About two days june 10th and 11th, 1963 that defined jfks response to the Nuclear Arms Race and civil rights. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan 3. Did i feel free paired . Yes. I wasnt elected so it didnt make that much difference. I did notice the difference between being the Vice President s wife and the president s wife is huge because the Vice President s wife can say anything, nobody cares. The minute you say one thing as the president s wife you have made the news. So that was a lesson i had to learn. During george bushs presidency barbara bush used the office of first lady to promote literacy and to raise awareness about aids and homelessness. She also earn her way into the history books. She and Abigail Adams are the only women in our history to be both the wife and mother of a president. Good evening and welcome to cspan series first ladies influence and image. Tonight is the story of barbara peers bush the wife of George Herbert walker bush. Here for the next 90 minutes are two guests, myra gutin is the barbara bush gibiographer. She is a first lady scholar and teaches at Ryder University in lawrenceville, new jersey. Thanks for being here shoo my pleasure. Jeffrey engel is the founding director of the center for president ial history at Southern Methodist university. He is the author of one book on george bushs Foreign Policy and at work on another one. Thank you for being here. Good to be here. We heard barbara bush at the outset talk about the fact that when she became first lady her words were much more attention getting. Its been interesting that that trend continues throughout our program tonight. We will see clips of an interview she gave to us in october and one of them which we released last week has been bouncing all around the News Networks for several days because she talked about president ial dynasties, political dynasties in history and also about the potential for her own son governor jeb bushs president ial aspirations. I wanted to start there because barbara bush as you describe her in the biography was in fact, it was a carefully managed public presence about you at the same time she had a good quote an candid comments. How do they mesh . I think she was always aware of her publish persona and i think that she particularly in the white house was always concerned about whether some action might end up having political consequences for her husband but she also was very candid and sometimes a comment slipped out and she admonished herself for it from time to time. So the candid barbara bush had some pluses and minuses for the bush add duration over time. Will you talk about that . She was somebody who would speak her mind and also somebody who would speak her mind to the president but not in a public way, behind the scenes, in their bedroom when nobody else was there she would tell him what she really thought. Lets stay with that note because as were working our way through the biographies of these women barbara about you wish is between two much more publicly activist first ladies, nancy reagan we learned about last week, next week Hillary Clinton. Barbara bush in this interview talks about her approach to the job and whether or not she takes an activist approach. Lets listen to that. If you ever wanted to give advice or talk about policy with your husband, who you would you do that . How would you approach that . If i wanted to id just tell him, but the truth is i really didnt want to. He had great advisers. I never ever called his office to say. If i had something to say i said it to george bush, but i didnt call jim baker or anyone at his office to say, george, this is what i think should be, because i just dont do that. Ive never had an office except in the house. Here at the white house i had an office, but i never went to it. My staff used it, but i worked in the white house and i worked in the Vice President s house at home. I just did not get into his office affairs. So, myra, describe her approach to the first ladys office. Well, she said as she became first lady that she wanted to do something positive every day and she really set out with her staff to try to do that. She looked at potential for her literacy project, some of the other things she was interested in and that it was really full speed ahead to try to do that one good thing every day. But as you look through the documentary evidence of the Bush Administration where can you see through Historical Documents now at this point evidence of Barbara Bushs influence on the white house . Theres very little evidence of her influencing policy. That was really not something she was interested in. Unlike other first ladies she believed her role was to set a proper standard for the white house, set a proper standard for the administration. So her impact upon the administration was really in portraying them as forthright, as honest, as direct and she was a very direct person. We dont see any particular policies that come out of her influence, rather we see a general tone, a general accepting tone, one that the public really took to over the course of her years in the white house. How was that tone different from the reagan years . Mrs. Reagan liked to get her hands dirty in politics and policy within the white house, almost a court politic, if you will. She would frequently call up advisers to the president and admonish them for one thing or another and try to maneuver people throughout the administration, putting the people that she liked in different places. Mrs. Bush never did that. She was a person who did not directly involve herself in policy, but theres an important distinction to be made there. She cared a lot about politics. She knew what was going on in washington, she knew all the players, knew all the actors, made sure she knew the gossip, but she wasnt interested in changing the policy. That was the president s job. And during the Campaign Times was she involved in Campaign Strategy that you know of . Less about Campaign Strategy than being out in front for the campaign because especially as the president moved into campaigning for his second term in 1992 she was really much more popular than he was in terms of polls throughout the country. There was many times when the president not only would send her out on the campaign trail, but really would go inn to answer questions with, well, you know, barbara and i think and that was a way of really saying that he was with her, she was the popular one. The subtitle of your biography with barbara bush is president ial matriarch. Thats the next thing wed like to show you of her talking about her relationships and view as a steward of her family. Lets listen in. How do you develop that thick skin or dont you, or politics, for criticism . Im not good at it. Most people dont dare criticize my children in front of me, but the press i dont pay any attention to. I dont like it, but i dont pay any attention to it. Dont dare criticize george h. W. Bush ever. Dont dare criticize george bush ever. When she came to the white house she told her press secretary anna perez that there were three areas where you better keep hands off, her fella, her family and her dogs. And that pretty much followed through. She was very very concerned and reacted sometimes very quickly. If there was criticism of george bush, who she always called george bush, and the children. We are going to invite you as we always do to participate in our discussion tonight and theres three days you can do it. We have a conversation under way on cspans Facebook Page and you can join that, we will work some of the questions in and comments into our discussion tonight. You can also tweet us using the handle firstladies and finally call us. If you live in the eastern or central 2025 53 0. Mountain, pacific or farther west 2025853881 and throughout the 90 minutes we will try to get as many comments from as many different media as we can in our program tonight. Lets go back in time and understand where she came from. She was born in new york city in 1925. Tell me more about ba bra peirces background. As you said, she was born in new york. At the time of her birth her father, Marvin Pierce was on the staff of the president at the mccauls publishing company. Her mother pauline was a descendant of an Ohio Supreme Court justice and the pierce family was distantly related to president franklin pierce. The family moved to rhode island, new york, where barbara and her siblings and older sister and two younger brothers grew up. It was a comfortable upbringing. They went to Public Private schools. When barbara was old enough for high school she was sent a he away to ashley hall, a boarding school in south carolina. Home for christmas break of her junior year she went to a Country Club Dance and thats when she met george h. W. Bush. These were very young people and they got married young. Can you talk about the courtship that led to this marriage. They both both accounts were attracted from the start. Because of the distance they developed an intimate correspondents which was typical for the sometimes, especially as correspondents that continues as george bush decides to drive the navy and pushes forward and becomes the youngest aviator in the Pacific Theater for the United States navy and their correspondents throughout that entire period is emotional, its intimate, its something that drew them both together when they couldnt be together in the same spot. The times when they were together were electric for them. They knew that they were for each other. She began school at smith college. Yeah, she did and she was there for a year and she admitted that she really wasnt the most dedicated of students. She was more interested in her boyfriend george bush. I believe she was rather active in athletics at her time at smith and she went back for the first semester of her sophomore year and then left school to marry george bush. And as a young couple when george bush went off as an aviator to the pacific arena weve all read in the history books that he had some very close encounters. Do you know the story of his being shot down in the pacific and what barbara bush knew about all that . Yeah, its a truly harrowing story, he was on a bombing run over an island and he started the dive down with his bomber and was immediately hit by en into he aircraft, enemy flak. He continued on his Bombing Mission and called back to his two fellow crew mates and said, were going to continue this mission, were going to go out over the pacific, were going to dump out and bail out and he thought that they had already left the plane and turned over and flew out himself and discovered only later that there was no chance for them to have survived. There was no other parachute. He was alone in the pacific and spent four and a half hours bobbing up and down in the pacific before he was rescued by a submarine and spent another several weeks actually continuing with the submarine on their patrol mission. During that time it was very unclear for the bushes, his parents, that had happened to him. He was officially listed as missing in action. They made a conscious decision not to tell barbara until they knew for certain that he was going to be fine. They missed their first wedding date because he still wasnt back and then finally he was back and on january 6th about two weeks after the original date they were married. And he served in the military until when and then went to yale at what point . He served until 1945 until the peace treaties were signed. He had flown so many sortees during the war that he had many points accumulated so he was able to take an early out and then he and barbara left for new haven and yale and the beginning of his long delayed college career. And during that time period first child was born . Thats right. George walker bush was born during that time and it was also at that point that george h. W. Bush was playing varsity baseball at yale and barbara was the official scorer for the team. It was a happy time for them at yale. Ultimately the bushes had six children. Yes, thats right. And they were george, then Pauline Robinson who is known as robin. Robin. Jeb who john. John ellis bush, thats how the nickname jeb name along. Neil born in 1955 and the final child, dorothy, known as dora born in 1959. I want you to tell the story if you would about robins death because it clearly impacted both parents for all of their lifetime. Robin was a little over two years old and woke up one morning and at this point the bushes were in texas and she said to barbara, i think today im just going to stay in bed or maybe i will go out on the lawn and look at the clouds going by. And that raised a red flag for barbara right away because her daughter was very active. She took her daughter to the pediatrician and the pediatrician asked barbara and george later that day. And she said to them, your daughter has leukemia. And george bush said, well, what does that mean . He said at that point in time, who knew what it was . And the doctor said, well, it means that shes not going to live very long. The doctors recommendation was that robin be allowed to go home and enjoy things, be around her family. But one of george bushs relatives was a doctor at Sloan Kettering in new york, the hospital, and robin was taken there to try some different treatment modalities to try to deal with the leukemia. They prolonged her life a little bit. She even returned to texas once, but she passed away. And the bushes still talk about her today, and still the emotion is very visible all these years absolutely. Its dramatic. I mean, president bush spent his entire life writing letters. Thats one of the things hes known for and famous for. And perhaps the most painful letters that we have in the archive are about him writing about his daughter, writing to his mother, in fact, years later, talking about the pain in his heart, the thing thats missing, the fact that we really do need a little girl in our lives running around, that life was not the same since. But they did manage to recover to some degree, and they had a big and bustling family. And this next clip, from our interview in october, barbara bush talks about her role as a parent versus the future president s role. Lets listen. Youve been referred to by some family members as the enforcer right. Of the bush family. What do you think about that reputation . Well, im not sure im thrilled with laura saying that. I deserve it, because george is so you know, anything they do is all right. But someone has to be sure that the standards are kept. And he leads by example. I lead by denying some things. And i am the enforcer; theres no question about it. Do i like that role . No. Would i rather he had done it . Yes. But it didnt work that way. Have any comments about barbara bush as the enforcer . Well, her husband always called her miss frank. And, indeed, she is. And she has had his back and the back of all of her family members all of these many years. If someone was critical of them, she was going to respond. There was a story that a reporter once told me that, if you wrote something negative about bill clinton during the clinton administration, maybe the clintons would forgive you and let you write another story. If you said something negative about george h. W. Bush, you were done until the next administration. We have two questions, one on facebook, one on twitter, about this aspect of mrs. Bushs life. David welsh wants to know, what aspects of mrs. Bushs personality might be seen in her son, president george w. Bush . Have any thoughts about that . Well, i think that both of them have long memories. Barbara bush, i think, does not let go of criticism very easily, and im not sure that George Walker bush does, either. And a similar question, and you can respond to both. Regina crumkey on twitter, are there any passions that a Young Barbara passed on to her own children . Well, you know, we have to appreciate i think to understand barbara bush, you need to appreciate that she was really a product of her times. And the passion that she passed on to her children was the fact that she had devoted her entire life to them, to raising a family and to being a good and loyal wife to her husband over the course of his varied careers. I mean, he was a really for many times it was at many sense, an active and absentee father for many years, because he was on the road as a salesman, then he was on the road as a politician, then he was on the road as a government official. She was the one who was there every night. And so, for george w. Bush, in particular, i think that helped form a real bond between the two of them, especially after robins unfortunate death. Just to pass some statistics on that, so people get a sense of how mobile this family was, by the time they made it to the white house, they had at that point been married for 43 years and at that point they even lived in 29 different houses in 17 cities. So it was quite a life on the move. Right. Dave murdock wants to know is, rumor has it that barbaras hair turned white after robins death. Is that true . I believe its true. I believe it is true. I believe thats true. Yeah. Ive heard and she both sides. And not surprisingly, given the devastating nature of losing a child, she took the death very, very deeply. This is a period where in many ways we would say today that she went through a period of depression, and it was only she tells the story it was only after she was so sad for so many months that she heard george outside saying to a young friend, im sorry, i cant come out and play today because i have to take care of my mother, that she realized this is too much burden to put on a little boy, but it also demonstrates the pain that she was having at the time, as well. Leroy is watching us in monticello, kentucky. Hi, leroy. You have a question . Caller yes, maam. Were the bush family were they a biblereading people . Did they go by their scriptures . Did they go to church and right, thank you for your question. Later on, if you watch until the end, we do have a clip where b