How Doonesbury helped turn George HW Bush into a mass-murdering war criminal

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/10/wimp.html

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I think we need to bring the phrase “see you in the funny papers” back into common parlance.

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Of any human who could possibly fated to be President to oversee the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the end of the Soviet Union, and the Reunificaiton of Germany, I’d choose no one but George HW Bush, thank you very much.

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The rise of the Bush family started in the late 19th century and is connected to the Rockefellers. They’re a product of the gilded age:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Bush

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People these days say this guy was “moderate.” Seems crazy to me.
I’m too young to have a memory of his career, but this clip says a lot:

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A moderate only in contrast to what exists as the Republican party of today. When you’re standing in the endzone, the 50 yard line looks very far away.

Consider a hack like Reagan wouldn’t even get the nomination by today’s standards much less enjoy GOP sainthood.

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… by murdering innocent civilians on a commercial flight. Is what he meant, not by keeping our eyes open.

What a wanker.

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Good thing he didn’t post this last Wednesday, because then it would have been in poor taste. We can only call truth to villainy when it doesn’t clash with our death cult rituals.

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Riiiiiight. Because he was totally out there in a foreman’s hard hat “overseeing” the reunification of Germany. As long as you’re here, I’ve got a bridge north of San Francisco to sell you…

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I liked Bill Clinton’s burn on GHWB for taking credit for all those things just because they happened on his watch: “it’s like the rooster taking credit for the sun coming up.”

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Different question about whether he was responsible for them (a little bit, in my view, sure), but for a guy to manage it with a minimum of drama? I can’t see anyone having done it better.

I think Clinton, btw, did a pretty good job following on to what Bush did (denuclearizing the Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan), mind you.

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That’s rich, coming from the president who people remember fondly because he happened to be president during the blossoming of the information technology economy. And who had the fortune of leaving just as it was collapsing. Timing is everything.

All presidents get too much credit and too much blame for every little thing that happens during their tenure.

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The Reagan administration did more damage to the fabric of our political system than any other president in my lifetime. Quite a bit of the crap that happened during the GHWB administration was simply continued implementation of Reagan policy. If Trump is in office for 8 years he might end up having done more damage, but while from Reagan the destruction was surgical, from Trump it is of the “bull in a china shop” variety.

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FTFY

Reagan was the beginning of the end for just about everything good in America. It’s been 40 years of disastrous neo-conservative policies since.

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Let us not forget GHWB’s emulation of Peter’s Denial “I never said Voodoo Economics”

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Mass-murdering war criminal, maybe. Or what we now call, “The good old days.”

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that’s George W Bush.

Bush père was a point of light;
Bush fils was an asterisk.
Clinton was a waffle.

(Gingrich was a bomb, Quayle was a feather)

Not sure what Obama was.

Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan were televisions, viewed side on.

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