and there you have it. a very candid eye-opening conversation between the biographer of the 41st president george h.w. bush, john meacham sitting down there for a conversation with former president george bush. bush 43. about a wide-ranging interview about his father s time as president. this new 800-plus-page book, it comes out this week. john meacham, of course, will be on new day tomorrow morning speaking more about it. i do want to speak, again, with david gergen, former presidential adviser to four presidents including the 41st president and m.j. lee who s with me as well, cnn politics reporter. david gergen, to you. wow. we re going to hash through all of this. just your reaction to the last half an hour of what we heard. well, it was very moving especially toward the end, and i
sure this is it? okay. it s on age 571. he admitted, however, that iraq was one issue where i wanted to know what he thought. that s me. you. let me set up the context. so spent a lot of time talking about how much did president bush 43 ask president bush 41 for advice? president bush 43 often said not much. he said, send your briefers. i did a line-by-line read of decision points, the bestselling presidential memoir in american history including u.s. grant. if we want to make this the presidential biography that meets that, that would be fine. but what i also found is that actually there was a lot, particularly on personnel questions, that you all did talk a little bit more. i said to president bush, i think you down played sometimes how much you talked to your dad about some things because you didn t want people thinking you
attorney general, bill saxby, says something to him, and bush says that whatever s going to have to happen about the president s future has to happen soon because it s august of an even numbered year and your dad is looking at congressional numbers which are just a total nightmare and your father also said, because nixon was saying, well, i have all this support in the senate. he said, no, you don t. you know, someone s not giving you the truth and you know as president how eager are people to come give you bad news? rarely. yeah. so what he does is leaves this cabinet meeting and writes a letter urging the president to resometime. the chairman of the republican national committee has written a letter to nixon, telling him his patron to whom he owes his last two jobs that it s better for the country for him to go. when people read this book,