redefine the american dream and sunday live in-depth your questions for former anchor and managie ining editor of "nbc ni news." he's written about "the greatest generation 1960s" and today, in depth, on c-span's "book tv." >> for the second time in recent months, former first ladies barbara bush and laura bush sat down for a conversation about their time in the white house as part of the series of conferences on america's first ladies. in this discussion, moderated by historian and biographer doris kearns goodwin, we hear barbara bush on her husband's 1992 loss to bill clinton and her thoughts on the 2012 presidential campaign. laura bush speaks about her work on behalf of women in afghanistan and about the moment she realized that average americans really do listen to what the first lady has to say. this hourlong conversation took

place at the george w. bush presidential center in dallas, texas, as part of the conference, america's first ladies, an enduring vision. ♪ >> hello, my name is mark langdell, i'm president of the george w. bush foundation, i want to welcome you to the final panel that we're having here today.

in my job i get asked a lot, well, how do you get the chance to work on building something as interesting and significant as the george w. bush presidential center. and i go, well, i have experience building complex real estate projects. i served in government. i'm interested in presidential history. i even like to watch c-span3, but the big reason and the real reason that i have this really great job is 23 years ago george and laura bush moved to dallas, texas, and they bought the house next door to me. and we became friends. and if there's one thing i can testify to, it's true then and it's true today, is that george and laura bush are true partners in life. and george w. bush truly and deeply loves his wife, so it is an honor for me to introduce to you a man who truly and deeply loves his wife, the 43rd president of the united states, george w. bush.

>> thank you, all, for coming. so, it seems fitting to me that for the america's first ladies conference we actually have first ladies. and it's my honor to introduce them, before i do so i want to thank mark for his leadership of the george w. bush foundation. i want to thank anita mcbride for conceiving and chairing what has been a really fascinating discussion. actually watched some of it being streamed over the internet. i want to thank gerald turner of smu and the smu folks. smu is an awesome university, by the way, and we are honored to be associated with it. and neil kerwin, president of

american university and his wife ann have joined us, thank you so much for being here. i want to thank the library directors, allen lowe, of course, of the president bush 43, warren finch, bush president 41. i'll be the funny guy. and mark updegrove of lyndon baines johnson's library down the road. i want to say something about doris kearns goodwind, we're fortunate to have her here. she's an awesome historian. i read a lot of history when i was president. i can hear people saying, we paid you all that money and all you did was sit around reading? it was fascinating. i didn't watch much tv.

anyway, it was fascinating to read history while i had the honor of making history, and no better historian to help a president understand the past and the future, by the way, than doris kearns goodwind, so we're honored you're here. and so the other thing that impressed me about doris kearns goodwin is she raised a son who became a united states marine, volunteered to be a united states marine, after september the 11th. i had the honor of introducing the best first lady ever. mom, would you take a tie?

obviously, i don't mind being surrounded by strong women. i was raised by one. i married one. and i believe we're raising two. welcome, former first ladies, barbara and laura bush. >> thank you very much. >> well, for me this is such a great honor. can you imagine having spent my life trying to bring presidents and first ladies who were no longer alive to life? i've got live ones here! much more fun. >> we hope. >> i always worry that -- i worry that -- >> careful. >> i worry that someday -- i worry that someday in the afterlife there will be a panel of all the presidents i've ever studied and everybody will tell me every single thing i got wrong.

the first person to yell out would be lbj, how come the book on kennedys was twice as long as mine? what it was like when you first get to the white house. you have this great line where you said i woke up with the president-elect. what's it like to wake up with the president in the morning and know that he's president and know that you're in a place that as 132 rooms and you have to make it a home, how do you do that? >> well, the house really i think was very easy. we brought furniture for the one family room, which was beautiful, and our own curtains came, matched the couches that we brought. first of all, 90-some people who work for you are family. they really are. and when we went back all those years later, eight years later when george and laura were there, there was our family, they were still there. there are some of them still there. not many anymore. old age got them. >> did you have a favorite place

in the white house where you liked to go? >> well, i loved my little office because it was -- besides being nancy reagan's beauty parlor, which she didn't like me to say, but it was, the dogs were born there, and you could look out the window at the jackson place and the -- what's that park? >> lafayette. >> lafayette square, and you could see all sorts of wonderful things.faced that part of washington, but i saw some people protesting us, some people loved us, i saw wedding being taken, i saw my first black bridesmaid dresses backing up to have their picture taken by the white house, their dresses were black, which i thought were amazing. i loved looking out at the people. >> i can well imagine. how about you? how did you go about -- you'd

already been there. >> i'd already been there, i had a huge advantage that no one else had, except for luisa adams, i knew from having been there with barb and president bush, it was really a home. when our little girls were 7 when their grandfather was president could slide down the ramp from the conservatory, the solarium. you saw in several of the photos earlier the wooden ramp, slide down that on their bottom or make the running jump to the one big antique bed that was so tall that it required steps to get into. but barbara and jenna can run and jump on it at that age. they also when the obamas came for the tour, they showed sasha and malia all of those tricks from their childhood at the white house, sliding down the ramp and jumping on the bed. so, i really knew. and because i knew that there was this really magnificent

collection of white house furniture, i didn't move anything with us. we had just moved into our ranch house, which is where all our furniture went, so i brought one chest of drawers for my dressing room that was george's grandmother's, just to have that there just to remember her. and then i brought some of our books, a few of our books. i also knew that we would get lots of books and so i didn't bring our whole library and just brought personal photographs and had a wonderful time going to the big warehouse. you can't call it a warehouse because it's really climate and temperature controlled with a conservatory, storage space where all the white house furniture was and bringing back different pieces to the white house. >> what extent are you aware of other presidents and their first wives -- maybe! and the first ladies being in the room? >> i think very much. i think there's a place in the white house which later became closets i think for ladies

clothes, that's where i hung my evening clothes and things as you walk down looking out at lafayette square where presidents made great pronouncements to people, and we brought a historian up, lincoln historian up and he said i can't believe i'm here. granted, they've redone the white house, but he felt he knew it. so, he went right to the closet, down the corridor, and i think the girls' rooms opened -- >> on both sides. >> but he ran right down there and looked, there wasn't the portico or something there, and he could feel lincoln giving the speech. >> wow. >> and it was -- >> imagine that. >> -- very exciting with him. one thing i forgot to mention, the thing i loved most was i could hear jenna and barbara, and i could hear marshall and walker giggling and laughing and riding bikes and swimming and who knew what but -- anyway, and george loved that.

they would swim and then they'd come into the -- and neil's children. but they lived in washington, dora's children and jenna and barbara would come. they all came to visit, but it was so cute. you could hear -- it made it home. and besides that in your own house when your grandchildren, you work. but in the white house there are 92 people to take care of them. >> so, when did you think of restoring the lincoln room, speaking of lincoln, since i was able to see that and you just did an amazing joce ing job. >> really you think of the presidents the whole time you're there and you do think of that and you think of the other challenges that the other presidents faced and our country faced and we overcame all of those challenges and especially during a time when we had troops in iraq and afghanistan, it was very comforting after september 11th to know that we can overcome this, too, and that we'll move on. and while peace may not be

forever, neither is war. and there's a great continuity really of living in a house where all the presidents, every one of them, except for george washington, had lived before you. and one of the things you do when you live there is you live with these effects of all the people that lived there before you. you live with their decorating. you live with their taste, their choice in furniture or in china or in decorative art. all the things that were acquired by the white house during other terms. and slowly i moved different pieces from the storage and set up each room, and then at one point during the second term we determined that it was time to redo the lincoln bedroom. it had last been done during president ford, i believe. actually, it was set up as a bedroom after truman renovated the white house. lincoln -- the bedroom, the bed, had actually been in the room that's now the upstairs dining room, across the hall from the

presidential bedrooms. the room that's now set up as the lincoln bedroom was lincoln's office before the west wing was built, obviously all the offices were down at that end of the residence hall, and it was the room that lincoln had signed the emancipation proclamation in. we owned one of the five original copies of the gettysburg address written in lincoln's hand and that was in the room, and our guests who would come stay in the lincoln bedroom would look at that copy of the gettysburg address, read it and weep, and it was very moving to see it. i worked with the white house historical association, with the curators and historians that are part of the advisory board and we had a little remnant of the wallpaper that had been on the wall of his room. we had photographs of the lincoln bed with the gold corona with purple and gold grape drapt

hung down from the corona, we knew from the white house records that the corona had been sent away from the white house in 1927, so we reproduced all those things. so it's not a real reproduction because it's neither an office nor a bedroom but instead both. we went to the same mill in englaged that had run the carpet for him on the 27-inch loom. >> wow. >> and we knew from the records that the carpet was g and o which the curators think meant green and oak, green and brown, and we went to the same mill, and they don't -- they didn't have records of what they'd actually sold to the white house, but we used a pattern that we think was the pattern. so, it was really very, very fun. it's a great place. >> i remember seeing it, it was so exciting, just to know that lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation in that room. it was a great story. he had shaken so many hands that

morning on new year's morning that when he went to sign the emancipation proclamation, his hand was shaking. he put the pen on. he said if ever a soul was in my hand, if i sign with a shaky hand, posterity will say he hesitated. it's a big, bold bahand. it's great. >> do you remember the first guest of the bush family who stayed in that bed and we immediately sent a new mattress for the lincoln bed so they would have a comfortable bed. it may be historic -- bucky and patty, our brother and sister-in-law, said nobody could sleep on this bed. >> i'll never forget one night i was able to sleep in what was churchill's room, there was no way i could sleep, i was sure he was sitting in the corner smoking and drinking his brandy. after world war ii, they were supposed to sign the document

putting the allied nations against the axis powers, but he awoke not liking the associated nations, they wanted to call it united nations and came wheeling into churchill to tell him the news and churchill is coming out of the bathtub and has nothing on, i'm sorry, i'll come back in a moment. ever able to speak, in a formal voice, please stay, the prime minister of great britain has nothing to hide from the president. oh, anyway! speaking of churchill sticking his stomach out, i recognize there's no regular ritual day in the white house, but what amazed me about you was, number one, the athleticism of you. number two, that you wrote a diary. we historians are so sad to think that in the future 200 years from now people are not going to have diaries. it's my favorite treasure. did you have a regular time when you wrote in the diary? >> i just wake up very early. i woke up at 6:00 this morning. i wake up very early. >> and lively? you wake up lively?

>> i don't talk to anybody. no. i wake up. put the dogs out. get the coffee, pick up the paper. but in those days, i really woke up pretty lively. and i just learned how to use a computer. >> ah. >> and i wrote a diary, and actually jon meacham has been given permission only because they're not to be opened for 50 years because i'm pretty naughty. >> right, right. >> that's a good one. >> who would guess? >> not to my precious daughter. anyway, i wrote a diary. and he's allowed to read part of it. but i didn't -- i'm ashamed to say i did not write too much about we have a war going on. i really wrote more about, i don't know what, i haven't read my diary in years. it's in the library, and anyone who reads it other than jon meacham, just a certain number

of years, will be shocked. >> well, i guess as an historian i'm not going to be reading that. >> well, barb is so unbelievably disciplined. it takes a lot of discipline to write a diary and then she would go to the white house swimming pool and swim laps every morning. >> now i can't. i just had new knees. they sink. i'm in real trouble. >> what fun it must have been to live with you! >> i don't know if george thinks that. i think he does. >> so, speaking of routines of the day, when i read your memoir, the funniest thing was when you talked about at the white house correspondents dinner your nightly routine. would you tell these people about that. i loved it so. >> well, the white house correspondents dinner you probably seen it every year on television, but it's the evening when all the white house correspondents, the press that are assigned to the white house and their guests, and they

always try to outcelebrity each other and invite lots of celebrities come to roast the president. as george said everyone makes fun of the president and he stands up and makes fun of himself. as george said, everyone makes fun of the president, and then he stands up and makes fun of himself. so george was always very funny at every one of the white house correspondents' dinners. but finely he said i have run out of ideas. why don't you surprise everyone and speak? so i had a very funny speech, i think. and george got up to speak to the crowd and kind of laughed and started telling a joke. and i sprang up and pushed him out of the way and said no, no, not that old joke again. and people gasped. i mean, the people i was sitting with thought that i had really just jumped up. but then i talked about being a desperate housewife and how mr. excitement here was already in bed at 9:30.

and i said that one night lynne cheney and condi rice and karen hughes, who i think is here and i had gone to chippendales and i wouldn't even have mentioned it except sandra day o'connor and justice ginsburg saw us there. but, you know, that sort of humor doesn't really translate to most countries, because most countries you can't roast the president like that. and so for a year after that, at least, on foreign travel, heads of state, when we were somewhere else, would take me aside and say, are you really a desperate housewife? >> humor is such an important thing. >> those things sometimes backfire. i can't remember which dinner, but there's a white tie there -- >> the gridiron. >> the gridiron. >> where they take themselves, pardon me, so seriously, you press. but, anyway, i decided it was on april 1st.

i decided ah-ha, so i worked with my hairdresser. and i wore a red wig and came out in my evening dress. and george says you're not going like that, are you? i said, yeah, i am. so we went to the dinner. some people thought i had cancer. and some people said, who is that woman with the president? and nobody thought it was funny. i had gone through great trouble to get this wonderful wig. anyway, it backfired. people were saying how are you for days after that. >> and you were just fine. to what extent do the first ladies get involved in preparing the meals or menus that will be eaten just for your ordinary nights? >> none. >> ordinary night, no. but the state dinners, they give

you choices of different menus and, actually, everything they cooked was very good. i do wish i was there again, only for the meals. >> we did have tastings for state dinners. we usually invited congressmen who weren't going to be invited to the state dinner over. >> you were much smarter than we were. >> to be the guinea pigs. but the white house chef would give us a weekly menu. if there was something on there we didn't think we would want, we would call and say don't fix that, but they were pretty terrific. >> they one believable. lovely people. >> i can imagine. one of the things i remember, of course, that your husband didn't like broccoli. and that became a famous moment. do you know fdr hated broccoli, too? >> oh, good. >> and his chef at the white house who was a woman, and she was really tough, would constantly serve him broccoli, because he should eat it even if he didn't like it. >> i read that in your book. >> exactly. >> i did.

>> and then every morning he served oatmeal, every single morning. he finally cut out cornflakes, 19 cents. post toasties. couldn't i have something other than oatmeal? he said he was getting chicken six nights a week. he said his stomach was rebelling so much that he bit a foreign power. so texas is so fortunate to have had three first ladies in recent history. tell me about your feelings about lady bird johnson, who i had such enormous respect for and so lucky to have known her when i was 24 years old. >> we adored her, truthfully, both george and i. and i felt so badly, probably shouldn't say this. when we went to washington i was so offended by the attitude of the kennedy people who would say to you oh, i wish you had been here in the good times instead of these awful texans. and finally at a dinner one night i said, you know, i'm a texan. and they said no you're not. you're from the east.

i said, well, then my five children are. we stopped doing that, we stopped going to those dinners. they ridiculed her accent. she was the most wonderful lady. she did more for beauty in this country, and she was so generous and genuine. and i loved her, and until laura, she was my favorite first lady. >> i also really admired her. and i was at graduate school in texas when president johnson died and his body lay in state at the lbj library and i lined up. they were there, lady bird and linda and lucy, greeting every single person that came through. but i did get to take her on a tour of the white house the last time she came to the white house. linda brought her, and she was in a wheelchair, and she'd lost her speech by then from a stroke, but she was still so expressive with her hands. if she saw a painting, i showed her president johnson's painting again.

and she put her arms out to him and when we met her at the door, the doorman was -- had been the maitre'd, he had come back from retirement, he'd been the maitre'd, and when the johnsons were there, and he sort of fell into her arms and they hugged. so it was really a wonderful pleasure to get to show her the white house that last time. >> she came to the white house when we were there, too. and told me a story about the picture of the little grumpy girl. >> thomas aikins? >> that's right. a group standing looking at it, and someone said, maybe lady bird, said, isn't she grumpy? and a voice in the back said she wasn't always. i married her. you know the picture? the little grumpy girl. >> you know, what it shows is when we often talk about first ladies, and i'd like to talk that in a minute. we talk about what they've done and you have both done so much on literacy and reading.

but the relationship with the president is such an important thing. i mean, she was able to come -- lbj was such a character. he would go off at times. and she could put a hand on the knee and say lyndon, you don't really mean that. there's just an ease that came into that. and that relationship of whatever you do in your marriage, in your life and your partnership, that's the real power that i think besides all the things you do in the world at large. but let's start with you and literacy. i mean, i know what you've done. and how did it happen that you chose that? >> well, i jogged around memorial park one year, knowing george was going to run. granted, nobody else thought he was, but anyway, i tried to think of something. i had worked in hospitals always as a volunteer, and then i decided i should do something that helps the most people and cost the government less money. i didn't want to be controversial. i got problems with that anyway. >> exactly. >> comes naturally, but i picked

lit reiss, but there's just no question in my mind, and now i've gone into family literacy, because if you have a mother or father or care take who can read, they can then follow their child in school and help them. if they can't, then the child doesn't have any inspiration. statistics in our country are shocking. the number of children who do not graduate from high school and who just drop out of the system. and so we're working very hard still. i have turned my foundation over. they don't seem to take it as well as they should, but jeb and dora are doing nationally, and neil and mrp who are here are doing texas, and george p. and mandy understand herb them are doing fort worth and dallas, but they keep saying, oh, mom, just sign this letter. i'm glad to do that. but i want them to take over. i'm 80 -- almost 87. and i'm delighted to be here, but george is --

[ applause ] >> george needs me. he needs me. his legs have said no more. will not move and it makes a huge difference. what's more, i am loving having him to myself. i'm loving it. about time. about time, says his cousin. but he's -- he's wonderful, he's loving and sweet. and he adores if the children they're all great. neil and maria live across the street. which is certainly something i never would have done. she built a house across the street from us. i loved my mother-in-law. i would no more have lived within six blocks of her. but their children come by. and it's just great. >> i can imagine. >> we love our life. we have a lot of good friends, and he needs me. >> wow. >> so reading for you, the book festivals and eventually afghanistan and burma and speaking. i remember once you said you never thought you would have to give a speech. look at you now.