As a bookend to last week’s cathartic discussion of George H. W. Bush’s role in my personal political development and the unlikely debt I owe him, I want to flag two informative takes on his presidency. Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine makes a perverse but persuasive case that, despite current praise from his co-partisans, Republicans learned all the wrong lessons from his administration. They’ve doubled down on the racism and intolerant nationalism that the past week’s encomiums downplayed, while rejecting his willingness to compromise and act in a bipartisan fashion. Meanwhile, Jeet Heer at New Republic has a concise rundown of the ways H.W.’s record has been whitewashed in recent days, partly out of a wish to highlight his differences from the current president, and revealing an elite longing for when the nation was ruled by. . . other elites.

Indeed, the idea that H.W. embodied the wealthy, Ivy League-educated upper strata taking their rightful place at the top of government may, in retrospect, may have been the single-most important early lesson I drew from the man. That high office in a democracy is something that you should inherit because of your luck of birth, connections, and better sense of the common good struck me as bullshit back then, and there was perhaps no better person than H.W. to impart the lesson. Beneath his noblesse oblige lay insecurity, intellectual and moral weakness (as demonstrated by the way he shifted from a pro-choice, anti-supply sider to Ronald Reagan’s anointed heir), and a nastiness that made itself known when his assumptions about the hierarchical nature of America were called into question. He helped me learn early on to see through the pretensions of those who claim privilege in America, for which I feel a reluctant gratitude even today.