Whom do you miss?
Rob Price

There’s a small sign on the front door of a log cabin my family has owned in Canada for many years. The signs says — and this will give you a clue how many years we have owned it — “I miss Ike. Hell, I even miss Harry.”

When I was young, I had no idea what the sign meant. When I was a little older, I figured out it was a joke on the Kennedy administration (There once was a time when, among Republican families, the basic attitude toward anything named “Kennedy” was hostile).

But it has only been after six years of the George W. Bush administration that I’ve really understood the sign. For we are living in a similar age, an age that could be summed up in a new but similar quip: “I miss Bill; Hell I even miss H. W..”

The “Ike” of our cabin door sign was, of course, President Dwight Eisenhower — He who ran on the slogan “I like Ike.” By 1962, a year or so into Kennedy’s administration, it was common to look back fondly on the Eisenhower years, which after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, seemed placid, comfortable, even safe.

The “Harry” of that sign was President Harry Truman, and, especially for you kiddies out there, it’s important to note Truman served only a single elected term of office and finished that term as an unpopular president. He chose not to seek re-election.

Now, jump ahead 40 or 50 years and where are we? After six years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Bill Clinton operates on the level of international rock star. Clinton is so popular, he would be mobbed just walking down Hornell’s Main Street, or Bath’s Liberty Street. And there are more Republicans in Hornell and Bath than Democrats!

Not only is Clinton as popular in his retirement as Eisenhower in his, Clinton’s predecessor, George H. W. Bush, apparently is the subject of as much nostalgic fondness as Harry Truman.

After nearly three years of war in Iraq, coupled with the sense of a Middle East spiraling towards chaos, the first President Bush is receiving popular media kudos as a wise governor of foreign relations. Bush I recently was featured on the cover of Newsweek, juxtaposed against the wayward Bush II. The gist of the article on the Iraq Study Group: The wise father has trumped the hapless son. It’s a Freudian take on American history: The Iraq commission’s study is basically a message from the older Bush to his son: You’re still not as smart as your father.

I have no idea whether Bush the Younger will knuckle under and accept the guidance of Bush the Elder. I don’t know much about what’s in the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations; I wouldn’t know how to evaluate those recommendations.

But I do know this nostalgia about George Herbert Walker Bush, if it really exists, is a lot of fog dressed up as memory. When we take a deep breath and reflect on what we actually know about the Bush I presidency, th e years 1988- 1992 don’t seem to warrant much nostalgia at all.

Bush I is remembered for assembling a cohesive alliance of countries to boot Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Fair enough, but what we forget is the irresolute Bush in the immediate aftermath of Hussein’s invasion — the Bush who needed Margaret Thatcher to warn him not to “go wobbly.”

We also forget Bush’s inaction in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Russia struggled to find its way in a new world, former President Richard Nixon criticized the Bush Administration’s “pathetically inadequate response” to the country’s for pro-democratic, free-market government. The administration, Nixon suggested, was anything but statesmanlike in its handling of the most critical foreign policy issue of its era.

Finally, those of you who cringe every time Bush II tries to speak a coherent sentence should do as I did a few hours ago and google: “George H. W. Bush quotes.” Here’s a sample:

 1992: “And let me say in conclusion, thanks for the kids. I learned an awful lot about bathtub toys — about how to work the telephone. One guy knows — several of them know their own phone numbers — preparation to go to the dentist. A lot of things I’d forgotten. So it’s been a good day.”

So do we miss Bill? Do we really miss H. W.?

My advice is, Don’t go wobbly.