She was able to get out, walked to the side and i had a broken ankle but didnt know it, for a few days. Another car came up, a man got out of the car and went to the person lying on the ground, my friend judy said that is the persons father on the ground, no, i said it couldnt be, that is mister bassett. When we got taken to the hospital we were in a room with a cloth draped separating us, judy and i were, we had very minor injuries, no one was there with us. I could hear mrs. Douglas crying on the other side of the curtain. And then when i got home that was just a huge tragedy and a life lesson that is a very hard lesson to learn that i learned early, things that happened to you, you cause things to happen if you could take it back you would but there is never anything you can ever do about it and it is just a fact and you have to accept it with whatever grace you can accept it with. Host you hadnt talked about it. Guest i had. In the 2000 race when it came out in the newspapers i was asked about it several times. I reread an article opera did in her own magazine after we moved to the white house and she asked me about it. It was in that article but i was never asked about it that often so i never really talked about it. People knew because i would get letters from Family Members of a young person who had been involved in a car accident where there was a death and get medicine teachers, parents, and send uncles and asked me to write to the young person, words of encouragement so i did and i would always suggest they get some kind of counseling, talk to a pastor, get a counselor and find some sort of help but i didnt do that and no one ever suggested it. No one really talked about it. Reagan and i talked about it. It was something we swallowed. Host the whole town new. Guest of course. Host did that in some way help when you met george bush that he knew and you didnt have to talk about it . I wanted him to know. I didnt know he was ever going to run for office but in case that would ever in some way affect his political run. Host it was important about you. Your daughters married someone they just met. Guest i would think that was really reckless. But i will say my parents were thrilled and barbara and george were, they were very glad he had found somebody, they were hoping for grandchildren. I was 31 the night before we got married, they really had the advantage. We had the same backgrounds, we had grown up just blocks from each other but i went to jamesville and we lived in the same apartment complex he was in without ever running into each other so it was like weve known each other our whole lives. We knew all the same people. There werent any surprises. Ever . Wasnt something in our background the other didnt know about. One of the things that might be a surprise, he was running for congress. That was really fun, he was running for congress, the congressman i interviewed with. Congressman man such a hairdo, he had taught us where to sit and not to get your hair blown. He was retiring in 1978 so george thought why not try to run for it, the seed had only been held by congress in may and as long as they did that so that is what it is and we travel up and down the panhandle of texas, it was a big district and it included lover, a big town, two or youll towns and the rest was rural farming and all the way up to that. Im not sure this is right but i remember you telling me a story, you asked about a speech and have some water. You said the speeches were terrific but you decided to give a little critique and then what happened . Guest when george was running for congress his mother gave me some advice and said dont criticize georges speeches, she said she criticized her georges be and he came home for weeks later with letters saying it was the best speech he had ever given. I took it to heart and endeavor criticize him and one time we were driving home into our driveway after a Campaign Event and george said tell me the truth, how was my speech and i said it wasnt very good. He drove into the garage wall. [applause] [laughter] host wellknown for taking criticism well. Before we jump forward into political life i want to go back to your child a little bit because you write about it so interestingly. Your father coming home from the war was tiny pictures of concentration camps. Why did he do that . The timberwolves had liberated one of the concentration camps and he came home with a little photograph that would have been in world war ii, the body they found. They there were 5000 dead when they liberated, the story is the american troops went in and put their faces in their hands and wept. My dad never talked about it, we would look at them but he didnt talk about it. My mother told me a story he told her which was he was just sort of impressed with an army nurse, he remembered an army nurse standing with a shovel and handing it to one of the germans that was still there when they liberated ignored house and he said i am an officer and she took a shovel and hit him across the bottom and said dig and he did. What he was digging were graves, big trenches really. Then later, many years later when i was in progress for a nato meeting i was preceded by holocaust survivor and we started talking and i told him my dads company had liberated courthouse, he said he had been in a concentration camp and i said my dad never talked about it and he said i never talk to my children about it either and he thought like i thought that it was too terrible to tell, that you couldnt admit to your own children that mankind could be that cruel but he said we always kept those pictures. Host what was your reaction when you heard about holocaust deniers . Guest that is terrible to hear about, it really is, crazy is what it is. It just happened we went to the day of remembrance at the capital, the day of remembrance, george was president and mother happens to be there, after the easter break and if you have ever been to the day of remembrance go sometime because it is very meaningful, soldiers marching with the flag of all the American Companies that liberated concentration camps. We didnt know to expect that. We havent been there for that so we see these flags come in and they were thinking what did the flag look like . It came by, the timberwolves and the wolfs head that is the timberwolf flag. We both burst into tears to see that flag of daddys go by. Host you had letters from the war. Do you always know about those . Guest i knew mother had those letters but i never read them. When i started to work on the book, i drove around and looked at all the houses. My mother lives there but i dont always drive around and look at the houses my daddy build, the homebuilder or the houses we lived in, every time he opened a new addition he would build a new house bar so he lived in several houses and he drove by the house george and i lived in, i had barbara and jenna the years we lived in and i read the letters, i had not read them. I always knew they were his love letters, they were newly married and he had been shipped overseas but i always felt she didnt want me to read them. There was something private about them and personal but then i read some of them and they were private and personal and i did feel a little bit like a voyeur reading it. But it was fun and interesting and fun to think of these young people in love and separated by the war. Host your mother lost three other babies which was a great tragedy in her life and with barbara and jenna you were very frightened. Mother lost my first memory, the western clinic in midland and ive never seen a baby, just a member thinking thats where my baby was and i was very aware this was the big disappointment of their life that they didnt get to keep those 3 other babies and have a family of four instead of an only child and not just one but four children. I was said too and that was my wish on a star to have a brother or sister. This wonderful picture of you, if you dont have it. What happens next . This is where we let barbara and jenna, standing with the photo for the cake and bite into it and when we remove the cake they link the cups of coffee and they never had sugar, they had their first birthday. But you had to go to dallas. I struggled to get pregnant and when i did i was so thrilled to have a sonogram and found out there were two babies. I was hoping my children would have a sister or brother and they got to have each other. It was a high risk pregnancy. I was 35, twin pregnancy so close to the end of the pregnancy i got preeclampsia toxemia and was sent into dallas where there was an intensive care nurse. They thought the babies would need an intensive care nurse which they didnt. When they were born it was big for 5 weeks early but it was a worry the whole time and mothers losses. Host you lost that race to congress and you got involved in the 1980 campaign and suddenly your father is Vice President , celebrity by association and suddenly you were somebody. Guest in midland so i would be working in the yard, thank you very much and they drive by really slowly and from out of town driving by, the Vice President s son. Host when he ran for president you moved up here as you were saying earlier. Guest we lived here in 1987 to work on mister bushs campaign after the price of oil had fallen, midland was a boom and bust town, the oil business, when the price of oil was high everybody, high cotton i guess and when it went down go through a bust there was one shortly before that so george was able to sell his oil company and we worked on mister bushs campaign and it was the first time in the 10 years george and i had been married that that i was ever with his mother a lot. Every time i visited her in maine when all the other kids were there and other grandchildren were there, highly stressed with all that. Her line about when things get really tense grabbed the bottle of aspirin and do what it says on the bottle, take 2 and keep away from children. [laughter] guest when we lived up here that year, running for president , he had never gone during the week they made them, to come home on sundays to get there and had a hamburger lunch which was the family condition every sunday and i got to know barbara for the first time and i am sure she got to know me and she had five children. I sent her to welcome me with open arms like mother welcome george, he was the only one. But then we got to know each other and love each other and love the same things, she loved to read. That year and a half we lived here we get up in the morning on saturday morning and an art show that was here at the smithsonian or somewhere else, she called me because she was the Vice President s wife, 30 minutes early by ourselves but it was a wonderful chance for george and me both to have a relationship, set for barbara and jenna and it was i was glad to live in the same chance the same town with them. By the end of his presidency host you are seeing things on television, reading things that were not true that were such mischaracterizations of him and your husband goes and runs for governor. Were you distressed that more politics was going to be in your life . Guest not really. Really politics is the family business. You know this. When you have a Family Member in politics and everyone is in it together you have opponents, you are in it together, the year george and i traveled in texas was really great, we did everything together, rode in the car together every day, i was fine with it. I had a good time. If you win that and lose life goes on, it is not the end of your life if you lose a political race and i knew that so when george wanted to run for governor i used to say after that congressional race you think george will never run again for office and are used to joke and say maybe when we are 50 and we were close to 50 and he ran host a long time away. Guest that was my hesitation when he wanted to run for president. Running for governor is a big job but the media is the scrutiny in me, criticism and attacks are not near what they are when you run for president. Host you knew that, really taken by surprise. We knew it because watching mister bush especially in the 92 campaign but in the 88 campaign as well. Host after your husband was elected governor your father got terribly sick and you saw your mother in the role of caretaker. I wonder how you reacted to that, being distant from her having to take down that role . He got alzheimers and got worse and worse, never got so bad he didnt know me. On the last thanksgiving before he died which was after george had been elected governor but before the inauguration we went to midland and spent that thanksgiving with him and at one point daddy said that is over there and that is my husband george bush, he said you married george bush, i said yes. And he said i will ask you for a loan. And then he laughed. That was so funny. Host the first lady started a few things in texas. In washington able to bring it here starting with the book festival. Guest i started the texas book festival. It is in its fifteenth or sixteenth year, it is hugely successful, very popular with authors, others love to get invited to austin. It is really fun and that is held inside the Texas Capital building and the only way we got to do that was george was governor and the speaker of the house, the texas house is the group that oversees the Capital Building and they dont let anyone else meet in the Texas Capital and i understand that but they still allowed us to have the book festival in the capital so for one weekend a year the Texas Capital is turned over to literature. So the readings on the senate floor and the house floor and the Committee Hearing rooms and auditoriums, there are a lot of sizes, authors who wont draw big crowds, it has been successful. We sell the books outside the Capitol Grounds because you cant sell things on the grounds, the Capitol Grounds, we made the book festival into a fundraiser. Weve given grants to every texas Public Library. [applause] host you got involved with arts and education, Family Protective Services and you came here as first lady and immediately got the book festival going, the National Book festival which we still have going and you were very involved in the literature and Early Childhood education, the things you learned a great deal about in texas, you started to concentrate on as first lady. At the capital on september 11th ready to testify before the Senate Education committee on Early Childhood education, tell us what happened next. Guest i got in my car that morning, to brief the Senate Education committee on Early Childhood education. I didnt have the tv on. I was looking at my briefing and i was very nervous, the first year he was president in 2001. As i was getting in the car the secret Service Agent leaned over to me and said a plane has just flown into the world trade center. I was getting in the car with margaret spelling and andy ball who was chief of staff at the time and we had no idea what was transpiring. When we got in the car into the capital we assumed it was just some weird accident, some terrible accident that a plane had thrown into the trade center but on the way to the capital we get a message about the second plane, so we know then that it is a terrorist attack. I go to senator kennedys office, hes waiting for me and we go to his office and he starts to give me a tour of his office and shows me all the mementos on his wall including a letter from his brother jack that had written to their mother when they were little. That teddy was getting fat and he was still amused after all these years at this cute letter but the whole time he kept up this small talk and i thought about it over and over that it was a defense mechanism because he had so many shocks in his own life that he kept up his small talk so that we didnt start to talk about what had happened and what this meant for all of us or if he thought i would fall apart and so he was just trying to keep everything in this sort of pleasant smalltalk way. We did go out. Senator judd gregg joined us, one of our closest friends who had been at the ranch that summer because he had played out gore for the debate prep. Host the son of a senator. Guest exactly. So judd joined us and he and i would look at each other because we were looking over senator kennedys shoulder to look at the television, the Small Television in the corner of the office and we were sick and we felt sick. I thought judd looked sick and im sure he thought i was sick too because we couldnt imagine. It was a blessing that senator kennedy kept up the smalltalk, a way to process what we were seeing and what it meant and the three of us went out and spoke to the press, we were postponing the briefing, already was in defiance of the terrorists. We would not cancel the briefing, it would just be postponed and as we finished saying we were postponing the meeting, the briefing, Lawrence Mcclellan from usa today said what do we say to the children . That is when i got the idea of what do we say to the children and i said then, parents need to assure their children they are safe, turn off the television and dont let them watch over and over the buildings falling but it gave me the direction of what i did, the letters that i wrote 2 High School Students and another letter for younger students about what had happened and what they could do for each other, how we needed to take care of each other but also host your great passion for the women of afghanistan. You have been there to 70 countries and youre still working on that issue and continue to work on that issue. Host i will work on that forever and what happened was as everyones eyes turn to afghanistan the women of the United States were so shocked by the contrast between the lives of women in afghanistan and our lives, we couldnt believe it. We couldnt imagine a government that would prevent girls from being educated and immediately i heard from women all over the country, they are unbelievable stories was one woman that i know whose husband was the president of the university and she said she would lie in bed at night and think what can i do to help women and one day at donald on her, she could write other president s of universities and say can you give afghan young women.