As is customary for a U.S. president's death, George H.W. Bush's passing inspires reminiscence, even for Americans less engaged in current events.
Bush personified a background disappearing from the upper echelons of public service-the son of a WASP elite, he nevertheless volunteered for military combat, compiling a heroic war record with humility before ascending the ladder of corporate America and politics.
When Bush entered the White House in 1989, he presided over a nation just beginning to feel the symptoms of socioeconomic dysfunction.
The Bush years are often linked with Francis Fukuyama's "End of history" thesis, with the 41st president carefully navigating America through a prosperous, unipolar world after the Soviet Union's momentous collapse.
This impression, especially after a brief recession, proved fateful when Bill Clinton prevailed over Bush in the 1992 presidential election.
As Daniel McCarthy has observed, "The problems America faces now-in foreign policy, economics, and even with multiculturalism and immigration-were already glaring when Bush was president. He failed to address them then, and now they are of a much greater magnitude."
History will judge whether it was already collapsing by the Bush years, when America stood on the cusp of the technological, demographic, and economic changes remaking the country today.
https://www.city-journal.org/george-hw-bush
Bush personified a background disappearing from the upper echelons of public service-the son of a WASP elite, he nevertheless volunteered for military combat, compiling a heroic war record with humility before ascending the ladder of corporate America and politics.
When Bush entered the White House in 1989, he presided over a nation just beginning to feel the symptoms of socioeconomic dysfunction.
The Bush years are often linked with Francis Fukuyama's "End of history" thesis, with the 41st president carefully navigating America through a prosperous, unipolar world after the Soviet Union's momentous collapse.
This impression, especially after a brief recession, proved fateful when Bill Clinton prevailed over Bush in the 1992 presidential election.
As Daniel McCarthy has observed, "The problems America faces now-in foreign policy, economics, and even with multiculturalism and immigration-were already glaring when Bush was president. He failed to address them then, and now they are of a much greater magnitude."
History will judge whether it was already collapsing by the Bush years, when America stood on the cusp of the technological, demographic, and economic changes remaking the country today.
https://www.city-journal.org/george-hw-bush
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