>> jeffrey ingold director of southern methodist university will discuss his book when the world came new with george h.w. bush and the end of the cold war.

. >> if you had to describe george herbert walker bush to someone who has never met him or seen him what would you say? mckee is a gentle man who comes up with a traditional american values to be part of the elite that really describes george bush he was born well-off with the best education in the best of training but yet spent his entire life to give more back and really was a gentle man you don't see much in american politics. >> where did it start quick. >> his mother who constantly told him it is your responsibility as a person to give back and like she stressed the team was more important than individual especially in athletics with

baseball in college the matter how me times he would say harrell one - - look what i did she said how did the team do that the broader success was more important. >> cspan: dad was born in columbus, ohio. >> he was from a manufacturing family but he realized the importance of thinking that both parents come from well-established families so he grew up in the center of new york but really in the financial orbit in the center of a financial institution for american foreign policy in particular. >> cspan: where did he go to school? b mckee went to private school but more importantly he went

to yale after he came back from college. >> cspan: go back to high school. >> he spends the middle years in the south pacific and upon graduation he and his friends all rush to register before they got jobs to volunteer despite the fact george bush's parents and even the graduation speaker that was the secretary of four close family friend of the war go to college go for a year or two and then they could become officers with a little more understanding that bush and his comrades had no interest in that the united states was just attacked and they wanted to get into the fight when it was over they didn't realize how long it would go he was 18

when he enlisted with his family connections paid off they did not keep him from enlisting he went into the navy they got him a spot that he ultimately becomes one of the youngest naval aviators in the entire pacific theater used to say he was the youngest until one of the germans younger showed up remarkably young to have that sort of responsibility spending several years in training then to get sent off to tokyo. and also to take care of them and under his command at only 19 or 20 years old. he talked about everything

else every other question i asked him he was wonderful multiple conversations but ask him about this particular moment we were on a plane together thinking this is the perfect moment to experience this he turned to me it was a double stuffed oreo and said what else you got? the idea being i am not talking about this it is off-topic. >> cspan: why? with september 2nd 1844 he and his crew on the bombing mission and his plane was hit and he had to hold the bomber

aloft and then after dropping the bombs he told his crew now time to bail he actually hit his head on the table and then realized he was in the water all alone there were no survivors he was the only one that actually survived so that haunted him to this day there's not a day that goes by he doesn't think of the two crewmembers under his command. >> cspan: why did they survive quick. >> that is largely one of those is impossible to answer it is pretty clear from the evidence they were most likely killed as the enemy shrapnel. a few years ago bush had an opportunity to go visit the

island does that make amends to our. at that point they spotted a second parachute that said one of him was alive long enough to get out of the plane. should he have stayed in the cockpit longer? there was no way to answer but to do something sacrificial was left guilty the rest of his lif life. he was in a small raft in the ocean he was vomiting taking on a tremendous amount of seawater after the adrenaline left and his current one - -

the raft is moving toward the island so we subsequently found out that other pilots shot down were later killed by the japanese with cannibalism. not knowing that bad capture is not good paddled furiously the other direction and ultimately the american submarine pick some up and spends the next month underwater with the crew doing missions until they could get back to base. cspan: what does he get out quick. >> 1945 he had more training for combat missions in fact, after he was shot down he could have taken a break at that point but he went right back to his unit to keep up the fight and not let his comrades down 1945 he just married barbara bush and the

news comes out the war is over with the atomic bombing brought the war to a quicker end than expected and within three months he was out of the service it on to the next step of life which was yale. cspan: what happened they are quick. >> he was part of an interesting cadre of students for those that had not been there and came back with a flurry so much so that they had to build huts for them so they did a program of studies that he could graduate in three years phi beta kappa in economics with the skull & bones society essentially the single most prestigious society you could be at graduating from yale but also

he was there with his wife and small son george. in fact, when my favorite discoveries of the entire book that both george's lived on in the apartment complex of the president and said please don't put up the dirty laundry of george's diapers but how in six months could go from the terror for her and in life of new haven. cspan: serving in the senate 52 through 63 what impact did that have on his life quick. >> it really demonstrated the kind of service that his mother had been describing her entire life but also that his father exemplified which was

the service of compromise. prescott bush was not a firebrand but the classic eisenhower republican. eisenhower's favorite golfing buddy. eisenhower said i like to play with bush because he will not let me win. he would be willing to reach across the aisle to have extraordinary legislation but the tales of going behind the scenes coming together that is so difficult to conceive of when did george herbert walker bush moved to texas? that was part of the adventure after he graduates he has an opportunity to go to new york

and work in his father's investment house he decides i need to make my life on my own and make my own way. and winds up in odessa texas so he began to work as a salesman for the oil company and it was a great moment to understand on a profound level on the one hand was able to take the leap of faith to say i will try something new not rest on the laurels of my family but on the other hand, he goes down to texas with a very large check from investors back home and is working for a family friend and if texas doesn't work out there is always a job in new york it was an adventure but

there was a very large net. >> when did you start working on the book by accident i was teaching at the bush school of government with international relations i just finished my first book which was a study of british aviation. my department chair said what is your next book going to be quicksand said there is a diary you might find interesting. it turns out it was bush's diary from the time he was ambassador to china. and it was fascinating to see a policymaker but then how

many years before it finally went into practice. so as recently as a historian i never thought i'd find myself working on it became more and more interesting not just the diplomacy that was masterful but also the end of the cold war more broadly and struck time and again he should not be here the cold war and its end and the collapse of a great power and great powers collapse invariably wars in sue and if you are laying bets about how the cold war ends 1988 or 1989 we have really good odds and the fact it is happenstance.

cspan: he hasn't been president 26 years how old we do have been in 1982 quick. >> i graduated high school in 1991 i remember the goal for a very clearly i have to concede it was football season and there were cheerleaders and i don't recall. i grew up in omaha. cspan: where did you go to college? for mac cornell studying history. i wanted to be a historian. cspan: your phd? and your first job? . >> at yale insecurities studies working only one house

down from where george bush was a student. cspan: how long we at texas a&m? . >> eight years after i left jail and went to the university of pennsylvania teaching their international relations program my wife is also a historian she was teaching at rutgers and got a call that said if you'd like to live in the same town we have two jobs for you so i have to admit the first time i went i knew where texas was but i did pull out the map to find out exactly where college station was. >> it was a difficult decision we really loved it but at that point preparing to open the george w. bush library they had decided to create a brand-new sensor to study the presidency.

i don't mean to suggest otherwise but you have something purely scholarly so when the opportunity arose to create a new one from scratch. cspan: bush was here 1998 with his book that was not mmr but i want to run a video that's not very long about the power of the oval office i know we are jumping way ahead but i want your reaction. >> every president i think can confirm that experience i will get him and then there is something about the office itself and the respect all americans feel where you just don't feel like bawling out the president or taking him on

or doing what you told your colleagues would do. >> when he was in china, he was eventually called back to run the cia he didn't want to do he thought to be honest that was a political move and said he remembered his father saying if the present ask you to do something for your country the answer is yes that sentiment really embodies his sense of obligation not to necessarily be a president in his own right but to hold the presidency up to hand it off to the next person and he did suitor that he would like but he embodied power and consistency.

so that respective office is difficult to put into words. cspan: how often did you interview him? mimic my first meeting in college station once i got to know him better would come to concerts. i use to bring him into the foreign-policy class but then to tell the historians he was showing up to see the looks on their faces. but mister president you are not getting it or asking penetrating hard questions. like you would with generals or senators but he was such a

gentle and thoughtful man and considerate he was marvelous to work with but i had been interviewing him for five years at that point sometimes many times a month. cspan: how did you keep records of any free interview one - - every interview? . >> i'm have records i'm sure the fbi could figure out how to do it but i audiotaped we had a morning session and said his office two or three hours to talk about the end of the cold war and his life then go to lunch it was a heavy experience to go with the secret service to go to lunch with the president because people don't normally stand

and applaud when i walk in the room. cspan: we can do this quickly but go through his life to say something about that. a us representative in the house. >> that moment he stood up to his constituents and voted for the fair housing act which is remarkably unpopular even though he expected it could ruin his career ultimately he went back to his district and explained the vote he was just visiting americans in vietnam and could not stomach the idea the african-american or hispanic or anyone else putting their lives on the lighting combat could not come home to buy a house. he voted that bill and then to give a higher purpose to service and then was us

ambassador? . >> i would say those were the most active years of his life. he ran for the united states senate but then to run against of someone who was more than george w. bush and he lost that election but in the back pocket he had a promise from president nixon that if he did this and it didn't work out, the nixon administration would take care of him so he actually went to richard nixon and said i think i would like to be treasury secretary. to which nixon replied you are not qualified he actually said

something worse the treasury secretary has to be somebody who can someday be president and he is not it. so then to be at the united nations at which point george bush at that point had zero diplomatic experience and he wisely turned that into a virtue to explained to the staff if he did nothing he would do exactly what kissinger said and that is what kissinger wanted to hear. cspan: he began as the chair of the rnc after 21 months middle of watergate? mimic because the president asked if the un experience was his happiest time of life that is what enthralled him than that time was the worst

politically because president nixon decided to shake it up and then they decided that's the person that you want and then it became difficult with watergate and the unenviable job to go out on the stump every day to defend the president increasingly over time who came to believe and then know was lying to him. not so much they had been lied to but that is what he encourages the makes it one - - resignation. >> he went to china for only 14 months.

why? . >> and then as a reward and then to be forwarded as vice president and then to give a nice landing place and then to keep people involved they are not involved in the actual conspiracy but it is an amazing story how they got to china because and then to continue in that vein and then it was a chance to become us ambassador to france so bush turn those down and said i would rather be in china.

first, frankly to enhance the social budget from their own bank account and then had two kids to put through college. he also thought going to china would be an adventure and something completely brand-new and foreign and looking at the opportunities of his life i wish i was a fly on the wall when he came back to inform barbara they were going to china. cspan: 357 days director of the cia how did that come about? . >> the long-term vestige of the difficulties of watergate and vi - - vietnam cia was under pressure at this point and gerald ford moves people around within the cabinet to

be cia director. and to believe in the theory that donald rumsfeld chief of staff one of the reasons he thought it was good for bush to take the job and then with rumsfeld competitors and with the added bonus for rumsfeld. . >> old enough to remember there was the washington wire in the "wall street journal" that predicted that george bush and donald rumsfeld would run for president so when did he start thinking about that? . >> george bush was so popular in charismatic his entire life

that people would often say you should run for president. i think he began to seriously consider in the seventies the first documented case i found that he wanted to be president was in china he would come back in 76 or 80 but also that realistic proposition maybe you're not the inside candidate but you could come from the outside. cspan: when did he first run? . >> 1980. going back to cia-- when carter wins bush asks if he could stay on so he's days on

for the next three years and goes back to houston but most of the time is on the road and 1980 he runs against ronald reagan ultimately the best first challenge that he manages to win the iowa caucuses at that point they assumed that was conventional wisdom putting too much time into iowa visiting every single county he wins the iowa caucus and then it goes downhill from there once reagan gets full attention. bush is the last man standing so that gives the most important historical phrases and criticisms about reagan because bush comes up on the campaign trail voodoo

economics to describe trickle-down but we forget it is reagan's vice president to use that when they were both going for the top job. 1980 convention was a weird one historically because there began to be talks that perhaps ronald reagan would choose gerald ford to come back and be his vice president. somebody had to be in charge

ultimately and ronald reagan had to turn and find someone to be vice presidents and the logical choice for the next man up. both to the sense of opportunism and the basic character but the primary campaign to work together over the next eight years >> host: when roger ailes became a close confidant and advisor to george w. bush? >> guest: when he had gotten to the national level politics of being able to surround himself with a people who would do the dirty work that needs to get done as he saw it.

play politics as tough as possible. okay i will use the word dirty and bush would always have a sense of removal he could say i did not order that or i did not know about the plan for example despite the fact that his campaign knew the ad was going to run with willie horton being the famous racially charged advertisement the bush campaign ran in 1988. there was always somebody around him that could be the hitman and they played that role. c-span: why did you believe him when he said he didn't know about willie horton? horton? >> guest: i see no documentation that said h but sd and people like atwater in particular. this is not to alleviate any guilt in the situations.

it does give a sense of the tone to go for the win. he wanted somebody else to do it. c-span: when ronald reagan was president, george bush as vice president wasn't invited to the quarters and had no time together except for the lunches they had is that a two-story and did you ask the president about that? >> guest: i never asked the president about that because the more interesting aspect would have been asking ronald reagan george bush didn't make it when reagan was president essentially nobody made it into the residence when reagan was president. the personal enigma he was

gregarious and liked to spend time by himself with his wife. a typical evening was to eat tv dinners or at least a tv tray and watch old movies together. that is how they like to be. one could never get too close to ronald reagan. nobody that we could call a true friend. >> host: what are the chances that he would have been elected president if he were not selected by ronald reagan as vice president? >> guest: i've never considered that question. i think he would have answered in 1984 to 88 election as one of

the pack. one of the remarkable things about the primary in 1987 and 88 is how far most of the candidates are trying to run away from the legacy. we think of ronald reagan of course through the lens of history as someone who is remarkably popular at the end. he was personally popular when his policies were not so specially the cold war and he still had to change the iran contra so most of the candidates were trying to criticize the legacy and i think given his experience in 1980 had he not a member of the administration he would have been first in line to criticize him in 1988. c-span: you start by telling about a man named gorbachev. here is video from the interview

in 1988. when is the first time you met him? >> when he was vice president, when he assumed office, the dave assumed office i was vice president and i came back to ronald reagan and said this man is different, much more open, much less inclined to turn to his aid to tell them what to s say. c-span: why did you start your book with a gorbachev story >> guest: i think it is silly to say that any one person is responsible for ending the cold war but if yo you have to shoot somebody more responsible if it be mikhail gorbachev. he's the central catalyst that gets the explosion started, the democratic explosion. the desire to reform the soviet union, not to eradicate it, but to reform and revitalize set in

motion the democratic revolution that brought down his country's entire. entire. and his interaction was critical and fascinating to me that in 1987 when i described their first limousine ride together in washington, d.c., gorbachev is arguablwasarguably the most famn the world and bush was trying to become the most powerful man in the world but the odds were not so much stacked against him but he was clearly uncertain if he was going to get the republican nomination and the idea that you have this incredibly popular rock star of a foreign leader were embraced by the american people than their own vice president was a dramatic moment for me. >> host: c-span: how much did you read the? >> guest: i've for periods before his presidency. i haven't read all of the excerpts during the presidency. my understanding is they are going to be released on his

passing. from his time in china it is particularly fascinating because i worked on it but also it gives an insight into how he liked to do the diary. he would dictate it at the end of the day and be honest often timeto be honestoften times aftw drinks at the end of the night so we got some really frank discussions from the president talking to himself, but really talking so it reads like you were listening to him because it is his own words. >> host: here he is talking about his diary. >> guest: first i was sporadic and not that i ever thought it would be transcribed verbatim but i would use it as a personal reference. some of these things make me sound like dana carvey but nevertheless, i tried to do it religiously and then i would

forget it. subsequently it was transcribed quite a bit later. c-span: when you read it was that on microfilm or the actual id self? >> guest: the audio tapes had been lost for the 1970s and so all we had from the 1970s were transcripts that have been done and this is important, transcripts that were done of audio tapes by people back in houston from his office in houston sometimes i hear or two after bush had recorded them in china and remember bush doesn't speak chinese and he's had a few drinks as they mentioned from time to time coming trying to describe people he met and to be transcribed by people who didn't speak chinese and trying to imagine what he might have been trying to say so the most fascinating and difficult part was trying to figure out exactly who was he talking about and i

think we got most of it i will tell you an interesting and important story about that as the book was going to press we've received a call from his office, princeton university published this book we received a call from the president's office saying the chinese have gone to visit president bush and brent scowcroft because they have concerns about what i say in the book. there are some problems or mistakes is the word they used. first we have to ask how they got a copy. c-span: was plaintiff's this? >> guest: c-span: before the book is published they had a copy. did you have any idea how they got a copy? >> guest: there were copies that have been circulating around. i don't think it is the greatest case of espionage but president bush didn't have a copy because one of the rules we set out in the arrangement is that he would never see the book until it was

published because he couldn't have any influence in the scholarly interpretations and he could agree to that in a heartbeat. what was fascinating to me is that chinese complaint about the mistakes and my first reaction as a researcher was to say this is great i must have misidentified people they are going to help me get it right. what they actually were upset about is the fact i referred to tiananmen square crackdown or as a massacre or as a bloody event and they wanted me to change the language, for example i suggested would you prefer brouhaha instead. there was no way we were going to change the language and that's why to this day there's s no official chinese edition of the book, because the chinese government wouldn't allow it to be published with those as they put it mistakes. you can still buy bootleg copies but not an official one. >> host: c-span: how many people were killed during tiananmen square?

>> guest: two to 3,000. there is no way of getting a great answer. c-span: why did they think you would change the language to anything? >> guest: at that time we were negotiating we haven't gotten to this age of sending out a copy but we were planning to negotiate to sell the rights around the world for this book. china was going to be a big market we thought because it was about china and there was a lot of money at stake and they thought if they got us to change the words that we would go ahead with the publication not realizing that my integrity and princeton university press was worth more than any money we could make. c-span: what kind of people came to you from china but >> guest: they came to brent scowcroft's office, the national

security advisor and also have ip-based communication with president bush's office and the information is then transmitted to me from his office and to their credit again they wanted to know what the chinese were asking because ultimately it was my decision whether or not we've are going to change words. president bush didn't have the authority to change words in my book. they wanted me to have the decision but they also said we expect you will do what is right. c-span: did brent scowcroft have clients at the time? >> guest: i wouldn't be able to say. i could presume that i wouldn't be able to say. c-span: there's so much to ask about with so little time, so i want to go to another major event, the fall of the wall. how much responsibility did george bush have? >> guest: zero. it is to say bush had a tremendous responsibility for making sure gorbachev's reforms continued to go peacefully that

is to say bush walked a tightrope through the first years of his administration knowing that if he pushed too hard on the soviets, that could cause a conservative revolution against the other democratic revolutions of eastern europe but if he does too easy on gorbachev and perhaps that could also cause a kind of revolution because the opponents, and he had many might say you are too close to the americans you must not have our interests at heart. that is the big influence that he had on the immediate fall of the wall. it was a surprise. it was actually a mistake that he's german spokesman read the wrong memo on television giving the wrong information, giving people the impression they had the right to cross the border and automatically when tens of thousands of people saw it on tv and rushed to the gates, they made the choice that they should open up rather than throw the crowd found rather than having

tiananmen square. c-span: president bush had been the head of the cia. the day not have any information this kind of thing was going to happen? >> guest: wasn't supposed to happen. it was in the week. in fact, i have a wonderful memo from about two days before the wall fell from bush's national security council, an internal memo that essentially says, and i'm paraphrasing, we should think about the fact that there might be a change in the border status and we should start planning how we might want to put together a committee to think about how we want to react. that is a bureaucratic start something that you expect isn't going to happen for six months or a year or maybe never. most of the people who saw the berlin wall fall had the same reaction which was this is something we never thought we would see in our lifetimes. most politicians especially german who would talk about a unified germany would talk about tearing down the division between east and west and knew

they could talk about that in the same way they could say we are also going to go to jupiter. it is easy to say because no one thought it would happen and then it happened to everyone's surprise. c-span: did you hear anything about mr. gorbachev that surprised you? >> guest: one thing that was quite interesting to me was more about bush and the idea of giving oral history, interviews as a historian i find both wonderful and frustrating in many ways because people have a marvelous ability to forget the details and the chronology and remember the end result and to push it back to the beginning. how many times have you been in a conversation with someone that says you know what really matters, that's the end result is the first time i started talking about his concerns about gorbachev in 1989, and i have boxes and boxes of memos from his administration saying we

don't know that we can trust this guy, he said at that time to me i always trusted gorbachev, he seemed trustworthy and i think the reason was because he had come to consider by that .20 years later gorbachev is not only trustworthy that an actual personal friend and once you're a friend of his, that is a category that you must have always been. >> host: c-span: talking about his closeness to mikhail gorbachev. >> guest: pretty darn close. going back to the question about emotionally close, because he, i remember when my last talk with him while he was in office it was maybe christmas eve for new year's eve and it was very emotional as he said goodbye. i'm close to gorbachev.

c-span: how much have they talked since then? >> guest: i can't answer for the last couple of years to be honest. i know they were communicating into the early 20s era zeroes, but gorbachev has remained an unpopular figure in russia and also has in some ways become more nationalistic than he used to be and of course president bush has moved on with his retirement. c-span: iraq. we could talk about that for a couple of hours, but what did you learn from president bush about his decision to go to iraq that we didn't know? >> guest: the most important thing is threefold. first is just how much iraq was for him and those around him not about the middle east the end of the cold war which is to say they understood the berlin wall had fallen at this time and do union seemed to be transforming rapidly at this time and they

understood the world had changed and however the international community chose to meet the threat of violence for the first time after the change would set the pattern for decades to come and iraq mattered but ultimately what mattered most was the post cold war sentiment they were trying to create. the second thing that was fascinating about the gulf war is that bush was fully prepared to go to war in january of 91 with 500,000 american troops in the region, ready to go even if congress, on the eve of the battle, had voted against giving him authorization. we have to remember he was a remarkably close vote, only a few votes tipped the balance. and ultimately bush wrote numerous times in his diary and it's been confirmed by many people in upper levels of his administration that even if he lost the vote, he was still going to use his authority to

send american troops into combat, which he recognized with a clearly impeachable offense. but he actually had an interesting rationale. he thought it was the right thing to do that saddam hussein had to be taken out at that point. the second coming he thought we were going to win this war and quickly. presidents to win the war quickly are popular and i would like to see congress tried to impeach you within 90% approval ratings to heat up before the hearings could possibly get moving, it would have already been over by several weeks so he was willing to take that risk. c-span: what did he say when he was asked why he didn't come in to take saddam hussein out in 1991 and his own ends up having to do it years later? >> guest: every member will give you the same answer which is also really out by the evidence as well that no one in 1991 even the bush administration including dick cheney thought it was a good idea to go south to baghdad and

the reasons they gave are haunting for us today. they suggested they would treat us like a foreign occupying force and they suggested that it would create ethnic and religious tension that would lead to the civil war ended with a tremendous strain on the palestinian issue which is at the center of so much of the public and frankly bush recognized if you own the iraq metaphorically speaking you were responsible for it and that was the responsibility the united states either shut and take or perhaps wouldn't even be able to be successful at and we don't need to because the expectation is that the threat has been to be removed. saddam hussein is most likely going to die from his own officers that was the most likely at that point. brian macklin is the last time you talked to him? >> guest: a few weeks ago. c-span: what was his reaction to the book? >> guest: i think he enjoyed it.

i had the great privilege of going down a couple of times and reading the book to him and mrs. bush before she passed and then also president bush himself at kennebunkport. it is a remarkable opportunity very few historians ever gets to read their work to their subject. c-span: why did you do that and why did he listen? >> guest: first of all because i thought it would be really cool, but second because president bush asked, or his staff asked because he was having difficulty with his eyes and couldn't read as much as he would like to. people were reading to him daily and he thought this would be a book you would want to read and we have a very positive relationship and it would be a chance to catch up. i do remember saying most people

have audiotapes and it was explained to me when you were a former president of the united states people read to you. c-span: i don't want to exaggerate what you are critical of him in the book. >> guest: frequently. c-span: did he avoid reading that part? >> guest: inadvertently it was a perfect wasn't intending to which is the budget deal and the no new taxes pledge. i'd forgotten that was part of my telling of the gulf war story only because it's a moment historian thinks a bright shining moment for bush but clearly it's difficult for him. he has been remarkably supportive in a way that should be in the and two other people who formerly held power in that he'll be stated and always understood that the job of people who make history and the people who write history are fundamentally different and have to be separate and his job was

to answer every question as truthfully as he could and my job was to assess things. i found many things in the book that i think he was misinformed or mistaken. overwhelmingly an extraordinarily impressed by the job he did especially as a diplomat. he also heroes tricks with time to time. c-span: a clip of him talking about personal diplomacy. >> guest: i believed, and i tried to practice this when i was vice president and long before that, that you are better, you have a better chance of succeeding if you know a person, know his heart beat, knoheartbeat, knowabout the fame interested in those things. c-span: were you able to qualify the number of handwritten notes or even typed out on little cards, did you ever get any statistics?

>> guest: i don't know that people can count that high. anybody as prolific as he was i can't say nobody was certainly no president has been as prolific as a letter writer, note writer and a person who maintain personal contact across his entire life. i understood that the british christmas card list was over 25,000 people. once he became a friend of george bush, you remained that way and he believed the personal touch was built over time so one of the amazing things that we were able to get declassified and pull out of the library to write this history were all of the phone calls and transcripts that he had with foreign leaders around the world so every time g he picked up the phone to talk to a foreign leader, we have the transcript. what's amazing is how little talking he did. he often claims to call people up, president of australia, zimbabwe and say what's going on

in your world, what do you think about the situation and just listen and that was useful for gathering information but then subsequently when you then call someone to ask for a favor they know it's not the first time you are calling that you have a relationship and they know they are interested in you as well. c-span: what effect did the parkinsons have on him? >> guest: i don't feel comfortable discussing his medical conditions. it's difficult for anyone to go through that. he has difficulty walking and the difficulty doing a lot of things he used to love. c-span: does he talk about that at all? >> guest: not with the. c-span: is there anything more you want to do on the story? >> guest: a comparison between the invasions of 1991 and 2003

needs to be done because i think the comparison between the two is quite important that i want to go back to something else just as a matter of personal effects. i did have a relationship he treated me very well and was the highlight of my career unexpectedly to work with him but i always maintained i had a distance and one way that i tried to maintain that was whenever i was writing and i found myself saying i wonder how the president is going to react to that word or sentence i would stop and push myself away and say you cannot in any way think about him while you are writing this. november 17, 2018. let's look at the cover again when the world seemed to george h. w. bush and the end of the cold war and our guest thank you

very much for joining us. >> guest: thanks a lot ♪ former president george h. w. bush died friday at 94-years-o 94-years-old. in riverside we spoke with local author andit