>> worked on the fall of the berlin wall and the china dairy of george h.w. bush. when we started the planning for the conference i communicated with jeff at the center and putting together this conference, i hope some representatives from southern methodist can join us. our three distinguished speakers have written extensive studies, professor of political science.

she has written ten books on presidential decision-making, numerous book chapters, of course, the book that's particularly relevant to us today is the co-president cri of george w. bush and dick cheney. and she will be discussing that shortly. i'm appreciative of the doctor for bringing her wonderful students today. a wonderful applause to all of you. [applause] >> professor martha teaches in the president of political science, author of numerous works including a book that won the richard award from the american political science association group managing the president's message, white house operation. the author of a book that came

out 2013, i believe, take up your pen, professor will be discussing the political ideology of george w. bush today. let me just quickly read you, if you will, before we begin a discussion a statement that jim man wrote in this opinion piece in the los angeles times. february 5th, 2015, bush's presidency is likely to be remembered to lack of constraints. it better be you because i'm not. george w. bush he took gambles in foreign policy and the economy. sometimes they paid off. history isn't likely to revise

that judgment, professor discusses and discusses, iraq, counterterrorism, very short analysis of the issues. you have a perspective there. the legacy has been defined. when i started the discussion, i think that the legacy is still unfolding, brought up the tax cuts as one of the achievementses of the administration. well, some people say these were not detrimental to the economy. the case about monetary versus physical policy and moik choices that may be too simple, this is kind of my inference from what they said, too simple to say a single policy is good or bad but the consequences of that policy for the other choice that is we make. i think these are some of the

issues, how we address that single choices and consequences for american politics as we look at foreign policy, domestic policy, economic policy, political leadership and campaigning. >> thank you, everyone, it is a joy to be here. dr. bose put together a magnificent conference and please join me and she doesn't get thanked enough, thank you, dr. bose. [cheers and applause] >> i was in a wonderful. every panel is wonderful, ed is in the audience, he said you have about 20-25 minutes before you lose everybody, tv shows,

presidential speeches, whatever so i'm going to be farless -- less than that so i hope to capture your attention in the 10-12 minutes. reframe or rethink everything that we have heard in the last days. she actually compares was george w. bush conservative, was george w. bush neoconservative. i want to offer a new framework of that because what i think is that, in fact, he does have a very clear ideology and his political ideology is frain within his own personal moral

code. the political ideology is extremely conservative when you think of it in terms of probusiness, progovernment, political ideology. you'll hear a little bit throughout my talk. but what george bush was, was a moral pragmitist. i take those words from his own constant reference. he wrote a book a charge to keep. which i'm sure everybody knows about. the proper rule for government is to build a single moral community.

remember, president george w. bush had his own moral awakening. he had long-term drinking problems. he quit cold turkey. he becomes a born again christian. that is what refrains his life and that what became the presidency of george w. bush. born again the government should have a more moral compass. he argued throughout both his terms as governor and during his terms in the white house for religious organizations to play a key role in partnership with the federal government, his religious drove entire political career. he became so involved.

this is important as religion. he has this relijios awakening. his father is running for president. '88 successful. '92 not as successful. reach out to coalitions. when carl rob becomesmentor when he runs for governor, it's that very sense that i can reach out to religious conservatives to become a bush. it is very simply where government builds a moral society, always remember, that is who george bush is. how can government use the

compass of religion to use a moral and civil society. he never advocated smaller government too many times and i met -- i spent a lot of time with the regan people. they wanted george bush to continue the reagan mantra. he argued for new vision for the proper role of government that would expand government funded religious programs. his vision for the proper role for government was evident in speech. that's absolutely telling about who george bush won. he just won a second term as texas governor. standing in austin, the capital

in austin, bush called upon texas and i quote from this speech to become a moral and spiritual center for the nation. the address referred to god and faith in god. i quote, again, we must rally the armies of compassion. this is who george bush is. as to be expected to the born-again christian, his presidential address when he was inago -- inagurated in 2001 peppered with religious. we will not pass to the other side of the road. he argued that americans hold beliefs beyond ourselves. we believe in god. for bush building a moral and civil society was his political ideology.

bush focused on the faith-based agenda. the co-presidency and bush and cheney was a wonderful division of labor that allowed george w. bush to pursue conservative and the moral compass of government and dick cheney to focus on the probusiness agenda. bush only had really three domestic agendas as everyone knows. tax cuts, immigration reform, standardized learning. he did not support the probusiness agenda, the antiregulatory agenda that dick cheney moved forward. it was a political necessity, he was after all, somewhat of a conservative but it was the moral compass that he wanted to pursue. bush's relationship with god guided presidency.

i bet you didn't know that he had prayer meetings in the morning, every cabinet meeting held for eight years began with a prayer and every cabinet officer was told when they came to the cabinet meeting, each one was given a day that they had to have a prayer to begin the cabinet meeting. for bush the lens were seen right and wrong. his world was built around. i think you may remember, i think some older faces in the audience, it's not all students, i don't know that the students remember this, but in the 2000 iowa presidential debate with other republicans, the moderator in iowa asked the various people on the stage, republican candidates who is your favorite philosopher, george bush

answered, jesus christ. but the presidency, i want to mention because i want to talk about the war that about halfway through after they got the programs going they were spending $2.1 billion a year in programs including programs in prison and i can go on and on and on. nothing facilitated dick cheney's rise to power more than the role that god played in bush's life. allowed dick cheney to focus on everything else. remember that dick -- dick

cheney in charge. but then came 9/11. well, the faith-base presidency was never abandoned. it was over taken by the war of presidency. and this is important because what happens now is actually very interesting. the war presidency became the center of the state's based presidency. good versus evil. right versus wrong. winning the war on terror would be done with religious fervor. i think some of the panels talked about this. right after 9/11 happens, what does george bush do, he immediately has a religious service at the national cathedral and declares a national day of prayer. relating terrorist became focus of the war. the book of salms.

he is identified the righteous in the world that god said was the united states. he suggest that had the blessings of liberty, a phrase he often used, were wart of god's plan. david, you may remember this, wrote a speech in which he talked about hatred. he changed those words from access of hatred to access of evil because evil doers is a biblical term. frame the war on terror within a biblical sense to ensure that we were right. theology became a large part, not only everything george bush did but focus it had war in iraq. we can say all we want about why

we go into iraq and i can go on for years on that but for george bush, remember, you have to separate who george bush was and dick cheney and donald and you have to separate the war in iraq from who george bush was. soon after we took down baghdad. u.s. soldiers had a huge sign that said bible studies wednesday at 7:00 p.m. military was being transformed into a faith-based military in line with bush's presidency.

so going back to our original question, what was the political ideology of george w. bush? the answer is simple. george w. bush was actually a physical conservative who welcomed the contributions of his vice president dick cheney to molding his administration into a strong probusiness administration. without cheney's clear vision, bush would have been far less successful in shifting governmental priorities to the right. but i should also note that bush never articulated the strong antiregulatory often very probusiness position that became the hallmark of his presidency, that was all dick cheney.

so when we discuss the political ideology of george w. bush, it was not conservative, not really, not in the ronald reagan way where you want smaller government. ronald reagan argued for smaller government. nothing that bush did argued for smaller government. the federal budget increased more in george w. bush more than in any president history. bush was not a neoconservative. he was not one of them. the only real connection that george bush had to ronald regan was on taxation, bush championed, tax reductions, he got them. bush had no problem with activist government to build a moral society. it was cheney that want today --

wanted to cut programs. a man who sought to improve citizens' lives using the compass from born-again christianity combined with resources of federal government. outlook on life was to the painting and you heard me mention that before. he named his book after the painting whose message he believed was to serve god in one action. that was the message he want today bring to presidency and that was his political ideology. he had a charge to keep. he says, faith changes lives and i know because faith has changed mine. he wanted to use the values of his faith to change as president.

ideology was simple and straightforward. government can improve lives specially if faith-based values are woven into governmental action. conservative want to reduce government programs, particularly social programs, certainly he had only limited rim to the regan revolution. bush accepted smaller government but not with regard to social services. he expanded social service programming and infused many with christian values. in summary, bush was a hybrid conservative whose personal value structured governed presidency both in domestic and foreign policy.

without i'll sit down and let martha talk. [applause] >> good afternoon, a very interesting and good conference that has generated a lot of discussion. and low ot discussions of was he right, did he do things correctly, did he. only 37 days to do it and they had it very well organized so that when he came into office he had his agenda down first week they discussed education, second week they discussed face-based, then they went into strengthening the military then weeks after that budget cuts and

tax reform and so they're able to stick to their agenda and not spend time discussing the agenda but rather getting right into the agenda and that's what a good transition did for them. a good transition now was important for all of us in the quality that they had of their handover power to president obama. transitions matter and that one in particular did. on inauguration day the tradition is that the -- that the incoming president comes to the white house at about 10:30 and they have coffee with the -- the outgoing president and vice president and the incoming vice president comes as well and they sit and have their coffee and then go up to the

hill. this inauguration day was a little different because in addition to the meeting they were having in the situation room, there was a meeting where all of the intelligence, talk intelligence and national security people were convened, the incoming and outgoing department heads and agency heads to discuss the threat on the inauguration. in the last few days before the inauguration, a threat came up and a threat was from alshbab that there was going to be some kind of attack and they had to weigh that at at the same time that the two presidents were about to go up to the hill, and all the work that hay had done leading up to the time of the

inauguration was that the incoming and outgoing secretaries knew one another, they had met during crisis training, exercise in mid-january where they went through for a day how things would work with the crisis and so they had talked to one another and felt comfortable with one another, which was important when here they're discussing something that was going to be crucial and how it should be handled. in their discussions of what some of the alternatives were steve who was the national security adviser for president bush says that in that meeting that hillary clinton asked question, that she had experience as candidate and so she said, raised of secret

service pulling president obama off of the podium, she said how would that be done. the optics of that would have been terrible for us and the message that it would have sent. ultimately the threat sizzled but it was there in an important way for several days and i think it shows the importance the kind of work that you do during a transition has. in looking at bush's transition, what were the elements of success and the first one president bush himself. president bush got involved and got involved early. in late 2007 he talked to his chief of staff josh bolton and told him that with two wars they

had to have a good transition and he wanted it to be the best transition ever. and so he deputize him to run the operation and come to him with issues that he thought needed his judgment. but he also reserved some things to himself that he wanted to do. he decided that there were three issues that he did not want staff to transition with president elect obama. he wanted to do that himself. and he wanted to tell him how important they were for -- he thought for the whole battle in the war of terror, war on terrorism and so he decided that doing it himself would send that message and so the three issues were drones in pakistan and what

the status was there about our operation and programs that we had in iran which could have been the project where we were -- the computers doing the attacking the centrifuges, and then the third issue that she wanted to transition himself was the importance of our relationship with saudi arabia, and when you look at those three issues, you see that president obama has himself taken all those three to be very important issues. he wasn't the only one who was -- oh was -- who was going to be working early. so was his national security advisers. steve began working in 2007 and

what he wanted to do was put together memorandum that dealt with issues and countries that would let incoming administration know how the issues stood or the programs of the country when they came in, what they had done during their time in office, would it happen on the issues and what the status was at the end, so there were four things and so they had a template for the issues and those were passed around not just the national security counsel staff, but everybody in the staff was ultimately involved in them, but they were passed around throughout government, the intelligence community, the defense and foreign policy. so they had those ready when

they came in as well as a not quite well-developed in a sense of sending it around government contingency plans. i think there were seven contingency plans. he too began early in 2007. what he wanted to do is something that had not happen before. president truman wanted to do the same thing but eisenhower didn't go along with it. what he wanted was to bring representatives, not candidates themselves, but bring representatives of the candidates to discuss issues that he thought were going to be important and one, if they could solve the issue early, the person would, indeed, hit the ground running. one of the issue was with

presidential appointment. he thought presidential appointments, they needed to know how important they were and to get started early, and to do that they took a very relaxed view of the -- of legislations that would allow for early security, national security checks and waive before they came into office. they wanted them to be ready for the transition itself. and so bolton told the reps of both candidates that what they would do is however many names they wanted to send, they could do and they wouldn't be involved in it. they would send it right to the fbi for the fbi to do background checks and they never went through the white house.

and that was important so that the candidates didn't think that they were going to be leaks. and there were no leaks. and the obama people took advantage of it and put in the names of 150-200 people. so on the -- at the time president obama was elected, then they -- they had their operation ready and so when he had his first national security briefing as a president elect, ram i man yell was -- ramh emmanuel was with him. he had done background check. they had done appointment early and another aspect of it was they knew that they were going to be a lot of the white house knew they were going to be based on their experience a lot of

people who were going to send in resumes to be considered for appointments and they thought that he was not capable of the pressure that was possibly going to be put on the incoming president. around these people came in at the end of june and early july. ..

so what you need is you need a memorandum of understanding that sets up what the rules are between white house and the incoming team. and they came up with one, both sides agreed on it with the white house, and that was signed the saturday after the election. they also had, clay johnson was working as a deputy for management and office of management and budget. he handled the executive branch departments and agencies, what information they would collect and how they would do it. he brought together the president's management council, and then in july sent out a memorandum telling all the departments and agencies what they were to collect and how were they to do it.

but none of this would have made any difference if the obama people have not used it. but they did use it and it was very important to them. so my time has gone off. i believe it with that. it was very useful for the obama people, and i think useful for bush's legacy as well. [applause] >> okay. well, thanks a much. i very much enjoyed being a part of the conference here, and i'm pleased to be able to talk to you about some of my research. so in the paper that i submitted for the conference, i try to

come to terms with the political ideology of george w. bush, both our best to characterize it in what sense to make of its broader impact and, indeed, its legacy. i think this is an important question, a central fundamental question, but like much else about mr. bush's eight years, a controversial question. in other words, was he a hard right conservative, a traditional orthodox conservative, a compassionate conservative, a neoconservative, a paleoconservative, or even a closet moderate? who knows? but i think it's important i figure this out. mr. bush himself said i don't do know once and these are no honest questions, but they are important questions. i take a stab at trying to figure it out. i don't sort of try to reinvent the wheel here. rather, i take it that the best

path is perhaps to survey the scholarly landscape to see what others have to say about this, and that's essentially what i did in the paper. i categorize these other views in my own fashion. they seek to render them as possible, comprehensive, as comfortable as possible. and i do wait in in terms of what i perceived to be the pros and cons. at the end of the day i think some are better than others but i think on balance some version of political scientists, stevens -- i think that's the most intellectual leverage on this question. that's where i'm going. by way of getting there let me walk you through some of the ways our privacy of others have made sense of bush's ideology. so this is sort of a subfield in political science. a lot of political scientist have devoted their careers to the issue. i don't but i review what they've done. one of the most popular accounts

is the rosenthal's nominating scores. on this account bush comes out as the single most conservative president by far. so i think that's a good place to start. i take it as a starting point. i don't think it is not problematic. i think it does have issues but i think it perhaps conflates strategic pronouncements with what might be in the candidates, the president's heart of hearts, within his mind. at its highly regarded in my field and they did it as good place to start. i look at some other similar ones. adams database and ideology, money, politics and elections in which bush emerges as more conservative than his father but slightly less conservative than ronald reagan. i look at the online on the issues scheme of ranking presidents and others. here again bush emerges as a

conservative, a more centrist conservative than the regular particularly pipe was reagan for what that's worth. i also try to see how one could balance these different accounts. nate silver at 538 did this a few months back and trying to figure out where to place jeb bush. so averaging these three accounts in a very interestingly i think and. and bush does emerge as a true doctrinaire conservative. i think this is good place to start but only a place to start. bush said he would not be defined by others. he would define himself so i take him at his word and a look at his words, what bush had to say about his own ideology, at the start with his de facto 1999 campaign text, in which he explained why he self identifies as a conservative. this is also i think the first place where he gives an account of what compassionate conservatism is about. you could say this is self-serving, a campaign text,

not a piece of political philosophy. fair enough but i think a good place to start. i consider other aspects of bush's 2000 campaign, his repeated invocation of his background and the entrepreneurial have been that his west texas and contradistinction to the more modern distinction connecticut bushes with all the political culture that compares in details. his promise to enshrine a culture of life and ownership society. or faster warshak has talked with his overt -- industry -- industry thousand campaign today. he says his philosopher is jesus christ. he is criticized for pandering to the religious right whom john mccain called agents of intolerance but we all know who won the south carolina primary and the rest is history. i look at his concert with the gop debates which is something that comes out in his writings, lessons learned from dad, don't anchor the base. this is a lesson by he by all

accounts took toward progressive woman show, it is a joke but bush made a joke at an $800 plate in india. this is an impressive crowd, the house and they have moore's. said people call you the elite. i call you my base. he's doing a shtick the force critics there's an element of truth in there perhaps. look beyond bush's words to his appointments. for example, that of john ashcroft as attorney general which placated pat robertson and other members of the religious right who would grown concerned about the new president. is to supreme court justices, 40 justice on courts of appeal. and delicate as policy. as ross perot used to say this is where the rubber hits the road. there's no better indication of what you think than what you do and bush's policies are very telling. the white house office of faith-based and community initiatives, two rounds of tax

cuts, tw most of that i think fs three square with conservatism, right? there's not too much wiggle room. other aspects of his policy agenda and his record do not square with it with a doctrinaire conservatism. i'm not the first to notice the spirit others have commented but these include things like no child left behind certainly. also his immigration reform proposal is controversial then, still especially for his party today. the 2003 pepfar aids program, others have talked about this conference. certainly the t.a.r.p. program in which bush said he was having to satisfy doctrinaire conservative ideology to do what he thought had to be done. and perhaps also medicare expansion. i think in total these constitute a numbe number of ou. this is sort of in social science terms deviations from the mean, that's it can't be

explained by bush as a doctrinaire conservative. i think this is a red flag for those who would adopt the label of bush as a doctrinaire conservative. i review what other -- others that it's about mr. bush of course, his democratic opponent tended to se seem as a hard rigt extremist. at the time of his republican officials and by the time agreed, senator of vermont perhaps christie todd whitman and others. in terms of the pundit hypocrisy, bill keller of the new york times originally said bush was a reagan like, a reagan the poster that later became convinced that mr. bush was the reagan real deal. and i review by conservative media has had to say about the president. frankly, a lot of the conservative journals that are not among my own media diet, bush came in for a lot of conservative criticism, an awful

lot their places like cato, "the weekly standard," american conservative, forbes, professor christopher higgins spoke about this but the volume and tone of criticism directed at mr. bush from the right i think is surprising and something to consider. some of those complaints might be dismissed as not being representative, as being narrow. i think in the later part of mr. bush's second term some could say look, these are conservatives rats fleeing a sinking ship while trying to prevent the good name of conservatives from going down with the bush titanic. there's something to that bestow on balance i don't think you can dismiss it out of him. i think they constitute another red flag towards the facile labeling of bush as a doctrinaire conservative. is there some what of making sense all this, coming up with an account that would explain the pieces that seem to fit, some of the pieces that don't fit, some of the conservative criticism and i think there might be.

i end up endorsing some form of what is well-known in my field as stephen's account of articulate first on the eve of the clinton presidency in which he describes these four regarding context of presidential issued such a chicken properly set up residence acros across the ageso end up in remarkably similar situations. and in that, he suggests that bush would be labeled an orthodox innovator. so the idea is bush is elected, affiliated with the dominant conservative norms and that it been more or less in place since 1980, bill clinton notwithstanding, but the idea it's grown a little older, a little stale so it is bush's job to innovate within the orthodoxy, to extend the shelf life and to reach. and on some accounts to entrench it further electoral he, right? to expand beyond what it had already achieved and to try to get new members of the

electorate into republican column for ages to come. i think there's an awful lot to this. i really do. it's complicated, complex. it uses bizarre terminology but i think what you can get past all that it really does confirm leverage on a complicated question. i think it explains bush's place in history. it explains the pieces that don't fit. this is bush going to reach out beyond what had been done to bring in the pieces into the republican conservative folder i think that doesn't explain a lot of these things that don't fit. it also think helps to explain some of mr. bush's medical political problems orthodox innovator's so called in to be perceived as arrogant and overreaching, for example. they tend to run up against the increasingly thick institutional politics, i.e., as time goes by is harder and harder to make the tweets, the innovations, the changes because government becomes a thing of itself, it is hard to change. then there's this idea that for

orthodox innovator's they are susceptible to the vagaries of events, the famous quote from prime ministers or mcmillan went past what might alter the plans. events, my dear boy, events. evil in this are especially vulnerable to events and i think it's a decent mr. bush's presidency had no shortage of these exogenous shocks, events coming that would disrupt the dominant narrative that was carefully cultivated and put in place. so again i think that account is the best way to make sense of mr. bush's ideology. i would caution there are two potential wrinkles to this. one is that other academics have written about the account and sought to become orthodox innovator's of his orthodox innovator typologies you will answer will offer said it goes well as far as it goes but it seems that late in bush's presidency late in the second

for orthodox conservatism is in retreat such that is placed in a political context changes. if you accept that it helps you to explain even more of his troubled presidency in the last couple of years. i think there's a lot to that. i think in 2006, seven, eight, nine, 10, it's impossible to sey the conservative era was over, conservatism was in retreat. we were on the edge of the new progressive era. i think that's 2010 it's hard to make that argument. i really do. i'm intrigued by this orthodox innovation of the orthodox innovation typology but in 2015 it doesn't seem plausible to me. what other possible wrinkle to consider here. i suggested that on this typology of the orthodox and get it up to and the pieces that don't fit on the sort of that style republican, conservative republican label. there is an alternative possibility. a number of people mentioned this in bush's presidency. i think the best articulation

comes from the journalists cokie roberts who said the president is copying a strategy right out of bill clinton's politico playbook. when in doubt, steal your opponents best ideas. clinton filched welfare reform, bush rob education reform and prescription drugs from the democrats. now, you've probably heard something like that before but the idea there is that bush was not being so much a good innovator of conservative orthodoxy. he was being an overly flexible clintonian opportunist. that's the h.r. to people on the right will like to hear that i don't think it's altogether if they want but i think it's fair considering what these pieces that don't fit in the service of expanding conservatism, or where the bits of machiavellian strategy and convenience? i think beauty is in the eye of beholder and i will leave it as an open question. it will probably depend on your own ideology.

in conclusion, suggestion some version of this is perhaps the best way to make sense of mr. bush, there's the broader question about just how to characterize it but what his legacy is. the legacy of george w. bush's political ideology. the record since this presence i think is muddy as has been reported before. he did not have a prominent role in either the '08 of the 12 geneva conventions. i would suggest the rise of the tea party further muddies the water. it's just too early to say that i will close with a vignette. at the beginning of the last hofstra conference on bill clinton years ago it was in the first day, i was sitting over here behind two older gentlemen and we were sort of resume the program and not paying much attention to what the person on stage was saying, but then the person on stage said it's too early. five years out was too early to say what is place an issue would be the a couple guys and then we said that's exactly right. i was struck by that because i

am a sensitive political scientist but i thought at the time five years out, that's not too short. we can assure mr. something smart about clinton. intenders hindsight i think i was wrong. i think they were right. too early now to see what the legacy will be. is because the context is not just backward looking, not forget what happened before bush. it's what happens after. this point is itself a fas fast, but look if we are on the years has been coverage of eight years of jeb bush that will color the way we perceive george bush's ideology. if we are on pages of hillary public figures of chelsea, that will change things. so in this, if nothing else i find myself in perfect agreement with george bush in his first year of office, which reflected, there's a legacy but i will never see it. in 2006 bush said you never know what your history is good to be like until long after you are gone. thank you. [applause]

>> those are three wonderful papers and, of course, i think most of us are probably sitting here recalling a line from a strategist of e-commerce revolution were asked what he thought the water and consequent of the french revolution was replied in the 1970s, it's too soon to tell. up for a begin discussing and posting some questions to our panelists i do want to take a moment to discuss this conference in general because of premature gossiping conference and no easy thing to put together something which is such so recent as grandma mentioned as something that brings us so many issues until the contentious debate that for many people are, in fact, sensitive nerves -- grandma mentioned -- and bring a difficult feelings and bitterness of the basins was very contentious time in history. as a student myself the

presidency i can't afford footage of u.s. foreign policy. and if i look at diplomacy writ large and when you think back on the difficult or think right now of the difficult diplomatic negotiations that are ongoing in the world today, of course you ongoing discussions with north korea and you have of course they very complex negotiations with iran over the nuclear program, this makes me want to thank a new the professor because those are nothing compared to the complex negotiations between a presidential research and the university faculty. [laughter] so thank you for putting this all together. >> it's all politics. >> affiliates. i would ask the front of questions about the historical legacy and long-term consequent of the bush administration of our panelists for open up the discussion but since so much of the focus was on ideology i want to begin with this question which was raised in some of the previous panels, and that is that all of you discussed both

the beginning and end points of the bush administration are focusing large part upon his great statement of his ideology and a charge to keep from 1999. i was one if you could say more about the evolution of bush's thinking. is the ideological position of the president the same in 2008 as it was in 2001 when he took office? >> when george bush took office in 2001, as we said earlier very limited agenda. immigration reform, tax cuts, no child left behind and the faith-based presidency. 9/11 changed everything and then as many of those programs and general essentially no child left behind was done. immigration reform, social security reform, none of those got done. graham talked about medical -- medicare reform for instance, apple was the other thing you talked about? medicare and what else? >> is the pieces that don't fit.

>> pepfar. >> but particularly the medicare part d before. these have nothing to do with conservative ideology. they have completely to do with this use of federal resources to baltimore and civil society. they are essential to george w. bush was. you can't confuse the political ideology of smaller government and a pro-business less regulatory affairs within george w. bush was. 9/11 changed everything. he became the war president. dick cheney essentially took over the presidency. all, many of the programs that have been thought of, social security reform, immigration reform, they did get tax cuts through, were reduced. at the beginning of the second or as you all know, george bush nearly lost the 2004 election gives americans did not support that war. when he won he realized he needed to reframe some things and one of the things he needed to reframe was the reliance on department of defense led by don

rumsfeld and paul wolfowitz. you do that. eventually forced rumsfeld and wolfowitz out, dic dick cheney o put us into the festival in the second term. and what doe what you see is a e bush. we talked about, graham talked about the bailout, the t.a.r.p. bailout of 2008. that's the george bush was. what you see is a george bush signed yes, the federal government can do good things the same way said about that with medicare reform and immigration reform. social security reform to a lesser extent. but the t.a.r.p. bailout is in we can use the resources of the federal government to benefit people in need. whoever that was. turned out to be a lot of corporations that it was for good. it was not scaling back government. it was not seeking legislation to cut programs. that's not a george bush was. what you see in the second part of the second term of the bush administration was actually a george bush to gain control of his own presidency.

by 2005, really in 2006, he was a far different president than he was in 2001 and i think he would say that. >> yeah, yeah, i've been struck at this conference but what i perceive to be sort of emerging thing, especially for people who work in the administration of trying to make this claim of a distinction across george bush's eight years. people have pointed to, what is it, after katrina? is it the 2004 election? is it the war in iraq? it's unclear exactly what causes this change but it's been remarkable a list of my perception how many people have described some sort of change across the eight years of bush's presidency. as if he were, as obama would say, he's evolving, right? his views were evolving and changing. i think that striking. if i were of a conspiratorial

slant of mind i would say, gee, there were talking point among the old bushes at the point in the difference in the second term. it's remarkable how many people said that. it is of a piece of perhaps his record in texas as a governor. he ran as a reformer with a record, someone who could reach across the aisle to make deals and a bipartisan fashion. another critic said texas democrats are pretty conservative law. you not to read too far across the aisle, but it did receive a change certainly from his time as governor through to the end of his presidency and yet, the t.a.r.p. bailout is probably the best in deployed, the exclamation mark because he said in his autobiography, look, i had to set aside ideology. i would adhere to the principle and then the system would collapse. which i think makes a number of point. it sort of suggests that he had a streak of rag mechanism that critics would be reluctant to

concede with. it might also something of the limits of conservatism as a governing ideology. so i will leave that out of there. >> also, if you look at the, from beginning to end, he was interested in management. when you're looking at both parts of the transition. and at the end, we think of just having one president at a time, but they were very careful to involve the obama people because they had run out of juice, out of political juice. to the work of an extension of t.a.r.p. and if they wanted to do a bailout, they were going to have to do it. but bush was willing to help as far as he could. so on the sunday after thanksgiving, there was a meeting at the treasury department between the obama

team, their financial team -- >> economic team, yeah. >> and in that meeting they discussed the auto bailout. and what the others brought to was that they would be willing to name an auto czar if they could go along with it, but they assumed they would take anybody that they wanted, that the obama people wanted to name. so that they could get started on the auto bailout early. this was not something in the end of the obama people wanted to do. i think looking back at the roosevelt, hoover to roosevelt transition, roosevelt didn't want to get involved in hoover's actions. and they decided against it because they would become their problem as well. by the bush people were willing

to make the effort. >> if i could just follow up on action at that point i think martha illustrates well, an argument, it seems to be implicit in much of paper and your book and what you just said that there wasn't this was a very organized, bush's management style for the transition, 2008, 2009, was indicative of management style of the presidency at that is consequential for his legacy. i think that's what i took from part of what you were saying, and then for shirley and anne graham i think the two digits of a bushes political ideology. it's not within orthodox conservative, was he a hybrid conservative, how did the policy, you're both saying rather look at his policies we have to understand is ideology, in overtime as how you view that ideology will shape how you view his legacy, right? possessing