john meachem, let's start with you. family. >> george herbert walker bush, we wouldn't be sitting here if he followed the conventional path. he went to war, came back to attend yale in 1948. that summer instead goichk of g wall street, he went to procter & gamble. he could have become an investment banker, but he wanted to go into the oil business. he said quite honestly they wanted to make a lot of money quick. he went to odessa, texas. mrs. bush's mother thought it was so far from the destination, she sent boxes of soap. they moved to midland and in 1959 mr. bush moved to houston, wanted to go into the offshore business. really that was the year his daughter dora was born. houston became home for them for the next 60 years. people joked he was there only for tax purposes. he ended up in maine. he had no intention of going anywhere except back to texas in 1993. >> last time he was seen in public was election day with his neighbors casting his ballot. >> he was -- what's so funny about being with him in houston is you'd

bush, former canadian prime minister brian mmulroney, brian simpson and john meachem. jon meachem is the former president's biographer, the author of destiny and power. the american odyssey of george herbert walker bush which i admit a number of us are rereading for a second time and retired four-star general barry mccaffrey from vietnam and a battlefield commander in the persian gulf who who served under his commander in chief, george h. w. bush. do you think inviting 45 was one of the last official acts of 41? >> i think it's part of the ambient reality. george herbert walker bush, the first president he met was eisenhower. there was a wonderful picture of him talking to mayme eisenhower in the stair way up to his office. he is big and charming and she is clearly being charmed. through president trump, he had a deference to and respect for the office. the last thing he would want would be to embarrass or somehow cause any sort of pain to do the incumbent president. i think it's a totally characteristic gesture on the part not just of the late president bush, but the

what i remember, john meachem's book came out, a biography done on 41.ough it out. in the book there's a passage where they're talking about me as vice president and explaining that i had become something of a hard ass in terms of changing my basic attitude and so forth from being sec def under 41 to being vice president under 43. after that came out and made some news, then i got a note from him that said, dear dick, i did it. and admitted it. then nice notes and nice things about me, but then i got an invitation at the next alfalfa club dinner. he loved the alfalfa club and came every year but i got an invitation to sit next to him at the head table that night. that sort of made sure everybody understood there's no fatal wound here. >> still friends? >> well, the thing that was different, of course, between my time at defense and my time as vice president was 9/11 when we lost 3,000 americans, more than we lost at pearl harbor. i admitted i was more of a hard ass, if you will, after that than i had been earlier. >> do you think this outpouring of bipar

i know in a conversation with john meachem that the president said very matter of factly that he's just going to be an asterisk in history. >> no, no. i don't agree with that. yes, he's a one-term president, thanks to you guys involuntarily retiring us from public service. but he's going to be and was a very consequential one-term president and i would argue far and away the best one-term president we have ever had and such a good one that he was, in my view, one of the very best presidents of all time. and he really got a lot done and he did it with great skill and he knew foreign policy. he understood it. he managed the end of the cold war peacefully. it ended with a whimper and not a bang. and then he did all those other things. >> historians are coming around to that view. which single memory of president bush will you cherish the most? >> i suppose one of the most vivid memories i have is sitting in his suite at the 1980 republican convention when it looked like governor reagan, who was going to get the nomination, was going to pick jerry ford, my old boss. i had been ford's chairm