Episode 24: George H.W. Bush

The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

Today’s episode is all about George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, and the man who came to the Oval Office arguably with the greatest pre-presidential resume of all. Ok, Eisenhower makes a good bid in this fight, but consider Bush’s credentials: he was a war hero, successful businessman, a congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, chief envoy to China, head of the Republican National Committee, head of the CIA, and then for eight years Ronald Reagan’s vice president.

That’s a pretty darn impressive list, and Bush was a pretty darn impressive guy: tall, smart, confident, and friendly. But a long resume of loyal and competent service is not ultimately the same as long resume of leadership. Bush was a good soldier and loyal, but also modest—well, as modest as a politician could be—and wanted to be friends with everyone. A loyal subordinate throughout his career, voters were right to wonder what precisely Bush stood for in 1988 when he ran for president. A cover story in Newsweek perhaps put it best. Was Bush…a wimp? He’d followed orders and changed political positions so easily when prudence or politics required, did he actually have convictions of his own?
We were thrilled for this episode not only to call upon great historians, but participants in history as well. This is something easier done for recent presidents, of course, than for 19th century ones. So today we began our conversation speaking to Professor Tim Naftali of New York University and a regular contributor to CNN. Author of numerous books on diplomacy and politics, Tim’s claim to fame today was the biography of Bush 41 he did for the famed American Presidents Series. We then talked to Fred McClure, a veteran of the Bush Administration, and chief legislative aide to the president from 1989 to 1991. You’ll soon hear why Fred liked to joke that this job meant he was the president’s “chief spear-catcher,” except, it was no joke. Finally, we spoke to SMU’s Neil Foley, The Robert and Nancy Dedman Chair in History and author of, among other works, Mexicans and the Making of America.

Together our conversations highlighted two themes:

• That the politics of race don’t have to be central to a president’s agenda to leave their mark.
• Actually, actually the more we thought about it, we want to repeat the first theme: that the politics of race don’t have to be central to a president’s agenda to leave their mark on history.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.