George H.W. Bush, 41st President of the US dead at 94: Cold War warrior, who spent a lifetime in high public office and created an American political dynasty passes away eight months after his wife Barbara
George H.W. Bush was the catalyst that built the new Republican Party.His broken tax pledge in 1990 empowered anti-government conservatives and moved the GOP ever further to the right. The party has never been the same since.
George H.W. Bush addresses the Republican National Convention in New Orleans after accepting his party’s nomination on Aug. 18, 1988. (George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum/Reuters)
DAN BALZ, WASHINGTON POST
The statement in the name of then-President George H.W. Bush was posted quietly in the White House press room 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 and 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.
Two years after that, the House was in Republican hands for the first time in 40 years, and the dominant figure in the party was House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was the antithesis of the defeated president in so many ways. The party began to shift from a philosophy of smaller government to one of anti-government, particularly anti-Washington.
The conflicting interests of Bush and the Gingrich forces continued for the duration of Bush’s presidency. Gingrich’s wing saw conflict with the Democrats as essential to creating sharp differences between the parties; Bush saw cooperation with congressional Democrats in the name of effective governing as essential for the country and, he hoped, for winning reelection as president. On that, he proved mistaken.
A recession that he seemed unable to manage, a skilled opponent in then-Gov. Bill Clinton and the entry of independent candidate Ross Perot combined to end the Bush presidency after a single term. As other Republicans lamented the fall of a president whom they much admired, those in the forefront of creating the new Republican Party were relieved that Bush had been defeated.
Bush died Friday at age 94. He will be remembered for many things. His long and 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.
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.
He was not above rough politics. His 1988 campaign will be remembered as one in which he pushed the envelope with tactics and issues that put his opponent, Michael Dukakis, on the defensive and left Democrats crying foul.
Bush Made Willie Horton an Issue in 1988, and the Racial Scars Are Still Fresh
PETER BAKER, NY TIMES
Mr. Bush’s successful campaign for the presidency in 1988 was marked in part by the racially charged politics of crime that continues to reverberate to this day. The Willie Horton episode and the political advertising that came to epitomize it remain among the most controversial chapters in modern politics, a precursor to campaigns to come and a decisive force that influenced criminal justice policy for decades.
Mr. Bush had, from the start, portrayed Governor Dukakis as soft on crime. His diffidence in disowning these extreme manifestations of his theme conveys cynicism. Worse, these events dramatize the need to control the flow of sewer money outside the official campaigns.
Willie Horton was a black murder convict who raped a Maryland woman and stabbed her companion while on weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison. Massachusetts was wrong to furlough a murderer sentenced to life without parole. Governor Dukakis inherited the furlough program from his Republican predecessor and eventually ended it - too slowly.
But Willie Horton is not unique. Many states and the Federal Government give furloughs. Other prisoners on furlough have committed murder. Nevertheless, Mr. Bush has flogged Governor Dukakis with the case for months.
“The reason why the Willie Horton ad is so important in the political landscape — it wasn’t just about a racist ad that misrepresented the furlough process,” said Marcia Chatelain, a Georgetown University professor of African-American history who teaches a class on race and racism in the White House. “But it also taught the Democrats that in order to win elections, they have to mirror some of the racially inflected language of tough on crime.”
The wisdom of the Massachusetts furlough program was open to debate aside from race. Releasing nonviolent offenders on weekends to help ease re-entry into society was the goal, but freeing violent convicts raised questions about security, and such release programs have receded in the decades since 1988.
“What crossed the line was not that he was raising the issue of crime itself because crime was a big issue, and that’s fair game,” said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University professor and the author of “Republic of Spin,” about political messaging. “But to use the image of this threatening black man — people call it a dog whistle; it was a pretty clear whistle.”
The fear of Willie Horton continues to haunt politicians today. When President Barack Obama was trying to forge a bipartisan coalition to overhaul the criminal justice system to ease sentencing laws that many in both parties believe went too far, some lawmakers worried that any change that resulted in the release of someone who would then go on to commit another violent crime could be political suicide.
Mr. Bush expressed no regret for the Horton ad, and some of his longtime allies have long argued that he got a bad rap for something that was not really of his making. Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, was the first to try to wrap the Horton case around Mr. Dukakis’s neck during the Democratic primaries that year.
By summer, Mr. Bush picked up the theme, citing the case during speeches, and by fall, his campaign began airing an ad attacking the Massachusetts furlough program, showing a series of prisoners walking through a revolving door. But that Bush campaign ad did not mention Mr. Horton.
The one that would be remembered for years to come was produced not by the Bush campaign but by an operative named Larry McCarthy working for an ostensibly independent group called the National Security Political Action Committee. The ad, called “Weekend Passes,” singled out Horton, showing a picture of his scowling face as the narrator described his torture and rape of the Maryland couple. In the end, it was shown only briefly on cable television, but its impact was magnified by repeated coverage on television newscasts.
Mr. Bush’s advisers had been focused on Mr. Horton for months. “If I can make Willie Horton a household name, we’ll win the election,” said Lee Atwater, (above with Bush) the campaign strategist. He later referred to making Horton “Dukakis’s running mate.” Roger Ailes, another Bush strategist, said, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.”
A little more than two years later, when stricken with a cancer that would take his life, Mr. Atwater repented the hardball tactics used in 1988. He said he particularly regretted saying he would make Mr. Horton into Mr. Dukakis’s running mate “because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.”
What was never clear was how involved Mr. Bush was in crafting the strategy. But as Josh King, the author of “Off Script,” a book about political stagecraft, and a student of the 1988 race, put it, “He was willing to employ campaign aides who would use the barest of knuckles in pursuit of the goal of humiliating and destroying the opposing candidate.”
But it was not an aberration in his career, as Rebecca J. Kavanagh, senior staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society in New York City, pointed out on Twitter. Bush attacked the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to curry favor with Texas conservatives. As president, he vetoed a civil rights act that would have prevented discrimination in employment, and a voter registration bill intended to register millions of minority voters.
A little more than two years later, when stricken with a cancer that would take his life, Mr. Atwater repented the hardball tactics used in 1988. He said he particularly regretted saying he would make Mr. Horton into Mr. Dukakis’s running mate “because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.”
What was never clear was how involved Mr. Bush was in crafting the strategy. But as Josh King, the author of “Off Script,” a book about political stagecraft, and a student of the 1988 race, put it, “He was willing to employ campaign aides who would use the barest of knuckles in pursuit of the goal of humiliating and destroying the opposing candidate.”
But it was not an aberration in his career, as Rebecca J. Kavanagh, senior staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society in New York City, pointed out on Twitter. Bush attacked the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to curry favor with Texas conservatives. As president, he vetoed a civil rights act that would have prevented discrimination in employment, and a voter registration bill intended to register millions of minority voters.