George Herbert Walker Bush, And The Death Of WASP Culture

It's been several weeks since the death of George H.W. Bush, and quite a bit has happened since then, politically speaking.  I always get behind in my blogging around this time of year, and 2018 has been no exception.  I'll catch up with recent events in a few days, or at least do my best to do so.  But it's impossible for me to allow Bush's death and funeral, and the media frenzy surrounding both events, without using some of the bandwidth available to me to make a few observations.

Bush was a one-term president, which might surprise some of you who did not live through his presidency as I did.  If your view of him was or has been formed at least largely by the lionization of him by the MSM earlier this month, you would have thought that he was another FDR, someone who would have been elected to four terms had the Constitution permitted it.  The truth of the matter is that the administration of the 41st President, even from the most non-partisan of perspectives, a decidedly mixed bag, one that, in the end, was undone at the polls in no small part because of a weak economy, and a violation of a campaign promise not to raise taxes.

I noticed that one of the wire services pointed that fact--and fact it is, as Yoda might say--in announcing the news of his death on Twitter.  The tweet was immediately pounced upon by the usual right-wing media hookers looking for attention, and denounced by them as an insult to a deceased leader and World War II veteran.  As a consequence, the tweet was subsequently followed up by a "correction."  Well done, Michelle Malkin and your cohorts in libel; let's see you show the same posthumous respect to another one-term president and veteran, Jimmy Carter, when he passes away.  I for one am not holding my breath.

Fortunately, although the MSM is instantly and complete cowed by professional media-hunters like Malkin who love to "work the refs" to promote their lies, the Internet proved to provide greater diversity in assessments of Bush and his public life.  You can, for example, find a relatively complimentary piece here, one that also takes a number of Bush's critics to task for overlooking his accomplishments, including his volunteering to be a Navy pilot and his facilitation of a peaceful resolution to the Cold War.  As for the critics, you can certainly find them as well; this piece, and this one as well, do a fairly comprehensive job of cataloging Bush's various sins, although I'm shocked that neither of them mentions Bush's pioneering work in placing a sexual harasser, Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court for life, paving the way for Brett Kavanaugh to join him.

What made it perhaps somewhat easier for MSM outlets to lavish praise on Bush was his stature as one of the last Rockefeller Republicans on the national stage, someone whose devotion to Wall Street and gunboat diplomacy was tempered by a desire to work collectively with those on the other side of the ideological fence.  That desire is perhaps best reflected in the accomplishments for which I, as a card-carrying progressive Democrat, believe that he legitimately deserves genuine praise for achieving:  the budget deal that, in conjunction with the one subsequently passed by the Clinton Administration, paved the way for the prosperity of the 1990s (and, of course, required him to break his earlier no-new-taxes pledge), and the prosecution of Gulf War I against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.  Unlike the subsequent Gulf War prosecuted by Bush's son, GWI was based on principles of international law, with the consent and cooperation of the international community and the full authorization of Congress.  Bush's handling of GWI reflected a commitment to the pillars of the post-WWII order that subsequently characterized his dealings with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations in ending the Cold War.

No doubt those accomplishments, as well as perhaps others, were based on the fact that Bush built his entire political career on connections, building a business and political Rolodex one card at a time that took him all the way up the Washington ladder and earned him the nickname "Mr. Resume."  But a career built on connections can be something of a double-edged sword, depending on the nature of the connections themselves.  Two names can be pulled out of the Bush Rolodex to illustrate that point:  Roger Ailes, and Shafiq bin Laden.  The former helped Bush build a electoral strategy for the 1988 presidential election that was built on racism and challenges to the patriotism and mental competency of his opponent, Michael Dukakis.  The latter belongs to the family that used its access to American (gained through the Bush family) to savagely, tragically attack the United States on September 11, 2001, and change the history and culture of this country for the worse, perhaps forever.

I think it's precisely this mixed bag of his connections that informs, perhaps even dictated (in hindsight) the mixed bag that is George Bush's presidential legacy.  And I think that the bag is mixed in the first instance because Bush, lacking a true ideological compass, just grabbed for whatever connections he could get as he moved up the political ladder.  It didn't matter whether those connections were on the left or the right, whether they were friend or foe to this country, or whether they even genuinely liked Bush as much as he thought they like him.  All that mattered was that they could help him "move up."  And so, when he finally got to the top, he was beholden to too many people with too many conflicting interests to have a coherent presidency with a consistent focus and clear priorities.  You can find a more extensive discussion of this here.

So, then, why the orgy of MSM worship on the occasion of his death?

I don't think that it was really all about Bush, or his presidency, or his fondness for handwritten notes (which, ironically, underscores the "connections" dimension of his career).  I think that, in an age and a current presidency defined by racial animosity and the rise of the poor white class as the focus of our political debate, it was really a kind of media Viking funeral for the elite WASP culture into which Bush was born, and which for decades served in a number of ways to mediate the differences among the various demographic groups that make up America's famously multicultural mosaic.  That culture is largely gone, its survivors in political retreat, and nothing has emerged to replace it as a mediating force.  If anything, the Internet has emerged to further fracture an already fractured nation, while simultaneously giving it millions of "channels" by which to express its increasingly divided character.

But the elite WASP culture, however much it may have mitigated the influence of racism in America, also institutionalized it in order to preserve its credibility with poorer white Christians.  That institutionalized racism harmed generations of people of color, and denied the country as a whole the benefit of the dreams and the talents these people possessed.  And, even if WASPs themselves are in retreat as a political force, the racism (and, for that matter, sexism) they institutionalized still remains a sore subject in our national debate.

This is why the aforementioned orgy of worship is, with all due respect to Bush's family, friends, and other supporters, sadly and seriously misplaced.  True, Bush was a former president; he deserves a certain level of respect, and his passing is unquestionably a major news story.  But it is also an entirely appropriate to use the occasion of his death to take stock of his impact on the nation and its people.  The power of the presidency is such that we as a people need to properly take stock of a president's actions and inactions, for better and for worse.  And the natural and appropriate grief that an individual's death inspires should neither influence nor deter that assessment process.  This is one of the many sacrifices a president's family makes for the sake of their family member's service.  We owe them a debate carried on with respect.  But we owe all of us, for the sake of our democracy, an otherwise honest debate.

As one of the pieces linked above puts it:

A president lies in state, as Bush is to do beginning today, not because he is kind to his family or has delighted those closest to him with his thank-you notes and a patrician manner, though those stories are important for historians to gather. A president lies in state simply because he was president; because he held power over the fates of hundreds of millions of citizens, and the direction of the world.

How he used that power, or failed to use it, must be reckoned with by any who seek to fully understand his legacy.

Rest in peace, Mr. President.  Thank you for your service, and for your family's sacrifices.  And rest assured that the rest of us will continue to respect both of those things, no matter how much we may disagree with each other.  And we will continue to build a stronger, safer, more prosperous and peaceful nation on your legacy.