>> Speaker 1: From the Library
of Congress in Washington DC. >> Cameron Barr: Good
afternoon everybody. Welcome. I'm Cameron Barr, Managing
Editor for news and features at the Washington Post,
which is a charter sponsor of the National Book Festival. First, a word of gratitude to
the cochairman of the festival, David Rubenstein and the many
other sponsors who've made this event possible. If you would like to add your
support, please note the information in the program or the app. We will have some time today for
questions and I've been asked to remind you that those who
query are distinguished guest. We'll be videod for
the Library's archives. Jon Meacham is a frequent
speaker at this festival, reflection of his eminence as
a journalist and historian. I hadn't met him until yesterday,
so I consulted Don Graham, who employed him for
many years at Newsweek. Don pointed out that Jon
is a former boy wonder. He became National Affairs
editor of Newsweek at 26. And by the age of 37, he
had been named its editor. Those were not always
fun years at Newsweek, especially in the time preceding the
Graham sale of the magazine in 2010, but Jon excelled even in adversity. In Don's words, he was a wise,
thoughtful and successful editor of Newsweek under impossible
circumstances. As Jon's colleagues would tell
you, even in the earliest years of his ascent, he was wise beyond
his years, much more capable of wry wit and ironic
detachment, then you're typical as we would say today millennial. Week after week, Jon would replenish
the building with new ideas, very often drawn from his
deep knowledge of history and religion and literature. Sometimes boy wonders but are-- fail to deliver on the promise
they exhibited at the dawn of their careers, not Jon Meacham. His passage from journalism
to book writing and publishing has been
marked by distinction, the success of his 2004 book,
Franklin and Winston, an examination of the friendship of Churchill
and Roosevelt helped him to emerge as a public intellectual. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House was awarded the
2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. More recently, Jon's book, Thomas
Jefferson: The Art of Power was on the Times and the Posts
best books of the year lists. Jon is here today to talk
about Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of
George Herbert Walker Bush. Sometimes-- Surprisingly intimate
look had sometimes underestimated occupant of the Oval Office. My colleague, Carlos Lozada the Post
non fiction book critic wrote that, "it pulls off a neat trick. It completes the historical
rehabilitation of its subject by deepening rather than upending, common perceptions of
the 41st president." It is a book that acts-- asks us
to consider as we witness a contest between two widely disliked
contenders for the presidency, the importance of personal
honor in our leaders. Ladies and gentlemen, Jon Meacham. [ Applause ] >> Jon Meacham: Thank you, Cameron. I appreciate that. A great deal. This is-- I feel a little
bit more warmly received at this particular book festival
than I did eight years ago when I was here to talk
about Andrew Jackson, who's at a rough couple
of months, whom I know. But I was on my way to
give my talk about Jackson. And a woman ran up to me,
which doesn't happen enough as a basic rule, and said,
"Oh my God, it's you." And I said, "Well, yes," you know? Existentially speaking,
that's hard to argue with. She said, "We wait right here, I
want you to sign your new book." And I said, "Yes, ma'am." Hand the guide, she brought back
John Grisham's latest novel. So whenever I think I am a boy
wonder who survived boy wonderhood, I remember that there's a
woman somewhere in America with a forge copy of
the Runaway Jury. So, memento mori as the medievalist
called it, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you all for being here. you are the reason,
many of the reasons that a lot of us do what we do. In the lonely hours of foot
noting and trying to make sure that you get everything right,
you're the ones on our minds to make sure we maintain our
covenant with you in terms of creating compelling, hopefully
compelling narrative non fiction. I don't know if you
all have noticed. There's a presidential race
going on at the moment. I just want to say right off the
top, the movement in 25 years from George Herbert Walker Bush as
the Republican nominee for president to the incumbent Republican
nominee for president, George Bush who could not talk
about himself do Donald Trump to quote Henry Adams
disproves Darwin. [ Laughter and Applause ] So-- [ Applause ] That's where we are. That's where we are. My view of President Bush is that
culturally and temperamentally. And this is not a nostalgic point. Culturally and temperamentally,
he has more in common with the founding fathers than he
does with this political generation. It's-- does not mean he's a
perfect man, we always learn more from centers than we do from saints. He was driven by a consuming
ambition to control the fates and destinies of millions
even billions of people. He made compromises along the
way and we'll talk about those. But at the end of the
day, in his heart, he was about honor
and service and duty. He believed at every point that
he wanted those of us who came after him to say that he had
always put the country first. And I think of fair minded judgment
suggest that he came as close as any mortal can do to doing that. And again, we'll talk about that. Now, the history of this book is
somewhat interesting to you all, but because you're here,
it means you're part of the broad dork caucus. And so, I hope you have your cards. Yeah. You get free
library cards and you have to watch this band in
the doctor's office. But I think the key thing to
understand about him comes from two biographical moments. And so, I want to start there. On June 12th, 1924, he was
born in Milton, Massachusetts, 18 years later as a
senior at Andover, Philips Andover Academy,
three things happened. He turns 18 years old,
he graduates from Andover and he joins the United States Navy
becoming the youngest flying officer in the navy. He had told-- he told me that
he very much wanted to go in to the service actually
right after Pearl Harbor. He looked in to joining the
Royal Canadian Air Force because you could get in to
the Royal Canadian Air Force without graduating from high school. He-- his father prevailed on him
to wait another six months or so. In his inimitable way when I asked
him, "Why was the impulse there so soon after Pearl Harbor?" President Bush said, "It was a red,
white and blue thing, you know? Your country is attacked,
you get in the fight." He-- On September 2nd,
1944 he's flying a mission over the Bonin Islands over
Chichijima to take out a radio tower and communications and supply point
going back to the home islands. Ferocious Japanese flock the plane,
the torpedo of injure bomber is hit, the wings of the plane go up
and flames, the cockpit fills with smoke, he realizes that he's
going down, but he keeps going. He keeps going over the
island to take out the tower. He goes back out to see,
he tells his two crewmates to hit the silk, to bail out. He turns the plane so
that they can do that, he turns back and then he bails out. At this point, tragedy
almost broke out. If you just bail out of a
plane, if you think about it, the plane doesn't stop,
so the plane keeps going. He gashes his head on the
tail of the plane, another six or eight inches and he probably
would have been decapitated. And that would have been
the end of the story. He plunges deep in the Pacific, his life unfortunately has fallen
off near by, he flaps into the raft, he cries, he retches
up the seawater. He realizes that his two
crewmates have not made it. And at some point today,
in Maine, they're in Maine for another two weeks, he will
think about Ted White and Delaney, who were the two men who lost
their lives that day in his care. He was 20 years old and had two
other men's lives in his hands. I think the further we come
away from that culture, the farther we come away
from that generation. It's difficult to remember
the immensity of that responsibility we
put on remarkably young men. One of the many moments, the
president cried in the course of our interviews for this book. I interviewed him for
nine years for this. Sometimes it was like the
world's worst WaspBane [phonetic] wasp therapy. He would cry. I would cry and then
we change the subject. You know, most of our debates were
vermouth or, you know, anyway. The-- I asked him, you know,
what did you learn from this. And he said, the chief question
that came out of his mind about the war experience
was why was I spared? Why was I spared? I submit to you that in many ways,
George H.W. Bush's frenetic journey from the autumn of 1944 really on to
this hour to some extent is driven by his eagerness, his need to prove
that he was worthy of being spared when others not, that he had to prove himself worthy
of their sacrifice. It's an elemental drama. And I believe deeply that that's
a big part of what has driven him. He came back to it in different
times during the interviews, always with tears, always sort
of late in a conversation. And my-- you know, the
other thing about his speed in life is he has always
been moving rapidly. This is a man who could play
18 holes of golf in 32 minutes. I played with him once and my
excuse was I was made nervous by secret guys with submachine guns. That's a lot to blame for
my game, but it's there. But it was a frenetic journey
forward, always moving. In 1980 when he was running
against Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination,
Bush was so excitable that he shook the hand of a department store
manikin in a department. Now, Lyndon Jonson would have
tried to register that manikin. [ Laughter ] And God only knows what Bill
Clinton might have done. So, always head long,
always looking forward, always moving to the next thing,
looking forward, looking forward. I've never met a man
that level of politics with so little interest actually
in how history would view him. He believe that he got some
things right, some things wrong and that people like me and
those who come after me will have to make our best decisions. And there's a level
of confidence in that. I would also submit that the
values and the vision in many ways, the character and the ambient
dignity that the bush family brought to our national politics
is something that we are in woefully short supply as we enter
the fall of 2016 and recovering some of that dignity will be one step
toward a saner political life. The second thing that affected
him deeply was the loss of his daughter, Robin in 1953. They lost her to leukemia. She'd born in 1949. George W was born in 1946, Jeb has
just been born in January I think of 1953, Robin was four years old. The Bushes had never
heard the word leukemia until the heard the diagnosis in the Midland Pediatrician's
Office in Texas. Remember they'd come from
Texas after Yale in 1948. When they moved to Odessa, Texas
first, Mrs. Bush, his mother and Rye was so convinced that
they'd move to the frontier that she would send her
daughter boxes of soap, because she didn't
the Texas had any. They moved to Midland, they get
the diagnosis, the doctors says with all sincerity, I think the
thing to do is simply take her home, make her comfortable and
she'll be gone in a few months. George Bush being George
Bush could not accept that. He walks outside, gets on payphone
and calls his uncle John Walker who is the head of Memorial
Sloan Kettering in New York, Dr. Walker says, bring her
up, we'll do what we can. She survived through some
very difficult treatments through October, Columbus
day weekend of 1953. It was the great cataclysmic
crisis of the Bush marriage and the Bush family life. It brought them closer
together as you all may know, many couples who lose
a child drift apart. Interestingly Mrs. Bush was strong
when President Bush was weak, and he was weak when she was strong. He could not stand watching
Robin be treated in the hospital, he couldn't stand the shots, he
couldn't stand seeing her in pain. So he would bolt out of the
room leaving Barbara the order and the love in that
hospital room in that hour. After Robin died, it
was President Bush who would hold Mrs. Bush all night
as she cried and sobbed for month after month after month as she tried
to cope with this unimaginable loss. So I also asked President Bush
in the course of doing this, what did the death
of Robin teach you? And he said without hesitation, that
life is unpredictable and fragile, unpredictable and fragile. I submit that he led his life
and he governed the nation in what Henry Kissinger
once referred to as the most tumultuous
four year period since Truman. With this tragic sensibility,
with this sense that everything could end
tomorrow and that therefore you had to do the best you could today,
you had to do everything you could to make the world a little better
because one could never be sure when everything would be taken away. I think these two experiences,
not particularly well known, it's not read my lips, it's
not Dana Carvey or the things that really shaped the man who became the 41st President
of the United States. Couple of things on the other
side, my view of President Bush is that he was a much more
affective politician than we give him credit for. Part of that is because his last
political act only netted 37% of the reelection vote. He was running against Bill Clinton who as he once later said was
the Sam Walton of partisanship. You know, Bush was-- by
1992, President Bush was not in a political world he
understood in many ways. There was the rise of
reflexive partisanship, there was the rise
of alternative media. Remember before there was Twitter
and there was Trump, there was CNN and Ross Perot and Cable
TV and Bill Clinton. As Mark Twain once said, history may
not repeat itself but it does rhyme. And 1992 rhymes with 2016. Remember Bill Clinton
went on Arsenio Hall. George H.W. Bush thought Arsenio
Hall was a building at Andover. And he had-- as where we took
Spanish, you know, he had no idea. No idea. So, he was just
not-- it was not his time. It had been 12 years under
Reagan and Bush, we had not had-- we had not had more than eight
years of single party rule since James Monroe, except for
the Roosevelt and Truman era. So it was already historical anomaly
for him to-- for him to be in power. But there are three things that he
did along the way to a mass power, that were not wildly admirable. And my own, my biographical view
is that he always redeemed himself and that's what makes this
tone, this level of conversation for my purposes possible. First, when he's running for the--
he's running for the Senate in Texas in 1964, running against Ralph
Yarborough, Ralph Yarborough who was the great populous
senator there. George H.W. Bush opposed
the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It's not something we like to talk about particularly not
today in Washington, right? But in 1968 in the wake of
the assassination of Dr. King, George H.W. Bush who
had won the house seat in 1966 representing the
7th district of Texas in Houston votes for open housing. He goes down to Texas,
to Memorial High School for a ferocious meeting
with his constituents. They were screaming things at him. They were using epitaphs that
you-- they shouldn't have used then and you sure as hell can't use now. Saying, "We didn't send you up
there to help these people." And Bush stood his ground. He was 41 years old. He stood his ground and he
said, "I cannot count in it, sending African-American soldiers
to Vietnam to fight for America and then say, they can't buy a
house in a given neighborhood. He quoted Edmund Burke who said that your representative does
not simply offer you a mirror of your will, but offers
you his best judgment. And in that moment he showed
a measure of political courage that helped give him the
strength to keep pushing on. He won the crowd over
and he move forward. The second thing that was not
particularly admirable was the 1988 presidential campaign. Many of you in the room remember it. It was not high-minded. We talk about the pledge of
allegiance, we talk about furloughs, we talked about flag
factories and flag burning. It was a values campaign
in many ways. And then a lot of people
thought it was unfair to the governor of Massachusetts. But what does Bush do after
he wins that campaign? Immediately, the press
conference after the election and the George Brown Convention
Center in Houston where he announces that Jim Bakker is going
to become secretary of state, he's asked about this. He's asked about the campaign. And Bush says, "That's
history, we are moving forward." He drew a direct line, somewhat
to his political detriment between what you set on the
campaign trail and what you did as a responsible officer
of government. He learned this I think in
china when he was there, remember this is a man who is a
member of Congress, the ambassador of the united nations, Chairman of
the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, Director of the
CIA, Vice President for eight years, he never hosted a reality show, but besides that he had
every possible qualification for President. So he said that he--
that it was history. What he learned in china was that
he picked up a phrase from Mao that campaigns were about firing
the empty canons of rhetoric, the empty canons of rhetoric. Interestingly Ronald Reagan would
never have said that, right? Franklin Roosevelt would
never have said that. They saw a connection between
politics and government that if you did not run
for a particular mandate, you would have trouble governing. And that happened in Bush's term. He did not run for a particular
mandate, he ran as a particular man. His argument was highly personal. It was that he could be trusted
with the affairs of others. My own personal reaction to him, one
of the reasons I wrote this book is that I had a very caricature sense
of him when he was president. I was an undergraduate
through most of the presidency. I attended a small
college in the university-- in Tennessee called the University
of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. There may be one or two of you
who are not be familiar with it. It is best understood
as a combination of Downton Abbey and deliverance. And so my best friend in college
was man you all may have heard of, he's from Lynchburg, Tennessee,
his name s Jack Daniels. And so, I was a little fuzzy on
a couple of things that unfolded. I felt the gulf war was
about Destin, Florida. So when I met President
Bush I had this kind of Dana Carvey view of him. But almost instantly,
this is in the late '90s, I realized that he possessed
a quiet persistent charisma. How many here-- How many people
here have met George Bush? Pretty good number. How many here have had or
received a note from him? Probably a dozen people
in this room. He has this ineffable
sense of command. I had a teacher once who
defined charm as the capacity to make others love you
without them quite knowing why. And that is true of George Bush. There is something about
him, it's why if you met him, you were with him, if you only
knew him through television and the electronic media, you probably were not
going to be as impressed. But as he once put it
when he ran for president in 1988, I have 30,000 friends. And he did. Remember, George Bush saw life
as one long reunion mixer. He was never happier than
when he was, you know, had a vodka in his hand and was
playing horseshoes with somebody. Back to ''88 quickly, so
the campaign is a disaster. He comes in and he tries to build a
culture of compromise and consensus. He's the last president to pass
significant bipartisan legislation with significant majorities from
pluralities from both caucuses. He passes the Americans
with Disabilities Act. I had a young man walk up
to me last night and say that he was a special
needs kid, a young man and that he thanked god
every day for President Bush. Because without President Bush
he could not have gone to college because the accommodations
for his test taking and making sure he got the help
he needed would not have existed without the Americans
with Disabilities Act, which is the single most
untraditional republican bill that you can imagine. Bush signed it because he believed
it was in the spirit of fair play. George Bush is a man who when
he was a child in Greenwich, his nickname was have-half because
if he had a treat or a dessert, he would cut it in half and give
the other half to the other kid. His brother said that he was
born with an innate empathy and there is something about,
and as we head into next week in the next 40 days,
which sounds biblical and we may be facing
a biblical thing, and the moon shall turn to blood. I don't see the lions and the
lambs lying down together, but maybe in a swing state or two. But character is destiny. The Greeks were right, and policies
change, circumstances change, but character tends not to when
people reach the point of running at this level for president. And George Bush's character was
always one while driven by ambition, driven by appetite, he
was delighted, you know, if he wanted to win and
if he won the nature of reality was somebody had to lose. And that was just fine with him. But by God, he was always going
to reach out right afterward and bring people together. A quick story on this. So in March of 1989,
John Tower fails to become the Secretary of Defense. Bush reaches out to Dick
Cheney who is then in the house to become the Secretary of Defense. That opens a place in
the house leadership. It was like a wing of a butterfly
that produces a hurricane. Gingrich, Newt Gingrich
runs for that job. A Congressman from Minnesota named
Vin Weber runs Gingrich's campaign within the caucus. The story, the papers
are full of stories about how George Bush is compromise and conciliatory approach
is being directly attacked by Newt Gingrich's confrontation. This is a man who would
put out a memo to his republican colleagues
saying use the following words to describe democrats. Sick was one of them. On American, outrageous, this
is the opposite of the world that George Bush had grown up in. Three of George Bush's best friends
in Washington were Democrats, Ashley of Ohio, Sonny
Montgomery of Mississippi, and Dan Rostenkowksi of Chicago. Bush kept his locker in the
house gym so that he could go up and play paddle ball and sit in
the sauna with the Democrats, that in very much thinking about, but he wanted to be part
of that conversation. He wanted to reach out because he
believed with Franklin Roosevelt that the science of human
relationships was absolutely essential to the art of politics. That was the air he breathed. So, when Gingrich wins, Bush calls
and asked Gingrich and Vin Weber, the guy who had ran the campaign
within the caucus to come to the White House for a beer. They go up to the residence, they
have a beer, and as Weber put it, only George Bush would have
remembered to invite the guy who ran the campaign in the house. You know, he was the typical
thoughtful thing to do. They have the beer, and
Gingrich and Weber can tell that there is something Bush
wants to say but isn't quite same. That's the definition
of being a wasp. And finally as they're standing
up Weber says, "Mr. President, what is it that worries
you most about us?" And bush is relieved to have
an opportunity to say so. And he says, I worry that sometimes
your idealism may get in the way of what I think of
as sound governance. I want to repeat that at the risk
of pulling a rubio [phonetic]. I worry that sometimes your
idealism may get in the way of what I think of
as sound governance. And Weber said, he
always appreciated, Bush didn't say your ideology,
your ideology, your nuttiness, your purity, your inflexibility,
he said idealism. He was giving them credit
that they genuinely believed in philosophical agenda
in which they were trying to build a Republican
house majority, which would in fact
happen five years later. But what he wanted and what he
didn't get was reciprocal credit that he was now the senior
constitutional officer in the United States of America. He is the one public official
as Andrew Jackson pointed out, elected by all the people and
that he had a constitutional duty, a cultural duty to try to govern
soundly, not simply score points to get to the next midterm
to help a given movement, to win partisan points. I know this sound as though
I am discussing Thermopylae, but this was just 25 years
ago, a quarter century ago and this was his ambient reality. And he paid for it, right? He said, read my lips in an
uneasy marriage to supply-siders. He worried all the time that he
was going to have to break it. He had to break it in 1990. As he put it he knew he
was going to be dead meat as only George Bush could say. Dead meat, you know. Dana Carvey, I told you I asked him, how did he build his
impression of George Bush? He said, the key to doing George
H.W. Bush was Mr. Rogers trying to be John Wayne. Yeah. [ Laughter ] Yeah. With six shooters,
not going to do it. So, I spent a lot of
time with these people. So, that's-- to me that's the key,
the key legacy is that this is a man who did put the country first,
it's President Obama's view, I interviewed him for this. He wasn't perfect by any means, it
is arguable that there wasn't much to do in the second term,
but I would suggest, given where we've come
in the last 16 years now, 20 years since he left office. Then we really need to consider
recovering as best we can, the virtues that were embodied
in this particular man. The partisanship changed,
the media landscape changed, it is not the world in
which he in any way grew up or would have understood, but there
are certain values that can be, I think ultimately recovered. I did this book partly
because President Bush and Mrs. Bush both shared
their diaries with me. The president kept a diary through
the presidency he dictated, once, twice, three times a week. It's a remarkable document. He talks into the recorder. You can hear the blade,
submarine one. You can hear the engines
of Air Force One. You can hear the coffee slurping,
sometimes a martini or two. Sometimes he is just beaten down. A fascinating document. And to make sure I got the
whole story, I asked Mrs. Bush if she would share her diary. And I will say that
when President Bush, 43, learned that his mother had decided
to let me read his mother's diary, the reaction in Dallas was not warm. As he put it, that's
not good for me. [ Laughter and Applause ] OK. God knows what mom wrote. But what-- what I found was
incredibly decent people, again, not perfect but these
are the kinds of people that you hope ultimately
end up leading the country. I want to close with this, I
mentioned the death of Robin Bush, the George Bush I got to know is
the one who I think is still not as well-known as he should be,
though I'm doing all I can. You know, he is leading this
wonderful retirement life. He's been in a wheelchair
now for four years. He is suffering from
a former Parkinson's. I saw him three weeks ago. He still follows everything
and is devastating. When he does speak
he is right on point. We were at lunch this summer and
Mrs. Bush was showing a bracelet that he had given her and
he looked at it and said, "I was a romantic devil." [ Laughter ] This was also shortly
after the moment where when he was jumping
out of a plane at '90. he was going to land at St.
Anne's, the parish near the house. And Mrs. Bush said it is a good
thing we're doing it at the church because then we can just
bury him right there. [ Laughter ] So, they have been
married for 72 years. Seventy-two years. When I was out talking
about the book last fall, I was with an audience and down
front there was a slightly older man with his wife and I made
that point, I said 72 years. And the guy out front
said, "Jesus Christ." [ Laughter ] I think he had a long ride home. [ Laughter ] That's a true story. He just couldn't get there. But this is the real George Bush. This is the letter he wrote to
his mother in the late 1950s. It is about Robin's
death, it is about Robin, at this point George W., Jeb, Marvin and Neil have both been
born, Doro has not been born. So that was 1959. So we think this letter
was written in '57 or '58. It was found in his mother's papers. She died two weeks after he lost
the election to Bill Clinton. And this is the George Bush that I
got to know and I hope you do too. He wrote, "There is about our house
a need, the running, pulsating, restlessness of the four boys
as they struggle to learn and grow needs a counterpart. We need some starched
crisp frocks to go with all of our torn-kneed blue
jeans and helmets. We need some soft blonde hair
to offset those crew cuts. We need a doll house to stand
firm against our forts and rackets and thousand baseball cards. We need a legitimate
Christmas angel, one who doesn't have
cuffs beneath the dress. We need someone who
is afraid of frogs. We need someone to cry
when I get mad, not argue. We need a little one who can kiss
without leaving egg or jam or gum. We need a girl. We had one once, she'd fight and
cry and play like all the rest. But there was about
her certain softness. She was patient. Her hugs were just a
little less wiggly. She'd stand beside our bed
until I felt her there. Silently and comfortable, she'd
put those precious fragrant locks against my chest and fall asleep. Her piece made me feel
strong and so very important. My daddy had a caress,
search and ownership which touched a slightly
different spot than the "Hi Dad," I love so much. But she is still with us. We need her and yet we have her. We can't touch her and
yet we can feel her. We hope she'll stay in our
house for a long, long time." In the course of interviewing the
president, I asked him to read that letter allowed
to me in Houston. And long before he finished, he broke down with an extraordinary
level of physical sobbing. So, much so that his chief of staff,
whose office was next door came in and she said, "Why did you want
president bush to do that?" And I said, "If you want
to know someone's heart," and before I could finish my
sentence the president said, "You have to know what breaks it." Thank you very much. [ Applause ] Thank you. [ Applause ] We have some time for
some questions here. How much time we got? >> Speaker 4: Yeah. Jon. I just finished your
book, this book, fantastic, I read a lot of history
of presidents. >> Jon Meacham: Thank you. >> Speaker 4: And it
was one question-- I have two little questions,
one you answered. You said every other page when George Bush was home,
he wrote in his diary. And I was going to
asked, did he typed it? But you mentioned he
used the microphone. >> Jon Meacham: He had a tape
recorded that he'd bought at-- sort of the staples of the era. >> Speaker 4: Right. >> Jon Meacham: He didn't want it
to be a government tape recorder. He carried it in his
briefcase, carried it everywhere. He often did it late at
night, early in the morning. He used the office on the-- in
the residence and loved that study of the Oval Office
and would often do it. He got up at about 5 every morning. They would take the dogs
out and then come in. They'd read about five papers. And then he would go down
and do some dictation. Fortunately, he tended to do
more in times of crisis than not, which for most diary
keepers is the opposite. Part of the power of
the diary I think is that he didn't really believe,
it was part of his code that presidents don't complain. They don't-- as he put it, they
don't wine about oh-oh it's me, you're just damn lucky to be there. And I think he said things to
himself that he could not say to Mrs. Bush, to Governor Sununu,
to Dan Quayle, to Boyd and Gray, you know, the people of Brent
Scowcroft, the people around him. And so, I actually believed
it's a therapeutic document. I'm going to publish a volume of
the diary, but he has to be gone. The way he's going,
I'll be gone first. So, don't wait up. >> Speaker 4: Yeah. Related to my second part was
you sort of alluded to that, throughout the book you site this
and it's his quotation to some diary and I'm wanting as a historian, do
you ever have the opportunity to get into a deep person's
mindset like that. How many-- Andrew Jackson certainly
didn't have a diary or whatever. >> Jon Meacham: You know, that
would require self reflection. >> Speaker 4: Yeah. But I mean it must have
hit a lot of impact on your personal feelings toward him and writing the way
you wrote the book. >> Jon Meacham: Thank
you for saying that. Yes. I'm the reason I did the book
because he offered me the diary and he offered to talk to
me as much as I wanted. And if you what I do,
that doesn't happen much. >> Speaker 4: Yeah. >> Jon Meacham: You know,
there are only 44 of these guys and there aren't that
many still kicking. So, it was a remarkable
historical opportunity. I feel very privileged to
have had the chance to do it. I should say there were no
conditions on the project. No one read it, no one reviewed it. The one exception was Mrs.
Bush's diary because it had so much personal stuff,
she kept that diary from 1948 until this morning. She gets up at 5 o'clock every
morning and writes in her diary. And several of her children said, "Please don't tell me
what she said about me." But she was going to seal that
for 50 years after she died. And people say, "Well, how did
you get her to give it to you?" And my technical historical answer,
I don't want to overwhelm you with a high brow answers, I begged. But I accepted the one condition on
the project, which was she wanted to see any direct quotations from
herself, which given a document that span 70 years I thought
was totally reasonable. So I took her 90 pages of excerpts with her fascinating
afternoon in Houston one day. She was reading along. And every once in a
while, she'd say, "My, I was an opinionated 37-year old." You know, ma'am, the
apple didn't fall far from the chronological
tree, you know. At 91, you're not pulling
a lot of punches. >> Speaker 4: Thank you. >> Jon Meacham: Thank you. Yes, ma'am? >> Speaker 5: Hi. Thank you. I just was interested in how you
were kind of drawing comparisons between what's going on in the
campaigns now and President Bush and how he conducted himself. And it's interesting on NPR, and
I can't remember the analyst name, unfortunately, but just on
Friday they were talking about-- there's some people believe
that direct line from the Bushes and Lee Atwater and Karl Rove to
what is now going on with Trump. >> Jon Meacham: Yeah. >> Speaker 5: Only that during the
Bush's era and perhaps relevant to their personalities,
their status, et cetera, that they did not do these--
say these things themselves. And now, the difference is
they use other people to kind of put these negative thoughts out-- >> Jon Meacham: Yeah. >> Speaker 5: -- and that would be
politically advantageous to them. But, they did use that as a tactic
to when there are elections, whereas now, you know, Trump
has taken it to another level. And he actually is the
messenger himself as opposed to-- >> Jon Meacham: Yeah. Trump needs no subcontractors. >> Speaker 5: Right. But I think that, you know, the
connection is very unfortunate. And I'm just wondering
whether, you know, you've painted a very positive
picture of President Bush. I was very disappointed
about the Lee Atwater and Willie Horton situation. So that comes to my memory. And I'm just wondering if in your
view, him as a decent participating in that says something about
the nature of our politics within the context of
the American democracy that it encourages decent people
to do the wrong thing in order to achieve their objectives
or is this just, you know, maybe you don't see
it as that important, but just I didn't get the
sense from your comments today. >> Jon Meacham: Yeah. >> Speaker 5: I haven't read
your book unfortunately, so I don't want to, you know,
say that you don't cover it. But I didn't get your sense-- the
sense from your comments today-- >> Jon Meacham: Right. >> Speaker 5: -- that you've
felt that that was important. Thank you. >> Jon Meacham: Right. Right. What I tried
to say is that now, when I talk about the '88
campaign, obviously we're talking about the furlough ads, the Horton
ads although the Horton ads were an independent expenditure group and we can spend the
next three hours on that. But you said something
quite brilliant there, which is politics is
not a pure undertaking. And if you want to amass power, to
try to be in a position of influence when the crises of the age come,
you're going to cut some corners. You are going to have some moments
where you say and you do things or you countenance
things that are said or done, which you are not proud. And I don't think there's any
doubt that the 1988 campaign is-- as examples of George Bush in his
apparatus pushing certain troops that on reflection and even in
real time are very uncomfortable and risk falling into
fear base politics. There's no question about that. To my mind what redeems George H.W.
Bush, is that once he got power, he did everything he
could to do good with it. So you didn't see that
on-- in the term. Without that redemption, it
would be a very different story. Now, is there a direct
line between-- in fact, I would go
back even further. I mean, from 1968 in where we are,
because some of the same people were in the campaign in 1968 is
the popular understanding of the southern strategy come along. People have argued, is the
republican party now dealing with a Frankenstein
monster that has gotten out of control and
now has iron chair. You know, that's one of the--
that's one of the questions. I'm a little skeptical of that
argument in terms of a direct line. I think that we have to judge
political figures on a totally of their lives and the
totally of their records. And I believe that the
country is better off because George Bush was
President for 40 years. I don't think he was perfect. I unquestionably the attack politics of the southern strategy
were used in his campaign. But, you know, even I remember
in interviewing Bill Clinton about this, and he said, you know, the thing about the Bushes
is there's not a racist bone in their body. Michael Dukakis still made that he had totally understood
why Willie Horton would be used in the campaign. All of this is in the book. So, I understand the argument
about the direct line. My sense is there is-- if
you're looking for philosophical or moral consistency looking at
the American presidency or those who seek it is probably not
the first place to look. So, you need to look at moments
on the totally of the lives where they manage to transcend
those shortcomings as my view. Yes sir. >> Speaker 6: You have
probably answered this question at least indirectly, I recently
saw the play in Stanton, bloody, bloody Andrew Jackson, which was-- >> Jon Meacham: Yes. >> -- a parody of Jackson. And I think of our current
campaign about unbridled populism and the manipulation
of that populism. Do you see any parallels today? >> Jon Meacham: Yeah. With Jackson and Trump, you know, I've resisted this for
a couple of reasons. One is that Jackson brought an
enormous amount of experience. You can argue whether
it was good experience or not, but to the presidency. He'd been a judge, he'd been a
senator, he'd been a general. And so, the idea that--
I mean, fundamentally, the choice is being presented to
us in the next 45 days or so is one between one of the most
conventionally prepared candidates in American history and the
least conventionally prepared. And interviewed Mr.
Trump about this. He makes no bones about this. This is not a partisan point. I should say by the way as well, I voted for presidents
of both parties. I expect to again. And so, what I hope to see in
terms of Trump and populism and that argument going forward
is that we can take the energy, the anger at the globalization--
the forces of globalization and find some way to channel those
into constructive reforms as opposed to finger pointing and
blame casting on the other. And it is an inarguable
point that the United States of America has become
in direct proportion to how widely we have opened our
arms from the very beginning. And-- [ Applause ] -- we are dynamic in proportion
to people who come here. We are the only nation on Earth where you can become
an American simply by saying you want
to be an American. We are not based on ethnicity,
we are not based on religion, we don't have to be born
into a certain tribe or clan, we are devoted to an idea. And I worry that the current
populous trend unlike the Jackson era, the current populous trend
is trying to limit the definition of what it means to be in America. Yet, that is a historical
and dangerous. [ Applause ] >> Speaker 7: Let me
profess my question by saying that I have finished your book, sir. And it's a superb piece of work. >> Jon Meacham: Thank you. That's enough. You can sit down. [ Laughter ] >> Speaker 7: One more thing. There is-- >> Jon Meacham: Downhill from here. >> Speaker 7: OK. There's an aggregate ranking
of the presidents by historian. >> Jon Meacham: And thanks
dad, I appreciate it. >> Speaker 7: And by historians
and presidential scholars that places George H.W. Bush
as 22nd among the president. How would you respond
to their answer? >> Jon Meacham: It takes-- sorry. That was Lee Atwater goes. It takes time. This was the earliest
possible point to do this book. My friend, Michael Beschloss has
a good rule that it takes 25 years to really get a sense and
let the passions cool. I think you'll rise up. I mean, one term presidents
have a hard time, although my fellow Tennessean James
K. Polk had a pretty good first term, although depending on how you
think about California, maybe not. So, it's a tumultuous term,
but I think when we look back on existential nuclear struggle
that ends peacably, it took Reagan and Bush-- I mean to be honest,
it took Democrats and Republicans and the people themselves from
Truman forward to end the Cold War. But I think we were fairly
lucky because I think that Ronald Reagan did things in the
'80s that Bush could not in terms of setting a rhetorical example. And also Reagan has
a great negotiator. Remember he was-- head of
the Screen Actors Guild. He used to say, people think
negotiating with Gorbachev is tough, they should have met Jack Warner. So I think that-- And then Bush
was able to come in and do things that I don't think Reagan
would have been very good at. And so, I think that number
will go up, I really do. One irony parenthetically is it's
going to be fascinating to watch over the next 20 to 30 years to what
extent Bush 41 historical stack is on a see-saw or on a proportional
lift with his sons, right? I think Bush 41, I know this,
Bush 41 for a long time believe that his historical stack would
always be on a see-saw with Reagan's that he was this--
he was an asterisks as he put it himself after Reagan. Because of the dynastic drama,
it's going to be interesting to see as people reevaluate George W. Bush,
what that does to George H.W. Bush because they did confront
two similar problems in very different ways. I know they're-- getting
factor there is going to be if we have Clinton dynasty stories,
it's going to be like, you know, C-SPAN meets Lancaster in New York. I mean it's just going
to go on forever, so. Is that it? I want to thank you all very much. And everybody go out and vote. [ Applause ] >> Speaker 1: This has
been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
