Former President George H.W. Bush waves to the crowd at TEDECU Stadium in November 2015 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)
A common claim—made by a certain Internet troll who puts up an economics blog at nyt.com some years after he won the Nobel Prize—is that partisanship in Washington came on with Rep. Newt Gingrich’s Republican Congress in 1995. The new GOP majority chafed that it had to deal with President Bill Clinton and became obstreperous.
Before that, things were pretty swell in Washington city, as they used to call the place. Chris Matthews says that in the 1980s, Tip O’Neill’s Democratic Congress and President Ronald Reagan got on famously. The Last Gentleman was President George H.W. Bush, who brought big coalitions together in favor of moderate policies, even if the electorate would hound him from office after one term for being a compromiser. Noble man, he who was wiser and steadier than the moody and erratic voters.
The Last Gentleman… Apparently this was the working title, now ditched, of the rather official biography of Bush I. The book has come out as Destiny and Power, by Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer Jon Meacham. It’s a fascinating book, as it must be, chronicling the years of this man-on-the-spot who was CIA director, almost Gerald Ford’s Vice President, ambassador to China and the United Nations, Reagan’s Vice President, President, and father to another president. “Quincy” (after Adams) they nicknamed W. Should have been “Quincy!”
Bush’s career, his “resume,” was as formidable, extensive and high-echelon as they come in politics. You would think that therefore, this figure would have made some signal contributions to American political rhetoric. Indeed he did. Bush said two—and only two—consequential and lasting things as a national leader, two lines still alive and kicking in 21st century usage in the lexicon of public affairs, over his meaty career.
These were “voodoo economic policies” and “read my lips, no new taxes.”
It is not necessary to rehearse the meaning and context of these remarks because they remain go-to parts of our language, well understood instinctively by average guys and gals. Voodoo economics—ah yes, that refers to the argument floated now and then by cranks (and by Bush’s opponent in the 1980 presidential primary, Reagan, against whom Bush directed the remark), that tax cuts spur growth and increase revenues, a theoretical dream and practical impossibility.
“Read my lips, no new taxes”— this is the chief modern exhibit of the very essence of politicians, their propensity to fib. Who cites “I am not a crook” (or for that matter, “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” not to say, in a disconcerting counter-example, “I did cut down that cherry tree”) anymore? Bush’s gem on accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1988, two years prior to his tax increase, and four years prior to his rout from office, is juicy as ever.
But isn’t all this at the heart of sage leadership? You do what you know is right, even if unfashionable, and even if they mock you for years afterward. That’s what’s best for the country. And hey, a prophet is never understood in his own place. (Let’s amend this biblical pearl for the Barack Obama era: Profit is never understood.)