had happened. we didn't -- at first we got conflicting reports as to whether he'd actually been hit. what -- what most people don't know is that president reagan came very close to dying from -- from -- not from the wound quite frankly but from an infection that set in after they had performed surgery on him. that -- that's probably well known out there now, but at the time it wasn't particularly well known, but it was quite a shock to those of us in the white house. we were new. a lot of us were new to the job, and then to have the president shot in an assassination attempt. you don't know whether he's going to live or not, it was very traumatic. it was a very difficult period. one of the things that we did or i should say didn't do which was receive a lot of attention, is we did not invoke the 25th

amendment which says that when the president becomes incapacitated the cabinet is to meet and turn power over to the vice president. well, the vice president was in texas when president reagan was shot. of course, he got the communication and got on air force two and was headed back to washington. i was over at the hospital with the other senior white house advisers, and -- and we talked about whether to -- and president reagan was about to go into surgery. and we talked about whether to invoke the 25th amendment. we concluded that it would not be the right thing to do because the doctors told us he would only be under the anesthetic for a very short period of time. remember, this was back in the cold war when the threat of nuclear conflict was still quite alive, but we didn't think it would be the right thing to do, and i will -- i will say this. the vice president of the united states, george h.w. bush, was -- was not anxious to see the 25th

amendment invoked because he had been the last competitor standing against ronald reagan in the nomination fight in 1980. and he didn't want people to think somehow he was trying to take over some power. i had been his campaign manager. i was the white house chief of staff. if i had said we're going to invoke the 25th amendment and give power to george bush, there might have been a little more than a little muttering in the white house, so -- so we decided not to do that, but i -- i will say this. i had the concurrence of president reagan's longtime advisers in taking that course. edwin meese agreed with me and some others, and as it turned out everything was fine. president -- vice president bush was so conscious of the fact that he had been the last standing competitor that when he came back to washington they were going to take the t?qf

where the president lands. i'm not going to land there. we're going to go to the naval observatory which was the vice president's residence. >> what was the relationship between president ford and president reagan like, especially after the 1976 primary challenge? >> well, you want me -- oh, that's a comparison question. i don't think i'm giving away any secrets to say not all that good at that time. it later became -- it later became better. that was a very tough primary, and it's -- it's quite natural that -- with competition like that, there's going to be some tension, and there was some, and there was some on -- on both sides. i have written two books about my political and public service. the last one was more about my political service, and what -- i was telling susan earlier. there's a chapter in there

earlier where i'm sitting in the oval office with president reagan, just the two of us, because i was his chief of staff, even though i ran two campaigns against him, get this, get this, i was president ford's delegate hunter in the contest of the nomination against president reagan and then we won and i was george h.w. bush's campaign manager against ronald reagan in the fight to the nomination, 1980, and yet ronald reagan asked me to be his white house chief of staff. now, somebody explain that to me. and we were -- we were sitting in the white house just reflecting on a lot of these events, and i said, you know, mr. president, i said if president ford had asked you to -- to come on the ticket with him in 1976, it's my opinion he would have been elected. we would have won that election. that 10,000 votes would not have been a problem, and -- and you

might never have been president, and he said that's probably right. he said, but i will tell you this, jim. if the president had asked me to take that position, i would have felt duty bound to do it. now, that's not totally consistent with what the reagan campaign told the ford campaign in 1976 when we said let's -- after the nomination fight. we said let's have a unity meeting, and the reagan campaign said we'll have a unity meeting provided you won't ask governor reagan to be on the ticket, and we said okay because president ford didn't want to ask him to be on the ticket, and reagan didn't want to be on the ticket. you asked about the tension. there it was, okay? >> what was your biggest challenge as secretary of state in the bush 41 administration? >> well, you know, i've said to people that i was an extraordinarily fortunate individual to be secretary of state when i was. we used to live in a bipolar

world where we had the soviet union and the united states. it was the cold war, and then the soviet union collapsed. communism -- soviet union imploded. communism collapsed. the wall came down, and we were in a unipolar world. the united states was the only superpower out there, and everybody wanted to get close to uncle whiskers, and i was secretary of state at the time. my job was a hell of a lot easier because everybody wanted to get close to the only remaining superpower. and so we got a lot of things done. what did we do? we were able to preside over a peaceful end to the cold war. the cold war didn't have to end becausefully. it could have ended with a bang instead of a whimper. we had the first gulf war where we kicked iraq out of kuwait with really minimal casualties, and by the way, we got other countries to pay for it. we had the madrid peace conference where israel and all

of her arab neighbors sat down face-to-face to talk peace for the first time. we had the unification of germany and a lot of things happened. you asked me what the toughest challenge was. trying to figure out -- i really believe this, trying to figure out where to concentrate because we were in such a position -- we were in a position to get so many things done and trying to figure out exactly what to concentrate on. i'm not sure we handled the breakup of the former yugoslavia very well. that was a -- that was perhaps the -- the greatest challenge. >> as secretary of state, what were your experiences with the fall of the berlin wall? >> well, we were -- we were fortunate to -- to be in power when it happened, and i -- i credit every american president, democrat and republican going all the way back to the beginning of the cold war, for

the fact that america was triumphant in the cold war because every president, democrat or republican, and every administration was steadfast in fighting the cold war on behalf of the american people, and that's why we ultimately prevailed. i happen to be hosting a lunch in the dining room state department for korson aquino who was the president of the philippines when i got a message from the under secretary of state for political affairs saying these germans were going to let people go through the wall. i could tell that was going to be big, big stuff, and it was, and by nightfall it was huge. and so i picked up the phone and called president bush and excused myself from dinner and went over to the white house. we spent the rest of the day over there talking about how we were going to -- how we were going to deal with that matter. but we were -- i think we did it

right. as i said, we continued to work president bush number 41 was smart enough not to dance on the wall. everybody -- the press were all over him saying why aren't you showing more emotion? you've won a 40-year conflict here, and you're just taking it as a matter of fact. well, he didn't want to stick it in the eye of gorbachev and the continuing leadership of the soviet union because he knew we had to continue to work with them to make sure that everything came from -- everything ended totally peacefully, and we did that. and one of the most important things we did, i think, was to unify germany in peace and freedom as a member of the north atlantic treaty organization. we didn't have very long to get that done. we had a narrow window of opportunity, but we got it done, and it's still now one germany, and the it's really important that that get done in that short time frame. >> we're going to go back to a ford administration question that we talked about a little bit earlier today when we were

touring the exhibits. what do you think was the impact of the helsinki accords on the cold war? >> i think that was a -- i think that's one of the most significant accomplishments of president ford and that it's -- it's really been underreported and underappreciated. the helsinki accords gave everyone who -- who wanted to support freedom for captive people, captive people of eastern and central europe or elsewhere in arab countries, gave them the -- the -- gave them a chance to argue for freedom and human rights and individual freedoms for people because that's some of the things that were contained in the helsinki accords. as i told you when we were touring the exhibits, one of the things that was in the accords though that has been observed by -- by its breach is a

provision in the helsinki accord saying borders will only be changed through peaceful means. that was one of the problems we had in the breakup of the former yugoslavia. these countries wanted slovenia, croatia, some of them wanted to declare independence, seize the border posts around them, and i went over to belgrade and i said if you do this, you're going to kick off one heck of a civil war. there were five -- you know, yugoslavia was only kept together by the ashore terrorism and totalitarianism of tito and once they started agitating for separation, we told them we thought it would end up in a big civil war, and it did. but the helsinki accords was a very, very important achievement of president ford's administration. >> help us understand why bush 41 was not successful in being re-elected. >> well, i would say there are three reasons.

first of all, he had a sorry campaign manager, me. [ laughter ] but secondly -- there were three reasons. we'd been there 12 years, okay? i mean, two reagan terms, bush was reagan's vice president. we'd been there two reagan terms. that's eight years and one bush term. the press particularly were tired of us. they really were tired of us, and we were climbing a high -- a tough mountain. there was another minimum wagon problem. that's reason number one. i think a lot of people were tired of us. we'd been there 12 years. it's very hard to keep the white house for more than eight years, for any party, if you go back and look at history. there's not many times when it's happened, and we had kept it for 12. secondly, we had a little fellow from texas named ross perot that

you may or may not have heard of, and -- and he took -- ross perot took 19% of the vote. clinton got 43%. bush got 38% and perot got 19%, and our polling showed us perot was taking two out of three votes and when you take that and you get 51%. when people say he didn't cost you the election i think he did. i'll say it again. i thought he did for 20 years, and i still think he did, but the third thing was our fault, absolutely, and that is instead of going up to capitol hill in january of 1992 when president bush 41 was at 90% approval rating and -- and saying, okay, desert storm was a great

success. now we're going to do domestic storm and i'm going to focus on the domestic problems facing this country, and here's an economic program that's going to get that done, if we had done that i think we might have won that election notwithstanding ross perot, but we didn't do that, and that was a mistake. >> let's talk about another election, and this is the one in 2000 with the vote recount. we have two questions about what are the common misperceptions about the events surrounding the recount, and just another on that, could you discuss that? >> i can discuss the recount. i don't know what people's misconceptions are about it. i can tell you a few factual things. number one, we were never behind in any count whatsoever, ever of all the counts that were taken. the press went in -- you know, all the hanging chads and ballots were all saved. the "new york times," miami -- a

miami paper, i can't remember which one, these are not exactly fans of republican candidates often. they went and did their own survey of these ballots, and they said under no scenario could gore have won after they looked at those ballots, so there's a fairly independent look at it. i think that -- i think it's -- i used to say that after the 1976 election where we lost by only 10,000 votes out of 81 million, i remember thinking to myself that night at 3:30 in the morning, boy, is this something. this is -- this is the closest -- this is going to be the closest presidential election of your lifetime. well, it wasn't the closest presidential election in my life. 537 votes. but a couple of other things i'll say about that, in addition to the fact that we never were -- never lost a recount.

we were never behind in the count. we won any number of court cases, and, yes, we won the supreme court -- the final case, and a lot of people say oh, well, you were just given the presidency on a 5-4 decision of the united states supreme court. that's simply not true. the vote on constitutionality in that case in the supreme court of the united states was 7-2. justice breyer, a democrat, voted with the republicans and justice souter voted -- voted with a dissenting democrat, i think justice ginsberg so in fact you had a bipartisan decision on constitutionality and then they took up the question of remedy after they said that the scheme that the florida legislature has put in place for recount is -- is illegal, unconstitutional, and then they said the time has

expired for further recount because by gore's own admission, the critical date was december 12th and this was december 11th. they said there's no longer any time to count. the gore campaign made a big mistake when they asked for recounts in only four counties, and they were pro-democratic counties, all of them, very heavy democratic counties, and they asked for a recount instead of a statewide recounty this should have come in. when they did that, that gave us the high ground, and their mantra was count every vote, count every vote. our mantra was, look, we've counted them five times, six times, every time and every time we count them we win, and -- and so finally the supreme court said, yeah, that's right. the supreme court also said that the florida legislature could not change the rules of the game after the game had started, and underftímé-h the constitution

legislatures of the very states have the ability to -- to determine how presidential electors are selected and florida had a law, but once all this recount business started and all this multiplicity of lawsuit, and by the way, we had a whole lot of lawsuits, i mean, maybe hundreds, that the supreme court said you can't change the rules of the game after it started. >> you'll be pleased to know that we're going to move from the presidents with whom you've worked to some current affairs questions. following the post-cold war euphoria, how and when did things go wrong leading to the difficult situation that the u.s. finds itself in today? >> well, i don't buy the assumption that the united states is in decline. i mean, you go out and you read the papers today. everybody is oh, it's terrible. we're in such bad shape. if we're in such bad shape why is it that everybody wants to come here? nobody wants to go anywhere else. we're not -- we're not in good shape today.

we have some humongous problems. our big debt bomb out there. we have debt-to-gdp of over 100% program for the next five years. that's unsustainable. we continue to spend beyond our means. we've got to find a way to do something about that. but i don't buy the argument that we're on the downhill slide. when i was treasury secretary for president reagan in 1986, the jackpots were coming into the united states buying up everything. remember, they were buying up radio city and everybody was saying, well, america's down the tubes. japan is going to own the world. guess what. it didn't happen, and they have just had 15 years of terrible economic times. we got a lot of things going for us that others don't. you know, people compare us to china. well, china's growth is really a very amazing thing. it's important. we need to acknowledge it.

it's significant, but we've got some strengths that they don't have, and lot after things going for us. it's really a very amazing thing. it's important. we can acknowledge it. it's significant, but we've got some strengths they don't have. one of them is our political system. our principles and ideas. if anybody would doubt our political system's going to be any different years from now than it is today, would anybody have the same guess as china, i don't think so. you don't resolve, address

the problem just by raising taxes. you do need revenue, but if you don't have spending, i mean, legal spending restraint, you can raise taxes, congress will spend the money you raise in taxes, then they'll spend more and the only time we've ever gotten a handle on it to any extent really was during the george h.w. bush administration when we had legal spending restraint in the form of the -- restraints. so, we've got a lot of problems, but i don't buy the argument that something terrible has happened to us. that's simply not true. we ought not to worry about the fact that brazil and india and china are moving up in the

world. i think it's more occasion they're moving up. why are they moving up? because these countries have embraced our paradigm of free market economics and we ought to welcome that. yes, they're competitors. and we will have to compete with them, but i think we're positioned to compete with them very effectively. >> how do you view the results of the study group applying to u.s. foreign policy during the arab springs? >> i don't know that i've thought about it in comparison to the arab spring. what we said was that at the time we took a look at it, we went over there, we were given full access to all of our policymakers, cia, all the ohs and what we said was, this was in december of 2006. we said the situation in iraq is grave and deteriorating.

the administration took some serious -- supporting a surge provided it with short-term and provided that the commanders on the ground recommended it. it turnsed to be to some extent success, but i got to tell you, i think the jury is still out a bit on what the final result is going to be in iraq. it's certainly a lot better than it was when we went there in 2006. but i don't think we've seen the end of it yet and i hope that things don't degenerate after we are fully out of there at the end of this year. but we are coming out. it's over. and certainly, the world is better off to be rid of saddam hussein, but we don't know yet what the final situation's going to be. we don't know the extent to which iran may be strengthened

by what's happened there and so, i think the one thing the iraq study group report did was to focus the attention of policymakers and the country, to some extent, on the fact that we needed to change what we were doing in there and we needed to find a way to do a better job of training iraqi forces so we could lead. we can't stay in all these countries. same is true with afghanistan. >> in your role as former secretary of state, could you give us a thumbnail state of the union? particular as it's related to national security risks for our country. >> well, we still have significant national security r risks. one of them, of course, the terrorism risk is still very much out there. we've got to remain very vigilant about that.

we are targets. we've got to understand it. cyber war fair. i'm not an expert in that. i don't know to what extent we are in a position to defend against cyber warfare. i think it's important for us to remember that throughout recent history, our alliance has helped the united states. again, you look at the united states and china. we have a web of alliances all across the world. whether it's in asia, europe or where it might be, people that will help us share the burden with the freedom willing countries. how we react, relate to the arab spring is important. that is a really big thing that's happening out there. again, we don't know what the final result of that's going to be. if the israeli egyptian peace

treaty blows up you can forget about israeli palestinian deal. it's still very much up in the air. we don't know what's going to end up happening in libya, whether that's going to be a civil war or be something else. syria's a terrible problem now. so, but as far as the threat of terrorism, it doesn't just come from afghanistan. somalia, yemen and other places like that. >> last question. thanks whoever submitted this. why didn't you ever run for president? we think you would have been a great one. >> i thought about it. would have been 1996, but i had -- in the years just before that, i had done two stints as

chief of staff in the white house for two different presidents. i'd been secretary to the treasury for four years, secretary of state for four years and i had worked on or led at a fairly high level, five campaigns with with presidents by three republican presidents and i was dead tired. pete knows how tired i was. i was dead tired. my wife and i talked about it. i think we could have raised the money, but i was 66 years old, too, at that time and we didn't have it in us and it was, i've never looked back on that decision. it was the right decision and i'm very happy with it. but i'm particularly happy to be back here in grand rapided to stand up for somebody that i will always, all of my life, honor and admire. jerry ford. thank you, all.

you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. for more information, follow us on twitter at cspan history. cspan's 2012 local content tour takes our programming on the road the first weekend of each month. march featured shreveport, louisiana with book tv at the library. >> mr. knoll was a local man born here and spent most of his life and he started accumulating books when he was a teenager. over his lifetime, he accumulated over 200,000 volumes. if we have a gem in the collection, it is probably going to be this one. one of the books we're most proud of. it's in the original binding, 6

1699 and once owned by a very famous scientist. you can see his name. i. newton. we are not pulling it out so much anymore because it is starting to flake away on the title page. >> american history tv looked at civil war era medical practices. >> pioneer medicine is a long stretch from what it is today. you consider that, the things that we take for granted today when we go to the doctor, things like the instruments being as germ free as possible. or the doctor has washed his hands. and we use the term louisly for doctors when we're talking early medicine. a lot of these doctors were self-taught or had worked under somebody else who had been self-taught and they were getting ready to retire, so they would just learn as they went. >> our city's tour continues the