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https://www.foxnews.com/us/george-h-w-bush-41st-president-of-the-united-states-dead-at-94


As with many political figures, you can nitpick about their faults and shortcomings, but I think history will be kind to George H.W. Bush. And already has been.

Arguably the most qualified person to ever run for president, and someone who mostly continued and solidified Reagan's legacy, and oversaw the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But also a president who was disappointingly not as conservative in his four years as his predecessor, oversaw the passing of NAFTA and GATT, and (along with Bill Clinton, George W., and Barack Obama) oversaw the shrinking of the middle class, the move toward his "New World Order" of globalism, and the offshoring of U.S. industry to southeast Asia, the rise of China, and in the wake of the Afghan war a power vaccuum that led to the rise of Al Qaida.

Bush was a moderate who did his best to put out fires globally before they spread into larger regional wars, such as Bosnia and Kuwait, and could have continued the war from Kuwait into Iraq to eliminate Saddam Hussein's threat, but chose not to for the bloodbath of civil war he, Cheney and James Baker thought it would create. And when the stalemate of no-fly-zones in Iraq (1991-2000) was used as a rationalization for 9-11-2001, Cheney and George W. Bush reversed that strategy and invaded Iraq to eliminate that festering problem. With obviously mixed results.

I think Bush only was prevented from getting re-elected in 1992 by independent candidate Ross Perot's taking 19% of the vote, that allowed Bill Clinton (as G-man has cited often) to win the election with 43% of the vote (mostly taking votes from Bush's fiscal-conservative base, including myself and most Republicans I knew at the time).

But Bush's presidency will no doubt be remembered for continuing Reagan's legacy, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Soviet influence over eastern Europe, and ultimately with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

Perhaps Bush will also be remembered for his civility and reaching across the aisle. He and Bill Clinton over the last three decades had become good friends before his death.






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The longest economic expansion started under Bush. I thought he was a conservative and a good President.


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Well, there's establishment-conservative, and then there's Reagan conservative. On many issues I agree, he was certainly far more conservative than Dukakis would have been.

In 1991, the head of the Heritage Foundation said in an interview: "We elected George H.W. Bush, and we got Michael Dukakis!" Certainly Bill Clinton and the Democrats in 1992 campaigned heavily on Bush's breaking his pledge (in 1988) "Read my lips, no new taxes", which when pressured by Democrats he eventually broke. And even so, added about a trillion to the national debt, most from the Persian Gulf War.

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Also interesting, in 1970, George H.W. Bush's political career was over. But when elected president, Nixon in a bipartisan gesture asked former Democrat Texas governor John Connally to be his Treasury Secretary.

 Quote:
TREASURY SECRETARY

In 1971, Republican President Nixon appointed the then Democrat Connally as Treasury Secretary. Before agreeing to take the appointment, however, Connally told Nixon that the president must find a position in the administration for George H. W. Bush, the Republican who had been defeated in November 1970 in a hard-fought U.S. Senate race against Democrat Lloyd M. Bentsen. Connally told Nixon that his taking the Treasury post would embarrass Bush, who had "labored in the vineyards" for Nixon's election as president, while Connally had supported Humphrey. Ben Barnes, then the lieutenant governor and originally a Connally ally, claims in his autobiography that Connally's insistence saved Bush's political career because the then former U.S. representative and twice-defeated Senate candidate relied on appointed offices to build a resume by which to seek the presidency in 1980 and again in 1988. Nixon hence named Bush as ambassador to the United Nations in order to secure Connally's services at Treasury. Barnes also said that he doubted George W. Bush could have become president in 2001 had Bush's father not first been given the string of federal appointments during the 1970s to strengthen the family's political viability.[17]


So without Connally's insistence, G.H.W. Bush's career would have been over, and he never would have been appointed U.N. Secretary, GOP Chairman, Ambassador to China, and Director of the CIA, to campaign on in 1980, and then Reagan's vice president for 8 years, all of which supremely qualified him to run in 1988.

And without Bush Sr being president in 1988-1992, George W. Bush never would have gotten the experience to run in 2000. All built on Connally pressing Nixon to find a place Bush.


Also the fact that Connally was in the convertible with JFK when he was shot (and Connally was injured as well by the same bullet that killed Kennedy), and Connally becomes a very interesting guy, who was at center stage in two pivotal moments of U.S. history.


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Man, the Bush tribute has been neverending for the last 24 hours on Fox News. I haven't seen any other news covered since he died.

They've interviewed pretty much every person who ever served in the Bush or Reagan administrations with him, as well as every reporter who knew him from covering his political career. I've turned it off a few times, not because I didn't like the guy, but just from the sheer overload.

John McCain's death got similar coverage, where it was more than a week devoted to McCain's life and political impact, and then funeral covered endlessly. And now the same treatment for George H.W. Bush. There's a limit to how much tribute one can absorb.


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Bye,H. I think you were a good president.

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 Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy


Well, there's establishment-conservative, and then there's Reagan conservative. On many issues I agree, he was certainly far more conservative than Dukakis would have been.

In 1991, the head of the Heritage Foundation said in an interview: "We elected George H.W. Bush, and we got Michael Dukakis!" Certainly Bill Clinton and the Democrats in 1992 campaigned heavily on Bush's breaking his pledge (in 1988) "Read my lips, no new taxes", which when pressured by Democrats he eventually broke. And even so, added about a trillion to the national debt, most from the Persian Gulf War.



Well I'll skip arguing with you and just leave it as my thinking of conservative being linked to being fiscally responsible. But actually I come from a more liberal state that pays its bills so things have changed.


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During the years of 1989-1993, I thought Bush Sr was a very good president. He kept smaller regional fires from blazing out of control into world wars. The 1991 recession was caused largely by a restructuring of our economy, causing millions employed in the military/defense sector to be uprooted from that shrinking field, causing a surplus of workers in the private sector tech industry.

It was only in retrospective that I saw any negatives to Bush's presidency, such as the rise of Al Qaida (the CIA didn't follow through in Afghanistan, since they were suddenly rather preoccupied with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe). And with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the downsizing of our military.
The effect of globalism, particularly NAFTA and GATT negotiated under Bush, resulted in a torrent of factories and jobs leaving the country, first to Mexico, and then to Southeast Asia, that is only now being reversed under Trump, renegotiating those contracts to the benefit of American workers. As NAFTA and GATT were passed by a bipartisan majority under both Bush Sr and Clinton, that was my first glimpse of the two-party system actually being one party, controlled by campaign finance and globalist corporations. Over time I gradually saw the influence of groups like the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminatti, the Rothschild bank, and the U.N., all having goals of undermining U.S. sovereignty in pursuit of a globalist world system. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, industry moving to China, and the coalition of nations in the Persian Gulf War, we saw the first move toward a truly global system while G.H.W. Bush was president.




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