A fierce partisan when necessary, George H.W. Bush refused to see cooperation with political adversaries as a form of ideological treason. He also was a throwback to a time when elites felt a profound sense of public obligation.


In light of the consequential life Bush lived, lifting up this habit might seem to accentuate the trivial. After all, he served bravely in one war and, as president, led his country to victory in another. What's the big deal about thank-you notes that are politically shrewd and reflect the old-fashioned habits of a well-bred patrician?




His two main domestic achievements as president, a new Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, were broadly progressive and they passed with Democratic support.

He cared about deficits in fact and not just in his rhetoric. So he was willing to violate his politically opportunistic 1988 "No new taxes" pledge to get a responsible budget deal two years later.


And it's worth remembering that when Bush asked Congress to approve the military campaign to reverse Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he did not seek a war vote during the run-up to the 1990 midterm elections. He waited until afterward, thus keeping the war decision out of electoral politics. He showed both resolve and restraint, resisting calls to send American troops into Iraq after Kuwait was freed from Saddam's grip. It was a much-contested choice that looks better and better in retrospect.

Bush was no saint -- but saints don't win elections. His 1988 campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis, then the Massachusetts governor, carried a taint of racism.

He attacked a Dukakis administration prison furlough program, which was a legitimate thing to do. But the criticism was linked to the release of Willie Horton, an African American and convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her husband while on a weekend furlough. Years later, when Bush's wily, engaging but also often ruthless campaign manager, Lee Atwater, was facing death from cancer, he apologized for having said he would "make Willie Horton [Dukakis's] running mate."



One day many years ago, I found myself talking back to the television set in a rather partisan way (for what, I can't remember). I called my children over to say I didn't approve of what I had just done and that it was not good that our politics had become so divisive.


E.J. Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post.