during Bush’s term was greater than the coming collapse of the Soviet Union. For more than 40 years, the United States had spent trillions of dollars planning to defeat the Soviet Union militarily. There was, however, no precedent for the collapse of a nuclear-armed superpower, and no plan to manage its political collapse from within.
Bush’s experience allowed him to improvise. He threw out the rule book and made Gorbachev a partner, supporting the Russian leader’s economic reforms at home, and helping manage the painful transitions abroad. Bush extended over $1 billion in food credits, launched government efforts to support US business investment in the USSR, lifted technology export controls, and supported targeted US assistance to help the Soviet dismantle their nuclear weapons. As dynamic social change swept Eastern Europe and eventually the Soviet Republics themselves, Bush refused to gloat, worried that signs of American bravado would empower hard liners in the Kremlin.
Between 1989 and 1991, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, Russian military units were redeployed out Eastern Europe, and independent elections in those countries resulted in the creation of democratic governments, all without a shot being fired. For the first time since 1945, Europe was finally whole and free. The architect of this peaceful transition was President George Bush.
Bush is perhaps best remembered for Operation Desert Storm, the most successful US military action since WWII. Less appreciated is the path that Bush chose between Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in August, and the launch of the air war in January.
As the global order transitioned to a unipolar world, Bush innately understood the need for the US to establish and maintain international legitimacy for its actions. Instead of a rush to war, Bush methodically created a case against Iraq, established objectives, and used the United Nations, as it was intended to be used, for the first time since its creation. It was not simply the US that condemned Saddam’s actions, but a united international community as well. Along the way, Bush built the most formidable military and political coalition since WWII, even getting the reluctant Soviet’s on board. He patiently exhausted every diplomatic option until force was the only option left.
While his advisors assured Bush that his authority as Commander-in-Chief was sufficient to launch the Iraq campaign, the President believed congressional support was an essential component of taking the nation to war, and Bush put it all on the line for a congressional vote in a Democrat Congress, which he (narrowly) won. The Gulf War was the first (and only) time that the US has had the explicit approval of both the UN and the Congress to go to war.
In his meticulous execution of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Bush created a model for superpower conduct in a unipolar world. It was a template where multilateral, coalitions, and the rule of law were inherent strengths in exercising US leadership.
There were other successes. US forces liberated Panamanians from a dictator. The near decade-long tensions between the US and Nicaragua, ended peacefully when a US brokered deal led to democratic elections that ousted the Sandinistas. After the Gulf War, the Bush administration launched the modern Middle East peace process, in Madrid in 1991.
Not all of Bush’s foreign policy decisions were popular. Bush was heavily criticized for his play for stability with China after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In a speech in the Ukraine in 1991, Bush cautioned against “suicidal nationalism” as Soviet Republics set referendums to withdraw from the Soviet Union. The speech, a Bush effort to help Gorbachev against hardliners in the Kremlin, was widely criticized in the US and the West as insufficiently supportive to the aspirations of the people in those republics.
Despite these shortcomings, there is no doubt that when Bill Clinton took the oath of office in 1993, Bush having inherited a shattering global order, handed off to his successor the safest global security environment in half a century.
George Bush is remembered most for his stewardship in foreign policy, but that is not to say that enjoyed no domestic success. As his White House Chief of Staff, John Sununu lays out here, Bush had notable achievements, made more remarkable by the fact Bush was the only Republican president among the last four, not to have GOP control in at least one House during his term. NAFTA, which will be rebranded under a new name next year, but remain in essential form, was negotiated during Bush’s term. Clarence Thomas, a stalwart conservative was nominated by Bush and confirmed by a Democrat Senate, after the most contentious SCOTUS proceeding prior to Brett Kavanaugh.
With such a formidable record, re-election would have seemed a foregone conclusion. Indeed, Bush’s popularity peaked in 1991 at more than 90 percent. But it wasn’t to be.
Bush’s agreement to raise taxes as part of the 1990 budget deal destroyed him with conservatives. In 1992, conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan challenged Bush in the primaries. Though he never won a state, Buchanan picked up roughly 25 percent of the GOP primary vote, signaling conservative disenchantment, and a serious potential problem in the general election. That was compounded by Ross Perot, who gave disillusioned conservative and Republican voters an alternative to voting Democrat.
It was no help to Bush that Bill Clinton, the most talented politician of his age, was his opponent in 1992. The Clinton campaign was so successful, that though the US economy had been growing since Q2 1991 – and grew at a 3.5 percent clip for all of 1992 (better than all of Obama’s eight years)- Team Clinton had convinced American voters the economy was in a recession. In a general election where Ross Perot fractured the center-right coalition in the US, Clinton was elected as a plurality president, with Bush winning only 38 percent of the vote.
Like Winston Churchill in 1945, a leader who had done so much to secure his nation’s security and improve the world order, was ultimately turned out of office by domestic concerns. Democracy can be unforgiving that way.
Over the 25 years since he left the White House, the nation has had the chance to see Bush’s accomplishments, not in the context of current events, but in history. The man who scoffed at “the vision thing,” in fact, had a compelling vision; a world where freedom, democracy, and enterprise could flourish. A community of nations, each sovereign, working together to advance human progress through timeless principles and values. The practical world left behind after George Bush stepped off the stage was freer and more peaceful than at any time in the 20th century.
President Bush probably wouldn’t say it that way. Too boastful.
Wouldn’t be prudent.
But it’s true.
And we are eternally in his debt for his wisdom and service.