i was at ucla was he said e want you in this course because weidi were talking about the 1970s. i want you to call me on when m memory intrudes with history. and i think that there is this problem for all historians who are writing, all political scientists, all evaluators who are thinking about these thingse ..nt ewaitevaluators when your memory is still there. >> i write about contemporary history from the '60s onward and i believe historians can do a good job with the first take. some of the best books on the '60s were written soon after the c section. -- '60s. some of the best books were written 5 to 10 years after that happened. . ..

>> guest: i'd add that, you know, historians 50 years from now will be biased about this period in different ways. obviously, if anyone writes about vietnam today, even someone not living through that event, they have opinions that reflect their politics today oh how they view iraq and afghanistan. it's impossible to escape that. there's differences. some are quite comfortable, otherrings are not. i think it's healthy to have historians put these things into context and capture and put the narrative together early on while it's still kind of fresh in our head. >> guest: yeah, i agree with dr. zelizer in general. sometimes history is excellent and other times it's awful.

sometimes they are good and sometimes they are not so good, but president bush had a good point. he said two engineers later, they are first assessing the first george w. and they are still assessing him and they will be assessing for for a long time to come, and i can't worry about it. the point the caller made about responsibility in contrast with president bill clinton there's a story contrasting him with president bush and john kerry why john meets a media straes gist for president bush and kerry says, you know, you guys did a great job with the campaign. my team, they really messed it up. he said it's amazing to me that he said that, frightening that he thought it, and horrific that he said it publicly. i think president bush was

willing to take responsibility and willing to take the blame in new hampshire. famously he didn't fire people in 2000 when they lost the pry mai to john mccain. he said this is on me, let's fix it for the next time. >> guest: yeah, i want to say a little something about that point about president clinton. i think that what you're getting at is what was thought of earlier. these books reflect these very different men. i think that president clinton who he is is someone who is very interested in understanding sen interested in understanding him and others. that's where all of that discussion about i feel your pain, i think, comes from. when you look at george w. bush, he is somebody who like i said from my perspective, he makes very quick judgments about people, and they are often what i would consider to be fairly a motive impression. he's very interested in whether

or not sort of people well up. one of the things he talk about a lot in the book is how many different individuals he saw get tears in their eyes and that was a very important characteristic for him. >> host: author of several books of history, many about the presidency. the most recent is edited by him, the presidency of george w. bush, the subtitle is a first his historic assessment. when will we see books that say a reassessment? >> guest: that will happen. i think the caller mentioned two presidencies, eisenhower and reagan with big reassessments. both were seen as presidents at that time that were light hearted, not serious. as presidents basically driven and controlled by their advisers rather than very dominant

figures, and we learned that was wrong, and i think what happened in both cases and in those cases archives mattered. as we discovered, for example, ronald reagan during the 1970s, you know, worked on every single radio address that he gave and really worked through the ideas and discovered the handwriting and how, you know, he really refined and honed in oning everything. he was serious about developing the arguments he put together. the national security documents showed ronald reagan took charge in the meetings. that takes about 5-10 years to really see the or civile data in george bush library. some of it is declassification, some of it is literally processing. we need people to go through @ material and put it in folders, but my guess is 5-10 years from now when we see what happens behind the scenes, we're going to start to see serious

reassessments. i don't know what they will be, which direction they will go, but there will be reassessments for sure. >> guest: one thing i would add to that, and i just spent a lot of time writing about the individuals before they became president, and quite frankly, who these individuals turn out to be as presidents is not all that surprising when you spend time understanding who they were before they got into the office. i think we have made sort of a tragic error consistently in believing that these individuals are sort of born in office. we go from inaugural to inaugural and forget they had political histories and lives before they reached that oval office. >> guest: that's a fantastic point about the reassessment of certain presidents like reagan and eisenhower and could happen to bush. there's this republican president --

there was ford was a law school grad and bush who went to yale and harvard business school. it can't be the case that every republican president has less than average iq and that's not the case. we see from reassessments they are not and they are smart and good behind the scenes. >> host: iowa falls, iowa. good afternoon, michael. >> caller: hi, how are you? >> host: good. >> guest: i read your book at bv in storm lake and anybody who wants to buy your book should buy it. my first question was answered earlier, so i'm going to -- george bush said early your that these not trying to shape a legacy. how much of his committed silence to the policies that the obama administration has enacted as well as, you know, his overall demeanor since levering office. isn't that shaping a legacy and

how much is that going to impact our public opinion of him as time moves forward and how much of that will impact the 2012 presidential race? >> host: let's go around the horn. >> you can't blame the president for shaming a legacy for not commenting on the administration. it's actually wise and smart. it's not really fair. you're the only one who has all the information that they did at the time, and i think presidents should stay out of current politics and president bush is right to do so. >> yeah, i mean, president bush has been notably and remarkably silent since he left office, not simply about president obama, but even about the republican party. i mean, a lot of the tea party movement for example is not a rebellion against president obama but president bush's policies like t.a.r.p. or the debate over immigration which mattered very much to president

bush. an issue he held dear to his heart, he's been totally silent as this has unfolded. i think he has decided to stay out. i don't think in the end this will have that big of an impact on how, you know, again historians and the public remember him, and in general it's a smart thing for presidents to stay out of the fray for awhile so they success sore of whatever party has a little space, a little political space to fight their own battles. >> guest: yeah, well, i wrote a chapter on george w. bush in another book that assesses his presidency called justice judging bush". one of the things i think came out of that and out of the work that i looked at is i think bush made a lot of ideologs uneasy and i think he also made a lot of partisans uncertain, so i think what you saw was that in especially the 2008 election

right, you know, john mckane and george caulked about this, he distanced himself from the presidency and that's no surprise where bush's approval rating was. i agree with julian that the tea party is, i think, a response to many of the big governments initiatives that did come out of the bush administration. whether it was no child left behind or the medicare prescription drug benefit, but i think that being said, you're right. president bush has been remarkably quiet which leads me to believe that he sort of feels as though what he should be judged on is what he did, not necessarily what he's planning on doing. >> host: julian, will you give us your assessment of writing about katrina? >> guest: yeah, he admits mistakes and not being

aggressive enough of the government's failure to respond to it. he admits the photo op, you know, was a bad choice. there are limits though. you know, i think a lot of the critics said this really revealed, you know, how little policy concern there was for urban america and it wasn't just katrina, but the state of the cities that was just kind of a huge disaster, a national travesty that was not dealt with and president bush obviously does not go that far, so it's like iraq in some ways. there is some administration of doing wrong. there is some add admission of mistakes, but he pushes back on critics that this was not somehow just his failure. he talks about other levels of government failing including louisiana, various levels of politics not responding as well. he's trying to find, i think, the middle point with katrina which again is what i expect

with a little more admission of making mistakes than i thought. >> guest: yeah, i found that chapter a difficult one for me to read personally because i was actively involved in the response. i know president bush took is seriously. he told everybody going into labor day weekend saying we've canceled the weekend. there is no weekend for anybody. we need to work full time on this. we had imperfect information and imperfect cooperation with the local officials and president bush was frustrated with this and a few months later he was remarking on this in meetings where he said, look, we've had something like 26-something national disasters at the time. in 25 of them went off without a hitch, but we are remembered for the 26th one. we were mindful to get a good strong fast reaction to show we knew what we were doing in getting stuff done, but we had imperfect information and cooperation in katrina, and it was frustrating.

>> host: joseph from missouri, you're on the air. >> caller: hi, i teach history at the university of missouri and there's a pivot point in the iraq planning was the military add viers had a different opinion of the size of forces needed. how could bush better navigated this part of the decision making process or is it just a matter of not enough experience? >> guest: well, i do think, you know, this -- we talked a little how the book doesn't talk so much about the debates over intelligence and what was known. it doesn't talk about another aspect which has been a focus of critics, that the state department was warning early on not with troops, but in terms of civilian reconstruction that the nation would be committing a lot more to rebuilding iraq once saddam hussein fell. there was also the debate about troop levels with some including in the republican party saying

you need a much bigger commitment to make sure that, you know, this did not fall apart, similar with afghanistan. he talks a little bit about that, but i don't -- i do think he tends to avoid some of the tougher parts of the debate nbding that issue. was it just experience, i'm not so sure about that. there's a book by thomas ricks that suggests the pentagon was very strong and didn't want, you know, the state department arguments to win, and in the end, the administration went with the pentagon. they went with the idea that you could do this to some extent on the cheap and some would say they were wrong so i'm not sure inexperience is the right prescription here so much as a choice early on about what it meant to change the regime, what it meant to rebuild a society, and how much this would cost the u.s.. >> host: this is booktv's look at president george w. bush's

presidential pep mori, -- memoir, "decision points." joining us from princeton is julian, and here in washington is troy and lara brown. >> caller: good afternoon, everyone. when bush says americans were enjoying peace and prosperity, surpluses were said to come for years to come. that was the flashing of tax rights in the first place. when george bush left office, we were knee deep in two wars and nearly bankrupt teetering on financial ruins. i remember in the interview bush gave during the presidency, i forget the name of the interviewer, but he looked forward to the time he could write a book and fill up his conference.

you all probably remember that. his hero was really marked by greed and theft. i just wonder if he was just doing a victory lap now in presenting himself and putting himself in interviewers. will he be subjected to real criticism by folks like you and others? might ask real questions about does he -- how many people he thinks died in iraq through his choice to go to war there. >> host: there's a lot of information there. we'll go around the board. lara brown. >> guest: i'm not sure where to start in on that, but i do think one of the things fascinating for me because i have spent some time understanding the monetary policy was actually his last chapter that dealt with financial crisis, that was sort

of in the waning years of his presidency. i think the one thing that isn't discussed in this chapter is actually how much the sort of recession and the september 11th shocks that landed into the economy with the coupling of the text boom busting that there was something of an implicit whether it was said policy or also part of kind of the economical cue laws in the white house to replace the tech bomb with the economic bomb. it was an active desire to create situations where individuals could take advantage of these new financial tools and overextend not just the banks, but also many taxpayers. >> well, i mean, i think, you know, he cut taxes twice early in his presidency, a very

significant tax cut in 2001, and in the end he doesn't shrink government. in the end government grows not just with the war on terrorism in the military operations, but with many domestic initiatives including the medicare prescription drug program. when you do that, you will have deficits and that's going to be an inevitable outcome of your administration. i would say that last chapter is absolutely fascinating and the tension with him and senator mccain over how to handle the financial crisis is kind of a very gripping story, and at the same time, you know, bush defends government and using government which is he does it in a very bush-like fashion. he says there was a problem, we needed government, so i called for an expansion of government. there are conservatives still uneasy with his presidency because of the deficit and the continued growth of government

that was a defining characteristic of his presidency. >> guest: i think president bush does it more in a friendly way when facing a financial crisis and he says there was a financial crisis, a possible depression, and i sure as heck was going to be franklin roosevelt rather than hoover to face the situation. i disgrease with the caller that the bush inherited with the tech boom busting was bush's fault and 9/11 was bush's fault and the housing crisis and policies obviously did lead it it, but they were not necessarily just bush pushing the policies. the democrats pushed home ownership and pushing home ownership was a good thing from the democratic perspective and it was good because it's giving subsidies to poor people since there was a notion we want to build up an ownership society with people have more stake. there was a bipartisan push for home ownership.

>> host: historically, how many presidents leave office popular? >> guest: well we have data back to truman because the gallop surveys go back that far, and what you see is as i recall it's just two actually have something of above, you know, 50% where they are popular on the way out the door and that's reagan and clinton, so you can spend time looking at those surveys that you see that the motion is downward. >> guest: kennedy was too, but no one snows that tragedy and no one wants to leave that way. the fact if you're successful and you had two terms, people are tired of you. >> two things happened. your opponents dislike you even more by the end of your presidency because you have done more, and usually members of your own party don't like you because once you're in power, the challenges of governing are

different than campaigning, and you have to cut deals, make compromises, and do everything washington is about and many people in your party, republican or democrat, won't like you by the end of that process. it's not that surprising that most president's end at the lower place, you know, than when they started. >> host: with your presidency of george w. bush first historical assessment, what should people take away from this quick of a book? >> guest: of the book that i edited? >> host: yes. >> guest: well, you know, i think there's kind of two take aways that i thought were interesting. one was to try to understand some of president bush's problems not just because of him or who he was, but some of the challenges that conservatives were facing by the early part of the 21st century after conservatives had been in power really for two decades and started to wrestle with some of

the problems that came with power, some of the difficulties of cutting government, some of the reliance that republicans had developed with government, and a series of issues that i think in the end explain a lot of the crisis that the republicans went through by the end of his presidency, and on the other hand, there's just some interesting, i think, history of bush. there's one terrific chapter that someone wrote gary, a historian at vanderbilt, on bush in texas and really looks at bush growing up and being an adult in texas and his interaction with the hispanic community there and really tries to show where the idea of broadening the republican party came from and why he was so passionate about liberalizing immigration reform, and in the end it didn't work. it was one of his failures, but you start to see kind of a different picture of president bush once you understand his

background. the third thing srb sorry -- again, the cost of katrina katrina and iraq. the sequence of those events and crisis really undermind what was politically a very successful presidency in that first term. >> host: not to be craft, but could president bush sat on 9/11 for eight years? i mean, politically? >> guest: well, obviously, i don't think he could. he had 90% approval ratings, and then a month after and but as 2004 got closer into the 2002 election which president bush did well and republicans had a retake over the senate, but you could see partisanship was increasing on both sides and 9/11 was not going to hold you politically the whole time. >> host: houston, go ahead, debra. >> caller: hi. >> host: hi. >> caller: i just want to first start by saying that president

george bush to me was a man of -- and full of courage, and i thank you for that. let's see -- i'm just wondering if anyone realized that during the time he was running for president, he was -- our country was being threatened for war that we were going into war if he became president by other countries, so to me what that said is that people within our own country were sabotaging the president. >> host: all right, we got your point. lara brown. >> guest: obviously the election was contentious and

uncertain and there was a lot of legal decisions and recounts. i wrote a book on the 1876 election, and 2000 has nothing on that. you know, there is this impression in our history that our elections and that our politics have been sort of more pure in times past, and really that's a false impression. when you go back in time, what you see is that the parties not only counted the ballots, but they printed them and knew where everyone lived and maneuvered around voter # -- voters. our politics are cleaner than they ever have been. another thing around hurricane katrina treen ya. one of the things fascinating to me as someone who tries to understand both political

parties, from leaders from both parties is that you see ideology impending on decision making. what you see in the hurricane katrina situation is you see the state and local government should lead, and there's a problem because one democratic ideology, the federal government should lead. when you have a democratic governor and a republican president, i think what you're actually having is a situation where both sides are expecting the other one to grab hold the reigns and go forward. i do think bush talks in his book about the tension that he felt with regard to louisiana. he doesn't have those kinds of issues when he's talking about his associations with either his brother as a republican in florida the year before or with haley barbara. >> guest: i'll agree and

disagree. first of all the notion that katrina was some kind of republican ideology issue. it's not conservative politics that say let the state and locals lead. it is the fema handbook and president bush talks about this. it limits his ability to intervene in states, but i agree that politics have been ugly in the u.s. and partisan and i thought president bush was interesting in his book when he says how unprepared he was for how partisan it was in washington. he had a great relationship with the late lieutenant governor in texas who was a democratic and was salty in his language, but said to bush, i'm willing to work with you and let's get stuff done together. bush thought he'd come to dc and get that done, but he wasn't able to. >> host: 1 it -- is did too early to reassess the

election? >> guest: no. there's books written on the court battles over the election, and i'm not sure, you know, in terms of what actually happened, i think there's been a lot of good assessments, and in terms of the impact on the presidency, i think that's been an important part of the story and will continue to be both in terms of how bush thought of himself, the kinds of tensions that it created within the country over his presidency. i think it was quite significant, but polarization doesn't start with george bush. it doesn't start in 2000. politics is always rough in american history. it's always rough in times of war. partisanship never stops at wart's edge, and there's been increasing polarization over decades for the way the media works to the how the parties are organized. it's interesting to me that president bush was so surprised that that's true because of his dad. his father lived through this

washington as well, and both, i think, you know, had a good sense of what this system is like, but i don't think, again, 2000 is the starting point. what we saw in president bush's presidency was the unfolding of trends and issues and political dynamics that had been brewing in some ways for many decades. >> host: i want to ask the panel, all three of you, have you read "white house diary" jimmy carter's book that came out and how it cares to "decision points?" >> guest: i did. i had some timing. i read it right away. i liked the diary very much. i wish we had this on every president. you know, it's drier reading. it's not structured, and it's not as punchy as "decision points," but that said to be able to read through a presidency and see how president

carter was thinking and reacting, you know, some of his comments about the members of congress he dealt with to his opinions on foreign leaders to how he perceived the 1980 election as it was unfolding. very different than how we remember it as this kind of inevitable landslide for ronald reagan. i find that helpful of the in some ways i want a diary like that on president george w. bush, and so i'm a fan of that kind of diary, and i think we really learn a lot from it. >> guest: i unfortunately have not read it, but i do like john clean sigh adam's diary. he has 12 volumes, so it taking time, but there's a great index and you can look up moments in time when he runs into martin van buren and finds him to be ambitious and not worthy of the

presidency. >> host: he appeared on our after words program, and in that program he said he's going to release his entire diary unabridged at the carter center within a year or two. jim, california, you are on with our historians round table discussing "decision points." >> caller: yeah, i just have a few comments. one is that i found on both the bush book and presidencies pretty much uneventful and that they were -- if any, the peter principle took sway. however, i would say that the latter bush, the younger bush, will be well-known and well-revered for his handling of the financial crisis at the end of his presidency while he was

highly criticized for katrina, ect., truth is is that i quite frankly think he saved our system, our economic system at the end of his presidency, and one other point that has been brought up is this unpop pew larty -- unpopularity of the presidents and the honeymoons are getting shorter and shorter. i personally think that mr. clinton was a one who took the presidency several notches right there with warren c. harding. the guy was impeached. he pled guilty to perjurying himself. he had a $25,000 fine, and he can't practice law in any court in the united states. >> host: hey, jim, who is your

favorite contemporary president? >> caller: by far, ronald reagan. ronald reagan fairs i'm concerned is first of all, i think if you analyze his initial economic -- he faced on economic crisis not unlike the latter bush and current president. >> host: all right. we got the point. thank you. >> guest: first, i disagree with the caller m i think there's bipartisan agreement on right, left, democratic or republican side. it was an eventful presidency. it kept us busy at the white house. i do take what the caller said seriously about the financial crisis and one point he makes is that he didn't want to dump this on obama and wanting to get this out before hand. i thought that was an important point.

yeah, it damaged his legacy with conservatives, but he saw it important to pass on a somewhat stable system, and i thought that was important. >> guest: yeah, i mean, i think this was eventful and i argue a transformative presidency. one of the things we look for in terms of how to evaluate presidents is how much do they remake public policy? how much do their zigs kind of -- decisions kind of last over time. at least what we are starting to see while president obama is in the white house is in terms of tax policy, connedder terrorism, -- counter terrorism, t.a.r.p., and regime policy. a lot of the changes set by president bush is in place even when democrats controlled both branches of government. congress and the presidency, so i think we have to look at this as far more transformative than, you know, your regular presidency, and timely, there is

an ironny that in the final years of president bush's time in the white house when he was at his lowest in terms of approval ratings, he made some of the decisions which might have been the most sit other than post-9/11, both with the surge in iraq and with t.a.r.p., and the of how to rescue wall street, and i think we might be talking about those last minute decisions so to speak for years to come even though they came at a time in his presidency when he was really just a lame duck. >> guest: i want the to weigh in about the financial crisis. i do actually agree that president bush did essentially save our system. we were in a place where t.a.r.p. absolutely had to be enacted. in fact, i thought it was a great duty on both republicans and the democrats' part to let that bill fail in the house. i think if you look back at the

tapes, there were certainly more democrats who voted for it than oppose it and more republicans who opposed it than voted for it, but speaker pelosi has the power of any speaker which means if she wants to twists arms, she could have done it. both sides played politics to their advantage and it was to the debt triment of the country and it's why you see later secretary paulson basically has to use t.a.r.p. in a different way than originally intended because the financial crisis had advanced to the point where they couldn't use it the way they had hoped. >> host: next call, kansas city, missouri. sherry, go ahead. >> caller: hi, thanks for c-span. i was watching a gillcot inquiry in the u.k. and the u.n. investigator on the ground in iraq in testimony indicated and stated that his advisories said

there were no weapons of ms destruction and that the bush regime had planned on overthrowing saddam from the beginning, and that was from another witness. thank you. >> host: what did you read in the book to relate to what that woman had to say? >> guest: there's no evidence that there was a plan to the start. he talked about nation building in his campaign against al gore, and it seems the whole notion was after 9/11 they were foesed on weapons of mass destruction being in the hands of people who were dangerous, but he said there was bipartisan agreement within the u.s. about that intelligence and everybody within the u.s. system had read that and senior people in the house and senate and administration had read and seen intelligence and seemed to agree this was a real problem. >> host: julian, did you read tailor branch's clinton

diaries? >> guest: no, i did not. i didn't have a chance. >> host: from a historical perspective, is it a loss that they no longer tape themselves? >> guest: yeah, i mean, currently working on lyndon johnson and listening to all the tapes, and frankly, to be able to hear that is extraordinarily helpful. there's a level of kind of inthat ma sigh you can gain of a white house from hearing the interaction between presidents and overseas leaders who are members of congress that we don't have since richard nixon when the tapes went away as far as we know, and i do think it's a shame. you know, we've losted tapes, the recordings. some say now we're losing other kinds of communication because presidents and the executive branch is so frightened about investigation. we heard this under president clinton and a little with president bush that they don't want things written down or want

it on e-mail. this is the record. i mean, presidents can write meme plors, -- meme roars, but in the end they will not shape how we remember the presidency, and not to be self-storing, but it's what they do is write about the record. if we don't have a record, it weakens our ability to understand the period and understand the stories. i think when we lost the tapes, it was a tragedy for our ability to understand the history and similar with other forms of recordkeeping. >> host: she mentioned john adam's diary. what's your favorite memoir? >> guest: i have to admit i read all of them, and i don't have a favorite. carter's is okay, trueman's is okay. what carter did was put some of the diary in it, and i find that a little bit helpful. clinton was okay, but it's a

little overwhelming. there was so much. you couldn't tease out, you know, what was him and what was vines. i don't have an answer in terms of a favorite, but if i had to pick one, it's the carter diary. again, that's what i think we benefit most from, a real live on-the-spot of what presidents were thinking. >> guest: i have to agree strongly. i think the presidential memoir is a poor genera. it's not the best historical or literary perspective. i'm interested in the aid's memoirs, the staff's memoirs. i have two favorites. my favorite democratic one is -- there's reasons the white house was not happy with him. the second is republican marty anderson called revolution. he was an economist working in the reagan administration, but he not only talks about that but

talks about all the rolling ideas and the economic difficulties that were going on at the time and gives you a sense of the perspective of what was going on in the u.s. in the late 70s that led to the presidency. >> host: anything else to add? >> guest: they covered it. >> host: frank, thanks for holding. you're on with the round table. >> caller: hello. >> host: hi. >> caller: let me give you layman's point of view. we discussed this prior to the war. it's hard to imagine that a country that didn't have five smokestacks are going to be a threat to the united states. actually, saddam was ugly enough oppose iran, and now we wind up al-qaeda. there were 19 of them in manhattan. in 50 in afghanistan, and now they are all over the world? this is what we accomplished in

ten years? what we have now is a jobs program in the middle east. in the meantime, we build 15 million houses with 6 million illegals, with 1% interest and the country's in debt. >> host: okay, we talk about iraq already in this round table, but we have not talked about immigration p does he write about it? >> guest: he does. george w. bush has a, and i think this is where his phrase, compassion conservatism describes him. he is a humanist. he is somebody who actually wants to help people, and he does see whether he's talking about what he did in africa or whether what he was doing with regard to imgracious.

he felt that one of the things that is visitly important is that -- vitally important is that people are treated with dignity and have equal opportunity. he wasn't interested in equal outcomes. he wasn't interested in sofort of a situation where the input in wasn't measured in terms of the result, but he certainly wanted to make peoples' lives better. >> host: julien, is the presidential biography a relatively new phenomena? did they write presidential biographies? >> guest: we've had them for over 100 years now dating back to the late 19th century, so we have them for many presidents. some successful, some less successful. it's really since harry truman that they take off in terms of sale and turn out to be a normal part of the post-pes

presidency. jim mir carter took is beyond everyone. i don't know the amount of books he's written, but it's now well over 100 years we've been having this. if i can get back to the caller, there is a really interesting point in the book where president bush says he regrets not going for imgrigs reform before social security reform. he says in the interview as well after the 2004 reelection, and i think kind of that choice of timing and sequence is really kind of interesting, and you can imagine a very different outcome not just on his presidency on immigration policy, but even in the republican party had he made that decision. >> host: you were deputy secretary of the department of health and human services. >> guest: i was. i was in the white house at the immigration deabt and involved in the domestic security counsel. we didn't get it through, but people forget and president bush

reminds us of how close it got. it passed the house and had more than the majority in the senate and president bush says if harry reid extended the debate longer, they would have got this done. instead, reid went out of session and said let's go back to the home districts and threne ere was anger and by that point it was too late to go back and see, but they were really close to getting it on immigration. this was a compassionat issue. he told stories about people he knew in texas who sent their kids to school, and now you tell them to go home? go home to what? they've been here for 30 years. >> host: president bush is critical of harry reid in this book and other places. what was it like to be in the white house at that point during some of the debates?

>> guest: that's a good question. i was in one session with the bipartisan members of the house and senate were talking, and what i noticed the members who had been in the senate longer, be they democrat or republican, were much more interested in getting along and getting an agreement, and the members who had been there a shorter amount of time, they wanted partisan points on both sides of the aisle. i remember one point the late senator keep difficulties and john mccain, leaders of getting something done, noted to the president they were embarrassed by their colleagues and sniping dependence the meaning of the president. this is a room that hosts meetings hosted by the president are in this room, and they senators are sniping at each other, especially the newer ones, and the older wants wanted to deal. i found that interesting. >> guest: the one thing i want to bring up is something that

was just mentioned about the timing issue. it recollected for me how he talked about how he wish he had done welfare reform prior to health care. what we see in both of these is both of these presidents thinking and believing that perhaps the more partisan issues would have been easier if they had had a bipartisan base on which to work. >> host: julien, can a senator, harry reid, bob, byrd, affect a presidency? >> guest: oh, absolutely. i think every president learns that from the per spectivity of the white house, capitol hill looks more powerful than it does on the campaign trail and a senator majority leader speaker have enormous power.

president john f. kennedy when he came to office one the people he was worried about was wilbur mills, chair of the house and means committee and controlled issues of the time, medicare after 65, social security before that, taxization, and he said mills was chairman before i got here and will be here when i leave. he understood just how much power legislatures have, and i think president bush, you know, some of the frustration comes from the realization in the presidency and both your success and failure. >> host: tevi and lara, i don't know if you have a chance to analyze the pictures in "decision points qtion, but you go through and there's the family pictures and nice lighting and there's crowd pictures throughout here, some katrina pictures, action

photos. there's no picture in here of nancy pelosi, but there is a picture of senator kennedy and others, but no harry reid. is that on purpose? >> guest: i think so. i think when you look at these pictures, one of the things that was interesting is i did what most people do is look at the pictures first and then read the book, and in doing that, it was then interesting because as he would talk about something, i would think back to the pictures that had i seen. he very much including pictures from the moments that he is referring to or discussing, so my favorite picture is the one sitting there with his entire family and because he's on the couch, you can see the presidential seal on his boots. there's that picture as we take the next call. go ahead, justin, thanks for holding. c-span: not a problem. as someone who voted for president bush in 2000, i look

back at his presidency and was disappointed and had anger, but at the same time, i think he did some good things. i think he kept the country safe with the antiterrorism policies, but i think he really went awry when it came to the war in iraq in the years between 2003 and 2007. i think he doesn't understand how much that affected a good chunk of the country like me who voted for him and supported him and the disappointment that came about from those years where it changed course in iraq. i don't want to get into that too much because i know you talked about that a lot. i think he did very well with the surge. i think that made a huge difference, and if iraq can be salvaged in the years to come, i hope i'm wrong about his decision. it just really bothers me all the lives were lost for a premise that turned out to be false. >> host: justin, will you buy or have you bought this book and will you read it?

>> caller: i have not yet. i've been thinking about doing it. i saw some of the interviews president bush has been doing over the airways, and i have not bought the book. i'm thinking about it. i think it will do me good to read it. i'm someone who does not have anger towards president bush, it just bothers me to the day that president bush and president obama now, i do not like that. i did not vote for president bush in 2004 because of the war in iraq, but at the same time, i believe he's a good man who did the best that he could. i just look back on that fateful decision to invade iraq as a wrong decision. i hope i'm wrong, but when it came to getting involved with the t.a.r.p. bailout, surge, and his policies when it came to fighting antiterrorism policies, all the torture policies, someone back to policy, but i just really think he failed the most fundamental obligation when it comes to a president goes to war.

i hope i'm wrong and that he meant well. >> host: thanks. >> guest: i just want to say a quick thing this is what i tell my students frequently. you know you live in a good democracy if you are ascended on a daily basis and have the right to voice that. i think we live in a vital democracy. i am offended often and every day i sort of thank the good lord that i am offended. it means that i am very fortunate as well. >> host: julien? >> guest: yeah, with iraq it's going to be the big question in terms of what did the policy accomplish or fuel to complush, but another will be how it affected his presidency. i think there are many people who feel like this caller who had he stayed the course on counterterrorism and other aspects of that agenda, even though there was partisanship

and weeks after 9/11 that he was on stronger political footing and that once he went into iraq even if today you could see kind of some of the potential benefits of the war and i think those are open to questions, i think he really got himself in a huge political mess, and i think there's many republicans who feel that way in addition to democrats, and i think his chapter on the freedom agenda which ultimately is a justification for iraq is not going to be sufficient to the earlier chapter where he admits the reason we went in was not correct and i think it's hard to get around that when you're looking at his presidency. >> guest: first of all, i think the caller is wrong to suggest that president bush didn't feel there was a political cost in this. he openly acknowledges the political cost of the war and talks about it frequently and also about the famous mission accomplished banner he stood in front of. he talks about the political

cost. about the agenda, he was influenced by current books and movies. he talked about the case of democracy and not only read it, but gave it out to a number of people and also a fantastic movie he saw, the east german movie and how influential they were in destroying people's lives and that shaped his notion of the agenda. >> host: did not see the picture of mission accomplished. that was not included. >> guest: probably a good move. >> host: markus from hawaii, hi. >> caller: just a couple comments. i vote who would be best for the nation. i think clinton set up a bigger mess for us than bush did. i'm going downtown to order this book today. just two questions on that. one does he have anything in the book about why he filed a brief

to try to stop an execution in the state of texas, and when he became aware of the condition of freddie mac, why didn't he pull an andrew jackson? >> guest: well, he does refer to, you know, fannie may and freddie mac. he was imploring the house essentially to act on the issue and deal with banking reform. i don't recall anything about the execution in the book because he tacks very little about his time in texas. >> host: right, to let you know, we have a few minutes left. what we haven't talked about that you wanted to bring up from the book, so if you think about that for a minute as we take this last call from san jose, california. go ahead, patrick. >> caller: i want to thank you

for being there, c-span. it is a service to the american people to educate them and to make them informed on these matters of great importance such as the lives of presidents. i feel, though, that in this recent panel discussion you have done a disservice to c-span to show the president being interviewed and selling his book only to have a follow-up show where the representatives that you have selected, the three panelists all seem to be apologists for the policies, positions, and activities of the president being sold prior to this program, and as an informed citizen, i'd like to ask from this point on that this not be

used as a forum for propgan dieing the policies of a man, but instead for equal commentary from both sides to explore -- >> host: you think all three of these historians are pro-president george w. bush? >> guest: my experience in listening to each one speak is that even though they are willing to chide him for small things, the real -- the subjects of real importance are not questioned. >> host: all right, thank you very much. professor julian of princeton, let's start with you. >> guest: i don't agree with the caller and we've raised issues that are not small. you know, the potential of manipulating data and evidence which is the rational for war, failures in katrina, and

economic policies, that's not small. we dealt with a lot of big issues, and i think there's disagreement on this panel in terms of evaluating the presidency. i think this is one of the challenges though of studying presidencies in a polarized age. i think many of the people listening and many of the people interacting in conversations kind of read into comments and read into what they see instantly their own politics, and often i find it difficult to have really thoughtful discussions in that environment, but we have to, we have to because i think this is a crucial part of our democracy to study, to evaluate, to debate what happened during different presidencyings in our history. >> host: you worked for president bush. >> guest: i did, and i'm more sympathetic to him, but we had a healthy discussion. one thing i say about the book,

is just how funny it is. there's one story quickly about my friend, jim, who his mother was a lawyer before working in the white house, and president bush said, you know, in this society when mother terry is a needs a lawyer. >> guest: i agree with julian on this. i actually think when you get into trying to assess the whole president, you do end up really with a rather some good, some bad, some pretty horrific, some i wish i could change, but i think a fair assessment from a historical and academic perspective really does try to take the full measure of the man, not just one aspect of one decision. >> host: very quickly. what haven't we talked about you want to bring up? >> guest: i just think the thing we didn't talk about is all his work in africa which he was involved