The world knew him as ‘Bush 41’. I knew him by a different name -during the time I worked for him as his speechwriter when he was vice president.

In those days, the staff called him ‘the Vishnu’. (Bear with me.) It was his own devising. He’d been to India on a state visit, where they’d presented him, amid much pomp and ceremony and clanging of brass, with a statue of the four-armed Vedic deity.