Clinton the Gentleman

Mark this day, that's right, Bill Clinton is getting props for being a gentleman.

Read this article and you may agree:


Interview: 'People Are More Hopeful'

Newsweek
March 14 issue - In his office in Houston, still on an antimalarial-pill regimen from his trip to tsunami-ravaged Southeast Asia, former president George H.W. Bush turned from his desk to his credenza to find a note that had just come in. "Here's a fellow who wants to give us $2 million," Bush says. "This cause has really hit people's hearts." With former president Bill Clinton—the two traveled together to the region last month—Bush 41 has led fund-raising efforts for the victims; private donations now total about $1 billion. In an interview with NEWSWEEK's Jon Meacham last week, Bush talked about the tsunami, Clinton, Jeb Bush's future and the news from the Mideast.
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Can we prevent breast cancer?

No
I don't know.
Yes

What was the trip like? Were you surprised by what you saw?Well, it was very emotional for me, very moving. The most moving part was to see the children of families that had been wiped out. I saw one guy standing with his hand on a kid's shoulder, and I said to the translator, "Ask him his story." And the man said, "This is my surviving child; my two daughters and my wife were killed, and he's the only thing I've got left." And it's on and on and on like that.
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• Non-Native English-Speakers Are Changing the Way We CommunicateThey had women therapeutically teaching the children just to let it all out, to draw how they feel, and one little girl drew her mother's face in the sea, and she was recalling her mother drowning. There were drawings of boats hanging from trees; others were the Marines in helicopters with help coming down, so that was a positive one. But you just get the feeling that it's going to be a long time before they can recover. The impact for me, the toughest, was the kids, the broken families.
A lot of people were surprised to see you and President Clinton get along so well.But as I said and as he said, they shouldn't have been surprised. We knew each other rather favorably before running against each other. When I was kind of responsible for the first national governors' policy on education, he was the key guy for the Democrats. We've never been all that close, but the nice thing about it was that there was a compatibility. I think he was respectful of my age, quite frankly. [Bush is 80.] I think he has rather pleasant feelings about the president, though they differ on a lot of stuff, and to the degree he would express something like that—which he did from time to time—that was, of course, enormously gratifying to his father. I think it was good, because it sent a message to the world that these two guys can fight like hell, have different political views and yet they can come together.
I'll give you one example of the courtesy he showed me. There is one bedroom on that plane—a government 757. There's a kind of VIP bedroom with its own bathroom. Then the next room has two tables and eight seats. He decided ahead of time that we want President Bush to have the front room, which was heaven for me, because if I don't stretch out, lie flat, I really hurt my body these days—spoiled—so anyway, he was going to have the other room. Well, he got in there and he wanted to play cards at night, and the next morning I got up and stuck my head in and I found him sound asleep on the floor of the plane. We could have switched places, each getting half a night on the bed, but he deferred to me. That was a very courteous thing, very thoughtful, and that meant a great deal to me.
Do you think that Sen. [Hillary] Clinton and Gov. [Jeb] Bush will run against each other for president?My expectation is that Mrs. Clinton will run and Governor Bush won't in 2008. Do I think Jeb would be a good president? Yes, I think he would be an outstanding president. He knows the issues, he's a strong leader. [But] one, you can discount what I say because I'm his dad and, two, he's pretty well convinced me that he's not going to.
Next time?Yeah. We've never talked beyond that.
Given what's happening in the Middle East on the democratic front, do you have any reflections on the reform feeling out there?I don't keep up with the day-to-day, but I do think people are more hopeful now. The turning point was having the Iraqi elections take place. People started saying, "Well, maybe President Bush is on to something, maybe this is the wave of the future there."
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

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