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By Jon Meacham
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Sitting in his office in Houston, still on an anti-malarial pill regimen from his trip to tsunami-ravaged Southeast Asia, former president George H.W. Bush turned from his desk to his credenza to find a note that had just come in. "Here's a fellow who wants to give us $2 million," Bush said. "This cause has really hit people's hearts." With former president Bill Clinton--the two traveled together to the region--Bush 41 has led fund-raising efforts for the victims; private donations for relief currently total about $1 billion. In an interview with NEWSWEEK's Jon Meacham last week, Bush talked about the tsunami, Clinton, Jeb Bush's future and the news from the Mideast. Excerpts:
BUSH: Well, it was very emotional for me, very moving. The most moving part was to see the children of families that had been wiped out. I saw one guy standing with his hand on a kid's shoulder, and I said to the translator, "Ask him his story." And the man said, "This is my surviving child; my two daughters and my wife were killed, and he's the only thing I've got left." And it's on and on and on like that.
They had women therapeutically teaching the children just to let it all out, to draw how they feel, and one little girl drew her mother's face in the sea, and she was recalling her mother drowning. There were drawings of boats hanging from trees; others were the Marines in helicopters with help coming down, so that was a positive one.
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Oh, yes. In terms of physical devastation, absolutely. Somalia was a human tragedy of starvation. As vice president I went to Sudan, and God, it was horrible. So I have seen deprivation, the ravages of famine, but nothing of this scope when it came to physical destruction. One other thing that impressed me in the tsunami was the military, who said they were not going in there with weapons, they were going in as partners. The soldiers are strong kids, and it's prob-ably good for them to see that they can help human lives and not only be fighters, as they are trained to do. And the NGOs, jillions of them, were on the ground and doing good things. I came away with a great respect for them.
But as I said and as he said, they shouldn't have been surprised. We knew each other rather favorably before running against each other. When I was kind of responsible for the first national governors' policy on education, he was the key guy for the Democrats. We've never been all that close, but the nice thing about it was that there was a compatibility. I think he was respectful of my age, quite frankly. [Bush is 80.] I think he has rather pleasant feelings about the president, though they differ on a lot of stuff, and to the degree he would express something like that [the "pleasant feelings"], which he did from time to time, that was of course enormously gratifying to his father. I think it was good, because it sent a message to the world that these two guys can fight like hell, have different political views, and yet they can come together to help other people.
I'll give you one example of the courtesy he showed me. There is one bedroom on that plane--a government 757. There's a kind of VIP bedroom with its own bathroom. Then the next room has two tables and eight seats. He decided ahead of time that we want President Bush to have the front room, which was heaven for me, because if I don't stretch out, lie flat, I really hurt my body these days--spoiled--so anyway, he was going to have the other room. Well, he got in there and he wanted to play cards at night, and the next morning I got up and stuck my head in, and I found him sound asleep on the floor of the plane. We could have switched places, each getting half a night on the bed, but he deferred to me. That was a very courteous thing, very thoughtful, and that meant a great deal to me.
My expectation is that Mrs. Clinton will run and Governor Bush won't, in 2008. Do I think Jeb would be a good president? Yes, I think he would be an outstanding president. He knows the issues, he's a strong leader. [But] one, you can discount what I say because I'm his dad, and two, he's pretty well convinced me that he's not going to.
Yeah. We've never talked beyond that.
I don't keep up with the day-to-day, but I do think people are more hopeful now. The turning point was having the Iraqi elections take place; people started saying, "Well, maybe President Bush is on to something, maybe this is the wave of the future there." There are positive signs that I think policymakers and the whole world should be encouraged by.
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