It was one of those sparkling, blue-skied days typical of the American autumn. The campaign train was parked in a siding. Down at the level crossing, George HW Bush was trying to whip up enthusiasm for his 1992 presidential re-election bid among a group of sceptical South Carolinians. His was an uphill struggle, part of what the travelling press had already dubbed a “long goodbye”.

Bored by the prospect of listening to a stump speech I had heard numerous times already, I wandered down the tracks. Walking towards me, wearing a heavy coat despite the sunshine, came a face I knew. It was Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser, also taking a quiet break from the fray. Scowcroft was a formidable figure, a cold war veteran and senior official under Nixon and Ford.

Of course, being a reporter, I had to ask him something. So I asked what he thought were Bush’s chances of beating Bill Clinton, the upstart Democrat governor from Arkansas who was leading in the polls with 10 days to go. To his credit Scowcroft did not brush me off. He did not put me down, as powerful men can so easily do to a journalist.

Instead, he shrugged his shoulders, gave a wry smile, and briefly raised his eyebrows. It was an eloquent statement, and unmistakable in its meaning. He knew Bush was beat. He wasn’t going to say so. But the train, metaphorically, had left the station. And Scowcroft was right. On 3 November, 1992, Clinton stormed to victory, and Bush was consigned to one-term ignominy.

The memory of Scowcroft’s courtesy to a foreign reporter has stayed with me. It was typical of how things were done in America in those less combative days before the 9/11 attacks, before the financial crash, before partisan political and populist-nationalist divisions got out of control, before the era of fake news. Bush’s time in office, from 1989-1993, did not lack fierce controversy. But it seemed contained in a way it does not now. And that was due, in part, to the way Bush set the tone.

Bush set great store by civility in public life. As Republican candidate in 1988 he called for a “kinder, gentler nation”. He was, quintessentially, a decent man, with a taste for the lifestyle of an English country gentleman. For the most part, though there were exceptions, Bush treated opponents with cordiality and expected their respect in return. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, evicting its royal family and seizing its oil wells, Bush appeared genuinely shocked at an egregious breach of good manners.

US president George HW Bush with prime minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street, 1989. Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

I was with Margaret Thatcher in Aspen, Colorado, in August that year when news of the invasion came through. Thatcher was on holiday, staying with the US ambassador to Britain. Amazingly, in hindsight, it was Bush who rushed down from Washington to join her, rather than the other way round. After supposedly receiving Thatcher’s spine-stiffening advice – she reportedly insisted: “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly” – Bush famously drew what he called a “line in the sand”. From that ensued what came to be known as the first Gulf war in 1991 and, arguably, also the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Bush’s son, George W Bush.

Bush’s White House was quite unlike that of Barack Obama, let alone Donald Trump. It oozed the confidence of a government and a leader who, in terms of sheer power, had no equals in the world. The Soviet Union was gone. The international terror threat was still largely in the future. Security around the Oval Office was efficient but nothing like it is now. Bush and his wife, Barbara, nicknamed the “silver fox”, were accessible to reporters in a way it’s hard to imagine.

Bush was a patriot who did not need cheap slogans to express his belief in enduring American greatness

I recall one Saturday morning on the South Lawn when Arnold Schwarzenegger, then still a mere actor, was publicising a presidential national fitness initiative by doing workouts for the cameras. Barbara Bush, no fan of sweaty push-ups, looked on with her English springer spaniel, the “first canine”, Millie, at her side. We were soon in conversation as I told her of the problems my daughters had encountered in settling our springer, Bryde, in our new Washington home. Free tips on springer handling followed, later encapsulated in her bestseller, Millie’s Book.

Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s avuncular press secretary, exemplified this relaxed atmosphere. Fitzwater invited me into his office for a friendly cup of tea on my first day in the White House press corps. If you needed something from him, you only had to phone. It was in this period that the Guardian obtained its first ever trip aboard Air Force One, flying with Bush from Omaha to Andrews air force base. Just try asking for similar assistance now.

It has become fashionable to suggest Bush belonged to an elite that is somehow responsible for the current rightwing populist backlash. It’s true he enjoyed a privileged upbringing in a monied east coast family. Bush was a natural scion of America’s white, Anglo-Saxon, Ivy League-educated patrician class – the closest 20th-century America came to an aristocracy. In a sense Bush was born to rule – and that era of entitlement has clearly passed.

But Bush’s most admirable quality is still of high value – his deep sense of public duty and service, dating back to his time as a second world war combat pilot. I recall travelling with him to Honolulu in December 1991, to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the sun rose over the Cemetery of the Pacific, Bush stood with hand on heart, his voice choking with emotion, exactly 50 years – to the minute – after the Japanese bombers swept in. Bush was a patriot who did not need cheap slogans to express his belief in enduring American greatness.

Simon Tisdall was the Guardian’s US editor and White House correspondent from 1989 to 1994