Looked down upon by liberals as a Reagan-lite, and downplayed by conservatives because he was a one-termer who famously broke a pledge and raised taxes.
But H.W. not only thrashed Iraq without getting bogged down in a forever war, he also oversaw the breakup of the USSR without firing a shot.
He set the stage for the 1990s as arguably America’s most successful and dominant decade ever. Bill Clinton didn’t terribly mishandle it, but you could argue Clinton simply enjoyed the benefit of the geopolitical groundwork H.W. laid.
And while Clinton dithered in Kosovo and elsewhere, he let the real future threat Osama bin Laden slip away despite OBL’s being responsible for several overseas terrorist attacks and connections to the 1993 WTC bombing.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/16/bill-clinton-and-the-missed-opportunities-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/%3foutputType=amp
H.W. was patriotic, respectful, knowledgable, a gentleman to the core, and was remembered fondly by pretty much everyone who worked with him regardless of Party.
The one thing you could maybe fault him for is not taking a harder-line against China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. But he’s hardly the first President to have bungled the China question.
https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/did-president-george-hw-bush-mishandle-china
Tl;dr — This President was the real deal, and he is totally forgotten.
