fromt support in that idea none other than george schultz and caspar weinberger, who years deniedrds to this day they ever thought this was any kind of a good idea. in fairness to them it was broached as a possible opening. both of those two senior cabinet officers essentially said it is ok by us. go ahead and pursue this. with certain caveats. in the summer of 85 reagan, in the hospital at this point having surgery, he meets with they discussed this idea over the course of a couple of weeks or so. then it is another story of how it goes from there. figure you one other have not mentioned. the director of central intelligence. malcolm: who is always in the background. agency is saying we can't trust these people. the polygraph, not that they are the perfect instrument, but these polygraphs are repeated. despite his own professionals advise cq's pushing this as well. given this unique relationship ith reagan, -- malcolm: he is a critical figure. he wanted to be secretary of state. job but togiven that the cia directorship after it was promised it would be a cabinet level post and he w

consistent. >> could i say a word or two about that particular document you cite which i think is george schultz' letter, memo he wrote on november 18th, 1987. and the first part of that schultz writes because of strength and philosophy, the u.s. relationship will always be unique and always difficult to manage. but it is increasingly clear that the soviet union is going to be seen by history as ronald reagan's china. the soviet union is change because of near, fear of china's reforms, fear of eastern european reslessness but most of all because of fear of falling parentally behind the u.s. i read that, the significance is that by the end of the reagan administration that it was still the view of the soviet union is reagan's china. and that's i think, very important in terms of thinking about reagan and europe and the end of the cold war. because there was tremendous improvement after eight years. but the cold war, the fundamental components of it were still in place when reagan left office in january of 1989. >> other comments or questions? yes, please. i'm sorry. get you next. >> david painter

johnny, able to register with people like george schultz and others and mcfarland. was something that probably helped them think, well, maybe something like this out. pan even when they got to ralph san johnny's nephew, they felt they were reaching finally the centers of power, responsible iran.als in one of whom by the way was forceser of air defense in iran. they never met with him. of it.was part they thought, okay, we got this break through. we're getting to the right people. it doesn't take long before the them good news folks, this is reached a point going to form is a commission to deal with this issue and to deal with the americans over a longer term. theica says great, who's on commission. half of them are the same people they dealt with before. it's the same revolutionary guards deputy head of still aroundwho is by the way. considered so -- such a negative force by the americans that the name they gave him was monster. he was such a bad guy. he's named to the commission to deal with the situations. time and again, they are hit in that whowith the fact they

reagan had kat weinberger and george schultz fighting over -- the previous george bush of administrationto handle the soviet union efforts bill clinton's administration struggled on what to do with the balkans for the obama administration was at war with itself so prominently thats fighting with his own cabinet, and you notice that this week, a lot of former obama officials work raising donald trump because of that tension. when you build a coalition, you have people people from different strings advocating for different things. steve banding, jared kushner represents different parts of the coalition. i think managing that tension so long the president himself understands which direction he wants to go in, it's not that big of a deal and people should not be as obsessed with it as they are. >> martha: do you want to respond to that? >> you know, in general, i think that's true as a guide to administrations. there is always a lot of tension. but this one is leaking up to the president. he's changing his positions on a weekly basis. i mean, he went the whole campaign saying on day one i'm

he said, well, you know george schultz has asked me to interview you as a possible next ambassador, if i send you, what are you going to do? well i winged it, i said well, the south africans need to know that the united states does not agree with this system, and that if they want relations with us, they're gonna have to change. it's gonna be my job to tell them that. - [voiceover] he was quickly appointed as our first black ambassador to south africa. - i go to south africa with no uncertainties about the rightness of our objectives and no illusions about the difficulty of our achieving them. i go with the utmost of goodwill toward all south africans. - he was the ideal american professional ambassador for those days and he was as a black american, a clear representation of the diversity of this nation, this successful nation to the people of south africa. - [voiceover] not everyone would welcome his efforts at public diplomacy. - well the south african president at the time, p.w. botha, was a fellow out of central casting in the hollywood sense. he was tough, he was direct, he was bl

a are talking about what great job james baker did and what a great job george schultz did during that. of time. there is no eisenhower warned policy -- eisenhower foreign-policy bump in the polls. allen dulles has been able to come up with a cold war strategy using the cia and -- i and covert ways and pushing things on the home front like the eisenhower interstate highway system. the point being that it is not just the president as an isolated person we are ranking, we are looking at the whole administration and how they did. one of the cree -- key criterion that you surround yourself with great people. in my mind, franklin roosevelt did that with -- more than anybody. frances perkins and this group of new dealers that he surrounded himself with. it was a dream team to get america through the depression. during world war ii it wasn't just about the cabinet but fdr had to pick amro king and douglas macarthur and the george marshall and general patton to lead us through those dark days. a good leader picks great people. host: it must be tough to pick people that are not just yes men but

you have to integrate the schools he puts together an amazing effective plan with people like george schultz and integrates the black schools. more black kid got into integrated class from richard nixon than any other american president. so it's complex and the only one guiding line is expediency. he sid that -- he said this is i have to do. the great tragedy of his be trail -- not betrayal -- the switch was that kennedy and johnson put the dignity of the white house behind the civil rights movement. they alived the presidentsive with civil right which is something that eisenhower had never done. truman and fdr had never done. they came out and said this is an american cause that the presidency is all about, and nixon backed off from that, and so all of a sudden the moral authority of the white house was no longer with the civil rights movement, and the started talking about civil rights extremists and who want instant integration and forced busing are just as bad as the klan which is a horrible comparison, but again he saw votes in the south and the first -- not the first but a major step o

it is time to talk about george schultz, who is now on scene. clark schultz and famously had a difference of opinion on nsdd25. he disputed some elements of 75, but he did not contest the call for soviet withdrawal from afghanistan. i don't believe that schultz embraced the imperial thesis. he recalled, we did not spend a lot of time thinking about why they did what they did. they did it. explained the soviet invasion of 1985 as a manifestation of the brezhnev doctrine, which he described as what is mine is mine, and what is yours is a war grabs. he continued to engage his soviet counterpart in afghanistan, which i've been -- i find no significant talks for the remainder of the first term. the locus of the activity moved to the u.s. -- un. the reagan administration was beginning to expand the struggle against the soviets on a number of other fronts. reagan's administration bickered about the prospect for dialogue with the soviets, it looked ahead with an ambitious campaign to condemn the invasion. throughout the 1980's, resolutions at the u.n. p

i personally argued with george schultz about the issue and he told me, nothing is worse. hussein is a terrible person. he's been cooperative with us in various ways, we're not going to abruptly change our policy, it was really a choice at that time between the iran and iraq. much higher. maybe a million or sort of a million. >> so the idea was you had to choose one together. you couldn't stand back and let it happen. so i was very much for sanctioning or doing something against iraq and found no support in the government at all. i remember there was even meeting about the incident where i made that case. i understand that. i wasn't secretary of state. >> when shults contradicted what i said and got quite mad about it. i understood his view as well. he was looking way over larger perspective than i was involved with. i still think it was the right thing to do at the time. in retrospect i don't think it was the right thing to do, to have the stand like that, that this was unacceptable behavior. >> john. >> thank you. i'm jonathan hunt from the university of south hampton an

>> yes, i joined with george shultz and jim baker and others in proposing with george schultz labeleda carbon dividend and others let's have a carbon tax but let's take that money and dividend back to the public. so why not just use it to reduce the budget deficit? answer, you probably can't get it passed. if you want to do with the environmental, if you want the u.s. to be an rv with what we talked about in paris, but you don't want all of them. detailed regulations that have been put in place substitute for it, a carbon tax, they give that money back to people and the treasury department under the obama administration, the treasury staff estimated if you did that come with something like 70% of households would come out ahead. .. at the response that i got across the political spectrum of people saying what a great idea, so that's not exactly a sample of the population but i thought it was encouraging. >> megan, one of the components into question here is eliminating for corporates, leveling the playing field between equity and financing, do you have thoughts on that and how do you

it's people like me or george schultz who is a distinguished fellow at the hoover institution have differentdebate it. >> unbelievable. i'm austan -- >> -- going to sleep. >> he's trying to take my chair. so i can do what you do. anyway, john, thank you. always a pleasure to have you on. i thought i could get you like waving your arms at me. because -- >> i agree with everything you said. >> it's amazing, right? >> in the past you would have yesterday at me for ever implying that higher interest rates could have been stimulative. in what world are you living where higher rates would have been better for the economy? >> and you said it better than i could even say it. >> but you didn't -- >> you didn't agree -- >> maybe it was -- >> i agreed with you 100%. >> but you didn't really say it. i wanted you to say it. >> you guys can get a room, it will be a love-in during the commercial break. in the meantime a lot ahead on "squawk box." up next, health care, tax reform and geopolitics hot spots. congressman robin kelly is going to join us on the set next. plus the final countdown in france. voter

can already see all of these celebrities like oprah and mark cuban and maybe george clooney are sort of-- and howard schultz are circling around because they think it back i can do it i can do it, but i think the democrats often times have nominated people with hall monitor personalities like al gore and hillary and john kerry. .. test test .... ....