I don’t want to go overboard here. Bush 41 brought us Willie Horton, and he was clueless in the face of the recession. That said, he embodied a concept of noblesse oblige in a way that seems utterly quaint today, and he was willing to reach across the aisle to raise taxes even though it damaged him politically. He was wise enough to stay out of the way when the Iron Curtain was falling, he put together the coalition against Saddam Hussein, and he knew better than to depose Saddam when he had the chance, because, unlike his son, he understood the Pottery Barn rule.
In short, he stood for competence, patriotism, public service, liberal democratic values, and restraint. He was a genuine conservative, not a bomb thrower who calls himself one. He couldn’t have been more different than you-know-who, or, for that matter, the rest of his party, as it currently exists.
That’s why I wrote a parody of “My City Was Gone” called “My Party Is Gone” about him during the 2016 primaries. It’s painful to contemplate how much the world has changed since 1992, but, as with McCain’s death, perhaps those memories will do some good.