“The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And I’ll say to them: ‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’” — George Bush's GOP Nomination Acceptance speech, Aug. 18, 1988.

"Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." - Texas Governor Ann Richards at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

George H.W. Bush may have lived one of the most personally moving stories in all of presidential history. There's war. There's loss. There are great heights and great defeats. Through it all, Bush often appeared somewhat wooden. Unreachable. Unavailable. But beneath that was a man of deep emotions. Follow along as Bush fights in World War II, builds an oil empire in Texas, and rises through the ranks of GOP politics to the White House, where he contended with the end of the Cold War, the aggression of an Iraqi dictator, and an economic reckoning that threatened to be the undoing of his career.

Bibliography
1. Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush – Jon Meacham
2. When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War - Jeffrey Engel
3. The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House - John Harris
4. Ronald Reagan: The life – H.W. Brands
5. Bush - Jean Edward Smith
6. Richard Nixon, the life – John A. Farrell
7. His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life – Jonathan Alter
8. Gerald Ford – Douglas Brinkley

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Americans have long had a complicated relationship with taxes. We don't like paying them, but we love the things they pay for. In the decades after World War II, both political parties agreed - taxes are worth it.
Then came Ronald Reagan and the anti-tax movement.
Michael Graetz, a Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale University and Columbia University and author of The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America, discusses how an American consensus was shattered and a new era of low taxation and deficit spending was begun, and the impact that era will have on Americans today and tomorrow.

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On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned recently-resigned president Richard Nixon of any crimes he may have committed in the presidency, and the pardon has never been the same since. Law Professor Kimberly Wehle, author of the new book Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works - and Why, discusses the origin and history of the presidential pardon and the danger its potential abuse poses to the future of democracy.

If you'd like to read more from Kim, check out her Substack at https://kimwehle.substack.com/

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