>> reporter: the wilson center was chartered by congress more than 50 years ago to in their words strengthen the relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs. one of the ways to fulfill that mission is through the history of public policy which strives to make public the primary source record of 20th and 21st-century history from repositories around the world and based on those to facilitate scholarship, education and debate. we mobilize, ship in public policy in other ways through podcasts like international history declassified, blogs like my own stubborn things and today's program is in line with that purpose. our guest today, andrew card. andrew card served with the national endowment to democracy, interim chief executive officer, president of franklin pierce university, acting dean of the bush school of public service at texas a and m and senior government role under three us presidents including white house chief of staff to george w. bush, and secretary to george h w bush. we have executive director of fiscal institute of international affairs. he has been it distinguished professor on diplomacy at georgetown, vice president of worldvision, a veteran who served in the gulf war, us special envoy to the darfur process and most especially administer of international development. today they have edited and produced transforming our world, george h w bush and american foreign policy, a collection of essays from well-known foreign-policy practitioners who participated in unfolding international events in the administration. i to make sure everyone knows we will have time to take some audience questions near the end of the program. if you have questions please submit them to event@wilsoncenter.org. please include your name and affiliation. let me get things going. for me, a recurring theme in this book even though it was written by 20 authors in terms of the essays is good fortune. and ocean that george w. bush was uniquely qualified to lead the free world when he did. the first president in 128 years with prior diplomatic experience, the only president with leadership experience in us intelligence agencies, the last world war ii veteran to serve, the last injured in combat and yet the book describes his election as an aberration. could we have george h w bush elected today? could we see someone with those unique qualifications rise to take the reins at these important times? andrew card, why don't i start with you? >> thank you for your service to our country, now at the wilson center. i'm excited to be with you. andrew natsios deserve 99% of the credit, a remarkable collection of essays comes out. i am credited with having helped him but really he helped me help him. he motivated me and the most remarkable thing is the introduction andrew natsios wrote to this book summarizes all the rest of the chapters but he does it in a way that i am going to say is optimistic and pessimistic. it is optimistic, you know what we should be looking for in a president, pessimistic in saying it is going to be hard to get there. to answer directly, it would be hard to have another person like george h w bush in the field of candidates that successfully compete to become president of the united states. i say that because his track record of responding to the call of public service was almost unique. not his predecessors have it and i don't think any of the successors to him will have it. it is best summarized by know about how he came to respect the calling of public service from a family that was engaged in public service, how he grew up in new england even though he became a texan so i am going to say the gravitas at yale but the boots on the ground ability to communicate well. the secretary of state was mind melded to him. they were the best of friends. they were soul mates and that made a difference. also survivors remorse, shot down in world war ii and watched his buddy get killed. yes, that had an impact. he was also experienced in so many aspects as outlined in his chapter, but i am going to reflect on jeff angle's commentary, he practiced hippocratic diplomacy, do no harm and he was a real gentleman as plato and burke told us and to be prudent, a word he used all the time, he did have. it was engaged with everybody, his friends and adversaries, he was respectful but most of all this collection of essays outlined his respect for the institutions we are seeing and was an institution polisher and andrew natsios captures that in his introduction but the people who volunteered to write chapters for this book all made significant contributions, books written of each one of them and there have been books written about many of them, but they are beyond expertise in terms of what they have done. they are serving as patriots and june baker has the first essay and personifies george h w was almost as well is george h w bush set the stage for the rest of the chapter. >> andrew? >> a couple stories to tell you a lot about bush himself. bush was caught by his mother and father not to use the word i if he could avoid it which is hard to do if you are a politician. we could discuss his written memos when he was president and speeches, he doesn't use the word because it is egocentric. he came back from a baseball game in high school and did a home run and they won the game is a result of it and told his mother, his mother said that is nice, how did the team do? he said don't you care about the home run? he said i care about how the team did and he repeated that story often. i heard about an apartment above the auditorium where we have a lot of messages, right next to the bush library, the bush school, the library - a great administrator, but 5 pandemic conferences before covid 19 and that is one of the focuses but he used to come all the time, one story how he is revered in texas. he almost died three years earlier and the german magazine actually said he died and it was very embarrassing. they had to do a retraction and all that. he survived, came back and there are 100,000 people at football games. he got 15 minutes standing ovation. they had to postpone the game because the audience would not sit down after his near-death experience. people want to know how popular he is in texas, he didn't go to school 6 days in. his friends in houston criticized him, texas and it was a rural area, because of the values of a and m. i will tell you another story, a french scholar, a conference on reunification of germany 7 or 8 years ago. i knew when he invited him that he would say it but of course a chancellor of germany, german unification, he was there that he spoke and he said something i won't forget. i was on the phone almost every day for two years orchestrating, helmet coal was in it, making sure every single detail was attended to so during the implementation process nothing got screwed up. we left when the scholar said nothing to do with it. that is complete nonsense. there was a concert of one of the great german orchestras in houston during the anniversary celebration and the german consul general stood up into intermission time and bush invited andy and i to go and she said mister president i went to thank you because we would not be one country now if not for you and a standing ovation but this is the german consul general saying this. george bush was a modest person but didn't have much to be modest about. he was a very humble guy and those characteristics mean he didn't promote himself and as a result i don't think a lot of the things he did made their way which is why we did this book. >> it reminds me a few years ago, the opportunity to meet with him, at the international republican institute at the time and i asked what would be the lesson that he would offer young people today. brent paused for a moment and said it wasn't easy and he said that today's young people look for that kind of reunification as though it was logical and inevitable and it wasn't easy. each step, each move, each disciplined move which you are pointing to, extraordinary, not in the skill sets of politicians, looking for instant reading the polls, what happens in social media and yet he had the foresight that so many understood the calibration and difficulties and what it would take to get it done. that maybe is the greatest sign of how unusual the time wasn't how unique his contributions were. there is one thing i say to people about george bush or any president, one person no matter how brilliant or experienced can run a government as big as the one we had but it is enormous and enormously complex. george bush cultivated a large group of people across the country in his first campaign for president in 1980 and then in 88 but then as vice president he had a huge network and it wasn't just people among the campaign, but people he wanted to run the campaign and the federal government and by putting people who are loyal to him and shared his worldview and values in office he was seizing control in a gentle way in the reins of power. the most no one was fired at the nsc, in the chapter by carl root, she worked for briscoe croft and had a distinguished career. she and i served from aig to active-duty but in her chapter, only 50 people in staff of the nsc when brent scowcroft was in charge. under president obama there were 400. that is how much it increased. she said the quality of people, all of them being cabinet members, 4-star generals, presidents of universities, condoleezza rice, a lot of what george bush is so good about is this huge network he built deliberately and that came out in the book. >> is something i to get to. and other personal angle, when bush 41, had the honor of visiting him at kennebunkport. pause for a moment and photos capturing moments of his presidency and found myself over and over, i had forgotten, that came back to me as i read this book, each chapter, in the presidency many of which have been forgotten or not fully appreciated. all the things that occurred during the bush 41 presidency lost to the mists of time, maybe everybody looks and thinks it was inevitable but this is to both of you, each of you what do you think in terms of accomplishments or wins is appreciated these days that bush 41 pulled together or pulled off? >> he did transform the world. we ended the cold war without going to a hot war. he was humble in the process. he didn't dance on the wall when it came down even though some people said he should dance on the wall when the berlin wall came down. he was very humble. he was also very disciplined about respecting institutions in washington dc that were not institutions. for example he works well with congress even though was controlled by the democrats. he respected the house and had plans on both sides of the aisle but he did not blindside congress with challenges he had and invited them to be part of the solution. it didn't mean everything was easy. it wasn't. it was very hard. but the institution of being part of the solution current is meet their responsibility. on the domestic side probably the american disabilities act which was so dramatic, it motivated the world to have a greater conscience about people who are challenged and need a little bit of a leg up. they need some help so the american disability act, read john sununu's book about being chief of staff for what happened on the domestic side. this book is focused on what happened on the international side and efforts under usaid. very dramatic in spreading the compassion of america around the world. that comes out in these chapters. how did he staff his government and bring people in? what is he looking for? he was not looking for people who would just echo his views, he wanted to challenge his views constructively and make a difference. i have to tell you. we all know he was president and was vice president before that. a lot of people didn't know about his track record in service or his son who was president which was pretty darn unique but i would deck out the first time i was campaigning with him, i was volunteer chairman of the campaign in 1978-79 and the 1980 process. there was an event, he was speaking at an event in springfield, connecticut, hartfield, connecticut and i got a call from james beckett iii who was part of the campaign and said ambassador bush is speaking at an event in hartford, connecticut, 45 minutes away from springfield, massachusetts. put together a key or something for ambassador bush, i didn't know a lot of people in springfield massachusetts but i call a friend who did know people there and they gave me someone at 2:00 in the afternoon and i drove out to see where this house was and meet the people and all that kind of stuff and the next day was the day of the event and i picked up ambassador bush, we arrived at this home in springfield, locked in, 25 people ready to have the with ambassador george bush, there was a sign on the mantle over the fireplace that said welcome george bush. it was billed busch. i tell you that made a huge difference for america. he actually did more to introduce transformation than any other president in our history when it came to inviting people to the responsibilities of governing. he made bandleaders better leaders because of how he led around the world. that is what transformed the world and grateful of his service. organizing the national security council is a must-read because it talks about the partnership that existed in the white house, normally tension between different bureaucracies. having been chief of staff i would carry around to putting years, president bush and briscoe croft and jim baker were a remarkable team that had the benefit of working with dick cheney and colin powell and the spectacular team that made a difference but it came because clinton had a vision but did not allow himself to be stuck on stupid. he was always invited to other solutions or better way of debating it and he did not count his chest and say i did it. he went overboard saying -- could have been we did it. >> i will narrow the question to you because andrew card opened the door. what struck me in the book, you and i both served as administrator, lack of appreciation for humanitarian leadership and crisis response, you were there at the time and extended and mobilized these tools and became administrator. talk about the innovation we saw from bush 412 usaid and humanitarian leadership. >> the dean of the bush school is a friend of mine, a friend of all of us and he was a great president but we need to talk about mistakes. he didn't do anything about the reconstruction of afghanistan after the russians left. in the introduction i said i need to check this out to make sure this is correct and he was wrong. i didn't know it. the first executive order that george h w bush signed was to organize the reconstruction of afghanistan after russian troops left. everybody else works with aig but they are in charge of reconstruction and the equivalent was $225 million in today's dollars. in those days you could do a lot with that. we started to do it. i didn't have anything to do with the separate office and the civil war started between the taliban and the northern alliance. you can say we didn't fix the diplomacy of that but don't - most of what we did do was destroy the civil war. not that he didn't focus on it. it was the first thing he focused on. alex the wall, one of the great scholars, no fan of that, and he has written a lot of books about africa and all that, a book called mass starvation which i use in my course on great famines and war and he said there's been a dramatic drop in the number of famine deaths. since the mid to late 1980s compared to the previous 150 years, tracked the number of deaths each year, you can see a big decline. there was a new international humanitarian response system organized under the bush presidency. i didn't even realize. this happened when bush was president. not that it just happened but he helped orchestrate. what was the creation of the un office, the un didn't to do a good job with the purge of northern iraq at the end of the gulf war and he wanted it fixed. he criticized the un but he said we are going to fix this and he did and there's a big fight in the administration. it has been a success story. the office of foreign disaster assistance which i was director of in my first job, an amusing story, i didn't want the job but andy kept telling the administrator, we want them to be the head of the latin american bureau. i really wanted to do this job. andy said we will move you later. i don't know anything about this. why are you putting me in this job? after two weeks on the job, this is the best job i had the most interesting. i want to stay here and it changed my career track. we now know disaster assistance was created in 1989. we didn't have an operation center before, we do now, it operates -- >> talk about darts, what they do and why they were so innovative. >> they were -- there was -- there were no job descriptions, no operations planning in an organized systematic way. we did a field manual, field operations guy, i wouldn't have called it that. that was the manual for the dart teams, people disciplines and shelter, modern sanitation and food security and nutrition and emergency medical care and reconstruction. people have specific duties and they would issue twice the information reports that would go out all over who are interested in responding to whatever the disaster was was mostly civil war and famines but also natural disasters and these teams, we would give them broad discretion without going to washington and it is a big thing in the united states. when the haitian earthquake took place, 125 people remain, the biggest dart team we ever had. we had five dart teams in 1992. .. so that is it. so that is that you cannot send another team out. i realize i'd gone too far. the point was humanitarian response system drove death rates down. he said he sent him to w fp to make that into the pre-agency dealing with emergency not just food they run the logistics airport convoys and all of that. catherine created that she was there for ten years. it was not an accident she was sent. they orchestrated the vote from the white house as the executive director. >> you may not remember this, when i was named administrator, you gave me a phone call and said you are about to see this huge agency, boots on the ground all around the world. but you said the one thing you do not appreciate is the value , you said to me i just promise you we will have this conversation again later. the tool of the dark inability to focus to meditate assistant is the best in the world it would be terribly valuable. given always thought the venezuelan migration and cyclones and we had that mexico city earthquake you were right, absolutely. that something i agree with you i think is under appreciated. let me switch gears. there is another aspect i think of the bush 41 era that is not really thought about. policy for good reason. reminds us, panama, northern iraq, kuwait, somalia, bush 41 was not afraid to use military force when he believed the cause was just an in line with the international framework that he believed would give it the credibility and the authority, yes the humanitarian leadership but he was no shrinking violet when it came to a muscular diplomacy a foreign policy when necessary. >> used more military force in any other present particulate up for ear. i'm sorry. >> he came at those challenges with empathy. he had been in the war. the last president to be in world war ii, injured, a hero, all that kind of stuff. also practice remarkable restraint. when we help to liberate kuwait he did not fall to the seduction of going all the way to baghdad. he built coalition, he worked with the rest of the world to keep saddam hussein under wraps. i think that was tremendous restraint. what he did in panama was really quite restrained. he would after 1% rather than the people of panama with the military and made a difference. there is not much written in the book here about what happened in panama. obviously we had challenges in yugoslavia that were emerging at the same time. it is not that he solves every problem that america faced during its his tenure. he set the stage for us to better understand what it takes to solve the problems facing america around the world. on this book is wonderful. it should be read by anyone who wants to be president or at once to serve at usaid or the state department or defense department. it is a great collection of real life challenges that were well addressed because you had leadership that showed compassion and vision. and they did not deal with just their own emotions. they try to keep their emotions under check as they met the emotions of the world. that escalated beyond the point of no return which frequently happens. i was impressed jim baker's suggestion of what it takes to be a great leader. they really just are the story of george h.w. bush. jim baker's first chapter in the book you will not be able to put the rest of it down. >> cell and or, you not only can comment or remember the bush 41 administration, but also someone who put the uniform back on during that era. so again, it is a fallacy that bush 41 was somehow afraid to use military force. >> it was a fallacy. we should george bush was quite the opposite he was able to control himself and who like to punch someone out or yell at someone. enough that he could get what he wanted done. without browbeating people and making friends with them. the only non- american the only non- participant in the bush administration hey wrote a chapter in said gorbachev said to him, if i did not trust george bush the snow would have not happened all of the transformation would not have happened and it could have resulted in a war. and gorbachev himself said because he trusted bush. that makes a big difference. it was not widely understood. i want to tell you a story located in latin and after america. the guy was throughout the last minute and we never got it done. which i regret. there was a famine developing unit work very closely together civil wars and i will blow all of the barges he was a rebel leader then because i do not want any food delivered to my people because some of them credit for for trying to get both sides to agree to this. this is a true story now hank called me up and said i have a hilarious story. i cannot imagine anything we said convinced him to do that. gorbachev called him up on the government will collapse within two weeks for the reason gorbachev did that is bush called on his own without anyone asking him to call your friend appear and tell him to get off the stick and open the port up or else. gorbachev did it. there was no famine. there is no famine. the foreign ministry or the state department call gorbachev directly to do it. and then the point is there's a lot of stuff that happened. it's not even in the book yet. >> me switch gears on both of you. i'm starting to take some questions that have been submitted to us. this comes from tom and washington university tomas a good question, did president bush have any regrets about any of his major foreign policy decisions after he left the presidency? so both of you not only served him, but continue to be friends of his. any regrets? any second thoughts on the decision? is not in the white house very much. he was upset with what was happening in afghanistan. we weren't really able to create a climate where they have institutions of government that would not be subjected to the taliban's influence if you will. in the world was second-guessing his decision not to go to baghdad after he liberated kuwait. he was very comfortable with that decision. there are others she kept to challenge him on that. you did the right thing in history records he did the right thing even though he did problems in that part of the world. and south america, latin america worked very hard very quietly and in el salvador in particular we felt as if we are making significant progress and we were but it collapsed soon after he left office. that was frustrating to him. i don't think he agonized over what he did as a president. i think he did agonize the effect of the campaign on his ability to do. i will never forget it was a remarkable celebration when the first gulf war ended. there is a military parade in washington d.c. it was as if we put the vietnam era behind us. people were standing proud in a uniform and being appraised by the public. so that was a great experience. the campaign itself did not struggle. and he did not win reelection. he did not get over losing that election until his son ran for president and one. but really it was when his son won a second term he felt as if, thank you. he also knew deep down inside if he had had a second turn his probably his son never would have been president. >> very interesting. andrew, any thoughts? >> clearly one of the things we are criticized for his bosnia. jim baker george bush made the decision that yugoslavia was in europe. i am a supporter of the european union. very personally very strong supporter of nato. it seems to meet the europeans should've been able to do this. does not encourage decisive leadership they all have veto power the countries have veto power to stop unified decision-making and they did not do a good job. i will not say who is he is a former prime minister of the countries in you americans keep telling us what to do all the time i'm fed up with that. why didn't you fix bosnia? you just told us we should not have intervened and now you are telling me we should have fix ball you should have fix bosnia. or stop the civil war. he went on a long time, the dark team was the longest running team was sent into bosnia to provide aid in bosnia, you may know this but it was there seven or eight years. a long, long time. >> i have another question that came in that really is not about politics. it is more about particular students of foreign policy think the possibilities. india will begin this with you. the question from charles is, if ross perot did not run for president. [laughter] how different but the world be today? impossible to answer but what are some thoughts? the seeds of ross perot came from newt gingrich if you will. it was frustrating he remembered the challenges in new hampshire where the president was challenged within his own party. that gave oxygen to ross perot. it was a frustrating thing. if ross perot had not run i do think george h.w. bush would have won reelection. i'm not sure the united states would be as unified as we think it would be. i think it's the divisiveness were actually sewn and kind of upset the apple cart. i do not think catchment there very few people at george h.w. bush did not really call friends. and ross perot would be one. he did not remember most people were his enemies, or his enemies. i'll tell you one story i remember right after the top vote we just barely won in the senate and the president invited senators to come down and watch a movie at the white house. people are in line, coming into the white house the president is greeting everyone as they commit to see the movie. he just really against on the bill for the senate pretty looks and says really? think of the people who voted for the bill because he was against it. [laughter] if george h.w. bush observed another term i think that further our institutions of democracy. which i really think we desperately need to this day. he did shore up a number of institutions. we tend to forget his chairman of the republican party was clinton. the first time i heard him speak he prays the institutions of democracy including the two-party system. people to be part of this democracy he was a big believer in the constitution. the second thing he did he went and cleaned up the cia and restore the cia to what it should be and is today in terms of a very respected institution. it was not that way when he became the director of the cia, he changed it. that is why the cia complex is named for him to this day. i think he was the greatest cia director we had. and a crucial time and context of the institutions of responsibility that helped our government do the job. you can go down the whole list, probably if he would have been elected to 82nd term, enough would have been signed even before it was under bill clinton. that is why the chapter about enough is so important. it did not just focus on foreign policy as a foreign policy expert. he also focused on foreign policy to be enhanced with free-trade. he was a well grounded in principles of inclusion not exclusion. that is though he built our democracy. i truly believe he was the greatest one term president in the history of our country. >> and am going to jump in here. something you pointed to, i started off by pointing to the sense of good fortune that is there throughout the book. in fact one of the chapters on u.s./german relations has good fortune right in its title. but what goes along with that, the number of times that bush 41 fortune different directions pretty goes to congress under foreign cut policy but ways and means ... is race for the senate wants to go to treasury gets a consolation prize going to the un. he goes to the rnc calm he goes to cia, all of those would be for someone aiming to lead the free world perhaps a distraction. and yet inevitably or it seems inevitably fates all of this in some way or another prepares him to go to the world stage and focus on foreign policy. but it any point along the way you might've said he is done. that is the end of george bush. it is because he is a gentleman first. and so those distractions, they would be distractions to someone else but not to george w. bush. he was around, he was focused we happened with the republican national convention in detroit when he was tapped by reagan to be his running mate, spice president. that came as a shock to the political establishment. even the people who were in detroit at the convention because it was gerald ford was going to become the vice president and all this kind of stuff. i think it was fate that gave him the breath of experiences he had. they came together at exactly the right time. think how dangerous the world was when russia was looking to reemerge not as the soviet union, but something else. the berlin wall comes down, even the british were not in favor of german reunification at that time. they were skeptical of it. george h.w. bush was the visionary transformational leader that was patient, and kind, and inclusive and did not command but invited. the way he would, especially during the time of that you reunification of germany, really meant there would be no hot war. we ended the ideology of the soviet union and the united states. we did it peacefully because president bush earned and gave respect pretty gave respect to people who were willing to be part of a solution. and he earned respect because he did that but his relationship with gorbachev was something no one could have predicted for years before the berlin wall came down. when gorbachev was in power for four years before george h.w. bush became president of the united states, may have been a glimmer of hope and expectation but it was not a reality. i think george h.w. bush allowed gorbachev to deal with the reality that the berlin wall came down and that germany should be reunified without being part of the soviet umbrella. that made a huge difference to everything else is taken place since then. lexi asked for the question or it was asked how things would've been different if ross perot would not have run and george bush would've had a second term. i agree he would've had a second term. one of the things people don't realize is all parties are coalition part of the republican party has been, for a hundred years sort of an isolationist wing of the party in areas of the south and midwest. they are not supportive of world war ii patrick buchanan who ran against george bush and the primary 1988 wrote a book and said we should not have entered world war ii. if you can imagine i cannot imagine anyone saying that. there is an element in the united states but by the way some of those people were democrats too. there's the isolation wing of the democratic party as well. that has come out more recently i think because of the crises we face what was made worse for the pandemic. there was one thing that we have not discussed on is the middle east other than kuwait. jim baker and george bush were on the cusp there is a chapter by dennis ross has been advisor five or six u.s. presidents on george bush and the middle east. one of the things he most regrets and jim baker said it before if we would've had a second term, we were on the edge of orchestrating that field. the middle east would be very different right now if you would have had a second term. the things that have not resolved now it's still been resolved but who knows we cannot tell. >> i have another question hear from zack who is a recent grad skidmore college. in the last few years of the soviet union the power struggle between yeltsin and gorbachev seem to define much of the politics. they took steps to remain actively neutral and the only one call directly after the signing did bush take a position, a stance. why do you think bush remains neutral for so long? does that get back to the notion of trying not to interfere too much or impose his will but to respect institutions? i think bush realize the tendency of american leaders to think they can save the world. and orchestrating events and other countries which has led us to a lot of problems for this is both parties. can meet very powerful in certain circumstances. in a hot war that is conventional we can destroy our adversaries. we cannot intervene. but to enter russian politics and try to orchestrate who is going to succeed is delusional in my view. i think he did the right thing by being in neutral. it is because of his own sense of balance and prudence in my view are not conservatives. in a historic sense of the word. they are like george bush i argue a great british politician and member of parliament who scored the colonies and edmund burke is a famous book called the reflections on the revolution which trashed the french revolution in a bloodbath that destroyed the institution. the person in the united states, the american president is the most a pit assize the view of the world was george bush. and to read a lot of the stuff, and the way you approach it. now he really did not like civil war. he did not like revolutions because revolutions without a couple of exceptions and bloodbath. he knew that. were running very short our time. one more question will have to make it a quick answer even if it's a complicated question. it seems to me that one aspect of both bush or readership is universal to assemble the coalition the first gulf war. how hard was that and could it be done today? could you piece together a coalition like that of again you made a reference before to james a baker. done today? and he let me start with you. >> i think it can be done but it takes a lot of work. george h.w. bush was the definition of personal relationships with people that would help to invite solutions to become a reality. he would call world leaders even when he did not have too. he would call them and help facilitate their needs was facilitate calling on them when we had needs for our country but he built a remarkable coalition jim baker, that team did a good job started with a personal relationship he had with so many world leaders. even ones that did not want to be part of the solution felt they owed it to him he was so polite and nice to them and caring. i think that is what made the difference. could happen again? yes it could but it takes a lot of work. my fear is that generally, politics today in international diplomacy today is becoming more hyperbolic, not reason as a result we try to be more tribal and what we think. one discipline president bush that he would deal with the world as it was. not as he wanted it to be. now, he would try to guide it to where he wanted it to be. but he dealt with it as it was. this is the reality, i'm going to respect the reality and introduce people to do things generally on their own. i'm not going to demand them to do something he did not do that. he did not play my way or the highway games at all. >> final word? >> we asked bob to write the chapter because he was the operations guy are both president and for jim baker to orchestrate the coalition. he goes through a detailed account almost day by day. i never asked him how he knew he made this phone call on this day. i think he must've kept a journal with a must-have archives of the state department. it is astonishing how many of these chapters are very detailed about exactly what happened from one day to the next. we have the archives of the bush presidency right next door some of the writers went and got documents to confirm. i wrote stuff i wasn't sure was true we went back to the archives and we corrected things. there was a real effort to find out exactly how this was done. >> gentlemen, congratulations on this great book transforming our world. it really is an excellent read. it's like walking in and seeing all those photos and saying oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, i had forgotten. congratulations this is a real service for anyone who cares about history and american foreign policy. congratulations and thanks again for joining us today.