After the Persian Gulf War ended, Bush’s approval rating soared close to 90 percent. Twenty-one months later, he was driven from office by the voters. A transition inside the Republican Party that was already underway accelerated.
The statement in the name of then-President George H. W. Bush was posted quietly in the White House pressroom on the morning of June 26,1990, but there was nothing innocuous about its contents. It was a political thunderclap, the beginning of the remaking of the Republican Party and part of the unintended legacy of Bush’s presidency.
It was a statement designed to jump-start budget talks that had been stalled for months. It did that and more, providing the catalyst that changed the Republican Party into an aggressive, hard-edge brand of conservatism that would hold sway for two decades.
The statement was a renunciation of one of the most famous campaign promises in modern American politics: Bush’s declaration of “no new taxes,” which he made as he accepted the Republican nomination in 1988. The pledge was a bow to conservatives, who always regarded him with suspicion, if not outright hostility. When he reneged on the promise, they exacted revenge.
Bush, who died Friday at age 94, will be remembered for many things. His long, exemplary service to country, the steadiness that marked his governance, and the humility and decency he brought to his political relationships are central elements of his legacy.
He was not above rough politics. His 1988 campaign will be remembered as one in which he pushed the envelope with tactics and issues — the Pledge of Allegiance and prison furloughs — that put his opponent, Michael Dukakis, on the defensive and left Democrats crying foul. In office, he was still in the shadow of former President Ronald Reagan, who in 1980 had selected him as vice president. Rhetorically, he was no Gipper.
As president, Bush proved that experience matters, that knowledge of the world is an asset, that careful and methodical can be more effective than big and bold, that responsibility to country takes precedence over loyalty to party, even if sometimes it comes at great cost, that compromise is not a dirty word.
His presidency came during a time of upheaval in the world. If Reagan’s presidency hastened the end of the Cold War, it was left to Bush to manage the decline and fall of the Soviet empire and to do so safely and without bloodshed.
