The president I came to know best was George Herbert Walker Bush. No. 41 in your program, No. 1 on your list of fast-playing golfers.
While the Assads are despotic, George H.W. Bush made the father an ally in Desert Storm, and Ehud Barak offered to return to Hafez Assad the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace deal.
George H.W. Bush had perhaps the greatest resume in American history. Director of the CIA, ambassador to the U.N., envoy to China, vice president of the United States and then, of course, president. It's staggering to contemplate one person achieving so much.
The last book I read to my mom was 'Barbara Bush: A Memoir' published by mom in 1994. It reflected on their entire life - dad going to China, running the CIA, running for Senate, running for President twice.
I think George H.W. Bush was confronted with some huge challenges - the invasion of Kuwait, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union - that he managed with great aplomb.
When Ronald Reagan chose George H.W. Bush in 1980, it was a clear signal that he was running an inclusive campaign; that he welcomed the moderate and even liberal wings of the GOP - there was a liberal wing back then - into his campaign.
Bush the Elder's stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I've ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.
I got to meet one Chief of Staff: Sam Skinner. He was Chief of Staff at the end of George Sr.'s White House.
President George H.W. Bush was a patriot who served our country in World War II, lead the CIA, an Ambassador to the United Nations, was the Vice President and the Commander and Chief who oversaw the end of the Cold War and successfully led our troops through the Gulf War.
Pat Buchanan's challenge to George H.W. Bush in 1992 helped elect Democrat Jimmy Carter.
I actually looked up in my journal trying to figure out some dates and, in January 1991, America is about to go back into its first sort of actual war since Vietnam, with the Gulf War. It just seemed unbelievable at the time that this country would do that - which is funny to think about now.
John McCain was one of the senators who voted against George Herbert Walker Bush's disastrous break of his no new taxes pledge when he raised taxes in 1990. That's really important. He's a supply-sider. And he's got supply siders like Phil Graham and Jack Kemp to vouch for that.
President George Herbert Walker Bush ran as a strong conservative, ran to continue the third term of Ronald Reagan, continue the Ronald Reagan revolution. Then he raised taxes and in '92 ran as an establishment moderate - same candidate, two very different campaigns.
[On George H.W. Bush:] A man who wishes to lead the Western world should be able to find the right words, string them together in coherent sentences, and steer them to an intelligible conclusion. His sentences have the stuttering start of an old car on a cold morning. They never run smoothly. The only speech part that he has mastered completely is the non sequitur.
I grew up admiring Ronald Reagan and Vice President Bush, and if I were old enough, I would have voted for 41. I was glad he won.
Here, anyone can become president. We've had haberdashers, generals, lawyers, peanut farmers, community organizers and a real estate developer, to name a few. But perhaps no one had a better resume than George H.W. Bush.
For more than a quarter century, I was fortunate to visit and play golf with President George H.W. Bush dozens of times, usually while paying a visit to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Everybody thinks the Bushes are from Texas. I've been there twice.
I can remember - I don't want to identify the individual - but a very prominent Democrat, who compared looking at Carter and then Reagan, and then Bush, and observed that many of the people around Carter were totally disloyal to him.
For President Bush, the first, the 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush, I spent all 4 years of his presidency on the staff for the National Security Council.
In 1991, only two years into the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice suddenly left her powerful job as the top Russia expert on the National Security Council and went back to California - to get a life.
[On George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis:] Americans now know they can vote for a man who can't express his thoughts or a man who can't express his feelings.
The attack on Iraq has been long planned. There just hasn't been an excuse for it. Since George H.W. Bush didn't unseat Saddam in 1991, there's been a longing among the extreme right in the United States to finish the job. The war on terrorism has given them that opportunity. Even though the logic is convoluted and fraudulent, it appears they are going to go ahead and finish the job.
I wish there were more, if there if there were more George H.W. Bushes in the world, we'd be, we'd have a lot more harmony, a lot more freedom, a lot more peace on earth, and I'm just so proud of his legacy he left earlier.
The U.S.S. George H. W. Bush is a great thing in my life. It's amazing. A great honor.
