Transcripts For CSPAN2 Destiny And Power 20161002 : comparem

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Destiny And Power 20161002

Negotiation who have written about this and the terms of his deals tell you about that and no i cant point to anything beyond the signature accomplishment of building trump tower. There he benefited from his father, having the best friend as the mayor of new york, he issued orders, orders, whatever trump wanted he was going to get he told people it was a pro bono project and he got him to work for free. No he got 10 million for. It is literally all a fraud, his life. Im sorry. If i had one i would tell you. Listen, thank you all very much. [applause] if you have books i would be glad to sign them. [inaudible conversation] heres a look at some books that are being published this week. They explore the opposing viewpoints of General Macarthur and president truman during the korean war in the general versus the president. Washington post columnist sebastian mala be profiled former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in the man who knew. They described her life as a teen refugee from syria in her memoir. Also being released this week is why they do it in which harvard professor explores the motives behind whitecollar crime. Senior fellow Michael Duran looks at the 1956 suez canal crisis and how the events shape americas future role in the middle east in the gamble. The university of london professor provides history of the islamic caliphate and in we wanted workers, Harvard Economic professor argues immigration has largely not affected the American Labor force. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the coming future on book tv on cspan2. [inaudible conversation] good afternoon. Welcome. I am cameron bar, managing editor for news and features at the Washington Post which is a charter sponsor of the National Book festival. First, a word of gratitude to the cochairman of the festival, David Rubenstein and the many other sponsors who made this event possible. If youd like to add your support, please note the Information Program or the app. We will have some time today for questions and ive been asked to remind you that those who query our distinguished guests will be videoed for the library archive. Jon meacham is a frequent speaker at this festival. He is a journalist and historian i hadnt met him until yesterday so i consulted don graham who employed him for many years at newsweek. He pointed out he is a former boy wonder. He became National Affairs editor of newsweek by the age of 26 and by the age of 37 he was named as editor. Those were not always fun years at newsweek including the times of the grand sale in 2010. The he was a wise, thoughtful and successful editor of newsweeks under impossible circumstances. His colleagues would tell you, even in the earliest years of his career he was wise beyond his years. Week after week john would replenish the building with new ideas, very, very often drawn from his deep knowledge of history and religion and literature. Sometimes they fail to deliver on the promise they exhibited at the dawn of their careers. Not jon meacham. His passage from journalism to writing and publishing has been marked by success. His pa it has helped him emerge as a public intellectual. Relation more recently, johns book thomas jefferson, the art art of power was on the times in the post best books of the year list john is here today to talk about destiny and power, the american odyssey of George Herbert walker bush. Sometimes a surprisingly intimate look at ast underestimated occupant of the oval office. Or my colleague wrote that it pulls up a neat trick. It completes the historical rehabilitation of its subject by deepening rather than a bending Common Misconceptions of the 41st president. It is a book that asks us toth consider a contest between two widely disliked contenders of the presidency, the the importance of personal honor in our leaders. Ladies and gentlemen, jon meacham. Between two widely disli [applause] thank you. I appreciate that a great deal. I feel a little bit more warmly received at this particular festival than i did eight years ago to talk about Andrew Jackson who has had a rough couple of months. I was on my way to give my talk and a woman ran up to me which doesnt happen enough as a basiu migh rule, and said, oh my gosh, its you. Exponentially speaking, thats hard to argue with. We wait right here, i want you to sign your book. Then she brought back John Grishams latest novel. Whenever i think i am a boy wender who survived boy wonder hood, i remember somewhere in america, there is a woman with a forged copy of the runaway jury. Memento mori as the mid evil is called it. Thank you all for being here. You are the reason that many of us do what we do. You are the ones on our minds to make sure we maintain ourak covenant with you in terms of creating compelling narrative nonfiction. I dont know if yall have noticed theres a president ial race going on at the moment. I just want to say right off the top, the movement in 25 years from George Herbert walker bush as the republican nominee for president to the incumbent republican nominee for president years from , george bush, who could not talk about himself, is donald trump. Nt. To quote henry adams, this proves darwin. [laughter] thats where we are. My view of president bush is that culturally and temperamentally, this is not a nostalgic point, culturally and temperamentally, he has more in common with the Founding Fathers than he does with this political generation. It does not mean he is a perfect man. We always learn more from sinners than we do from saints. He made compromises along the way and we will talk about those, but at the end of the day, in his heart, he was about honor and service and duties. We believe that every point he wanted those of us who came after him to put the country first. I think many came as close as any mortal can do to doing that. We will talk about that. The history of this book is somewhat interesting to you all, but because because youre here its because youre part of thea broad dork caucus. S i hope you have your cards. You get a Free Library Card and you have to watch these. Ds and the key thing to understand about him comes from two graphical moments so i want to start there. On june 12, 1924, he was born in milton massachusetts. Eighteen years later, three things happen. He turned 18 years old, he graduates from andover and he joins the United States navy becoming the youngest flying officer in the navy. He told me he very much wanted to go into the service right after pearl harbor. Th he looked into joining the Royal Canadian air force because you could get into the Royal Canadian air force without graduating from high school. His father prevailed to wait another six months or so and in his own way when i asked him, why was the impulse there so soon after pearl harbor, president bush said it was a red, white and blue thing. Your country attacks and you get in the fight. On september 2, he is flying aar mission to take out a radio tower going back to the home island. Ferocious japanese lack, the torpedo bomber is hit in the wings of the plane go up in flame in the cockpit fills with smoke. He knows he is going down, but he keeps going over the island to take out the tower. He goes out to sea and tells his crewmates to bailout and then he bails out. At this point, tragedy almost broke out. If you bill out of a plane, if if you think about it, the plane doesnt stop. The plane keeps going. He gashes his head on the tail of the plane. You think about ita another six or 8 inches and he wouldve been decapitated and that wouldve been the end of the story. He plunges deep into the pacific and his life raft has fallen nearby and he plops into the raft. He cries and wretches up the seawater and realizes that his crewmates have not made it. At some point today, in maine, he will think about the two men who lost their lives that day in his care. Anot who was 20 years old and had two other mens lives in his hands. I think the further we come away from that culture, the further we come away from that that generation and its difficult to remember the immensity of that responsibility we put on remarkably young men. One of the many moments the president cried in the course of our interviews for this book. I interviewed him for nine years for this. Sometimes it was the worlds worst wasp on wasp therapy. He would cry, i would cry and we change the subject. Most of our debates were removed, anyway, i asked him what did you learn from this. He said, the chief question that came out of his mind about the war experience was why was i spared. I submit to you that in many ways george w. Bush phonetic journey from the autumn of 1944 until this hour is driven by his eagerness, his need to prove that he was worthy of being spared when others were not. He had to prove himself worthy of their sacrifice. Its an elemental drama and i believe deeply that is a big part of what has driven him. He came back to it at different times during the interviews, always with tears, always in a conversation and the other thing about his speed in life is he has always been moving rapidly. This is the man who could play 18 holes of golf in 32 minutes. I played with him once in my excuse was i was made nervous by secret service guys with machine guns. Thats a lot to blame for my game, but its there. It was a journey forward, always moving. In 1980 when he was running against Ronald Reagan for the republican nomination, he was so excitable that he shook the hand of a Department Store mannequin in a Department Store. Now Lyndon Johnson would have tried to register that mannequin god only knows what bill clinton might have done. Always had long, always looking looking forward, always moving to the next thing. Looking forward, looking forward. Ive never met a man with that level of politics and that little interest in how history would view him. He believed he got some things right and somethings wrong wrong and people like me and those who come after me will have to make our best decision. Theres a level of confidence in that. I would also submit that the values and the vision in many ways, the character and the ambient committee that the bush family brought to our National Politics is something that we are in woefully short supply as we enter the fall of 2016, and recovering some of that dignity will be one step toward a saner political life. The second thing that affected him deeply was the loss of his daughter robin in 1953. They lost her to leukemia. She had been born in 1949. George w was born in 1946. She had she had just been born in january of 1953, robin was four years old. The bushes had never heard the word leukemia until they heard the diagnosis in the pediatricians office in texas. They had come from texas after yale in 1948 and when they moved to odessa texas, mrs. Bush mother was so convinced that they had moved to the frontier that she would send her daughter boxes of soap because she didnt think that texas had any. They moved to midland, they get the diagnosis. The doctor says, with all sincerity, i think the thing to do is take her home, make her comfortable and she will be gone in a few months. George bush, being george bush cannot accept that. He walks outside, gets on a pay phone and calls his uncle, john walker who is the head of memorial in new york. He said bring her up, we will do it we can. She survived through some difficult treatment through october, columbus day weekend of 1953. It was the great cataclysmic crisis of the bush marriage and the bush family life. It brought them closer together as you all may no, many couples who lose a child drift apart. Interestingly, mrs. Bush was strong when president bush was weak and he was weak when she was strong. He could not stand watching robin be treated in the hospital, he can stand the shots and seeing her in pain so he would bolt out of the room leaving barbara to maintain the order and the love in the hospital room in that hour. After robin died, it was president bush who would hold mrs. Bush all night as she cried and stopped for month after month as she tried to cope with this unimaginable loss. I also asked president bush, inl the course of doing this, what did the death of robin teaching. He said without hesitation, life is unpredictable and fragile. I submit that he led his life and govern the nation and what Henry Kissinger once referred to as the most tumultuous. And he since truman. With this sense that everything could end tomorrow and therefore you had to do the best you could today. You had to do everything to make fo the world a little bettererythiu because one could never be sure when everything would be taken away. I think these two experiences, not wellknown, its not read my lips or dana kirby or the things that really shaped the man who became the 41st president of the United States. A couple of things on the other thing side. States. My view of president bush is that he was a much more effective politician than we give him credit for. He was running against bill clinton who was the sam walton of partisanship. Bush was, by 1992, president bush was not in a political world he understood in many ways. There was the reflective partisanship and the rise of alternative media. Before there was trip twitter and trump, there was cnn and ross perot and cable tv and bill clinton. S se as mark twain once said, history may not repeat itself but itan does rhyme. In 1992, it rhymes with 2016. Bill clinton went on arsenio hall. They thought it was a building at andover. Thats where we took spanish. He had no idea. Andover. He was just, it was not his time. It had been 12 years under reagan and bush and we had not had more than eight years of Single Party Rule since james monroe except for the roosevelt and truman era. H it was already a historicaleighf anomaly anomaly for him to be in power. R. There were three things he did along the way to amass power that were not wildly admirable. My own view is that he always redeemed himself and thats what makes this tone, this level of conversation possible. He is running for the senate in texas and 1974. Rst is that hesg George Hw Bush opposed the 1964 civil 64 civil rights act. Its not something we like to talk about, particularly not today in washington. In 1968, in the wake of the assassination of doctor king, George Hw Bush who had won a house feed in 1976 representing houston voted for open housing. He goes down to texas and Memorial High School for a ferocious meeting with his constituents. They were screaming things at him, using epitaphs that they shouldnt of used then and you sure cant use now, saying we didnt send you up there to help these people. Bush stood his ground. He was 41 years old and he stood his ground and he said, i cannot send africanamerican soldiers to vietnam to fight for america and then say they cant buy a house in a given neighborhood. He quoted edmund burke who said your representative is not simply offering you a mirror of your will, but offers you his best judgment. In that moment he showed a measure of political courage that helps give him the strength to keep pushing on. He won the crowd over and he moved forward. The second thing that was not particularly admirable was the in 1998 campaign. Many of many of you remember it. It was not highminded. We talk about the pledge of allegiance and flag factories and flagburning, it was a values campaign in many ways and many people thought it was unfair to the governor of massachusetts. What does bush do after he wins that campaign. He was in houston where he announced jim baker would become secretary of state and he is asked about this campaign andco bush said thats history, we are moving forward. He drew a direct line, somewhat to his political detriment between what he said on the campaign trail and what you did as a responsible member of government. E, he learned this in china. This is a man who was a member of congress, the investor of the nation and director of the cia, Vice President for eight years,m he never hosted a reality showi, but besides that he had every possible qualification for president. He said it was history and what he learned in china is that campaigns were about firing the empty canons of rhetoric. Ronald reagan would have never said that. Franklin roosevelt would have never said that. They saw a connection between politics and government. If you did not run for a particular mandate, you would have trouble governing and that happened in bushs term. He did not run for a particular mandate. He ran as a particular man. His argument was highly personae it was that he could be trustedi with the affairs of others. Wash my own personal reaction to him, the the reason i wrote this book is that i had a. Character sense of him. I was an undergraduate for most of his presidency and attended d Small College called the university of the south in tennessee. There may be one or two of you who are not familiar with it. The combination of Downton Abbey and deliverance. My best friend in college was a man from tennessee and his name is jack daniels. I was a little fuzzy on a couple of things that unfolded. I thought the gulf war was about. [inaudible] in florida. When i met him i had this danalo kirby view of him, but most instantly i realized he possessed a quiet persistent charisma. How many here have met george bush . Pretty good number. How many here have received a note from him . Probably a dozen people in this room. He has this sense of command. I had a teacher want to define charm as the capacity to make others love you without their quite knowing why. I had a thats true of george bush. There is something about him. It is why, if you met him, youat are with him, if you only knew him from television or electronic media, you probably probably were not go

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