the mathematics doesn't allow any possibility to go unrealized. all roads are traveled in the quantum multiverse. you know, it's funny, i'm teaching this right now. i'm teaching undergraduate quantum mechanics, and i'm literally this week we're talking about, you know, the many worlds approach, and we set it up last week, and it is, if you actually go through the mathematics of it which very few people i've found actually do, a few people go back to the 1957 paper and read it, few people go back to the thesis that hugh everett wrote down. have you actually read his thesis? his thesis is a mathematical gem where he makes a very potent case for this idea. i don't want to sort of open it up again, i think there's still some things missing. but i'm taken along, and i'm very critical of it. it's an idea that i don't think is right, but i'm taken along by the mathematical argument to

sort of the last step. and the last step, i think he didn't quite get right, and i don't think anyone, in my opinion, has yet filled it in. but othersty agree with me and say a lot of stuff has been filled in. but if it's correct, all possibilities allowed by quantum physics actually have -- you know, sometimes i'm asked does that mean there's, like, one universe where, like, sarah palin is president? [laughter] and i have to tell them, you know, it has to be compatible with the laws of physics. [laughter] [applause] .. finishperspective,

yes, in terms of the other multiverse ideas we've discussed today, i'm not really sure what they have to say about it. >> a question over here. >> in your many bubbled world -- >> yes. >> we know after the big bang certain specific criteria had to be met or the universe would have flown apart. so in the other worlds, did they have to follow our laws in order to succeed or did some of them die or what -- how does that work? >> yes. so one of the deep questions that we have faced over the last 15, 20 years is along with what you're asking. we measured certain features of our universe, certain numbers, certain parameters, the strength of the electromagnetic force and the strength of the

gravitational force and the strength of the corks and we understand the numerical values that the experiments are revealing but we haven't been able to explain why those particular values have been found. now you might say should we care if the electron was a little heavier. that's one of the details but you should exactly for the reason that you asked. if those numbers had been somewhat different then the universe we have known and observed it -- if i have a number with 20 dials and you make gravity stronger or you make the electromagnetic force weaker for any if i can you do, the universe does not evolve in the way we know of. stars do not form and it's hard to imagine how life does not exist. and the deep question is why do those numbers have just the right values, give rise to the universe that we are familiar with. we have hit a dead-end so far in trying to answer that question.

the multiverse test is a very different way of thinking about that question. it's really along the lines of what you suggest. the idea is maybe there are many, many, many universes in which those numbers vary from universe to universe and universe and in most of those universes they couldn't exist because the stars wouldn't be there, the planets wouldn't be there and so forth and the answer for why the numbers have the values that we observe there is, we couldn't observe any other values. we couldn't exist in those other realms and that is an approach that may ultimately hold water. now, let me give you a little analogy on this that happened to me two years ago with my 4-year-old which helps someone understand this a little bit more. you know, my son is 6 years old now he was about 3.5 then. we went to the show store and this was the first time he was really old enough to think about what was happening. we go into the shoe store. the guy measures his store and pits on and it fits and we leave. everything is happy.

my son turns to me in the street and he says, wasn't it lucky that they had my shoe size? [laughter] >> and as i probed further i realized that what he had in mind was that shoe store had a single shoe size and it just so happens that it fit his foot. [laughter] >> what a mystery that would be. [laughter] >> but when i explained to him back in the stockroom there were many, many, many different shoe size and the guy picked out the one he measured. what's the moral if there's a unique object you're trying to explain that could be mysterious but if you realize it's not a unique object it's one of the a vast collection the mystery can evaporate. that's like the mystery of these parameters just like the shoe size we fit his fuse we find a universe where the parameters fit our existence and that may be the answer. >> all right. i guess to preface this

question -- i'm going to ask if you are familiar with ronald mallet and his time machine experiment. >> sorry, i don't. >> he's a theoretical physicist out of -- in connecticut, yeah and i guess he postulates that if you twist life enough that you can twist face time sufficiently to create like a -- >> time like curves -- >> a subatomical time machine -- >> you can't go back before -- >> right. if such a machine was actually built koobz something like that possibly be used to maybe test some of these theories? >> oh, boy? [laughter] >> you're talking about speculation. we're inspectiabout speculation. >> let me turn temperature direction and i'll simply say this. one of the big puzzles with time

travel, of course, is you go back in time and you affect things that may prevent your existence. you go back and you kill your parents before you're born and there's a logical paradigm like back to the future. hollywood loves this idea. is it a variation on the paradox, you know, which comes from the following idea? i mean, imagine, you know, that you travel -- you can travel to the future, you know. imagined i traveled to the future let's just say and i want to see what happened in string theory, you know, has it been proven or not? so i go to the library or the floating internet station or whatever and i see that prizingly the theory has made a major advance and the author of that paper is my mom. and i'm like that's weird because my mom doesn't like physics and she wants me to be a doctor but not this kind of doctor and that kind of stuff. [laughter] >> and i look in the acknowledgements in the paper in the future and she thanks me for teaching her all this physics

and i thought holy crap i got to get back. i use the little machine and i start to tutor my machine and man, it's not going well. she's not getting it. a year goes by and two years and i'm like how in the world is she ever going to write that paper and then i said to myself, i know what was in that paper, i read it. let me just tell her what to write. [laughter] >> so i tell her what to write and she writes the paper and everything turns out in the paper and the question is who get the credit. it's not really a credit really but it's really where did the information come from? did she get it from me, no. did i get it from her i got it from her paper. now, how does this relate to multiple universes coming back to this. here's the possible fanciful idea that people floated. imagine that when you travel to the past, for instance, you never come back to your own

universe. you come back say in the quantum multiverse and let's use that as an explicit example. you come back to one of those copies of the universe. so, for instance, if anything back in time and kill my parents before i'm born, i wouldn't be born in that universe but so what? my origin would still be unaffected because my parents would be unaffected in the universe so that's -- but again, it's a little far afield but at least that's some interaction with time travel. >> question over here. >> i just had a question about something i'm recently aware of, the bose einstein condensation theory. >> ceo >> and it's something physicists now -- we are so lucky to live in a time when people can produce a bose einstein condensation and certain elements. now, if they can hypothetically if they could create that instant in a room, do all the basic theories of quantum mechanics break down? if you have a situation --

>> sure. i don't think it does that. brian will be the final arbiter, but i think bose einstein condensation was created right here at mit. it was also created in colorado, yeah. so it's around the same time. bose einstein condensation is -- you cool something -- you cool some atoms to a very, very low temperature and the particles of the wave -- so the waves overlap. you're really creating quantum mechanics for a large object and for a collection of atoms i don't think it relates to anything else we've been talking about. >> yeah. and it really comes out of basic quantum mechanics. it's not incompatible -- >> so it drops from one point? [inaudible] >> pardon me? >> if you absolutely reach a bose einstein condensation all of those waves become one point. they jump to one point. that's what the physicists at mit say. >> i personally wouldn't

describe it that way. >> this is at mit described it. >> i'm not sure exactly what they had in mind. >> well, they describe it that way. >> okay. >> we have time for one last question over here. >> yes, excuse me. i should preface this by saying i'm a diehard mini worlder and i think the question makes sense if you like that. i was impressed by an observation in your first book where you noted a duality between length and a one over length time one over time which seemed to have a special meaning -- if i understand this correctly at about one time after the big bang when the energy for a wound and unwound string are about the same. there was something -- i don't recall the details now but something that you said there and the notes prompted this idea and i'd like to know if anyone is pursuing anything like this. >> okay. >> and that is that if you imagine there's a moment perhaps at this one time after the big

bang of permitly symmetry and i know zero microscope which describes a universe that's going to evolve perhaps ten to the five hundredth vacuum state or whatever it takes to get us forward to all the different versions of us here now, we could look at the same thing -- you'd expect the same thing to be happening in that one over interpretation going back to the moment of the so-called big bang. now that singularity turns into an illusion like the north pole and that first little thing so here's this image of us and we have another doppelganger now which is the whole multiverse repeated back in that first little moment in time. >> yes. acurious if anyone is pursuing ideas or anything like that? >> it is one of the most surprising features of string theory which shows that under

the circumstances largely that you're recounting, a universe that's bigger let me call the plank length and expanding is actually equivalent to a universe that's smaller than the plank length and contracting that's the 1 over r world that you're talking about. i wouldn't use the word doppelganger or image to describe these two realms. there's really distinct mathematical descriptions of the same reality. it's really just two different ways of looking at the same thing but looking differently. how would the cosmology and the singularity look in this picture, yes, right here at harvard, two cosmologists, they studied cosmology in the context of the universe that has that one of the symmetry and they did find something along the lines of what you're suggesting. so what is the singularity? so if you run the universe back in time it gets denser denser

way back in the density source to infinity. they found that in this setup when the universe gets smaller than a plank length that's about a tenth minus 35 meters. when it gets smaller than the plank length, the temperatures leveled out and as the universe gets smaller the temperature starts to come down because of the very symmetry you talks about. it never spikes to infinity. there's never a time when the density gross big. so this is a cosmology model that has been build from that symmetry. there's other things that doesn't describe yet and there's much work to be done to take it fully seriously. but as a toy test case after the cosmology where there wouldn't be a singularity it's one of the most potent one that comes out of string theory. >> do we have time for another question. i'd just want to point out if you're taking that kind of model seriously, then our current

event horizon would be represented by all of the possibilities in the mini worlds that could have happened to this point over this space and now if we want to get in our imaginary spaceship and go out much farther, everything happening there is just the same set of things. and what we're doing is we're kind of getting an outer product of all these combinations when we go out there and wait long enough to see what's out there, if that were allowed. we're really just sampling what's happening in another branch of the universe the way it functions here. and now this gives you another way to wrap that infinity so that it's not infinite. when you describe one event horizon, you've described everything and it will look like an evolving infinity to an embedded observer but you don't have a problem by what do we mean by infinite. >> that's rooted in the fact that we're talking of the radius of a circle which is, of course, a finite side. this is an example you have a finite universe and not an infinite one. you're right. we do not have this problem that

we were tussling with earlier. [inaudible] >> it can, absolutely. i'm sorry, are we done? >> i was going to say i think our time is up but thank you so much for that wonderful, lively and very mind-expanding conversation. mra[applause] >> you can see this and other booktv programs that we offer online at booktv.org. >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. up next on booktv, myra gutin recounts barbara bush's four years as first lady. she was more political aought to and political than her first husband and her understanding of public relations.

this is about 45 minutes. >> thank you, felicia. good afternoon, everyone. thank you for being here. i was listening to something that someone said as i was coming in. i've been teaching about first ladies now for 30 years. and i occasionally will teach a semester-long course but i also teach two various groups in my community and other communities and i just wanted to share one quick anecdote with you. one morning i came in to a room and barbara bush was prominently featured in this and a woman said to me, i'm wondering -- i see that you're going to talk about first ladies. i can hardly wait to hear when you have a to say about princess diana. [laughter] >> and i said, well, actually, she's not someone that i'm going to talk about.

she's part of the british royal family and this woman looked at me like i had perpetrated a crime and picked herself up and left and she never got to hear about barbara bush or anyone else for that matter. but this afternoon my topic very happily is the woman that was known during her time here in washington as the silver fox. and has always been known in her family as bar, and that is barbara pierce bush. i started to work on the barbara bush -- it seems like aeons ago like in the 2000's. and the book was finally published in 2008. i was very, very fortunate -- mrs. bush was kind enough to see me. she made access to every member of her staff available so i do feel what i was able to share in

the book is a pretty balanced interpretation of her time, both in the public eye and in the white house. our time is limited this afternoon and what i'd like to do is share with you some basic bigraphical information, just a little bit and if you have questions about that or anything else, i'm more than happy to address them during our question and answer period. but we'll have a quick look at her biography. then i'd like to share with you some thoughts about her advocacy of literacy. her great success as public communicator and finally her role and her reactions to the campaign of 1992, which for her in many ways was a watershed. as i was preparing for this, i thought there were three questions that i really wanted to answer for you. one was, what made barbara bush different? second, what made her special? and finally, what was her

legacy? generally speaking, barbara bush is perhaps one of our best ever liked first ladies. and perhaps you see that is an achievement. perhaps you don't. i would share with you that the fact that she was so popular made it possible for her to achieve the things that she did. think of her predecessor, nancy reagan, a very polarizing first lady. think of her successor, hillary rodham clinton, another polarizing first lady. barbara bush is sort of the still waters as these things move along. so she had tremendous popularity. she was seen a straight-talking down-to-earth grandmotherly -- at least that was the public persona. the private persona was a little bit different. i found her to be a political realist, to be tough, to be smart and savvy. and she always had her husband's

back. still does. the public never saw any of that, and that's certainly okay. and as i said, her great popularity helped to get people buy into her program. and to buy her books, among other things. just very quickly then, she was born in ryan, new york, in 1925. she was the daughter of a gentleman who at that point was the assistant to the editor of mccall's magazine, later on in barbara's life he would be the president of mccall's magazine. she really enjoyed a life of affluence. she went to the private rye county day school. when she got to high school she went to ashley hall in south carolina. and it brings us to an important moment in her life. a dance at the round -- the

round tree country club during christmas break of her junior year. she was introduced to a young george "poppy" bush. that was his nickname. and she said when he was in the room, he was so tall and attractive, that she could hardly breathe. later on, i found this wonderful quote. she said, when i tell my kids that george bush was the first man i ever kissed, they just about throw up. [laughter] >> this is really by the way very typical barbara bush. she is the master of self-deprecating humor. she has never minded pointing at herself and making herself the butt of her own jokes. but she was smitten with young bush. he with her and they were married in 1946. when he returned from his service in world war ii. he had been a fighter pilot.

mrs. bush always thought that she was going to be settling down with an investment banker in new york. but much to her surprise, george bush said to her, no, i think i'd like to have a career in the gas and oil business. we're going to texas. interestingly -- so they went to texas. it was 1948, i think. 1949. and mrs. bush's mother was so appalled that they were going there and she was so convinced that texas in 1949 was just a frontier town, that she used to send barbara packages that contained ivory soap and tissues because she wasn't convinced that they had stores there that sold those things. they did. however, being in the oil and gas business in odessa and midland texas in the early '50s maybe was not so much removed

from the reality of a frontier town. george w. bush had been born -- their oldest child. he was born before they went to texas. and when they were in texas, they, unfortunately, experienced great sadness. following george w. bush, their son jeb was born and then a daughter named robin. and it was found that robin had leukemia. and there is a wonderful interview with the -- it's generally about barbara bush, but one part of the interview is george bush, and he says -- we were told by the pediatrician to come and talk to her, and she said to us, this child has leukemia, and he said -- and i'm quoting directly here, we didn't know what the hell she was talking about, in the early 1950s, what was leukemia and he said the pediatrician said, well, your daughter is not going to live very much longer.

and they made a decision to take her to new york to sloan-kettering where she was treated with an experimental protocol but she died about nine months later. and barbara bush, to no one's surprise, add very, very difficult time with it. she dealt with depression for a while. and then eventually emerged from it. the two other bush children were born, two other boys, and then finally much to the family's great happiness, dorothy bush, known as doro, their only daughter now was born in 1959. mr. bush went into politics. barbara became the political wife. it was observed by reporters at the time that if there were slights against mr. bush or if he lost a race, barbara took it more seriously than george bush did. and by the way, that's always been the case. barbara has been devastated when

mr. bush has been rejected by the voters. so without going into too much other detail and again, i'm happy to answer your questions later. in 1980, mr. bush was poised for a run for the presidency. now, just before this, mrs. bush said she realized since mr. bush was going to actually make this run, she'd better have in mind a project for this national campaign, whatever it was going to be. and she took heart from something that lady bird johnson had said years before and i'm going to quote here from my book. ladybird johnson had said about the white house, it would be sad to pass up such a bully pulpit. it's a fleeting chance to do something four for your country and make your heart sing and it reflects well on your husband,

heavens, that's one of the biggest roles in life and mrs. bush says, i could have never guess that i would end up with such a chance to be useful and such an enormous return on a relatively modest effort. she investigated a number of possibilities for her project, and she decided that she was going to focus on literacy. there are some people who have suggested that the reason that she did pick literacy was because her son, neil, had -- was dyslexic. i asked her about it at the time that i interviewed her and she said, no, that really was not correct. she was a lifelong reader, a lover of reading, and she just felt -- and here i'm going to quote from her again, that if people could read, she felt everything else was going to be able to be improved. there would be less drug use.

there would be less teenage pregnancy. she just felt that it was really important. so literacy was going to be her project. mr. bush was getting ready for the presidential campaign and was in this presidential campaign in 1980 and barbara bush got on a plane to go to milwaukee and she goes to the college in milwaukee and the president of the college runs up to her and says mrs. bush, we're so glad you're here. i have 40 of our state's top literacy experts here to hear you. and mrs. bush says, i was panicked because at that point i didn't know anything. so thinking quickly, when they all sat down, barbara bush said to them, well, tell me, if you were married to the president of the united states, what would you do? >> and they went around the room

and she said before our time -- our time was up and only half of them had spoken, and i was rescued. she said but i took copious notes and i learned a lot that day and i continued to learn. because mr. bush did not win the presidential nomination that year, he did win the vice presidential nomination on the ticket with ronald reagan, she decided she was going to continue following up in this area because she thought it was a very solid project and one that would benefit the country. with her own money she hired two people to help her develop this as an area of expertise. she had breakfast where she invited experts to the vice president's residence. she spoke and read extensively

and during her time as the wife of the vice president she was involved in 537 literacy events. and i can't completely tell you that this is accurate, but my count at the bush library of her literacy speeches during the vice presidency was 225, which is a fair amount of speaking about the topic. by the way, i want to apologize. i've been ignoring passing around some photos. i'll pull these up, of mrs. bush. and i'm just going to pass them around. there's a packet and i'm going to invite you to have a look at them as things move along. thank you. and one of the photos you'll see there is mrs. bush reading to young children, which she did many, many times. coming a little bit on the heels of learning all about this was

mrs. bush's own foray into writing about -- well, trying to help with the literacy effort and becoming a writer in her own right. she wrote a book in 1984 called "see fred's story." see fred is her dog and you may think it's pretty odd but actually it was a dog's eye view of what went on in the life of the vice president and the second lady, mrs. bush, and that little book earned about $200,000 in profits, which mrs. bush was able to earmark for various literacy organizations. everything, though, would really intensify when she became first lady, and she let everyone know when she was on the campaign trail in 1988 that if mr. bush was elected to the white house, her particular project was going to be literacy.

and she made good on that promise. in march of 1989, she formed the barbara bush foundation for family literacy. it continues to exist to this day. the foundation began to publish materials. it gave out grants. as of the time when i wrote the book, so 2008, they had given away $16 million in literacy grass and mrs. bush said i have nothing to do with the grant selection process. they said they were nice enough to keep me up-to-date and let me know what's going on and interestingly, one of the first grants by the literacy foundation was to a literacy project in little rock, arkansas, being run by hillary clinton. so interesting that they sort of intersect there. during her time in the white

house, about 18% of mrs. bush's speeches were devoted to literacy. she was a voice for the program. a friend who is very much involved in curriculum and development said to me, she put a human face on literacy. she talked about an issue that at the time no one was really very interested in addressing. this whole idea of intergenerational illiteracy. mrs. bush did talk about it. she traveled to schools. she traveled to places where students were receiving ged degrees. she went to project head start outlets, she showed up on oprah and spoke about it there. she wrote articles. and we know for sure that she affected both the national literacy act, the adult education start and the even start act. this is from a woman by the way who said, even when i met her, i really had no affect on

legislation. i would always argue she put that particular issue on -- made it part of the national conversation. it seems to me that it was pretty successful. one other thing particularly stands out. in september of 1990, mrs. bush began to read stories on the radio to young children. it was 15 minutes every sunday night. and the particular program was called mrs. bush's story time. the wal-mart company was very interested in this. they ended up taping the various stories that she read and put them on sale. you can still buy them at wal-mart and all of the money goes to the barbara bush foundation for family literacy. highly highly successful first lady project as first lady projects go. moving into another area i want to share with you are her

efforts as a public communicator and i suppose this warms my heart because i am a professor of communication. i would have to say generally looking at barbara bush that she was active but she was also cautious as a first lady. she never wanted to put herself into the position where it was going to take george bush's political capital to clean up her mess. and that was the way she explained it to me. she also wanted to say early on that she was barbara bush and she was not nancy reagan. and there was something that i always loved in the week leading up to the inauguration, she was doing an event in washington and mrs. bush says, my mail tells me there are a lot of fat white-haired ladies that are tickled pink that i'm going to be first lady. and she also got a great kick

out of the fact that -- her image showed up on the side of a dc bus for an ikea furniture ad, nancy reagan style at barbara bush prices. [laughter] >> what's really funny about this is that barbara bush was always really very wealthy, very aristocratic. she was probably more affluent than nancy reagan but no one seemed to necessarily react to that. but, pardon me, as i mentioned, she was really quite an excellent public communicator. she is the last first lady who -- who did not have to deal with 24/7 coverage. that begins with hillary clinton because cnn really gains legitimacy covering the persian gulf war in 1991, and they're off to the races. not only that, there was no blogs, there were no social

media, so it really still was a different time. the first thing that mrs. bush did, and i thought it was brilliant, and i believe in this regard and perhaps next week barbara perry will speak about this, is that they looked at the tour of the white house that jacqueline kennedy gave in 1962, and they realized that it had really warmed her up. people really liked her much more after that. so both of the bushes, both barbara and george, gave a prime time tour of the white house on a program on abc. and it was a tour of the family-level of the white house. and it was very endearing. and sam donaldson was one of the reporters who was going on this tour, and he says to barbara

bush at one point, i understand that during world war ii, winston churchill used to visit the white house and he would walk around in the all together, if you were first lady would you permit it. the first lady said i definitely would permit it but i wouldn't look. [laughter] >> later on she goes out onto the white house -- to the balcony that had been built by harry truman, and sam donaldson said to her, you know, mrs. bush, this particular balcony was built by mr. truman. and barbara says, well, isn't that interesting. i wouldn't know. i wasn't born then. so she had a good time with it but it really -- it really warmed up both of the bushes. george bush, by the way, walked to one side of the room and he showed a toy chest where all the kids kept their toys when they came to the white house. it was just very humanizing. when she became first lady,

mrs. bush selected anna perez, who had had a long history already working on capitol hill to be her press secretary, and she gave her this advice. she said to her, if i said it, i said it, which meant if i said something, don't interpret what i was saying. i meant it. and if someone needs to interpret it, i will be the one to do it, but please don't -- don't do it for me. and that's an interesting approach to first lady press relations. you know, many first ladies have many people who will spin things in their -- the way they want them. mrs. bush, obviously, felt very strongly that she was going to represent herself. there were no regular press conferences but there were press opportunities. mrs. bush got along well with the press but i found something in her memoir where she said something that everyone in public life has to understand and she has this in quotes, the

press has the last word. she held occasional press meetings in the family quarters of the white house. people would be invited in and she would talk to them. everything was on the record. the reporters had mixed feelings about her. sometimes they found her very -- very outgoing, very helpful, especially, with regards to literacy. other times they found her a little hard to deal with because she was not willing to open up quite as much as they would have liked. but i would -- i think i'm safe in saying that's probably been the complaint about first ladies going back to martha washington, so nothing new there. during her time as first lady, mrs. bush gave 449 speeches. again, a fair amount of public discourse. she did not come easily or naturally to being a public speaker. she worked very hard at it. early on when they had come to

washington, she had developed slide shows. she had one about the gardens of washington. when they got home from china, she had one about china. and she would coordinate the speech with the slide show. it worked rather well and it also gave her confidence as a public speaker. she did have speechwriters but she also had significant input in whatever what was being said. and this leads me to one of the really defining moments of her time in the white house. she was invited to be the commencement speaker at wellesley college in june of 1990. shortly after it was announced, 150 of the 600 soon to be graduating wellesley undergrads signed a petition saying they did not want her as their -- as their speaker. they felt that she was coming as mrs. george bush instead of barbara bush. that she hadn't had any really

significant accomplishments on her own, and that they had been taught to do something quite the opposite. mrs. bush reacted with really, you know, very good humor. she said well, even i was 21 once. they're looking at things a certain way and i'm looking at them in another. there are some historians who feel that maybe this reaction camouflaged irritation but i did not get that sense at all when i interviewed mrs. bush. mrs. bushels said to me, when this whole hubbub occurred there were many wellesley graduates they would never give money to the college and we wrote hundreds of letters, please don't stop giving. this is just the opinion of some. in fact, over time, as the issue was discussed, things began to

turn. and i just want to quickly share with you a quote from erma bombeck who wrote a very serious column about the wellesley speech. and she wrote, if the wellesley students can't imagine what barbara bush could contribute to their education, imagine your own mothers. to deny them a voice is to suggest they have not achieved anything of any importance. they gave you a voice and a seat at the commencement. how important is that? so slowly things turned around. the young women who had opposed her began to recognize that maybe she had something to tell them. and by time, she flew up to wellesley on the day of the commencement address. they were solidly in her corner. and i just want to very quickly share the -- something that she said near the end of the speech. she exhorted the wellesley women to make three choices in life.

to try to get involved in something that was bigger than themselves. and she said in her case it was literacy. to make sure that life had joy. and she said in her case that was marrying george bush. and also to -- not to miss the joy of human connections. and i always thought that this little passage was really very nice and very well put, and i know from the six different versions that i saw this speech that barbara bush had significant input into this. she said, for several years you had impressed upon you to your career of dedication and hard work. this is true. but as important are your obligations -- your obligations as a doctor, a lawyer, or business leader will be, you are a human being first and those human connections with spouses, with children, with friends are the most important investments you'll ever make.

at the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. you will regret very much time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent. and at the end came the moment that ended of page 1 of every newspaper in our country. and she said, and who knows, sitting out there -- and who knows, somewhere out there in this audience may be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps and preside over the white house as the president's spouse. and i wish him well. [laughter] >> so she was a very good speaker. very facile. she told me that she never made changes in her speech text when she got to the podium but i found that to be not the case

because i saw lots of comments that she must have penciled in so she certainly made them which also speaks to a very confident speaker. so, by the way, that wellesley speech is to my memory is the most anthologized speech of all and that even includes eleanor roosevelt's discourse. so i believe that as a public communicator, she was of great success. as i say, she was very careful about what she said and how she said it. and this brings me to the last topic that i'd like to discuss with you this afternoon before we have a chance to chat. and that is the campaign of 1992. in 1988, barbara bush's role was not the same as '92. her popularity grew immensely in the white house. so in '88, she did give some

speeches. she certainly spoke to groups. but 1992 again was a different ball game. the president had experienced a precipitous drop in his popularity. at the height of the persian gulf war, i think his approval ratings were in the high 80s. by time the '92 campaign began, they were probably around the 40s. and 1992 did not begin well and this is also another great barbara bush story. they had gone to japan to talk to the japanese who i know are very much in our minds right now about trade agreements. and the afternoon that they were there, the first afternoon, just as a social event, a get-together, the president and our american ambassador had placed tennis with the crown

prince of japan and the emperor, object, and they were badly beaten. well, that night there was a state dinner in honor of the bushes. mr. bush on the way over said to barbara, i'm really not feeling well. and she said, well, do you think we should go back? and he said, no. you know, i think i can do it. and they got there and he got on the receiving line and said to her, i really don't feel good. they sat down. he was sitting next to the japanese prime minister and promptly vomited in the man's lap and passed out. he had -- he had a bad intestinal flu. he was taken out by his doctors and the doctor said to barbara, he's going to be fine. it's nothing serious. but the prime minister said to barbara, would you like to say something? so she said, you know, i can't explain what happened to george

because it's never happened before. but i'm beginning to think it's the ambassador's fault. he and george played the emperor and crown prince in tennis today and they were badly beaten and we bushes aren't used to that so he felt much worse than i thought. [laughter] >> so she really did save the day. but there were -- from that point on, there were questions through the whole '92 campaign about president bush's health. something else also that i've referred to surfaced very early on in the '92 campaign and that was barbara bush was way more popular than her husband. some of you may recall there was a campaign button back in the time of betty ford, and it said i'm voting for betty's husband. all of a sudden there were buttons that said i'm voting for barbara's husband. and as the campaign continued on, mr. bush was using phrases like, barbara and i think or

barbara and i believe. and by the way, that's a strategy that other presidents have used as well. when he eventually got the republican nomination, barbara was worried they had already had to surmount two primary challenges from patrick buchanan and h. ross perot. and they were also taking a fair amount of heat for the -- for mr. bush's appointment to the supreme court of clarence thomas. so she had a certain amount of concern, but then came the clintons. and things with the clintons started out on kind of a strange footing. a magazine concocted what became known as the great cookie controversy. some of you i can see nodding your heads. the question who baked the better chocolate cookies?

was it barbara bush or was it hillary clinton? and hillary clinton sort of dismissed this and said, i'm too busy to bake cookies, you know, let's get about this and mrs. bush said she thought the whole thing was forgotten. and a few minutes later the same magazine ran a story saying that in a taste test people liked hillary clinton's cookies better and barbara bush said that's really interesting because that's not my recipe. well, i mention it because even though it seems like a silly thing perhaps, it garnered all of a sudden some very serious comment from reporters and columnists. and this also gave mrs. bush a certain amount of growing disease with what she developing here. she gave a very much heralded speech at the republican national convention.

she talked about her husband as the most dedicated healthiest man she knew. she brought out her family and then after that, she took to the campaign trail. during that campaign, she gave 61 formal speeches but she was busy with phone banks and she was cheering on volunteers. she was involved in a viva bush rally in texas. she said to people, we need george bush's texas. as you all know, the country did not agree, and on that particular tuesday in november, they sent george bush back to texas and maine and they left barbara bush with a very, very sour taste in her mouth. she felt the country had not really given him a chance and that he had earned certainly a second term as president.

so it had to be a rather bitter day actually when she left the white house in january of 1993. she did enjoy retirement much to her surprise. she wrote her biography, a memoir, barbara bush. and another book. she became more active with her literacy initiative. and then she saw her two oldest sons, george w. and jeb go into politics. jeb first being elected the governor of florida and george w. then the governor of texas. she told george w. he should the run for governor. she was really worried about him. she was worried about the press treatment of both of her sons. but she must have had tremendous happiness when mr. bush was elected president. so today she shares a

distinction with abigail adams, and that is she was both the wife of the president and the mother of a president. the bushes continue to live happily. mr. bush is still jumping out of airplanes on his birthday. mrs. bush has had some health issues but she's still pretty well. and i'd like to conclude my comments by actually reading this last paragraph from the book. so i said, barbara pierce bush remains an enigma but few would argue with her celebritity her popularity or influence she used her considerable energies to improve in a lot of americans in the area of literacy is a testament of her white house tenure and she has certainly earned the title first lady of literacy. she became the public face of the george h.w. administration with constant travel, participation in ceremonial events and speeches. she used the white house podium effectively to articulate her views and concern.

she was a perceptive politician who knew how to work a crowd or bend an arm if necessary. during her busy public life, she made a number of comments that might have tarnished her image but her good works have more than restored the sheen. barbara bush who lived a busy life in service to george h.w. bush, and her family, her friends and her country. while there has been an ebb and flow to events, hers has been a life well lived and befitting many and i thank you very much. [applause] >> if you have any questions, i would be more than happy to answer them. yes, ma'am. >> at the wellesley commencement speech she gave, is that when she had raisa gorbachev that day? >> yes. she introduced mrs. gorbachev and mrs. gorbachev also spoke to

the graduates. and that, too, offered an interesting counter-point to nancy reagan because nancy reagan and raisa gorbachev did not get along at all. so it was quite a bit different. sir? >> the comment i was waiting for you to talk about the rhymes with witch comment. could you put that in context? >> i certainly could. yeah, i know ran out of time. i'm sorry i did have it here. the comment that this gentleman is referring to came about in 1984. mr. bush was running for re-election as vice president. and he had a debate with geraldine ferraro, the democratic nominee for vice president. and in the debate, ferraro said that he didn't -- he had no idea

what normal people were going through because his wealth insulated him from normal life if you will. so mr. bush was on the campaign airplane the next day, and she was talking to reporters. and she was, obviously, really unhappy about that comment, and she said, well, you know, geraldine ferraro and her husband -- they probably have more money than george bush. they could probably buy and sell george bush, and then she said, and i can't say what that woman is but it rhymes with witch. no, i'm sorry. i can't say what that woman is but it rhymes with rich, okay? so the reporters sort of looked at each other and i'm sure ran for the telephones. by time they landed, the comment

was all over. and it happened to be halloween. [laughter] >> so the reporters said to her when she landed at her next stop, did you mean, you know, that it rhymes with rich that -- and she said, i would never say that geraldine ferraro is a witch. [laughter] >> now, as a post-scrip to that some of the reporters i've spoken to in years after said -- they thought that it was a preconceived comment. that it had been planned. that mrs. bush was too much of a political professional to say something like that to reporters and not understand its implications. they thought she meant to get in a jab and she got in a jab but then she had something to retreat, so that was the comment. yeah, but interestingly it

follows her to this day. yes, ma'am. >> how was she as a mother-in-law especially to laura bush? >> how is she -- as a mother-in-law, especially to laura bush? okay. let's see. i think that she's tried to have cordial relations with all of her children. i've been told from time to time that the two of them have a respectful but somewhat distant relationship. i cannot attest to that myself. there's a story -- and again, i don't know if it's apocryphal or if it's true. yeah, if it's apocryphal or not. that when laura bush was first brought up to kenni bunk port to meet extended family,