American History Hit - George H. W. Bush: Ending the Cold War

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

President George H. W. Bush presided over the Gulf War, the conclusion of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall during what proved an eventful single term of office from 1989 to 1993. But what was his answer to the burning question of the age, the legacy of which rumbles on down to this very day: 'What next?' Don's guide to this pivotal presidency is Professor Jeremi Suri author of The Impossible Presidency and host of the podcast This Is Democracy.Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. On the evening of November 9th, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall collapsed, members of the press were ushered into the Oval Office at the White House,

encircling the president's desk for what they sensed was an important and pivotal moment of history. They found President George H.W. Bush exactly as he always appeared. Cool, calm, composed. The Cold War was melting before their eyes, but the president showed none of the euphoria lighting up television screens from Leipzig to Los Angeles. After ten minutes of questions and his characteristically measured replies, one reporter finally said what was on everyone's minds. You don't seem elated.

Bush leaned back in his leather chair, hands folded, his face an inscrutable mask of patrician restraint. I'm elated, I'm just not an emotional kind of guy. I'm very pleased. been very pleased with a lot of other developments. And we'll have some that'll suggest more flamboyant courses of action for this country. We're, I've been handling this properly with allies, staying in close touch. And so the fact that I'm not bubbling over, maybe it's to get along towards the evening because I feel very good about it.

He smiled faintly, as if that settled the matter. Perhaps it was for the best. It was this unflappable, buttoned-up, Yankee. statesman with a Texan touch, so cautious in tone so careful with history, who would need to guide the United States through the final days of the Cold War and into what he famously called the New World Order. Hello, I'm Don Wildman, glad to have you here. This is American History Hit, and we're back on board the Presidential Express. Next stop, George Herbert Walker Bush, the nation's 41st president, not to be confused with his son, also George, a decade

later. Bush won is inaugurated as America tilts towards a new decade, personal favorite of mine, the 1990s. As we all began to wake up from our Dayglow MTV stupor, things were about to get earnest again, vinyl shirts and grunge in Seattle, hip-hop going mainstream, techno throbbing in the clubs. The Reagan 80s were still here. Bush was his VP, after all, but a truly new world order would soon be upon us. Little did we realize. Our guide into this. This single-term tenure of President George H.W. Bush is Dr. Jeremy Surrey of the University of Texas, Professor of Public Affairs and History, and author of a number of acclaimed books, but I'll mention the impossible presidency, the rise and fall of America's highest office. Hello, Professor, Jeremy,

thank you for joining us again. Don, wonderful to be with you. Last time we talked about the Reagan presidency, this is very much related, sort of grows right out of it. 1984, George H.W. Bush wins a Landslide victory for Republicans. 53% of the public vote remains the most recent election in which a candidate won over 400 electoral votes. This is the last Republican who really draws heavily from the center, old school stuff.

That's kind of the lens upon which we will look at George Bush, right? I think that's absolutely right. And I think that's why he becomes a reviled figure by his own party. Because he's seen as not far right enough, as too much of a compromiser. Well, it's obvious where he gets this. He's an old patrician guy, right? He's the model for this sort of federal politician. Born New England, Milton Massachusetts, 1924, patrician upbringing. He is a son of a Connecticut senator, Prescott Bush, old money, Wall Street wealth. He attends, oh my God, it just goes on. He attends Phillips Academy and over and then Yale University, where he's a member of the Skull and Bones Club. The man is a wasp archetype. Absolutely right. He's also a World War II veteran, a World War II hero in many respects, and he's someone who gets into industry, into oil in particular, and that's what takes him to Texas. But he's doing this within the context of, as Texas Governor Anne Richard said, he was born with a silver spoon, maybe a silver foot in his mouth, right? He had advantage all the way through.

I don't want to gloss over this World War II thing. I mean, this is JFK-level stuff here. Yes. He becomes the youngest fighter pilot in the Navy, flew a torpedo bomber. on 58 missions. 1944, his plane is shot down in the Pacific. He bails and is then picked up by a submarine. I want to watch that movie. He's awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for Heroism Under Fire.

He's the last U.S. president to fight in World War II. I mean, that's an extraordinary event to happen in the beginning of your life and then to take on what he moves onward with, which, as you mentioned, is becoming an oil man, a wild catter. That's absolutely right. And it tells us so much about George H.W. Bush. the advantages that he had, he was also an adventure seeker. He was also someone who wanted to do big things. He left the Northeast to go to Midland, Texas, of all places, bringing Barbara with him.

And I remember when I first visited Midland, I realized, wow, Barbara must have really loved him to come down here from, you know, the Connecticut mansion in the 1950s. And I think World War II captures that as well. This is a man who believed all the privileges he had created a duty to serve his country. And he wanted to make a name for himself serving his country. It's the best kind of patriotism. I think we have to say that. I think it's fair to say that, where you take your advantage and you use that advantage to try to do something great for your country. And that's what he was doing in World War II. It was a model for our leaders back then. World War II was a factory of these fellows. You know, we talked about Gerald Ford. Same story, you know? Absolutely. And it's an interesting

contrast, by the way. Reagan stayed states side. This is not to denigrate what Reagan did, but he made propaganda films for the war. Right. Bush was out there fighting the war. Exactly. He obviously has politics in his crosshairs. He runs for the U.S. Senate in 1964, fails against the incumbent in Texas, ends up elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966. I didn't remember this. Reelected again, 1968, then fails in his Senate race against Democrat Lloyd Benson in 1970. Boy, amazing, a fateful race there. at which point he is nominated by Richard Nixon to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

He's the Republican National Committee chair. All these 70s, he's, what a resume is basically what I'm saying. And he's the first American representative to China after the opening to China. Exactly. It's not an ambassadorial position yet because we don't have official relations until 1979, but he's the first presidential representative permanently stationed in China. and he and Barbara and George Jr. and Jeb have a number of years where they're learning about and living in China. That's very important for thinking about Bush's foreign policy worldview because he's a believer that the United States and China can be friends and can work together. Which says something to him. He's also then named director of the CIA in 1975 by Gerald Ford. Absolutely. I mean, it comes back to his patrician background, one has to say. George H.W. Bush was the, the preeminent country club personality. He knew all the right people. And most of his roles, other than being elected to Congress, were roles where he was appointed by other Republicans, people who respected him, people who believed he was competent, loyal, trustworthy, and not an

ideologue, someone who could get things done. He was the manager. You wanted him to be your local town council person because you knew you could trust him. You knew he'd serve the community, and you knew he'd listen to people. Sure. I'm a little. When you hear these days about the far-right Republican Party and, you know, gone are those centrists. You're talking about George Bush, number one. He is the quintessential centrist Republican. That's exactly right. And that was his strength and his weakness. It was a real strength, as I think we'll talk about, because he was able to work with lots and lots of people, particularly international figures. Yes. That's the reason he gets picked as Reagan's VP because he pulls that center over

towards Reagan, who was scaring people with his conservative ideals. his timeline of when he enters the story. Now, as I mentioned, he's been around for eight years. He's been the VP under Reagan. Just side note, how much of an active VP was he? What was his role in that regard for Reagan? So he was not a co-president in any sense. But he played an important role as an ambassador. Reagan would send him to different places. And this was Bush's strength that he was able to build relationships with people in other countries. So he was an important part of the shall we say, American ambassadorial class during the Reagan years, but he was not a day-to-day policymaker. 1988, President-elect Bush. He's been elected. Reagan's still in power. The two of them meet with Gorbachev in New York. They talk on Governor's Island. Can you explain what happens that day and how much is it teeing up what's going to happen like a year later? I always tell people that that December day in 1988 is actually when the Cold War ends. It's not when all the problems go away, but it's certainly when the Cold War ends.

And Bush is now the president-elect. Reagan is still president. Gorbachev comes to New York to deliver a speech at the United Nations, and Gorbachev does what no one expected a Soviet leader would ever do. Gorbachev says, you know, we're negotiating with the U.S. and we're making progress, but it's going too slow. So I'm just going to unilaterally cut my forces in Europe by 500,000. Right. I remember that. Pull our tanks back. Right. The Soviet presence in Europe was all about conventional quantity. They had more than we did. they were going to pull that back unilaterally, unilaterally. And then from the UN, from 40th Street and 1st Avenue, Gorbachev goes to Governor's Island at the southern tip of Manhattan and meets with Reagan and Bush.

And we have the minutes of that meeting. And if you came from Mars and Reddit, you'd think these were three old pals. They met his friends. They met and the world sees that. It's televised, as Reagan intended. And boy, oh, boy, is it hard. to fear the Soviet Union then. It's the opposite of the world of Stalin. Yeah, but Bush is the former CIA director, so he's skeptical. He's suspicious. He wants to go slow. He's concerned that things are going a little

too fast. Again, Bush is the guy who does think about the nuts and bolts and the blocking and tackling in the way that Reagan is thinking about the bigger issues. And so Bush says in this meeting, yes, we want to do all these things, but, you know, we have to make sure we have the right team in place. And Bush also wants it to be his team. There's a transition going on here. Jeremy, what are your feelings at that time? You're a young person. What was your take on what was going on? Oh, I'm glad you asked me because I want to tell this story. So I was a high school student in New York City then. I used to go to Stuyvesant High School. So I used to take the subway to the high school. People find that funny that I took the subway to high school. I spent a lot of my time as a teenager on the subway. And I came out of the subway that day, Midtown Manhattan, 59 Street, and 2nd Avenue near where I lived. And I was just not following necessarily that they had met on Governor's Island. And I look around when I come out of the subway, come up into Manhattan. And I'm And the streets are filled with people, as if there's a parade that's occurring. And, you know, these are not, you know, bums. These are people wearing ties and suits, the lawyers and the accountants

and other people, the rich guys are out in the street. And I'm thinking, gosh, you know, it's December. Is there a special World Series? Do the Yankees win again? What's going on here? And then just where I get out on 59th Street, midtown Manhattan, these three Soviet zill limousines, which really looked like tanks are coming down the street. And all three stop. And out of one of them comes this man with this strange mark on his head, Gorbachev. And he's coming out into the crowd. I mean, you never imagined to.

Oh, God, you were there. I can't tell you, Don, it was like Bruce Springsteen was here, right? Or Paul McCartney. I mean, the crowd loved him. He was probably more popular even than Reagan for that crowd at that time. And he comes like right in my direction, right? I'm like, look, I could almost touch him, right? And then there's this mob of lawyers and accountants who are like, you know, trying to touch him.

This was a rock star moment for a Soviet leader. And I do remember thinking, as a 15-year-old at that moment, we can't fear these people anymore. Right. That was the gut feeling that we all had. Oh, thank goodness. But it was really his action about pulling back. That was very famous. Absolutely.

And we went, oh, my gosh, they really mean business. That was like fresh air from the mountain top. It was incredible. Robert Gates, who was the head of the CIA at that time, the DCI, he had been a skeptic. He had been saying, until that moment, until late 88, you know, be careful, the Soviets are tricky. Yeah. And he writes a memo then saying, Mayor Kulpa, I was wrong. This guy is the real deal. The whole world has changed. Yeah.

And that's revealing. The Berlin Wall falls in 1989. Soviet Union fails in 1991. There was a failed coup against Gorbachev, but all of that happens. What was George Bush's response to these momentous moments? How did he walk himself through it and carry us along with him? You know, he was the perfect person for that moment. He really was because he recognized and understood these changes and read deeply about them, but he didn't believe that he could control them. He had the self-confidence that only a patrician would have to say big changes are happening. And I can manage. it without having to control. And that's what he wanted. He did not want to dance on the Berlin wall, he said. He did not want to claim victory. He wanted to work with all the key players. And he made sure to have a close relationship with Helmut Kohl, the leader of West Germany, who becomes

the leader now of the United Germany, with Gorbachev, with Mitterrand, Francois Mitterrand, the leader of France, with Margaret Thatcher, the leader of England. He manages this, and he makes himself the center of the country club. If it's a country club of leaders, he makes himself a central figure who's helping to coordinate change, but he's not trying to dominate it nor put his name on it. You know, there's going to be bigger books than have been written so far about this moment because only a guy like a Bush, or let's go back to World War II, an Eisenhower, these people who know how to deftly walk through what are very human moments. You know, we look back at them as gigantic history, but it's really human beings who have to get

this thing done. And it takes a George Bush, one, to step so lightly through this amazing moment that really doesn't get recognized as such, does it? Absolutely. I think that's exactly right. It takes most of all an ability to see that you don't control change, but that you can still try to shape it, but shape it from behind, not by putting your face in front. But they were worried about reunification of Germany, you know, really big geopolitical things were going on here. And of course, how are we going to deal with this post-Soviet Russia, which is really, really a mess? And, of course, they're thinking about nuclear weapons and all the dangerous things that have to come to pass. Never mind who's the next in line.

You know, he backs Yeltsin, right? He does. Boris Yeltsin is an incredibly compelling figure at first. He's the leader of Russia, which was a republic within the Soviet Union, who challenges Gorbachev for not doing enough at home. Yeltsin's point is, well, you're doing all these things that sound good internationally, but what about at home? what about having real elections? What about allowing for a freer press? And then when there's a failed coup against Gorbachev in the summer of 1991, Yeltsin sort of pushes his way into power, pushing down the Soviet Union as a whole and making himself the new president of Russia. He's compelling

Yeltsin is because he's a populist. He actually believes in getting votes and persuading people and he's anti-communist. He's always seen as a little edgy, but he's a kind of, you know, democratic man of the people and what American president doesn't want that. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. I think one of the big issues that will get sorted out, and it's the topic of a very big book that was actually published called The End of History, which was from Francis Fukuyama, is the discussion of how we handle their transition to what we hope will be a liberal democracy. Obviously, that was fumbled in the long term of things, but was Bush part of that problem of not sort of helping this country, or could they even help them? I mean, they had to figure it out on their own.

That's a very big question. It's actually what I'm writing a book about now, so I'm still trying to figure this out. Oh, good. I think Bush does some good things and some things that in retrospect were not as good, but it's only obvious in retrospect. The good things he does is he really does try to use the United States as a helpful element in the transition in Russia. He does not see this as an opportunity for the United States to take advantage of Russia. He really doesn't. That is said about him by his opponents, particularly in Russia, but that is not true. He really sees this as a post-World War two moment. It's a replay of 1945. And he's thinking in terms of a Marshall Plan and in terms of these things that we can do. And he puts his best people on this and he tries to work with leaders

at multiple levels. The downside is that, and this is what I'm writing about, I think there's a little too much emphasis on economics. Not enough emphasis on institution building. And that's the moment. That's actually what Fukuyama is writing about that you cited so well. What Fukuyama was arguing was that there were these moments when history ends, when you've reached the end of a debate, a long historical debate, because one side wins definitively. And when they'd win definitively, things move inexorably in that direction. His argument was that liberal democracy had won. communism and command societies had failed. And what we were seeing in Berlin and elsewhere was the collapse of that other side of the debate.

And so that meant that all societies were going to move to be liberal democracies, and the debate would not be liberal democracy versus communism or versus fascism. It would be which kind of liberal democracy, which would still be a debate, but a different kind of debate. and for George H.W. Bush and people around him at the time when this became very popular, it put pressure on them to be doing more to move quickly towards liberal democracy, otherwise they would seem to be behind the times. And so it created a push, a push toward quick openings. So that's the belief in 1989, 1990, and for the next few years, it's hard to get away from that markets one, command systems don't work. And if you just unshackle people

and invest in economic change, good things will happen. We now, I think, all recognize that economic openness can actually be disastrous if it's not accompanied by institutions that provide for the rule of law, institutions that distribute resources fairly. And that's not what happens, and that's something we underinvested. How could George Bush have handled this situation differently than he did? So first, I think under the circumstances where things were changing so fast in real time, And one has to give him credit for having done pretty well.

But now in retrospect, this is why history matters, we can learn things that people didn't see at the time. The United States should have done much, much more to make sure that a small group of oligarchs, who were the old communist bosses, didn't get control over everything in a free market space. How could they have done that? Well, I think we could have insisted on more institutional limitations on people who had access buying up everything. that would have taken more involvement on our part. It would have taken more, a slower process. But what ended up happening was when the big state industries in the Soviet Union were privatized, the communist bosses who had run those state industries became the owners of them. I was one of those naive people. When I saw that Tiffany's was on Red Square, I was like,

yeah, here we go. We're back. Everybody, hello. There we go. McDonald's. I remember going, I went to McDonald's in Moscow at Trescaia. And we thought, Yeah, I mean, Tom Friedman and the New York Times are written about it. If you have McDonald's, now you're going to be a democracy. All contrary, right? Because if just a few people own all the revenue, it actually reempowers them. And that's the story of what Russia becomes, which is this sort of gilded age oligarchy. Yes, exactly. So, but how much was Bush himself responsible for that, do you think? Well, he wasn't responsible for it. But I think it was a blindside in him, because he came from a world where you actually trusted the big guys to make the right decisions.

And he was skeptical because of his background and his politics. He was skeptical on requirements to distribute resources more fully. And so in a sense, he was a product of oligarchy, and that created a bias toward oligarchy. Right. So had we established more relationships with institutions in those days, both in front of and behind the scenes, we could have propagated a more balanced society in Russia. Is that the suggestion? I believe so, but it would have taken a lot more work and it would have slowed things down. And we don't know what would have happened if it had been slowed down, right?

The idea was to get this done as fast as possible so the communists couldn't reestablish themselves. Wow. I'm saying that you had to build institutions so when you were coming out of communism, you weren't just going into the Wild West, which is what happened. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Bush had been one of Reagan's biggest critics before he became his vice president in terms about this economic outlook. He called, you know, trickled down economics, really voodoo economics. How much of that played a role in his own economic policy, domestically speaking? Well, so domestically, he remained a critic of supply-side economics.

He believed that actually you shouldn't lower taxes in a way that actually bankrupts your country, that you have to have revenue. He had been a businessman. He understood you need revenue to come. cover costs. And so he makes a big deal, true big deal, with Democrats to actually raise taxes and violates a promise he made when he ran in 88 that he would not raise taxes. He says, I wasn't lying, but the economic situation has changed. There's a recession in 1989, 1990, and we need to actually be able to bring in more revenue. And he will never be forgiven by people like Newt Gingrich for that tax hike. But it shows that he has that he's not. He says that he's not. He says that he's

He doesn't believe in the Reagan voodoo economics. The motto was, read my lips, no new taxes in his campaign against Michael Dukakis. And it doesn't get any clearer than that. Read my lips, he was saying. And then it just all backfired for him later in his term. And that was the thing that he could not recover from. Bush is so well regarded for the Gulf War, which was the model war, as far as, you know, modern times are concerned.

suddenly Kuwait was invaded by Iraq and Saddam Hussein. And this incredibly, as I recall, well-managed military situation exists. It's almost too easy is what happened. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, there were a lot of little things that went wrong. But yes, I mean, in general, the invasion of Kuwait is turned back by Bush within about nine months, right? Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in the summer of 1990. And by the spring of 1991, the United States, the United States, States has basically pushed him out, restored Kuwait, and it looks like Saddam Hussein will fall without our invading Iraq itself, right? Because we have pushed his forces out. We've created a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds and others. It doesn't end the way we would hope for Saddam Hussein,

but Kuwait is restored. And most of the costs of American operations are paid for by allies, particularly the Saudis and the Kuwaitis. And in fact, fewer Americans die in this operation then would have died under normal non-war exercises. Yes. And so it's extraordinary. And for many of us, myself included, then a college freshman, it's the first time we become addicted to this thing called CNN in 24-hour news. And we're watching it, and it's like a video game.

It looks so easy. I was sitting in an apartment, and my friend's apartment, and suddenly Wolf Blitzer, or somebody was over there in that, you know, watching it. And for the first time, we were getting real-time video. of bombs coming into a city, what we take for granted these days. That was happening in real time. And that was both a signal of the times, you know, and our fixation on media, which, you know, cable was just blowing us up.

But it was also how important media was to the presidency. You know, suddenly it was going to turn that corner. Absolutely. And it gave us actually a false notion of what war was going to be like. Yes. Because it looked anodyne. It looked antiseptic. It looked like it was something that could be.

Man, as you said, managed. And of course, what, you know, Carl von Klauswitz, the 19th century theorist reminded us of, and we've been reminded in recent years, you know, wars about fog and friction. It's not the video game. Yep, exactly. Well, you know, we're joking around, but the 24-hour news cycle suddenly changes the whole world, you know, as far as, you know, cable coming in, Ted Turner basically creates a monster, you know, which is really how do you possibly watch things this closely and have a normal society,

which is, you know, so different from when I was a good, we were kids. All this happens, and now every foreign intervention from Panama, Somalia, all of these now get that kind of attention. And that also creates a new kind of Vietnam problem of how do you deal with the press? How do you manage the situation? And it sort of tips things over into the times we deal with now, where you have pooled reporters. You know, it just got out of hand, didn't it? Well, I think it's, yes, and I think it's different, though, from Vietnam, because in Vietnam, you had reporters, more at least, say, for Walter Cronkite. others who actually kind of roamed around freely behind the war lines. And we got a lot of reporting

that was not controlled by the Pentagon. And that's part of the Vietnam story, right? In this 24-hour news cycle, there's a great deal of emphasis on packaging and controlling how people see what they see. Yeah. And so in the Persian Gulf War, in that war, in that war, 1990-91, reporters did not roam around freely. They were controlled. They were, as you say, press pools that were managed. So what you're getting is more information, but you're getting now more packaged information, and that creates the basis for a lot of the disinformation, disinformation that becomes quite common in our news sources thereafter. Well, yeah. I mean, it's also the advent of the produced news event. Cable and CNN and 24-hour news cycle all contributes to this sort of tail-wagging the dog effect where the news people begin to create the news people. the hype, and you suddenly get these full-on visuals and everything we have today where news becomes a show. Yeah, news becomes more entertainment. I mean, that's what I thought you were

getting at so well when you talked about Ted Turner. Because it's 24-hour news, there's got to be something to say that's interesting. They just can't repeat the same thing they said before. So they have to come up with a story. So the message becomes the medium, and the medium becomes the message. They become intersecting. So it's not just telling us what happened. It's actually changing the reality, so there's something to tell us that happened that's worth listening to. In the middle of his presidency, you have Tiananmen Square, which is so interesting because he was so familiar with China and probably had many friendships in China. And yet it was a difficult thing for the United States to manage and for George Bush, right? Yeah, so Tiananmen is a really important

moment. It's June of 1989, is before the fall of the Berlin Wall. And it shows us how things could have gone very differently, perhaps in Europe as well. This is in the student movement in China, is a really big deal. And one of the things that catalyzes more student activism is Gorbache's visit to China in June. And there are tens of thousands of Chinese in the street, Chinese young people, demanding more say in their government. And we know that the Chinese leadership debates whether to go further to reform or not. And it is Deng Xiaoping, who says, no, we're going to crack down. and they bring military forces from the provinces to attack the students in the cities.

It's horrible. It's caught on TV. There are reporters there. There is the famous image of Tankman, this small Chinese man standing in front of that column. Yep. It's extraordinary. He really captures that moment, right? The standing up, the small man standing up to these huge tanks. For George H.W. Bush, this is a big challenge because he recognizes and certainly sides with the students. wants reform in China, but as you said, he has very strong connections to the Chinese leadership, and he wants a peaceful, effective, economically profitable relationship between the U.S. and China, and that means working with the Chinese government.

So very quickly, after Tiananmen, when most of the world will not talk to the Chinese leadership in protest, Bush sends secret emissaries there in the late summer and reestablishes a relationship with them. He does not apologize for what they did, but he argues that. we will reform China better if we work with them rather than isolating them. And Don, that remains the debate today. Did we isolate or engage? Yeah. I mean, this was cultural revolution level stuff in a way. You know, this was like what we would have no part of in the past.

And yet here we are realizing that our economic future, you know, is in play. And so we can't afford to support the values that we would ordinarily speak up for. And Bush is front and center on that, isn't he? That's exactly right. And also his natural inclination as a patrician is to work with the big guys on the other side. He is not an ideological threatened you in your face guy. He's not a New Yorker of the 1980s. He's a country club guy. And work with the other leaders of the country club. Then again, in his defense, he has a new world order to manage, doesn't he? I mean, that phrase comes into play here under George Bush. Yeah, and one of the things that George H. W. Bush would say, which is honest is, you know, so much was changing. You've got to have someone to work with. You need some anchors. And so he's looking for figures. And Dung was a reformer. He was at least an economic reformer. And the belief was that if you support people like Dung and Yeltsin, who are flawed figures, but they are at least opening their societies in the long run. This is what everyone believes after 1989, right? This is the Fukuyama argument. In the long run, these societies are going to reform because openness will bring a desire for freedom and it will bring more information. What they don't realize is what you and I just talked about, that openness can also be manipulated to encourage hate and encourage violence. One of its last acts is to pardon many people

from the Iran-Contra affair. Pardoning has always been part of presidential politics, but this was a big choice he makes. Absolutely. And it's really important to focus on this for a minute. At the end of his time in office, Christmas Day, 1992, just before he's leaving office, George H.W. Bush pardoned his former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and five other individuals who had been indicted, few had actually been convicted, of perjury and related crimes that surrounded Iran contrast, surrounded this illegal arms for hostages trade by the United States. and Bush pardoned them for two reasons. First of all, he believed that they were good public servants who might have made some mistakes,

but they were still part of the club. And if you're a loyal member of the club, you protect people in the club. So that's part of it. But second, he was also protecting himself because he had been briefed on what was going on with these illegal transfers of arms and money. And he had been a supporter of it, and these individuals knew that, particularly Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger. So by pardoning them, they were not in a position where they had to reveal anything that would be damaging to him. I don't think Bush was afraid about his own prosecution, though that was still possible. He was afraid of his reputation. He didn't want us talking about this as we are right now. Yeah. And how much it represented about executive power and the influence that he was wielding at this point. And I think this is an important lesson for us. It's a point I make in the impossible.

presidency, presidents should not have this pardoning power. It is too much of a temptation, even for an honest man, a good man, an ethical man. I think Bush was all those things. It still creates a temptation to get out of jail-free cards to people who have done things that are wrong that would help you. And I don't think a democracy should have these. It's a monocical vestige that we need to get rid of prime ministers do not have pardoning power in European democracies. And that's far better. In the end, it's a one-term presidency. And And the irony really is that he is unseated by a man who basically learned from George Bush, one, how to grab the center, you know. But this time it's the Democrats coming over through Bill Clinton, helped by Ross Perrault, of course.

But there's a shift in the dynamics there that is so fascinating in the 90s. The Democrats through Clinton have so much power in the 90s because of what they've learned from George Bush under Reagan. Absolutely. I mean, Bill Clinton is probably the most skilled politician of the last 50 years, and that's exactly what angers his opponents because he's so good at this, right? What Clinton is able to do is grab the middle to triangulate on the issues like the economy where the Democrats had been weak. And he actually criticizes Bush for not handling the economy well, says he'll do it even better. but at the same time he's able to reach out to the left by identifying with cultural issues such as race inclusion, LGBT issues and things of that sort that are important to people on the

left. So he can have the credentials of being a progressive while at the same time being a moderate on some of the issues that matter for people in the economic and political space. Yeah. And he does that so well, he tax back and forth on those issues. But importantly, this is the end of the Republican center under Bush. It's seized by the Democrats coming over, and thus begins the era we're in today. It remains to be told how effective in the long run this Republican decision becomes, but that's definitely where it begins, is getting rid of George Bush and this idea that there's any kind of center to the Republican Party. Right. What Newt Gingrich realizes in a diabolical way is that actually Clinton and the Democrats have been pretty good at stealing the center.

Yeah. And so hold them accountable for the ways they're still a the left. So go after them on the cultural issues. Go after them on those issues. And that's really what Republicans have done ever since. That's why in our most recent election, it was all about, you know, transgender athletes, the six of them who play in. But that becomes an issue to basically scare people. And that's what you see. Instead of fighting over the middle, they fight over the extremes, whereas the middle is actually where policy is made. Interesting. Thank you so much, Jeremy. Where can listeners find out more about you and what you've done? Well, they can read my books, The Impossible Presidency, Civil War by Other Means, Henry Kissinger in the American Century.

I also have a podcast of my own called This Is Democracy. And then I have a daily substack newsletter where I put contemporary events into historical perspective called Democracy of Hope. And I hope people will subscribe to that substack newsletter. It actually helps to fund my graduate students now who have lost some of their funding because of the current administration. But that's for another episode. There you go. Thank you so much. much. Thank you, Don. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Please remember to like, review, and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you

next time.