Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
When George W. Bush was president, his communications with his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, rarely involved national policy. Instead, his father liked to send corny jokes to buoy his son’s spirits. But he couldn’t send them by computer. His son, while president, didn’t use email. So his father would email the jokes to a White House aide, who would bring them to the Oval Office.
In 2007, one of the emails related the tale of an 80-year-old man who had been arrested for shoplifting. Asked by the judge what he had stolen, the man said, “a can of peaches.” How many peaches were in the can? the judge asked. Told there were six, the judge sentenced the man to six days in jail. Then the man’s wife spoke up: “He stole a can of peas, too.”
This episode tells you more than you might suspect about the senior Bush, America’s 41st president—about, for instance, his self-deprecating sense of himself in his ninth decade. And it’s an example of why the book about him by his son, the 43rd president, is such a joy to read.
Not that “41: A Portrait of My Father” fails to discuss presidential matters. As his son’s narrative shows, Bush senior emphasized personal relations with foreign leaders. In 1989, he invited French President François Mitterrand to the Bush family retreat at Kennebunkport, Maine. His “cultivation” of Mitterrand “paid off,” Mr. Bush says, when France supported the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein ’s army from Kuwait in 1991. As President Reagan’s vice president, Bush senior was an early advocate of negotiating with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. After meeting Mr. Gorbachev, he “reported back that he felt the President could forge a unique working relationship with Mr. Gorbachev,” the son writes. His father was “a master of personal diplomacy.”
In 2007, one of the emails related the tale of an 80-year-old man who had been arrested for shoplifting. Asked by the judge what he had stolen, the man said, “a can of peaches.” How many peaches were in the can? the judge asked. Told there were six, the judge sentenced the man to six days in jail. Then the man’s wife spoke up: “He stole a can of peas, too.”
This episode tells you more than you might suspect about the senior Bush, America’s 41st president—about, for instance, his self-deprecating sense of himself in his ninth decade. And it’s an example of why the book about him by his son, the 43rd president, is such a joy to read.
Not that “41: A Portrait of My Father” fails to discuss presidential matters. As his son’s narrative shows, Bush senior emphasized personal relations with foreign leaders. In 1989, he invited French President François Mitterrand to the Bush family retreat at Kennebunkport, Maine. His “cultivation” of Mitterrand “paid off,” Mr. Bush says, when France supported the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein ’s army from Kuwait in 1991. As President Reagan’s vice president, Bush senior was an early advocate of negotiating with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. After meeting Mr. Gorbachev, he “reported back that he felt the President could forge a unique working relationship with Mr. Gorbachev,” the son writes. His father was “a master of personal diplomacy.”
Whole thing here.
