BUSH FAMILY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The memorial service for George H.W. Bush was a perfectly civil and eminently civilized event, and if one was listening in a literal-minded way it all sounded like a grand exception to life in modern Washington—two hours of stories and tributes that were entirely bereft of political tension. The only way to listen in a literal frame of mind, of course, was through some equivalent of self-lobotomy—to be willfully oblivious of context, guileless in a way that certainly does not describe Bush or any of the people he chose to speak at his farewell. The service was replete with praise for the 41st president that could, with just the slightest nudge of interpretation, be heard as implied rebuke of the 45th president. But only implied, never explicit—this, unlike almost everything else in American politics today, was not about Donald Trump.”
–John F. Harris, “Bush’s Funeral Wasn’t About Trump. But Of Course It Was.,” Politico, December 5, 2018