This week on q a, james mann, author and resident at Johns Hopkins school of studies, he talked about his biography of george w. 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 fathers 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 with the fact that he went to sam houston elementary school, and his father went to Greenwich Country Day School in connecticut. Regrew up in texas, where his father had not, and he identified with and i think took comfort in the idea the image of himself as a texas good old boy and he became very good at playing that role. How about his schooling . Well, so he went to texas schools until eighth grade, and then his parents sent him to prep school at andover. And by his own account, i think he said many years later, that making the transition to andover was the hardest thing he ever did in his life until he ran for president. He didnt like it there. There are painful, funny stories of him writing his First CollegeHigh School Essay in his first weeks there, and he took out the thesaures his mother had given him. He just didnt like it there and he reacted because by becoming kind of the fun guy in the class. There are pictures of him as a cheer leader. There are pictures of him as a cheerleader dressed up as a woman leading the taunts. He was the goto guy for fun. Thats at andover, and that very much continues at yale where hes the head of a fraternity, delta kappa epsilon. Hes the guy who organizes the toga partieparties. The first time george w. Bushs name ever appears in the New York Times i found was to defend his fraternity from it may have been his hazing practices, i forget what it was. But he was the spokesman for the old Fraternity Life at a time, this is the context, when yale itself was changing. There were certainly fraternities and parties there, and there were certainly lots of other students at yale, traditionally, who were the sons of former yale people. Yale was gradually becoming, in the early 60s, ameritocasy, like many schools, people were admitted on their test scores, it was becoming a more intense place. The faculty were more professional than the old gentile facility in the past and he didnt like it. He went three years into his presidency before he was willing to come back to the campus. He didnt give, didnt like it. During his presidency he eventually made a peace with it but it took a long time coming. When did he apply to law school, why wasnt he accepted . A couple of years after when bush left yale, he lived a kind of singles life down in texas. His father, his parents, actually left texas in the early 70s first they went to china, and they were well, they went to the United Nations and then they went to china, but they werent around. Bush lived in a singles apartment, he went into the Texas National guard, theres more of a story to that because he, like the sons of other texas politicians, went into a special Texas National guard unit that was really for politician sons and members of the Dallas Cowboys and this is during the vietnam war. It meant that he really didnt have to fight. And there have been disputes going back decades about how much pull was used. I found in researching the book that you cant no one has ever found his father, george h. W. Bush intervening or making calls to get him out of the guard. But friends of his father, and texas political leaders did so. Where did he apply for law school and, again, why wasnt he accepted . Im having trouble remembering that. Its probably in my own book i thought it might be texas. University of texas. Thats correct. Bush, at first, when he was applying for college, actually, kind of asked to go see go to austin and see the university of texas. And, you know, it was it might have been a wish, but he ended up at yale. And then, youre right. When he he tried to go to law school or thought about applying to law school and he applied to he applied to texas at austin. Do you know why they didnt accept him . I do not at this point. You point out in your book that there are two words to describe his change in life, one is drinking and the other is religion. Right. Explain that. These come together in the mid 1980s. And around in the period of 1985 and 1986, first lets talk about what happened and then whats in the background. As far as drinking, in 1986, he celebrates his 40th birthday with friends. Hes off in colorado at the broadmore row tehotel. He stays up drinking late with his friends, wakes up with a terrible hangover. He has a drinking problem, he sometimes describes it that way, sometimes not, for a good while. Hes been arrested for driving under the influence. This has been a chronic problem. He wakes up the day after and says thats it, im not going to drink. And he doesnt. He gives up drinking. The second thing that happens is that he develops he becomes an evangelical christian. And during this same period turns to religion. Now in my view, theres an interesting component to this. Both of these things happen within a couple of years after his father decides to run for president. So the sequence is that in 1984, Ronald Reagan wins reelection, hes obviously not able to run again in 1988. George h. W. Bush is his Vice President. And in april of 1985, his father calls the entire bush family together in a meeting at camp david, and he brings out lee atwater. Now sort of now famous political consultant, scoundrel. Great political tactician. And he says, this is lee atwater and lee atwater addresses everybody and says i think its atwater himself warns people, your father is going to be running for president , you have to be careful. Anything a member of the family does could come back to hurt him. And george jr. , that is george w. Bush and jeb are distrustful of atwater. They pull him aside and say how do we know we can trust you . They ask that question because atwater is a political consultant, some of his partners are consulting for a rival politician, jack kemp. And atwater keeps swearing and finally keeps swearing he will, and jeb bush says, what we mean is, if someone throws a grenade at our father, will you jump on it . So theyre mistrustful of this consultant and hes telling them to stay clean. And in the middle of these warnings, george w. Bush this is only a year before he decides to give up drinking all together. Thats the background on drinking. Hes had these warnings, he doesnt want to get into trouble. As far as religion, im not going to say if its someones religion has a political component to it in its origins. But i will say, you know, as soon as george w. Bush becomes an evangelical christian, he becomes the liaison for his fathers president ial campaign. Its a roll he plays throughout the 1988 campaign and up to and through the 92 campaign . How often did he run for office before he ran for governor of texas. In the mix of that, when did he meet laura welch and marry her . First, he ran for office once before his texas gubernatorial campaign. That was in the late 70s. He ran in 1978 for a seat in congress. And he lost. He lost to a guy named kent hans. Its interesting, in light of what we later know and think of george w. Bush that in that campaign, his opponent attacked him for being this east coast preppy guy from out of town who couldnt possibly know texas well. So he portrayed george w. Bush almost like his father. And bush began to develop responses to this. Bush definitely you know, one thing that i think many people agree is that he had a good sense of humor. Finally when he got tired of being attacked, hans at one point said we have a candidate who was born in new haven, connecticut. And, you know, hes an outsider. And bush said i was born in new haven, connecticut because i wanted to be with my mother that day. What about laura . He married laura in the late 70s. He and what else can i met her where and under what circumstances . Met her at a friends friends arranged to get them together at a barbecue. They were in midland, and she was a local librarian. I found you know, its interesting to me that even his choice of a spouse reflected this kind of antielite he chose someone from texas, not someone from the social set of his parents. And, in fact, if you read laura bushs memoir closely, she says, quite gently, it took me about ten years to be comfortable with barbara bush. Barbara had an acid tongue. And, you know, laura is quite the reverse. What was your assignment these are small books. Umhum. Under 200 pages. Theyve done them on all president s. Yeah, i joke to my friends, the assignment is if you write more than 50,000 words, well cut off your arm. What was your assignment . What did they want you to come up with and who did it . Who did the book . The book, like all the others in the series is published by henry holtz, called the american president series. They want you to briefly discuss the background of president s. Then cover their presidency and briefly their life after their presidency. And, in fact, the fine editor of this book at first asked me for an outline before i started writing, and i turned it in and there were eight chapters and two were getting him into the presidency and the last one was post president ial life. And he laughed and said, yep, you hit on it. Thats what all of these books are, with one exception, and that one exception diverted history for a minute was William Henry harrison who was president for only 30some days before he got a cold and died. And paul laughed and said in that book, the epilogue was the presidency. What is your background and what are you doing now . I am, by profession, a journalist. I spent more than 30 years of my career in journalism. Actually, this is now the 50th anniversary of the day when i decided that i wanted to be a journalist. I was about to go to medical school and i asked for a leave of absence, and 50 years ago this week, i believe, i was granted a years leave of absence from medical school and i went off and started at a small newspaper, not a good one, in new haven, connecticut and i never had so much fun in my life. So i may have taken another year of leave, i dont even remember now. But the minute i started, i liked newspapers and never went back. I worked for, over the next couple of decades, the new haven paper briefly and for the Washington Post for three or four years. Eventually was at the Los Angeles Times for over 20 years both in washington and overseas. Youre doing what now . Since then ive been writing books full time. I did that first at a washington think tank, i wrote a book that covers the george w. Bush administration called rise of the vulcans. And i moved in 2004 to Johns Hopkins school of advanced International Studies and ive written books there ever since. So heres some video, very brief, from 1988, george w. Bush is here in this town working for his father in april of 1988, its an interview we did with him. I just wanted you to hear him talk about texas. Its a state that encourages growth and its a state that has a certain sense of pride to it that i like. I just happen to think that texas has got problems. All those growing out of them. But the opportunities in that state are enormous. Im a person whos always seeking opportunity. That was 1988, what was george w. Bush doing during the campaign. And what do you think he was thinking at that point about his own future in politics . Very interesting question. Its a continuation of the story i told about lee atwater and mistrusting him. Because george w. Bush at that point he was kind of out of oil the business, he was relatively free. And when he expressed some mistrust to atwater about how his Fathers Campaign would be run, atwater said, you know, if you dont trust me, why dont you, he said to george and jeb, why dont you come to washington and bowork alongside me, watch every day. And george w. 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 fathers interests. Im sure atwater was too but he wanted to double check. His own ambitions, you know, i think i became convinced and wrote that he had his own ambitions at the time. So to move ahead for a second, in 92, after his father lost, hes running for governor of texas and 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 junior from running for governor of texas in 1990, because she thought it wasnt a good idea while george bush senior was president. Anything that one of them did could reflect on the other. How difficult was it for him to get elected governor of texas . The best line on that came from his father, george h. W. Bush who wasnt always full of great quips, but said that for george w. Bush to get elected president after he was governor of texas was like a 6 inch putt. It was harder for him to be elected governor. He had there was a very popular, well remembered now, democratic governor, ann richard. She was the one who said, of george h. W. Bush, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And richards was quite popular, but bush junior, george w, ran hard against her, he had a very good political adviser, good at politics, carl robe, and together they worked out the strategy to beat him excuse me, to beat her. And one of the tactics that they had, which people saw when he was president , was incredible message discipline. This was one of the characteristics of bush as politician. He would never have particularly penetrating or very long answers, but he would develop a handful, one sentence, two sentences, three sentences, and give them over and over. And years later, ann richards said that in frustration, she meant this as a political compliment but she said, if you ask george bush the time of day during that campaign, he would say we must teach our children to read. He would give the same response to everything. How did he get elected president . How . He lets talk about his political tactics and successes. He learned from his fathers loss, in 1992. He developed what he felt were strategies to win where his father lost. And to he noticed his fathers errors. So he needed to bring together, within the republican party, three different squiconstituenc one of them is the traditional republican conservative constituency, the Old Country Club constituencies, the people who wanted their taxes cut. Lesson number two was, dont raise taxes. Thats what his father did. He needed to develop much better support from evangelical christians than his father had, and needed to develop with the hawks, that was an important faction within the party. And all of those wings of the party needed to give strong support to the republican candidate. People forget now, for example, but the evangelicals were not always a solid a constituency in the republican party, in fact, they supported Democratic Candidates for many decades. Richard nixon made some inroads getting some evangelical support. They ran back to jimmy carter, a Southern Baptist democrat. Reagan developed much more support from evangelicals. And then, his father lost that kind of support. Bush worked both for his father and then for himself to bring evangelicals into the republican party. So that was one party of his Political Task that he succeeded in. As far as what i call the hawks or the Foreign Policy, the neo conservatives, hard for people to remember now, but in the 1992 campaign, they tended to support bill clinton. They were so unhappy with his father. This had to do with the fact that his father supported gorbachev, didnt support the breakup of the soviet union, didnt support an independent ukraine for a long time, a lot of other things. And bill clinton supported the neoconservatives, some of them went to work for him. Bush junior goes to work and develops their support as well. So he pulls together all the wings of the republican party. And then he campaigns he has no trouble winning at all winning the republican nomination. And then, running against al gore, he basically he runs against bill clinton and the lewinsky scandal, im going to bring george w. Bush says im going to bring honor and dignity to the white house. After that, we talk about the great political strategies, after all that it was enough to produce a deadlock in the Electoral College in the courts for decades. As you look back on the bush v. Gore decision and the fact that he ended up winning the electoral votes he needed but not the popular vote, whats your opinion of what happened during that period . I thought it was a travesty. I put in my career about eight years covering the Supreme Court, and one thing i thought i had learned was that the court of that era, and the conservatives on the court of that era, im talking of people like Justice William rehnquist were in favor of what they would have called federalism, or states rights, and i thought that when the florida Supreme Court, based on the florida constitution, awarded the state of florida to gore, that based on its own principles, i thought the Supreme Court would simply allow that to stand, say were not going to interfere. Thats not what the court did. They developed their own theory, it never made any sense to me. What impact did that have on his presidency . Less than people would think. In this sense. That most people thought that having not won a majority in the of the popular vote, winning such a narrow victory in the Electoral College, that he would start out very carefully. That he wouldnt take any bold initiatives and most of what he did would be directed at winning over democratic support. In fact, bush started his presidency very boldly, asked for a the tax cut in his first year. Succeeded in winning just enough democratic support to get it passed. But it was quite a radical move where people thought he was going to run from the center. Hed actually been, by most accounts, in texas a centrist moderate governor, but he ran as a very strong conservative with bold initiatives, focussed in the that first year mostly on tax cuts. 9 11. Ive heard of that. How many months of course its fairly obvious from january 20th to september 11th. Whats that whats that legacy . Well, the legacy is about as profound as any president has ever faced. Its the first time the United States homeland has been attacked since the war of 1812. And it changes the country automatically, immediately into one obsessed in big ways and small with protecting its security. So to take the most obvious example, the way that 325 million americans go through airports today started on september 12th, or whenever the flights resumed and its never gone back to what it was on september 10th. You know, it affected American Foreign policy just for the start i think we can say that it had a profound effect on bushs Foreign Policy team. That played a role, certainly, in the decision two years later to invade iraq. Heres a short piece of video, after his book came out, Decision Points, one asked about legacy. I dont really worry about my legacy because im still studying Theodore Roosevelt or harry truman. Theres not going to be an objective history done on this administration for a long time. Yeah, thats a little self serving. Its true for any president that it takes many decades to for historians to judge. But and that may be true with parts of what bush did. But its not too soon to judge on some aspects of his legacy. Its not too soon to judge on the war in iraq. Why . Because it didnt accomplish what he thought it was going to accomplish before he started the war. It cost 4,000 plus american lives, it cost 2 trillion, and i think you you know, i write in my book, and i dont think this judgment will change, that it was one of the biggest strategic blunders in American History. So those kinds of judgments i think can be made. You know, he is stating there the truism that, you know, peoples judgments do change of president s as time goes on. But i dont think that one is going to change much. How did he make the decision, both for going into afghanistan and iraq . Yeah, i think i would divide them. The decision to go into afghanistan followed immediately after september 11th. The thinking of the administration within hours of september 11th was we want to punish the people who did this. They knew right at the start this was al qaeda. And any countries that assisted them, in this particular case, since al qaeda had been based in afghanistan, that went afghanistan. They gave afghanistan a warning, fairly quickly, to turnover bin laden. And then proceeded to attack within weeks. Now, theres a lot more to that because they bush gathers his war Team Together at camp david the weekend after the september 11th attacks and there are one or two proposals that they go beyond afghanistan. That they, in one particular case theres a recommendation to attack iraq, at that very first weekend meeting after september 11th. But that is generally put aside. I choose those words carefully. Its put aside, but its not rejected. But for the time being they decide to focus on afghanistan. And that does i mean, that takes some time. That takes, you know, a few months for them to bring in cia teams and then eventually the military to dislodge the taliban from kabul. Now, how did he invade iraq . That is a much longer story. So there has been this recommendation, at the very first meeting, to attack iraq. Why . Because do you know who it came from . Yes, it came from Paul Wolfwitz at that first meeting. And he does not get support from others there. First of all, if you can envision this meeting, its the principals at a table, principals meaning members of the cabinet, cheney, rumsfeld powell, rice, and wolfwitz is at a back bench. This is a recommendation from the second level. And it is, again, shelved at the time. And after during those two months, while the war in afghanistan is being fought, couple of noteworthy things happen. One is the anthrax scare. So what turns out to be something entirely unrelated to al qaeda, as far as we know, people in washington and on capitol hill and so on are opening their mail and finding this powerder, which may or may not be anthrax. That further really scares the top levels of the administration. And i want to back up for a second there and say, that the september 11th attacks had caught the administration in its this is theyre nine months into the administration, they havent paid enough attention to the warnings they got about al qaeda. This administration thought of themselves im talking about, you know, the Foreign Policy team, people like cheney and rumsfeld, theyre the professionals. They served in office before, they know how to run things. The Clinton Administration is a bunch of amtures, thats their mindset. And they are focussed, also, on old issues involving states. By that i mean countries. So their issues of Foreign Policy this is before september 11th are getting out of an arms control treaty with the soviet union. Maybe dealing with north korea. They have a moment with china. But theyre dealing with the things that they have been familiar with in past administrations. Countrytocountry, u. S. Versus another country. September 11th hits, and here is the, quote, that meant the most to me is actually in a memoir by bob gates, who says that these guys were traumatized by september 11th. You know, they hadnt imagined this kind of problem coming from a nonstate actor. From a terrorist group that wasnt a state. And they spent much of the rest of their time trying to make sure that this could never happen again. And they you know, between the lines with in gates description is a lot of guilt that they had for for allowing september 11th to happen. So, after september 11th, you know, were not going to allow this to happen again, they get an anthrax scare, and they develop, slowly, the concern that al qaeda could somehow get weapons of mass destruction. You know, we have to go further, weapons of mass destruction, yes, theyre concerned about a Nuclear Weapon but theyre concerned about chemical weapons and particularly concerned about biological weapons. That somehow, al qaeda could get those. So thats the second thing that happe happens. And then theres, on the political level, carl rove, the political adviser plays a part in some of this. They develop the language that afghanistan is merely phase one of the war on terror. So they develop this language about the war on terror. No one can quite define what that is. And they call they call afghanistan phase one. By december, theyve defeated of 2001, theyve defeated in al qaeda or they dislodged it from kabul. And the question starts to arise, okay, whats phase two . And there is a period, if you i did look at this, in for a few weeks in sort of november, december of 2001, when theyre thinking of, waiting with should we attack theres an al qaeda unit in indonesia, you know, theres some al qaeda in yemen. And they dont quite work as a National Campaign against al qaeda. These are small units in countries of lesser importance. But meanwhile, theres iraq. Its still out there. And the first sign you get of the of administration thinking about going to war in iraq is in bushs state of the Union Address at the beginning of 2002 when he talks about the axis of evil. The axis of evil is iraq, iran and north korea. Let me just run seven seconds of a statement of george w. Bush at that interview during his book tour. Theyre asking did i make a mistake for example in the liberation of iraq. And the answer is no, i didnt make a mistake in my judgment. Comment . Yes, he made a huge mistake. He to the extent that bush has admitted mistakes, he admits tactical mistakes that were central to the war. Without ever saying that the entire war in iraq was a mistake. So we can i mean, the mistakes hes admitted, hes admitted he made a mistake in the Mission Accomplished landing on an aircraft carrier. And hes admitted and others have admitted the way they handled the post war was a mistake, by allowing the disbanding of the iraqi army. Their expulsion of the bath Party Members from government positions. Its true hes never said the war in iraq itself was not a mistake. In fact, what you saw right there is i guess a sign that he doesnt believe it yet. But i you know, i think thats profoundly wrong. In your book you talk about and of course you wrote a a whole book on the vulcans from the aides around george w. Bush early in 2004, but how much of what george bush became was the fact you point out he has a lot of people around him that used to work for his father, and how long did it take for him to change that . I think you know, i thought it took well into it took into his second term for him to change that. So, if you go back to his 2000 campaign and taking office in 2001, first of all, he gets attacked politically during the campaign for not knowing enough about Foreign Policy. I mean, here is al gore, whos been the Vice President , he was a Foreign Policy specialist before that, bush has been governor of texas, the only Foreign Policy hes done, as he would joke he would joke about his experience with mexico, but thats about it. And so he gets attacked for not knowing much, and he says, well, i dont he doesnt say i dont have to know much, but he says i have the finest group of Foreign Policy advisers around. And by that hes talking about this group, the vulcans, who are basically people who served with his father. Secondly, during that 2000 campaign, he chooses cheney as his Vice President. And carl rove doesnt want cheney. He lists cheneys disadvantages. Comes from a tiny state thats already republican. Hes not going to bring votes the way, say, Lyndon Johnson would carry texas for john kennedy. And hes too conservative. And bush wants cheney mostly because of his experience. Hes choosing his fathers advisers and that goes all the way up to and including his own Vice President. And once he takes office, he really does rely on them. He has kind of a bridging the bridging figure of kons lee a rice whos a friend of his to be National Security adviser. But these guys, cheney, powell, and rumsfeld, who cheney brought in as defense secretary, who are supposed to know how all of this works, and he relies on them, he relies on them before september 11th, then he has this problem as he in the run up to the war in iraq that actually his advisers dont agree with each other. Powell and excuse me, cheney and rumsfeld are very much in support of and cheney is pushing the idea of the war with iraq. Powell very much the contrary. Disagrees with particularly with cheney. But in that case hes still relying on cheney and powell. And all the way through that first term, he tends to support cheney, what cheney wants. You get to the end of the first term, the war is not going well. The war turns out to be a bigger and bigger problem. And his advisers are bickering with each other. And he decides, at the beginning of his second term, that hes going to change the Foreign Policy team. And the first thing hes going to do is replace powell. To powells surprise, he thought that rumsfeld would also be replaced. But bush doesnt replace rumsfeld. So youre left with cheney and rumsfeld, and rice then becomes secretary of state. That begins to change the dynamic. So the personnel are starting to change. Rice becomes is closer to bush than anyone else in the administration, including cheney, i think. And that changes the dynamic and then this is followed two years later by replacing rumsfeld. And meanwhile, bush is developing more confidence in his own judgments. It takes a good four years but he sees how this works and he sees how things can go wrong. And he gets to the point where i think, you know, he doesnt he doesnt rely on cheney, thats for sure. And really is the most important person on Foreign Policy in his own administration. As really he wasnt at the beginning. Im not going to skip it, because its not important, katrina, but we have very little time. And i want to make sure that you give us your view of the financial crisis and how that happened and what impact that will have on his legacy . There are several interesting things about the financial crisis for the bush and his team. I mean, several things that bush did helped play into it, the tax cuts, they kept this is not bush, of course, its the fed. But Interest Rates were kept so low that people kept guying mbue and more houses, prices go up, you get a bubble, Allen Greenspan insists its not a bubble. But when it hits, and the question is it hits in september 1988 with the collapse of lehman brothers. When it hits, bush decides that he needs to intervene and needs to and need to intervene vigorously. And what you see in 1988, and theres an immediate legacy over the next decade or so, is bush refuses to go along with the sort of libertarian right wing. He develops a massive program, t. A. R. P. Troubled asset relief program, to try and buy up these assets that are collapsing as a result of the financial crisis. The right wing opposes him, when i say the right wing, i mean in congress. And it was a very, very difficult fight. Fight to get congressional approval of this t. A. R. P. Program. He and cheney himself are fairly conservative republican are strongly in favor of this. And they succeed mostly with democratic support. This also happens in the middle of the 2008 campaign and actually this is more in the book of dick cheney than anyone else, you get descriptions of this crucial white house meeting where obama comes in. Let me step back. Mccain has said, im not going to campaign. Im going to stop campaigning. We need to have a major washington meeting to decide what to do about it. And bush allows this meeting. Obama is also there. So you get all the congressional leaders of both parties and john mccain from bushs own party and obama and mccain really doesnt have a lot to say. I mean, hes announced there is this crisis. But comes in and being john mccain, hes, you know, very active and sometimes irritable. But he really doesnt have a lot to say and obama looks fairly calm and deliberate as he is. Cheney writes that i think that obama was more impressive than mccain. And some of that came through to the public. I mean this was the general perception of the two candidates. It was a major help to obama. It hurt john mccain. You reference this in your book that John Lewis Gattis was here. This was george w. Bush in retirement. But here a couple months ago and i want to run what he said because its an interesting take on what you wouldnt surprise what happened to a president. My wife and i just happened to be in dallas. I think we were promoting the cannon book at that point. And so i had awe student, several students actually, who worgd f worked for him. I said we would like to drop by and say hello. We did. He had us come by at some ungodly hour, like 7 30 in the morning. And so i asked him how are you . He said im bored. I dont have enough to do. I told him he should take up painting. I told him about the churchill painting as a pastime. Its a small book. Small book, yes. The rest is art, as they say. He turned out to be very good at it. Expresident board. Would you expect that to happen to many expresident ed . Yeah. Why. I think for a good while bill clinton was bored. Because youre spending 24 hour days, you know, whether youre sleeping and playing golf or not, its always with you until youre out. And then i think theres a tremendous sense of decompression. The interesting detail on what gattis said is bush began find and did so but only without telling anybody outside his family. And the only reason we know about this is someone hacked into the emails of family members and found these paintings being sent back and forth. And so it interests me that he took up painting but really didnt want the public to know about it at first. Heres another couple of items you have in your book. You say that he made by the time you published the book, he had made 140 speeches kicking off 15 million for him personally. And that he also sold two million books of his own Decision Point books. This is not this is in my lifetime that a former president would be able to speak and make that kind of money. And we all know that george not george but bill clinton made probably 100 million off all this stuff. Yeah. Particularly george w. And clinton have had a lot of time to do this. I can remember right after reagan left office that he went to japan to give a speech and, you know, he was probably paid 200,000 and that was a big deal. No one ever heard of that. Paid 2 million to make two speeches. Just the idea of a president speaking was unusual at that point. Were you able to talk to george bush during this period at all . Did you want and were turned down . Yes. I actually think i can say i went through James Glassman who is working for him. I couldnt persuade bush to do it. I have to go back to the word limit here. Im not sure how much of a difference it would have made. You mentioned Decision Points. He wrote longer than this. So i think i got his point of view on most things. When did you the valkans book, did people talk to you . Yes, they did. So all the sources you have for this, which is the most valuable for the george bush w. Bush presidency . You mean which which book would be the biggest help . If somebody wanted to study it, you know, besides your short biography. What is helpful to you . Well, my own book, i consider, you know, for Foreign Policy a pretty good book. And then there are the memoirs. I think that bushcheney, rice wrote an interesting memoir, rumsfeld has a memoir. I think the memoirs everybody shades it a little bit one way or another. Interest anywhere own perspective. But theyre quite good. There is another book about cheney called angler that is an unusually good book. What did you think of george w. Bushs own memoir . I thought it was okay. I think as a memoir, it was better than clinton which just, you know, was not the best thing bill clinton ever did. But i thought it was pretty much pretty run of the mill. Our guest has been james mann and he wrote the book called george w. Bush which he said was published by times books and we thank you very much for joining us. Thanks. For free transcripts, visit us at q a. Org. 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