He was president for only four years, but George HW Bush shaped US history for decades, taking on tough jobs from Beijing to the CIA, ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait, sealing a breakthrough budget deal that cost him an election and fathering a future president.<\/p>\n
He died on Friday at the age of 94, his family said. His passing came seven months after the April 17, 2018, death of his wife, Barbara, to whom he was married for 73 years.<\/p>\n
His presidency, which ran from 1989 to 1993, was defined by two events – his aggressive response to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein\u2019s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the soon-to-be-broken \u201cread my lips\u201d pledge he made not to raise taxes while running for president in 1988.<\/p>\n
At a time when the Cold War was ending and the influence of Soviet-style communism was withering, Bush\u2019s military and diplomatic actions firmly cast the United States as the world\u2019s leading superpower.<\/p>\n
After Bush emphatically said Saddam\u2019s aggression \u201cwill not stand,\u201d US-led forces routed Iraq\u2019s army in the Gulf War, driving it from Kuwait while stopping short of taking Baghdad, Iraq\u2019s capital. Bush\u2019s popularity rating among Americans soared to about 90%.<\/p>\n
Twenty months later, in 1992, the Republican Bush lost his bid for re-election to Democrat Bill Clinton, whose folksy manner and focus on the economy struck a chord with many Americans and made Bush seem disconnected from voters for focusing on foreign policy over domestic issues.<\/p>\n
Despite a broad coalition that included several Arab states, US involvement in the Gulf War was seen as a violation of Arab sovereignty by some in the Middle East, and led a few militant groups namely Osama bin Laden\u2019s recently formed Al-Qaida to turn their focus toward fighting US influence. A decade later, the presidency of Bush\u2019s son, George W. Bush, was jolted by Qaida\u2019s deadly hijacking attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n
The Bushes were only the second father and son to serve as US presidents, the first being John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The Bush political dynasty also included Bush\u2019s father, who was a US senator, and son Jeb, a former governor of Florida who mounted his own run for the presidency in 2015 but dropped out in February 2016 after gaining little traction.<\/p>\n
Bush did not endorse Republican Donald Trump, the eventual winner in the 2016 presidential election, who attacked both Jeb and George W. Bush during his campaign. The elder Bush did not publicly say whom he voted for in the election, but a source told CNN he went for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
When he accepted the Republican nomination for president in 1988, Bush, then Ronald Reagan\u2019s vice president, was trying to win over conservatives who had more enthusiasm for Reagan. He answered questions about his conservatism with an emphatic pledge. \u201cRead my lips,\u201d he told the Republican National Convention. \u201cNo new taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He was president for only four years, but George HW Bush shaped US history for decades, taking on tough jobs from Beijing to the CIA, ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait, sealing a breakthrough budget deal that cost him an election and fathering a future president. He died on Friday at the age of 94, his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48919,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48917\/revisions\/48919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}