"esquire magazine". by 29, chief speech writer to george herbert walker bush, the then-vice president of the united states. and later the founding editor of "forbes" fyi. his great books have great teat les, and i think that's -- titles if you're going to write a book. give it a great title. they include "the white house mess," good title, "no way to treat a first lady," not about you, patricia, i don't think. [laughter] "supreme courtship," what a great name, and "thank you for smoking, by the way." his literary circle is reminiscent of that celebrated group of new yorkers that met regularly for lunch during the 1920s, the likes of robert benchly, ruth hale and dorothy parker. the inheritors of that tradition included christopher buckley, but also the late joseph heller,

the late christopher hitchensd9ñ and martin amos. one can only imagine what those lunches were like. so, ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to introduce the author of "but enough about you," a storyteller or, a cultural critic and, ifñr i hay say, irreverent historian, mr. christopher buckley. let's welcome him. [applause] >> hello. would you please turn your cell phones back on? [laughter] what a an honor to be introduced by dr. pasti, the es? i've had the pleasure for some years now of getting to know him

and his delightful and very beautiful wife, patricia, your first lady, who is a connecticut girl, i point out with no small pride being a connecticut yankee myself. and she is also an author, and you will be hearing from her at, later on at this festival. i, having identified myself as a connecticut yankee, i hasten to point out that i have -- can you hear me in the cheap seats back there? how much did you pay for those? [laughter] i hasten to point out that i have south carolina connections. my grandparents moved to camden in 1938, so i spent a lot of time growing up there. growing up is, in my case, an ongoing process. [laughter]

my uncle reid lived in camden. he passed away just a month ago, and i miss him greatly. he ran the public -- the buckley school of public speaking. and lastly and perhaps, yes, certainly most importantly of all i had the very good sense to marry a south carolina girl who is with us sitting demurely by the exit. [laughter] whether katie showed good sense in marrying me is, well, let's not go there. catty went to -- katie went to medical school here in columbia, and her grandfather was a very distinguished south carolinian. his name was elliott springs. and he was from fort mill. he was a classmate of the aforementioned f. scott fitzgerald at princeton. a yankee institution of

allegedly higher education. [laughter] and when the great war broke out, he volunteered as a fighter pilot and shot down a considerable number of huns. that's a technical airplane term. [laughter] eleven kills, to be precise, and then he came home and wrote a novel about it called "war birds," and it became a huge best seller. but he was cleverer than most writers which is to say he did not continue to be a writer. [laughter] he, wanting to afford the finer things in life, he went into the family business, textiles. and made a far better living, i suspect, than he would have had he remained a writer. so how's that for south carolina connections? does that suffice? [applause] but, you know, even so, even so

my in-laws still refer to me as that yankee katie went and done married. [laughter] but enough about them. as a matter of fact, the title of my new book is, indeed, "but enough about you." i'm not going to bore you by telling you how truly wonderful it is other than to say that it's attractively packaged. [laughter] and reasonably priced. [laughter] it's, you know, author introductions make me think of the "about the author" paragraph on the back flap of books. you're familiar with them, i know patricia is. these are the paragraphs that authors pretend they didn't write. [laughter] you know? considered the leading voice of his generation.

[laughter] considered the greatest writer since f. scott fitzgerald. no, i didn't write that. well, after a number of books, five or six, i sort of got bored with the "about the author" paragraph. there wasn't really anything more to say. hadn't been very much to say to begin with. so i just made, started making them up. [laughter] and the "about the author" paragraph in this book said that he has been an adviser to every american president since william howard taft. [laughter] why not, right? [laughter] so i was on about day ten of a book tour. book tours are, you know, instead of water waterboarding and sending seal team six -- [laughter] they ought just to send terrorists on book tours. [laughter] you know, we'd have found out

where bin laden was hiding much faster. [laughter] so you get a little punchy. i was walking into, i was in boston. it was about day ten. i was walking into an am drive-time radio interview. and these are not generally occasions of socratic dialogue. [laughter] that's a greek term. [laughter] you know, there's sort of, there's a hierarchy out there in radio land. up here you have npr and terry gross, fresh air, and then down here you have the am drive-time radio interview which consists of some ignoramus barking ignoramus questions at you between the traffic reports. so i walked into the studio, and the host -- to use sort of a

generous construction -- was, i saw him-up. ed over the "-- hunched over the "about the author," paragraph, and i knew right away this was all he would know about me. [laughter] and he looked up at me. his brow is now sort of beetling into kind of a cro-magnon aspect. [laughter] and he said, you were an adviser to william howard taft? [laughter] and i said, yeah. you know? [laughter] and now the brow is, you know, something was not right, but he was going to go with it. he said, well, so we can talk about that? i said, yeah, yeah, we can talk about that. [laughter] and we did. i haven't been invited back, but -- [laughter] it was kind of worth it. [laughter]

we mentioned book titles, i thought i'd talk a little bit about those. anyone hazard a guess how many books are published in the united states every year? it's about a million. i'm not sure they all get read. most of them, anyway, are by joyce carol oates. [laughter] and the others are all titled "50 shades of grey." [laughter] i think, you know, titles are very important. a title is a brand name, and, you know, you go into a bookstore -- you remember bookstores? you know, there are one or two left. and, you know, you see this vast array in front of you. i think it's important to, you know, catch the, try to catch the attention. of the reader before he goes and buys another volume of $50

shades of gray. -- "50 shades of grey." literature is full of some titles that almost came into being. f. scott fitzgerald, whose papers reside here, famously wanted to call "the great gatsby " trimalchi in east egg." [laughter] pretty catchy. [laughter] i don't need to tell this audience that trimalchio is the rich patron in -- [inaudible] because you already knew that. [laughter] or you could take another influential writer of the 20th century, adolf hitler. hitler's original title for mine catch of, that lighthearted

romp, was my four-and-a-half year struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice. you know, would you have wanted to be the furor's editor? tell him the title sucks. no, you tell him. [laughter] sometimes titles get into trouble when they're translated into other languages. this memorably happened to john steinbeck when his novel "the grapes of wrath" appeared in japan under the title "angry raisins." [laughter] you kind of wonder how moby dick would have made out. [laughter] really angry whale. [laughter] speaking of fish, peter benchly, the grandson of robert benchly, he of the

algonquin round table, had a hard time coming up with the title for his famous book. the printer was saying, come on, we need a title. and they had, they had gotten it down to three choices; the jaws of death, leviathan rising and the shark. so you probably figured out what book we're talking about here. and his father, nathaniel benchly, mischievously proposed why don't you call it who's that noshing on my leg? [laughter] you can imagine, remember the opening bars in the movie, who's that noshing on my leg? [laughter] slightly undercut it. so anyway, you know, titles are problematic. joe heller's catch 22 was originally titled catch 18 for

the eight years that he was working on it, it was catch 18. and then just before catch 23 -- catch 22 was to be published in august of 1961, his publisher called him and said there's this guy who's bringing out a novel called mila 18, it's a war book. he said we can't have two books with the number 18 in them. and joe was, you know, he was beside himself. so that's why you didn't have a catch 18 experience today at the department of motor vehicles. [laughter] some, this book is, this very reasonably-priced book is called "but enough about you." my first collection some years ago, it's a big, it's always a big moment in any writer's life when you have enough to recycle, old stuff. publishers hate collections because they don't sell, but i'm sure today you're going to prove

them wrong. [laughter] anyway, being a, you know, having enough for a collection is a big deal for every writer. so i was very puffed up and full of self-importance. as opposed to, say, now. [laughter] i was much younger then. so i said, well, let's call it ouvre to you. [laughter] get it? you know,ouvre being the classic french word for ouvre. [laughter] the trouble is when an american pronounces this word, it sounds like a prelude to vomit. [laughter] and this was not, random house did not think this was a selling point, you know? the vomitory aspect. is they said, no, let's not call it that.

so there was a piece in the book about an experience i had. i said let's call it want to buy a dead dictator. and they -- it requires some explanation. in 1993 i found myself, i was the editor of a magazine at, to, and i had a readership of 900,000 "forbes" readers. and communism had just fallen, the soviet union had fallen. the days of boris yeltsin, remember -- don't you miss boris yeltsin? is. [laughter] god, he was such an improvement on what we have now. he was always having to get up and stand on tanks and prevent, you know, a coup. and i became obsessed with the fact that the russians had gotten rid of -- they still had lenin's embalmed corpse on red square, sort of the sleeping beauty from hell.

[laughter] ? there were actually alternatives now on saturday night, you know? [laughter] what should we, what do you want to do tonight? well, we could go see lenin's body again. [laughter] the perfect date, you know? so i thought, well, let's see if we can give mr. lenin a push. so i wrote up a hoax article saying that we have just received some very hot information that the russians were so strapped for hard currency that they were going to auction off lenin's corpse. [laughter] but they were3

>> we're journalist. we have ethics, you know? so a couple of hours later, i go home, on the nordic track ski machine, might ever continuing battle of the bulge, and i was watching peter jennings "world news tonight." and a game linens face. and i thought, holy shit. [laughter] it was like being, britain and when you're a kid, a rock on the railroad tracks, you know? the next day the grown-ups are talking of the derailment? [laughter] so the next morning at about six my phone rang and it was steve forbes, and this was a little earlier and steep typically

called me. in fact, stephen never called me. [laughter] actually he has never called me ever again. and he said the russians have gone ballistic. it was like that scene in the movie "dr. strangelove," remember, mr. president, it's premier kiss off on the line and he is hopping mad. [laughter] the minister of the interior, had had to have broken into russian tv programming, into the russian opera, the mind boggles, oprah. i always wondered about soviet union, a country with 30,000 nuclear warheads and no dermatologist. [laughter] everyone had warts. then we got gorbachev and viacom you know, the whole thing.

anyway, he had broken in to russian programming to reassure to say he was not planning secret to auction off -- he took pains to denounce me personally as a brazen liar and an international provocateur. i thought, cool. [laughter] so eventually everyone got their sense of humor back. maybe except him, but six months later i was on the train going up to new york from my -- from washington and i open my "washington post" and there was a huge headline, kremlin dilution with offers for lemon. the weird thing about it was this was a hoax -- linen. a big, big story.

it had apparently alluded the 900,000 readers, people who drive the dynamos of american capitalism. they're going to be -- too busy to read newspapers. they were just added to have this, and to top it had come in from dallas, texas. not ross perot, which would've made perfect but it was a company but a limited only an american could have written. it had sort of a sweetness of innocence to it. we just completed our corporate headquarters down there in dallas and i discussed this with our interior designer, and he says he thinks mr. lindh would make a fine addition to our lobby. [laughter] -- mr. lenin. so there was that story in the book. so i tell that story, charlie

rose, if i could get a word in edgewise. and they said no, we are dead and dictator is not, it's not really selling. idol, maybe this goes to the sort of whole pointlessness of attempting satire in america, because you're really in, basically a losing contest with tomorrow's front page. i was introduced wants, spoke somewhere in ohio. it was one of those pacific occasions at 11 a.m. where you're looking out over the seaa of thousand, 50 shades of blue hair. old women, and for grumpy husband had been dragged along, elmer, you're going to get some culture today. the very sweet lady introducing me, the host, the chairman of the election committee, introduced me as a state arrest

-- state arrest. and she kept repeating it. she's going back and say, he really became a sadrist the summer -- anyway, so i said we still need a doll. i said, let's call it bassholes. this rerun that is i used to write short pieces for "the new yorker" and i became sort of fascinated and accessed by the proliferation of books on flyfishing. flyfishing used to be flyfishing. you go and stand in i.c.e. cold water up to your you know what for six hours, casting. go home, had a pretty good day. and then people started bringing

out books that sort of invested flyfishing with these mystical attributes, like flyfishing through the mid-lies -- midlife crisis. how i found on flyfishing. they had a serious arguments over whether or not, what kind of flyfishing each of the apostles were. st. john was a dry fly fisherman. saint andrew was -- i thought let's have some fun with it. so i wrote a piece that was sort of, just a brief of the new batch books on flyfishing. one paragraph each like that and publishers weekly. one of the books was peter benchley novel called "gills" about a vengeful trout. then there's the book called bassholes, and this was an attack on as fishermen by a very

prissy flyfishing jurist who thought all bass fisherman care about is only -- cold beer. sounded pretty good to me. the piece came out and people started going to bookstores asking for these books. they were furious they couldn't find it. they would go to the guy, barnes & noble behind the counter and said, the book they wanted was bassholes. so he would go, we don't carry bassholes. [laughter] i read about this in "the new yorker," you have to have it. we still don't have it. so i said to random house, look, i've done the market research. [laughter] there is a hunger in the land for a book called bassholes. they said no, prissy new

yorkers. so i still needed a title, and so i said okay, well i got it. let's call it look out, president park. and the reaction is pretty much yours. what the hell is he talking about? well, the story behind that was not i went to work at the white house in 1981. this is shortly after john hinckley shot president reagan and members of his staff. john wilkes booth shot lincoln to avenge the south. john hinckley shot president reagan to impress jodie foster, and there in the wake of the trajectory of idealism in the american political assassin. but it was an attention getting event, and if you remember what they called the traveling staff

of mr. bush's, traveling staff, the french would call it entourage. the french would you do have a more elegant term for. you're giving a briefing by the secret service on sort of what to look for any suspicious looking audience like this, you know, to be an extra pair of eyes and ears. this briefing took place in a darkened basement room in the old executive office building, which is that marvelous building right next to the white house. looks like a victorian wedding cake. in its day it was the world's largest office building. it's quite my favorite office building in all of washington. sitting in a darkened basement watching home assassination movies, america's least funny home videos. with expert commentaries from service agents, somewhere been there in dallas. we had the zapruder film, back,

forward. the ultimate debbie downer movie. we had arthur brimmer shooting george wallace, and then we had this really arresting bit of footage of an attempt on president park of south korea. you sure remember president park of south korea. i know patricia does. and he is in, at a podium much like this, slightly larger crowd, 5000, 6000 people. my typical audience size is much, much smaller. and the stage is full of his secret service guys, you know, the guys with dark glasses and ear pieces. they cut like machine guns actually. and mrs. apart is sitting over here. -- mrs. park.

do you have to do this with -- said there. is looking up at him with this expression, my god, i just love this speech. this is my absolute favorite part. is getting to the part about where we are going to dump human dust on the american auto market. so in the middle of all this i got it appears, starts to walk down the aisle right in front of the podium. taking his time, practically stopped this book sigir. he gets to about their and he reaches in and pulls out a .357 magnum, and he sort of, takes his time getting comfortable. he wants to get good platform there. you practically sort of -- [laughter] then he starts firing.

at the podium. president park just does this. [laughter] like this happens all the time. [laughter] you can almost room going, i'm dying up here. now his secret service detail senses -- [laughter] that something is amiss. one of them does something that always thought was interest from a clear point of view. he goes over and takes cover behind mrs. park. [laughter] go boom, boom. and let's hope it never comes to this. he's trading shots with this guy using the first lady as a shield.

[laughter] it's not very quiet in this room who are watching this. i was just a pot smoking english major who had gone down washington to do a speechwriting day. i was started having a i don't think i'm in kansas anymore, and the agent giving us the briefing says we don't do it this way. and i said, good, that's good. i like that part. and he said, if something goes down, which is a phrase i've managed to live my life up to this point without the phrase, it's going down, occurring. he said if something goes down you basically have two choices. you know, he said you conduct or you can take the round. -- you can dock on 10101.

i said i got the duck partner what was the second part? as long as it was a herbert walker bush, i was recently confident that if they came to that i would probably go for the duck option. [laughter] but anyway, random house said, you know, south korean presidents aren't really big selling points, so we needed, i still needed a title. so i said okay, let's -- i've got it. call it sue. they sort of look. there was this story in the book, i went, i was 29 when i went down to washington, d.c. to be a speechwriter. i was going to be a chief speechwriter to the vice president of the united states. imagine austin powers. you know, i thought this is big. this is really big.

it is going to change history. my speeches are going to be reprinted in full on the front page of "the new york times." they will be analyzed by the kremlin. on and then i got there and it took about 72 hours to figure out that no one really cares what a vice president says. we could never even get press coverage for any of his income speeches. the only guy we got was this guy from c-span to come and set up his camera in the back of the room on a tripod and press the on button and then he would go smoke in the lobby. [laughter] this is in case someone shot him. it was frustrating. and then one day in december 1981, the cold war heeded the. remember the cold war?

don't you miss the cold war? so much more fun than this one. the polls declared martial law, and they were russian tank positions moving in and we were going from dust -- defcon for the "defcon 3". i want to be the guy to pick up the phone and go, and say go to "defcon 3". i sometimes do that but we remain at defcon for. knowing take me graciously. so the west wing said to mr. bush, in recognition of his having been such a fine vice president, such a good team player, they say george will give the official u.s. response to this provocation. and now every media outlet in the world cared what george bush was going to say, and i thought,

yes. yes, this is all about me. so he was giving a speech the next day, and so i wrote the speech with a little input from the grown-ups. and everyone was there. live network feeds. being a highly intellectual, highly educated type person, i went to bartlett's familiar quotations and found the quote, uniyou become it was nice of ala bit of classic partially on the plate. and it was pretty apt, whatever it was. so mr. bush is up there giving his speech and what a magnificent man. i think we're just beginning to realize how fortunate we were as the country to have him.

he's doing great. he's doing fine. i'm sitting at the staff table with apple murphy. abdel murphy was the four star navy admiral who was mr. bush's chief of staff. i had been with the benedictine monks for four years in for school and i thought i knew something about authority figures and then went to work for a four star navy admiral your and boy, are they strict. [laughter] so mr. bush was invited to the gets, as the great historian, sue -- [laughter] it's like he was looking for a consummate and she's going on. and admiral murphy is not giving me the eyeball of death and i'm

going, i didn't make up this word. [laughter] it was like being in lost class. push. [laughter] you can do it. push. come on, come on. and finally, spits out. admiral murphy comes up and jabbed me in the chest with this thing as it next time say plato. [laughter] so that was the platonic era of bush rhetoric. but random house said, no, so there was a piece. i said let's call it wish i said that. this is the pace i've done for all things considered the npr

show. i had been called for jury duty in washington, d.c., and this is coming in a, the civic duty of every american. it's not an experience i particularly recommend in washington, d.c. there is surely no more pathetic sight than this rich democracy of ours than 72 adults trying to squirm out of doing their civic duty. i have a dentist appointment on tuesday. murder trial? me? no, no, no. so this was during the process called voir dire, which is french for internal process that makes you regret ever having registered to vote. and you know, the poor judge is going to the questions when we're all turn to get out on some technicality. and he says, does anyone here have any connection to anyone in

law enforcement? at the time i was married to a cia officer. i thought, this is promising. but remembering what poor scooter libby went through, it's not a good idea to shout out the name of your wife who is a deep cover cia officer. so, but, you need, i wasn't about to let this go so i held out my hand, and his honor looked at me. i said, your honor, may i approach? i've seen this on law and order. [laughter] and he said, approach. and i thought, cool. [laughter] so i approached and spent the next three weeks on the jury. [laughter] but i was telling a friend of

mine about my big rhetorical moment in court, and i said he served with the special forces with the green berets in vietnam and he listened patiently, and he said, if you like the first time i got to say cover me, which to put my big moment in some perspective, got me thinking about most of us don't get to say really cool lines, you know, value here in, some people here in real life and others here in movies like charge or sponge clamp, sutures, or three, two, one, ignition, or a periscope. in my case it probably would've been down periscope, after ramming some innocent japanese research vessel. and let's get the hell out of your. [laughter] captain buckley, what about the survivors? screw the survivors. this is my career here.

[laughter] i'll close this action with a story that was told to me by my dear friend christopher hitchens to whom this book is dedicated. but it is purportedly a true story. a magistrate in scotland and the town drunk have been brought before him for the umpteenth time and he was just sick and tired of being in front of this guy. so he looked down, look down his nose and said, macdougall, he said, you know been found guilty of the crime of public drunkenness. and it is the sense of this court that she should be taken here from the place -- to the place of execution, and then hanged by your neck until you're dead. and may god almighty have mercy on your seoul. and macdougall fainted. and the bailiff sort of looked

up at the magistrate, said, i just always wanted to say that. [laughter] >> thank you, thank you. [applause] >> i have been asked by my kind host to answer any questions you might have. any questions about bulk sales of the book. [laughter] i believe the limit is 10 to a customer, but you can also place orders for additional ones. anyway, i be happy, happy to fill up the balance of my time by yielding to you. any questions about recidivism?

in the back. [inaudible] >> you just heard it. [laughter] mr. bush was a delightful guy to work for. he was always the paradox of writing, he was always better without text here to is not coming up, i got of the text. and he had this come you know, mr. bush had these wonderful concho varieties them to use the word my dad probably would've used. he was, you know, one of the most athletic of people, one of the most grace, captain of the yale baseball team, and, but he had the sort of funny karma

where, after he left the white house in 1993, would've been he was an avid golfer and he went out to pebble beach to play in a pro-am charity golf tournament where they had a lot of celebrities. bill clinton i think was there, and clint eastwood, you know, the usual suspects. and it was being televised, so he is teeing off the first day and he sliced wickedly at a very high velocity in to the skull of a female spectator. it may this sort of horrible liquid sound, and she is lying there and the medics are applying pressure to in mr. bush, is also the most polite, considerate human being. he's just the nicest

episcopalians ever in history from greenwich, connecticut. he runs over and he is apologizing, my gosh, i'm so sorry. because it was televised, president clinton is there, they have to keep going. so a couple hours later he is lining up his putt on the 17th hole and he looks over and there's a woman in a wheelchair with her head swathed and in bandages. and he said oh, my god. he runs over and starts apologizing to her all over again. sorry. and the woman is looking up like this, if someone comes over and tap someone says, mr. president, that's someone else. she was hit by clint eastwood. [laughter]

when i first went to work for him, we went on, we're always going on trips because part of the job of vice president, if someone dies, you have to go and grief. his motto was you die, i fly. on one of these trips, whenever we are in a foreign country would go to the american embassy and do a little morale boosting, you know. he was very good at that. they loved him. and this was again just in 1981 after the hinckley shooting, and he told this story about reagan come which i think is alec what. he said, mr. bush said one day he went to see president reagan in the hospital, george washington hospital, and so he is ushered into the room and he goes and andy finds himself alone in the hospital room and

there's no president reagan. he's looking under the bed. and the bathroom door is open and he hears president reagan said george, i'm in here. come on. he goes over and president reagan, the leader of the free world is down on his hands and knees mopping. and mr. bush says, ron, what are you doing? well, i spilled some water and a don't want, i did one the nurse to have to clean it up. you know, in retrospect, it's a story that could be told about george bush. he would have done, he would have been down there mopping up the water, or whatever it really was. [laughter] he used to, you know, he used to

stay in washington on christmas soviet secret service detail could have christmas with her family. he was a wasp engines also come to something else about him, he's the most sentimental meant i think i've ever known. is this blue blooded, plenty new england guy, right? george bush has the two ducks of a grandmother. if they played the national anthem he started to blubber. a marvelous man. one of the great lessons of my life was to have the adventure of working for him. one more?

[inaudible] >> not my headline. [inaudible] >> do you know the context your? in october 2008, i had a blog from an old friend tina brown's new website called the "daily beast," and i simultaneously had a column in the "national

review." what do you know about "national review"? and in mid-october of the election cycle, i, in the company of a number of other conservative writers, david brooks, kathleen parker, a number of them, wrote a blog in which i said, i gave reasons in an argument about why i was going to vote for barack obama and not making bailing -- mccain-taylor governor else was on that ticket. well, and then tina put that somewhat headline on. sorry, dad, i'm voting for obama. my dad died in february and that was well past giving a shit who i was voting for.

sorry to put it that way, but -- it would be an exaggeration to say all hell broke loose but it was a bit -- the teapot was made slightly larger when "national review" fired me as a columnist, which was even funnier since i was on the board of directors. [laughter] i technically owned one-seventh. and, and anyway, the story sort of took on a life of its own. now, are you asking me do i regret? no, i don't regret that vote.

i do not regret not voting for john mccain and sarah palin. i don't know that my current views on president obama are in interest. i probably, if mitt romney talked about the 47th the centcom i would probably rate myself among the 41% in mr. obama's current approval rating, or non-approval rating. i'm also disappointed. and i think, at the time i said, one of the reason i'm going to vote for him is just because i think he, as was said of fdr, had a first class company.

i'm not so sure about that. whenever i see him giving a speech, i think, you know, this is dignified, attractive, smart guy, but i think, i think he's a little aloof. here's the guy who spent four hours golfing with, returning to my great aunt, with mayor bloomberg recently, did not ask mayor bloomberg one question. now, if you were a politician, if you president of the united states and do it for hours with a very smart mayor of new york, might you ask a question? you know, mike, how do you handle this? how do you handle that? i guess there are no friends

among world leaders. this is one of the remarkable things that's emerged -- am i babbling on? i think this is one of the remarkable things about george h. w. bush. i was on a tv show a week ago, one of the other guys, walter isaacson, a very, very smart guy, and the democrat and a liberal, and we were talking about george bush and he said, i think he may have been our best foreign policy president. and i think, you know, we are starting to realize just how extraordinary a guy we have in george bush. a guy who was willing to go back on and read my ellipse, had enormous, enormous political cost to himself. how many people are the on the national stage like that willing to do that. but what were we talking about?

[inaudible] [laughter] >> he was a mensch, and he had a sense of humor, too. after he stopped being president, that yale law school offered him a chair of law at video mac and he replied that he could not accept a chair, but he could accept a sofa of law. [laughter] you have a question? [inaudible]

>> i think, i wish i could turn back the clock. i think it's terrible. i think making fools of us. i think these devices are, i mean, you would have to pry this from my cold dead fingers. but i think, you know, i think we've made, i think we have, i think there's been a terrible trade off. who -- you mean, we live in the age of aceh.

-- gotcha. what politician was there? the original to say something, you know? i think it's made politics harsher and more discordant. it is of course a fallacy of the highest order to suppose that politics are nastier now than it used to be. it used to be probably far nastier, but it is, but i think, i think, i think the 24/7, the internet, the blogging has become our enemies of reason discourse. you can start a revolution in egypt, with twitter.

is that a good thing? i think maybe, i'm not sure. i'm not sure. [inaudible] >> london. it's still there. [laughter] the queen -- [inaudible] >> i will. my wife and i lived in which to sure for three months. i'm the only person you will ever hear of your the words i'm wintering in worchester issue. [laughter] we did. that was before. i'm going to brag on my wife. she took me a long a couple years ago. she was getting, she has more

advanced degrees than a person with a lot of advanced degrees. [laughter] she got her diploma from the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine, and she would -- this is a very intense three-month course given at the most prestigious school for hygiene and tropical disease. she would bring home for homework and sit next to me on the couch. i of course would be reading the original greek, and i would make mistakes of looking over her textbook which would be opened to some two-page color spread on some revolting form of disease. then she would say what's for

dinner? [laughter] a highly educated woman, my wife, and i do love her. and now all the world will know. [laughter] well -- [inaudible] [laughter >> but they haven't been bought. [inaudible]

>> do you know who i am? >> no. i am santa claus' chief deputy. [laughter] >> young men, do you know who i am? he said i am steve spurrier. [laughter] >> he made the little boy very happy. >> did the kids buy books? [laughter] >> it depends. >> i tell you a story of my first book tour. in 1982, i was, it was not a very venerable bookstore in

berkeley called black books what you'll be stunned to hear no longer exists. i was very excited by this because it was really one of the high churches of bookstores. and i've arrived, a littl late. i arrived at 8:05 for an 8:00 reading and there was not one human being there. there were hundreds of chairs and not one human being. and the very lovely lady, manager, was sort of saying, traffic is terrible tuesday nights in berkeley at around 8:00. i said, yeah, i noticed on the way in from the airport and my taxi going 70 miles per hour. and she said, excuse me just one minute. so she disappears and five minutes later there are four people in the seats sort of

spread out, all of them hispanic. [laughter] sitting there like this. and she got in to the stockroom. so my first reading from a book. anenter subterfuged was so generous as to include having them all go to the cash register afterwards and buy it. this was her version of honesty. thank you very much. [applause] >> we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> later this morning around 11:00 eastern time, booktv

will be live from hillary clinton's book signing from her recently published memoir, "hard choices." the former secretary of state is expected to sign a about 1000 books, and booktv will be there to bring you some of the sights and sounds from the event. that all happens soon on booktv. >> here's a look at some of the best selling nonfiction books according to into down, an organization of independent booksellers associate with the american booksellers association.