Accountable should ministration officials who shaved world events from the fall of the soviet union to the gulf war. Reporter the Wilson Center was chartered by congress more than 50 years ago to in their words strengthen the relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs. One of the ways to fulfill that mission is through the history of Public Policy which strives to make public the primary source record of 20th and 21stcentury history from repositories around the world and based on those to facilitate scholarship, education and debate. We mobilize, ship in Public Policy in other ways through podcasts Like International history declassified, blogs like my own stubborn things and todays program is in line with that purpose. Our guest today, andrew card. Andrew card served with the National Endowment to democracy, interim chief executive officer, president of Franklin Pierce university, acting dean of the bush school of Public Service at texas a and m and senior Government Role under three us president s including white house chief of staff to george w. Bush, and secretary to George H W Bush. We have executive director of Fiscal Institute of international affairs. He has been it distinguished professor on diplomacy at georgetown, Vice President of worldvision, a veteran who served in the gulf war, us special envoy to the darfur process and most especially administer of international development. Today they have edited and produced transforming our world, George H W Bush and American Foreign policy, a collection of essays from wellknown foreignpolicy practitioners who participated in unfolding International Events in the administration. I to make sure everyone knows we will have time to take some audience questions near the end of the program. If you have questions please submit them to event wilsoncenter. Org. Please include your name and affiliation. Let me get things going. For me, a recurring theme in this book even though it was written by 20 authors in terms of the essays is good fortune. And ocean that george w. Bush was uniquely qualified to lead the free world when he did. The first president in 128 years with prior diplomatic experience, the only president with leadership experience in Us Intelligence agencies, the last world war ii veteran to serve, the last injured in combat and yet the book describes his election as an aberration. Could we have George H W Bush elected today . Could we see someone with those unique qualifications rise to take the reins at these important times . Andrew card, why dont i start with you . Thank you for your service to our country, now at the Wilson Center. Im excited to be with you. Andrew natsios deserve 99 of the credit, a remarkable collection of essays comes out. I am credited with having helped him but really he helped me help him. He motivated me and the most remarkable thing is the introduction Andrew Natsios wrote to this book summarizes all the rest of the chapters but he does it in a way that i am going to say is optimistic and pessimistic. It is optimistic, you know what we should be looking for in a president , pessimistic in saying it is going to be hard to get there. To answer directly, it would be hard to have another person like George H W Bush in the field of candidates that successfully compete to become president of the United States. I say that because his track record of responding to the call of Public Service was almost unique. Not his predecessors have it and i dont think any of the successors to him will have it. It is best summarized by know about how he came to respect the calling of Public Service from a family that was engaged in Public Service, how he grew up in new england even though he became a texan so i am going to say the gravitas at yale but the boots on the ground ability to communicate well. The secretary of state was mind melded to him. They were the best of friends. They were soul mates and that made a difference. Also survivors remorse, shot down in world war ii and watched his buddy get killed. Yes, that had an impact. He was also experienced in so many aspects as outlined in his chapter, but i am going to reflect on jeff angles commentary, he practiced hippocratic diplomacy, do no harm and he was a real gentleman as plato and burke told us and to be prudent, a word he used all the time, he did have. It was engaged with everybody, his friends and adversaries, he was respectful but most of all this collection of essays outlined his respect for the institutions we are seeing and was an institution polisher and Andrew Natsios captures that in his introduction but the people who volunteered to write chapters for this book all made significant contributions, books written of each one of them and there have been books written about many of them, but they are beyond expertise in terms of what they have done. They are serving as patriots and june baker has the first essay and personifies george h w was almost as well is George H W Bush set the stage for the rest of the chapter. Andrew . A couple stories to tell you a lot about bush himself. Bush was caught by his mother and father not to use the word i if he could avoid it which is hard to do if you are a politician. We could discuss his written memos when he was president and speeches, he doesnt use the word because it is egocentric. He came back from a baseball game in high school and did a home run and they won the game is a result of it and told his mother, his mother said that is nice, how did the team do . He said dont you care about the home run . He said i care about how the team did and he repeated that story often. I heard about an apartment above the auditorium where we have a lot of messages, right next to the bush library, the bush school, the library a great administrator, but 5 pandemic conferences before covid 19 and that is one of the focuses but he used to come all the time, one story how he is revered in texas. He almost died three years earlier and the german magazine actually said he died and it was very embarrassing. They had to do a retraction and all that. He survived, came back and there are 100,000 people at football games. He got 15 minutes standing ovation. They had to postpone the game because the audience would not sit down after his neardeath experience. People want to know how popular he is in texas, he didnt go to school 6 days in. His friends in houston criticized him, texas and it was a rural area, because of the values of a and m. I will tell you another story, a french scholar, a conference on reunification of germany 7 or 8 years ago. I knew when he invited him that he would say it but of course a chancellor of germany, german unification, he was there that he spoke and he said something i wont forget. I was on the phone almost every day for two years orchestrating, helmet coal was in it, making sure every single detail was attended to so during the implementation process nothing got screwed up. We left when the scholar said nothing to do with it. That is complete nonsense. There was a concert of one of the great german orchestras in houston during the anniversary celebration and the german consul general stood up into intermission time and bush invited andy and i to go and she said mister president i went to thank you because we would not be one country now if not for you and a standing ovation but this is the german consul general saying this. George bush was a modest person but didnt have much to be modest about. He was a very humble guy and those characteristics mean he didnt promote himself and as a result i dont think a lot of the things he did made their way which is why we did this book. It reminds me a few years ago, the opportunity to meet with him, at the International Republican institute at the time and i asked what would be the lesson that he would offer young people today. Brent paused for a moment and said it wasnt easy and he said that todays young people look for that kind of reunification as though it was logical and inevitable and it wasnt easy. Each step, each move, each disciplined move which you are pointing to, extraordinary, not in the skill sets of politicians, looking for instant reading the polls, what happens in social media and yet he had the foresight that so many understood the calibration and difficulties and what it would take to get it done. That maybe is the greatest sign of how unusual the time wasnt how unique his contributions were. There is one thing i say to people about george bush or any president , one person no matter how brilliant or experienced can run a government as big as the one we had but it is enormous and enormously complex. George bush cultivated a large group of people across the country in his First Campaign for president in 1980 and then in 88 but then as Vice President he had a huge network and it wasnt just people among the campaign, but people he wanted to run the campaign and the federal government and by putting people who are loyal to him and shared his worldview and values in office he was seizing control in a gentle way in the reins of power. The most no one was fired at the nsc, in the chapter by carl root, she worked for briscoe croft and had a distinguished career. She and i served from aig to activeduty but in her chapter, only 50 people in staff of the nsc when Brent Scowcroft was in charge. Under president obama there were 400. That is how much it increased. She said the quality of people, all of them being cabinet members, 4star generals, president s of universities, condoleezza rice, a lot of what george bush is so good about is this huge network he built deliberately and that came out in the book. Is something i to get to. And other personal angle, when bush 41, had the honor of visiting him at kennebunkport. Pause for a moment and photos capturing moments of his presidency and found myself over and over, i had forgotten, that came back to me as i read this book, each chapter, in the presidency many of which have been forgotten or not fully appreciated. All the things that occurred during the bush 41 presidency lost to the mists of time, maybe everybody looks and thinks it was inevitable but this is to both of you, each of you what do you think in terms of accomplishments or wins is appreciated these days that bush 41 pulled together or pulled off . He did transform the world. We ended the cold war without going to a hot war. He was humble in the process. He didnt dance on the wall when it came down even though some people said he should dance on the wall when the berlin wall came down. He was very humble. He was also very disciplined about respecting institutions in washington dc that were not institutions. For example he works well with Congress Even though was controlled by the democrats. He respected the house and had plans on both sides of the aisle but he did not blindside congress with challenges he had and invited them to be part of the solution. It didnt mean everything was easy. It wasnt. It was very hard. But the institution of being part of the solution current is meet their responsibility. On the domestic side probably the american disabilities act which was so dramatic, it motivated the world to have a greater conscience about people who are challenged and need a little bit of a leg up. They need some help so the american disability act, read john sununus book about being chief of staff for what happened on the domestic side. This book is focused on what happened on the International Side and efforts under usaid. Very dramatic in spreading the compassion of america around the world. That comes out in these chapters. How did he staff his government and bring people in . What is he looking for . He was not looking for people who would just echo his views, he wanted to challenge his views constructively and make a difference. I have to tell you. We all know he was president and was Vice President before that. A lot of people didnt know about his track record in service or his son who was president which was pretty darn unique but i would deck out the first time i was campaigning with him, i was volunteer chairman of the campaign in 197879 and the 1980 process. There was an event, he was speaking at an event in springfield, connecticut, hartfield, connecticut and i got a call from James Beckett iii who was part of the campaign and said ambassador bush is speaking at an event in hartford, connecticut, 45 minutes away from springfield, massachusetts. Put together a key or something for ambassador bush, i didnt know a lot of people in Springfield Massachusetts but i call a friend who did know people there and they gave me someone at 2 00 in the afternoon and i drove out to see where this house was and meet the people and all that kind of stuff and the next day was the day of the event and i picked up ambassador bush, we arrived at this home in springfield, locked in, 25 people ready to have the with ambassador george bush, there was a sign on the mantle over the fireplace that said welcome george bush. It was billed busch. I tell you that made a huge difference for america. He actually did more to introduce transformation than any other president in our history when it came to inviting people to the responsibilities of governing. He made bandleaders better leaders because of how he led around the world. That is what transformed the world and grateful of his service. Organizing the National Security council is a mustread because it talks about the partnership that existed in the white house, normally tension between different bureaucracies. Having been chief of staff i would carry around to putting years, president bush and briscoe croft and jim baker were a remarkable team that had the benefit of working with dick cheney and colin powell and the spectacular team that made a difference but it came because clinton had a vision but did not allow himself to be stuck on stupid. He was always invited to other solutions or better way of debating it and he did not count his chest and say i did it. He went overboard saying could have been we did it. I will narrow the question to you because andrew card opened the door. What struck me in the book, you and i both served as administrator, lack of appreciation for humanitarian leadership and crisis response, you were there at the time and extended and mobilized these tools and became administrator. Talk about the innovation we saw from bush 412 usaid and humanitarian leadership. The dean of the bush school is a friend of mine, a friend of all of us and he was a great president but we need to talk about mistakes. He didnt do anything about the reconstruction of afghanistan after the russians left. In the introduction i said i need to check this out to make sure this is correct and he was wrong. I didnt know it. The First Executive order that George H W Bush signed was to organize the reconstruction of afghanistan after Russian Troops left. Everybody else works with aig but they are in charge of reconstruction and the equivalent was 225 million in todays dollars. In those days you could do a lot with that. We started to do it. I didnt have anything to do with the separate office and the civil war started between the taliban and the northern alliance. You can say we didnt fix the diplomacy of that but dont most of what we did do was destroy the civil war. Not that he didnt focus on it. It was the first thing he focused on. Alex the wall, one of the great scholars, no fan of that, and he has written a lot of books about africa and all that, a book called mass starvation which i use in my course on great famines and war and he said theres been a dramatic drop in the number of famine deaths. Since the mid to late 1980s compared to the previous 150 years, tracked the number of deaths each year, you can see a big decline. There was a new International Humanitarian response system organized under the bush presidency. I didnt even realize. This happened when bush was president. Not that it just happened but he helped orchestrate. What was the creation of the un office, the un didnt to do a good job with the purge of Northern Iraq at the end of the gulf war and he wanted it fixed. He criticized the un but he said we are going to fix this and he did and theres a big fight in the administration. It has been a success story. The office of foreign Disaster Assistance which i was director of in my first job, an amusing story, i didnt want the job but andy kept telling the administrator, we want them to be the head of the latin american bureau. I really wanted to do this job. Andy said we will move you later. I dont know anything about this. Why are you putting me in this job . After two weeks on the job, this is the best job i had the most interesting. I want to stay here and it changed my career track. We now know Disaster Assistance was created in 1989. We didnt have an Operation Center before, we do now, it operates talk about darts, what they do and why they were so innovative. They were there was there were no job descriptions, no Operations Planning in an organized systematic way. We did a field manual, Field Operations guy, i wouldnt have called it that. That was the manual for the