Dec 012018New York, NYStatementHillary and I mourn the passing of President George H.W. Bush, and give thanks for his great long life of service, love, and friendship.
I will be forever grateful for the friendship we formed. From the moment I met him as a young governor invited to his home in Kennebunkport, I was struck by the kindness he showed to Chelsea, by his innate and genuine decency, and by his devotion to Barbara, his children, and their growing brood.
Few Americans have been—or will ever be—able to match President Bush’s record of service to the United States and the joy he took every day from it; from his military service in World War II, to his work in Congress, the United Nations, China, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Vice Presidency and the Presidency, where he worked to move the post Cold War world toward greater unity, peace, and freedom.
He never stopped serving. I saw it up close, working with him on tsunami relief in Asia and here at home after Hurricane Katrina. His remarkable leadership and great heart were always on full display.
I am profoundly grateful for every minute I spent with President Bush and will always hold our friendship as one of my life’s greatest gifts.
Our hearts and prayers are with George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro, their families, and the entire Bush clan.
***UPDATED TO INCLUDE THIS***
Apparently, appropriately, the Texas event has been postponed.
The roots of the mainstream media hatred for the Clintons lay in the 1992 presidential election. They never forgave Bill Clinton for beating George H. W. Bush in that election. And they certainly never forgot. It is the reason they so ruthlessly knee-capped Al Gore in 2000 and even more ruthlessly brutalized HRC in 2008 and 2016. The media’s bias is not ideological but class based. People who insist Hillary is “the establishment” are missing the point. The establishment never considered either Clinton part of THEIR circle. And it is the media establishment who determine “the establishment”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are so right. The Clintons were considered “hillbillies” from Arkansas. No pun intended!
LikeLike
I will not be watching all the cable news hagiography of Bush 41, but I understand Andrea Mitchell is still inaccurately claiming that Ross Perot cost George Bush the 1992 election. What Perot did do is cost Clinton a popular vote majority, a fact which both the Republican party and the media have continually used to cast doubt on his legitimacy as president. The same party and media who become apoplectic if anyone suggests Trump’s presidency is illegitimate even as evidence piles up that he STOLE the Electoral College with the help of an adversarial foreign power.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brassy,
You are absolutely right on target in all of your assessments above.
Now, for the next several days, Bush will be made out to be a saint despite some questionable reports about his actions throughout his career. History, after all, is written by men and they never miss a chance to glorify themselves whenever possible, and especially after they die. They conveniently ignore all of the questionable actions taken while they were alive.
Women are simply written out of history.
LikeLike
And Tom Brokaw is still gainfully employed by NBC despite several credible allegations of sexual harassment recently. Those allegations disappeared down the memory hole very quickly. Certain media men are untouchable. Chris Matthews is another.
LikeLike
I don’t know. I’m a little more sanguine about this than either of you. The relationships among the Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas, look, to me, like a ray of light that shines through all the soot and smoke spread by the toxic regime under which we now live. I had wondered how they were going to schedule arrangements since Bill and Hillary have an engagement on the 4th in Sugarland. When I saw that the 5th would be the National Day of Mourning, I knew they had taken the Clintons’ schedule into consideration.
H.W. was the last of his generation to serve as president. When Bill took the torch, he was the first of my generation – the boomers. Party politics aside, there was a decency and reserve in that transition. Bill Clinton respected his predecessor. He did not go around attacking and blaming. So different from today’s atmosphere where the very young are learning a terrible lesson starting with “American carnage” at the inauguration and all of the attacks on the Obama administration and on the Clintons continuing every time Individual-1 speaks at rallies.
H.W. told us he wanted a kinder, gentler nation. We have come so far from that in only a little more than 22 months. The Bushes did not endorse this regime. We know several of them voted for HRC. They may not agree with us on everything, but they are decent people. H.W. was a decent man.
The media, for whatever their corporate and individual reasons, will do what they do. MoDo has another Clinton hatchet job out there, and I cannot even tolerate Mitchell’s face on the screen. She was the biggest purveyor of the “Hillary is sick” meme. But the bigger story is not theirs.
We will see these special families together in the next days. The words of the media won’t matter as much as the images. We saw a picture today of Individual-1 isolating himself from the whole world at the G 20 in BA. In normal times, were it either Bush, Bill, Obama, or Hillary, the lines would be forming for sidebar bilaterals. Not for this guy.
He has also isolated himself from this special club. I am amazed that he says he is going, but then he did not make it to several Veterans Day events. I will be interested to see how he approaches them after slamming them as he does.
Silent in all of this are the Carters. I am pretty sure they will take a day off from building houses for needy people.
LikeLike
Still, I didn’t say a negative word about Bush 41. My feelings about him are complicated, but he clearly never held a grudge against Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, the media did and does. Mo Do would be Exhibit A as evidence of that long-standing grudge. I am acutely aware that Bush 41 voted for Hillary and said so publicly. No small thing. There are things in his history which are problematic and should not be brushed aside because he has passed. However, people can and do change over time. He deserves to be honored. He also deserves to be remembered accurately.
LikeLike
It is interesting that Hillary supporters on Twitter are so divided on George H. W.. Some can’t get past the less admirable stuff. Some, like you, prefer to focus on his long life of service and a political evolution that brought him to vote for Hillary. History will sort it all out.
LikeLike
I know you didn’t. I am sure history will have no problem keeping the problematic aspects on record. Isn’t that what Antony said? “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones….” Maybe I am a little nostalgic for the days when presidents condemned murders by tyrants and fought back against invasions of sovereign states instead of gassing refugees and caging babies.
I’m old enough to remember the 2000 recount, Jeb’s guarantee to his dad, and the fact that Roger Stone was called into that mess. The few days after a president or beloved Senator dies are not, for me, a time when I want to think about those things. That is for the history books.
Having said all that I still don’t know how we are here. Why wasn’t it Jeb against Hillary? Never mind the general election. We know what happened there. Who screwed with the Republican primaries? And why doesn’t anyone question that? Or care?
So for a few days, I’ll remember the good things about a decent man and mourn his passing more than I did his predecessor. He was better than his predecessor. And then I will go back to covering Hillary and counting the days till Nancy gets the gavel (32).
LikeLiked by 1 person
And Nancy sure made Ryan and Moulton look like the jerks they are! (Wait till some of these Beto for prez folks find out he voted for Ryan for speaker in 2016.)
LikeLike
They didn’t know who they were messing with. Nancy plays hardball.
LikeLike
HW’s passing knocked Bernie’s “Gathering” clean out of the news. Silver lining. Personally, I think they should have called it “The Shining”. Then Bernie could have popped out and announced, “I’m baaack!!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brassy,
Your comments about the sanders’ “gathering” were priceless and made me laugh out loud! I pray that sanders stays away from the 2020 presidential election because he would muck it up too for those who are truly qualified (which is not him).
BTW, what ever happened to bernie’s “revolution”? Anyone who runs for president because he wants to start a revolution for real change and then the minute he loses virtually disappears and never mentions it again makes one think he was just using these young people for his own political gain, don’t ya think? Sounds a lot like trump and how he’s fooled his base…hmmm….
BTW, Still4Hill, I understand your desire for peace amongst the various folks you mentioned above; however, Brassy is right that HW should be remembered “accurately”. The media is slobbering all over him as if he was devoid of any wrongdoing. Would they be so over the top for any woman who had achieved as much or more?! HW voted for Hillary primarily because of the disgusting way trump treated Jeb during the primary. What better way to piss off trump? I doubt HW voted for Hillary for any other reason.
LikeLike
I give HW the benefit of the doubt on why he voted for Hillary. His oldest son and his wife didn’t. He could have voted for someone else (God knows too many others did) or written someone in. He knew her and wasn’t buying the smears.
“The Gathering” was just a roundup of the usual Sanders suspects, none of whom voted for Hillary. Sanders is delusional if he thinks he can get Dem nomination by surrounding himself with surrogates who publicly rejected the previous nominee. And he’s still attacking the Dem party and never the Republican party!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am not trying to paint any pretty pictures. I am only relating what I have seen whenever these folks are together. The bios/obits are prepared well in advance of prominent people’s passings, and Karen Tumulty noted in hers that HW’s was a document that dated so far back that it has been through a good many revisions. Once you have seen one or two of the comprehensive bios on cable, you have seen it all. That’s why God created the remote, which I used liberally every time Bernie popped up on my screen this week.
These one-hour bios are not the history. They are tributes. The history is in books. Personally, I am glad to see HW getting due credit for some things that until now have been attributed to Reagan.
Just now on ABC Amy Robach said, “They had to remove several rows of seats on the plane to make room for President Bush.” The last time I heard that sentence it was “to make room for President Kennedy.”
As to Bernie and his revolution, just like everything else he pushed, the revolution had no central core. The Parkland kinds and March for Our Lives formed their own movement and had an enormous impact on the incoming 116th Congress that nothing Bernie ever said or did could have effected. He cannot co-opt their movement, and they are not going away. So he’s done.
LikeLike
Still4Hill,
You were, as usual, astute in your excellent points about Bush, who does deserve tributes for his work. I have just been soured by how history has completely ignored women. As Mrs. Adams said to John, “remember the ladies” when he was on his way to help design our Constitution and he promptly ignored her request!
If HW can receive such accolades for his service, I wonder if history will be as effusive in their tributes to Hillary and her lifelong service to her country when she passes? What I am concerned about is that she will NOT receive the accolades she deserves. Can we count on historians to no longer dismiss extraordinary women of our times and continue to leave them out of our history as they have in the past? Men could learn a lot from us women, if they would cease and desist from assuming they are superior and we are not worthy of their respect. Therein lies the problem that we have yet to resolve. I just don’t understand why we haven’t.
As for sanders, I hope you are right and “he is done.” I will never forgive him for how he tried to undermine Hillary after he lost the primary. I also can’t forgive him for how little he has achieved as both a congressman and a senator…and how he has never built consensus or coalitions in the 30 years he has been in Congress yet still believes he is presidential material. What arrogance! Much like trump, who should never have come near the WH, neither should sanders and for many of the same reasons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I understand your concern given that even women reporters were vulnerable to the propaganda we saw in the 2016 campaign. Andrea Mitchell loomed large. She has influenced many of her younger female colleagues at MSNBC. Now we know the source of that “Is Hillary sick?” meme. She took that bait bigtime. As I remember, she pushed it hard.
I think we saw something new this cycle with young people energized by their own concerns and women not only getting into the arena but with organizations like the ones Onward Together supports providing training and funding for them to run at every level.
I don’t think Bernie will ever again be able to coalesce that little army he had going in 2015/6. There are diehards for sure, and I see my friends complaining about them on social media. But the youth movement has found its message, and it is not his message. Further, his history prevents him from ever trying to co-opt it. They have established their own growing leadership and are very supportive of one another. They are coming. Bernie is going.
As for Trump … well that is the ick we live with daily, The cleansing rains cannot come too soon. But it will continue to get worse before it gets better. And the worse it gets, the better a short administration like HW’s looks. Except for Clarence Thomas, the damage was not great.
LikeLike
Still4Hill,
Thanks so much for your excellent observations. They are always appreciated.
Yes, Andrea is part of the reason women have such a difficult time moving forward because she has used her powerful position to undermine strong women like Hillary. Why? I have never figured out why she hates Hillary so much. What did Hillary ever do to her to cause such animosity?
Frankly, it is due to her inability to be fair in her coverage of women (she doesn’t seem to have the same prickly attitude towards the men), she “should be going” right along with Bernie who, too, has overstayed his welcome a long time ago.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What bothered me in the past week was seeing some of the younger women over there making the hero worship very clear on Twitter. I know Andrea holds a great deal of power over there. I can’t help but think that she holds unfair influence beyond her corporate role. Neither do I know exactly what her problem is with Hillary, but Hillary knows about it. I remember one gaggle on the Westchester tarmac before a campaign swing when she asked a pointed question, and Hillary made a comment that was a little oblique but indicated that Hillary was onto her. I might even have mentioned it here.
Odd how she latched onto the “health” meme when she was sometimes on the plane and knew very well the kind of schedule HRC was following. It was a busy enough schedule that Andrea was not always on the plane because… why? She couldn’t keep up the pace? That’s where her younger sycophants took over for her.
LikeLike
I’m sure these younger women believe they need her approval in order to move ahead in the industry! I suspect it would not be good for their careers to be on her bad side, considering how she has treated Hillary and other strong women (Andrea is very insecure). She never seemed concerned with the men’s health in her reporting. Take a good look at trump, he looks just as physically ill as he is mentally ill, but she always shows a deference to HIM.
Sadly, women have proven to be their own worst enemies and because of that unfortunate tendency, have inadvertently stood in the way of our achieving gender equality with men, which was our God given right since time began. I NEVER read in the New Testament Jesus ever preaching that women were inferior to men while he walked among us. That idea came from the men he came to enlighten. I guess if Jesus couldn’t convince them that is an indication of just how hard it will be to get men to accept women as equals! All the more reason for us to succeed.
I wonder what the world would be like today if Eve had had 2 daughters instead of 2 sons! It reminds me of a saying I’m sure you are familiar with: “In the beginning God made man and then he had a better idea!”
LikeLike
You’re probably right, at least about their chances for advancement at MSNBC. But this sway she holds over these younger women is as disturbing (to me anyway) as sexual harassment from the men is. What makes her any better than Matt Lauer?
LikeLike
Very good point about her hold over these women. While I don’t think she is any better than Matt Lauer on a certain level, I do suspect that these women would prefer her kind of dominance over Lauer’s, if you know what I mean. His power gave him an advantage that Andrea did not have which made it possible for Lauer to undermine their self-confidence and self-respect because of his being a man. Imagine how it would undermine your self esteem being locked in Lauer’s office thinking you were invited to discuss a story but be sexually assaulted instead.
Unfortunately, there are just so few women who have made it to the senior level that Andrea has achieved, so where else can these young women go? Of course, Andrea would not have lasted as long as she has if she hadn’t followed orders from the men at the top expecting her to report on certain figures as her male counterparts were. Andrea is under their thumb too.
I also believe that women like Hillary are a threat to women like Andrea because Hillary didn’t sell out to get ahead but Andrea did and is the primary reason she hates Hillary. Like I said, women are their own worst enemy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s just another side of the same coin. There may not be one to one representation, but the other side of the Lauer coin is the powerful woman holds sway over the future of young people. Mitchell may be the less toxic in that the young women have to kiss up to her. The more toxic is the one who promotes the young men ahead of the more qualified young women. That one doesn’t even give women a chance. I will never understand people who do not want others to benefit from opportunities they had. Like Paul Ryan who went through college with social security survivor benefits but wants to do away with those benefits for others. Just evil and spiteful.
LikeLike