Another take on Bush’s legacy from TPM Reader JB …
I’ve been thinking a lot about the elder President Bush as he is remembered today, largely, for representing all the things his son did not as President, and which the current President does even less.
To Bush’s family and many friends, of course, he was much more than that. I don’t begrudge them any of their fond memories, or Bush the sometimes extravagant praise being thrown his way this week. He had real achievements to his credit, some of which are under-recognized today. Even this week, for example, we’re not hearing much about Bush’s role in the thankless task of cleaning up one of the least creditable products of Reagan’s tenure: a savings and loan crisis produced by federal determination to let a financial services industry regulate itself. Whatever he told his son about this episode must have fallen on very deaf ears indeed.
We’re now in the full tsunami of presidential mourning-cum-nostalgia for George H.W. Bush. As I wrote a couple days ago, the historical legacy is mixed and complicated, though it does include real achievements. Watching on cable news over the last 24 hours the tributes and praise have, for me at least, become close to overwhelming – almost as though Bush was a saint-like figure who walked the earth in a unique way and was an avatar of civility, goodness and universal affability and rectitude. In some ways, the nostalgia seems greater than it was even for Reagan, who was certainly a more historically consequential President and is embraced as the ideological saint of one of the two national political parties. Read More
Here’s yet another story based on reconciling our individual beliefs about our ethnic or racial identity with the results of DNA testing. It’s a good piece, with several twists. (I won’t give away the surprises.) But it does get at an issue I’ve thought about a lot as an historian and just as a lay person interested in science. Put simply, what if the report about your ancestry just isn’t true? Read More
It’s that time of year again, folks.
TPM’s 12th annual Golden Dukes are upon us and, much like 2017, this year gave us a seemingly bottomless pit of political disasters to consider.
George H.W. Bush’s death, like that of John McCain, has brought forth glowing tributes that are veiled critiques of our current president. In response, some commentators on the left have pointed to Bush’s flaws and failures – from his rejection of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 campaign and from the Iran-Contra scandal (of which he was an unnamed conspirator) to his tacit acceptance of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I want to sidestep this debate to say something 80 percent positive about one aspect of Bush’s foreign policy that most clearly came to the fore in his dealings with Europe, the Soviet Union and the Middle East.
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More or more these days you hear people drawing comparisons between our era and the 1850s, the decade before the outbreak of the US Civil War. There are great differences of course. But in both eras you see an intense political polarization, violence creeping into the realm of politics and a general failure of political institutions to contain or absorb great public controversies and disputes. To discuss this question and comparison I spoke to James McPherson, one of the preeminent Civil War historians of the last forty-plus years. I found it a fascinating conversation both about this pivotal decade from our past and about today. You can listen to it here.
As the country mourns the death of the first President Bush and considers his historical legacy, there is a very strong measure of nostalgia about his political career, his presidency and post-presidency. As there was after the death of Sen. John McCain, the encomiums are impossible to separate from the comparisons – implicit and increasingly explicit – with President Trump, a graceless egotist and predator who honors no code or set of values beyond self-aggrandizement. This harsh present reality forces a great deal of retrospective clean up and sanitization of Bush’s legacy, of which there was a good deal of good and a good deal that was not so good. Read More
When news came out earlier this week that Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman would meet to discuss the death of Jamal Khashoggi on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, I jokingly said it would likely begin with a high five. Well, Good Lord!, that actually seems to have literally happened, as you can see here.
Good Lord! I actually predicted this (maybe low energy high five or side five but still!) pic.twitter.com/2TXnl70V4o
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 30, 2018
TPM Reader MK shared some thoughts on this disturbing development … Read More
That’s amazing. A TPM Reader points out that just yesterday Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a speech at a big conference on … guess what? … enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – the one President Trump, Michael Cohen, Felix Sater and the President’s criminal brood might have a problem with. It was the American Conference Institute’s 35th International Conference on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Long and august title. This was just yesterday over in Maryland. Here’s the text of Rosenstein’s speech.
Here’s a noteworthy quote … Read More