jim leach. >> i once tried to get jim leach to be appointed head of the world bank and alan simpson who worked with alan greenspan decent man very bright. >> hunt: alan simpson. alan was a tough guy who was -- unlike leach alan simpson was quite conservative but a decent man so on gay rights and other things he was the opposite of me. so that generosity worked very well. the day after i came out alan simpson called me and said i apologize. i said for what? he said, i know i'm always making jokes about things. i probably made some anti-gay joke in your presence. he said, i'm so proud of you and i'm so glad you did what you did. he's probably one to have the most decent, likable people ever. >> hunt: president bill clinton. >> very bright. very effective. i regretted his -- i think he -- i regretted his wanting to accommodate the anti-government thing. i think he tried to do what you couldn't do. on the whole, though, one of the most talented people i've ever seen. >> hunt: george w. bush? decent. limited, i think, in terms of his approach to things, and i think he goes down his historica

bill bradley was in that group, and christine todd whitman, and jim leach -- >> they were interns, as i recall. >> yeah, interns. it was just a fun group of people. >> art laffer, dick cheney, and i would have dinner from time to time, or lunch from time to time, or just have meetings in the white house from time to time. >> in 1974, we came to the hotel washington to the two continents restaurant. that's where we sat down and talked about tax policy. and art drew the laffer curve. >> i invited jude wanniski, who was a writer for "the wall street journal" at the time. he passed on. but he kept all the records of this stuff. and in an article much later, it was called "taxes, revenues, and the 'laffer curve'." he recounted this dinner. so it was the four of us. that is the dinner we are talking about today. >> during that time, what we were trying to do was manage the transition from the nixon administration to the ford administration. there had never been anything like it. >> and the country was faced with some serious economic problems. and what was coming up through the system was n