The eulogies for Bush 41, (the father of W*, y’know), are getting a long run this week, to be capped by Wednesday’s state funeral in D.C.. And as usual with passing leaders, the reflections are heavy on hagiography.

In general I won’t quibble with the assessment that 41 was a decent guy (mostly), unfailingly polite to friends and foes (until his people weren’t), respectful of government traditions (as far as that goes), prepared to take a hit to correct a problem before it turned into a crisis and a far (far) better role model for the country’s youth than the shameful vulgarian currently squatting in the Oval Office.

In other words, as the Republican presidents of my lifetime go, he was up there with Dwight Eisenhower in terms of competence and ethics. But hagiography is a lazy, mush-headed exercise in any situation and certainly when the deceased has been a major international leader. As an adult no longer guided by fables and fairy tales I believe it’s better for all concerned to roll the warts, the blunders and the occasional hook-up with sleaze merchants into the historical narrative.

I’m always amused at how the media’s fulminating “small gummint conservatives” seem never to recall a Republican in the White House since St. Ronald of Hollywood. Until he died this past week how many times in the past year have you heard any pundit or politician even mention the name(s) of either George H. W. Bush or his son? It’s like they never existed. There was only Ronald, who should be on Mt. Rushmore, (perhaps carved over Abraham Lincoln) and then we jump to … well, most of them are still pretending Trump is a closet Democrat.

But here’s a shocker. I had no time for Reagan. Him launching his 1980 general election campaign with a speech lauding “states rights” (i.e. white nationalism) at the Neshoba County Mississippi fairgrounds, seven short miles from where the Ku Klux Klan murdered three civil rights workers barely a decade earlier, would have been disqualifying enough, if he hadn’t already played the feckless toady during the House Un-American Activities hearings on The Hollywood Ten. After that you can move on to his presidency. Refusing to lift a finger to control the AIDS epidemic, (that gay crap don’t play with the “states rights” crowd, so bleep ’em). And then jump to Iran-Contra and the usual Republican legacy of an astonishing run-up of debt and gutting of social services.

Reagan was a doltish tool for the ruling class who could read a script and tell a joke. Hence: The Great Communicator … to the Neshoba County-like, “states rights” base.

My regard for Bush 41 would be different today had he not preceded Reagan’s “states rights” strategy by renouncing his support for civil rights legislation being pushed by Martin Luther King (and Lyndon Johnson) in an effort to win votes in Texas in 1964. Playing the racial animus card for personal political game is always and forever a bridge too far. You want to change your attitude on taxes or pothole repair? Knock yourself out. But no truly moral human being ever … ever … inflames racial antipathies to get elected to a better job.

But then comes the 1988 campaign, which starts out with selecting … Dan Quayle, a Sarah Palin-like cipher — as his VP choice. (I was there at that moment next to the levee in downtown New Orleans.) Dude, you and John McCain … you lose serious points from the get-go for really bad, un-presidential judgment.

And it gets worse in ’88 by hiring on the D.C. “lobbying” firm of Charles Black, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Lee Atwater, and giving them a long run of leash to pull every sleazy, race-baiting trick they could think of against Mike Dukakis, including Lee Atwater’s notorious “Willie Horton ad”.

The retch-inducing shamelessness of that was, like Bush 43’s attack on John McCain as the illegitimate father of a black child during the South Carolina primary in 2000, all too typical of how the brahmin-like Bushes campaigned. Naked, cynical attacks on the street level under-girding a lofty, statesman-like pose from the podium.

That of course has been and still is from page one the Republican playbook, ever since “states’ rights” resentment-mongering guaranteed them white “working class”/”silent majority” votes over 50 years ago.

So yeah, in a very imperfect world where no human is ideal, and where as Bob Dylan says, “behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain”, Bush 41 was better than others. Maybe though just by being less reckless with the truth and less indecent than what we’re enduring now.

All that says though is that the bar is pretty damn low.