PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH...The way they were.

President George H.W. Bush was by excellence and example a gentleman and a type of American better books are written about. His life reads like a manual on manners, decency and professionalism. For the time being his biography can only exist in the past tense, regrettably. The deteriorated vocabulary of today's Washington cannot reach that high. It should retreat in shame. Perhaps his death might oblige Americans to revisit the current wrong choices made in their name. Being reminded the way the former president was, they might repent for the present aberrations they have failed to correct, until now.