yes? one more question. talk aboubit bitterness that lasted for generations. was thatu bitterness a combination of just the fire in richmond? seeingo the loss of their city r a combination of the war s overi probably ended up surrendering,i the institution over with, slavery, so on and so forth or y the power?roying the fire accentuated the hardship by destroying the livelihoods of richmonders, if e there had been no fire the result of war would have been ha enough, because after all, we can rebuild buildings but hundreds of thousands of peoples died and every family affected.t that would be enough to keep that sense of bitterness alive into the next generation. the yes, sir? the burning of the records, counties and so on. th how did that come about, coming up to it and destroying it it s true that quite a few records burned. it s a shame that there s only one building on capitol square that burned, and it was s state office building where there were a lot of co
speech that we should remember the whole of richard nixon and not just for his flaw, but we should remember the whole of the man. it was something he and i talked about on the plane on the way out, and i was very pleased that he took that view. i thought that was generous and compassionate healing and perspective, and i thought it was the right perspective. when with you re a president as i learned from nixon and others you re a president of all of the people and you re not a president of your party and you re the president of a large contingency and dynamic and squabbling country, but it was important to be healing and to let nixon let him be in pe e peace. i will also tell you a footnote from that. i was back as as you can imagine, at this at this outdoor ceremony where bob dole spoke and others spoke, and all of the nixon alumni, the white house staff were all in front, and i was with the clinton staff and we were all in black. and this note arrived back to me from o
tempered by war and they came of age during world war ii, and i think they returned to the united states. we have seven presidents in a row from kennedy through bush senior who served in the military uniform. all seven served in a military uniform, and six of them in the war itself and jimmy carter in the naval academy was too young and he was still in the naval academy when the war ended and he didn t serve as a submarine upon, but the point of all of this is i think as they were a generation that shared certain values from early in the 20th century, they d been in the triumphant war so that they had a very positive view about what america s role in the world was and could be. they were very proud of their country, but most of all they had engaged in common sacrifice when they were young, and i think it gave them a bond in governing that when i came to washington, and i like to say that there were strong republicans and there were strong democrats, but the people i met from
kind of stuff. none of the dirty tricks associated with the 72 campaign came through that at all. that was all sort of hidden away. it was compartmentalized. there was a lot within the white house which was compartmentalized. you didn t see it in the beginning, what structures were there, circles within circles. it was a complex, byzantine place. he began introducing me to the i think not just the spiritual side of richard nixon but his idealism and he helped me understand that nixon was a something cruel had happened to him somewhere along the way. he i don t know where this deformity of character came from or where these demons, as i call them, came from within him. but something one never knows. bryce harlow was another friend that used to say to me, he said publicly something terrible happened to richard nixon when he was young and we ll never know quite what it was. but nixon ray understood that about nixon, tried to help me understand it and tried to enlisted
and jim khiel was the boss, the head of the speech writing team. ray was one of the three principal speech writers, very gifted writer, a lovely lilt to his writing. jim khiel moved out or retired from government and ray moved up to the number one job and he was looking for an administrative assistant. i went in to have this interview. because we both had gone to yale, we struck up this conversation and went on for a while and we had a very, very engaged conversation. he said i m really interested in you possibly. i have some other candidates. one of them was married to richard nixon s daughter, tricia cox tricia nixon cox, a candidate for that job. i thought i have a zero chance, a great chance to go to the white house. this is a lark. it was very fun. i told him i said you ought to know i voted for humphrey. i m actually a great admirer of richard nixon s foreign policy. i m more liberal that this domestic policy. but i m interested in talking to you. i know you re going