You wish the liberal media would have shown 1/10th the respect for George H.W. Bush in life as it is doing now that he has died. Morning Joe exemplified that this morning, as Joe, Mika and Jon Meacham each offered emotional tributes to the 41st President—while making invidious comparisons with the current occupant of the Oval Office.
But emotion aside, there was one interesting fact that emerged. Joe Scarborough revealed, and Mika Brzezinski confirmed, that Mika's father, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, voted for George H.W. Bush. And that was the one and only time Brzezinski voted for a Republican presidential candidate.
Scarborough explained that what inspired Zbig was the kind of leadership and discipline that H.W. demonstrated in deciding not to continue on to Baghdad after the successful expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.
Note: Scarborough said that he had been the only person on a panel defending H.W.'s decision, after the liberation of Kuwait, not to continue the fight back to Baghdad. Did Scarborough's defense come shortly after Desert Storm, when H.W.'s restraint was being criticized? Or did it happen after the subsequent invasion of Iraq by George W. was revealed to be something less than a smashing success?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's important for people to remember now, he was getting absolutely skewered, in the years following the first Gulf War, for ignoring the advice of the red-hot conservatives and some of his generals, and stopping short of Baghdad. He was getting killed, and I was the one person on a panel that was defending him, saying, no, we showed extraordinary discipline. He said we were going to liberate Kuwait and then we were going to come home, and even with an open road to Baghdad, he knew that's what he had promised, that's how he had built this remarkable worldwide coalition, and he showed the discipline that few other leaders would show. And because of it, he didn't get ensnarled in the war that his son got ensnarled in several years later. But you know, Mika, it was that sort of discipline that actually made your father a very big fan of George H.W. Bush.MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes.
JOE: And I would say you could count the number of Republicans that your father voted for on one hand.
MIKA: Yeah.
JOE: You actually could count the number of Republicans your father voted for for president on one finger and that one president was George H.W. Bush.
MIKA: Yeah.
