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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Regarding Barcelona, I have several suggestions.
But I'd like to talk about 41 here instead.
It's probably not surprising that his funeral seems like such a non-event. In many regards, 41 was an extinct creature long before he actually died. He had low points, like Willie Horton, but it's safe to assume that was all Lee Atwater. And his high points are more for what he didn't do than anything he did.
Most notably, H.W. didn't go into Baghdad. This might have been the wisest consideration of the "you break it, you buy it" rule in history. And he observed undying civility, carrying himself as a President should. In fact, over the last five Presidencies, he and Obama are the only two who truly dignified the office. (W was technically dignified, but Iraq blights all positives for which he might be credited... It's hard to cite the good manners of one who blew 3 trillion and wasted over a hundred thousand lives because he was too lazy to stand up to Rummy and Cheney.)
I liked H.W. I'd vote for him today, for the civility and prowess. But I'm not sure he'd be the right kind of person in this age of discontent. The time seems to call for a more aggressive leadership. I think a guy like H.W. would be eaten alive in the office now, much like Macron is being savaged in France. Slow, steady, and measured doesn't cut it at the moment.
I feel like that should be disconcerting. But it seems somewhat linear. If you were reading the papers when Bush was in office, you absorbed discussion of many of the same problems that persist today. (Perot's giant sucking sound actually wound up being a spot-on prediction.) We didn't do much about them back then, when they were easy to tackle. And so we're reacting violently to them now, as they've become acute.
People on the radio have been lamenting that we don't have Presidents like H.W. anymore. I don't think we could have such a President today. Trump is exactly the kind of extremist one would expect in this age. A symptom, a reaction, rather than a steward, or manager, like H.W.
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To your Willie Horton point, Bush sometimes took the high road and sometimes took the low road. To take the measure of the man, you've got to acknowledge both.
Bush was not a conservative, and conservatives always found him suspect. He tried hard to overcome it, e.g., recanting on voodoo economics and vowing no new taxes, but it seemed that he was trying to hard, so he couldn't remove the suspicions. His Republican Party is no more, and he could never get elected today.
