Bush 41 was 'an American closer,' says GOP rival Buchanan
Dictionaries define a "closer" as a person who is skilled at bringing a business transaction to a satisfactory conclusion. In baseball, a "closer" is a reliable relief pitcher who enters a game in the final innings, typically to preserve a slim lead.
Such was Bush's role when 1989 brought protests in China's Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the challenge of negotiating a peaceful transition to what Bush later would call a "new world order," a phrase that alarmed nationalists like Buchanan.
"I think that President Bush belongs to another era," he said, noting that Bush was the last American president to have served in World War II. "He's the Greatest Generation president, but that was the end of an era and I think -- and it wouldn't be a criticism of him -- but I think he was from another time and another place."
Bush's son, George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton adopted more conservative approaches to key issues of "economic nationalism, economic patriotism and securing the border" that helped them to win but "were very new to President (George H. W.) Bush who came up from a different place and a different time."
As much as I disagree with Buchanan's far-right positions, he correctly saw that the conservative movement that in 1964 nominated Barry Goldwater -- who failed to win more than six states -- was on the rise fast and big enough to lead to Trump's election in 2016.
After Buchanan's primary losses, discontent in the GOP led to Ross Perot's third-party bid, which helped Clinton win, and later a Republican House under conservative Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and the era of polarization that we still wrestle today.
As much as I appreciate the progress this country has made in civil rights and respect for diversity, Buchanan sees only gloom in our drift away from the peaceful and prosperous America he remembers in the Elvis Presley era.
I, too, appreciate the positive aspects of the past that expanded social and economic opportunity and avoided our nuclear annihilation. But the fear and loathing of diversity and international alliances? I hope the next generation of leaders does better than ours.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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