The nation said goodbye to former President Jimmy Carter last week, and as all of the living former Presidents and many of the former Vice-Presidents gathered to pay their respects it was impossible, for those of us old enough to have lived through each of their administrations to make comparisons among them. I was only a baby when JFK was assassinated, but I have been at least somewhat aware of every President since. I remember LBJ and the good that he did through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the establishment of Medicare, contrasted with the grave misfortune of failing to end the war in Vietnam. I was even more aware of President Nixon and the Watergate scandal. I remember the affable, if somewhat clumsy Gerald Ford, who found himself catapulted to an office that he hadn’t sought, through a very bizarre set of circumstances. There was the humble and deeply religious Jimmy Carter, followed by movie star turned politician, Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton, who ushered in a new generation as the first Baby Boomer President, followed by the bumbling “W.,” Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
However, just after Ronald Reagan and just before Bill Clinton, came “41”, George Herbert Walker Bush, a former vice-president and one-term POTUS, whose administration flew a bit under my radar until now. “Daddy Bush,” the term which some people began applying to him after his son, George W., became “Bush 43” in the first father-son combination since John and John Quincy Adams, was POTUS from January 1989 through January 1993. I have been a lifelong Democrat, casting my first ever vote for Walter Mondale in 1984, and as such never paid much attention to presidents from the Republican side of the aisle. I recalled Bush 41’s famous, “…read my lips, no new taxes,” statement from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, (Bush) a statement which would come back to bite him when he actually did enact new taxes through the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1990 (Congress) less than a year after Bush took office. Additionally, President Bush took the highly controversial step of initiating Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, in response the Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait (U. S. Army Center of Military History).
There were some lighter moments that I recall as well, such as Bush’s famous hatred of broccoli (Carman) and an embarrassing incident in which he fainted at a state dinner in Japan after vomiting on Japanese prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa (FP Explainers).
What is perhaps most surprising to me is that I remember as much from Bush 41’s presidency as I do, given what was going on in my own life at the time. In the summer of 1989, my then husband and I, who were both employed at the same large insurance company, agreed to transfer from Indiana, where we had both lived for our entire lives, to a new office that was being opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Married just two years, we embarked on the adventure, not only of a major move, but also into the terrifying world of home ownership. This was back in the days when a combined income of just $85,000 could purchase this 3 bedroom, 2 bath, ranch home on one quarter of an acre for about $75,000.
By the time George H.W. Bush left office in January 1993, we had not only moved to Tulsa, but we’d also had a baby, (in 1990) moved again to take new jobs at the company’s corporate headquarters (1991) and gotten divorced (1993).
As the second inauguration of Donald Trump rapidly approaches it’s impossible not to face the future with a significant level of anxiety and fear. In order to combat those feelings and avoid a rapid descent into total insanity, I find myself seeking inspiring words and ideals from the past as a way of insulating myself from complete panic as we plunge headlong into a very uncertain future. Although I can’t remember exactly where now, I recently heard either a reporter or online content creator reference George H.W. Bush’s wish for a “kinder gentler nation.” While I vaguely remembered that phrase from 41’s time in office, I couldn’t clearly recall the context. However, if there was ever a time when we needed a path to a kinder gentler nation, it would have to be now.
So, I returned to Bush 41’s RNC acceptance speech for a closer read and I was struck how much the Bush of 1988 seems to be more closely aligned with my own personal values, the values of the Democratic Party, and the core of American values that I remember learning as a child than the current Republican President-Elect. For example, about midway through the speech Bush says, “I am guided by certain traditions. One, is that there is a God and He is good, and His love, while free, has a self-imposed cost: we must be good to one other” (Bush). I mean, can you imagine the “Orange Menace” saying something like that? Or this, “I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure the disabled are included in the mainstream. For too long they’ve been left out. But they’re not going to be left out anymore” (Bush). This is in deep contrast to Mr. Trump’s offensive impression of disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski (Donald Trump Under Fire for Mocking Disabled Reporter).
Bush also said, “…I hope to stand for a new harmony, a greater tolerance. We’ve come far, but I think we need a new harmony among the races in our country. And we’re on a journey into a new century, and we’ve got to leave that tired old baggage of bigotry behind…I want a kinder, and gentler nation (Bush). When placed in juxtaposition with Trump’s assertion that immigrants are “…poisoning the blood of our country” (Gibson) it is enough to cause metaphorical whiplash.
As I write this, Donald Trump will take the Oath of Office for a second time in just four days. In 2017, Trump gave a signature “America First” speech in which he spoke about protecting “our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs” (Trump). While Ronald Reagan spoke of America as a “shining city on a hill” (Reagan) and Bush 41 referred to the country as “a thousand points of light” (Bush, Inaugural Address of George H.W. Bush), Trump’s last inaugural address became known as “the American carnage” speech (Trump). George W. Bush, perhaps said it best, when he was quoted by several people sitting near him at Trump’s 2017 inauguration as having said, at the conclusion of Trump’s remarks, “That was some weird shit” (Ali).
As Donald Trump’s rhetoric has become increasingly divisive and unhinged of late, who knows what he will say this time around. Like many others, I plan to skip watching the inauguration in an effort to demonstrate to the incoming President, through low TV readings that at least half of the American public feels that his crass hatefulness is not ok. Instead, I think I’ll rewatch Bush 41’s RNC speech in which he said:
“America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle…to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world…A President is neither prince nor pope…I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easy-goingness about each other’s attitudes and ways of life” (Bush, 1988 Republican National Convention Acceptance Address).
I don’t know if it is possible to round up the hate, bigotry, and misogyny that Donald Trump has release from Pandora’s box, but maybe, by remembering the hopeful words of those who have come before him we can, at the very least, try.
Works Cited
Ali, Yashar. “What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump’s Inauguration.” New Yorker Magazine 29 March 2017. 13 January 2025. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thought-of-trumps-inauguration.html.
Bush, George H.W. “1988 Republican National Convention Acceptance Address.” 1988 August 18. American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. 12 January 2025. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/georgehbush1988rnc.htm.
—. “Inaugural Address of George H.W. Bush.” 20 January 1989. The Avalon Project. 13 January 2025. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/bush.asp.
Carman, Tim. “George H.W. Bush Never Wavered from His Hard Line on Broccoli.” The Washington Post 5 December 2018. 12 January 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2018/12/05/as-president-george-h-w-bush-never-wavered-from-his-hard-line-on-broccoli/.
Congress, 101st United States. “H.R. 5835 – Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990.” 15 October 1990. Congress.Gov. 12 January 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/house-bill/5835.
“Donald Trump Under Fire for Mocking Disabled Reporter.” 26 November 2015. BBC News. 12 January 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34930042.
FP Explainers. “History Today: George HW Bush Vomits on Japan PM.” 8 January 1992. Firstpost. 12 January 2025. https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/history-today-george-hw-bush-vomits-on-japan-pm-13849407.html.
Gibson, Ginger. Trump Says Immigrants are Poisoning the Blood of Our Country”. 17 December 2023. 12 January 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-immigrants-are-poisoning-blood-country-biden-campaign-liken-rcna130141.
Reagan, Ronald. “Farewell Address to the Nation.” 11 January 1989. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. 13 January 2025. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/farewell-address-nation.
Trump, Donald. “The Inaugural Address.” 20 January 2017. WhiteHouse.gov. 13 January 2025. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/.
U. S. Army Center of Military History. Operation Desert Storm. n.d. 12 January 2025. https://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/desert-storm/index.html.
quietlyradical 