He was in charge when Checkpoint Charlie checked out in Germany as the Berlin Wall fell. He was commander-in-chief leading Operation Desert Storm to a successful conclusion.
He was involved when the Soviet Union collapsed.But George Herbert Walker Bush, a man whose public service career is now memorialized in a presidential library, insists he is quite content in private life and most discontented about the current state of politics.
Retirement, though forced, has proved rewarding for Bush and his wife, Barbara, who live in Houston and now will have an apartment at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum to be dedicated this week at Texas A&M University.
"Life is good for us," Bush said last week as he passed the pizza at a noon lunch in his Houston office. "We can't ask for anything. There is not one thing in the world that I want, you know, material thing. Nothing. Our life is happy. We got a new dog. And we've got two sons in politics.
"We've got five kids that are happy in their own lives. What else is there? I'm 73. That's what life's about."
And though it's about time for the historians to began issuing the report cards on Bush's life and times, the ex-president insists he is not interested in a set-the-record-straight mission. He hopes the 40 million documents in the new library will help historians find a positive slant on his four years in the White House.
"I'd like scholars to go there and make up their own minds as to the successes and failures we had in the administration, what we did right, what we didn't do right. And who George Bush is," he said. "There's all these kind of myths out there that I've been fending off for years. I'm 6-2, and people say I'm taller than they thought. And people say, `You laugh from time to time. We never had that impression.' "
(George Bush jokes about the fact that the former Japanese official on whom he threw up during a state dinner will be at the library dedication: "I told him the dinner's on me this time.")
Bush's only first-person contribution to the making of his presidential legacy will be a book, "A World Transformed," co-written with former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, to be published next year. The book chronicles the landmark changes around the globe during Bush's four years in charge.
"It will not be a screeching best-seller," Bush said. "Big, thick treatise with a lot of detail. It's a policy book. Every German historian at Heidelberg U. will read this book."
The book, he said, is not a memoir.
"I want to be sure that the side that gets out is accurate," he said. "But now if I felt driven about doing that, I'd write a memoir, and people are urging me to, and I'm not goingto do it; let historians figure it out."
But, as if to give them some hints, Bush is ready to offer topics to research, including whether his administration is due any credit for the nation's current strong economy.
"I had not brought this up until now, but if people reach that conclusion that the boom, the growth started while I was still president, fine. I think that is what they are going to find, frankly," he said.
Bush calls his loss to Bill Clinton "more hurt than bitter."
"I lost in '92 because people still thought the economy was in the tank and that I was out of touch and that I didn't understand it," he said. "The economy wasn't in the tank, and I wasn't out of touch. But I lost. I couldn't get through the hue and cry for change, change, change."
Bush still resents a Washington press corps that he believes did not give him a fair shake. He has not forgotten or forgiven.
He recalls things with detail, including how to spell the name of a "lazy little guy" reporter who wrote a story saying Bush was amazed when he saw the scanning device at a supermarket checkout, making him seem out of touch.
Bush insists the technology was new and few people had seen it.
Because of the story, he wrote "the only letter I ever wrote when I was president complaining about press coverage."
"That one stung, and the d--- New York Times wouldn't do a d--- thing about it," he said.
So now, almost five years after ending a life of public service, Bush is another pensioner griping about politics. He believes it is an honorable endeavor, not always honorably endeavored.
"I don't like all the sleaze around, and I don't like the fact that it turns off a lot of people," he said, rejecting the notion that "everyone does it."
"It depends on what `it' is," he said. "If it's selling bedrooms, overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom, everybody has not done it."
Political fund-raising calls from the White House?
"I don't ever recall making a fund-raising call from the White House, ever, asking anybody to give money," Bush said.
These days, probing questions about his presidency come from friendlier sources. Bush recounted how granddaughters Barbara and Jenna Bush, the 15-year-old twin daughters of Gov. George W. Bush and wife, Laura, pressed him for answers about aliens last summer in Maine.
" `Gampy,' " he recalls them asking, " `what did you do with those people who landed? Don't tell us it didn't happen. And then you took them and froze them. What happened to them?' "
The ex-president showed he has not lost a step in the politician's shuffle.
"I said, `Look girls, I'm a busy man here,' " he responded by way of not pinpointing exactly where the frozen space folks are being refrigerated. "They read some crazy things."
Bush, the son of a U.S. senator from Connecticut, is proud that sons George W. and Jeb are in politics. Jeb Bush, a narrow loser to Democrat Lawton Chiles in the 1994 Florida gubernatorial election, will run again next year.
"I keep hearing that word used," the elder Bush said when asked if the family is building a dynasty. "I don't think either of these guys think they are doing something to fulfill a legacy or to be part of a third generation of a dynasty. I think it's more individual choice."
Bush declines to fuel the speculation about George W. Bush's potential 2000 race for the White House.
"I don't discuss that because the more national speculation . . . the more counterproductive that is for him. My interest is to see him be re-elected," he said, adding that presidential talk could spur some voters to think "he ought to be minding the store" instead of seeking a higher-paying job elsewhere.
"I'm not my son's keeper," Bush said.
From the head of the conference room table, as he navigates the baklava around the table, Bush talks about the library and museum documenting a life filled with personal and political fulfillment.
He claims to be uncomfortable, by training, about self-praise.
"I'm nervous if my mother is looking down, and here are people saying only nice things about her son," he said, "and then sees an exhibit that is a bit of an ego trip - she will be rolling around up there, balling me out."