I called George Bush a ‘wimp’ on the cover of Newsweek. Why I was wrong.

In October 1987, when George H.W. Bush announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story titled “Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor.’” The article did not quite come out and declare that Bush was a weakling, and it noted that Bush’s own advisers were worried about the “wimp” label. As the 41st president, Bush was anything but a wimp. In 1991, he had the courage to abandon his own “read my lips” vow and instead raise taxes in the cause of restoring fiscal sanity to the federal budget, left badly out of whack by his predecessor, Ronald Reagan.