Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast today is Tuesday December 4th 2018.

We are working on this podcast on Monday but we were having continuing technical problems which we have not ended and we once again come to you through the magic of skype rather than our own individual broadcast board.

We can never get this resolved with me as always senior editor Abe Greenwald high Abe hi John associate editor Noah Rothman high Noah hi John and social commentary columnist Christine Rosen high Christine hi John commentary of course the 70 odd year old monthly of intellectual analysis political property and cultural criticism from a conservative perspective.

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So we of course as is the entire country we are mourning the death of George Herbert Walker Bush the 41st president of the United States.

And of course his death has occasioned an outpouring of I think what can only be viewed as a nostalgia explosion for a time of different more formal more of the latest more established material standards that govern the country.

And of which I think we can say he was the last his presidency was the last flowering it was the last flowering of the president who would only wear a suit and tie in the Oval Office president who conducted much of his business through formal personal correspondence in which he kept up with thousands of people understanding the specific.

Brilliant social brilliance of communicating by hand by mail just before the explosion of the email would hit and before a baby boomer president who had actually dodged the draft could take his place in the Oval Office following a war hero who would flown 58 combat missions and actually had been shot down in the sea of the

Japan on one of those missions so we will we stand now 27 26 years after he lost the his reelection and was about to exit office with a president who is in almost every way his polar opposite.

And so I think there's a lot of nostalgia going on for what what what was lost although when it was lost almost nobody had nostalgia for it.

I'm a you have any thoughts on this and this one yeah yeah it's it's remarkable because even just watching the proceedings in DC now I was struck by how that feels like time travel even even though it's happening now because it because it involves figures from that time it's it's a reminder of how things just no longer work and you know as you say I mean.

What what what Bush was about we were already sort of in a different political universe or at least it's sort of different behavioral universe from even before Trump I think Trump has to have Trump's presidency sort of pushes us into something even that has a more science fiction like relationship with those times.

Right well so if Trump is the most anti establishment president we've ever had and I think it's arguable that Bush was the most establishment president we ever had in fact that was what he was that was his strength and his weakness was that he was somebody who had been born affluent enough and in a tradition of

that in which a public service was viewed as the highest good and something you were supposed to do in part to give back because of your because of your wealth and and and white privilege let's say you know and that and that now we have we have more cultural personal you know personal self fulfillment and

in which Donald Trump essentially runs for office and becomes president out of out of us out of a kind of personal need rather than you know rather than a sense that his whole life had been sort of moving him toward the position in which he could help guide this country.

Yeah I mean it's also yeah well thinking about it now you think in terms of polar opposite you think about how Bush really distinguished himself in throughout various institutions of government through time including the intelligence community and and the military it's it's it's a it's a remarkable thing compared to now how none of that is trusted none of that is now respected and it's all viewed as being suspect.

At the time remember that you know the New York Times for example there was that infamous portrayal of president Bush is this kind of bumbling privilege was who didn't understand how a supermarket scanner worked and John Goldberg had a great take down of that that whole

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