Welcome to Words Matter. I'm Elise Jordan along with Steve Schmidt. Our goal is to promote objective

reality. As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own

facts. Words have power, and words have consequences.

This was a sad week and a nostalgic week for many Americans watching the ceremonies

celebrating the life of President George H. W. Bush. And Steve, I don't know how you

felt about it, but H. W. Bush was the first president as a child that I really kind of

got to know of and became interested in politics because of I remember during the 92 campaign,

my dad, my granddad were talking politics all the time, and they were constantly comparing

H. W.'s character to that of Bill Clinton. And so this was kind of my political awakening

in the time frame in which I first fell in love with politics because of a man like

H. W. Bush at the top of the food chain who conducted himself in such a way that really

made you proud.

Well, I think I really share your feelings of nostalgia and this real sense of loss this

week, not just with the passing of an American statesman and somebody who I think is a

Titanic figure in the last hours of the 20th century. Somebody who's going to be remembered

very, very well by history. Somebody who I think is going to be regarded by historians

as the greatest one term president in the history of the country. Somebody who exercised

the combinations of wisdom and restraint and goodness that the American people have expected,

I think, from the president of the United States over the long arc of our history. He was

in addition to being the last of the World War II generation to be president of the United

States. This occasion marks the passing of the youngest combat pilot in the Pacific

theater of war at 94 years of age. And when we think about that generation that Tom

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