Former President George H.W. Bush, the 41st president and self-effacing patriarch of one of America’s premier political families, which has included two occupants of the White House, a senator and a governor, died Friday, at age 94.

As president, Bush led an international coalition to victory in the first Persian Gulf war in 1990-91, only to lose his bid for re-election the following year to Democrat Bill Clinton primarily because of a prolonged recession and Bush’s perceived inability to cure it.

Having won the race to succeed President Ronald Reagan in 1988, Bush had famously promised the Republicans who nominated him, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” a pledge that would haunt him when he agreed to higher taxes in a budget deal with Democrats two years later in 1990.

Bush’s political trademarks were his caution — lampooned by Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey with the line, “Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent” — and his perseverance, including eight years as Reagan’s vice president. When Republicans chose him at their convention in New Orleans in 1988, along with an obscure running mate, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana, CQ summed up Bush in the headline: “Never Awesome, Ever Resilient.”

Bush himself was uncomfortable articulating broad political themes — what he caustically dismissed as “the vision thing.” Some thought it cost him the election, though the consensus was that the sluggish economy drove him from office. In the words of Clinton advisor James Carville at the time, “It’s the economy stupid.”