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Bush the elder completes his life work
George Bush, that is, former president George H.W. Bush, the Bush who ran as Reagan’s heir, then trashed Reaganism; the Bush who made the most fulsome promise in American political history not to raise taxes, then raised them and joked, “Read my hips”; the Bush who spent a year noisily opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1991 as a “quota” bill, then signed it; the Bush who drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and urged Shi’ites and Kurds to rise up in rebellion against Hussein, then went golfing while Hussein slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites and Kurds; and, of course the Bush who ran such a listless, meaningless campaign for re-election in 1992 that the country was saddled with President Bill Clinton, the Debaucher of America; that George Bush has become best buddies with the same Bill Clinton, having him for an extended visit at his Kennebunkport home, playing golf with him every day, joshing around with him in public, treating him as part of the Bush family, talking about how he, Bush, may be the father Clinton never had, the whole works. Thus Bush completes his life work: first, through his utter lack of political conviction, he enabled the Great Stainmaker to become president, and now, through his very public friendship with him, he wipes out his sins and legitimizes him, and, by so doing, completes the trashing of America’s standards that occurred under Clinton’s presidency.
(I sent a note to Lucianne Goldberg about this. Email entry |