George H. W. Bush: A Remembrance

George H. W. Bush: A Remembrance

Former President George H.W. Bush, whose 100th birthday was observed on June 12, was the nicest politician I ever met.

I do not say that lightly. I met hundreds of politicians at the local, state, and national levels over a 45-year newspaper reporting career. Bush stood out from all of them – a real gentleman in every best sense of the word.

Many, if not most, of my news-reporting colleagues assigned to the "White House bear" when he was president had similar views, although none of us pulled our punches while covering him. Despite an extensive list of accomplishments during his first term, Bush lost his 1992 bid for reelection to Bill Clinton, due in large part to the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot and an ailing economy that Clinton effectively managed to keep front and center in his winning campaign.

Bush died in 2018 at age 94 after a well-lived and eventful life. Not only was he president of the United States, he also was vice president for eight years under Ronald Reagan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. envoy to China, a two-term congressman from Texas, and an oil-well entrepreneur.

Moreover, upon graduating from prep school in 1942, he immediately enlisted at age 18 in the U.S. Navy and became one of its youngest combat pilots flying off aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II. For his heroism, the Navy awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross, the fourth-highest U.S. military award.

A daredevil well into his senior years, Bush celebrated his 75th, 80th, 85th, and 90th birthdays by parachuting out of flying airplanes. Earlier this week, former Bush White House staffers gathered at Texas A&M’s Bush Presidential Library to mark his 100th birthday, honor his legacy, and reminisce about the eventful four years of his presidency. News reporters who covered the White House during his presidency joined the festivities last Monday via Zoom.

And an eventful and consequential four Bush years it was:

The fall of the Berlin Wall, which began the collapse of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired, thanks in large part to Bush’s quiet, careful diplomacy.
A short and successful Persian Gulf War where U.S. and allied troops drove Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army out of Kuwait with minimal casualties.
Low-key diplomatic relations with Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the Cold War and paved the way for a peaceful unification of Germany under the NATO umbrella.

Through it all, Bush refused to take high-profile victory laps for fear of embarrassing Gorbachev and fouling up their personal relationship so crucial to diplomatic progress. The public Bush was polite to a fault. He was even more down-to-earth in private. Here is a little story that reveals the human side of Bush rarely seen by the public:

It takes place 5½ years after he left office on a sunny September morning in coastal Maine. I went to the Bush family’s seaside summer home in Kennebunkport to interview him and his former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, on the publication of their new book, “A World Transformed,” a study of the post-Cold War landscape.

Bush and Scowcroft had just returned from an early-morning round of golf and declared that they were starving. Barbara Bush was working in her flower garden and was not about to go in and make breakfast. So, Bush appointed himself cook. He went into the kitchen, put a pot of coffee on the stove, and began making toast, feeding four slices at a time into a countertop toaster. By the time he finished, he had toasted an entire loaf of whole-wheat bread, creating a teetering pile that resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

He then loaded the toast, coffee pot, cups, and plates onto a tray and carefully carried it into the chintz-covered living room, where picture windows framed a view of Atlantic Ocean waves breaking against the rocks just 50 feet in front of us. Needless to say, a former president cooking and serving a meal to a newspaper reporter is an exceedingly rare occurrence, and yet it seemed natural for this most gracious of men.

And as the three of us sat down to eat, I admired the view while Bush and Scowcroft exchanged wisecracks about who shot the better round of golf that morning. Jokes aside, Bush was clearly having the most fun. He had a little tin shaker filled with cinnamon. And like a kid sneaking cookies from the cookie jar, he generously sprinkled cinnamon on his toast.

“Don’t tell Barbara,” he giggled. “If she sees this, she’ll kill me!”

Richard Benedetto is a retired USA Today White House correspondent and columnist. He covered New York State government and politics in Albany for Gannett News Service, 1976-82. He has taught political science and journalism at American University and in The Fund For American Studies programs at Georgetown and George Mason Universities for the past 17 years.