&a" with jeffrey engel, talking about his book on george h.w. bush and the cold ♪ brian: this week on "q&a," jeffrey engel, director of southern methodist university's center for presidential history will discuss his book, "when the world seemed new: george h.w. bush and the end of the cold war." brian: jeffrey engel, if you had to describe george herbert walker bush to somebody who had never met him, what would you say? dr. engel: i would say he is a gentleman. a person who came up with traditional american values of being part of the elite.

when we think about the term -- that really describes george bush. he is a person who was born well off, had the best education, the best of training, and spent his entire life trying to work in public service to give more back. and really a gentleman of the kind you don't see much in american politics. brian: where did it start for him? dr. engel: with his mother. a person who constantly told him, your responsibility was to give back. she always stressed that the team was more important than the individual, which was very important for bush who was into athletics throughout his life. no matter how many times he would say, mom, here is how i did, she would say, but how did team do? i think that imbues a sense of the broader success being more important than the individual. brian: his dad was born in columbus, ohio. how did he get to the northeast?

where was he born and where did he grow up? dr. engel: he was from ohio, from a manufacturing family. but then he made the switch into banking. both george h.w. bush's parents come from well esteemed lineages. he grew up in the center of new york and connecticut and in maine. really the new york financial orbit. really the central financial institution for american foreign-policy in particular. brian: where did he go to school? dr. engel: george bush went to private school for high school, then more importantly went to yale when he came back from the joe baca high school, he spends a few crucial years in world war ii in the south pacific. upon graduation he and his , friends all rushed to register before they got drafted. they all rushed to volunteer

despite the fact that george bush's parents and even the graduation speaker, none other than the secretary of war, close family friend of the bushes, encouraged bush and those like him to go to college, spent a year or two getting more seasoning. the expectation was these type of person would become officers. a good officer has a little more understanding of the world. bush and his comrades had no interest in that. the united states have just been attacked if humans before and they wanted to get into a fight before it was over. ironically not realizing how long it would go. brian: how old was he when he enlisted? was he an enlisted man or officer? dr. engel: he was 18. here is a good place for his family connections pay off. having been unable to keep him from enlisting in the navy, his family was able to get him a coveted spot as a naval aviator. he ultimately becomes one of the youngest naval aviators in the

entire pacific theater. we used to say he was the youngest naval aviator until one other gentleman who was a week younger showed up. now we have to say one of. either way, remarkably young for having that sort of responsibility. he spent several years training and ultimately gets sent off to fly torpedo bombers off an escort carrier. as an officer, take care of the men under his command. it is remarkable at this point, he is only 20-years-old. brian: when you interviewed him, did he talk about this? dr. engel: he talked about, as near as i can tell, everything else. every question i asked him he was for right. -- he was very forthright. multiple conversations. more interviews that i can or remember. when i asked him about this, we were on a plane together and i thought this is a perfect moment to ask about world war ii experiences. he turned to me and handed me a cookie. it was a double stuff oreo and

said, what else you got? the idea being, i am not talking about this with somebody one third my age. this is off-topic. brian: why? dr. engel: it was a searing lifetime event. in particular the fact he was shot down on september 2, 1944. he and his crew were on a bombing mission trying to take out a radio tower they had attacked the day before but unsuccessfully. his plane was hit by enemy flak, and bush was able to hold the bomber aloft and keep it on track for the bombing run. after dropping the bombs, he moved up to sea and tried to hold his crew men, time to go, and that he himself jumped out. actually hit his head on the tail as a came by and he parachuted down and realized in the water all alone in the pacific ocean that there were no other parachutes.

he realized he was the only one of his crew that had survived. that thought haunted him to this day. he says there is not a day that goes by he does not think about his crew members under his command, and why he was spared and they were not. brian: why didn't they survive? dr. engel: that is largely one of those things that is impossible to answer with full certainty. it is clear from the evidence we have that they were most likely killed by enemy shrapnel as it came in. they were not able to get out. a few years ago, bush had the opportunity to visit the island as part of a making amends tour. he was famous for reconciling with the japanese, his former enemy. he learned they spotted a second parachute, which told him one of his crew members survived long enough to get out of the plane.

he really wanted whether or not he should have kept the plane aloft longer. should have stayed in the cockpit longer? there is no way to answer these questions. nonetheless a person who did , something sacrificial was left feeling guilty the rest of his life. brian: how was he rescued? dr. engel: he was in a small raft on the ocean, bobbing up and down. he had taken in seawater, was vomiting. he writes home to his parents he was crying. think about the adrenaline. it had left his body at that point. then he noticed something particularly bad. his raft was beginning to move towards the island. that was really not a good place for an american pilot to go. we subsequently found out that other pilots who have been shot down on that island were not only killed by the japanese, but there was cannibalism that went on as well. bush, not knowing that, but knowing capture is not a great

thing for an american at this paddles furiously the other point direction and ultimately an american submarine picks him up. he spends the next month underwater with the crew doing submarine missions until he can get back to base. brian: when does he get out of the service? 1945. he had rotated back, had more training, flew 58 combat missions, really deserved time. after he was shot down, he could have taken a break. but he said, no, right back to his unit to keep the fight up. 1945, he had just married barbara bush and news comes out the war is over. the atomic bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki brought the war to a quicker and then people were -- quicker end then people were expecting. he was on to the next step, which was yale. brian: what happened at yale? of angel: he was part

interesting cadre of students who came in after the war. there was essentially five years of students who had not been there. many of them came back with a flurry after world war ii ends. so much so that essentially the university had to build huts for them to live in. they were so packed on campus. therefore they give them an accelerated program of study. he was able to graduate in three years in economics. was part part of the skull and bones society. mosttially the single prestigious society any person could be at graduating from yale. he was there with his wife and ultimately with his small son george. one of my favorite discoveries of the entire book is that barbara bush and george -- both george's -- actually lived in an apartment complex next to the residence for the yale

president, who came over one day and asked her to stop putting out the laundry of george's diapers when he was having parties. it gives you a sense of how a person could go go in six months from the terror of world war ii into the life of new haven in the 40's. brian: prescott bush, his father served in united states senate. to 1963. what impact did that have on his life? dr. engel: on george bush fuzzy ite, -- george bush's life, really demonstrated an example, if you will, of the kind of service his mother had been describing her entire life, but also the kind of service his father exemplified, which was a service of compromise. service of negotiation. george -- excuse me prescott , bush was no firebrand. he was what we would call a classic eisenhower republican. he was one of dwight eisenhower's favorite golfing buddies. one of the reasons.

eisenhower said, like to play with bush as he is one of the people who will not let me when. -- let me win. when you are president, you get a few mulligans. he was the kind of person who was willing to reach across the aisle. we have extraordinarily little legislation that was authored by prescott bush. but an extraordinary wealth of tales of him going behind the scenes getting the sides to come together in a way that is difficult to conceive of today. brian: why did george herbert walker bush move to texas? dr. engel: that is where the money was. texas was part of the adventure. at the end of 1948, having just graduated from yale, he has the opportunity to go to new york, to work in his father's investment house. he instead decided, i need to go and make my life on my own. make my own way. hops in a studebaker, a brand-new one and drives across country and winds up in texas. he had a friend of the family who had an oil company there.

he began to work as a salesman for the oil company. barbara and little george come a little bit after. this is a great moment for trying to understand who george bush is on a profound level. on the one hand he is a person who is able to take the leap of faith and say i'm going to try something new and not rest on the laurels of my family to succeed. on the other hand he goes to taxes with a very large check from some investors back home. -- texas with a large check from some investors back home. he is working for a family friend. and he knows if texas does not work out, there is always a job back in new york for him. it is an adventure, but there is a large net. brian: when did you start this book? dr. engel: i started working on this book around 2006. really by accident. i was teaching at texas a&m at the bush school of government, in the policy school teaching international relations and security studies. i had just finished my first

book, a study of british and american aviation, export controls. my department chair came and said the question every assistant professor hates what , is your next book going to be? he said before you get into it, why didn't you go over to the library? there is a diary you might find really interesting. turned out to have been bush's diary from the time he was de facto ambassador to china. 1974, 75. it was gripping. it was fascinating to see a policymaker thinking through the issues of the day and how international relations worked and how diplomacy worked 20 years before he put it into practice. i was immediately drawn into this period, a period cerise and as a historian i never thought i would find myself working on, because it wound up being more is not only there bush's sense of diplomacy, which was masterful in the oval office

but also i was drawn to the end , of the cold war. i was struck time and again by the fact that you and i should not be here in a real sense. the cold war and its end can best be understood as the collapse of a great power. when great powers collapse, typically, almost invariably throughout history, great power wars ensue. we never ran that experiment with nuclear weapons in the next. -- in the mix. if you were taking bets about how the cold war would end in 1989, you would get good odds on chaotically and violently. the fact it did not, the happenstance, the circumstance, and also the masterful diplomacy at the time to keep it from that drew me to no end. brian: he has not been president for 26 years. how old were you in 1992? dr. engel: i graduated from high school in 1991. in fact i am often -- i remember

the gulf war very clearly. i am often asked about the berlin wall and i have to concede it was football season and there were cheerleaders and i really don't recall. brian: where did you grow up? dr. engel: omaha, westside. brian: where did you go to college question mark -- college? dr. engel: cornell. i knew i wanted to be a historian from the time i was 4 or five. brian: where did you get your phd? dr. engel: university of wisconsin. brian: where was your first job? dr. engel: yale. i was working only one house down from where george bush had been when he was a student in the 1940's. brian: how long were you at texas a&m? dr. engel: eight years. after i left yale i went to the university of pennsylvania. i was teaching their in their international relations program. my wife is also a historian, she does colonial american history and religious history and she was teaching at rutgers.

texas a&m called and said, if you would like to live in the same town, we have two jobs for you. that was remarkably appealing. off to college station we went. the first time we went there, i knew were texas was, obviously. but i did pull out the map to find where college station was. brian: why did you move to smu? dr. engel: that was a difficult position. we love being at amm. &m.a dr. engel: smu at that point was preparing to open up the george w. bush library and the george w. bush institute. they had decided to create a brand-new institution to study the presidency, especially as an academic counterweight to the political think tank on campus. i do not mean to suggest these are equal in weight, but they wanted something purely scholarly. when the opportunity arose to create a new center from scratch, that was something i just had to jump at it brian:

president bush was here in 1998 when he had his book about foreign policy. i want to run some video about george bush talking about the power of the oval office. i know we are jumping way ahead. but when we hear him talk about this i want your reaction. president bush: every president would confirm that experience. i'm going to tell this guy off, i will get him, then they go in and there is something about the office itself and the respect all americans and most foreigners have for that office where you do not feel like balling out the president or taking him on the way you told your colleagues you were going to. brian: what do you see there? dr. engel: when he was in china, he was eventually called back to run the cia. something he did not want to do. he thought running the cia was a political career killer. he still had aspirations for higher office. then he says he remembered his

father saying, if the president of the united states asked you to do some for your country, the answer is yes. that sentiment really embodies his entire sense of obligation not to necessarily be a president in his own right, but to hold the presidency up as a charge to hands off to the next person. granted, he handed it off sooner than he would have liked but he , understood the president embodies american honor and american power and embodies american insistence he in many -- american consistency in many ways. brian: when did you first meet him? how often did you interview him? dr. engel: i first met him my first year in college station. he actually -- once i got to know him better, he used to come to our classes at the bush school quite frequently. i have a very funny story about that. i used to bring him into my foreign policy class when the

students had to do a simulation where they had to present to the president and the national security council some policy issue. we never told the students they were showing up, so it was wonderful to see the look on their faces. we had him play the role of president. at one point during the break i said, mr. president, i have to tell you, you are really not getting it. you are not asking hard questions. we need you to drill them like you drilled generals or senators or anyone else who came into the office. he looked at me and said, can you imagine what would happen if one of these students call their mother and said, the president came to class and said my idea was stupid? he was such a gentle, thoughtful man and consider it at his core he was marvelous to work with. by the time i had left the bush school, i had been interviewing him for five years at that point. sometimes many times a month. brian: do you have records of

every interview? dr. engel: i do have records. i am not sure i have a computer capable of playing my records, but i'm sure if the fbi came and we could find a way to do it. it is such an old program. i audiotaped everything. we would usually have a morning session. i would drive down to houston, we would sit in his office, talk about the cold war, talk about his life, and go to lunch. it was a really heavy experience to go with the secret service to lunch with the president. people don't usually stand and applaud when i walk in a room. brian: that is some us to talk about. i want to go through his life and the years and have you say something about that period. 1967 to 1971. he was the u.s. representative in the house of representatives. dr. engel: the most important thing about that moment is the time he stood up to his constituents. he voted for the fair housing act, something remarkably unpopular in his district in

texas. even though he expected this would ruin his political career. he went back to his district and explained his vote and explained that he had just come back from visiting american troops in vietnam and could not stomach the idea that an african-american or hispanic american or any other kind of american who put their lives on the line in combat could not come home and buy a house. he voted for that out of conscience and demonstrated that he did see a higher purpose to service. brian: march of 1971, he was a u.n. ambassador. how did that happen? dr. engel: if you look back, perhaps his happiest years of his life, i would argue. he found he really loves diplomacy. he hit run for the united states senate from texas. he had given up his house seat to do so. he was expecting to run against a relatively liberal candidate, instead found himself running

against -- oh my goodness. lloyd bentsen. who i think we can safely say is more conservative than george w. bush. the ironic situation where the republican was the more liberal candidate in that election. he lost that election. he had in the back of his pocket a promise from president nixon that if he did this, run for senate, and it did not work out, the nixon administration would take care of him. george bush went to richard nixon and said, i think i would like to be treasury secretary. to which nixon replied, you are not qualified. nixon actually says something worse about him to one of his aides. he said the treasury secretary has to be somebody who can someday be president. bush isn't it. a funny statement now. they found a different position, which was to be at the united nations, at which point it was pointed out that george w. bush had zero diplomatic experience.

the international experience and largely come during world war two. bush very wisely turned that into a virtue. he explained to the staff under nixon that since he did not know anything, he would do exactly what henry kissinger said. that is exactly what henry kissinger, the secretary of state, wanted to hear. brian: 1973, he began as the chair of the republican national committee. there for 21 months. middle of watergate. why did he do it? dr. engel: because the president asked. and if the u.n. experience was his happiest time of life where he discovered something that enthralled him, the time of the rnc was the worst time politically and his life. -- politically in his life. he did it because president and decided to shake up his cabinet after winning reelection in 1972. move people around for the second term. he decided bush would be the kind of person he wanted at the rnc because he would be a loyal follower of the president's ideas. it became difficult because of

watergate. bush had the unenviable job of being forced to go out on the stump everyday and defend the president, a president who he increasingly came to believe and then know had been lying to him. like other republicans at that time, the moment they realized not so much that they had been made to lie for nixon, that was a moment he and others encouraged his resignation. on september 20 6, 1974, he went to china as the u.s. liaison for only 14 months. who sent him and why did he take that job? dr. engel: gerald ford sent him. the president who comes after next and. ford sent him essentially as a reward for the service he had done for the republican party. bush had been talked about as being ford's vice president. that did not happen, but they wanted to give him a nice landing place.

to be honest, ford wanted as many people involved in watergate and bush was the public face of watergate, though never involved in the actual conspiracy, out of public view. it is an amazing story how they got to china. everyone knew at this point he had the diplomacy bug. he wanted to continued. president ford offered him the chance to become a u.s. ambassador to france or to great britain. the two greatest plums a president can offer for an ambassador. bush turned those down and said, i would rather go to china. i think he did that for two reasons. the first is frankly that the ambassador to france and the ambassador to london are typically supposed to enhance the embassy social budget from their own bank account. bush still had three kids to put through college. but also because he also thought going to china would be an adventure, like going to texas. it would be something completely new, completely foreign, and

something completely exotic and exciting. if there is one conversation i wish i had been a fly on the wall for, it is when he came back and informed barbara they were going to china, something she had no idea he was thinking of. brian: for 357 days he became the director of the central intelligence agency. how did that come about? dr. engel: essentially as a long-term vestige of the difficulties of watergate and vietnam. the cia was under pressure from congressional investigations. gerald ford decided to shake things up. move people around within his cabinet and called bush home in order to be cia director. this is something bush thought was going to kill his political career. i believe the theory that donald rumsfeld, who was chief of staff to gerald ford, at least one of the reasons he thought it was good for bush to take this job was because bush was going to be one of rumsfeld's competitors

should he want to run for the white house himself. having him being tarred as a spy, something that i would kill his career, was an added bonus for rumsfeld. brian: i'm old enough to remember back in the late 60's, there was an item called the washington wire in the wall street journal that predicted that george bush and donald rumsfeld would be running for president. when did he first started thinking about being president? dr. engel: george bush was such a popular and charismatic person his entire life. the kind of person people would often say you should run , for president. i think he began to consider in the 1970's. the first documented case of him explaining to people he wanted to run for president was when he was in china. something he was going to come

back into in 1976 or 1980. clearly he was a person who always thought he should be in charge. he was not an alpha male, but he also thought it was a realistic proposition that he would never be the inside candidate, but he would be able to come in from the outside. brian: when did he first run? dr. engel: he first ran in 1980. to go back to his cia days, when president carter wins in 1976, bush asked if he could stay on. carter wanted his own director, so bush spent the next 3 years prepping for his run in 1980. he goes back to houston but spends most of his time on the road, meeting people in different states. 1980 is when he ran against ronald reagan. it was ultimately the best first challenge against reagan in the sense that bush managed to win the iowa caucuses.

ronald reagan had assumed he was going to steamroll to the convention, that was conventional wisdom, and he did not put much time and iowa. bush visited every iowa county and shaking hands. bush wins the iowa caucus and frankly it is downhill from there. once reagan gets his full attention in the campaign. bush wound up being the last man standing against ronald reagan. he gives us some of our most important historical phrases and criticisms about ronald reagan. bush is the one who comes up with the term "voodoo economics" to describe trickle-down economics or supply side as reagan would have preferred. we still use the term voodoo economics and we forget it ultimately was reagan's vice president he used that as a criticism against him when they were both going for the top job. brian: what was their personal relationship before he was picked to be the vice presidential candidate?

dr. engel: before he was picked i would argue they had no relationship except for a somewhat antagonistic one. they were not close. i'm not sure how often they had been together except on the campaign trail. something that does not breed camaraderie when your finally competitors. in the 1980 convention, it was a weird one historically. there began to be talk that perhaps ronald reagan would choose gerald ford to come back and be his vice president. they would essentially be co-presidents. these negotiations got close before both sides realized it would never work. somebody had to be in charge ultimately. reagan had to turn and find someone to be vice president. the logical choice was the next man up. the one who had been last man standing in the campaign. george bush. as a testament to both men, their sense of opportunism and their basic character, that they were willing to work past the

criticisms of the primary campaign to work together over the next 8 years. brian: what was your reaction when you saw a roger ailes became a close confidant and advisor to george h.w. bush? dr. engel: bush had a remarkable ability throughout his career, especially when he got into national level politics, of being able to surround himself with people who would do the dirty work that needs to get done for an election as he saw it. lee atwater, roger ailes, people who would play politics -- dirty may not be the right word, but as tough as possible. ok, i use the word dirty. bush would have a sense of remove it he could say, i did not know about that plan, i did not know about willie horton, despite the fact that his campaign clearly knew the willie horton ad was going to run, a

racially charged advertisement the bush campaign ran in 1988. there was always someone around who could be the hitman. ailes and atwater played that role. brian: why did you believe george bush when he said he did not know about the ad? dr. engel: i have seen no documentation that he did and i have seen documentation from people like atwater is that we made a point of not discussing such things. this is not to alleviate bush of any complicity or guilt. he was in charge. he is responsible for what happens with his campaign. but it does give a sense of the tone he wants to set. he told his people, we're going to go for the win, we're going to do whatever it takes, we're going to play dirty, play the race card and emasculate michael dukakis. he wanted those things done, but he wanted somebody else to do it.

brian: many many stories have , been written over the years that when ronald reagan was president, george bush, his vice president, was not invited to the private quarters. they had no time together except their lunches. is that a true story? did you ask the president about that? dr. engel: that is a true story. i did not ask because the more interesting question would have been asking ronald reagan. which unfortunately i never had the chance to do. george bush was not the only person who did not make it into the residence when reagan was president. essentially no one made it into the residence when reagan was president. ronald reagan was perhaps the greatest personal enigma of our presidents. he was gregarious but likes to spend time by himself or with nancy. their typical evening was to eat tv dinners and watch old movies together just the two of them. one could never get too close to ronald reagan.

believe me, george and barbara bush tried. he thought, if we could make the reagan's our friends, that would help us professionally and politically. and make a nicer work environment. ronald reagan did not have friends in that way. he had many close acquaintances. nobody besides nancy we could call a true friend. brian: what are the chances george herbert walker bush what has been elected president if he had not been selected by reagan as vice president? dr. engel: i have never considered that question. i think he would have entered -- and let's presume reagan wins -- he would have entered the 1988 election as one of a pack of people who would be running for president. at that point as i think about it more, he would have been in good stead. one of the remarkable things about the republican primary is just how far most of the candidates on the field are trying to run away from the legacy of reagan.

we think of reagan through the lens of history, someone who was remarkably popular at the end. he was personally popular, that his policies were not. he still had the taint of iran-contra. most of the candidates were trying to criticize reagan's legacy. i think his experience in 1980, had bush not been a member of the administration, he would have been first in line to criticize reagan in 1988. brian: you start your book by telling a story about george w. bush and a man named gorbachev. here is some video. >> when was the first time you met him? president bush: when i was vice president. today he assumed office. i was the guy in those days that went to a lot of funerals over there. i was vice president. i cabled back to ronald reagan, this man is different. much more open.

much more frank. much less inclined to turn to his aides to tell him what to say, much less program. brian: why did you start your book with the gorbachev story? dr. engel: i think the book is fundamentally about the cold war. think any is silly to one person is responsible for ending the cold war. if you have it to someone more responsible, it would be mikhailovich off. his desire tomikhailovic reform the soviet union, not to eradicate it. but to reform it and revitalize it. set in motion the democratic revolution that brought down his country's empire, and bush's interaction with him is critical. it was fascinating that bush in 1987 when i described the first limousine ride together in washington, d.c., gorbachev was

arguably the most famous man of the world. bush was trying to become the most powerful man in the world, but the odds were not so much stacked against him but it was clearly uncertain if he was going to get the nomination. the idea of this incredibly popular rock star of a foreign leader more embraced by the american people than their own vice president was a dramatic moment. brian: the diary. how much of that did you read? dr. engel: i read his entire diary before his presidency. i have not read all the excerpts of the diary during his presidency. my understanding is they will be released upon his passing. the diary from his time in china is particularly fascinating as i worked on it and also because it gives an insight into how he liked to do the diary. he would dictate it at the end of the day. even dictate often after having a few drinks.

we got some frank discussions of the president talking to himself, but really talking. the diary reads like him -- like you're listening to him. it is his own words. bush: first it was sporadic. it, notdictate into that i thought it would be transcribed verbatim but i would use it as a personal reference. some of the things make me sound like dan accardi, which perhaps i am but nevertheless i tried to do it religiously and then i would forget it. transcribed it was quite a bit later. brian: was it on microfilm or the diary itself? dr. engel: they had been lost in the 1970's.

the 1970's from his time in china were transcripts that been done. you have to picture this. transcripts that were done of audiotapes by people back in houston in his office, sometimes a year or two after bush and recorded them in china. bush does not speak chinese, and he had a few drinks. he is trying to describe chinese people he met and have it be transcribed by people who did not speak chinese ever trying to imagine what he might even trying to say. the most fascinating and difficult part of the diary was trying to figure out exactly who he is talking about. butink we got most of it, an important story. press book was going to we received a call from president bush's office. princeton university published the book. the chinese have gone to visit president bush because they have

concerns about what i say in the book. there are some problems, mistakes is the word they used. first of all we had asked kelly got a copy. -- how they got a copy. this is -- brian: before it is published? they had a copy? dr. engel: yes. brian: any ideas how they got a copy? dr. engel: there were copies circulating around. i don't think necessarily it was a great case of espionage. president bush did not have a copy. one of the rules we set out for our arrangement was he would never see the book until it was published because he cannot have any influence. he agreed to that in a heartbeat. that thefascinating chinese complained about the mistakes in the diary. my first reaction as a researcher was to say this is great. i must have misidentified people and they will help you get it

right. what they were upset about was effective referred to tiananmen square as a crackdown, or massacre, or a bloody event and they wanted me to change that language. i suggested would you prefer "brouhaha" instead? that's why there is no official chinese edition of the book because the chinese government would not allow it to be published with those "mistakes." you can buy bootlegs copies for not an official one. brian: how many people did the chinese government kill at tiananmen square? dr. engel: the best estimates are at 2000 and 3000. there is no way of getting a great answer on that. brian: why did they think they do a change the language? dr. engel: i honestly think they thought we would sell out. we were negotiating.

we had not gotten to a stage of sending a copy that we plant to negotiate the seller is run the world for the book. china was going to be a big market because the book is about china. and there was a lot of money at stake. they thought if they got asked to change the words, we would go ahead with publication in china, andrealizing my integrity princeton university press's intelligence -- integrity was worth more. brian: give a good to you or princeton and who came to you from china? dr. engel: nobody came to me. bush's national security adviser, communication with president book and it was then transmitted to me from president bush's office. to their credit they wanted me to know what the chinese were asking because it was my decision as the editor whether or not we were going to change words.

president bush did not have the authority to change the words in my book. they also said, we expect you will do what you think is right. brian: briscoe cough -- brent coff have chinese clients at the time? dr. engel: i can't say. brian: another major event, the fall of the wall. how much responsibility did george bush after that? dr. engel: zero, in the immediate sense. bush had a humorous responsibly for making sure that gorbachev's reforms continued to go peacefully. bush walked a tightrope that his entire first year knowing if he pushed too hard on the soviets, that could cause perhaps a counterrevolution against gorbachev and the other democratic revolutions in eastern europe. that he was too easy on

gorbachev, that could cause a counterrevolution because gorbachev's opponents might say you are clearly too close to the americans. you must not have our interests at heart. that is the big macro influence bush had on the immediate fall of the wall. it was actually a mistake. east german spokesman rather wrong memo on television essentially giving the wrong information and the impression that has the right to cross the border and ultimately when tens of thousands of people saw that it rushed to the gates, the guardsmen a wise choice they should open up rather than mow the crowd down. brian: president bush had been head of the cia. did the cia not have any information is was going to happen? dr. engel: no one did. it was an absolute mistake. i have a wonderful memo from two days before the wall fell from bush's national security council

we shouldtially says think about the fact there might be a change in the border status and we should start planning cap moment together a committee to start thinking about how we should react. that is typical bureaucratic starts to something you expect is not going to happen for six months or a year or maybe never. most people saw the wall fall had the same reaction. this was something we never thought we would see in our lifetime. most politicians, especially german ones who talk about a unified germany would talk about tearing down the division between east and west and knew they would talk about that the same way we would say we are going to jupiter. suddenly it happened to everyone's surprise. brian: did you hear from the president about mr. gorbachev that surprise you? so, one thing that

was really quite interesting to bush and thebout idea of doing oral history, doing interviews for history. i find that wonderful and frustrating. people have a marvelous ability to forget the details and the chronology and remember the end result and push the result back to the beginning. have anytime semifinished conversation where they say, you know what really matters? that's the end result. the first time i spoke about his concerns about gorbachev, and i have boxes and boxes of memos from his administration say we don't know we can trust this guy. president bush said to me, i always trusted gorbachev. he seemed trustworthy. the reason was because he would come to consider him, 20th later, he's actual personal friend.

once you are a friend of george bush's that the category you must have always been in. brian: talk about his closest gorbachev. how close did you get in? president bush: pretty darn close. emotionally close. my last talk with him while he was in office, christmas eve or new year's eve, and it was very emotional. he said goodbye. i am close to gorbachev. brian: how much of a talked since then? dr. engel: i can't answer for the last couple of years. i know they were so communicating into the early has's, but gorbachev remained an unpopular figure in russia, and also has become more

nationalistic that he used to be. president bush has moved on with his retirement. brian: iraq. we could talk about that for a couple of hours, but did you learn from president bush about his decision to go into iraq? dr. engel: the most important thing is twofold. threefold actually. the first is just so much iraq was for him and those around him not about the middle east at the end of the cold war, which is to say the understood the berlin wall had fallen. russia seems to be transforming. they understood the world had changed and however the international community chose to meet the threat of violence the first time after that change what set the pattern for decades to come. iraq mattered but ultimately what mattered was the post-cold war sentiment they were trying to create.

the second thing that was fascinating for me was bush was fully prepared to go to war in january of 1991 with 500,000 american troops in the region, even if congress had voted against giving him authorization. it was a remarkably close vote. only a few votes tipped the balance. ultimately bush wrote in his diary, and i've had is confirmed, that even if he lost the vote he was still going to use his authority to send american troops in combat. which he recognized would be a clearly if each full offense -- impeachable offense. he thought saddam hussein had a be taken out. secondly he thought we are going to win this war quickly. president twho win wars

quickly are popular. he thought before impeachment hearings 50th moving, the war would have been over for several weeks. he was willing to take the risk. brian: what did he say would ask him why he did not go to take saddam hussein out in 1991? this sun inns of having to do with years later. having to dods up with years later. dr. engel: the numbers of the administration will give you the same answer. no one in 1991 and the bush administration, including dick cheney, thought it was a good idea to go to baghdad. the reasons they gave her haunting for us today. they suggest that the iraqis would treat us like a foreign occupying force. they suggested it would create ethnic and religious tension that would lead to civil war. it would put tremendous strain on the israeli and palestinian

issue, the center of summary middle east politics. frankly bush recognized if you owned iraq, metaphorically speaking, you are responsible for it. that was a responsibility united states either should not take or perhaps would not be able to be successful at. can we don't need to because her expectation is that the threat will be removed. saddam hussein will likely die from a coup from his own officers. brian: when was the last time we talked to him? dr. engel: just a few weeks ago. brian: was his reaction to your book? dr. engel: i think he enjoyed it. i have a great privilege of going down a couple of times and reading the book, reading chapters of the book to him and mrs. bush before she passed. times todifferent president bush himself at kennebunkport. it is a remarkable opportunity

that few historians ever get to read their work to their subject. brian: why did you do that and why did he listen? dr. engel: i did it because i thought it would be really cool. secondly because president bush asked, or his staff asked because he was having difficulty and could not read as much as he wanted to. people were reading to him daily. they thought this would be a book you would want to hear. we had a very positive relationship and it would be a good chance to catch up. i remember saying most people have audiotapes. it was explained when you're the former president, people read to you. brian: i don't to exaggerate this that you are critical of him in the book. dr. engel: frequently. brian: did he plans when he saw that? did you avoid reading the part? dr. engel: i did inadvertently

rita p -- read a part over his budget deal. i had forgotten that was part of my telling of the gulf war story, only because it's a moment historians think was a shining moment, but clearly it was a difficult time for him. he has been remarkably supportive and way i think should be an example to other people who formally held power in that he always understood the job of people who make history and the people who write history are fundamentally different and separate. his job was to answer every question has truthfully as he could. my job was to assess things as truthfully as i could. i found many things in the book where he was misinformed or mistaken or made mistakes in judgment. overwhelmingly i came away extraordinarily impressed by the job you did, especially as a

diplomat. even an all-star hitter strikes out from time to time. brian: a short clip of him talking about personal diplomacy. president bush: i believe, and i have tried to practice this as vice president and long before that, that you are better -- you have a better chance of succeeding if you know a person, , know his heartbeat know about the family and are interested in hosting. >> for you able to quantify the number of handwritten notes or typewritten notes on the little cards? did you ever get a statistic? dr. engel: i don't know people can count that high. brian: has anyone ever been as prolific as he is? dr. engel: certainly no president has been as prolific as a letter writer, no writer, a person who maintained personal contacts.

the bush christmas card list was over 25,000 people. when she became a friend of george bush's, he remained that way. he believed the personal touch was built over time. one of the most amazing things we were able to get the classified and pull out of the bush library to write this history for all the phone calls, transcripts of the phone calls he had with foreign leaders around the world. every time you pick up the phone, we have a transcript. what is amazing is how little talking he did. he would often call people up, president of australia, zimbabwe, and say, what is going on in your world? with you think about the situation and just listen. that was useful for gathering information. he was very explicit about this. when you call someone to ask for a favor, they know it is not the first time you're calling. you have a relationship and they are interested in u.s. well.

brian: what impact has the parkinson's had often? -- had on him? dr. engel: i'm not comfortable describing his medical conditions. he is aging and it's difficult for anyone to go through that. he has difficulty walking. difficulty doing a lot of things he used to love. brian: does he talk about that? dr. engel: i never asked. brian: is there anything you want to do with the story of george herbert walker bush? dr. engel: the story of a comparison between the bush 2003ions of 1991 and of to beo be done -- needs done because the comparison is quite important. another thing that's a matter of professional ethics. i had a personal relationship with president bush. he treated me very well and it was the highlight of my career.

i always maintained i had a distance, a professional distance. one way i tried to maintain that was whenever i was writing and i found myself saying, i would have the president is going to react to that word or that sentence, i would stop and push myself away from the desk and walk around and say you cannot think about him while you're writing this. you have to think about what you think about him. brian: when does the paperback amount? dr. engel: november 17, 2018. brian: "when the world seemed new: george h.w. bush at the end of the cold war." professor jeffrey engel, thank you for joining us. brian: thanks a lot. which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018]

>> for free transcripts or to give his comments about this program, visit us at q-and -a.org. >> next week on q&a, d.l. university historian joanne freeman on her book "the field of blood: violence in congress and the road to civil war." next sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up monday morning, >> talks aboutg store the start of the new supreme court term.

juan williams on his new book. on brettas jipping kavanaugh's supreme court nomination. watch washington journal, live at 7:00 eastern monday morning. join the discussion. the c-span bus was recently in honolulu for the 39th stop of our 50 capitals tour. join us next weekend on october six and seven -- october 6 and 7. exploring hawaii's history and culture, and public policy issues facing the state. next saturday on c-span at 7:00 a.m. on washington journal, director of hawaii's office of planning will talk about homelessness and lack of affordable housing. on book tv on c-span 2 at noon, stuart coleman on his book on

the life of legendary adaline server eddie icow. then the university of hawaii at west oahu. sunday are hawaii week and continues on c-span at 9:30 a.m. eastern on washington journal. -- a renewable energy efforts and whitey. on american history tv on eastern, we0 p.m. visit the valley of the priests along the north shore of oahu. three0 p.m. eastern, short documentaries about whitey. the 1956 film "soldier in hawaii. watch what you weekend next weekend on c-span, book tv and

american history tv. listen to hawaii weekend on the freeseas fan radio app. clear teachin -- we are featurig honolulu's mayor next weekend. >> now, republican governor greg abbott debates democratic challenger lupe valdez at the lyndon b. johnson presidential library in austin, texas. this is about an hour. >> in the texas constitution, it says texas is a free and independent state. the governor holds the state's highest office. >> all political power is inherent in the people. >> and it is up to the texans, from the rio grande to the red river, the panhandle to the gulf -- >> when you can't find a way, you go out and make a way, make it happen.