I am happy to have governor sununu in this room. Tonight, were making history to learn about some of the innerworkings of the white house. There have been pundits and professors. There was a professor a couple months ago. He led a group of us egypt, 97 of us to be precise. He is the person professor pushing back on the dates of the pyramid and sphinx, like 10,000 years. I think it is wonderful. Family a famous writer by the name of microclimate of mark twain, who was here. My father, as a 12yearold boy he used to sit with the other kid, and mark twain would read some of his latest work. Of course, most special of all, the white house connection was the 300 pound president. William howard taft secretary of the treasury built the house in 1902. William taft visited twice. One of the times he visited, they invited the whole town. The good president shook hands supper0 people for the was one ofdfather the guests. He brought along his 12yearold son, my father. 40 years later, daddy bought the place. It had been empty for 15 years and he bought it for literally a song. This evening is sponsored by the dublin area gop. We have a wonderful chairman who is full of energy and good ideas. Ramona is our president and i want to introduce her. We are the little engine that could. [applause] is such a pleasure to spend evening with you guys. My name is ramona branch. Dublin is located in the beautiful region of southern new hampshire. We refer to ourselves as dagop, which is widely recognized in our party. We welcome you to our second fundraiser, in preparation for the 2020 election. All money raised will go to our republican patriots running for office. Cspan considers tonight so important that they have decided to come up and videotape this event their programming. Are a young, growing organization. Our tagline is, we might be small, but we are mighty. Citizensrs are dynamic who generously give their time and talent in the fight to restore america to our foundational principles. Thank you. Recognized by our peers as setting the bar and republican town committees and we welcome your talent and participation on our team. I would like to introduce of the newector Hampshire Republican Party to serve as the moderator. [applause] i know that we know who these gentlemen are. I will do a quick introduction. Governor sununu was the 14th chief of staff during george w. Bushs administration. Governor sununu was elected as the 75th governor of the state of new hampshire, serving in that role from 1983 to 1989. During his time as governor, he served as the chair of the National Governors assist mission and following his public service, he served as chairman of the new Hampshire Republican Party, during which time, the gop took back the state legislature with super majorities. Thank you for joining us, governor. [applause] secretaryguest is andrew card. He served as the 21st white house chief of staff. To serving as white house chief of staff, he served as the 11th secretary. A white house equity chief of staff and a member of the massachusetts house of representatives. He has worked in the reagan, bush and 43 administration and 41 following his every, he the texasn of a m university and is the fifth president of Franklin Pierce university up the road in new hampshire. We will start off tonights discussion. I will ask the first couple of questions and then i will turn it over to you guys. Just flag me down and you can ask a question. What was it like to be the chief of staff to the president of the u. S. . It is a hard question to answer in an unemotional way. Servinge privilege of iorge h w bush, who considered a very close friend, certainly someone that i respected and cared for, and even though i initially told him i did not want to go to washington, he eventually persuaded me and i wife that it would be a good idea to come and try it. The most interesting thing to me was the process that the president took on all of his decisions. He was a president who listened, who i could discuss things with, sometimes not agreeing with him, but certainly someone who tried to opinions and find all of the views before he solidified his decision. For me, it was an experience i call the most fun i ever had in my life. It was a wonderful time to be chief of staff. The world was changing before our eyes on a daily basis. The soviet union was collapsing, driven by the astute leadership of George Herbert walker bush. Fun, and forating, highlights that i constantly look back on. Saying youpen up by do not apply to become the president s chief of staff. It is not like he goes to monster. Com to find a chief of staff. Was invitedd when i to be the president s chief of staff. Was asking me to run his transition into government. The thursdayo be morning before election day in 2000. Something. D me to do i had breakfast with him and he said, are you ready to do this . I said if you are talking about running your transition, i would be happy to do that. He said, i am talking about the big one. I knew what he meant. Night came and did not go away. , he formallying asked me to be his chief of staff, and i was flattered. I think he asked me to be his chief of staff because i had served under every chief of staff that served under Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush. Then he had howard baker, then kenny, and then we changed president. I had the maybe it was not the privilege, but in honor to serve. By the way, this is 100 substantiated. He is the most intelligent person i have ever met. His iq is off the charts. He was remarkable to work with and i learned much from him. I think that is why george w. His asked me to be on staff. Remember the Television Show cheers . The theme song was, a place where Everybody Knows your name. I wanted to be the opposite of that as chief of staff. I wanted to be the opposite of that as chief of staff. I wanted to be a chief of staff where nobody knew my name. It changed on september 11, 2001 with a picture of me whispering in the president s ear. My goal was to be a staffer in charge of the staff and allow other people to be recognized for the job that they were doing. It was a great honor to serve. I grew up in a family where politics was not a dirty word. My grandmother was a suffragette. She said the most important word in the constitution was we. It is our government. I was brought up to believe that if the president asked you to do something, you find a way to say yes. Maybe you tried to talk the president out of doing it, but if he needs you, say yes. I was privileged to be invited by three president s to serve at the white house. So when i was asked, i said yes, but it is not a job that you apply for. Can you go through what it was like on 9 11 and some of the events that happened that day . September 11, 2001 was a day that many of you said he would never forget. If you were a High School Senior this year or a senior in college, you were not born then, so there are a lot of people in Society Today who do not know enough to remember. Neveromised another to forget. Tell your children and grandchildren all about it because it was a day that changed the world. The president woke up in sarasota, florida. The chief of staff wakes up well before the president does. We have a lot of work to do. I look up very early that president sread the daily brief, going over the Economic Data and doing the next nuts and bolts of the job. I went outside to check on the advance team and i also knew that the president was getting ready to go for a run on the golf course. When we arrived the night before, i was struck by the terrible stench. The red tide had killed fish and they washed up on the beach and it stunk. That morning, after i got up to see what the advance team was doing to move the motorcade around, i was struck by the terrible stench in the air. I knew that the president was going to go for a run and i was worried the president might get sick, so i went to the white house physician and said, is the president going to get sick if he goes for a run . The doctor said no, he is tough. This will not bother him. The president was completely preoccupied by something he had done a couple days before. He invited a reporter to go running with him on the golf course and found out he was a former ncaa crosscountry runner. The bushes are unbelievably competitive. They never let the grandkids beat them at horseshoes or checkers. George w. Bush was just as competitive. He was preoccupied that he had invited stretch kyle to go out on a run with him in sarasota, and they did. As he was walking out to go for the run, i said, do not worry about the red tide stench. I checked with dr. And he will you will not get sick. He looked at me like, you are an idiot. That is all right. He came back from the run and he strut. Ng the george bush he was quite confident. He beat stretch kyle and he was full of himself. He could not wait to go to this elementary school. It was going to be an easy day. I remember two people asking a question, did anybody hear about the plane crash in new york city . We piled into limousines and drove to the school and the president went to a secured phone. I did not hear that conversation. I went into the classroom to see if it was set for the president. I went back to the holding room, standing at the door to the classroom was the president and the principal of the school. When acting National Security advisor, a woman named deb lower, with on to become a navy admiral. She said it appears a small plane crashed into one of the trade towers in new york city. The president , the principal and i all had the same reaction. What a horrible accident. The pilot must have had a heart attack or something. The principal opened the door to the classroom and she and the president walked into the classroom. As the door shut, the captain came up to me and said, it appears it was not a twinengine prop plane but a commercial jetliner. My thought was they must have known that the plane was not gaining altitude. A nano second later, the captain came up to me and said, another plane hit the other tower of the World Trade Center. My mind flashed to three initials. I knew about the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1992 and i knew about al qaeda. That is where my mind went. I performed a test that we had to perform a lot, every day. Does the president need to know . 1000 times atest day and most of the time, it is no. This was an easy test to pass. Yes, he needed to be told. I presumed he was sitting underneath the microphone, where everything that was said could be picked up. I knew that he was sitting in front of second graders and a press pool. I decided to pass on the facts and make my editorial comment, but not invite a dialogue. I opened the door and walked into the classroom. The teacher of the second graders was conducting a dialogue between the president and the students. Say good morning to the president. Good morning, mr. President. This dialogue was taking place. Anne compton was in the prospal press pool and she saw me. It was particularly awkward for me to come in from backstage, up to the president. She looked at me and said [mouthing words] the teacher told the students to take out their books and as they were reaching for their books, they were reaching under their desk for the books up and that is when i walked up to the president. I leaned over and i whispered into his right here, a second right ear, a second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack. That is all i said to him. He never turned and looked at me. He never said anything to me. I could see his head bobbing up and down. He did not turn to me. I went back to the door of the classroom and i can still see his head bobbing up and down. The students were particularly attentive to their books. The press pool was not looking at the president but the press secretary. I saw the principal of the school, the secretary of education and a white house staff working on education issues. They were mouthing, what is up . I opened the door to the command center and i said, get the fbi director on the phone. Get the crew back on air force one. We will need to get out of this place. We were not scheduled to leave for a few to the secret service, hours. I said get ready to turn around and depart. I said, get some remarks written for the president. We have 600 people in a gymnasium and he has to Say Something to them, but he cannot say anything that we do not know to be the truth. The president walked into the room and i did not realize he had taken about nine to 10 minutes to do so. We were busy and we were getting. I was pleased with how he reacted because he did nothing to introduce fear to those second graders. He did nothing to demonstrate fear to the media that would have translated it to the satisfaction of terrorists around the world, and he gave me a chance to get ready for him. He walked into the staff room. The first thing he said was, get the fbi director on the phone. It was bob mueller. He had only been fbi director for 10 days. I went into the back of the room where the president would be addressing the crowd that had gathered. He stood in front of the crowd and he began his remarks saying he was going back to washington dc and i cringed because i did not think we were going back to washington dc. We did not know enough to say that we were going there. It was just something that the president said, but after he gave his remarks, he did not declare war or anything else. He just explained what was happening and excused himself. We then drove to the airport. The president was frustrated and i was right behind him in the limousine. The pentagon had been hit. I got to the plane in sarasota. I was struck how the engines on the plane were running. It is a protocol no no. The usually do not start engine until the president is on the plane. It told me that the pilot really wanted to get out of there. We ban up the gangplank and the we get up the gangplank and the plane starts rolling. We took off at a steep incline and flew up to about 48,000 feet, in a serpentine way. I witnessed a president perform the responsibilities of a president. I believe on september 11, 2001 is when george w. Bush realized what the real job of a president was. He presumed the job was what it was when he took the oath of office and gave his inaugural address, but the real job is living up to the oath of office. I watched him do that. He was a remarkable leader and i have great confidence in what he did. Do not forget that story. Tell your children and grandchildren. [applause] you both served as chiefs of staff during times of great change. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your time in the white house, something about the times changing. When george bush took office as president of the u. S. , it was really a time of opportunity that had been established by the reagan and Bush Administration having rebuilt our defense structure. Eight years earlier, when Ronald Reagan took office, the defense structure was in shambles. They had cut the budget over and over again and Ronald Reagan made it a high priority to make sure that the defense structure was back in a position where he could talk about it, peace through strength. When george bush took office, he knew because he had seen the signals from gorbachev, who was running the soviet union at that time, that he had made an assessment that economically, they could not keep up with the u. S. s newly returned military strength. George bush realized that here was an opportunity to try to take advantage of the reality that gorbachev was now aware of, to try to reduce the tensions between the u. S. And the soviet union. Really, i do not think president bush gets enough credit for what he undertook over the next three to four years in dealing with this opportunity. This president began by bringing people in to find out exactly what was going on in the soviet union, not in terms of intelligence but in terms of personalities. With henrya meeting kissinger coming in. He was going to be going on a and theip pretty soon president wanted to hear from him, what his opinion was and to really ask kissinger to Pay Attention to a few things, and to come back and report to him. Members ofin congress, senators, experts in the soviet union. He spent time with academics, trying to absorb as much as he could and i remember the thing is the presse started writing obnoxious editorials that george bush did not understand the opportunity that was in front of him, that he was blowing the opportunity, that he was taking too long to act. The New York Times and Washington Post were the most egregious. They vote editorials that made no sense and, certainly after the soviet union collapsed, it was guided to that collapsed by george w. Bush, they must have been embarrassed. But the president wanted to make a strong proposal. Where he out to be one talked about a dramatic inuction of u. S. Forces europe as part of nato, which would allow the soviet union to pull its forces out of Eastern Europe. The thing that struck me was how the president was constantly looking for information. In the Bush White House that i served income of the most important meeting of the day was the meeting at 8 00 with the president , myself, the Vice President and another. We would meet for about an hour and a half, starting with the cia briefing. The president would come in and , always pointed at trying to get a sense of how far he could take this opportunity. He had already spoken at length on the phone to margaret. Hatcher invitedortantly, he had the president of france to come to Walkers Point. When he proposed a and one of those morning meetings, we looked at each other and rolled our eyes because he was this forsic european patrician whom the information of Walkers Point would have been anathema. [laughter] but george bush had in their. George bush treated him with respect that the senior president because he had been elected before him deserved. Talking about the historic opportunity and historic lesson that he was giving to george bush started about 250 years and explain why europe was doing what europe was doing. He had really ended up in a bad place with Ronald Reagan. What george bush was rebuilding the relationship. Hiswhen he left, he had support as well. The proposals went great. The european allies bought into them. Happenedree things during the process. Poland,ne, we went to right after the poles had an election to change their legislative body. Poles had been allowed to have this election by gorbachev and it was a strange situation. The legislative body was the new Freedom Group and the president was perceived to be the puppet of the soviet union at that time. And to me, this is a classic george. We had no idea how we were going to deal with this slight conflict. His answer was, lets have a lunch. He directed the ambassador to have a lunch. It was a room about this size without with about as many tables. We invited some of the reformers. We invited members of the catholic church, who were very important in the transition and i was sitting at a table right about their, about eight of us there. The gentleman across from me stood up and pointed his finger right in the face of the minister of interior, who runs the police in poland. He said, i do not know if you remember me, but you put me in prison. To his credit, the minister paused for a second and said, yes, but remember i gave you a very good cell. [laughter] around the room, the conversation started with a little edge and it was drifting into a point where they all recognize that they were poles. Arelast thing i remember there people standing in a corner talking about how they were going to come together and govern. The punchline of that part of the story is that a month later or two months later, he was withcted as president support. Catalyzed that change in poland by having a lunch. E went on to czechoslovakia 800,000 people in the square. When george bush said Something Like czechoslovakia be free, there was a roar like an express train and the building shook. Everywhere he went, he recognized that he had to do things in a way that did not embarrass gorbachev. Date, november 9 , and we are sitting in the oval office. I do not remember if you were there. And the press secretary comes in and says, you have to watch in the room next to the oval office and see what is on tv. Berlin people walking across the checkpoint without being shot. More, the first few, we were told came through apprehensively to test whether the liberation and reforms that were taking place in the rest of Eastern Europe were going to be acceptable at the berlin wall and it seemed to be. As they kept coming through more and more, it was clear that the berlin wall was no longer the berlin wall. Course, the president realized that she was in a precarious position. He did not want to gloat. Hardlinerst the would take that as an excuse to stop what he was doing, so george bush responded in a very double way and received criticism from the press, who was saying that he does not understand the significance of the berlin wall. If you look at the memoirs, both of them talk about how important it was that George H W Bush had the discipline not to gloat at that time. The last thing in the sequence of that year that i will talk about is the summit meeting in malta. It was going to be the first meeting between the president and gorbachev. The president decided to lay it all out. When we arrived there, it was clear that gorbachev was nervous. He thought it was going to be tough negotiations and what george bush did in his opening presentation is, he laid out all the opportunities and all the assistance that the u. S. Was willing to provide, all the commitment to change and support that the u. S. Would give, and it was clear to me in that first meeting george bush established a trust relationship with gorbachev, which was the key to allowing the collapse of the soviet union to take place without a shot being fired. Both of you touched on the trying times. Can you touch on the similarities between the president when it came to decisionmaking and behindthescenes . They have to put things in the context of where you are in your relationship with them. Ronald reagan was kind of like my grandfather. Him, but disagree with i always felt guilty, so i did not disagree with him much. George w. Bush was like my dad. And igree with my dad tell him i disagree with him and then i would feel really guilty. I would work hard to make up for disagreeing with him. George w. Bush was like my brother. What are you thinking . The context is very different. I did find president reagan could translate complicated things into simple ways to understand them. He was a great communicator, even as we discussed tough issues in the oval office. George h w bush was a phenomenally respectful listener. He invited everyone to speak candidly. He would look at you and listen and digest and then he would meet and form his opinion. George w. Bush was very disciplined as a decisionmaker, the first president who had an mba. I watched him have a structure to his process. He was very disciplined and i would go to him and say, you will have to make a tough decision. He would say, when is the decision do . Days, monthsours, or years and he would say ok. He would tell me what he needed to be ready, but there are many times where he would come to me and say, today is the day you told me i had to make my decision and i have made my decision. They all had a structure in the allowed forthat policies to be investigated before they were imposed. A process is incredibly important. Policy is easy to make up. Policy everyke up day and think it should be lamented. Staffers white house that are very smart and they think they have the right policy. Roger porter worked in domestic policy and economic policy. Good process for it to be discussed and i was fortunate enough to be part of that. Policies would come in and someone would have to take the role and how to implement it. What are the consequences of implementing . What if it does not go right . Policya process around so that policy was not defined all of the time by unintended consequences. Credit president reagan, president george w. Bush and george w. Bush with having a process before a policy is announced or implemented to understand as many consequences as possible so that fewer unintended consequences end up defining the policy. About the only thing i can add to that is to talk about george w. Bush a little more. Bush was recognized as a great Foreign Policy president and past more Domestic Legislation than any president except Franklin Roosevelt and lyndon johnson. You had the clean air act, civil rights bill a budget agreement the bush budget document so maligned for created all the surpluses that started taking waste beginning the end of 1992, the end of the clinton years. George bush came with an agenda the kind ofof things that he wanted to get done. Hehink one of the reasons asked me to be chief of staff was because i had been a governor and i have been involved in a state that had to implement and address all of , and really issues asked and encouraged me to put together the kind of death and he was talking about. Andy whoself and served in the legislature in massachusetts and understood both policy and politics. Roger porter, brought him in. He had been at harvard and i head. We had the they are the most astute domestic policy planners and developers i have ever met. George w. Bush understood that he had people that he trusted and he believed they knew what they were talking about. He would listen and he would spend time. In the Campaign Leading up to the election, we brought governors to teach the president how to talk in the language on issues that the people understand. Governors talk any language that people understand. Senators talk in a language even they do not understand. [laughter] i think it really made a difference in the campaign. Began to realize that not only was there a huge opportunity in terms of a dramatic change that led to the collapse of the soviet union, but there was an opportunity to do things domestically, even though he had to deal with a 260 to 175 inwas favor of the democrats in the house and 5545 in the senate. But george bush had this art form of listening, creating a trust relationship, even with his adversaries, and getting them to agree to changes that i am absolutely positive they would not have agreed with with any other president , that they did not trust as much as president bush. The trait that i thought was so significant was the fact that this was a president who understood his issues well enough to sit down and talk to his adversaries in such a way that created trust and produced compromise. The democratic chairman of the committee ance we had him in at least a dozen times trying to put together the budget. One on one with the president and they brokered, in the nicest sins of the word, and agreement on the toughest budget issues that one would have thought was impossible to resolve at all by didnt the personality and relationship that george bush developed with his adversaries. Talk about how the president developed a relationship with members of the other side. Is different for every president. It started because he had been a member of the house. It continued even as Vice President , he would go to the house gym and work out with the members. He would meet them for lunch, dinner or horseshoes. A president elect people and because he likes people, they liked him. How can you not like a man sends your wife a card on her birthday every year that is the kind of guy george bush was. Had ange w. Bush experience as governor and came from the private sector, became governor of texas and he kind of thought he could come in and muscle his way in texas as the governor. The Lieutenant Governor was a democrat. A Lieutenant Governor is actually more powerful than a governor because they are the real president of the senate and nothing happens in the legislative party if there is not an ok. George bush learned a valuable lesson in the first month of being governor of texas, where he had to work with the legislature to get things done. The Lieutenant Governor made hee that nothing got done if did not work with them. It was a valuable lesson. He brought that lesson to washington dc. Meeting after he became president was with leaders of the democratic party. Senate of the democratic party. He talked about what he had done in texas and he wanted to do the same thing. He brought members of both parties down for movies and experiences and had the courage to sit across the table and speak respectfully with them, seldom getting into our into arguments. He was very careful with his words, and i think it made a difference. Important that a president have the courage to listen. The president s that we served had the courage to listen. The courage to make a decision. Ronald reagan and oneill had a very different views and styles. They communicated well with each other, they told jokes, they laughed, they argued and came to agreements. They celebrated democracy. Didnt thee w. Bush, democratic Lieutenant Governor actually endorsed him for president . He did. He was very fortunate that he had earned their respect and it made a difference. I want to turn to any members of the audience. It sounds as if both of you were saying that you need to get along. It almost sounded like this is exactly what you are saying that donald trump does not do. I think that you might want to comment, if that is the purpose of what you are saying, you might want to comment on how the current president is different from the two that you described. Fairness, there are different strokes for different folks. Trump. Stand president i grew up in crete in queens at the same time he did. I am not shocked by his style. Tough,kground was in the nasty, difficult real estate business in new york, where you have to deal with the democratic city council. Andunion that are corrupt you have to deal with all of the elements that are in there. So he came to the office with a different style and he is doing things in a different way. I do not think some of the things he has been able to get through, he could have gotten through if he had decided to try to change his personality. The white house is different. Laughingest white. Ouse in existence when we had that morning meeting, she said every time she walked past it was raucous laughter. She could not understand how those people could ever get anything done if all they are doing is laughing all day. George h w bush had a tremendous sense of humor. He loved to do funny things at the most awkward moments. We had Staff Meetings like that. The meeting we had before the 8 00 meeting was a 730 time meeting 7 30 meeting. Thee were senior members of white house gathered around a table with 30 minutes to tell each other what was going to happen that day, what had to be in, who had to be brought who had to be massaged, what news stories had to be pumped or killed, and it was done with an atmosphere of laughter with 30 minutes. He used to past me notes. The notes were hilarious. One time he passed me a note and it was a math problem. He said, solve it. We both have the same degree. His was from my tea and mine was m. I. T. And mine was from carolina. He knows a lot and i know little. I was trying to work this problem. Everybody was like, what are you working on . It was stokes theorem. It was a lot of fun. I celebrate our democracy. If you ever have a democracy that does something to perfection, it should be by accident. Because we have represented. If it is perfect and everybody sees it as perfect, it was a dictatorship. I loved the controversy that comes with democracy. I like people being different and expressing different views in different ways. I do not particularly like how President Trump taps on his own steps on his own success with tweet. My grandma would say a few words before you spit them out. He should lick his thumb before he tweaked it out. Tweets it out. I do not like that he throws confetti in the air all the time and says, you cannot see what is happening on days because any is falling, but i would like to see what his happened because it is what is being done because it is generally pretty good. Different strokes for different folks. Our democracy is designed to reflect us. We have now changed the way that we do business. We are a digitally connected community. When both of us served, Digital Communication did not exist. Now you are tweeting, facebooking, instant messaging and everything else. I am troubled by it because it changes the nature of democracy. My favorite founding father gave us the oldest working constitution. [laughter] they all told us that the greatest threat to democracy is modern rule. Mob rule. Digital communication has brought the mob closer to the rule. I hope that we will Pay Attention to what that means because it changes the nature of democracy. Think about one thing. Whether we like it or not, what is happening today is a natural progression. Franklin roosevelt discovered the power of the radio to go right to the people. Jack kennedy discovered the power of network tv, and he used that masterfully. Bill clinton discovered that he could get to even more people using cable tv. Barack obama was the first president to take advantage of social media in general, and donald trump discovered this place of social media called twitter, and he is using that in such a way that when we wake up in the morning, there are 65 i think that is the current number, 65 Million People looking to see what the dear leader has tweeted out to them. That is progression. I have no idea what the next step is, but there will be a next step. As citizens of this country and citizens across the world, we need to Pay Attention to this. We need to mature enough to cope with the tensions that are created by these progressions, as we go along. We have to learn how to live with the silliness on the left, the silliness of the right and by anyone in this world of volume communication. We are almost out of time. We will go time or last question now. Governor sununu, i think, going through the period of time, when the soviet union fell and germany had to be reunited, that task of reuniting germany must have needed considerable plumas see and effort because east germany was a wreck. Kohl tohad to convince take it on. It was a massive undertaking and george hways credited w bush with the ability to make that possible. I would love to hear what you know and what your experience was with that. Is really laid out in the book for quiet man. [laughter] but the fact is, what george bush had done, in the description that i gave you earlier, it laid the foundation for that. He spent hours on the phone with Margaret Thatcher and developed a trust relationship there. He brought the french president to Walkers Point and renewed the u. S. French relationship and developed a strong relationship with him. Kohl actually did not need to be talked into it. If anything, he had to be slowed down. Gorbachev, in meetings with the president and in his memoirs says one of the things that could have screwed this up was his impatience to go right to reunification, so the artform was getting the british and the french, who is nations had been savaged, one way or the other by the germans a generation ago to accept a strong, reunited germany. The relationship he developed allowing that to happen. We were astounded that not only at thebachev accept appropriate time, the concept of reunified germany, but he did not really raise much objection when it was proposed that a reunified germany be part of nato. The process could not have happened without the personal relationships across the board that george bush developed with the key people in europe, particularly the two leaders of the nations that should have most not wanted the unification of germany, the u. K. , england and france. Again, the way he handled gorbachev allowed it all to come together. Thank you both for joining us tonight. Thank you so much for coming and sharing all that. Thank you. [applause] before you get up, i will turn it back over. I hope you enjoyed it as much as i did. I feel like we had a piece of living history tonight. We discussed, what can we give these people