ululate!

George Herbert Walker Bush has died at age 94.

Called a "wimp" during his presidency, and the subject of a fake-news story about his inability to figure out a cashier's laser scanner, President Bush had the dubious honor of following up the eight-year-long act that was Ronald Reagan's presidency. Known, for better or for worse, for prosecuting a war against Iraq and for uttering the ill-fated "Read my lips: no new taxes!", Bush was supposed to be a "holdover" president, taking the reins from Reagan and keeping the country largely on course. Instead, the nation as a whole swerved left and elected Bill Clinton president after Bush had, in a rare show for recent presidents, served only a single term. Bush was a World War II veteran, enlisting in the US Navy and serving as its youngest-ever aviator until the end of the war. He became an oil tycoon after moving from Massachusetts to Texas, and—in a surprise to me, when I was researching this post—served for a time as an ambassador to the UN after being appointed to the post by President Nixon.

Bush was an avid skydiver, leaping from planes even into his nineties. He leaves something of a mixed legacy in his wake; the charity work he has done for Africa, alongside former rival Bill Clinton, is quite commendable. At the same time, he did bequeath to the world his son George W. Bush who, as president after Clinton, also got us into a war with Iraq that turned out to be expensive, pointless, and deadly to far too many US troops. I suppose history will ultimately judge Bush Sr. As for me, I agree with those commenters who saw the man as thoughtful and urbane, despite being prone to bizarre verbal gaffes (a tendency his son also inherited). Bush was probably also the last of the self-consistent "traditional" Republicans. His passing marks the end of an era.