I didn’t vote for him in 1988, my first-ever Presidential vote having been cast for someone who happens to be running for President this year, but you’ve got to have at least a grudging respect for a guy who’s willing to jump out of an airplane at 83 years old:
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — He’s 83 and just had hip replacement surgery in January, but that isn’t keeping former President George H.W. Bush from skydiving.
Bush celebrated the grand reopening of his presidential museum on Saturday with a surprise skydive, his sixth and his first since 2004, when he jumped to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Bush jumped on Saturday strapped to an expert from the Army Golden Knights parachute team, as he did three years ago.
Good for him.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
[...] Below The Beltway has a neat article up about former President Bush skydiving at 83 years old. I’ll not steal Doug’s thunder here. Go read it: Below The Beltway » Blog Archive » Why I’ve Come To Like The First President Bush [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Jumping off of an airplane, “strapped to an expert from the Army Golden Knights parachute team” may be somebody’s idea of being worthy of respectability, at least of a grudging variety.
I wish to disagree.
The country is in shambles, thanks to his prodigal son, who seems to have parlayed his experience with several failed business ventures, into failing the country on a large scale, with the assistance of his master, HeWhoShallNotBeNamed.
He has started a pre-emptive war against a nation, and is scrambling to figure out how to get out with a semblance of “Peace with Honour”, while at the same time sabre-rattling against another country.
He has accumulated a tremendous increase in the national debt, thanks to the Republicans’ allergy to taxes, and affinity to borrowed spending. He is unconcerned that this h would become the problem of the next president, and future generations.
He trashed the military, their morale, the prestige of US abroad; in short made a dismal failure of anything he attempted. The fact that 20-30% of the people still like his reign is a testament to PT Barnum’s assertion.
With all of this going on, what does the elder Bush do? He is conspicuously inconspicuous from any public discourse of the serious straits that the country is in, content to have his minions, Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft come up with veiled and indirect critiques of Junior’s antics.
Oh recently he did say that the people unfairly blame his son for everything.
A mother’s unconditional and blind love for her son is understandable. But the elder Bush ought to be able to separate his fatherly love for his son, from a genuine concern for what is happening to the country that he once presided over, and thus far more knowledgeable than many in public life.
That he keeps mostly mum about it, and sometimes defends his son, is a testament to the intellectual bankruptcy and moral dishonesty of this “elder statesman”. Instead he is content to indulge in infantile fantasies at taxpayers’ expense.
I have absolutely no respect for George Herbert Walker Bush.