George H W Bush: Kinder and gentler breed of leader with uncommon grace

He believed in courtesy, as any lawmaker who dealt with him and any journalist who repeatedly crossed paths with him can attest

Kinder. Gentler. Those were words that George HW Bush famously used in his inaugural speech, when he was sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. I say “famously” not because the verbiage was particularly visionary, but because it evolved, over the years, into a shorthand for his philosophy, for his character, for what the Republican Party needed to be and for what he wanted to make it.

The words fell into a passage of the speech that, in relation to the “American carnage” of the current president’s oratory, seems both quaint and exotic — and makes you