The best, or luckiest, or both, politicians don’t often have to pander for votes. They are either charismatic and articulate enough to create a vision that exceeds the details of its parts, or are able to cash in on the ideological homogeneity of the area they represent. For every Beto O’Rourke, who almost upset swimming relentlessly upstream in Texas, there is a Duncan Hunter Jr., who won re-election as a devout Trumpie while under indictment for overt corruption. American politics takes all shapes and sizes. Yet and still, in the main, we prefer our candidates stand for something and show at least some backbone for sticking with and defending positions through political headwinds they inevitabley will face.
There were different reasons George HW Bush was not a great candidate for any office he ran for during his political career. He wasn’t particularly adept at connecting with strangers over small talk. Nor did he possess a passion for change he was chomping at the bit to tell people about. But I suspect what dimmed his enthusiasm the most at the retail level of electoral politics was his disdain for pandering, which early on he learned was often a requirement for victory. His discomfort for adroit flexibility on issues was matched by his inability to spin the blowback it engendered. It’s no coincidence that the sharpest stake to his second term Presidential fortunes was the ineptitude of his defense for abandoning a previous pledge he never wanted to make.
In 1964, as a young war hero running for a Congressional seat in the hustings of Texas oil country, HW embraced the evolving GOP Southern Strategy and went all in against LBJ’s Civil Rights Act. It would be the first of many chapters in the saga of Bush’s struggles with doing the right thing on race, and it was a miserable failure. Not only did he lose the primary, but the strategy left an ugly aftertaste. He later fully admitted his pandering in 64’ was wrong, and it served as a lesson. In 1968, with the comfort that comes with running unopposed for his second term in the House, Bush made amends by joining Republican moderates in supporting the Fair Housing Act, a move that helped reinforce enduring distrust by right wingers that HW could be counted on.
Throughout his eight years as Reagan’s VP, Bush held fast to the principle that his job required 24/7 team play, and anything but fully supporting the Administration’s frequently far right agenda was not an option. Of course, doing so conveniently enhanced the ideological bona fides he would need for the 88’ primary season to dispatch the likes of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan, but HW was very quick to tack toward the center even before the nomination was fully in hand. On issues like abortion, gun control and tax pledges he was clearly uncomfortable tossing red meat around. To HW’s mind’s eye, his candidacy was defined by the competence of a resume full of check marks, not the emotion of continuing any “revolution” his predecessor ushered in. Governing, not changing political landscapes, would be the hallmark of his time in office.
But the road to the White House was not as straightforward; Lee Atwater had his own set of rules for running a campaign… no rules at all. Whatever comfort zone HW thought existed for him to bask in his patrician’s sense of right and wrong was not anything the morally vacant bestie of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone recognized.
Anybody who has earned a living selling things knows making promises is a double-edged sword, razor sharp on both sides. Long-term success in sales requires repeat and referred business. The surest sale is one to a previously satisfied client. However, first they have to become a client, and that’s where the line between promising what you and your product can deliver and the limitations reality exerts come into conflict. Promising anything a prospect wants to hear, in spite of a clear understanding some expectations aren’t viable, may get you the business, but will surely create problems later in the customer satisfaction department. Many companies and the sales people they employ don’t care about future considerations when pursuing new business, and will say whatever is required…. thus, the negative caricature of the salesman, and the enduring image of the beleaguered American consumer.
Presidential politics is not a speck different, which candidate Bush learned the hard way in 88’ and beyond. When HW entreated for all to “read my lips” and promised no tax increases, he came fully into conflict with the requisites competence and responsible stewardship in the office he sought would demand. When the Willie Horton ad poured racist toxicity into his campaign’s narrative, he understood how Faustian the bargain had become. And while his reticence didn’t stop him from pursuing both avenues to get over the finish line – which most contend he would have reached without either compromise of his innate sensibilities – it did render him completely inadequate to finessing the fallout they inevitably produced when re-election time came around in 92’. He learned the hard way it’s next to impossible succeeding as only a partial hypocrite, sticking just a couple of toes in the swamp. Bush was never all in with his deal with the devil… so in 92’ it was rescinded, and his fate in the history books was sealed, a hapless one-termer, merely keeping the chair warm in the transition from the bold ideology of Reaganism to the nimble expediency of Bill Clinton.
The Trump Presidency affords HW a larger slice at historical relevance than he enjoyed before nihilism’s rise to the White House. Now, like the others in the elite group he just departed, Bush’s tenure as POTUS affords a stark contrast to the nadir the office now suffers.
The HW years were jammed with international challenges he confronted with a level of seriousness and restraint we can currently only reflect back on with satisfied nostalgia as the rabid imbecile we most recently installed shames our country and endangers the world. But perhaps the real dichotomy we should appreciate is Bush’s tortured relationship with political expediency compared to Trump’s minute-to-minute efforts at satisfying his wretched core’s mindless grievance. Maybe what we should hold closest as we bury another US institution is his cognizance that a “right thing” existed, even if his human frailties compromised his ability to embrace it.
The lessons HW learned painfully from his failures punctuate a system with an ability to enforce the consequences of bad choices made in the fog of naked ambition. Whether Trump will suffer those same repercussions may foretell if the system itself is fully endangered and may not survive. Our appreciation of the good faith public servants like HW aspired to at least reminds us of how much we stand to lose, and should strengthen our resolve to protect it. BC