George Herbert Walker Bush

I am sometimes reminded that for many of us, George Herbert Walker Bush was, during his Presidency, a symbol of the cynicism and brutality of a dawning corporatist world order. And I cringe: how good we had it, to have that guy as our bad guy. His “kinder, gentler nation” was not to be. His rationalist statesmanship was the last of its kind in the White House. His world order was patrician, but compassionate. And he walked the walk, even if he wasn’t so good at talking the talk thing. I did not support him politically, and I do not do so retroactively — but I know he would have respected that choice and, had the occasion arisen, been capable of a serious conversion about that. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and who knows how long it’ll last, but it was built by people like 41.