George H.W. Bush got to hear his own eulogy before he died. His reaction was priceless.
I thought, “it couldn’t have been that great.” I was wrong.
In George H.W. Bush’s final days, Jon Meacham — the Bush biographer, presidential historian and one of four people chosen to eulogize the 41st president — decided to share the words of his speech with its subject.
And the ailing Bush responded in characteristically self-deprecating fashion:
“That’s a lot about me, Jon.”
Of course no humans are perfect, but GHWB was a great family man, a war hero, and overall, in my opinion, a very good president.
I’m not sure. He set the stage for the wasteful, expensive Iraq war. He didn’t do anything about the atrocities in Bosnia (which had no oil). Incarceration rate in the US shot up 40% from 1989 to 1993. He didn’t do enough to end Reaganite “tough on crime, tough on drugs” policies.
He was decent on immigration and got the ADA passed (though ADA actually isn’t perfect since it enabled frivolous lawsuits and harmed public transit in the US).
In sum, he wasn’t the worst president, but we’d have been better off with Mike “ACLU” Dukakis. I didn’t know him, I didn’t know his family, why should I waste time mourning him?
it’s clear that something beyond economics — and certainly not foreign policy — motivates Trump’s people. My guess is that it’s a low-boil rage against a vague and threatening liberalism — urbane, educated, affluent, secular, diverse and sexually tolerant. It is, in other words, some of the same sentiment that once fueled European fascism.
Those of us who write newspaper columns know that sheer brilliance, should it happen, gets a silent nod of the head, but affirmation — saying what readers already think — gets loud hurrahs. This is Trump’s appeal as well. He validates the thinking — some of it ugly — of many Americans. To them, Helsinki doesn’t matter and even Putin doesn’t matter. Only Trump does. To them, he hates the right people.[/quote]
Update: 9/10 of Republicans now approve of Donald Trump.
