Together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind, peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle and worthy of our childrens future. 27 years after president bush called for International Order the strong men of saudi arabia and russia celebrated the lack of it as america pulls back under donald trump. Friday marked that sharp split as the 41st president of the United States, George Herbert walker bush, died at the age of 94. This morning we remember his life and his tremendous legacy, and how his approach to leadership stands in stark contrast with the politics and the news and the policies of today. Welcome to morning joe, its monday, december 3rd, with us we have the president of the council on Foreign Relations and the author of the book a world in disarray, richard haass, jon meachum is with us, he is an nbc news and msnbc contributor, nbc news chief Foreign Affairs correspondent and host of Andrea Mitchell reports, Andrea Mitchell is here, and columnist and associate editor for the Washington PostDavid Ignatius as well. Joe, wow, what a stark contrast between h. W. s legacy and the news we have today. Well, it is, and it did, it did seem to become starker every time you saw stories about george w. Bush george h. W. Bush and the life that he lived. I will say that its almost as if bush 41 inspired this president to even move beyond his own boundaries that he showed the first two years by delivering to this country and the world a statement upon george h. W. Bushs passing that was graceful and was president ial and quite frankly whats been lacking a bit in the past. I want to talk to jon meachum who on wednesday will be eulogizing george h. W. Bush and who spoke about him yesterday at the national cathedral. You know, jon, we to talk about what a great man george h. W. Bush was and how he guided america and the world through the ending of the cold war, how he reunified germany, how well, just, you know, a cia director, an u. N. Ambassador, ran the rnc, Vice President , president , congressman, took courageous stands. He was a great man, but what is so remarkable in 2016 and the great take away from his life has to be that he was a good man. He was fundamentally a decent man. Not only when he was president of the United States, but when he was a young child, a kid whose nickname was hab half because anytime you had a sandwich whoever he was with he would tell the other person, here, have half of mine. It was that generous spirit that made this great man a good man from the very beginning. Anyone who was around him was enveloped by a kind of quiet persistent charisma. Its not a word we associate with president bush, we think of jack kennedy as charismatic, we think of reagan as charismatic, we think of clinton as charismatic, we think of george w. Bush with a locker room charisma kind of oneonone ability, barack obama has the big arena charisma. George h. W. Bush in my experience and to my observation always communicated ineffably an ambient sense of confidence that your future, your country, would be safe in his hands, and they were big hands. He used to talk with that big left fist. I think that one of the remarkable things about him is he is of our time generationally, but he really has more in common with the roosevelts and the founders culturally and temperamentally than he does with the post in the 1990s forward. More in common, i think, with fdr than with bill clinton or even in many ways with his own son in terms of the politics they confronted. So he is a remarkable figure in that he was a little out of fashion even while he was reigning over the country. A couple things happened on his watch that shaped the politics we have now, the rise of talk radio, cable news was becoming more significant. He used to belly ache into his tape recorder all the time about what the talking heads were saying. And most importantly, the break among the house gop against his deal to get a budget, get spending controls, a deal that set with some higher taxes set the conditions for the prosperity of the 1990s in what was, i think, sort of the o. J. Simpson bronco chase of modern partisansh partisanship. When bush was going out to announce that bipartisan deal in the rose garden Newt Gingrich leaves the white house, there is a split screen on cnn, drives up to the hill and there is a rally among the house caucus, gop caucus for gingrich. In many ways that set the stage for 1994, set the stage for just a more a more brutal politics. It happened, interestingly, to my mind, under the feet of someone who did want very much to govern with consensus, because consensus had shaped him. Yes. You know, David Ignatius, again, comparing where we were with george h. W. Bush and where we are now, i read so much this weekend, but i think a paragraph in the president s own words, former president s own words, really boils it down that, yes, every politician makes mistakes, every politician is flawed, every politician will fight like hell to get their story out there and sometimes use very sharp elbows, but at the end of the day, you know, they put their Country First and they put people around them first. This is part of a note that george h. W. Bush wrote to hour recent dowd, he said, i reserve the right to whine, to not read, to use profanitiy, but if you ever get really hurt or if you ever get really down and just need a shoulder to cry on, or just need a friend, give me a call, i will be there for you. I will not let you down. Now, if george h. W. Bush who was skewered by the media throughout most of his political life had decided to call anybody an enemy of the people it would have probably started with maureen dowd, but he understood that the press wasnt the enemy of the people and even said basically at the end of the day, were all in this together, and i will be here for you, just like i know you would be here for me. What a remarkable difference between 1988 and 2018. George h. W. Bush never more than in the recollections that maureen has in that wonderful column was for a son of the elite a down to earth guy. He was funny, he was selfdeprecating, he couldnt quite figure out why he liked this New York Times columnist, but he did, and he kept writing to her. I think one of the things i liked most about him was that he was grateful in the Old Fashioned new england way. He didnt believe in showing off, the idea that you brag about your accomplishments would have been abhorrent to him, but he had an ability to make difficult things look easy throughout his presidency, thats especially true in Foreign Policy. We forget how hard it was to find a pathway so you could reunify germany, the cornerstone of the post cold war world was one germany. Bush had to do that with great subtlety. A friend reminded me over the weekend we had the snl crisis over bushs watch and guess what, a lot of people went to i will gentleman. He didnt make a big fanfare of it but held people accountable. Thats the one thing that happened never happened after the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. Why werent anybody punished . Well, they were in george h. W. Bushs presidency. I think those simple qualities that made him somebody that maureen dowd could tell funny stories about, i mean, thats what we all sense about him, thats what we love and we miss as we think about his passing. Richard haass, you worked for president bush, bush 41, and obviously during very momentous times, so momentous that you didnt even have time to cut your hair or even comb it at times. My goodness. He was a very busy man. Scraggly. He called that his neo einstein cut. Richard, im just curious, looking at pictures of this past weekend, Vladimir Putin highfiving the crown prince of saudi arabia when other World Leaders didnt want to be even seen shaking his hand, it just reminds me of how what a deft touch george h. W. Bush had, that he was a realist, but at the same time would never allow Something Like that to stand without calling it out. What are we missing with the leadership of donald trump . George h. W. Bush was a realist, but he was a realist who also had values and standards and principles. He always tried to balance it. One of the first tests of his presidency you will remember in 1989 was the crushing ever dissent in tiananmen square. What bush tried to do because he had been the former u. S. Envoy to china, he knew how important that relationship was and he couldnt allow the relationship to end. On the other hand, he also knew it was important to send a message and sanctions were put into place and the administration tried to balance that. Or when saddam invaded kuwait, one of the reasons bush felt urgency there is he was getting the reports of what was going on in kuwait and he essentially said weve got to act here or if we dont theres not going to be a kuwait left to save. He didnt have the patience of some people who said, well, just let sanctions work. He said, no, we will give them a fair chance, but then if we must we will use force. And then what was so interesting is after we used force in a d decisive way, he showed restraint. He said if we try to liberate baghdad we will incur more casualties there than we did in liberating kuwait in a first place. There always was a sense of balance in the man between a kind of principle and a real determination. I think people underestimated the steeliness of determination, but he also had a sense, again, of limits, of restraints, and whether it was in their personal relations with people, there was a formality i remember once i was called over to see him, joe, and i got to the door of the oval office and john sununu was the chief of staff at the time and he said, what do you think youre doing, richard . I said i just got a message that the president wanted to see me. And he said, go back to your office and put on your coat, because i walked over with just my shirt and tie and left my shirt jacket in the office. There was a sense bush more than anyone else and this is a contrast to today obviously he had a sense, joe, that he was the temporary custodian of the oval office. He didnt own it. He was simply the 41st president of the United States, he knew there would be a 42nd, a 43rd and so on. So he was very aware, he had been given this trust. He was a borrower, if you will, of the office, but ultimately he knew there were limits and you had to pass it on to who came after him. And you brought up kuwait. Its o interesting. I remember being a young congressman and my chief of staff coming in and saying, do you have time to talk to the president . And since i was a back bencher, i said, the president of what . He said the president of the United States, the former president , george h. W. Bush. I said, well, yeah. I scrambled around, i picked up the phone, and its important for people to remember now, he was getting absolutely skewered in the years following the first gulf war for ignoring the advice of the red hot conservatives and some of his generals and stopping short of baghdad. He was getting killed and i was the one person on a panel that was defending him saying, no, we showed extraordinary discipline. He said we were going to liberate kuwait and then we were going to come home, and even with an open road to baghdad, he knew thats what he had promised, thats how he had built this remarkable Worldwide Coalition and he showed the discipline that few other leaders would show. Because of it he didnt get en snarled in the war that his son got ensnarled in a few years later. It was that kind of dis mr. Inn that actually made your father a very big fan of george h. W. Bush. Yes. I would say you could count the number of republicans that your father voted for on one hand. Yeah. You actually could count the number of republicans your father voted for for president on one finger and that one president was george h. W. Bush. Yeah, and theres so much news to cover, but its hard not to recognize that the passing of george h. W. Bush has rekindled bipartisan good feeling on editorial pages and just about anywhere else that politics is spoken. President bushs death also has done what many previously believed was impossible, its inspired the current occupant of the white house to briefly behave in a way thats president ial. With gracious words and a declaration of an extended period of national mourning. But what becomes undeniably obvious with every bio run about bush 41 is that stark contrast between these two men. Bush served in the military, treated people with respect and dignity and put country ahead of party and self time and time again over his half century in Public Service. Half century. Over the last two years deviancy has continued being defined down by this current president , his cronies, his supporters, who love telling reporters that they dont care how deviant his behavior becomes. Lets see what happens at wednesdays memorial service. My prediction is that trump fakes more respect for a family whose unprecedented history of Public Service has repeatedly belittled. Then he goes back to making a mockery of the very office that george bush and this nation long revered. Just as president bushs character was set even during his earliest days at andover with the stories that you all have told, donald trump remains the man, think about this, the man he was while avoiding the draft and then telling howard stern on the radio that sleeping around with women in new york city while avoiding sexual diseases was his own personal vietnam. He said that. As is always the case, the presidency does not shape character, it reveals it in a raw fashion and that is why we celebrate george h. W. Bushs legacy and fear the next two years of mr. Trumps wild white house lied. As we continue to watch that, andrea, its conduct in office that we look at today with President Trump and we look at over the past few days, even, which leaves our jaws dropping. Well, certainly in personal and political and Foreign Policy and relations with the media the contrast could not be more stark. You have President Trump returning from a g20 where he couldnt meet with Vladimir Putin for a variety of reasons, they said it was because of ukraine, but perhaps it would have been better to meet with him and stand up to him, publicly stand up to him on ukraine, rather than just avoiding the whole subject and the obvious implication was that he couldnt meet with him because of the plea agreement just hours earlier before departing of Michael Cohen. So all of that brought into gross relief as well as that extraordinary handshake, hand grip, bromance in between the two strong men who are sort of the book ends of the trump Foreign Policy. So many thoughts flood over me about george h. W. Bush and the years and years of watching him in so many roles, the political role, which people have acknowledged, 1988 was a brutal campaign, lee at waters death bed confessions for the Willie Horton ads and other things that transpired, but the contrast between that and the touch decisions he made, jon meachum referring to that tough budget decision which did set the stage for years and years of prosperity as well as some of the other decisions that he made that contradicted his own previous more political impulses. He always, however, with maureen dowd and with others, im thinking of peter bakers reminiscence about ann devroid the correspondent from the Washington Post that led to the demise of john sununu her own reporting and when she got sick with cancer the first person to respond was president bu bush. She had absolutely bedeviled him and he and jim baker got her into m. D. Anderson for intensive treatments, tragically did not save her young life, but they did everything they could in houston to help her. It could not have been a more dramatic contrast because she was the toughest white house correspondent, maureen was certainly the toughest columnist, but there are so many other examples. Marlin fitzwater represented the balance and the spirit of president bush 41 in terms of his role as press secretary and the contrast could not be more stark with what we see today. Absolutely. Jon meachum, we are possibly going to be seeing on wednesday act two in a remarkable Public Public play where we move from a mccain funeral, the john mccain funeral, which was unlike anything that either mika or i have ever seen in our life, a coming together basically of leaders celebrating what washington once was and what people believed washington could be again, and i cant help but believe thats what were going to see on wednesday as well, republicans and democrats and independence and others saying this is who we have been, this is who we will be again. I suspect i suspect we may leave with many of the same feelings on wednesday that we did after the john mccain funeral. Oh, absolutely. I think it will end up being, i think, the cumulative effect of the week is going to be a reminiscence and lets hope a celebration, not an internment, of an american order that looked outward to the world, did not look inward in an isolationist way. This will be about global engagement, its going to be about free trade, its going to be about an america where we understand that if we arent involved in the affairs of the world, young men like george h. W. Bush end up getting shot down out of the sky because that was the price of the isolationism of the 1920s and 30s. I want to say i want to mention two names here because i think president bush would want us to. From september 2nd, 1944 the day he was shot down in the pacific, every day he thought about ted white and dell delaney who is the two crew mates who died on that mission with him. He always wondered why he was spared. My own view of his life is that in many ways every subsequent day was an attempt to prove himself worthy of having been spared on that day. He understood that his life was no longer his own. He heard his mothers voice, h