Larry looks at the life of the attorney general. Thats a look at some of the current nonfiction bestsellers according to the boston globe. Many of these authors have appeared or will be appearing on book tv and you can watch them on our website booktv. Org. Good evening. Welcome. Just a few quick administrative notes, please turn off your cell phones if you havent already. Will we get to the q a part of the session, cspan book tv is here filming and we are filming also for the youtube channel, we would appreciate it if you have a question to find your way to that microphone there so not only everybody watching can hear you but jean, whos 83, can also hear you. Please be considerate of everybody else. Before you come up to get your books signed, our staff asked that you fold up the chairs that your seating and in. This must be a crowd of hardcore president ial history enthusiast. Either that or some of you are just looking for a distraction from the president ial history happening before us on a daily basis. I would like to introduce Jean Edward Smith who is a distinguished biographer of president s and other notable figures. He has written about eisenhower, fdr and grant as well is others. All this while holding down a day job as a professor. Hes been with the university of toronto for 35 years and a dozen years at Marshall University and columbia and university of virginia and several other schools that are probably leaving out. Now he has zeroed in on the president of george w. Bush. He is very critical of our 43rd president , no question whether its been miss guided invasion of iraq or torture tactics, the fumbled response to katrina, there, there is much to be critical about. He places responsibility for the administrations resonating failure firmly on the former president , notwithstanding the influence that also. [inaudible] but as a reviewer in the new yorker said his book doesnt feel like a hatchet job. Its in the word of the new york times, a comprehensive and compelling narrative and they said life with a sense of history. One of the most interesting tidbits i learned about him from the acknowledgment in bush the book, he still composes in longhand on yellow legal pad. He then has someone type up what he would written. When you consider this book is almost 800 pages and print, thats a lot of legal pads. Please join me in welcoming jean davis smith. [applause] thank you very much. This is my introduction of the third viagra fee here up politics and prose. Earlier i did fdr and its always a pleasure for me to return to washington where i was born 833 years ago and went to Elementary School and Junior High School and high school. I was not permitted to interview george bush for the biography. Dick cheney whom i interviewed a number of times set up in the interview for me and allison just before i was to fly out i got a call from one of his aides and it was that the president didnt want to see you. You wrote a book critical of his father and for that reason he does not wish to see you. That was true. I wrote a book dealing with the first iraq war and it was critical of bushs decision in iraq. Before i begin, let me make two remarks to put the biography and context. First when it came to National Security policy george w. Bush was absolutely in charge. All the decisions were his. He was indeed the decider, as he called himself. After 911 and everything, he was not a fan of Condoleezza Rice or anyone else. He was the driving force. Whether it was snooping or the war in iraq, these were all personal decisions made by the president. Everyone on the Administration Fell into line. The nsc was established by the congress in 1947. The idea idea behind it was to prevent the concentration of power in the white house that happened under fdr in world war ii. It was designed to bring the secretary of state and secretary of Defense Military leadership. You were to discuss National Security issues. In his eight years in the white house he presided over 314 meetings of the nsc. He appointed george bundy as his security advisor. Neither truman nor eisenhower had a National Security advisor and the size of the staff mushroom. Under truman and eisenhower the staff were basically notetakers. Under kennedy the size of the staff had increased up to 20 and began to and the policy issues. It doubled again when kissinger became the National Security advisor to nixon and by the time george bush took office it numbered well over 100. These were professional experts in specific areas. In many respects the National Security act of 1947 had been turned on its head. Instead of a body that coordinated government policy as was intended, the National SecurityCouncil Staff became a policymaking tool for the president. Bush ran policy from the white house and the National Security staff allowed him to do. The second point i would like to make is that bush is a born again christian who saw the world in biblical terms. That was especially true after 911. Bush defined the battle against terrorism as a struggle between good and evil. He saw himself as a place on earth to defeat the forces of satan. That religious fixation is the common denominator behind both the domestic excesses of the Bush Administration and the Foreign Policy decisions he made. In many respects the contrast to Abraham Lincoln is interesting. Lincoln, in in 1861 after the battle of bull run was visited by a delegation of protestant ministers and the spokesman for the group told him that he had a vision from heaven the night before and the president had said. [inaudible] he replied, i hope the lord is on my side but what i really need is kentucky. [laughter] today is george bushs 70th birthday. He was born in new haven connecticut on july 6, 1846. Upon his fathers graduation from yale the family moved to texas where the senior bush went into the oil business. George w grew up in midland and when it came time for high school he finished near the bottom of his class. The dean of students at andover told george not to bother to apply to yale because his grades were so low he could not possibly get in but george did so and was admitted. George was a fourthgeneration legacy at yale, his grandfather, his father, great grandfather all had gone to yale not the time he applied, yell was admitting 52 of the legacy applicants. Princeton and harvard were admitting 14 . When he became president of el during his freshman year and change the rules. From that point on yellow would take the same amount of students that princeton and harvard took, 14 . His three brothers and sisters had the same legacy credentials that he did and no one got in. Bush did no better at yale than he did at andover. Returning to texas and spent the next five years in the wilderness. His father arranged for him to be commissioned in the Air National Guard which deferred him for service in vietnam and his career in the guard has become a matter of controversy. It was during these five years that bush drank heavily and used drugs. He was admitted to the Harvard Business school in september of 1973 and is one of the few graduates of Harvard Business school, if not the only one not to have a job offer when he graduated. [laughter] he had 53 interviews with fortune 500 companies and did not receive a job job offer. One of his classmates told him his classmates considered him ignorant. With no job offer he returned to texas and like his father went into the oil business buying leases on property hoping to strike oil. In 1977 he married laura welsch. The. The following year he ran as the republican nominee to secede retiring congressman george mae hahn. If those of you who are old as i am you remember he was a member of the Appropriations Committee for 12 years and was a Senior Member of the house. After the election he returned to the oil business, prospered for several years through Family Connection but the downturn in Oil Prices Hit hard. He profited from several mergers and eventually sold out. It was during this time that bush became a bornagain christian. In his memoirs, bush credits billy graham with his rediscovery of god but the fact is the conversion came a year earlier by a lesserknown evangelist. Its also true at this time that bush gave up drinking. The occasion was his 40th Birthday Celebration at the Broadmoor Hotel in colorado springs. He was celebrating his 40th birthday and became hopelessly intoxicated and woke up the next morning with an incredible hangover and resolved to quit drinking. Laura said it was because he got the bill from the previous night celebration. Actually it was because george recognize that his father was running for president and he didnt want to embarrass him in anyway so he stopped drinking. It was 1986 and the longer he was in the oil business, they moved to washington to assist his fathers president ial campaign in the 88 election. George was given an office, Campaign Headquarters and the woodward building down near the white house and his office was between roger ailes who is handling the publicity, now head of fox news and for the next two years he learned about electoral politics from two gifted practitioners. He ran against Michael Dukakis and george really saw firsthand how to run a president ial campaign. When the election was over in november of 88 he planned to work in his fathers administration and return to texas. He started an informal campaign to run for governor and at the same time helped organize the syndicates to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team. The rangers as you may recall are the senators Expansion Team that have been formed here in 1961. They moved to texas in 1972. They were spirited contenders and the deal came through and bush stopped running for governor and for the next four years was the public head of the Texas Rangers. He owns only 2 of the the stock. He built a new stadium and really fast in the glow of an improving baseball franchise. He assisted in his fathers election in 1992 but from a distance he stayed in texas and when clinton won the election he ran for governor for texas. Jeb ran for governor of florida at the same time. Bush was running against and richard in texas. In florida jeb was favored to defeat the democratic incumbent. The election was an upset. George one in texas job lost in florida and from that point on george became the likely successor to his father. Texas are really the largest, the secondlargest in the state of the union in terms of area and the second largest in terms of population. 1876 stripped power from the governor. The governor of texas is essentially a symbolic figure a little like the queen of england most Political Science scholars in State Government consider the texas governorship the weakest in the United States per the governor of texas cannot even issue pardons. Thats. [inaudible] as the symbolic leader of texas he was overwhelmingly reelected in 1998 and he also built a political machine led by carl and erin hughes and was quite quietly exploring the possibility of running for president in 2000. Bush announced his candidacy in june 1999, defeated john mccain in the primaries, was nominated almost unanimously at the convention. Al gore was the democratic nominee and was heavily favored to win the election. Core fumbled almost immediately when he chose the most conservative democrat in the senate as his running mate. He snubbed bill clinton throughout the entire campaign and did poorly in the three television debates. The chores of lieberman and the snubbing of clinton gave thirdparty candidates and opening on the left and he would believe he would also pull about 3 million votes in the election came to the floor. Gore failed to carry ten states that he had carried in the 1996 election. Any one of which wouldve been over the top. The Supreme Court decided that he would become president and bush was superb as a politician seeking votes but he had no executive experience, little knowledge of International Affairs and really had not traveled abroad, a short Attention Span and genuinely believed he was gods agent put here on earth. With the exception of appointing colin powell as secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense and his friends as secretary of commerce, he delegated the selection of his cabinet and other top federal officials to dick cheney and clustered himself in the white house with his staff from texas plus Condoleezza Rice as his National Security adviser and andy card as chief of staff. If you think about it, it is inconceivable that Franklin Roosevelt wouldve turned the selection of his cabinet over to john garner or Dwight Eisenhower would have allowed nixon to do that, especially after the scandal. As a result, bush took office with the sub cabinet appointees who were powerfully motivated and already equipped to provide the intellectual justification for the president s policies. Conservative in outlook and articulate, these likeminded longtime friends cheney played an Important Role during his first two years. He had an office in the white house and his staff became part of the staff. They were all white house staff. The Administration Position on energy, the the revision of the tax code in 2001 and after 911 the president ial directive to try al qaeda members by military commissions all reflected his input. Over the years influence leaders. Bush devoted himself to domestic issues. The United States had run a budgetary surplus under clinton. Clinton had applied the surplus to reducing the national debt. He was consistent that the money should be returned to the taxpayers, its your money he said frequently on the election trail. They are urging congress to pass one of the largest cuts in history. He also pressed reform and no child left behind which Congress Also enacted. Bush rarely touched form policy issues during his first month of office but when he did so it was with determination to assert american supremacy. The Clinton Administration in south korea had worked since 1994 to bring north korea back into the family of nations. The United States thought they were provide economic assistance for north korea in return for rich north korea would abandon its nuclear program. Madeleine albright visited in december 2000. The president came in 2001 to put the final seal on the deal with north korea. North korea was on the verge of renouncing Nuclear Weapons and signing a peace treaty with the south. Bush rejected the idea. This wasnt something that bubbled up from one of the white house staff. The North Koreans were evil he believed in the government must be replaced. This was bushs personal decision. The attacks of 911 were surprised but merely reinforce his view of good versus evil. In many respects the attacks of 911 have been a defining moment in american history. Bush led the United States into a 3 trilliondollar war in iraq and had the doctor or in of unavoidable war and weakened our alliances and aspired young muslims around the world to join the jihad. Domestically it was an leased by the administration and undermines liberty and tarnish the respect of traditional American Values of tolerance and moderation. On september 12 he assumed total responsibility and total authority as the nations commanderinchief. That morning cheney offered to lead a group of cabinet officers to devise policy. Bush rejected the officer offer. This is a job for the commanderinchief and cannot be delegated, said bush. Rather than treat treat the events of 911 as isolated incidents, rather than handle them through the political process bush depicted them as acts of war by the course of evil. I wont really go into his assault on american civil liberties. In the book i devote two chapters to nsa spying and the torture trail and the record is clear. Bush genuinely believed he was fighting the forces of satan. As a result, if youre doing that, no holds are barred. Whether it is enhanced interrogation techniques, extraordinary rendition or the intercept of private communications here in the United States, he thought he was gods agents in the final fight to rid the world of evil. Let me say a few words about the war in iraq. From the beginning bush was determined to remove saddam hussein. The intervention in afghanistan was simply a warmup. He instructed the department of defense to prepare to invade iraq and ignored the findings of un weapons inspectors that he had no weapons of mass destruction. The planning for the invasion began early 2002 and the military assume the purpose was to remove saddam hussein, destroy whatever weapons of mass instruction might be found and leave iraq as soon as possible. They believ