Blog on the Lillypad
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
 | Excerpt of Eulogy for Ronald Reagan by George Bush Sr.
From the days of the presidency of George Bush Sr., people have speculated that a distance lay between Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush. Reagan, during his presidency, never behaved with the lightness and easy humor around his vice-president as he did with other dignitaries. Was this courteous restraint a sign of distance between the two men? And yet, during the senior Bush's presidency, as Reagan set about the task of planning his own memorial service and funeral, Reagan asked George Bush to speak at his funeral. |
I think that Reagan and George H. Bush shared a type of friendship fast disappearing from our culture. Both men came from a generation that maintained friendships not only from personal warmth, but from business or political association. We tend to look down on such relationships, and yet business relationships and political relationships can be built on character and integrity, just like any other relationship.
Men of good character have lived up to such friendships with all the duty and integrity that they would give to their most devoted comrades. The fact that Reagan and Bush may have had widely different views, different tastes, and different past times did not hinder them from respecting and admiring each other. Nor did it hinder them from performing the office of friendship for each other with earnestness and thoroughness.
Certainly, George H. Bush's eulogy for Mr. Reagan showed a genuine warmth in a man normally reserved in speech and demeanor. While some of the eulogy struck me as having been carefully written and carefully read, the following excerpt, strengthened further by George H. Bush's tone of voice as he struggled at one point to go on, revealed a sincerity of admiration and wonder at Ronald Reagan:
As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life. I learned kindness; we all did. I also learned courage; the nation did.
Who can forget the horrible day in March 1981, he looked at the doctors in the emergency room and said, "I hope you're all Republicans."
And then I learned decency; the whole world did. Days after being shot, weak from wounds, he spilled water from a sink, and entering the hospital room aides saw him on his hands and knees wiping water from the floor. He worried that his nurse would get in trouble.
The good book says humility goes before honor, and our friend had both, and who could not cherish such a man?
I think that George H. Bush has given us a lesson in the faithfulness of friendships forged by men of integrity. Ronald Reagan was excellent at taking people as he found them and building from there. George H. Bush was not a fellow to clown around or display the warmth and enthusiasm that came so naturally to Reagan. And yet he is just the man, and just the sort of friend, to publically recount his friend's many virtues and hold up the evidence of such virtues for all the world to see.
