April 7, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Leadership and Legacy, Jeffrey A. Engel, Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, shares his personal experience with former President George H.W. Bush and the valuable lessons he learned about the presidency—an office for which no one can truly prepare. Engel identifies memory, energy, and empathy as the key traits of an effective leader, while emphasizing that voters should prioritize character and judgement over personality when evaluating presidential candidates. He also highlights the importance of a deep understanding of history for a successful presidency. Tune in to gain valuable insights on leadership, the presidency, the art of restraint, and the challenges of writing history about someone you know.
Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library is hosted by Washington Library Executive Director Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky. It is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association and Primary Source Media. For more information about this program, go to www.GeorgeWashingtonPodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Lindsay Chervinsky (00:01):
What can the career of George HW Bush tell us about
history and presidential leadership?
Welcome to Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George (00:06):
undefined
Washington Presidential Library.
I'm Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, headof the library at Mount Vernon.
In this podcast series, we talk withexperts about leadership and history,
how studying these stories helpsus understand our current moment,
and how we can apply lessons fromleaders in the past to our own lives.
(00:27):
Today I am joined by Jeffrey Engel,whose official title is David Gergen
Director of the Center for PresidentialHistory at Southern Methodist
University, but who I used to callboss, and mostly because it annoyed him.
You see, if you looked up theword "mensch" in the dictionary,
you would see Jeff's face.
In addition to being a first ratechap, an excellent mentor, and someone
I now proudly call a friend, Jeffis also an exceptional historian.
(00:50):
He has an ability to see the humanityin people, without falling in love with
his subject, which is no small feat.
His work on the Cold Warfundamentally changed how I
think of the presidency, Americanpower, George HW Bush, and legacy.
I know you'll learn asmuch from him as I do.
Who are some of the presidents you havestudied and why did you choose them?
Jeff Engel (01:14):
I started in 1946 with Harry Truman.
It was the first real project I ever did.
That was my undergraduate thesis.
I had a grant from the NEH back whenthey used to give undergraduates grants,
and I wrote on the 1946 Franco-AmericanLoan, which is so important.
You've never heard of it.
And Truman was really the first guy thatI got into, which of course, brought me
(01:37):
back to Roosevelt, and then I would sayI didn't necessarily focus on presidents
as much as time periods at first.
I was focused on the Cold War until itcame time to do my second book, and my
first book came out and my departmentchair very nicely, one afternoon, very
nice guy, came down the hall and said, sowhat are you doing for your second book?
And I said, I don't know, I, I thinkmaybe the economic diplomacy of the 1920s.
(01:59):
And he said, instead of that, whydon't you go look at this diary that
just opened up at the Bush Library.
And I went over and it turns out itwas Bush's diary, HW Bush's diary
from when he was ambassador toChina in the early 1970s, mid 1970s.
And I've been stuck with him andthe ends of the Cold War ever since.
It's just utterly fascinating.
I never in a million years thoughtI would do something that modern.
(02:19):
But the questions were justcompletely fascinating.
Lindsay Chervinsky (02:22):
So we're gonna circle back and talk about him in
a lot more detail, but I'm reallycurious to know what it is like or
what the differences are betweenstudying someone that you have spent
time with and someone that you haven't.
Perhaps you can tell the listenersa little bit about the time
you spent with him so they knowwhy I'm asking that question.
(02:42):
This was something I wanted to ask rightat the beginning of the conversation
because Engel, as you will hear,actually got to know George HW Bush.
As someone who has mostly writtenon presidents from 200 years ago,
I was curious about how knowingyour subject could impact the work.
He wisely pointed out that theimpact depends on how you end
up feeling about that person.
Jeff Engel (03:06):
Yes.
In fact, I actually think it'sa three parted question to me,
or a three headed question.
'Cause I think it's, um, spendingtime with somebody versus not spending
time with somebody, but also spendingtime with somebody that you like, and—
Lindsay Chervinsky (03:18):
Yeah, that's an important detail.
Jeff Engel (03:19):
Well, and, and I've had both.
So for your readers, I had the opportunityto work on George HW Bush's diary when he
was in China, and we effectively wrote abook together on that where I did all the
annotations and, I interviewed him dozensand dozens and dozens of times, and then
subsequently did that for my next book,which was a study of his time as president
and his foreign policy in particular.
(03:40):
And I was teaching at the Bush School formuch of that time and spent a lot of time
with the president and with Mrs. Bushand um, a lot of social time as well.
And in fact, I sort of consideredhim a grandfather in many ways
and I still miss him to be honest.
And that made it very difficult to writeabout him because I was very keen that
(04:01):
whenever I was writing something about himand I found myself thinking, I wonder what
the president's gonna think about thatsentence, I would literally push away from
the keyboard and say, you can't go there.
You cannot think that way.
Like, that's not your job.
So there are a lot of places where I'mvery critical of his foreign policy
and to his great credit, he was adamantthat people who make history and people
(04:25):
who write history have two separateand important jobs and that the makers
should not get in the way of the writers.
So he was wonderful to work with.
I actually wonder, as I work on differentprojects now, in depth, how difficult
it is to write in depth about a humanbeing that I've never spoken to.
Because when I would readBush, I could hear his voice.
I've been working on H RossPerot lately, and I never had the
(04:47):
opportunity to meet Perot, and soI understood Bush's mannerisms.
I understood, you know, the twinkle inhis eye and so on, and I don't have that
for Perot, and it's a different process.
Lindsay Chervinsky (04:57):
I can relate to that.
I was doing a little bit ofwork on Eisenhower and all of a
sudden had the revelation thatI could listen to his speeches.
And knew what his voice sounded likeafter writing about Washington and
Adams, whose voice I do not know,that was a wild, wild realization.
Jeff Engel (05:14):
That actually must be really cool.
And you could actually see him too.
Lindsay Chervinsky (05:17):
Yeah.
Jeff Engel (05:17):
You see him move.
Lindsay Chervinsky (05:18):
It's extraordinary.
And then for me at least, then I startedto get into the space of, there's so
much material because you have allof that audio visual, like how do you
even begin to cut down on what you use.
So I, I had not planned to ask thisquestion, but now I'm super curious.
How did talking to someone who youdidn't like, and I won't make you name
names unless you want to offer them,how did that shape your writing process?
(05:42):
Did you have to push backagainst the opposite?
Jeff Engel (05:43):
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (05:44):
Like you didn't want your dislike to come into the text?
Jeff Engel (05:46):
Yes.
I spent a considerable amount of time inmy life writing on somebody who I don't
want to name, because I wrote a very longobituary that's going to come out when
he or she dies, could not stand the guy.
And— I guess I say he is a guy— didn'tlike him, didn't like his policies, didn't
like the way he treated other people,didn't like the way he treated me, didn't
(06:06):
like the way he treated the nation.
And again, I had the same processwhere if I would find myself
writing something and saying, amI being emotionally disparaging?
I literally would push away from thekeyboard and say, that's not your job.
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:19):
Okay.
So let's dig into HWBush a little bit more.
For brevity, I will becalling him Bush 41.
Jeff Engel (06:26):
That's, that's, that's my favorite— actually, can I
tell a funny story about that?
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:29):
Please do.
Jeff Engel (06:30):
So, when I was working on — working with, Bush 41, was during
the time when Bush 43 was president andwe had very young kids in preschool.
So, you know, to try to differentiatewhen we were talking around dinner table
about what daddy did today at work,versus what's going on in the country.
We started referring to him asthe "daddy President Bush" and the
"little boy President Bush," andwe still call him the little boy
(06:52):
President Bush around our house.
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:54):
How does Bush 43 feel about that?
Jeff Engel (06:56):
I have never mentioned this to him.
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:57):
Oh, okay.
How did his father feel about that?
Jeff Engel (06:59):
I never mentioned that to him either.
Lindsay Chervinsky (07:00):
That's probably a good omission.
That is fantastic.
Okay, so because you knew him, thisis not usually a question that I
get to ask people who write aboutpresidents, but because you knew him,
I'm wondering if you could talk tous a little bit about what you feel
were his defining personality traitsthat made him who he was as a leader.
This question became a launch pointfor a much broader conversation
(07:23):
about presidential leadership.
Engel stressed Bush's tremendous energy,but also a sense of self-awareness about
the fact that it was his position aspresident, not necessarily anything about
himself, that had the greatest impact.
Jeff Engel (07:39):
That's a great question.
Um, the first one that leaps tomind is his astounding energy.
And I saw him at the end of hislife and I saw astounding energy.
He actually tailed off in the lastcouple of years, as people do.
But I saw him when he was still primand proper, and what was amazing was
having now gone back and read throughhis diary, from different periods of
(08:01):
his presidency, he actually developed athyroid condition when he was president.
And one of the things that he writes inthe diary that's really interesting is he
says, I'm paraphrasing, I'm experiencingthis thing that other people have always
told me about, which is called fatigue.
Because he just never had it.
And he also had an incredible memory.
So the stories are legion of him walkingout— when he was campaigning, walking
(08:24):
into a building, having somebody,one of the campaign aides say, okay,
there's 67 people work in this building.
Two hours later walking outta the buildingand he'll say, wait a minute, I only
met 64, where's—and then, then he'd namethe three names that he had been shown.
That was when he was presidentand running for president.
When I met him, he was not pleased withhis own memory, which I thought was
really fascinating because he, I think,had come down to what we might consider
(08:48):
a normal person's memory, or a geniusperson's memory, but he felt a decrease.
So I think memory and energyare two really important things.
And if you think about it, that'sactually the way that he ran his entire
political career, was based upon personalrelationships, and based upon becoming
friends with people, and one waythat he could do that was, if he had
lunch with you, 25 years later, he'dremember what you guys talked about.
Lindsay Chervinsky (09:10):
Wow.
Jeff Engel (09:11):
And that was really effective when you want to be a,
a retail politician, if you will.
Lindsay Chervinsky (09:15):
Well, it is, especially because I think people have
this expectation today that politicians,they meet so many people who— so they
might be nice to you, to your face,they might show interest, but the
likelihood that the minute they stepup from the table, they're not gonna
remember anything you have to say.
Jeff Engel (09:29):
That's my assumption.
Lindsay Chervinsky (09:29):
Yeah, that's my assumption too.
So for someone to feel so invested,you can see how that would be very
endearing and would inspire a lotof loyalty in people around him.
Jeff Engel (09:40):
Oh, most definitely.
And again, here's a case where readinga person's diary can be very interesting
because in his diary, both when, whenhe was ambassador and then subsequently
when he was president, though, thathas not been released to the public
yet, he often will say, I'm feelinga little overwhelmed and burnt out.
I've been working nonstop.
You know what I need to do?
I need to get a big party, andwe need to invite people over.
(10:03):
So I, and, and because people energizedhim, and I always was astounded by
that 'cause I would say, boy, ifI'm exhausted, the last thing I want
to do is have other people around.
But he drew energy from otherpeople, which is, I think, really
important to his personality.
There's one other element which I thinkis really important, and this really
came through from knowing him personally,was his personal empathy and sense of
(10:26):
his own power, by which I mean, he wasto the manor born, you know, he is the
epitome of silver spoon, noblesse oblige,and he would never deny otherwise.
And he was very sympathetic, bothwhen he was president and then
after he was president, to how hisactions as president and a former
president would affect average people.
(10:48):
I'll give you two examples.
When I was teaching at the Bush School,I used to invite him to class, whenever
the students would do— once a year,they'd do a simulation, it was a
public policy school, so we're doinginternational security, and I would
invite the students in when they hadto present to the president and he
would play the part of the president.
And at one point during a break, Isaid, Mr. President, I gotta tell
you, you're really terrible at this.
(11:10):
You are terrible at playing thepresident, because I've read the
National Security Council minuteswhen you were president and you asked
really hard, insightful questions.
Every question you ask these kidsis softer than the last softball.
And he looked at me and he said, canyou imagine what would happen if one
of these kids called home and said thepresident came to class today and said my
idea was dumb, how devastated they wouldbe, and he just wasn't gonna go there.
(11:30):
Similarly, we, we were out to lunch onceand him and I and Mrs. Bush and, and his
chief of staff and we were sitting in acorner of a restaurant in College Station
and there's only one other person sittingin that room, it's a young kid, maybe
19, 20 years old, sitting by himself,and he's clearly nervous and he's clearly
dressed up, and it's a nice restaurant,like he's clearly waiting for somebody.
(11:51):
So, young lady shows up, and the guymeets her, pulls out the chair, tucks
her back in, et cetera, et cetera, andPresident Bush, at the end of the meal
when we were leaving, got up and said tothe girl, I want you to go tell your dad.
This guy's a good guy.
He's a gentleman.
And he didn't have to do that.
Also, he knew that if he was a normalperson, walking up to someone saying,
tell your dad that he's a gentleman,they would think that was creepy.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:14):
That's so true
Jeff Engel (12:14):
But here she could say, hey, I saw the president, and the
president said, Bob's a good guy.
And I presume they're married now.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:20):
Well, yeah, of course.
I feel like with that first date, itsounds like it was the first date,
you don't really have a choice.
Jeff Engel (12:25):
Yeah.
I was gonna say you have no choice.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:26):
Yeah.
Jeff Engel (12:26):
Presidential approval.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:27):
That type of self-awareness is extraordinary.
You've studied a lot of presidents.
How many of them do you think have that.
Jeff Engel (12:35):
I think most of them develop it, but I would make a distinction between
those that are able to differentiatebetween the fact that people pay attention
to them because they're president,which means everybody listens to what
you say, everybody hangs on everyword, everybody laughs at your joke.
Everybody lets you pick up your putt.
All kinds of things when you're president.
There are some people, somepresidents who recognize that's
(12:56):
because they're president.
Dwight Eisenhower,actually, great example.
He used to complain all the time thatwhen he was no longer president, people
wouldn't let him cheat at golf as much.
Uh.
Other presidents, some who I'd rathernot name, I think never understood
that it wasn't their own abilities.
It was the fact that—
Lindsay Chervinsky (13:13):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (13:14):
—the president was an important idea in people's minds.
You always say, you can hearpeople when they're in the presence
of a, any president, Democrat,Republican, doesn't matter.
Say, oh my goodness, thisperson was so charismatic.
Oh my goodness, this person lit up a room.
Well, the truth is, everybody'sstaring at the person to begin
with because they're president.
So the presidents who I think candifferentiate between the office and
the fact that they are not brilliant,it's the office that's brilliant, is
(13:37):
a key distinction between the typetwo types of presidents, if you will.
Lindsay Chervinsky (13:41):
That's such an important idea because I think the office
of the presidency, that— the power ofthat position is one that Americans
have really grappled with because itis unlike anything else in the world,
and because it is not hereditary, itis not really backed by military force
in the same way an autocracy would be.
We don't have to uphold it in that way.
We uphold it becauseAmericans choose to uphold it.
(14:03):
And yet it is not based on a person.
So it's not personality based.
It's a very tricky concept that wegrapple with at times better than others.
Jeff Engel (14:12):
I think especially nowadays, I'm of the belief that politics
changed around the time that BillClinton was president in a fundamental
way, and we haven't changed back.
Wherein before Clinton was president—and I'm talking about the modern
presidency, I'm not gonna talk aboutpresidents from your time period, 'cause
you know those so much better than Iand and will probably tell me that my
presumption is wrong, 'cause I, I thinkfrom what little I know about politics
(14:35):
from your era, it was pretty nasty too.
But in the Cold War era, beforeBill Clinton, there was, I think
a general grudging respect of thepresident from his political enemies.
Lindsay Chervinsky (14:45):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (14:45):
Which means they weren't actually even political enemies.
They were political adversaries.
Lindsay Chervinsky (14:48):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (14:49):
They weren't enemies.
Starting with Clinton, peoplestarted to hate the president.
Whether it's hating Clinton, hatingBush, hating Obama, I mean, you go
through the list hating Trump, obviously.
The emotional element got involvedand I think that's actually a problem,
not just a problem that people hate,which is not useful for politics, but
also it diminishes the office of thepresidency and it makes people assume
(15:14):
that the president of another partyis not interested in their welfare.
And that also by the way, makespresidents perhaps a little bit less
interested in everyone's welfareand not their own constituencies.
Lindsay Chervinsky (15:25):
So I'm gonna take the host's prerogative and do just a
tiny bit of a u-turn here, which is tosay that one, because this podcast is
about leadership, and typically we willfocus on presidential leadership, but
one of the most effect leaders that wehave seen in, I would argue the last 50
years, is the former speaker of the house.
Jeff Engel (15:40):
Oh yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (15:41):
Nancy Pelosi.
And she, I think would agree withyou about the change in politics.
In interviews, I've heard her say asmuch and she blames it on Newt Gingrich.
Jeff Engel (15:50):
Everybody blames it on Newt Gingrich.
Lindsay Chervinsky (15:52):
Easy target.
Jeff Engel (15:53):
Well, he is.
And, and, um, Julian Zelizerhas a great book on this.
Um, Nikki Hemmer has a great book on this.
You know but there's this generalconsensus that Gingrich was able to
manipulate the media of television betterthan anyone for his own political gain
and recognized that one of the interestingthings about television, when you're
(16:13):
being interviewed is, there's often notsomeone who's going to push back on you,
and if they do that doesn't necessarilymean that they're gonna show that clip.
So—
Lindsay Chervinsky (16:20):
Yes
Jeff Engel (16:20):
—you can say whatever the hell you want and it'll get broadcast.
It's very McCarthyite in a sense.
And people don't pay attention tothe refutation, and the incentive
for the opposing side, if you will,is to come up with something more
outrageous to say, to get their airtime.
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Lindsay Chervinsky (17:24):
All right, back to Bush 41.
What were the biggest mistakes thathe made over the course of his life,
and what did he learn from them?
Jeff Engel (17:33):
I'm gonna complicate mistake and disappointment.
He was always disappointedthat he was never able to win
statewide office in Texas.
He ran for Senate and lost twice.
I think he learned from that, I can'twin statewide office in, in Texas.
And there is an irony here that hewas too conservative for the nation
in many ways by the end of his term,but not conservative enough for Texas.
(17:55):
That you know, you could getelected president but not governor.
So I think he learned from that experiencethat he was not going to succeed in that
realm, and he didn't try a third time.
He moved into first, appointed office,and then the vice presidency, but he
never again tried on a Texas level.
Lindsay Chervinsky (18:11):
Interesting.
So on the flip side of that, if thosewere his disappointments, what were
his greatest leadership moments,whether they be in his previous
positions or in the presidency.
Jeff Engel (18:20):
The thesis of my book about him is that he was an
extraordinary, effective leader offoreign policy, arguably the best.
Lindsay Chervinsky: What is the book called? (18:28):
undefined
Jeff Engel (18:29):
When the World Seemed New
and the End of the Cold War.
And it's based on 10 years of goingthrough the documents and pulling
out and declassifying documents.
It's actually very handy to beemployed by a school that is 300
yards from a presidential archive,and you have students that you
can assign to fill out forms.
So—
Lindsay Chervinsky (18:48):
And you have a president that is in
theory, in favor of this project.
Jeff Engel (18:51):
Yes, very, very much so.
That was actually a huge help.
What was astounding from that is, firstof all, most people remember the end
of the Cold War as a rousing success.
In fact, if you have asked theaverage American, if they have an
opinion on this, which increasinglythey don't, they'll tell you, oh
yes, Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.
And they'll use the term "won."
More important than that is that thisis the first time in history that
(19:12):
we've had a major empire collapsewithout an ensuing great power war.
By the way, you could argue that the warin Ukraine is actually sort of part of
the war of Soviet succession, if you will.
We'd never run that experiment inhistory with nuclear weapons involved.
So Bush appreciated just howdangerous this moment was.
And Bush time after time, aftertime, quietly via telephone or via a
(19:35):
handwritten note, communicated withother leaders to lower international
tensions, and then did the other keything, which is he didn't talk about it.
Because that would blow the whole purpose.
Lindsay Chervinsky (19:45):
Engel emphasized the importance of
strategic restraint in leadership,particularly presidential leadership.
Bush, he argues, intentionallydidn't gloat about his foreign
policy successes, because that wouldhave undermined the relationships
he had built that had made thosesuccesses possible in the first place.
And that, Engel suggests,had ramifications at home.
Jeff Engel (20:07):
If you talk about something publicly and embarrass someone, then that
defeats the purpose of quiet diplomacy.
So one of the reasons, there areseveral reasons, but one of the
reasons I think that he did not winreelection is because he never told
the American people how good he was.
Because he didn't think itwas in a nation's interest.
And I can assure you, I have all thememos from his campaign staff and from his
(20:28):
political advisors saying, we need to getthis message out about how successful we
have been, because when you're successfulin diplomacy, it oftentimes, it doesn't
make the front page of the times.
It only does when you fail.
And he refused to ever boast, if youwill, about his own accomplishments,
especially in the diplomatic realm,because he thought, first of all it
wasn't gentlemanly, but more importantlyit wasn't in the nation's interest.
(20:48):
He had a, he had a line about this wherehe said about when the Berlin wall fell
and people were encouraging him to go tothe Berlin Wall, he said, I'm not gonna
dance on the wall, because that wouldembarrass Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.
Lindsay Chervinsky (20:58):
It strikes me that, that's very similar to intelligence and
the military in that when they have asuccess, you often don't know about it.
Jeff Engel (21:07):
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (21:08):
And when they have a failure, things tend to blow up.
Jeff Engel (21:10):
Yes.
And you and I are speakingin the aftermath of another
potential assassination attemptagainst former President Trump.
And I think, obviously we all believethat's horrific, but I do think it's
worthwhile to note that we don'thear about all their incredible
successes for the Secret Service.
They're getting criticized today, butI wish we could put it in a context,
and we don't have the numbers to putit in a context, but we know that
(21:31):
there's a lot of successes as well.
Lindsay Chervinsky (21:33):
We do.
And in fact, if you Google threats againstthe president, there are some records
that have started to come out aboutthings that did not make the news the
time, but just like lists of threats thatthey learned about, that they changed the
route of a car, they decided to go to adifferent direction based on the threat.
And it's worth noting how many ofthem there are on a regular basis.
Jeff Engel (21:53):
Most definitely.
Lindsay Chervinsky (21:54):
So I think that you could characterize what you just described
about Bush in one word, or the one wordI guess I would use would be restraint.
Jeff Engel (22:03):
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:03):
This is a theme I've been harping on a great deal about lately
because I think that John Adams exerciseda great deal of restraint in 1800.
Restraint is not always very sexy.
Jeff Engel (22:12):
No.
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:13):
It does not typically get monuments made to it.
Although I was told by an audiencemember that there is a Temperance
Monument in Washington DC, which intheory is a monument to restraint,
but presidential restraint doesn'ttypically get the monuments.
Why not?
Why don't we celebrate that as much?
Jeff Engel (22:28):
Well, I think we don't see it that much in presidents in particular.
'Cause we have to remember, and I hopeyou've made this point to your audience
before, just 'cause I'm sure you'veheard me say it a thousand times, that
all presidents are basically sociopaths.
And think about the ego that isrequired to become president of the
United States, and now in the modernera, the ego that is required to say,
yes, I will take control of enoughnuclear weaponry to destroy humanity.
(22:52):
Personally in charge of it.
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:53):
Well, and just to be clear, you're not even
saying ego in a bad way per se,but that you have to have such—
Jeff Engel (22:57):
You have to have it
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:58):
—in— insane confidence that you are the person
that should be making those decisions.
Jeff Engel (23:02):
I mean, there's 350 million people in this country.
And you have to genuinely believe that youare the best person or you shouldn't be
doing the job and you can't do the job.
And that's not normal.
And consequently, I think we should notexpect those people necessarily to act
in a restrained manner 'cause they didn'tsucceed by acting in a restrained manner.
And it's only the, I would argue thebetter presidents, who are able to
(23:24):
appreciate, especially in foreignpolicy, the quality of restraint.
There was some talk, for example,when Barack Obama was leaving
office, people were looking aroundfor a historical comparison.
And Derek Chollet, who now is withthe Defense Department, I think, he
wrote a really interesting book wherehe made the point that Obama's heroes
from a foreign policy perspectivewere Eisenhower and George HW Bush.
(23:47):
And now stop for a second and think aboutwhat a caricature or what a comedian's
impression of Barack Obama sounds like.
It's.
Incredibly.
Slow.
Lindsay Chervinsky (24:02):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (24:03):
Which is not how he was on the campaign trail, but he
learned over time that every worda president says has a potential to
crash the stock market or cause a war.
And he was very, very restrained,especially by the end of his presidency.
And not every presidenthas learned that lesson.
Lindsay Chervinsky (24:15):
Is there a way that we think we can
cultivate restraint in leadership?
Or is it kind of like you justhave to hope someone learns it?
Jeff Engel (24:22):
So there is no great preparation to be president
because there's no equivalent job.
So by definition, we're putting somebodyin an uncomfortable position, and if we
believe in the Peter principle, at somepoint we're gonna get people rising up to
that position who are not up to the task.
And I am very uncomfortable, thoughI don't have a better solution, very
uncomfortable with the way that we choosepresidents now because I think we choose
(24:42):
the person who is the best campaignerand the best retail politician, and
forget that actually we want this personto make fundamental policy decisions
about America's future, especiallyfor areas that we don't know yet.
One of the most amazing projects I everparticipated in was a project to look at
what happened over time to a president'sforeign policy in their first year.
(25:04):
And the takeaway across all ofthe presidents that were looked
at, and I was only involved inthe 20th century part, but I think
they did 19th century part too.
The 20th century part obviously ismuch more important 'cause it is.
Lindsay Chervinsky (25:15):
Listeners, I'm rolling my eyes.
Jeff Engel (25:16):
Yes, she is.
Every single president faceda crisis that no one would've
anticipated in their first year.
If you made a list on inaugurationday of, here are the places
where we need to worry about.
Every single one of them faced acrisis that was not on the list.
And we need to remember when we'reelecting somebody that we should
be focused on, I think, their basiccompetence and their basic character
(25:38):
because there is no way that you canpresent somebody with the scenario that
they're going to have to deal with.
Lindsay Chervinsky (25:43):
Absolutely.
I mean, two fantastic examples inthis century alone are George W. Bush.
Bush 43.
Jeff Engel (25:50):
Yep.
Lindsay Chervinsky (25:50):
Ran on the economy, and September 11th happened
eight months into his presidency.
And Joe Biden ran on the pandemicand the economy and racial
reckoning, and Ukraine happened justover a year into his presidency.
Jeff Engel (26:03):
Yes, and go through the list, Somalia for Clinton.
Frankly, the entire end of the ColdWar for HW Bush, Reagan had issues.
Carter had issues.
And in each case they were forced to bothlearn on the job, how to be president, and
learn on the job about a place and a thingthat they had never thought about before.
Which is why there's one other elementwhich I think people need to remember when
(26:26):
they're thinking about presidents, andof course, we're having this discussion
in the context of election season.
I think we focus too much on votingfor the president, and I think we need
to remember that the president is notmaking most of the decisions that are
coming outta the executive branch.
George W. Bush had agreat line about this.
He said, things don't get tomy desk unless no one else
can solve them as president.
So what you're really electing are the7,000 people that the president's gonna
(26:49):
bring to Washington with him or her.
'Cause they're the ones who are actuallygonna make most of the decisions.
So find somebody who you think has agood sense of character and good sense
of judgment about the people thathe or she surrounds themselves with.
Lindsay Chervinsky (27:01):
One of the main themes of this show is the interaction
between history and leadership.
So I wanted to know (27:06):
did Bush draw on history to inform his leadership style?
The answer it turns out is a mixed bag.
We have been talking about, you know,obviously, our sense of history, and
we're historians, so obviously we love it.
But did Bush 41 have anappreciation of history?
Was that something that you feltcontributed to his abilities?
Jeff Engel (27:27):
Yes.
Yes and no.
He was not as vigorous a reader ofhistories as other presidents, uh,
including frankly, I think his own son.
Doesn't get credit enough forhow much he read while in office.
Bush 41, I think was very, verykeen on understanding his role and
the nation's moment in history.
Remember, he joins the Navy at age 18.
(27:49):
He's the second youngest navalaviator in the Pacific Theater.
Used to be that we could say hewas the youngest and somebody found
somebody younger, so that's annoying,we have to say second youngest.
So at 19, he's commanding troops in combatand flying combat missions and so on,
and comes from his storied family, andis always thinking of himself, expecting
himself, to be at the pinnacle of society.
So he was very keen that hispolicies lined up with Franklin
(28:13):
Roosevelt's and that his policieslined up with Dwight Eisenhower's.
What are the consistencies here thatmake us Americans in our foreign policy?
Even though times have changed,even though situations have
changed, how do we know who we areexcept from our sense of history?
Lindsay Chervinsky (28:25):
It's fascinating that he picked those two because they
are of course from different parties,and yet Eisenhower of course, famously
kept on a lot of the New Deal policy.
Jeff Engel (28:35):
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Chervinsky (28:35):
Much to the chagrin and of the more radical
elements of the Republican party.
They were also very different men.
Jeff Engel (28:40):
Well, I think there's actually a simple explanation,
honestly, for this one.
Remember, HW Bush is exactly inthat demographic that never knew
another president their entire livesuntil Franklin Roosevelt died, and
he was also his commander in chief.
So when the war happened, and Bush startedtalking about his new world order, it was
quite— quite frequently pointed out thatthere's nothing new about this at all.
(29:03):
Bush's response was, . yeah, thisis the, this is the world I fought
for under Franklin Roosevelt.
We just never got a chance to implementit because the Cold War got in the way.
In terms of freedom of trade,American leadership in the world,
international accords and so on.
Also, Eisenhower was a family friend.
He used to go golfing with Eisenhower,and actually it's very interesting.
One of the reasons that he went golfingwith Eisenhower is because Bush's father
(29:25):
was one of Eisenhower's— who spentsome time in the Senate during his,
during the Eisenhower years, was oneof Eisenhower's favorite golf buddies.
The reason is Bushes, by theirvery nature, are extraordinarily
competitive, and Eisenhower noticedthat the elder Bush, whose first
name unfortunately, is just escapingme for this moment, I apologize.
He wouldn't let him cheat and hewouldn't— Eisenhower who was also
(29:47):
competitive, wanted somebody whowould actually give him a good game.
Lindsay Chervinsky (29:50):
Well, and to your point about people treating you
differently, there probably weren't thatmany people who would actually compete
with the president or with the formerpresident beacause of who Eisenhower was.
Jeff Engel (29:59):
Yeah, and I shouldn't, and I shouldn't have said
cheat, I should have said beat.
Everybody wants thepresident to like them.
So everybody wants the president towin when they're playing with them.
Not the Bushes.
They went in for the win.
Lindsay Chervinsky (30:09):
So would it be fair—
Jeff Engel (30:10):
Prescott.
Prescott's his name, sorry.
Lindsay Chervinsky (30:11):
—would it be fair to say that, Bush's— the people that he
learned leadership from then, were peoplethat he was close to, like he actually
had personal relationships with, asopposed to people that he had studied.
Jeff Engel (30:22):
If you extend personal relationship to include people
that he never met, but had a greatinfluence on his personal life,
like Franklin Roosevelt then, yes.
He never met Roosevelt that I'm aware of.
He really imbibed something that is eithernon-existent today or unfashionable,
which is a genuine sense that people whowere given great privilege in life, and
(30:44):
he was always aware of the privilegeshe had been given, and people who had
been given by God, great talents inlife, and he was very talented, we
talked about his memory, that theyhad commensurate duty to help others.
And in parentheses, the others is thoseless endowed and those less fortunate.
And that's the part that we're notsupposed to say out loud anymore, that
in this country, everybody's equal.
(31:05):
But the truth of matteris, look around the room.
Any room you're in, youcan see differences.
So Bush really believed that his formof leadership, which he saw exhibited
around him, both in Washington and hisown family, was one of giving back.
Lindsay Chervinsky (31:18):
That's actually like a founders esque—
Jeff Engel (31:20):
Yeah.
Lindsay Chervinsky: —approach to public service. (31:20):
undefined
Jeff Engel (31:22):
Well, and it's, and it's also important to note, just
like most of the founders, you know,better than I, you have to also
not worry about your next meal.
Lindsay Chervinsky (31:30):
Mm.
Jeff Engel (31:30):
When you're doing that.
Give you a good example.
When Bush was a young man, graduatedYale after World War II, was offered
a job at an investment bank, HarrimanBrothers, and would've had a great life
being an investment banker, would'velived in Greenwich like his dad, would've
gone to the country club, could'vehad an easy street from the age of
24, and especially after having foughtin World War II, who could blame him.
And Bush didn't want that.
He got a Studebaker convertible anddrove out to Texas and said, I'm gonna
(31:53):
get into the oil business, 'cause thatseems to be, that's where the action is.
Two things that are importantabout this, that they don't tell
you in the family mythology.
First, he had in his pocket a half milliondollar check from other investment bankers
that would help him start his business
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:08):
Helpful.
Jeff Engel (32:09):
Second, he had an offer, and he would actually get this offer every now
and then over the next couple of years,would you like to come back to New York?
Anytime you wanna come back toNew York and go into investment
banking, there's a job for you.
'Cause you're a Bush and you wentto Yale and you're a personable guy.
It's family lore that Bush struckout for the frontier on his own
and gambled with his family's life.
(32:29):
That is true only in the sense thathe always had a really good parachute.
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:33):
That does help with the courage part of it.
Jeff Engel (32:35):
It does.
It really does.
And I think like the founders,I think, my sense is that George
Washington never worried that hewasn't going to be the most important
person on his own plantation.
Yes, he had financial troubles, buthe never thought that he was never
going to be at the top of the foodchain for colonial American society.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:51):
Well, I think that's true after a certain point.
So it is true after his older halfbrother Lawrence dies and he inherits.
Jeff Engel (32:59):
Yes, yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:59):
And then he has wealth in a real way.
I think until that point he was verymuch on unstable ground and quite
reliant on connections and sort ofpersonal charisma to try and get ahead.
But then once he has money,then yes, you're right.
And has the good fortune of beingthe tallest person in the room most
of the time, and having the sort ofmilitary bearing that is quite useful,
(33:20):
and then showing up in moments inmilitary uniform, just as a suggestion.
Jeff Engel (33:23):
And this also explains again, your expertise, not mine, but
why so much of his early career isspent trying to build a reputation.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:31):
Yes.
' Jeff Engel (33:31):
Cause he wants to find something that's independent of the things
that he was gifted when he was born.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:36):
Yes, absolutely.
Jeff Engel (33:37):
Uh, it's the station in life that he was gifted.
Today, we would call itprivilege, to be honest.
Bush had a great sense ofhis own privilege, I think.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:43):
So, when we talk about leadership, that's kind
of a fuzzy term in today's meaning.
Jeff Engel (33:48):
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:48):
What does it mean to you?
Jeff Engel (33:49):
I'm gonna do that politicians thing where I'm gonna
answer a slightly different question.
I have been—
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:53):
It's politicians and media.
If you don't like the question,just don't accept the premise of it.
Jeff Engel (33:57):
You know, I am now in my third decade of teaching
at the university level.
And every institution I'vebeen involved in has said, we
want you to teach leadership.
And every institution I've ever beenat, I've made the point that you can't.
That you can demonstrateleadership, you can show examples of
leadership, but you can't actuallytrain someone to be a leader.
You can train them to have certain skillsthat might contribute to leadership.
(34:18):
But at the end of the day, leadership Ithink is being able to not only have a
vision, but being able to get other peopleto buy into your vision and understand
ultimately, success is not about you,it's usually about the organization.
So when your team succeeds, you succeed.
That's a really hard— and either youunderstand that in life or you don't.
(34:40):
And we all know successful people in theirsixties and seventies and eighties who
still make every situation about them.
And we know other leaders oforganizations who are more than
willing to let their subordinatesand their acolytes have the limelight
Lindsay Chervinsky (34:53):
In some ways, the Bush that you have described is understandable,
but I think perhaps might feelinaccessible to some people because he
had such a unique and extraordinary life.
Jeff Engel (35:04):
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Chervinsky (35:04):
But I'm a firm believer that presidential history and
presidential leadership can be appliedto the day-to-day, 'cause everyone
has leadership decisions they haveto make, whether it's just with peers
or running their own organization.
So what lessons does Bush 41'sleadership, what lessons about that are
accessible to this current moment and canwe apply to our work, our business, our
(35:26):
hobbies, our volunteer work, et cetera?
Jeff Engel (35:29):
I really thought about not only in terms of teaching and writing
about the presidency, but having workedwith the president, what could I learn
from him to make me a better leader.
I don't expect to be presidentof the United States, but
I do run an organization.
And the fact that he always used the termwe, and he always said, we are doing this.
It's an administration.
And he was very, very comfortable—again, 'cause he was at the top of the
(35:51):
food chain— very comfortable givingcredit to people around him for success.
And, and I think he knew that whena president succeeds, the president
succeeds, and the president's gonna getthe credit at the end of the day, so why
not turn to Bob at the moment and say,boy, Bob's the one that got this through.
Boy, Bob did a great job on this.
And help Bob in his careerand help Julie in hers.
(36:12):
And that I think is one of thekey lessons that I take from him,
that a leader succeeds when theorganization succeeds, and that you
will get your own credit in time.
People will recognize that yourorganization is good and you'll get
your goodies, but the way you getthere is by helping other people.
Lindsay Chervinsky (36:27):
What would you say to presidents that they should
keep in mind in terms of legacy?
How is that differentthan the average person?
Jeff Engel (36:35):
I think my first answer would be, what took you so long to call?
Um, but.
I actually would suggest thatpresidents should go back to
Washington and to the founders.
I think the most important thing thatI've taken from writing about this
period is the importance of virtue,and the classical sense of virtue.
(36:55):
That virtue and your reputation in thatera for men of that certain class was
derived from how much people thoughtthat you were putting the nation and the
community ahead of your own interests.
So I think if a president wakes upevery day and doesn't ask the question,
how am I gonna improve my legacy?
But wakes up every day and says, howam I gonna make this a better country?
(37:18):
A legacy will follow.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:19):
That's great.
Well, thank you so muchfor this conversation.
I am very grateful for your time.
Jeff Engel (37:24):
I'm very grateful for all the work that you do.
I'm just busting out with pride everytime I, I think of how great you're doing.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:30):
Thank you.
Well, it would not have beenpossible without this opportunity.
For those listening, we're recordingthis in Dallas at the, uh, SMU
library, but this is where I dida postdoctoral fellowship at the
Center for Presidential History anduh, so it's very nice to be back.
Jeff Engel (37:45):
It is important to note that you wouldn't have a career without us.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:48):
Obviously.
Jeff Engel (37:48):
I mean that's, that's, yeah.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:49):
Obviously.
Jeff Engel (37:50):
Obviously.
You can cut that part out.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:56):
Thank you for joining us this week on Leadership
and Legacy, and thank you so muchagain to our guest, Jeff Engel.
You can buy his books, includinghis excellent book on the end of
the Cold War, When the World SeemedNew, wherever books are sold.
Just as a reminder, if your local storedoesn't have a copy of the excellent
books of our guests, you can alwaysask them to order a copy for you.
(38:16):
They will be happy to do so.
I'm your host, Dr. Lindsey Chervinsky.
Leadership and Legacy (38:21):
Conversations at the George Washington Presidential
Library is a production of theMount Vernon Ladies' Association
and Primary Source Media.
In the spirit of George Washington'sleadership, we feature the perspectives of
leaders from across industries and fields.
As such, the thoughts expressed in thispodcast are solely the views of our
guests and do not reflect the opinionsof the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
(38:45):
To learn more about Washington'sleadership example, or to find out
how you can bring your team to theGeorge Washington Presidential Library,
go to GW leadership institute.org.
Or to find more great podcastsfrom Mount Vernon, visit
George Washington podcast.com.
You can also explore the work of PrimarySource Media at primarysourcemedia.com.
(39:08):
Join us in two weeks forour next great conversation.
What can the career of George HW Bush tell us about
history and presidential leadership?
Welcome to Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George (00:06):
undefined
Washington Presidential Library.
I'm Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, headof the library at Mount Vernon.
In this podcast series, we talk withexperts about leadership and history,
how studying these stories helpsus understand our current moment,
and how we can apply lessons fromleaders in the past to our own lives.
(00:27):
Today I am joined by Jeffrey Engel,whose official title is David Gergen
Director of the Center for PresidentialHistory at Southern Methodist
University, but who I used to callboss, and mostly because it annoyed him.
You see, if you looked up theword "mensch" in the dictionary,
you would see Jeff's face.
In addition to being a first ratechap, an excellent mentor, and someone
I now proudly call a friend, Jeffis also an exceptional historian.
(00:50):
He has an ability to see the humanityin people, without falling in love with
his subject, which is no small feat.
His work on the Cold Warfundamentally changed how I
think of the presidency, Americanpower, George HW Bush, and legacy.
I know you'll learn asmuch from him as I do.
Who are some of the presidents you havestudied and why did you choose them?
Jeff Engel (01:14):
I started in 1946 with Harry Truman.
It was the first real project I ever did.
That was my undergraduate thesis.
I had a grant from the NEH back whenthey used to give undergraduates grants,
and I wrote on the 1946 Franco-AmericanLoan, which is so important.
You've never heard of it.
And Truman was really the first guy thatI got into, which of course, brought me
(01:37):
back to Roosevelt, and then I would sayI didn't necessarily focus on presidents
as much as time periods at first.
I was focused on the Cold War until itcame time to do my second book, and my
first book came out and my departmentchair very nicely, one afternoon, very
nice guy, came down the hall and said, sowhat are you doing for your second book?
And I said, I don't know, I, I thinkmaybe the economic diplomacy of the 1920s.
(01:59):
And he said, instead of that, whydon't you go look at this diary that
just opened up at the Bush Library.
And I went over and it turns out itwas Bush's diary, HW Bush's diary
from when he was ambassador toChina in the early 1970s, mid 1970s.
And I've been stuck with him andthe ends of the Cold War ever since.
It's just utterly fascinating.
I never in a million years thoughtI would do something that modern.
(02:19):
But the questions were justcompletely fascinating.
Lindsay Chervinsky (02:22):
So we're gonna circle back and talk about him in
a lot more detail, but I'm reallycurious to know what it is like or
what the differences are betweenstudying someone that you have spent
time with and someone that you haven't.
Perhaps you can tell the listenersa little bit about the time
you spent with him so they knowwhy I'm asking that question.
(02:42):
This was something I wanted to ask rightat the beginning of the conversation
because Engel, as you will hear,actually got to know George HW Bush.
As someone who has mostly writtenon presidents from 200 years ago,
I was curious about how knowingyour subject could impact the work.
He wisely pointed out that theimpact depends on how you end
up feeling about that person.
Jeff Engel (03:06):
Yes.
In fact, I actually think it'sa three parted question to me,
or a three headed question.
'Cause I think it's, um, spendingtime with somebody versus not spending
time with somebody, but also spendingtime with somebody that you like, and—
Lindsay Chervinsky (03:18):
Yeah, that's an important detail.
Jeff Engel (03:19):
Well, and, and I've had both.
So for your readers, I had the opportunityto work on George HW Bush's diary when he
was in China, and we effectively wrote abook together on that where I did all the
annotations and, I interviewed him dozensand dozens and dozens of times, and then
subsequently did that for my next book,which was a study of his time as president
and his foreign policy in particular.
(03:40):
And I was teaching at the Bush School formuch of that time and spent a lot of time
with the president and with Mrs. Bushand um, a lot of social time as well.
And in fact, I sort of consideredhim a grandfather in many ways
and I still miss him to be honest.
And that made it very difficult to writeabout him because I was very keen that
(04:01):
whenever I was writing something about himand I found myself thinking, I wonder what
the president's gonna think about thatsentence, I would literally push away from
the keyboard and say, you can't go there.
You cannot think that way.
Like, that's not your job.
So there are a lot of places where I'mvery critical of his foreign policy
and to his great credit, he was adamantthat people who make history and people
(04:25):
who write history have two separateand important jobs and that the makers
should not get in the way of the writers.
So he was wonderful to work with.
I actually wonder, as I work on differentprojects now, in depth, how difficult
it is to write in depth about a humanbeing that I've never spoken to.
Because when I would readBush, I could hear his voice.
I've been working on H RossPerot lately, and I never had the
(04:47):
opportunity to meet Perot, and soI understood Bush's mannerisms.
I understood, you know, the twinkle inhis eye and so on, and I don't have that
for Perot, and it's a different process.
Lindsay Chervinsky (04:57):
I can relate to that.
I was doing a little bit ofwork on Eisenhower and all of a
sudden had the revelation thatI could listen to his speeches.
And knew what his voice sounded likeafter writing about Washington and
Adams, whose voice I do not know,that was a wild, wild realization.
Jeff Engel (05:14):
That actually must be really cool.
And you could actually see him too.
Lindsay Chervinsky (05:17):
Yeah.
Jeff Engel (05:17):
You see him move.
Lindsay Chervinsky (05:18):
It's extraordinary.
And then for me at least, then I startedto get into the space of, there's so
much material because you have allof that audio visual, like how do you
even begin to cut down on what you use.
So I, I had not planned to ask thisquestion, but now I'm super curious.
How did talking to someone who youdidn't like, and I won't make you name
names unless you want to offer them,how did that shape your writing process?
(05:42):
Did you have to push backagainst the opposite?
Jeff Engel (05:43):
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (05:44):
Like you didn't want your dislike to come into the text?
Jeff Engel (05:46):
Yes.
I spent a considerable amount of time inmy life writing on somebody who I don't
want to name, because I wrote a very longobituary that's going to come out when
he or she dies, could not stand the guy.
And— I guess I say he is a guy— didn'tlike him, didn't like his policies, didn't
like the way he treated other people,didn't like the way he treated me, didn't
(06:06):
like the way he treated the nation.
And again, I had the same processwhere if I would find myself
writing something and saying, amI being emotionally disparaging?
I literally would push away from thekeyboard and say, that's not your job.
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:19):
Okay.
So let's dig into HWBush a little bit more.
For brevity, I will becalling him Bush 41.
Jeff Engel (06:26):
That's, that's, that's my favorite— actually, can I
tell a funny story about that?
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:29):
Please do.
Jeff Engel (06:30):
So, when I was working on — working with, Bush 41, was during
the time when Bush 43 was president andwe had very young kids in preschool.
So, you know, to try to differentiatewhen we were talking around dinner table
about what daddy did today at work,versus what's going on in the country.
We started referring to him asthe "daddy President Bush" and the
"little boy President Bush," andwe still call him the little boy
(06:52):
President Bush around our house.
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:54):
How does Bush 43 feel about that?
Jeff Engel (06:56):
I have never mentioned this to him.
Lindsay Chervinsky (06:57):
Oh, okay.
How did his father feel about that?
Jeff Engel (06:59):
I never mentioned that to him either.
Lindsay Chervinsky (07:00):
That's probably a good omission.
That is fantastic.
Okay, so because you knew him, thisis not usually a question that I
get to ask people who write aboutpresidents, but because you knew him,
I'm wondering if you could talk tous a little bit about what you feel
were his defining personality traitsthat made him who he was as a leader.
This question became a launch pointfor a much broader conversation
(07:23):
about presidential leadership.
Engel stressed Bush's tremendous energy,but also a sense of self-awareness about
the fact that it was his position aspresident, not necessarily anything about
himself, that had the greatest impact.
Jeff Engel (07:39):
That's a great question.
Um, the first one that leaps tomind is his astounding energy.
And I saw him at the end of hislife and I saw astounding energy.
He actually tailed off in the lastcouple of years, as people do.
But I saw him when he was still primand proper, and what was amazing was
having now gone back and read throughhis diary, from different periods of
(08:01):
his presidency, he actually developed athyroid condition when he was president.
And one of the things that he writes inthe diary that's really interesting is he
says, I'm paraphrasing, I'm experiencingthis thing that other people have always
told me about, which is called fatigue.
Because he just never had it.
And he also had an incredible memory.
So the stories are legion of him walkingout— when he was campaigning, walking
(08:24):
into a building, having somebody,one of the campaign aides say, okay,
there's 67 people work in this building.
Two hours later walking outta the buildingand he'll say, wait a minute, I only
met 64, where's—and then, then he'd namethe three names that he had been shown.
That was when he was presidentand running for president.
When I met him, he was not pleased withhis own memory, which I thought was
really fascinating because he, I think,had come down to what we might consider
(08:48):
a normal person's memory, or a geniusperson's memory, but he felt a decrease.
So I think memory and energyare two really important things.
And if you think about it, that'sactually the way that he ran his entire
political career, was based upon personalrelationships, and based upon becoming
friends with people, and one waythat he could do that was, if he had
lunch with you, 25 years later, he'dremember what you guys talked about.
Lindsay Chervinsky (09:10):
Wow.
Jeff Engel (09:11):
And that was really effective when you want to be a,
a retail politician, if you will.
Lindsay Chervinsky (09:15):
Well, it is, especially because I think people have
this expectation today that politicians,they meet so many people who— so they
might be nice to you, to your face,they might show interest, but the
likelihood that the minute they stepup from the table, they're not gonna
remember anything you have to say.
Jeff Engel (09:29):
That's my assumption.
Lindsay Chervinsky (09:29):
Yeah, that's my assumption too.
So for someone to feel so invested,you can see how that would be very
endearing and would inspire a lotof loyalty in people around him.
Jeff Engel (09:40):
Oh, most definitely.
And again, here's a case where readinga person's diary can be very interesting
because in his diary, both when, whenhe was ambassador and then subsequently
when he was president, though, thathas not been released to the public
yet, he often will say, I'm feelinga little overwhelmed and burnt out.
I've been working nonstop.
You know what I need to do?
I need to get a big party, andwe need to invite people over.
(10:03):
So I, and, and because people energizedhim, and I always was astounded by
that 'cause I would say, boy, ifI'm exhausted, the last thing I want
to do is have other people around.
But he drew energy from otherpeople, which is, I think, really
important to his personality.
There's one other element which I thinkis really important, and this really
came through from knowing him personally,was his personal empathy and sense of
(10:26):
his own power, by which I mean, he wasto the manor born, you know, he is the
epitome of silver spoon, noblesse oblige,and he would never deny otherwise.
And he was very sympathetic, bothwhen he was president and then
after he was president, to how hisactions as president and a former
president would affect average people.
(10:48):
I'll give you two examples.
When I was teaching at the Bush School,I used to invite him to class, whenever
the students would do— once a year,they'd do a simulation, it was a
public policy school, so we're doinginternational security, and I would
invite the students in when they hadto present to the president and he
would play the part of the president.
And at one point during a break, Isaid, Mr. President, I gotta tell
you, you're really terrible at this.
(11:10):
You are terrible at playing thepresident, because I've read the
National Security Council minuteswhen you were president and you asked
really hard, insightful questions.
Every question you ask these kidsis softer than the last softball.
And he looked at me and he said, canyou imagine what would happen if one
of these kids called home and said thepresident came to class today and said my
idea was dumb, how devastated they wouldbe, and he just wasn't gonna go there.
(11:30):
Similarly, we, we were out to lunch onceand him and I and Mrs. Bush and, and his
chief of staff and we were sitting in acorner of a restaurant in College Station
and there's only one other person sittingin that room, it's a young kid, maybe
19, 20 years old, sitting by himself,and he's clearly nervous and he's clearly
dressed up, and it's a nice restaurant,like he's clearly waiting for somebody.
(11:51):
So, young lady shows up, and the guymeets her, pulls out the chair, tucks
her back in, et cetera, et cetera, andPresident Bush, at the end of the meal
when we were leaving, got up and said tothe girl, I want you to go tell your dad.
This guy's a good guy.
He's a gentleman.
And he didn't have to do that.
Also, he knew that if he was a normalperson, walking up to someone saying,
tell your dad that he's a gentleman,they would think that was creepy.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:14):
That's so true
Jeff Engel (12:14):
But here she could say, hey, I saw the president, and the
president said, Bob's a good guy.
And I presume they're married now.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:20):
Well, yeah, of course.
I feel like with that first date, itsounds like it was the first date,
you don't really have a choice.
Jeff Engel (12:25):
Yeah.
I was gonna say you have no choice.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:26):
Yeah.
Jeff Engel (12:26):
Presidential approval.
Lindsay Chervinsky (12:27):
That type of self-awareness is extraordinary.
You've studied a lot of presidents.
How many of them do you think have that.
Jeff Engel (12:35):
I think most of them develop it, but I would make a distinction between
those that are able to differentiatebetween the fact that people pay attention
to them because they're president,which means everybody listens to what
you say, everybody hangs on everyword, everybody laughs at your joke.
Everybody lets you pick up your putt.
All kinds of things when you're president.
There are some people, somepresidents who recognize that's
(12:56):
because they're president.
Dwight Eisenhower,actually, great example.
He used to complain all the time thatwhen he was no longer president, people
wouldn't let him cheat at golf as much.
Uh.
Other presidents, some who I'd rathernot name, I think never understood
that it wasn't their own abilities.
It was the fact that—
Lindsay Chervinsky (13:13):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (13:14):
—the president was an important idea in people's minds.
You always say, you can hearpeople when they're in the presence
of a, any president, Democrat,Republican, doesn't matter.
Say, oh my goodness, thisperson was so charismatic.
Oh my goodness, this person lit up a room.
Well, the truth is, everybody'sstaring at the person to begin
with because they're president.
So the presidents who I think candifferentiate between the office and
the fact that they are not brilliant,it's the office that's brilliant, is
(13:37):
a key distinction between the typetwo types of presidents, if you will.
Lindsay Chervinsky (13:41):
That's such an important idea because I think the office
of the presidency, that— the power ofthat position is one that Americans
have really grappled with because itis unlike anything else in the world,
and because it is not hereditary, itis not really backed by military force
in the same way an autocracy would be.
We don't have to uphold it in that way.
We uphold it becauseAmericans choose to uphold it.
(14:03):
And yet it is not based on a person.
So it's not personality based.
It's a very tricky concept that wegrapple with at times better than others.
Jeff Engel (14:12):
I think especially nowadays, I'm of the belief that politics
changed around the time that BillClinton was president in a fundamental
way, and we haven't changed back.
Wherein before Clinton was president—and I'm talking about the modern
presidency, I'm not gonna talk aboutpresidents from your time period, 'cause
you know those so much better than Iand and will probably tell me that my
presumption is wrong, 'cause I, I thinkfrom what little I know about politics
(14:35):
from your era, it was pretty nasty too.
But in the Cold War era, beforeBill Clinton, there was, I think
a general grudging respect of thepresident from his political enemies.
Lindsay Chervinsky (14:45):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (14:45):
Which means they weren't actually even political enemies.
They were political adversaries.
Lindsay Chervinsky (14:48):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (14:49):
They weren't enemies.
Starting with Clinton, peoplestarted to hate the president.
Whether it's hating Clinton, hatingBush, hating Obama, I mean, you go
through the list hating Trump, obviously.
The emotional element got involvedand I think that's actually a problem,
not just a problem that people hate,which is not useful for politics, but
also it diminishes the office of thepresidency and it makes people assume
(15:14):
that the president of another partyis not interested in their welfare.
And that also by the way, makespresidents perhaps a little bit less
interested in everyone's welfareand not their own constituencies.
Lindsay Chervinsky (15:25):
So I'm gonna take the host's prerogative and do just a
tiny bit of a u-turn here, which is tosay that one, because this podcast is
about leadership, and typically we willfocus on presidential leadership, but
one of the most effect leaders that wehave seen in, I would argue the last 50
years, is the former speaker of the house.
Jeff Engel (15:40):
Oh yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (15:41):
Nancy Pelosi.
And she, I think would agree withyou about the change in politics.
In interviews, I've heard her say asmuch and she blames it on Newt Gingrich.
Jeff Engel (15:50):
Everybody blames it on Newt Gingrich.
Lindsay Chervinsky (15:52):
Easy target.
Jeff Engel (15:53):
Well, he is.
And, and, um, Julian Zelizerhas a great book on this.
Um, Nikki Hemmer has a great book on this.
You know but there's this generalconsensus that Gingrich was able to
manipulate the media of television betterthan anyone for his own political gain
and recognized that one of the interestingthings about television, when you're
(16:13):
being interviewed is, there's often notsomeone who's going to push back on you,
and if they do that doesn't necessarilymean that they're gonna show that clip.
So—
Lindsay Chervinsky (16:20):
Yes
Jeff Engel (16:20):
—you can say whatever the hell you want and it'll get broadcast.
It's very McCarthyite in a sense.
And people don't pay attention tothe refutation, and the incentive
for the opposing side, if you will,is to come up with something more
outrageous to say, to get their airtime.
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Lindsay Chervinsky (17:24):
All right, back to Bush 41.
What were the biggest mistakes thathe made over the course of his life,
and what did he learn from them?
Jeff Engel (17:33):
I'm gonna complicate mistake and disappointment.
He was always disappointedthat he was never able to win
statewide office in Texas.
He ran for Senate and lost twice.
I think he learned from that, I can'twin statewide office in, in Texas.
And there is an irony here that hewas too conservative for the nation
in many ways by the end of his term,but not conservative enough for Texas.
(17:55):
That you know, you could getelected president but not governor.
So I think he learned from that experiencethat he was not going to succeed in that
realm, and he didn't try a third time.
He moved into first, appointed office,and then the vice presidency, but he
never again tried on a Texas level.
Lindsay Chervinsky (18:11):
Interesting.
So on the flip side of that, if thosewere his disappointments, what were
his greatest leadership moments,whether they be in his previous
positions or in the presidency.
Jeff Engel (18:20):
The thesis of my book about him is that he was an
extraordinary, effective leader offoreign policy, arguably the best.
Lindsay Chervinsky: What is the book called? (18:28):
undefined
Jeff Engel (18:29):
When the World Seemed New
and the End of the Cold War.
And it's based on 10 years of goingthrough the documents and pulling
out and declassifying documents.
It's actually very handy to beemployed by a school that is 300
yards from a presidential archive,and you have students that you
can assign to fill out forms.
So—
Lindsay Chervinsky (18:48):
And you have a president that is in
theory, in favor of this project.
Jeff Engel (18:51):
Yes, very, very much so.
That was actually a huge help.
What was astounding from that is, firstof all, most people remember the end
of the Cold War as a rousing success.
In fact, if you have asked theaverage American, if they have an
opinion on this, which increasinglythey don't, they'll tell you, oh
yes, Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.
And they'll use the term "won."
More important than that is that thisis the first time in history that
(19:12):
we've had a major empire collapsewithout an ensuing great power war.
By the way, you could argue that the warin Ukraine is actually sort of part of
the war of Soviet succession, if you will.
We'd never run that experiment inhistory with nuclear weapons involved.
So Bush appreciated just howdangerous this moment was.
And Bush time after time, aftertime, quietly via telephone or via a
(19:35):
handwritten note, communicated withother leaders to lower international
tensions, and then did the other keything, which is he didn't talk about it.
Because that would blow the whole purpose.
Lindsay Chervinsky (19:45):
Engel emphasized the importance of
strategic restraint in leadership,particularly presidential leadership.
Bush, he argues, intentionallydidn't gloat about his foreign
policy successes, because that wouldhave undermined the relationships
he had built that had made thosesuccesses possible in the first place.
And that, Engel suggests,had ramifications at home.
Jeff Engel (20:07):
If you talk about something publicly and embarrass someone, then that
defeats the purpose of quiet diplomacy.
So one of the reasons, there areseveral reasons, but one of the
reasons I think that he did not winreelection is because he never told
the American people how good he was.
Because he didn't think itwas in a nation's interest.
And I can assure you, I have all thememos from his campaign staff and from his
(20:28):
political advisors saying, we need to getthis message out about how successful we
have been, because when you're successfulin diplomacy, it oftentimes, it doesn't
make the front page of the times.
It only does when you fail.
And he refused to ever boast, if youwill, about his own accomplishments,
especially in the diplomatic realm,because he thought, first of all it
wasn't gentlemanly, but more importantlyit wasn't in the nation's interest.
(20:48):
He had a, he had a line about this wherehe said about when the Berlin wall fell
and people were encouraging him to go tothe Berlin Wall, he said, I'm not gonna
dance on the wall, because that wouldembarrass Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.
Lindsay Chervinsky (20:58):
It strikes me that, that's very similar to intelligence and
the military in that when they have asuccess, you often don't know about it.
Jeff Engel (21:07):
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (21:08):
And when they have a failure, things tend to blow up.
Jeff Engel (21:10):
Yes.
And you and I are speakingin the aftermath of another
potential assassination attemptagainst former President Trump.
And I think, obviously we all believethat's horrific, but I do think it's
worthwhile to note that we don'thear about all their incredible
successes for the Secret Service.
They're getting criticized today, butI wish we could put it in a context,
and we don't have the numbers to putit in a context, but we know that
(21:31):
there's a lot of successes as well.
Lindsay Chervinsky (21:33):
We do.
And in fact, if you Google threats againstthe president, there are some records
that have started to come out aboutthings that did not make the news the
time, but just like lists of threats thatthey learned about, that they changed the
route of a car, they decided to go to adifferent direction based on the threat.
And it's worth noting how many ofthem there are on a regular basis.
Jeff Engel (21:53):
Most definitely.
Lindsay Chervinsky (21:54):
So I think that you could characterize what you just described
about Bush in one word, or the one wordI guess I would use would be restraint.
Jeff Engel (22:03):
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:03):
This is a theme I've been harping on a great deal about lately
because I think that John Adams exerciseda great deal of restraint in 1800.
Restraint is not always very sexy.
Jeff Engel (22:12):
No.
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:13):
It does not typically get monuments made to it.
Although I was told by an audiencemember that there is a Temperance
Monument in Washington DC, which intheory is a monument to restraint,
but presidential restraint doesn'ttypically get the monuments.
Why not?
Why don't we celebrate that as much?
Jeff Engel (22:28):
Well, I think we don't see it that much in presidents in particular.
'Cause we have to remember, and I hopeyou've made this point to your audience
before, just 'cause I'm sure you'veheard me say it a thousand times, that
all presidents are basically sociopaths.
And think about the ego that isrequired to become president of the
United States, and now in the modernera, the ego that is required to say,
yes, I will take control of enoughnuclear weaponry to destroy humanity.
(22:52):
Personally in charge of it.
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:53):
Well, and just to be clear, you're not even
saying ego in a bad way per se,but that you have to have such—
Jeff Engel (22:57):
You have to have it
Lindsay Chervinsky (22:58):
—in— insane confidence that you are the person
that should be making those decisions.
Jeff Engel (23:02):
I mean, there's 350 million people in this country.
And you have to genuinely believe that youare the best person or you shouldn't be
doing the job and you can't do the job.
And that's not normal.
And consequently, I think we should notexpect those people necessarily to act
in a restrained manner 'cause they didn'tsucceed by acting in a restrained manner.
And it's only the, I would argue thebetter presidents, who are able to
(23:24):
appreciate, especially in foreignpolicy, the quality of restraint.
There was some talk, for example,when Barack Obama was leaving
office, people were looking aroundfor a historical comparison.
And Derek Chollet, who now is withthe Defense Department, I think, he
wrote a really interesting book wherehe made the point that Obama's heroes
from a foreign policy perspectivewere Eisenhower and George HW Bush.
(23:47):
And now stop for a second and think aboutwhat a caricature or what a comedian's
impression of Barack Obama sounds like.
It's.
Incredibly.
Slow.
Lindsay Chervinsky (24:02):
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Engel (24:03):
Which is not how he was on the campaign trail, but he
learned over time that every worda president says has a potential to
crash the stock market or cause a war.
And he was very, very restrained,especially by the end of his presidency.
And not every presidenthas learned that lesson.
Lindsay Chervinsky (24:15):
Is there a way that we think we can
cultivate restraint in leadership?
Or is it kind of like you justhave to hope someone learns it?
Jeff Engel (24:22):
So there is no great preparation to be president
because there's no equivalent job.
So by definition, we're putting somebodyin an uncomfortable position, and if we
believe in the Peter principle, at somepoint we're gonna get people rising up to
that position who are not up to the task.
And I am very uncomfortable, thoughI don't have a better solution, very
uncomfortable with the way that we choosepresidents now because I think we choose
(24:42):
the person who is the best campaignerand the best retail politician, and
forget that actually we want this personto make fundamental policy decisions
about America's future, especiallyfor areas that we don't know yet.
One of the most amazing projects I everparticipated in was a project to look at
what happened over time to a president'sforeign policy in their first year.
(25:04):
And the takeaway across all ofthe presidents that were looked
at, and I was only involved inthe 20th century part, but I think
they did 19th century part too.
The 20th century part obviously ismuch more important 'cause it is.
Lindsay Chervinsky (25:15):
Listeners, I'm rolling my eyes.
Jeff Engel (25:16):
Yes, she is.
Every single president faceda crisis that no one would've
anticipated in their first year.
If you made a list on inaugurationday of, here are the places
where we need to worry about.
Every single one of them faced acrisis that was not on the list.
And we need to remember when we'reelecting somebody that we should
be focused on, I think, their basiccompetence and their basic character
(25:38):
because there is no way that you canpresent somebody with the scenario that
they're going to have to deal with.
Lindsay Chervinsky (25:43):
Absolutely.
I mean, two fantastic examples inthis century alone are George W. Bush.
Bush 43.
Jeff Engel (25:50):
Yep.
Lindsay Chervinsky (25:50):
Ran on the economy, and September 11th happened
eight months into his presidency.
And Joe Biden ran on the pandemicand the economy and racial
reckoning, and Ukraine happened justover a year into his presidency.
Jeff Engel (26:03):
Yes, and go through the list, Somalia for Clinton.
Frankly, the entire end of the ColdWar for HW Bush, Reagan had issues.
Carter had issues.
And in each case they were forced to bothlearn on the job, how to be president, and
learn on the job about a place and a thingthat they had never thought about before.
Which is why there's one other elementwhich I think people need to remember when
(26:26):
they're thinking about presidents, andof course, we're having this discussion
in the context of election season.
I think we focus too much on votingfor the president, and I think we need
to remember that the president is notmaking most of the decisions that are
coming outta the executive branch.
George W. Bush had agreat line about this.
He said, things don't get tomy desk unless no one else
can solve them as president.
So what you're really electing are the7,000 people that the president's gonna
(26:49):
bring to Washington with him or her.
'Cause they're the ones who are actuallygonna make most of the decisions.
So find somebody who you think has agood sense of character and good sense
of judgment about the people thathe or she surrounds themselves with.
Lindsay Chervinsky (27:01):
One of the main themes of this show is the interaction
between history and leadership.
So I wanted to know (27:06):
did Bush draw on history to inform his leadership style?
The answer it turns out is a mixed bag.
We have been talking about, you know,obviously, our sense of history, and
we're historians, so obviously we love it.
But did Bush 41 have anappreciation of history?
Was that something that you feltcontributed to his abilities?
Jeff Engel (27:27):
Yes.
Yes and no.
He was not as vigorous a reader ofhistories as other presidents, uh,
including frankly, I think his own son.
Doesn't get credit enough forhow much he read while in office.
Bush 41, I think was very, verykeen on understanding his role and
the nation's moment in history.
Remember, he joins the Navy at age 18.
(27:49):
He's the second youngest navalaviator in the Pacific Theater.
Used to be that we could say hewas the youngest and somebody found
somebody younger, so that's annoying,we have to say second youngest.
So at 19, he's commanding troops in combatand flying combat missions and so on,
and comes from his storied family, andis always thinking of himself, expecting
himself, to be at the pinnacle of society.
So he was very keen that hispolicies lined up with Franklin
(28:13):
Roosevelt's and that his policieslined up with Dwight Eisenhower's.
What are the consistencies here thatmake us Americans in our foreign policy?
Even though times have changed,even though situations have
changed, how do we know who we areexcept from our sense of history?
Lindsay Chervinsky (28:25):
It's fascinating that he picked those two because they
are of course from different parties,and yet Eisenhower of course, famously
kept on a lot of the New Deal policy.
Jeff Engel (28:35):
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Chervinsky (28:35):
Much to the chagrin and of the more radical
elements of the Republican party.
They were also very different men.
Jeff Engel (28:40):
Well, I think there's actually a simple explanation,
honestly, for this one.
Remember, HW Bush is exactly inthat demographic that never knew
another president their entire livesuntil Franklin Roosevelt died, and
he was also his commander in chief.
So when the war happened, and Bush startedtalking about his new world order, it was
quite— quite frequently pointed out thatthere's nothing new about this at all.
(29:03):
Bush's response was, . yeah, thisis the, this is the world I fought
for under Franklin Roosevelt.
We just never got a chance to implementit because the Cold War got in the way.
In terms of freedom of trade,American leadership in the world,
international accords and so on.
Also, Eisenhower was a family friend.
He used to go golfing with Eisenhower,and actually it's very interesting.
One of the reasons that he went golfingwith Eisenhower is because Bush's father
(29:25):
was one of Eisenhower's— who spentsome time in the Senate during his,
during the Eisenhower years, was oneof Eisenhower's favorite golf buddies.
The reason is Bushes, by theirvery nature, are extraordinarily
competitive, and Eisenhower noticedthat the elder Bush, whose first
name unfortunately, is just escapingme for this moment, I apologize.
He wouldn't let him cheat and hewouldn't— Eisenhower who was also
(29:47):
competitive, wanted somebody whowould actually give him a good game.
Lindsay Chervinsky (29:50):
Well, and to your point about people treating you
differently, there probably weren't thatmany people who would actually compete
with the president or with the formerpresident beacause of who Eisenhower was.
Jeff Engel (29:59):
Yeah, and I shouldn't, and I shouldn't have said
cheat, I should have said beat.
Everybody wants thepresident to like them.
So everybody wants the president towin when they're playing with them.
Not the Bushes.
They went in for the win.
Lindsay Chervinsky (30:09):
So would it be fair—
Jeff Engel (30:10):
Prescott.
Prescott's his name, sorry.
Lindsay Chervinsky (30:11):
—would it be fair to say that, Bush's— the people that he
learned leadership from then, were peoplethat he was close to, like he actually
had personal relationships with, asopposed to people that he had studied.
Jeff Engel (30:22):
If you extend personal relationship to include people
that he never met, but had a greatinfluence on his personal life,
like Franklin Roosevelt then, yes.
He never met Roosevelt that I'm aware of.
He really imbibed something that is eithernon-existent today or unfashionable,
which is a genuine sense that people whowere given great privilege in life, and
(30:44):
he was always aware of the privilegeshe had been given, and people who had
been given by God, great talents inlife, and he was very talented, we
talked about his memory, that theyhad commensurate duty to help others.
And in parentheses, the others is thoseless endowed and those less fortunate.
And that's the part that we're notsupposed to say out loud anymore, that
in this country, everybody's equal.
(31:05):
But the truth of matteris, look around the room.
Any room you're in, youcan see differences.
So Bush really believed that his formof leadership, which he saw exhibited
around him, both in Washington and hisown family, was one of giving back.
Lindsay Chervinsky (31:18):
That's actually like a founders esque—
Jeff Engel (31:20):
Yeah.
Lindsay Chervinsky: —approach to public service. (31:20):
undefined
Jeff Engel (31:22):
Well, and it's, and it's also important to note, just
like most of the founders, you know,better than I, you have to also
not worry about your next meal.
Lindsay Chervinsky (31:30):
Mm.
Jeff Engel (31:30):
When you're doing that.
Give you a good example.
When Bush was a young man, graduatedYale after World War II, was offered
a job at an investment bank, HarrimanBrothers, and would've had a great life
being an investment banker, would'velived in Greenwich like his dad, would've
gone to the country club, could'vehad an easy street from the age of
24, and especially after having foughtin World War II, who could blame him.
And Bush didn't want that.
He got a Studebaker convertible anddrove out to Texas and said, I'm gonna
(31:53):
get into the oil business, 'cause thatseems to be, that's where the action is.
Two things that are importantabout this, that they don't tell
you in the family mythology.
First, he had in his pocket a half milliondollar check from other investment bankers
that would help him start his business
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:08):
Helpful.
Jeff Engel (32:09):
Second, he had an offer, and he would actually get this offer every now
and then over the next couple of years,would you like to come back to New York?
Anytime you wanna come back toNew York and go into investment
banking, there's a job for you.
'Cause you're a Bush and you wentto Yale and you're a personable guy.
It's family lore that Bush struckout for the frontier on his own
and gambled with his family's life.
(32:29):
That is true only in the sense thathe always had a really good parachute.
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:33):
That does help with the courage part of it.
Jeff Engel (32:35):
It does.
It really does.
And I think like the founders,I think, my sense is that George
Washington never worried that hewasn't going to be the most important
person on his own plantation.
Yes, he had financial troubles, buthe never thought that he was never
going to be at the top of the foodchain for colonial American society.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:51):
Well, I think that's true after a certain point.
So it is true after his older halfbrother Lawrence dies and he inherits.
Jeff Engel (32:59):
Yes, yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky (32:59):
And then he has wealth in a real way.
I think until that point he was verymuch on unstable ground and quite
reliant on connections and sort ofpersonal charisma to try and get ahead.
But then once he has money,then yes, you're right.
And has the good fortune of beingthe tallest person in the room most
of the time, and having the sort ofmilitary bearing that is quite useful,
(33:20):
and then showing up in moments inmilitary uniform, just as a suggestion.
Jeff Engel (33:23):
And this also explains again, your expertise, not mine, but
why so much of his early career isspent trying to build a reputation.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:31):
Yes.
' Jeff Engel (33:31):
Cause he wants to find something that's independent of the things
that he was gifted when he was born.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:36):
Yes, absolutely.
Jeff Engel (33:37):
Uh, it's the station in life that he was gifted.
Today, we would call itprivilege, to be honest.
Bush had a great sense ofhis own privilege, I think.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:43):
So, when we talk about leadership, that's kind
of a fuzzy term in today's meaning.
Jeff Engel (33:48):
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:48):
What does it mean to you?
Jeff Engel (33:49):
I'm gonna do that politicians thing where I'm gonna
answer a slightly different question.
I have been—
Lindsay Chervinsky (33:53):
It's politicians and media.
If you don't like the question,just don't accept the premise of it.
Jeff Engel (33:57):
You know, I am now in my third decade of teaching
at the university level.
And every institution I'vebeen involved in has said, we
want you to teach leadership.
And every institution I've ever beenat, I've made the point that you can't.
That you can demonstrateleadership, you can show examples of
leadership, but you can't actuallytrain someone to be a leader.
You can train them to have certain skillsthat might contribute to leadership.
(34:18):
But at the end of the day, leadership Ithink is being able to not only have a
vision, but being able to get other peopleto buy into your vision and understand
ultimately, success is not about you,it's usually about the organization.
So when your team succeeds, you succeed.
That's a really hard— and either youunderstand that in life or you don't.
(34:40):
And we all know successful people in theirsixties and seventies and eighties who
still make every situation about them.
And we know other leaders oforganizations who are more than
willing to let their subordinatesand their acolytes have the limelight
Lindsay Chervinsky (34:53):
In some ways, the Bush that you have described is understandable,
but I think perhaps might feelinaccessible to some people because he
had such a unique and extraordinary life.
Jeff Engel (35:04):
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Chervinsky (35:04):
But I'm a firm believer that presidential history and
presidential leadership can be appliedto the day-to-day, 'cause everyone
has leadership decisions they haveto make, whether it's just with peers
or running their own organization.
So what lessons does Bush 41'sleadership, what lessons about that are
accessible to this current moment and canwe apply to our work, our business, our
(35:26):
hobbies, our volunteer work, et cetera?
Jeff Engel (35:29):
I really thought about not only in terms of teaching and writing
about the presidency, but having workedwith the president, what could I learn
from him to make me a better leader.
I don't expect to be presidentof the United States, but
I do run an organization.
And the fact that he always used the termwe, and he always said, we are doing this.
It's an administration.
And he was very, very comfortable—again, 'cause he was at the top of the
(35:51):
food chain— very comfortable givingcredit to people around him for success.
And, and I think he knew that whena president succeeds, the president
succeeds, and the president's gonna getthe credit at the end of the day, so why
not turn to Bob at the moment and say,boy, Bob's the one that got this through.
Boy, Bob did a great job on this.
And help Bob in his careerand help Julie in hers.
(36:12):
And that I think is one of thekey lessons that I take from him,
that a leader succeeds when theorganization succeeds, and that you
will get your own credit in time.
People will recognize that yourorganization is good and you'll get
your goodies, but the way you getthere is by helping other people.
Lindsay Chervinsky (36:27):
What would you say to presidents that they should
keep in mind in terms of legacy?
How is that differentthan the average person?
Jeff Engel (36:35):
I think my first answer would be, what took you so long to call?
Um, but.
I actually would suggest thatpresidents should go back to
Washington and to the founders.
I think the most important thing thatI've taken from writing about this
period is the importance of virtue,and the classical sense of virtue.
(36:55):
That virtue and your reputation in thatera for men of that certain class was
derived from how much people thoughtthat you were putting the nation and the
community ahead of your own interests.
So I think if a president wakes upevery day and doesn't ask the question,
how am I gonna improve my legacy?
But wakes up every day and says, howam I gonna make this a better country?
(37:18):
A legacy will follow.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:19):
That's great.
Well, thank you so muchfor this conversation.
I am very grateful for your time.
Jeff Engel (37:24):
I'm very grateful for all the work that you do.
I'm just busting out with pride everytime I, I think of how great you're doing.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:30):
Thank you.
Well, it would not have beenpossible without this opportunity.
For those listening, we're recordingthis in Dallas at the, uh, SMU
library, but this is where I dida postdoctoral fellowship at the
Center for Presidential History anduh, so it's very nice to be back.
Jeff Engel (37:45):
It is important to note that you wouldn't have a career without us.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:48):
Obviously.
Jeff Engel (37:48):
I mean that's, that's, yeah.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:49):
Obviously.
Jeff Engel (37:50):
Obviously.
You can cut that part out.
Lindsay Chervinsky (37:56):
Thank you for joining us this week on Leadership
and Legacy, and thank you so muchagain to our guest, Jeff Engel.
You can buy his books, includinghis excellent book on the end of
the Cold War, When the World SeemedNew, wherever books are sold.
Just as a reminder, if your local storedoesn't have a copy of the excellent
books of our guests, you can alwaysask them to order a copy for you.
(38:16):
They will be happy to do so.
I'm your host, Dr. Lindsey Chervinsky.
Leadership and Legacy (38:21):
Conversations at the George Washington Presidential
Library is a production of theMount Vernon Ladies' Association
and Primary Source Media.
In the spirit of George Washington'sleadership, we feature the perspectives of
leaders from across industries and fields.
As such, the thoughts expressed in thispodcast are solely the views of our
guests and do not reflect the opinionsof the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
(38:45):
To learn more about Washington'sleadership example, or to find out
how you can bring your team to theGeorge Washington Presidential Library,
go to GW leadership institute.org.
Or to find more great podcastsfrom Mount Vernon, visit
George Washington podcast.com.
You can also explore the work of PrimarySource Media at primarysourcemedia.com.
(39:08):
Join us in two weeks forour next great conversation.
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