Today marks the centenary of the birth of George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st president of the United States. With one exception — his eldest son in 2004 — he is the last Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote.

He was a remarkable man in many ways, having been decorated as a U.S. Navy pilot during World War II, and his resume before the presidency was broad. After becoming a successful oil executive, he was a two-term congressman, unsuccessful candidate for the Senate, ambassador to the United Nations and to China, chairman of the Republican National Committee and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Bush seems now a figure of a truly bygone age. He was a relatively low-key vice president to Ronald Reagan by choice rather than imposition, learning from his Democratic predecessor Walter Mondale that being effective as VP in Washington owed a lot to avoiding conflict with White House staff and cabinet secretaries. He was also aware that the previous Republican vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, had become mired in disputes with other members of the administration by trying to insert himself into the decision-making process.

Because he succeeded the man who was then the oldest president in history, it is easy to forget that George H.W. Bush turned 65 the summer after his inauguration. He had come of age politically in the 1950s and early 1960s, before the Republican Party’s “Southern........

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