Some Things Are Partisan, Some Are Just Dope
A totally dope move by George H.W. Bush:
The young boy is Patrick. He’s 2-years-old. He has Leukemia. His father is part of the former President’s Secret Service detail. Bush the Senior joined other members of his security staff to show their solidarity for young Patrick.
Fellow former President Bill Clinton weighed in with a pretty cool Tweet himself.
41, you look great. Love what you’re doing. MT @jgm41 41 shaved his head to show solidarity w 2-year-old Patrick
— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) July 24, 2013
There is a lot of stuff that divides us, some of it justifiable, some of it stupid. Hopefully Bush’s gesture is the sort of thing that all of us, regardless of where we might fall in the political sphere, can support as gracefully as Clinton.
H.W. was always the sane Bush. I voted for him in 2002 because the Democrats had not run a compelling candidate, they’d run some unknown good ole’ boy from Arkansas. Plus unlike a lot of people, I didn’t mind that he’d pulled us out of Iraq before toppling Saddam and that he’d raised taxes to eliminate the deficit (which his tax increases later did during the Clinton administration) while at the same time cutting spending by sending hundreds of old B-52 bombers to the scrapyard and putting thousands of tanks into storage into Kuwait and the troops who’d used them on a plane back to civilian life, giving Bill Clinton the peace dividend that led to the technology boom that Clinton helped foster with tech-friendly policies. On a scale of 1 to 10, I put H.W. at about a 7, he wasn’t the most dynamic of Presidents but he was sane and competent, which made him definitely unusual compared to too many recent Presidents :(. Which of course is why he could never win re-election in the Republican Party… proving your sanity is a sure-fired way to alienate the Republican base, even though Barry Goldwater was a liberal compared to George H.W. Bush. So it goes. It does’t surprise me that H.W. did a decent thing. He never struck me as a vindictive or vicious man — just very conservative in the old sense of the word.Report
I think you mean 1992…..
I don’t know if I would say Goldwater was a liberal compared to H.W. Bush. H.W. Bush signed the American with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
I don’t see Goldwater doing either…..Report
I know someone who met H.W. personally (in Japan). Never had a bad word to say about the man.
And yeah, HW got vilified for Reagan’s economic policies, not his own. 4 year gap between changing economic policies and when they hit (Carter’s policies made Reagan’s recovery)… until we get to GW Bush, whose policies were really that dunderheaded that they hit while he was still in office.Report
There’s a story told about Bill Clinton and Bush41. Both were ex-presidents by this time. They were touring the world, doing tsunami relief. Bill Clinton always admired Bush41 and treated him with deference. The two were flying in a bizjet on a long haul across the ocean. There was only one bed on the aircraft and Clinton gave it to Bush41, ostensibly for just a nap.
Bush41 awoke some hours later, to find Bill Clinton asleep, stretched out in the aisle of the aircraft, his coat under his head.
Bush43 got wind of this incident and his opinion of Bill Clinton went up considerably. Bush43 is nothing if not loyal, especially to his father. Bush41 had lived in the shadow of his own father and great things had been expected of him. Bush41 was at one point the youngest pilot in the US Navy and had been shot down.
I admired Bush41, though I was never a big fan of him, politically. He was, as Badtux says, a conservative of the old school, which is to say a man of duty and honour. Not all Bush41 did was wise or good: his role in Iran-Contra was more than a little dogshit on his heel but I’ve had some on mine. On the whole he was — and still is — a fundamentally decent man.Report
He’s 89. How much could there have been to shave?Report
Yeah…big thumbs up for Bush the Elder.Report
He was always struck me as a pretty cool dude and a good politician and a decent man. {{But contra Blaise, I was in Guatemala in ’91 and the civil war was definitely not over.}}Report
He’s a fine man and it’s a great thing to do, but those are unrelated. I can easily picture Bush the Younger doing the same thing, and he’s a deeply flawed man guilty of immense crimes.Report
Good point. This is exactly the kind of thing I could see Bush Jr. doing, and sincerely, but that wouldn’t in my mind absolve him of everything else he’d done. Bush Sr. was, in my opinion and in retrospect, a better president.Report
The thing is, it doesn’t matter how good a President he was. If someone does something cool, we should say as much. It doesn’t mean you can’t also think the guy was a shitty President or a bad man. There are people I work with whom I don’t like personally or professionally. But every now and then they do something that is deserving of accolades, and I don’t hesitate to offer it to them accordingly.Report
There’s one of those “someecards” that seems to sum it up:
http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/MjAxMS05YjFkMzUwNDEwNjE1ZjQ4Report
I’d be more impressed if he were also spending time trying to get his party not to cut medical and supportive care to sick kids and their families.Report
The gross thing is that politicians can only be praised for their good acts after they retire from politics. If Biden or Ryan did something decent, half the country wouldn’t acknowledge it, and the other half would do so for partisan points.Report
Eh. Booker saved some people from a burning building.
Zimmerman helped a guy out of a car.
People do do good things.
May it outweigh the bad that they do.Report
“I don’t know that Biden shaved his head in solidarity as much as plagiarized the hairstyle of someone else.”Report
You didn’t bald that.Report
Magnificent.Report
Well, it is quite possible that if they did it when they were in office they would in fact be doing it for partisan points. We as the public have no real way of knowing what lies in the hearts of politicians.Report