our country. she said, and who knows, sitting out there. and your nose, somewhere out there in this audience may be someone who will one day following my footsteps and preside over the white house as the president's spouse. i wish him well. so she was a very good speaker. ..

>> she was very careful 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. 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 the 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, just as a social event, a get-together the president and our american ambassador had played tennis with the crown prince of japan and the emperor okay. and they were badly beaten. well, that night, there was a state dinner in honor of the bushes and 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, for. 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 a bad intestinal flu. he was taken out by his doctors and the doctors 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 he's the ambassador's fault. he and george played the emperor and the crown prince in tennis today and we were badly beaten and we bushes like so he felt much worse than we thought. so from that point on there was questions through the whole '92

campaign about mr. bush's health. something else 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 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 clinton and things started out kind of on a strange footing. a magazine concocted what became known as the great cookie controversy. some of you i can see nodding your heads. you remembered this. the question was, who baked the better chocolate chip 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 forget about this. and mr. bush said she thought the whole thing was forgotten. and then a few months later, the same magazine ran a story saying that in a taste test, people

liked hillary clinton's cookies better. and barbara bush, well, 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 dis-ease with what she saw 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 that 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 in january in 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 not 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 president. she shares a distinction with abigail adams, 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 would like to conclude my comments by actually reading this last paragraph from the book. so i said, barbara pierce bush remains an i nothing ma but few would argue with her celebrity, her popularity or her influence. that she used her considerable energies to improve a lot americans in literacy is a test want to her white house tenure and she has certainly earned the title of first lady of literacy. she became the public face of the george h.w. bush administration with connecticut travel and 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, benefiting 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 was the time she had the raisa gorbachev. >> yes. raisa gorbachev at wellesley. and mrs. gorbachev 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. >> the comment i was waiting for

you to talk about the rhymes with witch comment. could you put that in context. >> i certainly can. i'm sorry, i just ran out of time here. the comment that this gentleman referred to came about in 1984. it was -- 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 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 mrs. bush was on the campaign trail -- 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, sorry. i can't say what i really want to say but it rhymes with witch. and the reporters looked at each other and i'm sure ran to the telephones. by the time they landed, the comment was all over. it happened to be halloween. [laughter] >> so the reporter said to her when she landed at her next stop, did you mean, you know, that it rhymes with witch -- and she said, i would never say that geraldine ferraro is a witch.

[laughter] >> now, as a post-script to that some of the reporters i have 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 the jab and she had something to retreat into and so that was the comment. but interestingly it follows her to this day. yeah. yes, ma'am. >> how is she a mother-in-law especially to laura bush. >> how is she a mother-in-law especially as to laura -- >> laura bush. >> 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 kennebunkport to meet the extended family, she met george's grandmother, so dorothy bush, the first president bush's mother, and the first president bush's mother said to her, so what do you do? you know, what's your story. and supposedly laura bush was supposed to have responded, well, i read and i smoke. then there were questions of how

well did that go down with barbara bush? no one ever said. i think it's probably fair to characterize it as maybe -- maybe distant, maybe more cordial. certainly, her -- barbara bush's relationship with her grandchildren is very warm. she sees them a lot, you know, still. yes, ma'am. >> i seem to remember that when barbara bush first became first lady, some reporter asked her a question involving the name of eleanor roosevelt, you know, or you want to be like her, and to which barbara bush replied, don't talk to me about eleanor roosevelt. my family -- i've forgotten the rest of that. but i was kind of wondering what her family had against eleanor roosevelt although i have my own

opinions. >> well, probably the fact that her father and maybe the whole family were not fans of any of roosevelt's social or economic policies. but i did hear mrs. bush at one point talk about the fact that her mother had detested eleanor roosevelt. she thought that she was a busy body. she was running around, around the country. until she met her and then she really did reverse her opinion. and i think that over time, maybe barbara bush also reversed her opinion but i remember the comment as well. yes, ma'am. >> was it difficult for first lady bush to deal we are husband's failures, did she comment about her son george bush as president and his successes or failures?

>> she said also nothing for publication. i do know from things from what she said that she was concerned about our involvement in iraq. and had real concerns about us going in and what was going to happen. but beyond that, she really hasn't said very much about his presidency. you all may remember there was that one incident early in his presidency where -- this is george w. bush was eating a pretzel, and he started to choke on it and she said that was pay back for having criticized her cooking. but, no, she's not really said very much about it. yes. >> we hear -- we've heard a little bit about nancy reagan's circle of friends but i don't recall ever hearing anything about barbara bush's friends.

>> i think she had a fair number who came to the white house, but i think she was very careful about it and kept it very quiet. she certainly has a group of friends that she's had for a long time and i'm blanking on the name of one of them in particular. you know, they certainly were not -- they didn't have the glitz and glamour of any of nancy reagan's friends. but she was supported by numerous friends and, of course, the family. well, once again, i thank you very much. it's been my pleasure. [applause] >> well, now on your screen is professor robert pape of the

university of chicago. he is the author of "dying to win" and he's just written a follow-up to that bestseller called "cutting the fuse." doctor, what is this about this book. >> there's more data, more patterns and more policies to look at and to examine. and they are terribly important for specific policy decisions we need to make in the coming years. >> what did you find? >> what i found is that over 95% of all suicide terrorist attacks are driven by not religion but a specific circumstance. foreign occupation. that is, large scale military presence on territory that the terrorists prize, that is the main trigger, the main point of

radicalization that drives people from simply being angry to going to the point of willing to kill themselves on missions to kill others. >> how many suicide attacks have there been annually? >> annually, just in the last few years, over 300 a year. and, in fact, suicide terrorism has been exploding around the world. if we would go back just 10 years, say, the year 2000, the year before 9/11, there were just 20 suicide attacks around the world. one by the way of those 20 against the uss cole was u.s. american inspired. in the last year, over 300 suicide attacks around the world. and they're not thinly scattered. they're concentrated, concentrated in the area of american occupation, especially, afghanistan, especially, iraq and increasingly, the spillover of afghanistan into pakistan is causing a huge number of attacks

there. and so what's been occurring is not just a large number of suicide attacks but a large number of anti-american-inspired suicide attacks. >> so besides the obvious policy of pulling out, is there another policy? >> absolutely. >> to prevent this. >> because pulling out, simply abandons our interests, ignores our interests. what this book suggests is a middle ground policy called offshore balancing. offshore balancing continues to pursue our core security interests and obligations in overseas regions but does so with over the horizon, naval power, intelligence assets, relies on economic assets and political tools and this is the core policy that we pursue as the united states for decades in major regions of the world, such as the middle east with great success, and we should return to

this policy. >> can you give us specifics about how we should pursue the policy in the middle east. >> in the 1970s and '80s, the united states had core interests in the middle east including the persian gulf and we maintained and secured those interests without stationing a single combat soldier on the arabian peninsula. instead, we relied on allies, especially iraq and saudi arabia, we relied on over the horizon offshore military power carriers essentially in the arabian peninsula. and we relied on a series of bases so that we could put troops in and out if we needed them but not maintain there permanently year after year. well, we abandoned that policy in the mid-1990s much to our detriment because by abandoning that policy of offshore balancing and shifting to offshore heavy ground presence, what we did is inadvertently give terrorist leaders the key

tool to recruit suicide attackers to kill us. >> robert pape, afghanistan, how do you offshore afghanistan? >> you offshore afghanistan over a period of two or three years, not an abrupt policy change. and by the way, similar to how we did this in iraq and how we're doing it in iraq. we noticed over the past three years we have been transitioning from heavy onshore presence with year by year withdrawing about a third of the troops and notice how in iraq it has produced more stability. afghanistan, we should follow a similar policy. over the course over the next two or three years, we should withdraw about a third of the troops a year and along the way, we should also rely more and more on economic tools to achieve our nation-building goals in the country. >> dr. pape, why do you think there has not been a suicide bomber in the u.s. yet? >> i think it's not because the

bad guys haven't tried. in fact, you can look at the newspapers almost every year and see foiled plot after foiled plot. the reason we haven't had suicide attacks in the united states, the main reason, is because we have adopted an excellent series of defenses, especially, immigration controls preventing immigration from countries that we're occupying. so, for instance, if you're iraqi, and you want to try to get in the united states since we invaded and occupied iraq, good luck. we don't even let in people that have actually risked their lives for us, which is kind of a moral dilemma we face. but the bottom line is, that we have adopted important security measures to prevent incoming people from areas we occupy and that more than anything else has taken the steam out of the threat to the united states.

>> in your book "cutting the fuse" do you profile any of these suicide bombers? how is it to make a suicide vest or put together a suicide bomb. >> the technicalities of putting together a bomb is not all that difficult. however, there is a bit of an expertise involved which is why most suicide bombers are walking-in volunteers, not long-time members of a terrorist group but they go to join a group. why are they joining a group? for two reasons, number 1 they need to learn how to kill people. it's easy to kill yourself, not so easy to actually kill others. although, it can be learned pretty quickly and then second darely, they want the press text message of communities that are occupied for doing the attacks for them and the terrorist groups do that by releasing martyr videos after the fact. >> how much does it cost to put together like a suicide vest? >> oh, a suicide vest, easily,

less than $1,000. most of the money that, in fact, will go into a suicide vest is not coming from the blasting caps. it's not coming from the actual vest itself. it's literally you need to pay somebody some money who can essentially do this part time on a regular basis. and the reason is because you need a little bit of familiarity, a little bit of familiarity with things like blasting caps so that you don't simply just blow yourself up because the point here of the suicide attack, remember, is not simply to kill yourself. that's the easy part. the difficult challenge is to kill somebody else, and that's what takes that little special expertise and you have to pay somebody to stand ready part time. >> robert pape, how did you get interested in researching this topic, again, "dying to win" your first book."

"cutting the fuse" as a follow-up. >> before i started to study terrorism i spent 15 years studying air power. so on 9/11 itself there were lots of questions related to how many people died that day. and because of my expertise on air power, i could come on television programs and say that had this been an air attack, we would say that the floor where the cruise missile would hit would be engulfed by a fire and people from that point on down would have a chance to get out and so could get out and people from that point on up couldn't and wouldn't. and that allowed me on the night of 9/11 to estimate that somewhere between 3 and 7,000 people died that day, which, of course, for the media was helpful. but since there were no terrorism experts, i was also asked tons of questions about suicide terrorism, and terrorism in general, and that's when i began to really research the phenomenon which i had not really done before. >> what do you teach here at the university of chicago. >> i teach national security affairs in general.

i teach courses on strategy. i teach courses on international politics in general, the theory of international politics. and next year i'll be teaching a course on humanitarian intervention. >> who's your co-author, james feldman? >> james feldman is the person who hired me when i taught at the air force in the 1990s. he is a retired colonel from the air force. he's a ph.d. from harvard. and he, along with a whole research team i put together, "for cutting the fuse" were absolutely instrumental because "cutting the fuse" looks at a whole variety of patterns to try to test the assumptions underneath this argument. a whole variety of cases. one person simply can't do that and i have to tell you ken feldman, he goes by ken, ken feldman is probably the most brilliant military officer i've ever run into, and i think that

he was just simply a fantastic partner for this book. >> robert pape is the co-author of "cutting the fuse: the explosion of global suicide terrorism, how to stop it" printed by the university of chicago press. >> thank you, peter. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2 and here's a look at our part-time lineup for tonight. >> in 2001, 2002, c-span american series writers the authors who created the american literature. in april 2002, broadcasting live from the ernest hemingway house

in key west, florida, american writers spent two hours looking at the life and the literary career of ernest hemingway. this year marks the 50th anniversary of his death. watch a re-air of that program right now. ♪ ♪ >> we have some rare footage of ernest hemingway off the coast of key west, florida. ♪ >> and key west c-span is today as our american's writers series. today we're going to focus particularly on the 1920s and '30s through the life and times of this nobel prize winning writer with 21 books to his credit. joining me live from the ernest hemingway home in key west is hemingway scholar susan beagle.

susan, if one wants to study this period of history, why would you turn to ernest hemingway. >> in a lot of ways ernest hemingway almost is the first half of the american 20th century. he's born in 1899 just as the new century is about to begin. he's of age to come under fire in world war i to experience the growth of american literary. and as well as being a wonderful writer of fiction and he's also a journalist and he's traveling the world at the greco turkish war. >> how did he gets here to key west? >> he arrived here in the year 1928. he was returning from paris with his second wife pauline pfeiffer. she was pregnant with their first child, seven months pregnant, and the idea was to -- they actually took an ocean

liner from the port la rochelle to cuba and they were going to pick up a car here. pauline's rich uncle gus was going to give them a model coupe that she could drive in arkansas and the car wasn't ready when they got here so the ford dealership gave them a little apartment. and they spent six weeks here waiting for that car and during that time hemingway just fell in love with the place. he was writing a farewell to arms and he was getting a lot of work done and met some local people who took him out fishing. one of my friends likes to say the first time he got a 30 pound tarp on a 2 pound line. he was really hooked on key west. and so after that visit they kept returning for the next two years and then in 1931 bought their home here. >> if you haven't been to key west, let's give you a little bit of sense of place so you know where we are. if you were to land at the miami airport and drive about 3.5 to 4 hours depending on the traffic, this is truly an island with a 7-mile bridge to cross into it.

it is the southern most point in the united states. and we are about 90 miles away from cuba, cuba is the most important part of hemingway. how come? >> hemingway's great love is actually the gulfstream czechs from the wall between key west and cuba. what really, really hooked him into this place was fishing in the gulfstream and then watching the trade of these two cultures across the stream. when he got here it was still prohibition. the principal source of economy in this community was smuggling liquor across the stream into cuba. the 1930s we had drastic immigration laws and restrictions so smuggling aliens across the gulfstream from cuba into key west also a big part of the scene then and then cuba itself was locked in revolution. there was a right wing military dictator in power and there was a growing revolt and a lot of

revolutionary activity and gun running. really an exciting time to be here in key west. he loved the fishing. he loved hispanic culture. he loved the real people here and the kind of hard-boiled life that they led dealing with these two cultures. in a transitional periods. >> each one of these programs was focusing on a particular work of this writer and we're dealing with the sun also rises in the modern library list of books at the end of the 20th. this was number 45 of the most influential novels of the century. for him which book was it? >> for hemingway it was his first novel. his very first book was a collection of short stories called in our time, which absolutely a groundbreaking book. one of the things we need to remember in hemingway, in a sense he really created literary modernism and brought it into the mainstream and clear prose that completely overturned all the ornate victorianism and it

was created in those book of short stories and it brought him on scene as a major reader, it's conversation of dialog and introduction of lost generation characters. >> it was published in 1926. >> that's right. >> by whom. >> f. scott fitzgerald who recently published the great gatsby and introduced him to maxwell perkins at scrivener. he was a big catch for them and a great start to hemingway's career to be. >> before we leave this spot here, we are just outside hemingway's home which is right over our shoulder. and we are right by route 1 and those who have not been here, all the millions of us who live in east coast america are also very familiar with u.s. 1 running all the way from maine to florida. you are seeing some pictures of that right now. this is as far you can go and still be in the united states of

america. and this is a city with about 33,000 permanent residents and lots of tourists who are at the height of the tourist season and this place is open for business so you'll see lots of people here visiting ernest hemingway's house as we're talking about it. what's important about the american writers program is your participation. and in a few minutes we'll begin taking your telephone calls and we're going to be talking about his writing but the writing is in the larger context of what was happening in the country in the '20s and '30s. a very tumultuous time in american history. if you would like to join us please do. >> now, in 1926 in america when his book came out, tell us about the country. and who was reading him? >> the people who were really enjoying hemingway were really people of his own age group to a

certain extent. they would be people in their late 20s. the flappers, the young people of that era who had served in world war i and become very disillusioned with the older generation and its values. it was a terribly alienating war, millions of people dead. the first huge mechanized conflict in world's history. very turned off from the values of their parents, the whole make money business culture. a comparable thing, i think, would be the 1960s generation during the vietnam war. it really created a lost generation, style, a sense of speech, a sense of dress. these also immediately embraced by the literary community, by the intelligencia. people actually were collecting his manuscripts in paris before he was ever published in the united states, knowing he was going to be a sensation. >> we're going to take a walk and we're going to make our way as the program progresses around some of the grounds around the

house here and while we're doing that, tell me a little bit more about his world war i experience. >> he was in world war i as an ambulance in the american red cross. >> why didn't he serve. >> he wasn't able to serve because he had very bad eyesight and couldn't get in the army and he was very badly wounded in italy. he's the first american wounded in italy. he was in a trench when it was hit by a mortar. kind of they call them a trash can mortar filled with nails and pieces of metallic garbage. he received over 227 little pieces of shrapnel in his legs. got out of the trench in spite of that to carry a wounded man from the back of the lines and when he got out he was hit twice by machine gunfire. he got a bullet in the knee, a bullet in the foot. he spent a long time recroup rating in the hospital in milan and if you read farewell it's a story about a wounded ambulance

man and the nurse he had a very similar experience. he met and fell in love with a nurse while he was there. >> while he finished his wartime recuperation, did he come back to the united states? >> he came back to the united states briefly to continue his career as a journalist that he had begun before he left. he was a reporter as a young man for the "kansas city star" and the toronto star but he didn't stay here long. he got introductions from sherwood anderson to some of the great writers in paris, and he wanted to go over there. he had a little trust fund and off they went to europe to become a writer. >> as we're standing on the corner of the ernest hemingway where it is about 85 degrees and we have this balmy assignment this afternoon in the tropics. i want to introduce you to another guest who will be with us throughout the program and she is an expert on the lost generation, linda miller is joining us. she's at a set around the corner from where we are under the palm trees. linda miller would you just pick

up, please, and explain a little bit more about the group called the lost generation. who were they and what was ernest hemingway's role? >> well, the last generation was probably an expression coined by gutrud stein, and ernest hemingway and his generation were a lost generation. and hemingway, what do you mean by that? and she said, you drink too much. hemingway took umbrage with her definition with them as a lost generation and decided actually every generation was lost in one way or another. but it is an expression captioned for this group of writers and artists that have stuck. hemingway's friend archbald mcleash said that actually it was not an apt coinage for their group either because it wasn't themselves that were lost but it was the world out of which they had come that was lost to them and so i think to talk about

their lostness, what these writers were doing and much of it was when they lost america, to find america in europe, to find america as a friend of hemingway said, was to find america in one's heart, in one's spirit, and in a foreign land. there was something about this idea of transplanting yourself in another location away from america so as to write about america and discover their american identity. >> let's get our first telephone call in for our conversation with ernest hemingway. it's from san diego. you're on c-span. please go ahead. >> caller: hello and thank you for taking my call. i've been anxiously awaiting for this particular program because i'm a big fan of ernest hemingway. several years ago, back in the '60s, a friend from the university of indiana sent me a copy of what was called "a man's credo" by ernest hemingway. i've never seen it published or

heard about it from any source that i accessed and i was wondering if any viewer or your guests might have come across this. one of the quotes from the credo states, a long life oftentimes keeps man from his optimism. and i thought this was insightful given the fact that hemingway did commit suicide. i'll wait for your response. thank you. >> thanks very much. susan beegel is editor i should tell you. she teaches but she's also the editor of the hemingway review, which is published out at the university of idaho. she spent a lot of time with ernest hemingway's writing have you heard of a man's credo. >> i'm not familiar with it and i don't believe he wrote anything specifically titled to that. i would guess it might be a work where an editor had perhaps picked up quotations from hemingway and made a man's credo out of them. i haven't heard that specific

quotation either but he did write in something called the art of the short story. that the writers of short stories come to no good end. and writing about concluding fiction but also writing about suicide, he said longevity is not an end. it is a prolongation, shuck it off. [laughter] >> arlington, virginia, you are on c-span. welcome to our discussion about ernest hemingway. >> caller: thank you, good afternoon. i'm interested to know if your experts have any knowledge or input of a duel that ernest hemingway was supposedly involved with a reporter from new zealand. his name may have been thomas scott, edward scott. and i just have heard rumors that he was -- there was a challenge to a duel and i just wondered if there was any truth to it or if they could elaborate on this? >> linda miller, do you know about a duel in his past? >> i know about a duel that he

had in the office of max perkins related to a challenge to