Bush 41? I wouldn’t be so quick to compare him to anybody actually great in history however large or small. He was a 1 term president who got elected and then squandered the good will of the American Voter.
His quote “No new taxes” will be remember in history for the next 200 years. Compare this to Churchill’s “We shall fight them in ....”.
The only thing that links the two together is both marked the decline of their respective nations.
As for the comparison with Churchill, don’t think Churchill didn’t make his mistakes as well, and with a far greater global impact and human toll. When Churchill formulated the plan force the Dardanelles at Gallipoli, they incurred over 300,000+ casualties. It was a major blunder and extremely poorly conceived and executed by ANY standard, even those of that time.
Don’t get me wrong. I view Churchill as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century, if not the greatest, and he remains for me right behind or just ahead of Ronald Reagan. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t flawed. Same with leaders such as Halsey, Patton, and MacArthur. (I see MacArthur as flawed, even more so)
While I don’t see GHWB as a great leader in that respect, I also give him credit for managing to hammer together a coalition to do the right thing in the Middle East (And yes, because we had at that time an even greater dependency on Middle Eastern oil than we do today, it was the right thing and in our own self-interest) and it was indeed executed brilliantly by any metric. We shouldn’t disparage the fact he was able to execute Gulf War I without having it spill over and spread.
That doesn’t happen by accident, even if the best thing President Bush did was to give the military a high degree of latitude.
I was a defender of both the Bush presidencies, because at each time, I thought the actions in the Middle East were correct. I find great fault with both of them domestically, and I carry no water for either of them now in light of their support of Hillary Clinton in the last election, which I find a gross abomination which renders both undeserving of any consideration.
But, IMO, facts are facts, and I appreciate the leadership both Bushes showed when they had to put it on the line, even as I am disgusted by both today, and particularly since the alternatives would have been “leaders” like Dukakis and Gore.