Why George H. W. Bush Struggled to Connect With America
Amid the outpouring of tributes honoring the life and, by some measures, underrated presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush—who died Saturday at the age of 94—is the inevitable criticism of his communication skills. In his brilliant book What It Takes, about the 1988 presidential campaign, Richard Ben Cramer captured the problem in a nutshell: “People thought the President’s speeches didn’t pack any punch, so they sacked the speechwriters and gave Bush new words to prove he cared about the recession.”
Bush was widely understood to be an old-fashioned gentleman. His persona was neither affectation nor artifice. He was, by all accounts, a person of strong character, when he appeared flummoxed and then defensive in response to a question about how the national debt affected him personally. Bill Clinton, in his singular style, swooped in to engage with the questioner—a moment that arguably helped win him the election.
