NEW YORK (AP) — His nation celebrated George H.W. Bush this week as a statesman, a veteran, a loving and committed family man who was a totem of respect, humility and mildness. But something else seeped into all the praise as Americans gathered Wednesday to send him on his way.

Bush was also remembered as an emissary from, to use his own idiom, a kinder, gentler America of seemingly clearer challenges — which were, in reality, as complicated as the fragmentary problems we face today.

In an era where Donald Trump volleys insults at will from the White House directly to an audience of tens of mi...