By Adam Nagourney, Nov. 30, 2018<\/p>\n
George Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, who steered the nation through a tumultuous period in world affairs but was denied a second term after support for his presidency collapsed under the weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs, died on Friday night at his home in Houston. He was 94.<\/p>\n
His death, which was announced by his office, came less than eight months after that of his wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Bush had a form of Parkinson\u2019s disease that forced him to use a wheelchair or motorized scooter in recent years, and he had been in and out of hospitals during that time as his health declined. In April, a day after attending Mrs. Bush\u2019s funeral, he was treated for an infection that had spread to his blood. In 2013, he was in dire enough shape with bronchitis that former President George W. Bush, his son, solicited ideas for a eulogy<\/a>.<\/p>\n But he proved resilient each time. In 2013 he told well-wishers, through an aide, to \u201cput the harps back in the closet.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Bush, a Republican, was a transitional figure<\/a> in the White House, where he served from 1989 to 1993, capping a career of more than 40 years in public service. A decorated Navy pilot who was shot down in the Pacific in 1944, he was the last of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office.<\/p>\n Mr. Bush was a skilled bureaucratic and diplomatic player who, as president, helped end four decades of Cold War and the threat of nuclear engagement with a nuanced handling of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n Yet for all his success in the international arena, his presidency faltered as voters seemed to perceive him as detached from their everyday lives. In an election that turned on the economy, they repudiated Mr. Bush in 1992<\/a> and chose a relatively little-known Democratic governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, a baby boomer, ushering in a generational shift in American leadership.<\/p>\n If Mr. Bush\u2019s term helped close out one era abroad, it opened another. In January 1991 he assembled a global coalition<\/a> to eject Iraqi invaders from Kuwait, sending hundreds of thousands of troops in a triumphant military campaign that to many Americans helped purge the ghosts of Vietnam.<\/p>\n But the victory also brought years of American preoccupation with Iraq, leading to the decision by George W. Bush in 2003 to topple the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, in a war that taxed American resources and patience<\/a>.<\/p>\n The elder Mr. Bush entered the White House with one of the most impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9s of any president. He had been a two-term congressman from Texas, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president, under Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n And he achieved what no one had since Martin Van Buren in 1836: winning election to the presidency while serving as vice president. (Van Buren did so in the footsteps of Andrew Jackson.)<\/p>\n A son of wealth and a graduate of Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and Yale, Mr. Bush was schooled in the good manners and graciousness of New England privilege and civic responsibility. He liked to frame his public service as an answer to the call to duty, like the one that had sent him over the Pacific and into enemy fire as a 20-year-old. (\u201cThe cockpit was full of smoke and I was choking from it,\u201d he told his parents in a letter from the submarine that had plucked him from the sea.)<\/p>\n He underscored the theme of duty in accepting his party\u2019s nomination for the presidency in 1988 in New Orleans. \u201cI am a man who sees life in terms of missions \u2014 missions defined and missions completed,\u201d he told Republican delegates<\/a> in the Louisiana Superdome, acknowledging a swell of applause. He said he would \u201ckeep America moving forward\u201d and strive \u201cfor a better America.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat is my mission,\u201d he concluded, \u201cand I will complete it.\u201d<\/p>\n Tall, at 6 feet 2 inches, with an athlete\u2019s graceful gait, Mr. Bush was genial and gentlemanly, except in the throes of a tough campaign. (Admonished by his mother against self-promotion, Mr. Bush, an inveterate note writer, in his clipped diction avoided the first person singular pronoun.) He represented a \u201ckinder\u201d and \u201cgentler\u201d strain of Republicanism \u2014 the often-quoted words he used in his Inaugural Address<\/a> to describe his vision for the nation and the world \u2014 that has been all but buried in a seismic shift to the right in the party.<\/p>\n Mr. Bush\u2019s post-presidency brought talk of a political dynasty. The son of a United States senator, Prescott S. Bush<\/a>, Mr. Bush saw two of his own sons forge political careers that brought him a measure of redemption after he was ousted as commander in chief. George W. Bush<\/a> became the first son of a president since John Quincy Adams to follow his father to the White House. (Unlike the father, the son won re-election.) Another son, Jeb Bush<\/a>, was twice elected governor of Florida and ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2016.<\/p>\n As the elder Mr. Bush watched troubles envelop the eight-year presidency of his son, however, what had been a source of pride became a cause of distress, friends said. The contrast between the two President Bushes \u2014 41 and 43, as they came to call each other \u2014 served to burnish the father\u2019s reputation in later years. As the younger Mr. Bush\u2019s popularity fell, the elder Mr. Bush\u2019s public standing rose. Many Americans came to appreciate the restrained, seasoned leadership the 41st president had displayed; in an opinion poll in 2012, 59 percent expressed approval. Democrats, including President Barack Obama, praised the father as a way of rebuking the son.<\/p>\n It was a subject Mr. Bush avoided discussing in public but one he finally addressed in conversations with Jon Meacham, his biographer, in a book published in 2015<\/a>. Mr. Bush was quoted as saying that his son\u2019s administration had been harmed by a \u201chard line\u201d atmosphere that pushed an aggressive and ultimately self-destructive use of force around the world, and he placed the blame for that on men who had long been part of his own life and who became key figures in his son\u2019s orbit \u2014 Dick Cheney, his son\u2019s vice president, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, his son\u2019s secretary of defense, with whom the elder Mr. Bush had feuded.<\/p>\n \u201cI do worry about some of the rhetoric that was out there \u2014 some of it his, maybe, and some of it the people around him,\u201d Mr. Bush said in the Meacham book, \u201cDestiny and Power:<\/a> The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n He was particularly critical of Mr. Rumsfeld. \u201cI don\u2019t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president, having his iron-ass view of everything,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cRumsfeld was an arrogant fellow and self-assured, swagger.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Bush and his sons did not attend the Republican National Convention that nominated Donald J. Trump as its presidential candidate in 2016, and he pointedly did not endorse Mr. Trump in his race against Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n During the primary, Mr. Trump had repeatedly belittled Jeb Bush as \u201clow energy.\u201d Mr. Bush, who had entered the contest as the son of a president with an inside track for the nomination, was forced to withdraw by February.<\/p>\n After his loss in 1992 to Mr. Clinton,<\/a> in an election in which the billionaire independent candidate Ross Perot<\/a> won almost a fifth of the vote, Mr. and Mrs. Bush repaired to their home in Houston and to their oceanfront compound in Kennebunkport, Me. By his own account the loss had left him dispirited and feeling humiliated. But he did not quite retire.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nGenerations in Politics<\/h2>\n