i always did what you believed was right. you spend a lot of time thinking about the presidency? do you think about the decisions you made or is that in the past? on some of of them i think about them because i m still engaged with the military. laura and i welcomed troops coming back from afghanistan. they wouldn t have been there had i not decided to take out the taliban. laura had them to our house in dallas. those are moms who lost a son in combat or daughter in combat. i m still involved with veterans and military people. so, i think about the decision to send them into combat a lot. and i thought a lot about the presidency when i wrote this book. right here at the ranch. sean: you didn t spend a lot of time first of all i m a type a personality and i need
the bush presidency and that chapter hasn t been written that book hasn t been written. and it can t be written for a while. historians who live the moment have got their prejudices. there needs to be time to fully analyze the consequences of the decision to not only liberate iraq, but to then help the iraqis develop their own democracy. sean: and what happened 10 years later, 20 years later. and the effect of a free iraq if the democracy succeeds, like i think it will, on other countries. sean: you think history will judge you fairly? yeah. some historians will say i like what george bush did, some will say i don t like what george bush did. when he did them. it is going to be hard to analyze things objectively. sean: this book is your take on the presidency? your take on your views?
in 19 whatever it was. i was arrested for drunk driving. here s what i was concerned about, at the same time i was telling my girls if i catch you drinking and driving, you are not going to ever drive. i was worried that they would say wait a minute, he really must not mean that he did the same thing and look, he got to be governor. i was more concerned about good parenting, than i was my own political skin at the time. in retrospect, as i put in the book what i should have done was, i drank. i shouldn t have done that i quit drinking. and by the way, we are about to have a big fundraiser for mothers against drunk driving, something like that. and i didn t. therefore, when it drops out four days before the election, all momentum stopped and it created confusion. i wasn t concerned about my statement, when i first her the news. the statement was simple. i made a mistake. i drank too much.
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in the book i describe my frustrations about not being in washington on 9/11. after having gone to louisiana and nebraska, i said i m coming home. sean: they didn t want you to come home at that point? no. and you can understand why. sean: you made that final call and that was it. absolutely. sean: do you wish you came home sooner? it doesn t matter. sean: this was in part why you are writing the book to bring people inside the oval office, the life of the president of the united states, the worst attack on american soil. i think you even said, when you saw those towers go down you were on the plane you knew that you were probably the only president in american history that saw so many people die at one time. real-time, yeah. sean: is going through your mind. you ve got to make the decision. dick cheney is underground because they thought the white house might be hit at that point. because ouse.