What Bush’s legacy tells us about the modern presidency.
President George H. W. Bush’s legacy will be shaped by the political moment at which he died. At least, the first round of takes and analyses seems to focus heavily on the contrast between his political style and that of President Donald Trump, and the ways in which the Republican Party has changed since 1992.
These comparisons lend themselves to similar conclusions: that Bush was a leader who had some bipartisan accomplishments, who united the nation around foreign policy goals (heavy set of asterisks here for those who did not share his goals or were harmed by them), and who wrote a gracious note to Bill Clinton after the 1992 election. Even before his death, Bush’s pragmatism had been elevated to full-blown statesmanship.
Detractions from this narrative have mentioned Bush’s 1988 Willie Horton ad, which stoked racial fears, and his neglect of the growing AIDS crisis .
There are obvious reasons why even a fairly minimal commitment to bipartisanship, combined with interest in foreign policy, might be an especially potent nostalgia formula right now. But it’s also worth considering how this approach was received at the time, and what the challenges that Bush faced tell us about the evolution of the presidency as an institution.
He was a president of limited rhetorical talent in a time of a highly personalized and media-packaged presidential politics. His presidency followed that of an important party icon, something he struggled with during that particular moment.
Bush’s presidency, both as it really was and in its retrospective treatment, tells us about what modern presidential politics forgives, rewards, and punishes — and about the gap between the abstract depiction of the presidency and its concrete reality.
First, it’s not entirely an accident that Bush was a single-term president couched between two leaders who were known for their communication skill and style. It’s also true that the abilities of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to magically alter the preferences of the electorate are mostly a myth. At the same time, their public personas were a lot different from Bush’s, in ways that were consequential for the presidency.
Although many have remembered Bush’s warmth and humor in the days since his passing, when he was president he was often depicted as distant and awkward. There are lots of possible explanations for why the 1992 election turned out as it did. But Clinton’s strength wasn’t his experience, and it certainly wasn’t his impeccable character; it was his ability to convey warmth and empathy.
