The stories behind George H.W. Bush’s most iconic phrases
A handful of political sayings that continue to reverberate in American politics are indelibly linked to President George H.W. Bush, whose public life included serving as the CIA director, as vice president during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and his single term in the White House as the 41st president.
“Voodoo” economics
While they were rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, Bush famously panned Reagan’s economic plan, calling it “voodoo” economics.
Bush, who had an undergraduate degree in economics from Yale University, coined the phrase to describe Reagan’s plan to drive economic growth by cutting taxes. “It just isn’t going to work,” , “what I call a voodoo economic policy.”
After joining the Reagan administration as vice president, Bush at one time denied using the term, which was a source of embarrassment. But it caught among Reagan’s critics.
“The wimp factor”
As he campaigned in 1987 to succeed Reagan as president, Bush was battling against a so-called “wimp factor,” cover story published in October of that year.
The article raised questions about whether Bush could overcome public perceptions that he wasn’t strong or tough enough to take on the nation’s challenges during the Cold War.
Vice President Bush, the article pointed out, stood taller than Reagan at 6 foot 2 inches. But members of the public were often surprised to find when meeting Bush in person that he wasn’t a “little short guy,” it said.
Bush went on to win the 1988 election, but lost a second term. On Saturday, behind the cover story “Fighting the ‘wimp factor’,” said he was wrong to have thought that Bush lacked the “the inner fortitude to lead the free world.”
“Read my lips: No new taxes.”
Bush spoke this iconic line as he accepted the Republican nomination for president in 1988 — one that would come to haunt his presidency.
“The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no, and they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say to them, ‘Read my lips: no new taxes’,” he
In 1990, Bush with Congressional Democrats that called for raising taxes to help cut the national deficit. The reversal became a major line of attack in Bush’s bid for a second term and he ultimately lost to Democrat Bill Clinton.
“It did destroy me,” Jon Meacham. “It was a mistake (to make the pledge), but I meant it at the time, and I meant it all through my presidency. But when you’re faced with the reality, the practical reality of shutting down government or dealing with a hostile Congress, you get something done.”
“A kinder, gentler nation”
Bush laid out his vision for a kinder, more gentle nation during his bid for president in 1988 and when he was eventually sworn in as the country’s 41st president. The words stand in stark contrast to the incivility and name-calling that has come to define today’s politics.
But, at the Republican convention in 1988, meaning as “teaching troubled children through your presence that there's such a thing as reliable love.”
“Some would say it's soft and insufficiently tough to care about these things,” he said. “But where is it written that we must act as if we do not care, as if we are not moved? Well, I am moved. I want a kinder, gentler nation.”
“1,000 points of light”
Bush coined the phrase in 1988 at the GOP national convention, when he described America as a nation of community volunteer organizations — “a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”
The focus on volunteerism continued through Bush’s first term with as a Point of Light for community service. He also launched a nonprofit organization bearing the same name.
The phrase caught on with the public, sparking a country song and plenty of political satire, including cartoons of devastated neighborhoods cast as "a thousand points of blight,” .