Book: 41: A Portrait of My Father
Author: George W. Bush
Review: John E. Parkerson, Jr. – Attorney, Hall Booth Smith, P.C.; honorary consul general and foreign economic counselor of Hungary
My son, Justin, gave me the new book by George W. Bush for my birthday a few weeks ago. The gift touched me, as I believe that my son related to what early reviews regarded as an intimate portrait of a father by an admiring son. I just completed the book as my bedtime reading; and I am struck by George W. Bush’s devotion and love for his father, George Herbert Walker Bush – our 41st president of the United States.
As our 41st president nears the end of his remarkable life with increasingly fragile health, I also am struck by his son’s apparent need also to define his own presidency by many of the lessons that he learned from his father. This could be most interesting and illuminating aspect of the book. Although the book is not couched as a political study, but rather as an intimate portrait of a father’s influence on his son, one cannot help but draw subtle comparisons. George W. – the son and our 43rd president – seems to reevaluate some of his still-debated decisions, such as the second Iraq war, in light of the lessons he learned from his father.
George H.W. Bush is presented as selflessly devoted to family and sincerely dedicated in service to his country, showing strong determination and understated but clear ambition, a sense of purpose and adherence to principle, graciousness and civility in both victory and defeat and loyalty to friends. When the 41st president failed in his reelection bid, his son conveyed effectively the deep disappointment and regret that his father initially felt – that despite a successful, three-decades-long career in his country’s service, he somehow failed to complete his life-long mission to his country. This, despite a remarkable pursuit of public service that included (we forget): congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and two terms as vice president under President Ronald Reagan – leading up to his single term as president of the United States.
As I read the son’s tribute to his father, I not only came away with greater appreciation for 41’s character, but I also watched 43’s reexamination and of his own record and, perhaps, the Bush legacy.
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