He was a generous but subtly demanding boss.

Indeed, the key to all diplomacy was knowing when they were serious about their threats and when they were posturing. Nations were like individuals, requiring cultivation and the paying of respect.

He was a product of a culture where it was generally counterproductive to hold grudges.

Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H.W. Bush candidly admitted, "I might have been obsessed with bodies – boobs they are now called. But what seventeen-year-old kid was not? Guilty am I.

He did something he rarely did. He decided not to see things from the other guy's point of view.

The politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity.