president and how he was later chosen to write the president's letter of resignation. this is about an hour and a half. >> hi, i'm tim atelli, and i'm director of the richard nixon presidential museum in yorba linda, california. i have the honor and privilege to be interviewing david gergen for the program. david gergen. thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here. >> as i told you, i'll go in chronological order. i want to start by asking you about the relationship, if you can call it that, that developed between former president nixon and bill clinton. >> it was an odd relationship between bill clinton and president nixon, one that would have, i think, never -- you never could have predicted. you have to remember that hillary clinton, after all, was on the staff that helped to impeach him and put him on trial, and bill clinton was no great lover of richard nixon, but bill clinton came to have great respect for richard nixon's insights. i remember he told me once that he had received a private letter from richard nixon about the soviet union. he said it was the most insightful and helpful paper he'd received up until that time on the subject. i had an unusual experience working for president clinton in that i'd worked for president nixon and i kept up with him off and on in the years intervening, and i had a call from president nixon who said i'm going to be in washington in a couple of weeks. would you come have breakfast with me? i said, sure, i'd be honored to come, and i asked him if i could bring somebody from the white house, and i told him i'd like to bring the chief of staff which was matt mccharty who was then chief of staff for bill clinton and he happily agreed to go and we went to the washington circle hotel which is on dupont circle, and i remember arriving there in the morning and it was just the three of us, but a young woman who was there with him was his research assistant and she went on to write books about him who is now a television and radio personality was there and monica crowley, and i can't remember -- i can't remember who else, but anyway, while we were talking and having one of the fascinating meals and president nixon looked at me and said i'd like you to take a message to president clinton, and i realize suddenly that we were there because he appreciated or admired what i had to say. he wanted me to be a messenger. once a staff person, always a staff person. shire, wh sure, what is it? he said i want you to talk to him about nafta which was something that was a treaty with mexico and canada, of course, on trade that president bush's administration had negotiated but was then sort of dormant in the early months of the nixon administration and i want you to take a message to president clinton about nafta. he said he's coming out very strongly for it, and i know he doesn't have the vote, but tell him that there are things worse than losing, and it's really important that he stand up for this, and then he added, if he wants to understand why it is so important to embrace nafta, tell him to read up on the repeal of the laws and i thought to myself, only nixon, of all of the presidents i've known would reach back into history that way and find this illuminating example and it was telling because i went back and double checked myself and i knew what i was talking myself. in the court laws in the mid-19th century against the protests of many farmers know it was a move away from protectionism toward free trade and it's often regarded as one of those turning points that unleashed the british economy and even though there were people who got hurt in the interim because they were no longer protected, and they did a great deal for the country over time and it was one of those things that free trade was one of the things that made great britain a great nation. again, i was reminded that richard nixon had a great love of history and love of biography, and i think that informed much of what he did, and it made him a wiser leader in many ways. if you've ever been out to independence missouri to go to the truman library, and harry truman was the only president in the 20th century that never went to college, but you'll find a talk out there when you get to high school students that was so applicable to nixon and truman said not every greeter is a leader, but every leader is a reader, and richard nixon is a reader. it made a great deal of difference to his presidency. he was clearly a flawed leader and deeply flawed, but he did have a bright side and he had a very dark side and we earn welled the consequences of the dark side and sometimes we need to remember the bright side. i would go back to that conversation and he'll talk about clinton. he thought, i think it is too tough for the public. i think if he gets too much responsibility it may not sit well with the public. i found richard nixon toward the end of his life to be a person who was always perceptive, you know, and once you came to accept who he was as a human being, and his human flaws and came to then appreciate that there were other sides to him and there was much about him that was also admirable, and i felt his assessments were really quite apt. i have one other story becau because -- i was one of those who stayed until the end in august of '74 and felt very betrayed at the time and quite angry, and then over time, and sort of the wounds healed and i tried to see nixon hole as he is, the more complete nixon and come to grips with that, and as years passed i went on to see him in 1970 -- late '75 and early '76 and the former treasury secretary and bill simon was one of my bosses and one of my mentors. we had a very, very good dinner with president nixon. he made his famous drinks. he made drinks for us. >> martinis. >> martinis, nixon martini. he
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