Large problems landed in Bush’s inbox, and he worked with a Democratic-controlled Congress to resolve them – even if he received scant credit at the time.
On domestic policy, the rap sheet on George H. W. Bush read: “inbox president.”
In the wake of the Reagan Revolution, that translated to passivity and the absence of his own agenda. The 41st president himself confessed struggling with “the vision thing.”
Yet hindsight shows those assessments sold him short. Large problems landed in his inbox and Bush worked with a Democratic-controlled Congress to resolve them – even if he received scant credit at the time.
During his first year in the White House, Bush 41 and Congress enacted legislation to mop up the failing savings and loan industry. Ending that crisis, which festered through the Reagan years, ultimately cost financial institutions and taxpayers $481 billion. But it protected the savings of 25 million customers at insolvent S & Ls.
Bush’s second year produced bigger achievements.
First, he reached agreement with lawmakers on the Americans with Disabilities Act to outlaw discrimination against the disabled in employment and public accommodations. Then, business lobbies such as the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business warned it would cause economic disaster; today they hail it as a landmark civil rights law.
Next, they reached agreement on amendments to the Clean Air Act that eventually tamed the pollution-driven threat of acid rain.
