Second look at George H.W. Bush
Over the next few months, the Soviets changed their minds. They acquiesced to the surrender of their single most fundamental geopolitical claim. They acquiesced without violence and without getting much of anything in return. In the history of world diplomacy, there has never been a negotiation like this one. That work of negotiation fell not to the eloquent Ronald Reagan but to George H.W. Bush, who never saw a speech he didn’t mangle.
There is no “tear down this wall” clip by Bush. But it was during his presidency that the wall was in fact demolished — and not by some lucky accident but after months of agonizing work by Germans and Americans together.
There’s a saying in Hollywood: “He who will not toot his own horn, his horn shall not be tooted.” George Herbert Walker Bush is an inveterate non-horn-tooter. He did not toot his horn over the end of the Cold War. He did not toot his own horn over his deficit reductions. He believed that horn-tooting risked alienating the very people whose cooperation had made the accomplishment possible in the first place. Very likely, he was right, too.
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Shut up Frum, you’re an imbecile.
Bmore on January 3, 2013 at 8:10 PM
Agreed.
KCB on January 3, 2013 at 8:12 PM
Okay, who let Frumpy near the liquor cabinet again?
Thomas More on January 3, 2013 at 8:12 PM
It’s f**king New Year, HotAir! 3 days in and already you’re linking to this insufferable ass boil. Why do you hate us so?
HerneTheHunter on January 3, 2013 at 8:14 PM
Yikes! The whole piece read like an obituary. BTW, I wonder how Mr. Frum came out with E-Book ‘Why Romney Lost‘ only a week after the election?
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on January 3, 2013 at 8:15 PM
I could have had that book written a year before the election.
Stoic Patriot on January 3, 2013 at 8:16 PM
Nice, and very funny.
Thomas More on January 3, 2013 at 8:19 PM
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on January 3, 2013 at 8:19 PM
It was written dozens of times on these very threads for the last year.
astonerii on January 3, 2013 at 8:19 PM
What a moron. Is he really stupid enough to believe that really clever negotiations were the reason that the Soviets called it quits?
sharrukin on January 3, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Why yes, yes he is.
Rio Linda Refugee on January 3, 2013 at 8:23 PM
It was an obit. He just got tired of waiting for the man to croak. Bush was very very good at the few things a president is supposed to do in our system. In particular he ran American foreign policy as an expert, which he was after a carreer as ambassador to China, head of the CIA and two term VP. He built a coalition to support the first Gulf War and strengthened our alliances in Europe while peacefully ending the Cold War. His domestic policies were less successful, particularly agreeing to tax increases in exchange for future cuts that never materialized. Praise from a numbnuts like Frum should not be an indictment of Bush’s presidency.
Ted Torgerson on January 3, 2013 at 8:25 PM
Frum is what we call ‘Weapons Grade Stupid’.
sharrukin on January 3, 2013 at 8:28 PM
Keep those hilarious comments coming. Only humor is keeping me relatively sane.
Drained Brain on January 3, 2013 at 8:49 PM
Indeed, the poor chap is a blithering idiot.
Othniel on January 3, 2013 at 10:21 PM
Can’t HA have a resolution for no Frum in 2013?
besser tot als rot on January 3, 2013 at 10:37 PM
I thought this might be a serious article. Then I saw who wrote it.
RoadRunner on January 3, 2013 at 11:38 PM
BS. Go browse the Margaret Thatcher archives and read for yourself how pappy Bush did everything possible to stop the Berlin Wall from crumbling, going so far as even conspiring with the french to rebuild it. How he tried to shore up Gorbachev. What stopped him was none other than Maggie and Kohl. As for the USSR it was too far gone. Bottomline, Reagan won the cold war in spite of pappy.
Pappy’s legacy is “no new taxes”, mixed signals causing Saddam to invade Kuwait, the mixed signals leading to unnecessary decade of war crimes in the aftermath of Yugoslavia, mixed signals to the iraqi shites, Liberia, Somalia etc. And of course, don’t forget Tiananmen Square.
Sad to say, a lot of what slick Willy had to handle was precipitated by Pappy. There’s a reason why he only got one term, most remember the taxes, but riding just below the consciousness was Bush’s reluctance to defend freedom
In four years this mush headed new world orderist set the world for two decades and counting of wars and rumors of war. So spare me the Bush adulation via the historical rewrite
AH_C on January 4, 2013 at 1:51 AM
Au contraire. He was an expert real-politick and statist. His refusal to support freedom unabashedly still reverberates to this day – undoing gains achieved by Reagan. To wit Putin would not be presidenting today but for Pappy – Bush’s feckless betrayal of the principles of liberty and freedom gave us Yeltsin thus giving us Putin – a widely swinging pendulum from one extreme to the other)
AH_C on January 4, 2013 at 2:01 AM