Former President George H.W. Bush dies at 94

The United States will observe a federal holiday Wednesday in honor of the late George H.W. Bush, America’s 41st president, who passed away on November 30 at age 94.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order appointing December 5 as a national day of mourning. On the same day, all living former presidents — including Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and Bush’s son George W. Bush — are expected to attend a memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Memorial services for President George H.W. Bush began on Monday and will take place for four days until he is laid to rest in Texas on Thursday.

Bush died on Friday at the age of 94 and this week will be honored in Washington, DC, and his home state of Texas. He laid in state in the US Capitol Rotunda starting on Monday evening.

President George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday at age 94, will be honored with a state funeral this week, as is customary for former heads of state.

Bush, who was one of the last politically influential pragmatists in the Republican Party, will lie in state in the US Capitol Rotunda before a funeral at the National Cathedral. After those ceremonies, his body will be returned to Texas for burial.

Since his death on Friday at the age of 94, former President George H.W. Bush has been praised repeatedly as the antithesis of President Donald Trump.

“Bush was an ambitious politician, but he also was self-effacing and reluctant to personalize the achievements of his administration,” wrote Michael McGough at the Los Angeles Times. “For Trump, everything is about Trump.”

George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday at age 94, was probably best remembered, legislatively, for his 1990 budget deal. But for many in the disability community, he is remembered for another bill passed that year: the Americans With Disabilities Act.

A monumental piece of legislation that prohibited discrimination against those with physical and intellectual disabilities, the act that Bush signed was seen as the equivalent of the Civil Rights Act for individuals with disabilities.

George H.W. Bush, the one-term president who died on Friday at age 94, is often overlooked by history, despite having presided over the last truly bipartisan “grand bargain” and the end of the Cold War. But if there’s one context in which his name, along with that of another man, is regularly invoked, it’s when political campaigns make coded racist appeals to white voters.

Even as President Donald Trump usurps him with increasingly transparent racist attacks, George Bush Sr.’s “Willie Horton” ad remains the key reference point for dog-whistle politics.

George H.W. Bush died at his home in Houston, Texas, on Friday night, launching a blizzard of obituaries praising his legacy and successful stewardship of the country as a one-term president. But it is not too soon to talk about the accusations by eight women that Bush Sr. touched them inappropriately.

Sexual harassment or assault can’t be bracketed off as part of a politician’s private life. It’s an important part of the story of their leadership, their use of power, and their policy. The same is true for Bush.

As leaders around the world begin paying their respects to the late President George H.W. Bush, current President Donald Trump added his name to the list, tweeting out an official statement and a shorter, more personal tweet, while also declaring Wednesday December 5 a national day of mourning.

In the official statement, Trump praised Bush’s “essential authenticity, disarming wit, and unwavering commitment to faith, family, and country,” noting that he had “inspired generations of his fellow Americans to public service — to be, in his words, ‘a thousand points of light’ illuminating the greatness, hope, and opportunity of America to the world.”

Following the death of President George H.W. Bush, many are sharing online the touching letter that he left for his successor Bill Clinton on Inauguration Day 1993.

In the letter, written on White House letterhead and signed “George,” Bush Sr. shares the wonder and respect he felt for the office, and wishes success and happiness for the man who defeated him in his bid for reelection.

Presidents give hundreds of speeches, but, for better or worse, Americans tend to remember just a few one-liners. For George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st US president, that line was his pledge at the 1988 Republican National Convention when he accepted the party’s nomination.

“Read my lips: No. New. Taxes.”

George H.W. Bush was a genuinely excellent president responsible for historic achievements that are often overlooked because of the arbitrary way we value presidential legacies.

His passing, on Friday at the age of 94, is a perfect time to take stock of his policy accomplishments and take a broader view of his career than was visible during the extended period when he and his sons were active in presidential politics. Bush’s single term was not so long ago, but he was both the last president of the generation that served in World War II and one of the last politically influential pragmatists in the Republican Party.

George H.W. Bush was admitted to a hospital Sunday for a blood infection, and the 93-year-old former president is now in intensive care. The timing is unsettling: It happened the day after the funeral of his wife, former first lady Barbara Bush, who died at 92 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure.

But could the first event really have caused the other?

Former President George H.W. Bush, 93, was hospitalized on Sunday, a day after the funeral ceremony for his wife, Barbara Bush.

A statement from a family spokesperson, Jim McGrath, said that the former president had been admitted to the hospital after contracting an infection that spread to his blood. “He is responding to treatments and appears to be recovering,” the statement read.