Chapter:
Part two of a biography of George H.W. Bush, the 41st president.
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Transcript: Chapter 14
Narrator: "I read ten or fifteen letters all of them saying "Take care of my kid," George Bush wrote in his diary Christmas Eve 1990. "Some saying, "It's not worth dying for gasoline. Then I sit here knowing that if there is no movement on Saddam's part, we have to go to war."
Jeb Bush, son: The weight of the world was on my dad's shoulders, and the decision had already been made or was in its final stages. And so here we were having Christmas, family Christmas, at a time that the people would come in to brief the President of the United States about this upcoming action. And it was just a very unusual time.
Narrator: Dear George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro: I guess what I want you to know as a father is this: When the question is asked "How many lives are you willing to sacrifice, it tears at my heart...I look at today's crisis as "good" vs. "evil." Saddam cannot profit from his aggression and from his brutalizing the people of Kuwait. So dear kids, batten down the hatches. I'm the luckiest Dad in the whole wide world.
Evan Thomas, co-author, The Wise Men: I think George Bush was the last gasp of the "wise men". He's right out of that tradition, literally and figuratively: Andover and Yale, this deep sense of duty to serve, serving in peace and war, making some money but then going in for a long period of public service.
Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian: I wouldn't call him the last of the wise men. I think he is the heir to that tradition. The wise men never had to run for office. That's the difference. They didn't have the scars of running for office. He is this curious combination of qualities: someone who has a discomfort with the grubbier side of politics, and yet forced to wallow in that for much of his career, in order to have a shot at doing what the wise men would do.
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