Jon Meacham with George Stephanopoulos on Destiny and Power

it's great to be back at the Y great to be here with my former editor Jon Meacham that's why I went into TV so you decided to tackle a living president I did you did and I want to go back to the moment take us inside the room you know when you broach this subject but George Bush and say I want to write your biography sure it was around 2006 I first met him in 1998 I'd gone up to Kennebunkport with our friend Michael Beschloss and like thousands tens of thousands of other people had been immediately impressed by his quiet persistent charisma I had an idea and he sort of been stuck in my mind as Dana Carvey really and I had been an undergraduate at Suwanee when he during most of his presidency which is a combination of Downton Abbey and deliverance and I had a really good friend in those years you all may know him he's a good man his name is Jack Daniels and so I was a little fuzzy on some of the presidential facts at that point so I had this fairly caricatured vision there'd also been this very young man who helped a governor from Arkansas in 1990 to defeat him and so the Clinton campaign had done a very good job of portraying him as out of touch out of time but when I met him I was struck by as again many other people are his grace his generosity but also I understood the ambient sense of power that he could project he's totally unlike Bill Clinton in that that his Clinton's charisma is such that he can do big do wholesale he can do retail Bush can really really only do retail charisma but he did it as persistently persistently persistently and I think I knew then that there was a book there ultimately Michael again Beschloss has a great rule that you can only really just know this truth about a presidency in so far as we can 20 to 25 years after and I also knew that because President Bush took a very long view of history he was very affected I think by his time in China which is you'll remember Henry Kissinger once asked Mao what he made of the French Revolution and Mao said it's too soon to tell so he Bush imbued a great deal of that so about six years later seven years later I went to them and said I'd like to do a set of embargoed interviews for a biography it would have to be after the son was out of office obviously but the son has been reelected so he's been reelected so I do that I mean it was hard enough the first time uh-huh but what I in a classic George Bush move he was skeptical that there was enough there and he actually said well what if you find an empty deck of cards which is a classic George Bush malapropism because he meant empty suit or not a full deck of cards and out oh no I was sitting in his office he has an office in College Station where the library is I remember exactly where we were and I was making the case I said look mr. president you're the you're the last president of the generation you were shot down out of the sky you imbue your life has embodied the values of a generation that's passing he had very little interest in that because I think like the best members of that generation he didn't see his combat as anything particular he saw it as his duty but then I moved into the presidency and I said and I also believe that more things happen to you in four years then often happens to any other president in eight and that sort of perked him up a bit and then he said well do you want to look at the diary being an ace reporter I said you mr. Prez you really dug it out of him yeah you know we were in a parking garage you know when they make the movie Hal Holbrook will be me you know so yeah so so a couple months later I went to his office in Houston and I sat and he has one office with a lot of windows and in a conference room behind him where it's a little intimidating it's where you know presidents get lots of gifts and he that people send him a lot of shotguns through the years so all of his firearms it is Texas after all are all in this room so I was sitting there in this armory basically reading the diary I chose not to see any connection between the two and I'll never forget I called Michael actually who's a dear friend at that time reading the first few pages of the presidential diary and realizing this is as close as I'm ever going to get to being president of the United States because he's talking about what it felt like he's complaining that Nancy Reagan didn't let Barbara look at the house until January 11th he talks about he's briefed on his nuclear responsibilities and when he's gonna get the card and how it works and he says stark stark and it's just this amazing sense of sitting there with him and I'm convinced that it's a better diary I'm convinced the book is better not because he was writing it because when you write you're always thinking about how someone's gonna read it but he was really talking to himself and because part of his code from his mother from his father was you never complained you never talked you know you you never wind he once told me he said no one ever wants to hear a president of the United States complain about oh the loneliness of the job you're just damn lucky to be there maybe you can't answer this question but why does he trust you with the diary why does he trust you with the book I piss Kop a in I don't know there are only four of us so I had a one in three shot um I don't I don't I can't answer that really I I think that well they I have I can speculate one is I was working for Newsweek the Bush family and Newsweek did not have what we would call diplomatic relations remember 1987 the wimp factor that was the Newsweek cover the chief that he never forgot he if he were sitting right here he could tell you all about the wimp factor he hated it one of my talking points back was that I was in high school when I ran which which is true I think he won he didn't want to write a memoir he wanted a serious historical look I was seen I think fairly unfairly depends on the issue as sort of center-left I was a journalist with a magazine with which he had feuded so if I the judgments I came to would have more credibility than more my more explicitly conservative historian I think that's my best guess conditions on his part none none he gave me the audio he gave me the transcripts he gave me the vice presidential transcripts he opened the vault in the library he granted me as many hours as I wanted he was always polite usually patient he dislikes being put on the couch but that's what I had to do we did a lot of crying it was like the world's worst wasp on wasp therapy and we can talk about those moments the other thing I think that sealed it honestly was I said I'm not on a deadline here you know I want this to be right and I'm this is not about the son I'm not comparing father and son this is about you so wasn't he knew it wasn't a family history no yeah and and and it shouldn't be because some point King David was just King David you know he wasn't he wasn't always precursor and I remember sitting with his chief of staff a wonderful woman named Jeanne Beker who made the project possible in many ways the two powerful women who made it possible were mrs. Bush and Jean and he said well how much time are you talking about in terms of interviews and I said not much I'll come down two or three times a year you know and it'll be fine and if you don't want to talk we won't talk he said ok so you don't want to go steady I said no I don't want to go steady but I want to talk to you and I'll put it in the drawer and we'll do it after you're gone do you think when he started talking to you about this that his family once George W was would be out of office two years down the road the the Bush family was done with politics but he envisioned Jeb I think he envisioned Jeb I think he very early on in the transcripts he talks about how he hoped Jeb would run he knew at that point that George P had an interest you know I think he saw the story unfolding in the way perhaps senator Bush saw the story unfolding but he does believe in history he reads a lot more history than he lets on that brings me back to something that really startled me at the beginning of the book having watched George Bush for a long time I worked in a campaign against him it seemed like from the outside that these were sort of positions he kind of fell into one after yeah another but you go back at the beginning of the book his dad is talking about him running for president like 1950s in the 50s the 50s there are three great moments here and the reason we call it destiny and power is that he he did have a sense of destiny that he was meant to serve on the largest possible stage after he shot down on cetera dnesday he was shot down on Saturday September 2nd 1944 he loses two crewmen that was one of the occasions where he cried with me he thinks about them every day Dell Delaney and Ted White he has two concerns about that one was did he do enough to save them and the answer was yes he followed protocol and the second was why was I spared and here's this young man who at 18 years old three things happened on his 18th birthday he turned 18 he graduated from Andover and he signed up to go to war why was I spared I think that was a foundation of I need to be commensurate with my salvation I have been given a great gift and then the second was the loss of their daughter Robin in 1953 and I asked what he had learned from that what he taken away from that and he said that life is unpredictable and fragile and that every moment counted so I think already wired to be competitive to race forward I think these two life and death experiences really did give him a sense of mission his sister Nancy who sort of think Katherine Hepburn Nancy Bush Ellis said he was meant to be saved his father introduced him to the French ambassador in the 1950s saying this is my son George he's gonna be President of the United States one day his father-in-law I don't know about your father-in-law my father-in-law has never written a letter saying I think he's going to be President but but Marvin Pierce did and then he himself finally tunes into this in 1965 this story and let me tell you who fell off his chair when I told him and it was George W who had never heard this in 1965 George HW Bush is about to run for the Congress in the seventh District of Houston Republican district it's gonna be a race unto this hour it's a Republican district there's gonna be there's a fellow who wants to challenge him in the primary the guy says Bush goes to meet with them and to get the potential opponent says I just think you want to use this as a stepping stone to the Senate and Bush says no no I want to use it as a stepping stone to the presidency I don't know if I can make it but I don't want you to foreclose that possibility and the guy got out of the the guy got either that was 1965 and so he had been thinking about a path to the presidency at least since 65 you know you talk about his malapropisms one of the things I learned when I read this book though is that in some ways he's kind of a poet and it was I was just reading it again on the way over here this letter he writes to his mom yeah in the late 1950s his daughter Robins been gone for several years and he there's about our house in need we need someone who's 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 it's stunning stuff yeah I had him read that letter out loud to me in an interview in Houston and the door was open to his office and long before he finished he was sobbing in a physically uncomfortable way so much so that his chief of staff gene heard what was going on and came in and said what's going on and I said I asked the President to read this letter and she said why and I said because 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 I totally understood that I think part of the reason he was inarticulate honestly is his mind worked faster than his mouth he would often start to qualify his points on the way in as on their way out he really only by my count he gave two great speeches in his life one was of all things at the main convention in 1980 he pulled out a victory when he was supposed to lose that was a key moment in that race an 88 and the 88 convention speech but you know then he walked it back with me he said I asked him what's your greatest regret and he says witness said read my lips he said peggy noonan I'm that man all that stuff he just you know they done everything that could do and still they almost had to surgically implant the first person pronoun in the man's mouth because he wouldn't do it in fact Peggy talks about how she would just write around it you know went to Texas looked for oil ran for Congress because that was the only way to get him to give the speech but then what was so striking about it and you were you were the opposite campaign at the time was he actually said I am that man and the reason it was so politically powerful is no one had ever heard him say that but in retirement he was still uncomfortable about and that campaign and the first term is you're right he picked so much in the first term is as much as two terms for another another president shows the two sides of George Bush he did whatever it took to win yep in 1988 and once he became president did whatever it took to govern right it's a it's a it's a lifelong theme and thank God for it or this would be a very different book I think he redeemed himself again and again and there are three examples he he ran as a Goldwater Republican in 1964 he opposed the Civil Rights Act which is now a piece of legislative scripture in American life but when he's in Congress in 68 what does he do he votes for the open Housing Act which lifted racial discrimination from the real estate market much to the fury of his constituents in Houston there's a huge meeting at Memorial High School in Houston people are throwing the N word at him they said he told me he said some rich guy down here said we didn't send you up there to help these people but he did it he quoted Burke's saying as a legislator I don't owe you to mirror your judgment I owe you my best opinion and he's flying home and we forget George noses politicians Ben so much time on airplanes there's actually a great monograph to be done about how the constricted world of an airplane affects the mind of a politician but he's he's full that was a better line than I thought put that one down but he's sitting there and a woman comes at him and he you know any boss knows this any I'm sure George gets this on that all the time on the streets you know someone's coming at you with a look in their eye and they're gonna take they're gonna tell you what all as we say it in the south and this woman's coming at him and he's thinking oh jesus here we go again and she says I want you to know I'm a Democrat I've never voted for a Republican but I will now never vote for anyone but you and it was this moment of relief washed over him and he went home and went back to Washington so there was that there was the brutal campaign in 1988 I don't know if you all know this but George was the director of rapid response for Michael Dukakis George has been my friend for 20 years I say this with love that is like being the radar operator at Pearl Harbor you're right so he runs he hires Lee Atwater he runs a tough brutal campaign interestingly he was way ahead of his staff he knew the first mention of Michael Dukakis and Bush's diary he says this will be easy to put into a liberal versus conservative mode before they came in with the focus groups and all that he knew it intuitively but what does he do when he gets to Washington he attempts sometimes successfully sometimes not to create a kinder gentler consensus culture in Washington to pass domestic legislation he passed the ad a he changed the structure of every building in America he got the 1990 budget he said that you know he said read my lips no new taxes he got to a point where he thought he had to do it so he did it he did what it took to amass power but as George just said once he had it he tried to put the country first directly ahead of his own political interest and you know he his great regret is saying read my lips Dukakis told me a great story about their post-election courtesy call and he's there standing there talking and Bush says well I certainly can't raise taxes in the first year and Dukakis is like this guy just kicked my ass saying he never raised taxes and he's talking about in the first year you know it was it was an amazing moment but I think he redeemed himself at every point and he knew in some ways talking about ninety two after the budget deal after the triumphs of the first Gulf War he he had a sense that the work of his presidency if that up to that point was over yeah I think the work of his life was over if you look at it I mean biographically you always look for the archaeological layers so his ambient experience of Washington was 1967 to 1971 when he was in the house two terms the first two years were under Lyndon Johnson he's right George Bush is a Republican congressman from Houston Lyndon Johnson is the most liberal president since Franklin Roosevelt passing and mints legislations changed the life in the face of the nation for those two years what do you think the percentage of voting the percentage that George Bush voted with Lyndon Johnson fifty three percent now you would think that's probably an aberration so Nixon becomes president in 1969 that numbers gonna skyrocket it does skyrocket to 55 percent his reality he's from Texas and he's from Texas in that district and he called him as he saw them can you imagine now a member of the Republican caucus voting with Barack Obama fifty three percent of the time you can't because even if you could he'd be gone in eighteen months because they would primary him and he'd be out he went to his life was the house gym he played paddle ball with Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi lud Ashley of Ohio one of his best buddies was Dan Rostenkowski you know they just you worked in the house his reality was a Washington where you were with the president when it seemed right you opposed him when it seemed wrong and somewhat presumptuously actually it said this a lot of this is in Barbara's diary he actually said to Johnson in 67 I'll never demonize you sir now I'm not sure Lyndon Johnson was all that worried about George Bush but I always think of Johnson because when Bush was running for president in 1980 you know and when he went Bush ran he just ran all out and he once shook the hand of a department store mannequin and in New Hampshire Lyndon probably would have tried to register the manager but but his reality was you serve presidents so he loses in 72 Benson and then begins those appointed jobs and I appreciate your pointing that out he he moved maneuvered manipulated to get each of these jobs and not all of them were his first choice he had the shortest White House career as an aide to Bob Haldeman of anyone and there's about 40 minutes he will thank god I mean can you imagine what he might have said on those tapes I mean if Richard Nixon could turn Billy Graham into an anti-semite lord knows what he could have done with anybody else he wanted to go to the UN Nixon wanted him to work for Haldeman he sends but Bush brilliantly intuitively again appealed to Nixon's class anxieties and said well mr. president I'll do what you want but nobody up in New York is making a case for you and I could go up there I know that world I can do it so here's the son of a failed grocer from Yorba Linda being told by the son of a Polish senator from Connecticut that he can go up and represent Richard Nixon in this zip code that appealed to Nixon Bush understood how to reach Nixon so Nixon thought about it while Bush was off getting his office calls him back in and says no you're going to the UN the next job was being Republican National Chairman during Watergate what second prize but he and that's the origin if you want to draw a line to the wimp factor because Nixon decided Bush wasn't really tough enough because Bush wasn't willing to go out and cut every Nixon enemy throat and so and he talks about he says he thinks I'm not oh he thinks I'm not a killer you clearly admire President Bush you know really admires you was there any moment as you're working on this and you're writing this where you cringe that's it boy I wish I didn't know that yeah I wish he had I think he committed a sin of pride in picking Dan Quayle it was his first executive decision to be made totally on his own since he went on the ticket with Reagan he never sat down with Jim Baker and Atwater and ales and mossbacher and Nick Brady and said here are the choices what do you think he wanted to surprise them because he didn't want to be handled and I just think yeah vice president Quayle was very kind to me in this project he's a lovely man more prepared than people gave him credit for at the time although was better allowed it will to call that a bad roll out like calling the second world war and unpleasantness Jesus God listened to you you really have gone GMA is a big audience how are the Indiana numbers now it was eight buddy was 41 years old he looked younger and there was no preparation you know Jim Pinkerton who was working for the Bush campaign had to go send a staffer out to a local bookstore which we approve of other way to buy the Almanac of American politics and Xerox the pages about Quayle to give to the press and the one and it was actually one of our few sort of unpleasant moments together we were sitting on the porch together at walkers point and I was sort of chasing him around a little bit I was saying all right you've got Jim Baker the gold standard you got Atwater you've got all these people around you you've got mrs. Bush you've got George W and you never just sat down and said hey who would you put on the ticket and he had a pair of binoculars and he was looking out which I you know I'm a subtle guy so I pick up on signals so he's doing this well I'm sitting where George is sitting and I'm thinking maybe this question isn't going over very well and finally he put it down he said sometimes you just don't want people telling you what to do all the time and that was a sin of pride and was Dan Quayle really the best man to potentially become president if the unthinkable happened in a in a field where you had Bob Dole in Jack Danforth and Alan Simpson being vetted I think that's an interesting question so there's that I don't think he spent a great deal of time on his Supreme Court appointments he thinks that Souter was a quote huge mistake he's very proud of Justice Thomas to this day sorry I know it's the 92nd Street Y you know anybody who thinks that sitter that he kind of didn't mind having a closet moderate on the court is just wrong a quote it's a dreary I remember we were sitting at lunch and I said let's talk about Souter and Thomas he went a huge mistake huge mistake and and I wish he had been more forthcoming and had been a better adviser in real time and then more truthful about iran-contra out of the loop out of the loop he was in the loop you have to believe that cap Weinberger George Shultz were just totally inventing their version of events to believe the bush wasn't in the loop and he was an old spy master he was a realist he wanted to support Reagan I wish he you know he denied it offhand he denied it categorically said we've no no we didn't sell arms to Iran and then it's we it's classic George Bush because some days he would say well I'm just not gonna tell you what the advice was and then some days he would say but I had reservations because it was through a third government so I think to me it's it's the black mark of the record I wish that he had not ended the war 200 hours I wish he had taken out more of Saddam's armor I wish that he had not encouraged the uprisings the ethnic uprisings in Iraq and then failed to support them brent scowcroft is pretty tough on him about that he thinks that Bush just got excited about come up you know if you rise up and he's tough and I want to get to the questions a day all of you have in a second but he's tough on Vice President Cheney yeah I'm Don Rumsfeld who he always had a difficult relationship with but how hard was it to get him to talk about that do you realize the kind of impact it would have he started see I asked about it forever of course and you know and got the look there were there two funny things that people work form always talked about one was the look that said if you're so smart why am i president United States and you're not good at that and the other yeah well yeah your your guy brothers do and the other was in Brent Scowcroft told me Boyden gray told me this that the the hand gesture you lived in mortal fear of was the thumb doing this on the desk because it meant I know exactly what you're saying do you have anything else is actually useful for me so he was a caring boss and a good boss but a tough one this is a an audience I think will bear with me on the weeds of the Rumsfeld thing you all know okay so the let me finish answering a few the question I'm the Cheney stuff it was October 2008 when he first said that he thought Cheney had contributed too much to the hawkish tone of the administration that he had pushed too hard to widen the war on terror past the Empire build an empire which was the exact opposite of the vice presidency that Bush had had Bush treated the vice presidency as a senior confidential advisor without portfolio Cheney treated it as a policymaking policy advocacy it was like having an AE I in the White House basically and I remember I remember very clearly I was sitting in the chair that he sat in his vice president you get to keep your chairs and he had a bunch of them he had all his jobs in the Cabinet Room so you know it's someday you could be vice president someday could be you an ambassador's kind of fun for somebody like me it's like dork Epcot and so I'd like oh I think I wanna be CIA director today I remember sitting in that chair and nearly falling out of it because and I knew with the first 72 hours of this roll out would be it turns out is the first ten days because it was the first direct criticism of Cheney and then he criticized his son and he said that his his son's rhetoric had been too harsh at time and I said well what are you thinking of and he says the axis of evil I think will be shown to be historic a classic George Bush formulation I think will be shown to not historically benefit anything and then I took all of this to rums and then Rumsfeld just he threw under the bus completely swagger iron ass arrogant kick-ass to take names in that kind of staccato voice but I took everything to everyone involved including anyone mentioned in the Diaries because I wanted to I wanted this to be history not journalism and George W Bush was surprised he said my father never said any of this to me during the presidency or after he copped to the fact that his rhetoric could be hot at times and then he joked he said but they understood me in Midland and I think that given the context the years those comments were made which was oh eight oh nine ten eleven and it was a series of conversations says these were not drive-by quotations it was when Iran was in the news in a big way and I think the president President Bush 41 feared that the Cheney wing was pushing to expand the war on terror past Afghanistan in Iraq I do believe that 41 and 43 were closer together on the substance that's one of the things that you write in the book that I think does clear up a lot of is at the time people believed that in some ways 41 was sort of was sending out Brent Scowcroft and Jim Baker to as a proxy for his own views on how the the coalition was not being put together yeah at the time and I guess that leads to a question from someone out in the audience which is as a misconception in the beginning the father felt the invasion of Iraq was a big mistake which he did not at least in his letters the tip to President Bush but why was any more honest with his son in advising about the war overall or not being open about these other kinds of criticism though both men told me they didn't have these conversations does that mean they didn't have them I can only report what don't you believe they didn't have them I think part of Bush's forty-ones code not to I believe that it's possible that you and I have now talked more about this than they did I really do I and it's an it's an interesting intersection of a kind it's like nitrogen and glycerin there okay apart but you put them together so Bush 41 has a code of deference to the sitting president which he began with Lyndon Johnson he learned it from his father his father played his father was Dwight Eisenhower's favorite golf partner in the Senate because he could go play golf with Prescott Bush and Prescott would never bring up business and they could just play golf and it was genuinely relaxing and I think he learned something from that so he never challenged a sitting president he did call on Nixon to resign I don't mean to make him out to be a sycophant but he was making unless it was an existential crisis he was not going to go tell Evans and Novak what he really thought in order to win a headline which is totally antiquated again it's like talking about you know Achilles in his tent now it's so far away so that code extended to his son and I defy anybody to spend five minutes with george w bush and think that he was really open to a lot of advice i really do i think that he thought that the cataclysm of 9/11 had fundamentally changed America's strategic environment that he had a vision of what he wanted to do he wanted to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists this is what he decided to do I'm sorry to say this all right I just got to say it he got reelected on this sorry I don't think maybe will mark you down as undecided but this was adjudicated in the 2004 election and so but I don't think in 2002 there was a conversation at Camp David where George W walks in through all the diplomacy walks him through everything and President Bush 41 says if the man won't comply you have to do what you have to do then he wrote him a letter when the operation was was launched and remember this is an Ole Miss man with CIA director he didn't write anything down he didn't expect to someday see and so I think he believed with a lot of the country early on that Iraq was not an irrational thing to do he did have private anxieties one of the few blind quotes I have in the book is from a very good friend a source I trust implicitly of the president's who said that he had anxieties but that his confidence and and love for his son overwhelmed those and that he was willing to put his trust in George W let's talk about President Bush and President Clinton there's a two-part question here but let me preface it with a couple of observations and questions number one 1992 41 deeply believes despite the fact as you write that he wasn't even sure he wanted to run again despite the fact that he'd been battling Graves disease and a depression he firmly believes that the country will not choose Bill Clinton right over him why right because he had not served in Vietnam and he was less worried about the woman's stuff you know after Gary he was sort of rooting for Gary Hart against the press in 1987 and he sort of rooted for Clinton against the press in 92 he didn't think that it'd be personal foibles unless they affected your your public actions will matter that much but the draft-dodging as he put it was a big deal to him the letter to Colonel Holmes all that I'm you're gonna PTSD I do but he he said to he just didn't believe that Bill Clinton had the character that would impress enough of the American people to elect him president and then Bill Clinton defeats him you could think a guy would hold that against him forever and somehow they become as close as you can be well I want to ask you this I mean I mean Bill Clinton is one of the most charming men when he wants to be right in the world if I'm right that George Bush can be one of the most charming men though they are totally different one of my favorite remarks that 41 made about Clinton and I ended up at a low sizing it in the book was Bush saying you know I like Bill but he talks all he says and who the hell knows if he's right says there 142 windmills in Nigeria George we need to get 32 more and how do you know I don't understand the other the other great one is when when George Doug you who's responsible for this because it started with instant a tsunami tsunami Indonesian ami relief walk in so Bush 41 and Clinton walk into the one of the embassies of the Indonesian embassy I guess in Washington had to sign the book you know the story and there's a beautiful landscape on the wall and Clinton looks up and says that is a beautiful picture who painted that in the way 41 tells the story says oh that's um Bunga he's our great landscape artist and and Clinton goes that's great and they walk up and they sign the book and then they come back down and one of the other consul generals was with them who had not been down there before and Clinton grabs the new guide says that is my favorite oom Bunga I've seen a lot of them bonded 41 can tell this story over three six three Bloody Marys so I think part of the attraction is there they are the odd couple I mean here's here Georgia age and you've done this to blessedly because I've been so lucky in my life I've spent time with talked with every president of my lifetime I guess except Nixon and Reagan and when you talk to a president and you bring up the weather usually within 3.2 seconds they will bring up what the weather had been like when they were president and how much better it was when they were president you have to take a squash racquet and beat George Herbert Walker Bush about the head to get him to talk about being President Bill Clinton not so much so I think that there's kind of the opposite now I'm interested from your point of view is I know that Bush is amused by him what do you think Clinton seasoned Bush I think he sees what you saw on your book a gentleman who put the country first and who took him in who after that campaign like that still found a way to embrace him and I think that and that and you and you can't I think underestimate the club the club thing yeah these guys both know what it's like it does lead to this question though which you also get into in the book were you surprised that 41 felt distant from Hillary Clinton oh this is a classic George Bush line he says we like Hillary but we don't know her this is one of the reasons it took 17 years to write this book I think I don't know this not sound like him I think but I don't know that that she sees it as more cynical I have this gut feeling that she sees it as some kind of cynical political relationship and that she doesn't forgive as easily and prop may remember moments as wind you know he was out there calling him bozos and now Bush 41 did write a letter to Clinton they know six saying we're gonna have to cool it for a while because Hillary was about to run for president by basically making a case against the years of his son and he said you know we're gonna cool it did they didn't of course but it is striking that Senator Clinton has never gone to Walker's point Clinton comes a couple of times a year as Barbara will tell you because mm-hmm he talks all the time I got to ask you a question about Jeb before we get to one more from the audience it's clear in in your telling of the story from their perspective that the whole the both George and Barbara resists this notion that they had somehow now chosen Jeb yeah over George W in in back in 1994 but the george w still harbors a little bit of resentment yeah that they were more upset over Jeb's loss in 94 and w is happy for w's victory yeah yeah it's it's robbing this is where it's all the house of Atreus yeah it's fascinating for T let me let me get 43 credit for this cuz this is 43 theory of the whole case which makes sense to me he's I asked him I said you know Jeb was supposed to be president not you everybody thinks that tell me why it's not true and he said well the origin of it is probably the Jeb grew up faster there are seven years apart because Robin was in the middle and-and-and-and was lost so as George W himself says he he was a little bit more of an uncle early on than a brother and he went off to handover and then they haven't really lived anywhere near each other for decades but he said you know Jeb fell in love early went through college in two and a half years had his babies early moved to Florida he was a much more serious guy and as George W has said famously when I was young any responsible I was young and irresponsible Jim Baker told me that george w was damn near juvenile delinquent and he just if you had looked in the 1970s that these two guys you would have thought you know what I bet Jeb is probably the more serious person what that doesn't take into account and what puzzles me and one piece of news in the book is as early as 1972 george w was looking at running for the state Senate in Houston in 1978 he did run for the House famously out in Midland and lost leading his father to write him a letter in 1977 that laid out the code we've been talking about which is George HW Bush saying you have to be your own man you have to take positions that are contrary to mine I'll be there in campaign for you if you need me I'll stay away if that helps more it was exactly the way he acted when he ran for president when George W I ran for president so if this was some dynastic plot it started back in 1977 the the 1994 story is really interesting but George again I credit george w he says that on roof george w was upset because basically he's taking you a phone call he's just been elected governor of texas and all his parents want to talk about is how sad they are about jeb losing in florida but as he put it as 43 put it to me on reflection it's kind of classic george bush you're to sympathize with the loser and I credit that theory because on the night the Supreme Court closed down the Florida recount George HW Bush is watching television he watches Al Gore concede the presidency he picks up the phone and calls the White House switchboard and says this is George Bush Senior I would like to speak to Vice President Gore Gore takes the call on his mobile phone and he says I George HW Bush says to Al Gore that's the most patriotic and dignified thing I've seen in my public life I've lost I know what this feels like I just want you to know that I'm hurting for you too Al Gore told me that story not George Bush Al Gore told me that story final question we'll give you a chance to make your case for forty-ones place in history which he describes famously to you now as an asterisk but here's the question George HW Bush was probably one of the best prepared people to serve in the office of the presidency yet an office he exhibited no vision and seemed to not understand the power of the presidency would you comment on this statement I love the 92nd Street walk it's a broad mosaic I I asked him about the the vision thing a lot and it was very sweet answer at one point he said what's wrong with trying to help people isn't that vision enough and which I kind of agree with he was a steward not a seer he was not Ronald Reagan he was not Theodore Roosevelt he was not Franklin Roosevelt but there is a quieter kind of heroism a quieter kind of leadership let's look at what happened quickly in his four years the Berlin Wall comes down well Tiananmen Square first he manages that relationship with China he continues us on a path toward a more secure relationship with China that's in June the Berlin Wall Falls we forget that Tiananmen was part of the ambient reality of the thinking because they had just seen a repressive government cracked down on demonstra he handles the fall of the wall with a effortless grace with people light with people saying oh he doesn't understand the poetry of the fall of the wall that's one of the most insane things you can possibly say this is a man shaped by the Cold War a man who was nearly killed because of the force and rise of nationalism and ideology around the world he understood the Cold War he understood what it meant when that wall fell down but half-half Bush knew and he put himself in the shoes of Gorbachev and realized that Gorbachev had hardliners to deal with and Bush had hardliners to deal with arguably Bush was better at helping Gorbachev with his hardliners than Bush was taking care of Gingrich at all on his right so if I had told you in 1980 that the Berlin wall would fall Germany would be reunified over the objections of Margaret Thatcher and Francois Meteor all who accepted Churchill's view that the Hun is always at your feet or at your throat they were very worried about this Jiri unifies Germany he supports Gorbachev some people say supported him too long my view is the Soviet Union's gone so that's we can argue about that a little bit but ultimately Gorbachev was the right bet and at home he passed significant domestic legislation that was largely involved the public sector that he tried to make as conservative as possible one of the pieces here's here's a category you don't hear much good political science but there's some really interesting political science which is like French military victory it small category that I'll wait it's okay it was worth a second in which he was I lost that one sorry good political science good political science his you've done this before public opinion was the same in 1989 to 1983 1993 as it was in the middle of the Eisenhower years so my argument about bush's place in history very briefly put is that he is an Eisenhower figure who is conservatism was based on preserving what was best about the country reforming what he could and recognizing limitations and the world which could have become incredibly a lot lot Messier a lot faster if he had handled things differently ultimately was passed on to Bill Clinton in terms of foreign policy I think you'll agree in a lot better shape than it might have otherwise been and the economy was - then with the help of a lot of biographers Eisenhower's place in history was revised and I think destiny and power is gonna begin that process the George Bush Johnny Joe everyone

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 39,526

Rating: 4.757576 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Jon Meacham (Author), George Stephanopoulos (Politician), History (TV Genre), Politics Of The United States (Literature Subject)

Id: 3RaWzzsmU1g

Length: 53min 23sec (3203 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2015