George H.W. Bush’s Legacy

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/opinion/george-hw-bushs-legacy.html

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To the Editor:

Re “The Grace of George H.W. Bush” (Sunday Review, Oct. 16):

Jon Meacham correctly identifies the antecedents of today’s pustulant Trump campaign in the 1988 campaign of Bush the Elder, pointing to the malign presence of swamp-dwellers like Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater. But notice the elephant missing in Mr. Meacham’s brief summary of Mr. Bush’s tactics in 1988:

Mr. Bush “painted Mr. Dukakis as soft on crime for his record of furloughing convicted murderers and criticized his veto of a bill mandating that public schoolchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Mr. Meacham is too genteel to point out that the 1988 Bush campaign set a new low for racist pandering, with its focus on the blackness of Willie Horton and its dog-whistle reassurances to its deplorable plurality of racist voters.

Pointing out that Poppy Bush was more than happy to profit from these vile racist tactics, of course, would spoil Mr. Meacham’s dreamy “nostalgia.”

Although Mr. Bush’s refined sensibilities recoiled at rudeness, he was still happy to let others get down in the mud with the deplorables and do his dirty work for him.

OWEN MAHONEY

Dundas, Ontario