someone who through his thousand points of light, through his dignity, through his values sort of brought out better angels in the republican party and amongst americans. there were not that many good angels in the 88 campaign. that was willie horton and mike dukakis. it was a rough campaign. when you look at any political leader you have to take the bad with the good. history siphons away some things that may be negative. sometimes it emphasizes things that may be a negative. but i think in bush s case, the 1988 campaign is something that embodied the way he approached life, but i would say not. this is a person for most of his life worked hard for civil rights, tried to bring this country together. had values of decency and an
gulf war that he thought he had finished? i don t think we can assess it that way. the decisions actually that his son made to go back to iraq were fateful decisions. i m not sure those are decisions the father would have made. we know the father s closest political sorry, foreign policy adviser, brent scowcroft, his national security adviser, his best friend, brent scowcroft came out against the gulf war and for that was fired by the son. yeah. extraordinary. in september of 2002 for writing an op-ed in the wall street journal arguing against the gulf war. he was fired from his post. so the son went against what his father i think would have done. but my colleague and friend
the berlin wall was falling. he had the guts to push for the reunification of germany. he wasn t initially confident that was the right thing to do. it consolidated this process of change. there was no going back. he did it in a tough-minded way, advised by brent scowcroft, his national security adviser, and secretary of state baker. that is a moment that could so easily have been mismanaged. i think the reason president george h.w. bush is so beloved is that there s a way in which he took the american story out of the privileged world that he had grown up in. he went west himself to make his fortune in texas. served bravely in world war ii. he became a public servant in the very best sense. he represented for the country
he praises george h.w. bush s foreign policy. he writes even more important, though he could be tough in a political fight, he was in it for the right reasons. people always came before politics, patriotism before partisanship. to the end we knew we would never agree on everything, and we agreed that was okay. honest debate strengthens democracy. andrea mitchell told me about 20 minutes ago she thinks history will judge george h.w. bush well despite these very clear failings that he had. i think andrea is right. i think his rrd ecord on foreig policy was so outstanding. he brought the cold war to a conclusion in a way that made it look almost like a magic trick. here we had a generation of the most bitter rivalry, and president bush saw that the soviet union was coming down.
the deal that he made that cost him the presidency on the budget to raise taxes despite his owe promise at the convention to make deals all along the line in terms of cutting spending and so forth, those cost him initially but they created the long boom of the first of the following decade. and he didn t reap the political benefits of it but in the end he thought this is what public service is about. joe, real quick, president trump listened to what he says when things like this happened because it could go any way with trump but he said george h.w. bush was exemplary and lives an exemplary life and that is music to most people s ears that donald trump thinks so. because george bush did live a exemplary life. he was doing what was best for the country even if it cost him a second term in the white house. and i m proud to have served with him. what he did by raising taxes realizing the long-term gain