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Ohio University OHIO Open Library All Forum Articles College of Arts & Sciences Forum 6-30-2014 The Elder Statesman: George H. W. Bush in Retrospect Ohio University College of Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/cas_forum_all Recommended Citation Ohio University College of Arts & Sciences, "The Elder Statesman: George H. W. Bush in Retrospect" (2014). All Forum Articles. 734. https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/cas_forum_all/734 This News Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences Forum at OHIO Open Library. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Forum Articles by an authorized administrator of OHIO Open Library. For more information, please contact deborded@ohio.edu. The Elder Statesman: George H. W. Bush in RetrospectJune 30, 2014Categories: In the News, Students in the NewsTags: Aaron Brown, American Diplomacy, Contemporary History Institute news, history experts, history graduateresearch, history news, in the news, students in the newsPresident George H.W. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush take their seats onday two of the Republican National Convention in 2008. (Photo by JustinSullivan/Getty Images)By Aaron Brown and Mirco Reimerreprinted from American Diplomacy(Aaron Brown is a History Ph.D. candidate at Ohio University.)More than 20 years after leaving office, George Herbert Walker Bush finally seems to step out of Ronald Reagan’sshadow. While Bush the Elder never was a president who could speak to people`s hopes and dreams like the likes ofKennedy, Reagan or Obama, America’s 41st president had a steady diplomatic hand which served him, Americans, andthe world well. Bush might not have been transformational in his objectives or inspirational in his style, but he presidedsuccessfully over one of the most complex and overlapping global evolutions in the twentieth century.While Jeb Bush seems to be the hottest name in (Republican) town and George W. Bush attracts media headlines with hispaintings of animals and foreign leaders, George H. W. Bush — America’s 41st president — almost seems to have beenforgotten. Recently, however, the limelight has shifted and more than two decades after leaving the White House and 25years after his inauguration, the spotlight is back on George Herbert Walker Bush. Benefiting from a wave of historicalrevisionism, America’s 41st president, once largely portrayed as the biggest incumbent loser since William Howard Taft,is today portrayed as the most popular former president of the past half century, according to Gallup polls.“History is beginning to recognize that George Bush was the best one-term president in American history,” James Baker,the former secretary of state and a friend of Bush the Elder, recently told the New York Times. While much of Bush theElder’s rehabilitation previously seems to have been the result of the former president’s pleasant personality and personaldecency — and, obviously, his funny socks — American academics and journalists are now also starting to reassess the41st`s presidency.In a time were his son George W. Bush brought the U.S. into a quagmire in Iraq and Barack Obama has to deal with aresurgent Russia, a Sunni insurgency in Iraq and Syria, and transatlantic tensions, George H. W. Bush’s foreign policystands out as the gold standard of American leadership. Facing one of the most complex and overlapping globalevolutions since Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of World War II, Bush the Elder’s administration guided Americawell through years of global upheaval. Therefore, the presidents’ stellar leadership in historic times of upheaval can serveas a role model for future and current American presidents. Any American president would be well advised to ask himselfor herself: “What would Bush Sr. do?”A Steady HandThe collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was the most transformative event of the late 20th century.George H. W. Bush played a decisive role in these developments. The 41st president faced a dramatically changingworld, as the Cold War ended, the Communist empire broke up, and the Berlin Wall fell. By trying to engage Sovietleader Mikhail Gorbachev and then pursuing to integrate the new Russia into a new world order, the stakes for Bush theElder were high. His game plan was controversial and his opponents thought the president was naïve, but in the end,Bush succeeded. The president brought France and Britain around on the issue of German reunification whilesimultaneously blocking Soviet/Russian attempts to keep Germany out of the western alliance.It is worth to remember that the main reason the end of the Cold War was such an extraordinary event was that althougha great power — the Soviet Union — had committed suicide, the transition was largely peaceful. Historically, greatpowers never “die in bed.” Rather, they tend to unleash a major war before they breathe their last breath as did Hitler’sNazi Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Under Bush the Elder, however, a great power actually diedin bed. Under the most treacherous of circumstances, the Bush administration kept calm and delivered a superbperformance. As Stanford’s Josef Joffe has noted, Bush’s diplomacy stands as one of the greatest moments in the historyof American statecraft.The successful German transition and German unification is barely discussed today — since the focus seems to be onGermany’s new strong role in Europe and within the European Union. In addition, German reunification is today oftenviewed as the natural result of the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), but it is important to highlightthat events, of course, could have evolved differently. Had Bush overplayed his hand, as Lyndon B. Johnson didconcerning Vietnam, Bush could easily have undercut Gorbachev’s support back home, potentially triggering a backlashfor Germany and the entire continent. George H. W. Bush’s leadership during this time might have lacked Reagan’sinspirational flourishes but it was compensated by the presidents’ steady diplomatic hand. Bush recognized that trueleadership sometimes meant doing less, not more. While these outcomes may appear inevitable from today’s perspective,they could very well have turned out differently had another person occupied the White House.Ending the Cold War in Iraq and PanamaBush’s realist foreign policy extended beyond Europe as well. While taking great pains not to “rub salt into the SovietUnion’s wounds,” the president was also aware that the United States needed to maintain its ability to influence worldevents. The U.S., still reeling in some ways from the Vietnam debacle of the 1960s and 70s, would refrain fromcommitting its military to lengthy campaigns abroad. But it would take decisive, swift action against regimes it viewed asa threat to world peace.When dictator, drug trafficker, and former CIA asset Manuel Noriega assumed control of Panama in the mid-1980s, hewas a useful partner in Reagan’s fight against communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua. But as the Cold War ground to ahalt, Noriega became less of an ally and more of an embarrassment, particularly after allegations of money launderingand drug dealing on behalf of a brutal Colombian drug cartel. Once it became apparent that Noriega would use force tomaintain his grip on power (he sent gangs of thugs into the streets of Panama City to beat up his opponents), the Bushadministration decided that the Panamanian strongman should not have control over the prized Panama Canal and thathis ouster was imperative. When reports surfaced in late 1989 that Americans living in Panama were being harassed byNoriega’s supporters, Bush decided to send in 28,000 troops to arrest the leader. Dubbed Operation Just Cause, thelargest U.S. military intervention since the Vietnam War was largely a success (only 23 American troops lost their lives).Noriega remains in prison to this day.Another foreign policy challenge arose in the summer of 1990 when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded his neighborKuwait, effectively gaining control of 21 percent of the world’s oil supply. Saddam had long resented Kuwait for its oilwealth and leveled accusations that it was stealing Iraqi oil through “slant drilling.” After a devastating war withneighbor Iran, Iraq was at its weakest point in years. Saddam, believing that such a maneuver would go unchallenged,decided to turn tiny Kuwait into the “19th province of Iraq.” The Bush administration and its allies, an internationalcoalition of 35 countries, responded to this blatant violation of international law with Operation Desert Shield. Thealliance successfully ejected Saddam from Kuwait, and suffered few casualties in the process.Though most of the world supported Bush’s wars, the interventions in Panama and Kuwait did not go unchallenged.Human rights activists decried the punishing levels of violence unleashed on unsuspecting civilians in Panama City andIraqi capital Baghdad as a result of the invasions. But more noticeable was the lack of condemnation from one longtimeAmerican foe – Moscow. In fact, the Soviet Union even supported the American-led effort to contain Saddam. Somescholars have argued that the Soviets’ silence during the invasion of Panama and the war against Saddam signaled theend of the Cold War. This is debatable, of course, but it appeared that Bush’s skillful diplomacy in Europe was paying offelsewhere.Bush steps out of Reagan’s ShadowThe historical revisionism concerning Bush the Elder’s presidency is, to some degree, a function of the perspective thatcomes with the passage of time. More than 20 years after leaving office, Bush seems no longer to stand in the shadow ofRonald Reagan, and Americans — tired of being on a constant war footing — increasingly seem to appreciate Bush’scompetence as president during a consequential time.To be sure, George H. W. Bush was never a president who could speak to people’s hopes and dreams like John F.Kennedy, for example, could. Bush the Elder did not have “the vision thing,” as then vice-president himself had quippedin January 1987 in an issue of Time. Maybe, George H. W. Bush failed to articulate his policy positions in a compellingand coherent manner. But the 41st president was a pragmatist, a result-oriented man who was grounded in the realities ofthe world. Rather than operating from a standpoint of how the world ought to be, he looked at the world as it was. AsJoseph S. Nye JR, professor at Harvard University, put in his most recent book Presidential Leadership and the Creationof the America Era:“While transformational presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan changed how Americans seethe world, transactional presidents like Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush were sometimes moreeffective and more ethical… Bush was not transformational in his objectives or inspirational in his style, buthe presided successfully over a major structural transformation from a bipolar to a unipolar world. If any ofthe balls that Bush was juggling had been dropped, the consequences could have been disastrous.”In times of increasing political polarization, gridlock and a toxic political climate in Washington, George H. W. Bush,therefore, stands out as one of a kind: The last of a dying breed, the last true American statesman. While Bush was one ofthe most qualified candidates ever to assume the office of president of the United States, he ultimately — for a number ofreasons — failed to convince the American public to give him another term in office. Consequently, Bush has beenlabelled an average president, and the most common evaluation of his presidency is that he failed domestically but didwell foreign policy wise. As keen observers of American politics know domestic issues tend to trump foreign policy — aphenomenon Bush experienced in the 1992 election when, in the minds of the American electorate, his foreign policyachievements were not good enough to overshadow domestic issues and an economic recession.The Legacy Thing“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” Barack Obama said, well before his2012 re-election. Maybe this assessment should be applied to Bush the Elder, too. In a time were Americans mostly havehad foreign policy rookies sitting in the White House, it is worth looking back at a president who was well-served by hisexperience in World War II, being a U.S. envoy to the United Nations, U.S. ambassador to China, CIA director, andRonald Reagan’s vice president for eight years. As the National Interest has noted: “The perilous situation unfolding inUkraine under President Obama and the debacle in Iraq unleashed by the younger George Bush should neverthelessremind us that prudent statesmanship is easy to take for granted.”Speaking to Time’s Jon Meacham about his legacy, Bush the Elder observed: “I think there’s been a certain revisionism…I’m surprised people remember because I feel like I’ve gone away, out of the game, all that kind of stuff. I haven’t beenparticularly interested in the legacy thing, except hoping that historians get it right, which I think they will.”The passage of time is essential in formulating a true understanding of any presidency. Obviously, the historicalassessment of Bush’s presidency and legacy is still evolving. Only after partisan battles have cooled and a policy legacyis fully matured, a balanced assessment can be made. The same is the case regarding the 41st presidents’ place in history.As it happens, history seems not yet to be done with George H. W. Bush. Neither should we.

The Elder Statesman: George H. W. Bush in Retrospect

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The Elder Statesman: George H. W. Bush in Retrospect

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