Sand Slipping Away
The 41st President of the United States, George HW Bush, passed away this weekend. He was 94 years old, the patriarch of the Bush political dynasty. With his passing, another member of the historic Republican Party, the Party that rejected the absolutism of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater; the party of Eisenhower, Rockefeller and yes, Richard Nixon; is gone.
We have seen this Grand Old Party; tough on foreign policy, free marketeers on trade; a party that still had a heart; slowly pass away before our eyes this year. Barbara Bush, John McCain, and now the President, all revive memories of what a “kinder and gentler” Republican Party was. And, as the speeches are made and the memorials articles are written, we see the stark contrast between the Republicans of then, and the Trumpians of today.
It’s not that President Bush 41 was soft. Mike Dukakis, his Democratic opponent for President in 1988, would beg to differ: the raw racism of the Willie Horton Ad run by Bush, literally blaming Dukakis for murder, was as ugly as the ads of today. And it’s not that the Republican Party of the era was so compassionate: the “…thousand points of light…” was about volunteering to solve the problems the government wasn’t going to pay for.
But there was a class, and an understanding of service to America, that is missing today. While Democrats might disagree with Bush, or Reagan, or even Bush 43; there was still a presumption that they were trying to do what they thought was best for the country, as opposed to what was best for themselves (OK, Dick Chaney might be the exception.) Today, after a week of more Trump revelations of self-interest over country, it seems clear that the old GOP is gone. Even the lesser leaders of the Party, McConnell and Ryan and Graham, have remained silent as the drip-drip-drip of the Mueller investigation hammers away at the Trump Administration.
I never voted for Bush 41: the truth is that I have never voted for a Republican President. But, I could still have respect for them. For Gerald Ford, who took on the Presidency at its lowest point after Watergate, for Ronald Reagan who seemed like the “harbinger of the apocalypse” before he took office (but we survived); for Bush 41, who was the last of the “Greatest Generation” to lead our nation.
All of them are in stark contrast to the President of today. And that’s the problem President Trump has this week: another funeral where by contrast his Administration will be held up to ridicule. Another ceremony where the grace of American politics and politicians will demonstrate what we are missing, and the shadow of the Mueller Investigation will continue to darken this White House’s door.
While I don’t agree with them, I do feel for Ohio Republicans like John Kasich and Rob Portman (he served as a Bush 41’s White House Counsel.) They are Republicans of the “old school;” one dared to speak out in opposition to the President, and the political price has been that his Party has left him. They must feel like they are standing on the beach, as the waves tumble onto the shore, and the sand dissolves into the sea under their feet. The ideas they built their careers on; the mentors and leaders they worked for; all are slipping away, leaving them standing alone in the waves.
So we say farewell to George Hebert Walker Bush this week. We know he is where he wants to be; a man who’s marriage was so strong he didn’t want to live without his love. And we can admire the courage and the class of President Bush, and those others who will stand, gray and stooped, beside his casket. Perhaps seeing this contrast once again will embolden other Republicans to stand up for the ideals of their Party, rather than knuckle under to the bully in the White House. I’m not holding my breath, but those Republicans may soon need to, as the tide of history washes their current President, and with him their Party, out to sea.
