bush in the public eye, one was karl rove and george w. bush. those relationships was maybe more significant to his presidency and how specifically that cheney one evolved over the course of the presidency? >> rove is the political guy, the guy that came up with the strategies based upon what he thought would be effective policies. but i think context is important in this whole thing, chris, because bush, the way he governored in texas was with a more of a macro approach to -- he's not a details guy. i think what cheney saw, the reason cheney -- the reason cheney was brought in and asked to find a vice president, and he found himself, cheney saw the opportunity and bush's naivete that bush did not have the insider washington expertise and understanding of policy and cheney saw an opportunity. when cheney became vice president, you will remember the first thing he did was he arranged a secret meeting with members of the energy industry to try to begin to immediately affect the things that mattered to him most. i think what happened over the cours

talking about jeb bush, does george bush haunt him, help him?riticized him in 2000 and said if his last name were smith he wouldn't be anywhere. he's trading on his dad's name. if jeb bush were running and his last name was smith it might help him. he's an impressive figure. there is a lot of republicans who like him a lot, but he's going to have to deal with the legacy of his family name at this point and explain why america should go back to another bush. even if you like the best two -- >> they seem so different in demeanor, in everything. >> they're incredibly different. you sit with either one of them they're incredibly different. the problem which is what the governor said is i like jeb bush and the bush family. i like the clintons but we've been in this rodeo for almost 40 years. some bush or clinton has been running for president for almost 40 years. the country is like, yeah, that was great, give them a watch, let them go home and where are our new leaders in this country. president obama did that so well, inspired a whole new generatio

bush was in charge. impression i've taken from it so far was actually that cheney was very, very good at being publicly subservient, sub missive but he was an incredibly good staffer. he understood how power worked in the white house, key roles. he played an incredibly crucial role staffing the white house. he did an effective job setting up choice architecture. george w. bush made decisions cheney presented to him. what happened is that architecture got out of his control. before that he was powerful. not in the sense he was a puppet master but he set up decisions that it only made sense for george w. bush to go in the way cheney would have wanted him to go. is that an incorrect interpretation of it? >> that's a fair point. president bush gave him this role. he said to vice president cheney you set up the transition, you set up the beginning of the administration with people he knows and trusts around various places. he gives the vice president his own staffer the same rank as the president's staffers.

in many cases, president bush managed. putin and bush were at a head. he was always respectful but would come to the point and that created difficult conversations between them. they had a good personal rapport, even through an interpreter. there were a number of leaders who spoke good english. >> do you remember one? >> merkel. she is terrific in private and public. very thoughtful and smart. genuine type of person in the same way that president bush is. they developed a rapport. her english is good but not perfect. when they would talk or do video conversations, which they did, she would have an interpreter with her. the interpreter never had much to do except when merkel would get caught on the word. >> where did they do the conversations? >> in the situation room. he did them with tony blair and gordon brown and merkel. and, with the prime mr. barak -- the prime minister of iraq. >> did the prime minister speak english? >> no. it was hard to establish a personal rapport. they made a good effort at it. the distance, both in language and culture, was

bush always did. internal dissent. you don't need a lot of people squawking outside because that not only doesn't help the process of decision-making, it optionally -- actually undermines it. people won't feel comfortable giving their candid advice in a private session with the president if they feel like some of the else in that room is going to be talking outside about what is said. so you do need people who are going to say, no, i disagree. this is how it ought to be done. is lesson i have taken away really advice for people who have had the kinds of jobs i had. deputy chief of staff and the chief of staff. in both roles, i viewed it as often my most important responsibility to generate disagreement in front of the president. a lot of time is spent in those roles of trying to generate agreement among the cabinet and senior advisers on issues that aren't presidential. you don't want to take up the president's time with second- tier issues. as deputy chief of staff for policy, i spent a fair amount of time saying, can

bush administration. in this second part of our discussion about your time as chief of staff of the white house, start off by giving us what you saw with the press in the media. how did you view them? usually, with some hostility. that is the natural state of affairs between the white house and the press corps because -- because that is the nature of what the press needs to do. they need to catch the white --se on whatever is what whatever is going on. we came in with a press corps that was inclined to be unfriendly. they did a fair amount of work to warm up the relationship. it -- throughout the bush ministration, it was -- it was relatively tense. the view inside the white house werehat most of the media substantiallyy or biased against the ministration. -- the administration. we felt that we were swimming upstream. it,president, annoyed by said that his advice was to let it go off your back and do the best you can. do not get fixated on it. do not spend all your time riled up about how badly the press

president bush was studio. rarely wrent to a meeting with him where he had not read the briefing materials. staff knew not to overload him. he knew the book was going to be this big. you think the most important country you're writing ant is the most important one you. have to be respectful. he read the briefing papers, often ignored him. they often told him to try to raise ten issues but he knew better than to try to race ten issues with vice president peweden at that moment. at moment. so he exercised an amount of independent judgment about how to raise them. he got detailed reading materials on every meeting going forward. he would rarely sit down with a world leader saying here are the top two or three things i want to fix. >> who had direct access? who could go to the oval office? and who managed -- who had access by phone and if you had -- if you could go through the door. >> we were never formal about that. as a procedural matter, generally with exception of a select few, you want to see the president, y

>> i think he respects george bush. i think he's disappointed with george bush.i think he thinks that the president got away from the principles that they together had articulated on national security in the first term. that he became too concerned with his problems with popularity and too interested in trying to particularly on things like the harden, you know, worry about criticisms he might receive. >> rose: do you think cheney thought he wasn't tough enough? >> i think he thinks that, i don't know if i would put it that way. >> rose: how would you put it. >> i think he wouldn't say in public way but i think in private my guess is he thinks that president bush just moved away from the principles that they had had. >> rose: what do you think george bush today in dallas pursuing with a passion painting. when your mind goes back what do you think he thinks of what he did and didn't do. did he for example ever consider, you know, why and what went wrong. whether people let him down, whether his presence will always be clouded because of the advice of some people h

bush says we know that dick. no i mean really conservative which i think a lot didn't quite get at first. >> rose: what was the attitude of the father. >> the father was supported. the father supported cheney. they'd a good relationship. w. bush asked his father at one point what does it mean when somebody says know much because cheney originally did say no when he sent his aide. bush pursued them and there's some suspicion of cheney role as the vice presidential committee. i was the selection committee. >> rose: what does that mean that he said no at the beginning, that he was not machiavellian and he wanted it all the time or something else. >> his argument would be how could i be machiavellian and turned it down. if i really wanted it i would have said yes to begin with. but clearly as the job took form, he did find it more appealing than he thought. he had wanted to be president at one point. he explored it in 1996, decided he didn't like rung around the country raising money and all of this stuff that requir

for the bush administration. you remember we went through 7 1/2 very difficult tumultuous years, hugely consequential, dramatic changes in the world and in the united states. you know, we'd had a recession. we had a crisis of confidence in american business. we had the 9/11 attacks, the war in afghanistan, the war in iraq, hurricane katrina. all of these things. so when we approached the last year of the bush administration, as we got to 7 1/2 years in, most of us thought let's try to wrap this up in a responsible and effective way and for whoever wins the presidency, leave the country and the white house in as good a shape as possible for that next person. and there we're hit with the financial crisis which really exploded in september 20608. it had been festering for a few months. but i don't think anybody expected what happened in september and october 20608 to be on the hour rye rison in the final days of the bush administration. when i served the last few years as chief of staff, the explosion of economic cr

bush administration. in the epilogue to george w. bush's book. you greeted me. you were in his office on the last day of his presidency. he said he greeted me the same he did every day in my chief of staff. mr. president, thank you for the privilege of serving? did you say that? >> i did. sometimes there was a variation of it. but i did as chief of staff, i visited with the president first thing every morning. he got to his desk at about 6:45. and i would get five minutes to get settled. our tradition was the first person the president sees was the chief of staff. i would walk in at about 6:50 in the morning. i always said something to the effect of, thank you for the privilege of serving. and it wasn't intended to flatter him or to thank him, it was intended to remind me and to help me remind everybody else what a privilege it was to be inside the white house. so i just made it a habit. it was a privilege. >> what did he say back? >> he would just move on. he was a president i think really understood the presidency, understood the privilege of being in the oval

let's look at republicans, you have reagan, george bush, bush ii. in each of these cases you can see the confirmation rates for the republican nominees who were the brightest was lower than it was for the ones that weren't. for reagan, almost 98% of his dumber nominees, no offense to people who didn't go to a top law school paula have to tell you when i send this around to some earlier academic publishers i would get all sorts of people offended. .. >> now, if you look at the democrats, the opposite is true, smarter nominees whether it's carter, clinton, or obama got confirmed. i just make a general statement that when i do the regression results later, what you basically, the thing is it's going to be generally the smarter nominees for both parties with a hard time, but particularly smart republicans have a smart time. now why democrats fight stronger against smart republicans than republicans fight stronger against smart democrats? i'm not sure, but i think it's going to make a big difference over time. right now, you have some people from the rea

and bush says enough. whatever he said, there's dispute about what he said, enough that the congressman walked away thinking he had the commitment and switched his vote. a lot of things go into this. the difference, though, that after it passed when the rollout happened, democrats were at that point interested in making it work. they were not still fighting it at this point like the republicans are still fighting this. so while they weren't -- they're critical, they had it in their interest to fix the problem. gwen: what about the surveillance piece of this and seemed like it really began -- this idea that we spy on everybody for every possible way for our own security began post-9/11. is that wrong? >> we've been spying on our allies and friends for decades, you know, henry stenson, the secretary of state once said we don't read each other's mail but we've been trying to read mail for a long time. and at times during the bush administration when they passed the patriot's act they continued these programs

because you wrote a book on this, how did he make bush feel -- was it that bush wasn't that smart inipulated or really, truly skillful? >> i think bush figured out in the end that cheney was manipulating him. but he flattered him and he made bush think that he -- he made bush think, much of the way people around nixon played to his insecurities and feelings about liberals and people ganging up on him, he played to his sense that he was sort of a lone hero standing up for what was right against people who didn't understand how dangerous the world was. and he got what he wanted for five, six years. and then bush got wise to him and had to recalibrate and cheney wasn't on board for that. >> what's interesting is as the former president sort of comes out of the shadows if you can call dog paintings coming out of the shadow, i do think, you know, bush's approval ratings have steadily climbed. i do not think that history will be as kind to dick cheney as it will ultimately be to george w. bush. >> no, i don't think it will be. and i think we're seeing something heartening about u.s. politi

he is models off of george bush's. they wanted to show distance from the left house republicans as he used reelection in texas to make his case to donors nationally and governors. cri christie will timeout his bipartisan accomplishments and reelection as he perfectsa a more anti-washington message. many governors feel they have no choice to utter that their party is taking a beating nationally. listen to this. >> the government almost shut down. now they are tapping somebody's phone and now this. this is creating an issue of confidence in the minds of the american people. we are sitting in a room and figure out what's good and what's bad and how we fix it. the problem is washington talk past one another. >> listen to him quickly pivoting and noting that there was a democratic governor in talking about working it out with the democrats. he is running for reelection in a swing state if you haven't figured that out. republican governors against washington and every candidate who was not incumbent are trying to use the dis

bush was not a shrinking violet-- violet. people described rooms when they were making decisions he was the one running the meeting. vice president cheney actually stayed quiet, he didn't actually offer his opinion in many meetings but where his power came from is when every other advisor left the room, cheney stayed behind. and what advice he gave to the president obviously people don't know. but it was, a situation where a number of times you could find president bush pushback even in the early days. >> woodruff: and you do write though in the first term in particular the vice president very influential in the president. but i want to specifically about the iraq war. >> right. >> woodruff: how much of that was the president and how much of that was the vice president? would it have happened if it hadn't been for the vice president. >> right. >> woodruff: and the secretary within that's a great question. obviously colin powell was skeptical. condi rice was following the president's lead. would it have happened without vice p

president bush went the other way. second term president bush moving apart.ea, on the opposite side of most issues confronting the white house. >> wan to pin down on what separated the two, drove them apart. the atlantic said bush cheney marriage ended in a fight over another man. an interesting way to describe it. >> vice president cheney's chief of staff scooter libby, convicted in leak case, obstruction of justice, bogus prosecution, goes to the president in the last days of the administration. you have to pardon him. you have to do this. president bush assigns lawyers to go back and look at it, decides i'm not going to. this final climatic moment, you're leaving a good man wounded on the field of battle. harshest thing in years, quite an ending. >> encyclopedia of that experience, one that struck me was the pr nightmare when dick cheney shot his good friend and hunting partner harry whittington in the face. it was laura bush ultimately who said we've got to get on top of this. >> she didn't interfere a lot. she was not a player in politic the way hillary

of both president bush 41 of course and dick cheney. at the time they were very close and he i think was supportive. but he did urge president bush 43 as he was coming rumsfeld. >> rose: he wanted it too. >> he did too. he reminded the new incoming president remember what he did to your dad, there was bad blood between rumsfeld and bush 41. >> rose: what does that say about the president when his father and others said don't go there. does that suggested he had an independent mind. >> it suggests he wanted an independent break. he wanted to bring in some folks from his father's administration but it's an interesting thing to say of course because all he needed to do was ask his dad. but he wanted to make a break and he wanted to sort of put down his own marker. >> rose: what role did he think the vice president would play. did he as some suggested think the vice president would be a kind of prime minister? >> i don't think he saw him that way. he saw him first among equals as advisors. he did lean on him and empower

bush library in dallas. i would think the killing of sama bin laden is a high water mark of the obama presidency, the most wanted man, the most heinous crime against america of 9/11. obama got him. historians will show that barack obama was vigilant in the world of terror, just as vigilant as george w. bush, but had a different strategy of how to do it using drones and special ops instead of sending in the troops the way president did. host: you talk about the legacy of franklin roosevelt. this is a tweet from a viewer. how will the president's environmental legacy read? guest: one national park was created under the obama administration. it was a monument, and got upgraded to park status in california. there have been a number of executive orders signed by barack obama creating national monuments. one was for munro in virginia. the san juan islands. he created the first federal park in the state of delaware and harriet tubman -- at. tubman's -- at harriet tubman's home where she lived. cesar chavez's home a

bush, and bush's policies, although he's not ready to actually name drop bush 43. the bush legacy continues to develop since he left office in 2009. >>> our lead read today. it explores the relationship between bush and his vice president, dick cheney. it's called "days of fire, bush and cheney in the white house." it was written by the "new york times" chief white house correspondent peter baker, who joins me here. good to have you back. congratulations on this wonderfully received book. it's getting great critical reviews. tell me, there's been a lot of speculation, lot of people talking about what drove bush and cheney apart. >> right. >> what was it? >> i think it begins with iraq. obviously iraq, the war starts to go badly, there are no weapons there and bush begins looking at a second term. he's got to make a case to the american public. cheney offers to drop off the ticket. bush thinks about it and decides no, i'm not going to but he's beginning to think how do i begin to reshape my administration. what do we have to do for a second term, more diplomacy, les

reagan, bush, bush c. each of these cases you can see the confirmation rate for the republican nominees who were the brightest was lower than it was for the ones who were. almost 90% of his number nominees, no offense to those people who didn't graduate top law school. when i sent this around to some earlier academic publishers, i've got all sorts of people offended when i would use these terms. but anyway, you can see almost 98% for his brighter nominees being confirmed. george h.w. bush, this is amazing. 89% of the nominees got confirmed. only 33% of his nominees from the top law schools who develop those schools got nominated. really dramatic difference. now if you look at the democrats, the opposite. they're smarter nominees, whether carter, clinton or obama all but confirmed. i'll just make a general statement. when i do the regression results later, basically the same is going to be generally the smarter nominees. republicans have a smart time. why democratics fight stronger than republicans fight st

road and now the jeb bush road? >> isn't this the problem, that the rush limbaughs and the glenn becks, they attack any voices in the party that advises restraint. >> it is part of the problem. you know, they have this authenticity litmus test. they love to refer to these republicans as rhinos. republicans in name only. sadly, there's not really any place in the republican party right now for jeb bush. you know, a pro-immigration, almost moderate bush brand name republican doesn't have much place. the tea party is at times anti-bush, and certainly when you look at this pivot the president has made towards immigration, it poses an incredible challenge for the republican party. because the far right doesn't seem to want to come to the table and have this negotiation. but the moderate and more pragmatic republicans understand the future of the party in some way rests with this republican caucus' capacity to show they can support immigration reform. the president's in a win/win situation right now for that. he's going t

governor bush is uniquely suited for this recognition.hinking, compassionate approach to policy, and solution oriented leadership were values held here and example five by the lake jack kemp. throughout his life, jeb bush has proved an exceptional leader in advancing the american idea. as everyone here knows, jeb bush was twice elected as governor of florida. during his tenure, he focused on real ways to improve people's lives. it began with improving the state's economy. hisrnor bush delivered on principles, cutting 20 billion dollars in taxes, building florida's global reputation for trade and investment and reducing the state government workforce by more than her team thousand. his limited government approach help unleash economic growth in the state, creating 1.4 million new jobs. most dear to his heart is improving education especially those children to which opportunity has been denied. was transformed florida's educational system which is why he is a go to mentor for educational leaders across the nation. as one of the most respect

or george bush jr you know in that we have these reactionaries in the federalist society now in the judicial branch which are making it virtually impossible to seek protection from the judicial branch against the unconstitutional conduct of the executive so that a constitutional litigation attorney such as myself find myself right at the center of these types of confrontations between the raw assertion of executive power whether it's rendition or torturing people or asserting the right under the national defense authorization act to unilaterally arrest american citizens and hold them in detention with no right of habeas corpus and the right to counsel and no one would believe that this could possibly have happened in our country but here it is what i do in the book in the people's advocate as i explained from a front row seat that i had throughout these entire last three decades what it looked like seeing this national security state coming descend upon our country that's why the book is so important not because it's all about me because it's not it's about an era when this happened

bush brought in ted kennedy to see 13 days which was a movie about john f. kennedy's experience with the cuban missile crisis. so bush trying to be bipartisan brought in ted kennedy and they ended up working together on the successful no child left behind law. >> go back to who is the gentleman who kept a record? >> paul fisher. there's some great stories about him. one story is that eisenhower would not watch movies with robert mitch m in them because he had been arrested for marijuana possession. and fisher would try to sneak movies with mitchham by eisenhower. he wouldn't tell him he was in it but when he got on the screen eisenhower would walk out. when jimmy carter who watched 480 movies the most, he only did it in one term. when jimmy carter became president he said he wanted to watch family friendly fare. and fisher's reaction in the late 70s was you're not going to get to see many movies that way. >> where did you find this information? where did mr. fisher keep it? >> all the nixon movies are on line. you can look at every one that nixon did. some o

bush. there's a great story i tell in the book when he's in kennebunkport and he's asked by reporters what he's doing on vacation in kennebunkport, and he said, i'm going to do some tennis, some golf, some motor boating, some running, some -- some horseshoes. and i'll do a little reading. reading wasn't his top priority either. >> over the years when you looked back at the books that had an impact on a president, what did you find? and the impact on us is people. >> that's my inspiration of writing this book. i was curious if it had an impact. one of the most famous stories is this -- michael harrington wrote about poverty in west virginia. kennedy is supposed to have read that book and it led to the war on poverty. not quite that simple. it didn't happen quite that way. he read a book review by dwight mcdonald in the "new yorker" and that inspires kennedy to tell walter heller who is the chairman of the council of economic advisors to go look to policies that can be used to alleviate pover

shot down and use that as a pretext to invade iraq so this thing goes on all the time still in the bush the father of bush in kuwait way why do you think these are a false flags and more historically explored in these provocations kind of the use of these false provocations starting to do for this but we're excited especially to try to expose this to national security archives putting out great documents about these things so people know some of this but it's at the heart of our story because we're telling the other side of american history the dark side all the interventions the assassinations the dirty tricks the psychological warfare the torture of don't forget the arrogance it's behind and that you have those two it's always you're able to drop them on japan and get away with it successfully by calling it a moral victory and saying that it ended world war two then you adopt the attitude that because you want you were right because you're right you're good that's what follows and therefore you create your own moral code oh i love i love the series because i think a recurring theme is

he jokes, i always had this idea of a bush-cheney far long time. >> george w.isionmaking. do you believe that? >> well, i think it's important to try to get into decisionmaking, understand why he made the decisions he did, not to disagrier or agree but evaluate how they were made. i think history is going to re-examine and re-look at this period of time for decades. we'll be debating these things far long time. >> you say he left office as the most disliked president in seven decades. >> he did. >> and cheney didn't fare much better snop a former aide to president bush said what's it like to leave office in an unpop yoor r uhlar president? he kind of bristled and said i was almost the most popular president, which he was for a time after 9/11. >> why wouldn't president bush talk to you? >> he didn't believe a book written by "the new york times" reporter could be fair. he felt the paper had not been balanced in his time in office. but i think in the end he allowed a lot of people around him to talk. >> and an interesting nugget about harriet miers. people may n

bush administration. lex please be seated, everybody. -- >> please be seated everybody. >> good afternoon and welcome everyone. my name is sean joyce, deputy director of the at the eye. today we are truly honored to be joined by president barack obama. mr. president. [applause] mr. president, on behalf of every fbi employee, it is my crib wedge to welcome you back to fbi headquarters. [applause] >> we also have a number of other special guests here today, including former director webster, sessions and the special warm-up welcome back to director mueller and his wife. [applause] we also welcome former attorney general ashcroft. i would also like to have the directors join me on stage including to my far left, robert dortch, a friend and colleague with whom director call me worked to help some of richmond hardest hit areas. most importantly, director call me his wife. thank you for taking part in today's ceremony. we are also pleased to have the directors children, maureen, kate brian claire and abby. [app

bush and dick cheney.inters in their styles have had lasting ramifications on the gop today. peter baker has a new book on that relationship. vice president cheney himself was on abc this morning talking about the current state of the gop. >> we clearly need to spend time and effort on building the base, building the party, making it a full-time professional operation in terms of the rnc. there is a lot of work to be done, no question about it. >> joining me live, peter baker. good to see you, sir. there has long been this narrative involving dick cheney. essentially calling the shots. how much power did he actually wield? >> right. good question. you know, we got this sort of rather cartoonish version of what that white house is really like. it became solidified in the public mind, great fodder for comedians. but in fact vice president cheney was never actually quite as influential as people assumed he was. and even though he was an important figure in the first term, by the second term, he and president