bush almost like his father, bush started to develop responses to this. one thing that i think many people agree on is he had a good sense of humor. finally when he gets tired of being attacked, he says we have a candidate that was born in new haven, connecticut. an outsider. he said i was born there because i wanted to be with my mother that day. >> what about laura? >> he married her in the late seventies. >> matter where and under what circumstances? >> friends arranged to get them together at a barbecue. they were in midland. she was a local librarian. it's interesting to me that even his choice of east spouse reflected this kind of anti elite. he chose someone from texas. not someone from the social set of his parents. in fact if you read laura bushes men more closely, she says quite gently, it took me about ten years to be comfortable with barbara bush and her acid tongue. laura is quite the reverse. >> what was your assignment? these are small books. under 200 pages. they've done them on all presidents. >> i talked to my friends is that if you writ

bush presidency?ames: you mean which -- brian: which book that he read would be the biggest help if somebody wanted to study it, besides your short biography? james: well, i -- brian: what's, more to you? james: my own book, rise of the vulcans, i consider for foreign policy a pretty good book. a and then there are the memoirs. i mean, i think that bush, cheney, rice wrote an interesting memoir. rumsfeld has a memoir. i think that the memoirs, everybody shades it a little bit one way or another from their own perspective. but they are quite good. the other there is a book about cheney called angler by bart gellman that's an unusually good book too. brian: what did you think of george w. bush's own memoir? james: i thought it was ok. i thought it was actually as a memoir, it was better than bill clinton, which just was not the best thing bill clinton ever did. but i thought it was pretty much -- pretty run-of-the-mill. brian: our guest has been james mann. and he wrote the book called "george w. bush,"

bush. >> james mann author of the biography on george w. bush. if a friend asked you to tell him about him what would you say? >> i would say he was the son of a president, had trouble dealing with that fact for the first 40 plus years of his life and then got his own personal life together enough to be a quite successful and shrewd politician to be elected governor of texas and then became president of the united states. the first thing he would be known for then, at the time of his presidency, now and forever more, will certainly be the fact that he was president at the time of the september 11th attacks, and chose to wage a war in iraq that turned out to be a disaster. >> what were his early years like? >> well, he followed in his father's footsteps and i say that quite literally, because he was forced, almost, to go to prep school at andover, he went to yale, he did many of the things his father did. it really, in his mind, i think, it was not him. he once said, many years later, there were differences between him and his father, starting wit

bush. this interview was included in c-span's 2019 book, "presidents, " a compilation of interviews with historians. 23rd int bush ranked our most recent survey of presidential leadership. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," james mann talks about his biography of president george w. bush. brian: james mann, author of the biography on george w. bush, if a friend of yours who had never met george w. bush asked you to tell you about him, what would you say? james: i would say he was a guy who was the son of a president, had trouble dealing with that fact for the first 40 years-plus of his life and then got his own personal life together enough to be a quite successful and shrewd politician to be elected governor of texas, and then became president of the united states. the first thing he would be known for then at the time of his presidency now and forever more will certainly be the fact that he was president at the time of the september 11th attacks and chose to wage a war in iraq that turned out to be

bush. a part of theuch library, the museum and the community. >> we all know that our grandmother loved taking sawures and, you know, we the scrapbooks she would keep of pictures of all of us. in the more recent years, i realize how much she kept from her entire life until i was booking research for my and i was able to go down to college station, to my and theyer's library have the archives there. my coauthor and i were like, ok, a day and a half. let's do it. 8 a.m., first day we walk in, finch was like, ok, where do you want to start? she opens the door. it is like millions and millions of different scrap books, books, tapes and things. like, what? oh, my god. we only have a day and a half. anyway, we started in her scrap books. my grandmother had kept scrapbooks from every part of their life together. at the george h.w. bush library and museum, director one offinch showed us barbara bush's many scrapbooks theirning mementos from life together. >> we're here in the research room. we're g

president bush, mrs. bush, great to see you again. thank you for this honor. 200 acres of mountain park. work with national park service. it is a rustic retreat, simple, single-story cabins, oak plank siding, cedar shake shingle roofs. just enough amenities. enough security of course, but very pleasant, simple place to go where many presidents have found that respite they're looking for. >> talk a little bit about your role and the staff. >> it is navy command. it's run by the navy. it's been that way since the roosevelt years. he took the sailors from the yacht that stewart talked about and the marines to guard it. so it's a navy command that operates and maintains the principal facility for the president. but on the weekends, it takes on that whole aura of being the place where the president and his family and guests can get away whether for their own personal use or for diplomatic purpose. >> and so presidents use this partly as a recreational retreat to get away. they also use it to entertain and host world leaders. tell us a litt

president bush and misses bush were so much part of this place.rom 1993 until the last years of our life -- their life, they were here all the time. they did programming with us. misses posted a literacy program. did a literacy program. we got to enjoy their company so long in town. >> the c-span cities tour continues with a visit to the final resting place of president bush, his wife barbara and their daughter robin. >> we are about 4/10 of a mile from the library and president bush chose this site to be his final resting place. ago we year and half buried misses bush here and then about six days later in december he was brought up 4141 and the special car. peoplely there were lining the tracks all the way from houston. probably 80 or 90 miles from houston here and there were people lined up all along the tracks. i was in a bus and we follow the path of the train. we could see the people all over the tracks. the train ended at the university about a mile from here. andcasket was brought here the kids who are in the corps cadets here. there's a wa

bush did. and so, he went and worked alongside lee atwater for over a year. >> so, he actually moved to washington and helped. and his role in the campaign, his first role he called it was loyalty enforcer. so, with all these politicians and political figures running around, he was the guy watching out for his father's interests. i'm sure atwater was, too, but he wanted to double check. >> his own ambitions, i think, i became convinced and wrote that he had his own ambitions at the time and so to move ahead for a second, in'92 after his father lost, he's running for governor of texas. everybody says that he developed his ambitions after his father lost. no. i think he held his ambition in check while his father was president. >> in fact, barbara at one point discouraged george jr. from running for governor of texas in 1990 because she thought it wasn't a good idea while george bush sr. was president. anything that one of them did could reflect on the other. >> how difficult was it for him to ge

so i was on the 1988 bush/dukakis campaign on the bush side. i would say the top half is exactly not true, not how he was perceived and the bottom half is exactly how dukakis was perceived from our point of view. and i remember being -- having a t-shirt that said, beware of greeks wearing lifts. there was a lot of joking about the difference in height between the two. prush was 6'2" or 6'3". there was a "saturday night live" skit called dukakis after dark and it played upon this that there was this other side to michael dukakis that nobody saw or knew about. but on the top side though i would say the left side of what they try to sell is exactly what we all perceived in george bush. a war hero, 58 combat missions, and life long public servant. i met david mccullough when i was making a documentary about president bush and david mccullough said to me it takes about 50 years for historians to render a judgment on a president and how glad he was to see that historians had come around and given george bush the credit he deserved and that he was ali

bush, bill clinton, george w. bush and include barack obama's 2008 election. the university of virginia's miller center hosted the event. >> well, we're going to get started here with round two of presidents on whom oliphant was able to bestow his gifts and a country on which he was able to bestow his gifts by commenting and visually and with words on those presidents. i'm mike nelson. i'm the guy that you had to put up with the first panel. fortunately, we have a new cast of people to add their voices to the wonderful voices that you heard from the scholars of the first panel. once again, we have miller center people here. the miller center, one of its main emphases is to study the presidency in historical depths with objectivity and in other words, we are all in the business of doing stuff that an editorial cartoonist is not in the business of doing, which is reacting to events on a day-to-day basis, which pat oliphant did in his 60-plus years as a newspaper cartoonist. and whereas we all strive to be as objective as we can, the job of the editorial cartooni

of andident bush meeting robin misses bush in heaven -- and mrs.h in heaven. president bush loved trains and loved railroad travel. early in the planning for his funeral, he wanted to be brought from houston to college station, his final resting place here at the library, in a train. so the drum light from the train, then up used some of its heritage fleet to bring the family up, and they had a car especially designed for the upket, and they created the 4141 foreign exhibit we get here on american railroads more than 10 years ago. that up 4141r, locomotive was used to pull the train. and it will be coming here sometime in the next year or year and a half, and will be outside the library. so we are really looking forward to that. and that u.s. postal service issued a stamp in june 2019, a forever stamp with the president's portrait, and unveil that here at a ceremony in college station. the president picked the portrait himself. president and misses bush both were so much a part of this place, from 1993 until the last years of their life they were h

bush: the wedding planner. to the night is wedding. -- jenna's this is my last white house correspondents dinner as president. i'm not sure what i'm going to do next. after he left office, vice president gore won an oscar and the nobel peace prize. i might win a prize of publishers clearinghouse or something. but thanks for inviting me. creditedment tonight's first. this is a small world. greg was once in a punk band called "bastards from ill," which is what did and -- dick and i will call our band. two months ago craig became an american citizen. [applause] i'm honored to: call you fellow american. ladies and gentlemen, surprisingly, i've enjoyed these dinners. tonight i thought we would reminisce a bit. the first couple of years i came to this dinner i was really into slideshows. we have put together 70 scrapbooks about our life as a family. what i've done is pull out some of the actual, never before seen photos from the scrapbooks. [laughter] fmr. pres. bush: this was during the great drought of 1953. jeff.e

and i love the whole bush family. i was an only child and when i married into the extended bush clan, i got brothers and sisters and wonderful in-laws, all of whom opened their arms to me. included in the package, i got this guy here. i think when you marry someone, you unconsciously are looking for something in your spouse to help fulfill something in you. and george did that for me. he brought fun and energy into my life and so many other things. george is a very good listener, he's easy to be around, and on top of it all, he's a loving father whose daughters absolutely adore him. so in the future, when you see me just quietly sitting up here, [laughter] i want you to know i am happy to be here for a reason. i love and enjoy being with the man who usually speaks to you on these occasions. so george and i thank you for inviting us, thank you for all of the good work that you and the press do, and thank you for your very kind hospitality this evening. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] to friday night white h

bush, thank you.[applause] >> thank you to spence, joe, nick and larry that i told you would be informative and entertaining. thank you all for coming. you will exit through the museum. please take a few minutes to stop by and visit our new special exhibit, presidential retreats, way from the white house, which will be open until 8:15. tickets are available at bush centre. org. our next presentation is the lecture. and june 12 with a conversation about global flashpoints. thank you and have a good evening. [applause] >> on the presidency, cia chief historian talks about the evolving nature of the relationship between presidents and their cia directors, and how it is influenced by the president's needs and interests. one director, george h w bush later became president himself. the smithsonian hosted

bush administration. and, this is not just street myth, this is a myth that is propagated by people like brent scowcroft in the iraq war words he said i don't know cheney anymore. cheney has changed. and there is also what i call the cardiology theory. everybody in this room know someone at a dinner party who knows a cardiologist jordan is a cardiologist or wants to be a cardiologist to says chaney's heart attack and again, he had had three before we ever get to the beginning of the bush administration, for by the time you took office, that somehow they changed him and they transformed him from moderate. not true. and what i found really the closer you look, cheney was conservative. he was always conservative. and it tells us something about ourselves i think that we think you change. so let's look at the reasons that people think you change. one reason is that cheney subscribed to what i called the hired gun theory. he served as white house chief of staff and the next year he went out to wyoming to run f

bush was tempo. president bush was trailblazer. joe's nearly 30-year career with the service culminated in 2015, when he. . . . . [ applause ] >> well, thank you all we have a fantastic program and interesting information on the secret service, how it runs, and a lot of back stories you will find fascinating. so let's get started. joe director clancy i should say, as a former director of the secret service can you set the scene of the history of the secret service because it wasn't always about protection. >> that's correct, spence, first it is unusual for agents to be sitting on stage. typically we're stage left or right talking into our sleeves but talking into these mics are a challenge. i want to give you warning because of our training any sudden movements might create -- [ laughter ] we noticed a couple people didn't applaud when we walked in. the history of the secret service, it's a tremendous history over 150 years. it started april 14, 1865, civil war there's a lot of counter fit currency and the treasury secretary went i

bush. he went against public opinion. he went against his secretary of defense. he went against his secretary of state. he went against his joint chiefs of staff. against condi rice, rumsfeld, pace, all of them were against the surge. and with the talented assistance of steve hadley and his nsc staff, president bush orchestrated a decision that everyone eventually agreed upon and over the next 18 to 24 months the surge did reduce violence and it did reduce sectarian killings. my question, should these generalizations then inspire a reinterpretation of president bush and the iraq war? i don't think so. by mid 2006, the prevailing policy was failing. the choice was double down with the surge, reposition, and/or carefully withdraw. nobody around president bush, even the opponents of the surge, could face a pullout and acknowledge defeat, whatever that might mean. so the only option, actually, was the last card. the surge. bob jarvis explains this in terms of what political scientists call pros

he served for president bush, or trailblazer, mrs. bush was tempo. his nearly 30 year career culminated in 2015 when president obama named joe the 24th director of the u.s. secret service. so he was in charge. today he is the chief security officer at comcast corporation. nick trotta is here. they worked on large scale events like leader summits. post 9/11 travel including trips to iraq and afghanistan that you will hear about tonight. he was in yankee stadium as president bush through out the first pitch before game three in the world series. also tonight, spencer geissinger. he was under advance and operations. he oversaw dozens of military and security military agencies and travel including the u.s. secret service. now he is the global director for show call inc. we planned to have former secret service agent kathleen flatley. because of a medical reason she is not able to be here tonight and we are wishing her a speedy recovery. let us welcome them to the stage. >> thank you all. we have a fantastic program tonight and really interesting informat

bush and barack obama. but first, remarks by president ronald reagan, delivering his last speech to the dinner in 1988. [applause] you.pres. reagan: thank thank you. [applause] fmr. pres. reagan: thank you. thank you very much. please. thank you all. i am delighted to be here. my, what a crowd. it looks like the index of larry's book. [laughter] [applause] it's good toagan: see norm and your incoming senator kerry o'leary. in his book, larry said that jerry filled his coat pockets with pastries. earlier tonight, just to be safe, i told him, keep your hands off my dinner roll. said repairing me for a press conference was like reinventing the wheel. it's not true, i was around when the wheel was invented, and it was easy. [laughter] [applause] fmr. pres. reagan: even howard baker is writing a book about me. five, thed "three by measure of a president." [laughter] mike said reagan: that i have a short attention span in his book. i was going to reply to that, let's movehe hell, on to something else. [laughter]

bush presidential center hosted this event. >> here at the bush center, of course, we have a wonderful relationship with our partners at smu, and it's so nice to have smu president dr. gerald turner and his wife, gayle, here with us tonight. we're grateful to all of our

bush presidential center hosted this event. >> here at the bush center we have a wonderful relationship with our partners at smu. it's so nice to have dr. gerald and his wife tonight. we are grateful for all of our board members in attendance. knowing our panelists, tonight will be one of those engaged programs that is informative and highly

president bush talks about this in his interview about how he was conscious of that. i thought a lot about this during my time in the white house, because i would watch how carefully i watched the president, and not just his explicit verbal direction to me but i was one of those people when i would walk into the oval office, if i was pre-briefing the president before a phone call or a meeting, i would look for every cue in the room to see how much time i actually did. did i actualry have two minutes or maybe did i have ten minutes and i would rely on all kinds of things, what kind of shoes is he wearing? he's in a better mood if he's wearing cowboy boots, i have longer. if the vice president is in the room, maybe there's other things going on, i have shorter. so you're constantly looking for cues, and i think it's part of being an effective person in government, but the downside can be that if you're a president, any, you know, joke, muttering under the breath, could actually shape what you get in your next briefing or what people give you because there is that natura

the bush administration, the famous phrase in bush's inaugural speech in early 1989 was good will begets good will. if iran shows good will to the u.s. and this mainly meant getting their friends in lebanon to release the remaining american hostages in lebanon, if iran shows goodwill, we will reciprocate. one problem was that it took three years for the remaining hostages in lebanon to be released, so it was not until december 1991 that they were released, by which time things had changed quite a bit. and, secondly, u.s. priorities shifted rapidly after the desert storm war, the madrid peace process began, the bush -- the first bush administration was very invested in that. pushed it very hard. iran was very much an opponent and that really soured the prospects for better relations. so i would score the first bush administration as really a period of containment even though there was a little bit of talk about maybe engaging in pursuing engagement but that never really got off the ground. the early clinton period largely continued this. the clinton administration was pursuing many of the

i had less access than meghan or steve to president bush. particularly with president bush, the overwhelming impression i had was how different he was from the cartoon caricatures my academic friends at duke held of him. their version of him was not smart, not thoughtful, not well read, inarticulate and reflexive, making impetuous decisions. and that was not the person that i saw. i saw someone who was deeply committed to the integrity of the office and the notion that he was a custodian of something greater than himself and temporarily a steward of that he had to hand onto the next person and he did make sure he left the next person better off than he had been. that was the job of the president, to leave the next person better off if you could. i'm not saying he did not make mistakes. of course he did. but there was a commitment to something that was greater than just his own legacy, his own standing, the way people thought of him. that was inspiring. he also was so much smarter than people give him credit for. i will never forget one day h

is bush in heaven. -- ms. bush in heaven. the light from the train. president bush love trains.ailroad travel. early in the planning process for his funeral, he wanted to be brought from houston to college station as his final resting place. -- she wanted to be brought on a train. the drum light from the train and up used some of its heritage fleet to bring the family up. had a car specially designed for the casket. p -- theyed you created up 4141 franco exhibit we did here on american railroads 10 years ago. railcar locomotive was used to pull the train and it will be coming here sometime in the next year and will be outside the library. we are looking forward to that. service issued a stamp in june 2019, a forever stamp with the president's portrait on it. here at aled it ceremony in college station. the president picked the portrait out himself. is -- andbush and ms. ms. bush were so much a part of this place from 1993 until the last years of their life. they were here all the time. they did programming with us. the president and ms. bush both. she did a literacy program for

bush white house during katrina. as of today, the american death toll for coronavirus is more than triple already what the death toll was on katrina. it may be 100 times the death toll from katrina by high summer. but the type of failure is the same at core. again, you can get really focused on the president's demeanor and mendacity. yes, the president has lied about this crisis, lied about the virus. he has said terribly ignorant and dangerous and damaging things about it. his public presentations in terms of how he has handled this are just astonishingly bad. but ignore what he says. look at what he has done. still no nationwide stay-at-home order. no widespread access to tests, still. no national quartermastering for procurement and allocation of critical medical supplies. no real use of the defense production act to compel the production of supplies, despite the fact he keeps citing it. it not happening. to the contrary, he's actually been using fema to undercut the ability of states to procure materials on their

bush's presidency. he was too ill during 9/11 to do anything about that even though people were apparently going to his hospital bedside and encouraging him. saying they needed his voice. he died in october of 2001. what he did note of george w. bush was in assumption a lot of cartoonists made early in his election and presidency. that the president is stupid. cartoonists who got to live longer came around on that and decided that he was not a stupid president. but at this point, that's how herb block is depicting him. as under the control of dick cheney and his father. ignorant about world affairs. this particular cartoon was actually drawn during the 2000 presidential election. as you can see in the last year and a half of his life, again the ideas are solid. he's coming up with an opinion. and he's able to see a way to express it. he is using -- with his pen. the white house as an institution, as a substitute for the sitting president, appears quite frequently in his cartoons when he wants to talk ab

bush, bill clinton, george w. bush and include barack obama's 2008 election.he university of virginia's miller center hosted the event.

bush's presidency.he was too ill during 9/11 to do anything about that even though apparently people were going to his hospital bedside and encouraging him and saying that they needed his voice. he died in october of 2001. what he did note about george w. bush was an assumption a lot of cartoonists made early in the election and early in his presidency, and they drew him as stupid. now, cartoonists who got to live longer came around on that and decided that he wasn't a stupid president. but at this point, that's how herb block is depicting him as under the control of dick cheney and his father. and ignorant about world affairs. and this particular cartoon was actually drawn during the 2000 presidential election. and as you can see, in the last year and a half of his life, that mr. block, again, the ideas are solid. he's expressing an opinion. he's come up with an opinion. and he's able to conceive of a cogent way to express it. but the drawing style is a lot weaker. he's using that when he can't correct

bush white house during katrina. and, as of today, the american death toll for coronavirus is more than triple, already, what the death toll was in katrina. it may be 100 times the death toll from katrina by high summer. but the type of failure is the same, at core. i mean, and, again, you know, if you get -- you can get really focused on the president's demeanor and the president's mendacity. yes, the president has lied about this crisis. lied about the virus. he has said terribly ignorant and dangerous and damaging things about it. his public presentations in terms of how he has handled this are just astonishingly bad. but ignore what he says. look at what he has done. still, no nationwide stay-at-home order. no widespread access to tests, still. no national quarter mastering for procurement and allocation of critical medical supplies. no real use of the defense production act to compel the production of supplies, despite the fact that he keeps citing it. it's not happening. i mean, to the contrary. he's actually b

his last name was bush, jeb bush. so she thinks banana republic.so she decides we are going to get this over with. a patient person, we are going to get this over with now. we are not going to let this case go on and come back to congress. ruth peter ginsburg told us about this. looking down the road, more than any other supreme court justice of her time, she looked at the practical consequences of the supreme court's decision. she didn't really go for doctrine and theory. she cared about the consequences. in this case it was going to be a mess. she did and weaknesses and that is why she voted the way she did. >> that morning, she told her son correctly half of the country is going to hate me, and they did. although she was suddenly very decisive and have few regrets. on this one, she did. she was uncomfortable being asked about it and 12 years later she told "the chicago tribune." afterwards she started by saying no question. >> uncharacteristically defensive on her part. >> for the challenge for the personal timing, she didn't feel coming afeelth

bush and bush are going to be a good trip. this experiment is the most delicious one the lettuce was grown at 0 gravity and then of course eaten they carry out. biological in physics experiments study the performance of stem cells and develop medicines to cure cancer this experiment is the most important one for jack fisher as his daughter had cancer. but space minnow also guinea pigs mission control constantly monitors their health and watches closely to see if they exercise enough. we have a special treadmill 1st off we can find it's on the wall we have to work out physical exercise. to do 2 and a half hours a day because if you don't have good exercise your muscles and your bones just just go away and you come back as a 90 year old man and then you your wife like you anymore. that's the answer. to some crude. in this in this book in the city of new keeping them honest with the poor you have a need for you. in europe and mutual in this cheering and thank you both of you support you but at least now there was there were 3 met

laura bush. again, just this lovely, sophisticated -- it looks sort of simple, but the sophistication and the color scheme and the painting of richard's stuff just sort of is annoying and wonderful. and up in the corner, that's our trump that kevin kelleher, who draws for "the economist" just did recently with a twitter bird on his shoulder. a fabulous piece of color art. in the bar, the probably -- 75% of the art on the walls is really straight caricatures. there are a number of real political cartoons here as well. this particular corner has got one by me and one by kevin kelleher. this is something he did for "the economist" and this is one i did for politico. you can immediately tell the difference in that we have word bubbles, captions. there's a lot more information and opinion being conveyed in these, of course, which is really what we're about. kevin's is a lovely example of good political cartoon sort of built around a clever visual met ametaphor. it's conveyed quickly. it's the boxing r

the bush -- the first bush administration was very invested in that, pushed it very hard, iran was very p much an opponent, and that really soured the prospects for better relations. so i would score the first bush administration as a period of containment even though there was talk about engaging in -- pursuing engagement but that never really got off of the ground. the early clinton period continued this. they were pursuing many of the same goals as the bush administration in the u.s. particularly the process. and also, in the early clinton years, iran was carrying out a lot of terrorist attacks assassinating iranian exiles and also a couple of argentina and elsewhere. iran is really being schizophrenic. but on the other hand, carrying out very, very nasty attacks. all of this culminated in the bombing of 1996 backed by iran. certainly not carried out by iran, in which 19 u.s. air force personnel were killed in a very dramatic terrorist attack. there was suspicion immediately. but they didn't get concrete proof of this for quite some time. so the clinton administration chose to wait u

bush: the academic world moves at its own pacace. in the commercial world, we're--it moves at its own pace, but there are momements and there are projectsts that bring everyonene into the f fold and lelet the is kind of flow. it's s very organ. it's the way that thihinking works,s, the way that problem-m-solving woworks, the y that y you approacach a problelm a a different t perspective sometimes, takake a step b back. when you''re working on aa project, youou develop the cocommunity ththat helps you moe forward.d. swezey: : now we are at this p t where the knowleledge that's ben accumulalated here o on abalonee farms like thihis is actuauallya valuluable resouource, and it'sa criticical step in conservininge species in many ways, not only from a technical standpoint, but also from what was achieved, starting the farm m in the first place and getttting these animas to persist, anand so, in that sense,e, it is a valuable rerese from the y years and years of effort to build this place. russo: i t think that t the timr divevers to be p

bush. 20th spot.t will be interesting when we do the next survey at the end of the trump presidency if whether george w. bush moves up at all. he passed away. we had three days of celebration in this country of presidency and the reminds of things he encompassed. that hasn't impact our historians, too. bill clinton we just talked about in 15th place. george w. bush, 33rd. the first time we had him right after he left office, he was one point lower. we added another president so he went up one. only other certainly you reaction to 9/11 is an important part, but economic crisis, the ones that ensued after 9/11 and response to hurricane katrina are all things overtime. we'll see how historians late his presidency. finally, barack obama, his debut in the survey, he came in 12th place. not a bad place to start. so here are a couple of more. here are the top five in 2017. dwight eisenhower, as we talked before, made it into the top five for the first time. theodore roosevelt in fourth place in this survey.

bush." professor brand served as special assistant to the secretary of defense for strategic planning from 2015 to 2016. so please join me in welcoming a very distinguished panel of scholars, practitioners this afternoon. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. and i would also like to thank our hosts here at smu for putting on this event today. it's a lot of fun to get together with the folks who work to bring this book to fruition and so many of the policymakers who share their time and insights for us and it's a pleasure for me to be up here on the stage with three gentleman who are not only importantly involved in decision-making that led to the surge and later in its implementation, but we're also very generation with their time and insights as we told the story. so the basic run of show is that each of them will have a chance to make some comments and then i will ask a couple of questions of the group and we will open it up to general questions and discussion. and so with that out of the

bush. we have patricia matson with us, who was a speechwriter and press assistant for patricia nixon and continued in the office of the first lady for betty ford. she's had an extremely distinguished career, including many years in senior roles at capital cities abc. and our dear friend betty monkman who worked for more than 30 years in the office of the curator at the white house, retiring as chief curator. betty is a great colleague for us here at the association. she has worked with us and continues to work with us on many projects. she authored our book on major -- our major decorative arts in the white house book which is available in our book shop. she's a consultant to our white house history quarterly, which is our quarterly scholarly magazine that we're very proud of. and betty is a master of knowledge regarding the white house collection. so we have a wonderful panel for you to hear from tonight. but before ann comes up and our panelists, i'd like to introduce hugh hewitt represen

and president bush felt that. and i'm just going to tell some stories, so indulge me for my experience in this, but just one. the day after the speech, announcing he's sending what became 30,000 more american troops to iraq, which was a wildly unpopular decision, if you put yourself in that time. we went to ft. benning, and the president spoke with a number of americans who would be heading over to iraq. it was a pretty draining day. we had worked on this policy. i felt very strongly that it was the right policy. i'll talk about why. you've read it in the book. but even after all those meetings, we had president bush then went and spent about an hour with gold star families behind closed doors. and so this was a president who was living and breathing this war as he has written since every day but until the surge decision, i think it's fair to say he's living it, he's breathing it, he's struggling it, as steve saw every day, more and more than i saw in those days, but he wasn't really commanding the war. and the su

bush. and it seems to be a very rare occasion, and i was hoping you all could tell us a little bit what it's like for a first lady to do that, and did mrs. nixon get much press coverage at the time? because i couldn't find out much about it. and it was amazing i've even heard stories about being in an open helicopter. >> mm-hmm. >> it's interesting. actually, that's one of the first things that i really learned about and admired about mrs. nixon was the fact that she was the first first lady to go to an active combat zone. and i'll tell you where i really learned this, and it was while i was working for mrs. bush, and we went to the national constitution center in philadelphia, and there was an exhibit about first ladies. and what struck me was, i didn't know until that time that she -- and still to this day is the most-traveled first lady in history, to 81 countries. and no one has eclipsed that. and then really studying more and peeling back the layers of the bravery to go to an she is th

bush and obama, in 2007 president bush named him deputy national security adviser. then we have professor brett h. mcgurk, he's at stanford university before moving to stanford he served as a the global coalition to defeat isis. he helped to build and lead and natural coordination. previously mcgurk served in senior positions in bush and obama administration's,. he is left several diplomatic -- he led talks with russia over the syria conflict. and finally the panel of discussion will be moderated by this professor, he is henry kissinger distinguished professor of distinguished affairs -- he is also a columnist for bloomberg opinion. he is the author and editor of many books, and what good is strategy and power and purpose from harry truman to w. bush. he served as the special assistant for strategic planning for 2015 to 2016. please join me in welcoming a distinguished panel of scholars. yes (applause) thank you very much, i would like to thank our host for putting on this event. it is a lot of fun to get together with the folks who worked to bring this book to frui

bush asked you what you could do about hiv and aids in africa. dr. fauci: he felt that as a rich nation, we have a moral responsibility. david: the best way for me to prevent getting an infectious disease and having to have you as my doctor is what? dr. fauci: tthe normal, low-tech, healthy things are the best things that you can do, david, to stay healthy. >> would you fix your tie, please? david: well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. let's leave it this way. all right. ♪ david: i don't consider myself a journalist. and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. i began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. how do you define leadership? what is it that makes somebody tick? we're here today with dr. anthony, also tony, fauci, who is the director of the allergy and infectious disease institute of the national institute for health, which he has led since 1984, 35 years. that's a pretty long time to be leading the institute at nih. is that a record? dr.