“George Bush was possibly the most kind and considerate person I’ve ever known in my life."-James Baker III
"A perfect American."-Colin Powell
"I just wanted to say hello to the president and the first lady," Bush told reporters afterward with a smile, according to The New York Times. "When the president comes to your hometown, you show up and welcome him."
The Patrician President and the Reporterette: a Screwball Story-Maureen Dowd
I come from a line of Irish maids who worked for the first families of America, the Mellons and the Gores, wealthy, aristocratic families like the Bushes.
...
In another life, I probably would have been serving President Bush his vodka martini, made to perfection with a splash of dry vermouth, two olives and a cocktail onion.
...
His idea of cursing like a sailor entailed unleashing a string of epithets like “Golly!” “Darn!” and “Oh, shoot!”
...
...I came along just as the old world of Ivy League white men running everything was breaking up...[B]y 1988, I could be The New York Times White House reporter.
And that was a shock to the system for H.W. He was all noblesse oblige and I was all class rage. He was clearly expecting someone with a name like Horatio Farnsworth III, a Harvard man who would bat around the finer points of the North Atlantic alliance over highballs on Air Force One.
...
Fortunately, H.W. was too gracious to hold my background and writing style against me for long. He adapted and treated me with utter fairness and kindness, even when I dubbed him “goofy”...
What other commander in chief wore a bunny tie on Easter and a pumpkin tie on Halloween? Who else would sit in the White House reading women’s magazines with his wife and then look up to ask, “Bar, what’s a bikini wax?”
[No! He didn't! Ho-ho-ho.]
Who else would go to the magic shop near the White House and fill his office with items like a red rope that turned white, a calculator that squirted water and cash on a string so you could yank it back when someone tried to pick it up?
Who else would send me...a picture of himself and Barbara parodying that famous attenuated Al and Tipper Gore convention kiss?
[OMG! Hilarious.]
Who else would jump out of a plane on his 90th birthday, years after he began using a wheelchair? Waiting for her husband on the landing pad of their church in Kennebunkport, Barbara dryly noted that if the parachute didn’t open, at least they wouldn’t have to go far for the funeral.
[OMG! HILARIOUS!]
One of the only things that 41 ever boasted about was when he began hilariously claiming, after he got out of office, that he had coined the phrase “You da man” in the ’60s.
[OMG!]
“He maintains he was inspired to shout it to the Houston Astros’ Rusty Staub as he rounded third base following a home run, and it slowly caught on from there,’’ Doro Bush wrote in her book on her dad.
["He maintains"! From his own kid! Ho ho ho.]
I didn’t spare the journalistic rod. When I took my mother, who was on crutches, to a White House Christmas party, President Bush kissed her sweetly. On the way home, she said, “I knew he had a cold, but he was so handsome, I just went for it.’’ Then she glowered at me, muttering, “I don’t want you to write anything mean about that man ever again.’’
[Oh my God, Maureen Dowd, this is an absolutely precious article. God love you.]
Sometimes, H.W...declared himself “double dip angry” with me after a tough column on W.
["double dip angry" Oh my God.]
After he was out of office, I sent H.W. and Barbara books and small Christmas mementos. Once, I told my assistant, Ashley Parker — now a Washington Post White House reporter — to send him a glasses case embroidered with a lobster. She got distracted and sent him some cheap drugstore hand warmers that you put inside gloves.
Naturally, since we’re talking about the most polite man who ever lived, I soon got a thank-you note for the 50-cent present: “I shall use the handwarmers as Pres. Obama comes in and we Bushes leave town,’’ he said.
When my mom died at 97 in 2005, he sent me a kind email that made me cry.
[Oh. Oh, God bless that man.]
