David M. Shribman

We may not be looking forward to the November election — the polls tell us that — but this is not a country that likes to look back. Yet at this fraught moment, it might be salubrious to look back — back, back, back, as the sportscaster Chris Berman might put it, to the 41st president and to the life lessons he would have taught us as a nation, if only we had listened. 

We’ll never reach agreement on the issues that marked his presidency between 1989 and 1993. Instead, the nation seems to yearn for the courtly elegance, the steely character, the intuitive generosity of spirit, and the mature judgment of a president it spurned after one term. 

George Herbert Walker Bush was not everybody’s favorite president. He may be everybody’s favorite role model.

No member of the Bush family — a family that accounts for election to the House and Senate, a stint as director of central intelligence, an appointment as chief American delegate to China, four terms as governor of giant states, eight years as vice president, and 12 as president — likely voted for, or sought to extend the legacy of, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But each of them, especially the 41st president, would endorse FDR’s comments published just after he was elected in 1932: 

“The presidency is not merely an administrative office. That is the least of it… It is preeminently a place of moral leadership.” 

I read that excerpt to Roger Porter, who worked for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Bush and who now teaches a course on the American presidency at Harvard. He had an immediate reaction:

“Character matters because to effectively lead, presidents have to have the country behind them, not necessarily agreeing with them on every policy but trusting their judgment and their instincts,” he said. “Trust is something that is hard to earn and easy to destroy. Presidents who are great always remember that and act in ways that engender both the trust and respect of those who support them and those who disagree with them — but still trust them. At the end of the day, it is character that matters more than any other single quality.”

That’s probably why Jean Becker, who for a quarter-century was Bush’s chief of staff and who wrote a book about him, was asked by her editor to write yet another. “The world is not done with him,” he said. The result is “Character Matters … and Other Life Lessons From George H.W. Bush,” to be published in a few days. 

The book opens with some reflections from James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and longtime Bush friend. “Sadly today,” he wrote in a foreword, “modesty and mindfulness have become vanishing virtues as braggadocio and pomposity too often rule the day.”

Here, from the pages of Becker’s book, are some life lessons from the man who said one of his proudest achievements was being one of the founders of the YMCA in Midland, Texas:

— Selflessness. “I saw repeatedly the absence of meanness and hatred in President Bush. And so the biggest lesson he taught me, by his example, was the importance of living a life of service and a life with plenty of room for joy.” (Marlin Fitzwater, longtime Bush press spokesman)

— Optimism. “Civility will return to Washington eventually. The excesses condoned by the press will give way to reason and fair play. Personalities will change and our system will have proved that it works — more slowly than some would want — less efficiently than some would decree — but it works and gives us — even in adversity — great stability.” (Bush, in a letter to his children while chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate years — a period during which, he told them, “I expect it has not been easy for you to have your dad be head of the RNC.”) 

— Reverence for humanity. “I guess what I want you to know as a father is this: Every Human life is precious. When the question is asked ‘How many lives are you willing to sacrifice’ — it tears at my heart. The answer, of course, is none — none at all.” (Bush, in another letter to his children, on the eve of the first Gulf War. He added, poignantly, “every human life is precious — the little Iraqi kids’ too.”)

— Simple humanity. Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas was at the National Governors Association annual meeting in Portland, Maine, when the governors were invited to a cookout at Vice President Bush’s house. “Chelsea, who was 3 years old then, marched up and said she needed to go to the bathroom. The vice president of the United States took her by the hand and led her there himself.” (Clinton, who later would defeat Bush in the 1992 presidential election, added, “Nobody who knew George would have been surprised by that.”)

— Perspective. The 8-year-old son of White House staffer Ginny Mulberger wrote Bush asking him why he wanted to be president. “I had already run for president, losing to President Reagan,” he wrote in a handwritten note. “I felt I could help the country and do good things as president. So I ran again in 1988 and won, and I loved it.”

— Acceptance of criticism. In a note to The New York Times‘ Maureen Dowd, he wrote: “I reserve the right to whine, to not read, to use profanity, but if you ever get really hurt or if you ever get really down and need a shoulder to cry on or just need a friend — give me a call. I’ll be there for you. I’ll not let you down. Now, go on out and knock my knickers off.”

— Modesty: “Yes, I am the George Bush that once was president of the United States of America.” (His essay in the Yale 50th Reunion yearbook)

The other day, I had occasion to speak to Bobbie Kilberg, who was deputy assistant to the president for public liaison and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Bush years. “George Herbert Walker Bush was the most ethical and empathetic person I have ever known,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone like him and won’t meet anyone like him again.” The world is not done with George Bush yet.

A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.