H.W. Bush dies at 94

George H.W. Bush dies at 94

He presided over the end of the Cold War — and fathered another U.S. president.

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN

Former President George Herbert Walker Bush, who navigated the United States through the end of the Cold War and a realignment of American relations with the Middle East, died Friday. He was 94.

His death was confirmed in a statement released by his office. “George H.W. Bush was a man of highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for,” the statement quoted his son, former President George W. Bush, as saying.

Bush, who was elected Ronald Reagan’s vice president in 1980 after stints as CIA director and United Nations ambassador, also had foreign policy define his presidency. The Berlin Wall fell while he was in the White House, the U.S. began building relationships with the former Soviet bloc, and his Operation Desert Storm, which chased Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was the most popular American military intervention since World War II.

But facing a deep recession, the specter of his broken “Read my lips” pledge against raising taxes and a powerful third-party candidacy from Ross Perot, Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992 and the chance to construct a more robust national legacy.

In all, Bush spent 20 years in close proximity to the White House: four years as the 41st president of the United States, eight as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, plus another eight as his eldest son, George W. Bush, occupied the Oval Office.

Throughout, he occupied an increasingly rare spot in American politics: a moderate known for his policy expertise and personal rapport who often struggled on the stump and with other aspects of retail campaigning. Though largely out of sync with much of the contemporary Republican Party, he weighed in on the 2012 race, endorsing Mitt Romney.

Bush was also supportive of a 2016 campaign by his second-oldest son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, which nonetheless failed to yield a third Bush presidency.

Bush’s proudest political accomplishment, he said in one of his final interviews, with Parade magazine in 2012, was that he “had an honorable administration. We were relatively scandal-free and blessed by good people.” He also pointed to a policy achievement: “Something I guess I’d throw in there is the liberation of Kuwait.”

A son of wealthy Connecticut Sen. Prescott Bush, Bush built his political career around his image as a Texan — an oilman and a veteran. After political losses, he ran again — following up one failed Senate bid with another, and trying for the White House in 1980 before winning in 1988. He formed a deep, almost paternal relationship with Bill Clinton, the man who defeated him for reelection in 1992. And he helped his own son get to the White House — though that son’s legacy as a two-term war president overtook the father’s.

Bush stayed active after leaving the presidency, forming his relationship with Clinton while soliciting aid for relief from the late-2004 Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Soon after leaving the White House, he went skydiving over Arizona, fulfilling a decades-old promise from his days as a Navy pilot to jump out of a plane for pleasure and not under duress. He went skydiving again to mark his 75th birthday and every five years after that. His final jump came in June 2014, as he celebrated his 90th birthday with a tandem jump near his Kennebunkport, Maine, vacation home.

In recent years, Bush’s health declined. Suffering from vascular Parkinsonism and unable to move his legs, he made public appearances in a wheelchair. Still, he was hopeful that he would walk again and regain some vibrancy. In a letter to his family in 2012, he wrote: “Who knows, maybe they will come out with a new drug that makes legs bend easier, joints hurt less, drives go farther, memory come roaring back and all fears about falling off fishing rafts go away.”

“Aging is all right,” he said that year in an interview with granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager, a contributor to NBC’s “Today.” “Better than the alternative, not being here.”

In World War II, Bush served as a Naval aviator and fought in some of the largest air battles of the war. He married Barbara Pierce in January 1945, nine months before he left the Navy and returned to Connecticut to study at Yale University. (She passed away, after 73 years of marriage, in April 2018.) In 1948, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.

Then, Bush and his young family — which by then included son George Walker — headed to West Texas, where Bush built a career in the oil industry with the help of his father’s connections. Bush and his wife eventually had six children, five of whom survived to adulthood.

After succeeding in business as the president of Zapata Off-Shore Co., Bush turned to politics and ran for the Senate in 1964. He lost, but came roaring back two years later in a House race, becoming the first Republican to represent Houston. He took moderate positions, backing the Vietnam War while voting for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and won a seat on the Ways and Means Committee.

But his time in the House was relatively brief. His own ambitions and the urgings of President Richard Nixon led Bush to try again for the Senate in 1970, but he lost to Lloyd Bentsen, a defeat that seemed as though it might be the end of his political career.

It wasn’t, though. Appreciating Bush’s sacrifice of his House seat, Nixon tapped Bush to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and he was quickly and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. He did the job for two years until, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, Nixon asked him to take on the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.

After Nixon’s resignation, Bush served as President Gerald R. Ford’s envoy to China and, for just under a year, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Again, as when Nixon gave him the U.N. job, a president had given Bush one opportunity after another had been given to someone else — the CIA job came only after Ford considered Bush as a possible vice presidential running mate.

In 1980, Bush ran for his party’s presidential nomination as a moderate Republican with the government experience to be a strong chief executive. He focused on Iowa and narrowly won the caucuses there, but fell behind as the race moved on to New Hampshire and other states. After the last-minute collapse of a deal that would have made former President Ford his running mate, nominee Ronald Reagan tapped Bush — the man who had coined the phrase “voodoo economics” to describe the supply-side economics Reagan advocated.

Though Bush had criticized Reagan before joining the ticket, he kept a low profile once in Washington and aligned himself with Reagan’s policy positions. He did extensive international travel and, while never a close confidant of Reagan’s, did become a trusted member of his administration.

After Reagan’s two terms, Bush easily won the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, accepting it at the convention with a vow to lead “a kinder, gentler nation” without much change in course from Reagan’s presidency. He also pledged “Read my lips: no new taxes,” a promise on which he later had to renege.

That November, Bush and Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle trounced Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and running mate Lloyd Bentsen, the same man who had defeated Bush in the 1970 Senate race.

Bush took office as geopolitics began shifting rapidly. By 1991, he and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and began building a partnership between the two nations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. intervened military in Panama after its leader, Manuel Noriega, annulled the results of a democratic election. It was the first U.S. military action in more than four decades that was not part of the Cold War and eventually resulted in a democratic government that Bush lauded during a 1992 visit.

The biggest military action of Bush’s presidency was the Gulf War, prompted by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Bombing and a ground invasion drove out Hussein’s forces. But Bush opted against trying to oust Hussein, saying the U.S. would have “incurred incalculable human and political costs.” It was a decision that many in Bush’s world would come later to regret, as George W. Bush chose to invade Iraq in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Domestically, Bush was less successful.

With a Democratic majority in Congress, Bush was forced to agree to tax increases and spending cuts in 1990, infuriating many Republicans. But it was Bush’s inattention to the declining economy that did in his 1992 reelection bid: Exit polls showed that 69 percent of those who voted for Bill Clinton and 72 percent of those who backed independent candidate Ross Perot made their decision based on their views of the candidates’ plans to revive the economy and create jobs.

Bush was a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association but resigned in 1995 after its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, described federal law enforcement agents as “jack-booted thugs” who wanted to “attack law abiding citizens.” Citing the stories of Secret Service agents and others who had served well, Bush said he could no longer be a member of a group that would not repudiate such an “unwarranted attack.”

After Bush left the White House, two of his sons — George and Jeb — followed him into politics, running for governor of Texas and Florida, respectively, in 1994. Only George won that year, but Jeb tried again four years later and won. He spent two terms as Florida’s governor, and led the state during the recount of the 2000 presidential vote there, which by a close margin went to George.

Bush was proud of his eldest son for winning the presidency but never directly advised him. His own shortcomings in some ways motivated his son, who in 1994 told a friend: “Never underestimate what you can learn from a failed presidency.” The younger Bush was eager to take up his father’s unfinished business and referred to Hussein as “the guy who tried to kill my dad” as he waged the Iraq War.

Since leaving the White House, the younger Bush has turned more to his father’s example, working on service projects with former President Bill Clinton and keeping a low profile. He reflected on his father’s career in the 2014’s “41: A Portrait of My Father,” a book that he described as “a love story” and not “an objective analysis.”

“It’s a story of an extraordinary man, in my judgment, the finest one-term president our country has ever had,” the 43rd president said in November at a launch event at his library. The book includes the younger Bush’s revelation that his father had considered not running for re-election in 1992 out of concern for a third son, Neil, who faced legal troubles.

Though Bush’s next two successors besides his son were both Democrats, the 41st president was able to build strong relationships with Clinton and President Barack Obama.

The younger Bush often jokes that Clinton is his “brother from another mother,” and Barbara Bush said in 2012 that Clinton “thinks of George as the father he never had. Truthfully. I mean that as a compliment. He’s been very thoughtful about calling and he’s a good fellow.”

For all the warmth that later developed, losing the presidency to Clinton was “a terrible, awful feeling,” Bush told his granddaughter Jenna. “I really wanted to win and worked hard. Later on, people said, ‘Well, he didn’t really care,’ which is crazy. I worked my heart out.”

While Obama rose to national prominence as Bush’s health began to deteriorate, they were still able to cultivate a bond across several meetings, including the 41st president’s visit to the White House in July 2013.

“Our country is a better and stronger force for good in the world because more and more, we are people that serve,” Obama said at an event celebrating Bush’s Points of Light Foundation. “We are surely a kinder and gentler nation because of you and we can’t thank you enough.”

In early 2014, Bush greeted Obama on the tarmac in Houston, his wheelchair positioned at the foot of the stairs to Air Force One. Obama later described it to historian Douglas Brinkley as “one of the kindest things he had experienced as president.”

In February 2017, he and his wife participated in the coin toss for the New England Patriots-Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl matchup being played in Houston. On Nov. 25, 2017, he became the longest living president in U.S. history, surpassing Gerald Ford.