Despite being a kind, warm, friendly and unassuming gentleman – I was personally struck by him escorting me to the door of the bathroom of his home in Houston rather than just pointing out the way – he came across publicly as a rather patrician character, out of touch with the needs and wishes of the common people. This cost him his re-election, and its own way perhaps distanced him from Indian public opinion.
George HW Bush Was A Misunderstood Humble Globalist: Tharoor
12/December/2018
George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States of America, who passed away last night at the age of 94, was the most internationalist of US Presidents – arguably the last one whose Presidency was driven more by considerations of global geopolitics than domestic politics.
India never quite warmed to George H.W. Bush. Partly this was because, with so many big-ticket global headline issues on his agenda, India never loomed large among his concerns. Partly, it may have been due to the fact that he lacked the charisma of his youthful successor, Bill Clinton, whose visit to New Delhi in 2000 is credited with constituting the first major breakthrough in Indo-US relations.
Yet, he was very much a friend of India. As a former ambassador to the UN, he knew and understood Indian policies and positions; as a knowledgeable internationalist, he was not inclined to see India through the lens of ignorance through which most American politicians regarded our country.
He had Indian friends as well, notably the tennis superstar Vijay Amritraj, a frequent sparring partner on the White House tennis courts (Bush was an obsessive and indefatigable tennis player) and the Florida dentist Zach Zachariah, who was Bush’s principal fund-raiser in the Indian-American community.
These friends took advantage of their proximity to the US President to sensitize him to India’s interests and concerns, and found Bush receptive and sympathetic.
As a former US Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Bush was inclined to be somewhat sympathetic to China. But developments in that country were not conducive to warming relations; the Tianmen Square massacre even led Bush to impose sanctions on the People’s Republic. Under Bush, therefore, India did not suffer from the Sinocentrism that has often limited Washington’s respect for Indian interests.
Handling Collapses & Unifications
Bush became President as the Cold war was ending; the dramatic collapse of the USSR, and the emergence of sixteen independent nations out of the ruins of the Soviet Union, occurred on his watch.
He worked to minimise the prospects of global disruption from this event and ensured that the Russian federation was accepted as the successor state to the USSR, including inheriting its permanent seat at the United Nations.https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/president-george-hw-bush-remembered-by-shashi-tharoor