The Power of Character with Jeffrey Engel

[00:00:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: What can the career of George HW Bush tell us about history and presidential leadership? Welcome to Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library. I'm Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, head of the library at Mount Vernon. In this podcast series, we talk with experts about leadership and history, how studying these stories helps us understand our current moment, and how we can apply lessons from leaders in the past to our own lives.

Today I am joined by Jeffrey Engel, whose official title is David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, but who I used to call boss, and mostly because it annoyed him. You see, if you looked up the word "mensch" in the dictionary, you would see Jeff's face. In addition to being a first rate chap, an excellent mentor, and someone I now proudly call a friend, Jeff is also an exceptional historian. He has an ability to see the humanity in people, without falling in love with his subject, which is no small feat. His work on the Cold War fundamentally changed how I think of the presidency, American power, George HW Bush, and legacy. I know you'll learn as much from him as I do.

Who are some of the presidents you have studied and why did you choose them?

[00:01:14] Jeff Engel: I started in 1946 with Harry Truman. It was the first real project I ever did. That was my undergraduate thesis. I had a grant from the NEH back when they used to give undergraduates grants, and I wrote on the 1946 Franco-American Loan, which is so important. You've never heard of it. And Truman was really the first guy that I got into, which of course, brought me back to Roosevelt, and then I would say I didn't necessarily focus on presidents as much as time periods at first. I was focused on the Cold War until it came time to do my second book, and my first book came out and my department chair very nicely, one afternoon, very nice guy, came down the hall and said, so what are you doing for your second book?

And I said, I don't know, I, I think maybe the economic diplomacy of the 1920s. And he said, instead of that, why don't you go look at this diary that just opened up at the Bush Library. And I went over and it turns out it was Bush's diary, HW Bush's diary from when he was ambassador to China in the early 1970s, mid 1970s.

And I've been stuck with him and the ends of the Cold War ever since. It's just utterly fascinating. I never in a million years thought I would do something that modern. But the questions were just completely fascinating.

[00:02:22] Lindsay Chervinsky: So we're gonna circle back and talk about him in a lot more detail, but I'm really curious to know what it is like or what the differences are between studying someone that you have spent time with and someone that you haven't.

Perhaps you can tell the listeners a little bit about the time you spent with him so they know why I'm asking that question.

This was something I wanted to ask right at the beginning of the conversation because Engel, as you will hear, actually got to know George HW Bush. As someone who has mostly written on presidents from 200 years ago, I was curious about how knowing your subject could impact the work.

He wisely pointed out that the impact depends on how you end up feeling about that person.

[00:03:06] Jeff Engel: Yes. In fact, I actually think it's a three parted question to me, or a three headed question. 'Cause I think it's, um, spending time with somebody versus not spending time with somebody, but also spending time with somebody that you like, and—

[00:03:18] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah, that's an important detail.

[00:03:19] Jeff Engel: Well, and, and I've had both. So for your readers, I had the opportunity to work on George HW Bush's diary when he was in China, and we effectively wrote a book together on that where I did all the annotations and, I interviewed him dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and then subsequently did that for my next book, which was a study of his time as president and his foreign policy in particular.

And I was teaching at the Bush School for much of that time and spent a lot of time with the president and with Mrs. Bush and um, a lot of social time as well. And in fact, I sort of considered him a grandfather in many ways and I still miss him to be honest. And that made it very difficult to write about him because I was very keen that whenever I was writing something about him and I found myself thinking, I wonder what the president's gonna think about that sentence, I would literally push away from the keyboard and say, you can't go there. You cannot think that way. Like, that's not your job.

So there are a lot of places where I'm very critical of his foreign policy and to his great credit, he was adamant that people who make history and people who write history have two separate and important jobs and that the makers should not get in the way of the writers.

So he was wonderful to work with. I actually wonder, as I work on different projects now, in depth, how difficult it is to write in depth about a human being that I've never spoken to. Because when I would read Bush, I could hear his voice. I've been working on H Ross Perot lately, and I never had the opportunity to meet Perot, and so I understood Bush's mannerisms. I understood, you know, the twinkle in his eye and so on, and I don't have that for Perot, and it's a different process.

[00:04:57] Lindsay Chervinsky: I can relate to that. I was doing a little bit of work on Eisenhower and all of a sudden had the revelation that I could listen to his speeches. And knew what his voice sounded like after writing about Washington and Adams, whose voice I do not know, that was a wild, wild realization.

[00:05:14] Jeff Engel: That actually must be really cool. And you could actually see him too.

[00:05:17] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah.

[00:05:17] Jeff Engel: You see him move.

[00:05:18] Lindsay Chervinsky: It's extraordinary. And then for me at least, then I started to get into the space of, there's so much material because you have all of that audio visual, like how do you even begin to cut down on what you use.

So I, I had not planned to ask this question, but now I'm super curious. How did talking to someone who you didn't like, and I won't make you name names unless you want to offer them, how did that shape your writing process? Did you have to push back against the opposite?

[00:05:43] Jeff Engel: Yes.

[00:05:44] Lindsay Chervinsky: Like you didn't want your dislike to come into the text?

[00:05:46] Jeff Engel: Yes. I spent a considerable amount of time in my life writing on somebody who I don't want to name, because I wrote a very long obituary that's going to come out when he or she dies, could not stand the guy. And— I guess I say he is a guy— didn't like him, didn't like his policies, didn't like the way he treated other people, didn't like the way he treated me, didn't like the way he treated the nation.

 And again, I had the same process where if I would find myself writing something and saying, am I being emotionally disparaging? I literally would push away from the keyboard and say, that's not your job.

[00:06:19] Lindsay Chervinsky: Okay. So let's dig into HW Bush a little bit more. For brevity, I will be calling him Bush 41.

[00:06:26] Jeff Engel: That's, that's, that's my favorite— actually, can I tell a funny story about that?

[00:06:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: Please do.

[00:06:30] Jeff Engel: So, when I was working on — working with, Bush 41, was during the time when Bush 43 was president and we had very young kids in preschool. So, you know, to try to differentiate when we were talking around dinner table about what daddy did today at work, versus what's going on in the country. We started referring to him as the "daddy President Bush" and the "little boy President Bush," and we still call him the little boy President Bush around our house.

[00:06:54] Lindsay Chervinsky: How does Bush 43 feel about that?

[00:06:56] Jeff Engel: I have never mentioned this to him.

[00:06:57] Lindsay Chervinsky: Oh, okay. How did his father feel about that?

[00:06:59] Jeff Engel: I never mentioned that to him either.

[00:07:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's probably a good omission. That is fantastic.

Okay, so because you knew him, this is not usually a question that I get to ask people who write about presidents, but because you knew him, I'm wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about what you feel were his defining personality traits that made him who he was as a leader.

This question became a launch point for a much broader conversation about presidential leadership. Engel stressed Bush's tremendous energy, but also a sense of self-awareness about the fact that it was his position as president, not necessarily anything about himself, that had the greatest impact.

[00:07:39] Jeff Engel: That's a great question. Um, the first one that leaps to mind is his astounding energy. And I saw him at the end of his life and I saw astounding energy. He actually tailed off in the last couple of years, as people do. But I saw him when he was still prim and proper, and what was amazing was having now gone back and read through his diary, from different periods of his presidency, he actually developed a thyroid condition when he was president. And one of the things that he writes in the diary that's really interesting is he says, I'm paraphrasing, I'm experiencing this thing that other people have always told me about, which is called fatigue. Because he just never had it.

And he also had an incredible memory. So the stories are legion of him walking out— when he was campaigning, walking into a building, having somebody, one of the campaign aides say, okay, there's 67 people work in this building. Two hours later walking outta the building and he'll say, wait a minute, I only met 64, where's—and then, then he'd name the three names that he had been shown.

That was when he was president and running for president. When I met him, he was not pleased with his own memory, which I thought was really fascinating because he, I think, had come down to what we might consider a normal person's memory, or a genius person's memory, but he felt a decrease.

So I think memory and energy are two really important things. And if you think about it, that's actually the way that he ran his entire political career, was based upon personal relationships, and based upon becoming friends with people, and one way that he could do that was, if he had lunch with you, 25 years later, he'd remember what you guys talked about.

[00:09:10] Lindsay Chervinsky: Wow.

[00:09:11] Jeff Engel: And that was really effective when you want to be a, a retail politician, if you will.

[00:09:15] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, it is, especially because I think people have this expectation today that politicians, they meet so many people who— so they might be nice to you, to your face, they might show interest, but the likelihood that the minute they step up from the table, they're not gonna remember anything you have to say.

[00:09:29] Jeff Engel: That's my assumption.

[00:09:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah, that's my assumption too. So for someone to feel so invested, you can see how that would be very endearing and would inspire a lot of loyalty in people around him.

[00:09:40] Jeff Engel: Oh, most definitely. And again, here's a case where reading a person's diary can be very interesting because in his diary, both when, when he was ambassador and then subsequently when he was president, though, that has not been released to the public yet, he often will say, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and burnt out. I've been working nonstop. You know what I need to do? I need to get a big party, and we need to invite people over. So I, and, and because people energized him, and I always was astounded by that 'cause I would say, boy, if I'm exhausted, the last thing I want to do is have other people around. But he drew energy from other people, which is, I think, really important to his personality.

There's one other element which I think is really important, and this really came through from knowing him personally, was his personal empathy and sense of his own power, by which I mean, he was to the manor born, you know, he is the epitome of silver spoon, noblesse oblige, and he would never deny otherwise. And he was very sympathetic, both when he was president and then after he was president, to how his actions as president and a former president would affect average people.

I'll give you two examples. When I was teaching at the Bush School, I used to invite him to class, whenever the students would do— once a year, they'd do a simulation, it was a public policy school, so we're doing international security, and I would invite the students in when they had to present to the president and he would play the part of the president.

And at one point during a break, I said, Mr. President, I gotta tell you, you're really terrible at this. You are terrible at playing the president, because I've read the National Security Council minutes when you were president and you asked really hard, insightful questions. Every question you ask these kids is softer than the last softball. And he looked at me and he said, can you imagine what would happen if one of these kids called home and said the president came to class today and said my idea was dumb, how devastated they would be, and he just wasn't gonna go there.

Similarly, we, we were out to lunch once and him and I and Mrs. Bush and, and his chief of staff and we were sitting in a corner of a restaurant in College Station and there's only one other person sitting in that room, it's a young kid, maybe 19, 20 years old, sitting by himself, and he's clearly nervous and he's clearly dressed up, and it's a nice restaurant, like he's clearly waiting for somebody.

So, young lady shows up, and the guy meets her, pulls out the chair, tucks her back in, et cetera, et cetera, and President Bush, at the end of the meal when we were leaving, got up and said to the girl, I want you to go tell your dad. This guy's a good guy. He's a gentleman. And he didn't have to do that. Also, he knew that if he was a normal person, walking up to someone saying, tell your dad that he's a gentleman, they would think that was creepy.

[00:12:14] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's so true

[00:12:14] Jeff Engel: But here she could say, hey, I saw the president, and the president said, Bob's a good guy. And I presume they're married now.

[00:12:20] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, yeah, of course. I feel like with that first date, it sounds like it was the first date, you don't really have a choice.

[00:12:25] Jeff Engel: Yeah. I was gonna say you have no choice.

[00:12:26] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah.

[00:12:26] Jeff Engel: Presidential approval.

[00:12:27] Lindsay Chervinsky: That type of self-awareness is extraordinary. You've studied a lot of presidents. How many of them do you think have that.

[00:12:35] Jeff Engel: I think most of them develop it, but I would make a distinction between those that are able to differentiate between the fact that people pay attention to them because they're president, which means everybody listens to what you say, everybody hangs on every word, everybody laughs at your joke. Everybody lets you pick up your putt. All kinds of things when you're president. There are some people, some presidents who recognize that's because they're president. Dwight Eisenhower, actually, great example. He used to complain all the time that when he was no longer president, people wouldn't let him cheat at golf as much.

Uh. Other presidents, some who I'd rather not name, I think never understood that it wasn't their own abilities. It was the fact that—

[00:13:13] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:14] Jeff Engel: —the president was an important idea in people's minds. You always say, you can hear people when they're in the presence of a, any president, Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter. Say, oh my goodness, this person was so charismatic. Oh my goodness, this person lit up a room. Well, the truth is, everybody's staring at the person to begin with because they're president.

So the presidents who I think can differentiate between the office and the fact that they are not brilliant, it's the office that's brilliant, is a key distinction between the type two types of presidents, if you will.

[00:13:41] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's such an important idea because I think the office of the presidency, that— the power of that position is one that Americans have really grappled with because it is unlike anything else in the world, and because it is not hereditary, it is not really backed by military force in the same way an autocracy would be. We don't have to uphold it in that way. We uphold it because Americans choose to uphold it. And yet it is not based on a person. So it's not personality based. It's a very tricky concept that we grapple with at times better than others.

[00:14:12] Jeff Engel: I think especially nowadays, I'm of the belief that politics changed around the time that Bill Clinton was president in a fundamental way, and we haven't changed back. Wherein before Clinton was president— and I'm talking about the modern presidency, I'm not gonna talk about presidents from your time period, 'cause you know those so much better than I and and will probably tell me that my presumption is wrong, 'cause I, I think from what little I know about politics from your era, it was pretty nasty too.

But in the Cold War era, before Bill Clinton, there was, I think a general grudging respect of the president from his political enemies.

[00:14:45] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:45] Jeff Engel: Which means they weren't actually even political enemies. They were political adversaries.

[00:14:48] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:49] Jeff Engel: They weren't enemies. Starting with Clinton, people started to hate the president.

Whether it's hating Clinton, hating Bush, hating Obama, I mean, you go through the list hating Trump, obviously. The emotional element got involved and I think that's actually a problem, not just a problem that people hate, which is not useful for politics, but also it diminishes the office of the presidency and it makes people assume that the president of another party is not interested in their welfare.

And that also by the way, makes presidents perhaps a little bit less interested in everyone's welfare and not their own constituencies.

[00:15:25] Lindsay Chervinsky: So I'm gonna take the host's prerogative and do just a tiny bit of a u-turn here, which is to say that one, because this podcast is about leadership, and typically we will focus on presidential leadership, but one of the most effect leaders that we have seen in, I would argue the last 50 years, is the former speaker of the house.

[00:15:40] Jeff Engel: Oh yes.

[00:15:41] Lindsay Chervinsky: Nancy Pelosi. And she, I think would agree with you about the change in politics. In interviews, I've heard her say as much and she blames it on Newt Gingrich.

[00:15:50] Jeff Engel: Everybody blames it on Newt Gingrich.

[00:15:52] Lindsay Chervinsky: Easy target.

[00:15:53] Jeff Engel: Well, he is. And, and, um, Julian Zelizer has a great book on this. Um, Nikki Hemmer has a great book on this. You know but there's this general consensus that Gingrich was able to manipulate the media of television better than anyone for his own political gain and recognized that one of the interesting things about television, when you're being interviewed is, there's often not someone who's going to push back on you, and if they do that doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna show that clip.

So—

[00:16:20] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yes

[00:16:20] Jeff Engel: —you can say whatever the hell you want and it'll get broadcast. It's very McCarthyite in a sense. And people don't pay attention to the refutation, and the incentive for the opposing side, if you will, is to come up with something more outrageous to say, to get their airtime.

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[00:17:24] Lindsay Chervinsky: All right, back to Bush 41. What were the biggest mistakes that he made over the course of his life, and what did he learn from them?

[00:17:33] Jeff Engel: I'm gonna complicate mistake and disappointment. He was always disappointed that he was never able to win statewide office in Texas. He ran for Senate and lost twice. I think he learned from that, I can't win statewide office in, in Texas.

And there is an irony here that he was too conservative for the nation in many ways by the end of his term, but not conservative enough for Texas. That you know, you could get elected president but not governor. So I think he learned from that experience that he was not going to succeed in that realm, and he didn't try a third time. He moved into first, appointed office, and then the vice presidency, but he never again tried on a Texas level.

[00:18:11] Lindsay Chervinsky: Interesting.

So on the flip side of that, if those were his disappointments, what were his greatest leadership moments, whether they be in his previous positions or in the presidency.

[00:18:20] Jeff Engel: The thesis of my book about him is that he was an extraordinary, effective leader of foreign policy, arguably the best.

[00:18:28] Lindsay Chervinsky: What is the book called?

[00:18:29] Jeff Engel: When the World Seemed New: George HW Bush and the End of the Cold War. And it's based on 10 years of going through the documents and pulling out and declassifying documents.

It's actually very handy to be employed by a school that is 300 yards from a presidential archive, and you have students that you can assign to fill out forms. So—

[00:18:48] Lindsay Chervinsky: And you have a president that is in theory, in favor of this project.

[00:18:51] Jeff Engel: Yes, very, very much so. That was actually a huge help. What was astounding from that is, first of all, most people remember the end of the Cold War as a rousing success.

In fact, if you have asked the average American, if they have an opinion on this, which increasingly they don't, they'll tell you, oh yes, Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. And they'll use the term "won."

More important than that is that this is the first time in history that we've had a major empire collapse without an ensuing great power war. By the way, you could argue that the war in Ukraine is actually sort of part of the war of Soviet succession, if you will. We'd never run that experiment in history with nuclear weapons involved. So Bush appreciated just how dangerous this moment was. And Bush time after time, after time, quietly via telephone or via a handwritten note, communicated with other leaders to lower international tensions, and then did the other key thing, which is he didn't talk about it. Because that would blow the whole purpose.

[00:19:45] Lindsay Chervinsky: Engel emphasized the importance of strategic restraint in leadership, particularly presidential leadership. Bush, he argues, intentionally didn't gloat about his foreign policy successes, because that would have undermined the relationships he had built that had made those successes possible in the first place.

And that, Engel suggests, had ramifications at home.

[00:20:07] Jeff Engel: If you talk about something publicly and embarrass someone, then that defeats the purpose of quiet diplomacy. So one of the reasons, there are several reasons, but one of the reasons I think that he did not win reelection is because he never told the American people how good he was. Because he didn't think it was in a nation's interest. And I can assure you, I have all the memos from his campaign staff and from his political advisors saying, we need to get this message out about how successful we have been, because when you're successful in diplomacy, it oftentimes, it doesn't make the front page of the times. It only does when you fail.

And he refused to ever boast, if you will, about his own accomplishments, especially in the diplomatic realm, because he thought, first of all it wasn't gentlemanly, but more importantly it wasn't in the nation's interest. He had a, he had a line about this where he said about when the Berlin wall fell and people were encouraging him to go to the Berlin Wall, he said, I'm not gonna dance on the wall, because that would embarrass Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.

[00:20:58] Lindsay Chervinsky: It strikes me that, that's very similar to intelligence and the military in that when they have a success, you often don't know about it.

[00:21:07] Jeff Engel: Yes.

[00:21:08] Lindsay Chervinsky: And when they have a failure, things tend to blow up.

[00:21:10] Jeff Engel: Yes. And you and I are speaking in the aftermath of another potential assassination attempt against former President Trump.

And I think, obviously we all believe that's horrific, but I do think it's worthwhile to note that we don't hear about all their incredible successes for the Secret Service. They're getting criticized today, but I wish we could put it in a context, and we don't have the numbers to put it in a context, but we know that there's a lot of successes as well.

[00:21:33] Lindsay Chervinsky: We do. And in fact, if you Google threats against the president, there are some records that have started to come out about things that did not make the news the time, but just like lists of threats that they learned about, that they changed the route of a car, they decided to go to a different direction based on the threat. And it's worth noting how many of them there are on a regular basis.

[00:21:53] Jeff Engel: Most definitely.

[00:21:54] Lindsay Chervinsky: So I think that you could characterize what you just described about Bush in one word, or the one word I guess I would use would be restraint.

[00:22:03] Jeff Engel: Yes.

[00:22:03] Lindsay Chervinsky: This is a theme I've been harping on a great deal about lately because I think that John Adams exercised a great deal of restraint in 1800. Restraint is not always very sexy.

[00:22:12] Jeff Engel: No.

[00:22:13] Lindsay Chervinsky: It does not typically get monuments made to it. Although I was told by an audience member that there is a Temperance Monument in Washington DC, which in theory is a monument to restraint, but presidential restraint doesn't typically get the monuments. Why not?

Why don't we celebrate that as much?

[00:22:28] Jeff Engel: Well, I think we don't see it that much in presidents in particular. 'Cause we have to remember, and I hope you've made this point to your audience before, just 'cause I'm sure you've heard me say it a thousand times, that all presidents are basically sociopaths. And think about the ego that is required to become president of the United States, and now in the modern era, the ego that is required to say, yes, I will take control of enough nuclear weaponry to destroy humanity. Personally in charge of it.

[00:22:53] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, and just to be clear, you're not even saying ego in a bad way per se, but that you have to have such—

[00:22:57] Jeff Engel: You have to have it

[00:22:58] Lindsay Chervinsky: —in— insane confidence that you are the person that should be making those decisions.

[00:23:02] Jeff Engel: I mean, there's 350 million people in this country. And you have to genuinely believe that you are the best person or you shouldn't be doing the job and you can't do the job.

And that's not normal. And consequently, I think we should not expect those people necessarily to act in a restrained manner 'cause they didn't succeed by acting in a restrained manner. And it's only the, I would argue the better presidents, who are able to appreciate, especially in foreign policy, the quality of restraint.

There was some talk, for example, when Barack Obama was leaving office, people were looking around for a historical comparison. And Derek Chollet, who now is with the Defense Department, I think, he wrote a really interesting book where he made the point that Obama's heroes from a foreign policy perspective were Eisenhower and George HW Bush.

And now stop for a second and think about what a caricature or what a comedian's impression of Barack Obama sounds like. It's. Incredibly. Slow.

[00:24:02] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:03] Jeff Engel: Which is not how he was on the campaign trail, but he learned over time that every word a president says has a potential to crash the stock market or cause a war.

And he was very, very restrained, especially by the end of his presidency. And not every president has learned that lesson.

[00:24:15] Lindsay Chervinsky: Is there a way that we think we can cultivate restraint in leadership? Or is it kind of like you just have to hope someone learns it?

[00:24:22] Jeff Engel: So there is no great preparation to be president because there's no equivalent job.

So by definition, we're putting somebody in an uncomfortable position, and if we believe in the Peter principle, at some point we're gonna get people rising up to that position who are not up to the task. And I am very uncomfortable, though I don't have a better solution, very uncomfortable with the way that we choose presidents now because I think we choose the person who is the best campaigner and the best retail politician, and forget that actually we want this person to make fundamental policy decisions about America's future, especially for areas that we don't know yet.

One of the most amazing projects I ever participated in was a project to look at what happened over time to a president's foreign policy in their first year. And the takeaway across all of the presidents that were looked at, and I was only involved in the 20th century part, but I think they did 19th century part too. The 20th century part obviously is much more important 'cause it is.

[00:25:15] Lindsay Chervinsky: Listeners, I'm rolling my eyes.

[00:25:16] Jeff Engel: Yes, she is. Every single president faced a crisis that no one would've anticipated in their first year. If you made a list on inauguration day of, here are the places where we need to worry about. Every single one of them faced a crisis that was not on the list.

And we need to remember when we're electing somebody that we should be focused on, I think, their basic competence and their basic character because there is no way that you can present somebody with the scenario that they're going to have to deal with.

[00:25:43] Lindsay Chervinsky: Absolutely. I mean, two fantastic examples in this century alone are George W. Bush. Bush 43.

[00:25:50] Jeff Engel: Yep.

[00:25:50] Lindsay Chervinsky: Ran on the economy, and September 11th happened eight months into his presidency. And Joe Biden ran on the pandemic and the economy and racial reckoning, and Ukraine happened just over a year into his presidency.

[00:26:03] Jeff Engel: Yes, and go through the list, Somalia for Clinton. Frankly, the entire end of the Cold War for HW Bush, Reagan had issues. Carter had issues. And in each case they were forced to both learn on the job, how to be president, and learn on the job about a place and a thing that they had never thought about before.

Which is why there's one other element which I think people need to remember when they're thinking about presidents, and of course, we're having this discussion in the context of election season. I think we focus too much on voting for the president, and I think we need to remember that the president is not making most of the decisions that are coming outta the executive branch. George W. Bush had a great line about this. He said, things don't get to my desk unless no one else can solve them as president.

So what you're really electing are the 7,000 people that the president's gonna bring to Washington with him or her. 'Cause they're the ones who are actually gonna make most of the decisions. So find somebody who you think has a good sense of character and good sense of judgment about the people that he or she surrounds themselves with.

[00:27:01] Lindsay Chervinsky: One of the main themes of this show is the interaction between history and leadership. So I wanted to know: did Bush draw on history to inform his leadership style? The answer it turns out is a mixed bag.

We have been talking about, you know, obviously, our sense of history, and we're historians, so obviously we love it. But did Bush 41 have an appreciation of history? Was that something that you felt contributed to his abilities?

[00:27:27] Jeff Engel: Yes. Yes and no. He was not as vigorous a reader of histories as other presidents, uh, including frankly, I think his own son. Doesn't get credit enough for how much he read while in office.

Bush 41, I think was very, very keen on understanding his role and the nation's moment in history. Remember, he joins the Navy at age 18. He's the second youngest naval aviator in the Pacific Theater. Used to be that we could say he was the youngest and somebody found somebody younger, so that's annoying, we have to say second youngest. So at 19, he's commanding troops in combat and flying combat missions and so on, and comes from his storied family, and is always thinking of himself, expecting himself, to be at the pinnacle of society.

So he was very keen that his policies lined up with Franklin Roosevelt's and that his policies lined up with Dwight Eisenhower's. What are the consistencies here that make us Americans in our foreign policy? Even though times have changed, even though situations have changed, how do we know who we are except from our sense of history?

[00:28:25] Lindsay Chervinsky: It's fascinating that he picked those two because they are of course from different parties, and yet Eisenhower of course, famously kept on a lot of the New Deal policy.

[00:28:35] Jeff Engel: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:35] Lindsay Chervinsky: Much to the chagrin and of the more radical elements of the Republican party. They were also very different men.

[00:28:40] Jeff Engel: Well, I think there's actually a simple explanation, honestly, for this one. Remember, HW Bush is exactly in that demographic that never knew another president their entire lives until Franklin Roosevelt died, and he was also his commander in chief.

So when the war happened, and Bush started talking about his new world order, it was quite— quite frequently pointed out that there's nothing new about this at all. Bush's response was, . yeah, this is the, this is the world I fought for under Franklin Roosevelt. We just never got a chance to implement it because the Cold War got in the way. In terms of freedom of trade, American leadership in the world, international accords and so on.

Also, Eisenhower was a family friend. He used to go golfing with Eisenhower, and actually it's very interesting. One of the reasons that he went golfing with Eisenhower is because Bush's father was one of Eisenhower's— who spent some time in the Senate during his, during the Eisenhower years, was one of Eisenhower's favorite golf buddies.

The reason is Bushes, by their very nature, are extraordinarily competitive, and Eisenhower noticed that the elder Bush, whose first name unfortunately, is just escaping me for this moment, I apologize. He wouldn't let him cheat and he wouldn't— Eisenhower who was also competitive, wanted somebody who would actually give him a good game.

[00:29:50] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, and to your point about people treating you differently, there probably weren't that many people who would actually compete with the president or with the former president beacause of who Eisenhower was.

[00:29:59] Jeff Engel: Yeah, and I shouldn't, and I shouldn't have said cheat, I should have said beat. Everybody wants the president to like them. So everybody wants the president to win when they're playing with them. Not the Bushes. They went in for the win.

[00:30:09] Lindsay Chervinsky: So would it be fair—

[00:30:10] Jeff Engel: Prescott. Prescott's his name, sorry.

[00:30:11] Lindsay Chervinsky: —would it be fair to say that, Bush's— the people that he learned leadership from then, were people that he was close to, like he actually had personal relationships with, as opposed to people that he had studied.

[00:30:22] Jeff Engel: If you extend personal relationship to include people that he never met, but had a great influence on his personal life, like Franklin Roosevelt then, yes. He never met Roosevelt that I'm aware of.

He really imbibed something that is either non-existent today or unfashionable, which is a genuine sense that people who were given great privilege in life, and he was always aware of the privileges he had been given, and people who had been given by God, great talents in life, and he was very talented, we talked about his memory, that they had commensurate duty to help others. And in parentheses, the others is those less endowed and those less fortunate. And that's the part that we're not supposed to say out loud anymore, that in this country, everybody's equal. But the truth of matter is, look around the room. Any room you're in, you can see differences.

So Bush really believed that his form of leadership, which he saw exhibited around him, both in Washington and his own family, was one of giving back.

[00:31:18] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's actually like a founders esque—

[00:31:20] Jeff Engel: Yeah.

[00:31:20] Lindsay Chervinsky: —approach to public service.

[00:31:22] Jeff Engel: Well, and it's, and it's also important to note, just like most of the founders, you know, better than I, you have to also not worry about your next meal.

[00:31:30] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm.

[00:31:30] Jeff Engel: When you're doing that. Give you a good example. When Bush was a young man, graduated Yale after World War II, was offered a job at an investment bank, Harriman Brothers, and would've had a great life being an investment banker, would've lived in Greenwich like his dad, would've gone to the country club, could've had an easy street from the age of 24, and especially after having fought in World War II, who could blame him.

And Bush didn't want that. He got a Studebaker convertible and drove out to Texas and said, I'm gonna get into the oil business, 'cause that seems to be, that's where the action is.

Two things that are important about this, that they don't tell you in the family mythology. First, he had in his pocket a half million dollar check from other investment bankers that would help him start his business

[00:32:08] Lindsay Chervinsky: Helpful.

[00:32:09] Jeff Engel: Second, he had an offer, and he would actually get this offer every now and then over the next couple of years, would you like to come back to New York? Anytime you wanna come back to New York and go into investment banking, there's a job for you. 'Cause you're a Bush and you went to Yale and you're a personable guy.

It's family lore that Bush struck out for the frontier on his own and gambled with his family's life. That is true only in the sense that he always had a really good parachute.

[00:32:33] Lindsay Chervinsky: That does help with the courage part of it.

[00:32:35] Jeff Engel: It does. It really does. And I think like the founders, I think, my sense is that George Washington never worried that he wasn't going to be the most important person on his own plantation.

Yes, he had financial troubles, but he never thought that he was never going to be at the top of the food chain for colonial American society. Tell me if I'm wrong.

[00:32:51] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, I think that's true after a certain point. So it is true after his older half brother Lawrence dies and he inherits.

[00:32:59] Jeff Engel: Yes, yes.

[00:32:59] Lindsay Chervinsky: And then he has wealth in a real way. I think until that point he was very much on unstable ground and quite reliant on connections and sort of personal charisma to try and get ahead. But then once he has money, then yes, you're right. And has the good fortune of being the tallest person in the room most of the time, and having the sort of military bearing that is quite useful, and then showing up in moments in military uniform, just as a suggestion.

[00:33:23] Jeff Engel: And this also explains again, your expertise, not mine, but why so much of his early career is spent trying to build a reputation.

[00:33:31] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yes.

[00:33:31] Jeff Engel: ' Cause he wants to find something that's independent of the things that he was gifted when he was born.

[00:33:36] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yes, absolutely.

[00:33:37] Jeff Engel: Uh, it's the station in life that he was gifted. Today, we would call it privilege, to be honest. Bush had a great sense of his own privilege, I think.

[00:33:43] Lindsay Chervinsky: So, when we talk about leadership, that's kind of a fuzzy term in today's meaning.

[00:33:48] Jeff Engel: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:48] Lindsay Chervinsky: What does it mean to you?

[00:33:49] Jeff Engel: I'm gonna do that politicians thing where I'm gonna answer a slightly different question. I have been—

[00:33:53] Lindsay Chervinsky: It's politicians and media. If you don't like the question, just don't accept the premise of it.

[00:33:57] Jeff Engel: You know, I am now in my third decade of teaching at the university level. And every institution I've been involved in has said, we want you to teach leadership. And every institution I've ever been at, I've made the point that you can't. That you can demonstrate leadership, you can show examples of leadership, but you can't actually train someone to be a leader.

You can train them to have certain skills that might contribute to leadership. But at the end of the day, leadership I think is being able to not only have a vision, but being able to get other people to buy into your vision and understand ultimately, success is not about you, it's usually about the organization. So when your team succeeds, you succeed.

That's a really hard— and either you understand that in life or you don't. And we all know successful people in their sixties and seventies and eighties who still make every situation about them. And we know other leaders of organizations who are more than willing to let their subordinates and their acolytes have the limelight

[00:34:53] Lindsay Chervinsky: In some ways, the Bush that you have described is understandable, but I think perhaps might feel inaccessible to some people because he had such a unique and extraordinary life.

[00:35:04] Jeff Engel: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:04] Lindsay Chervinsky: But I'm a firm believer that presidential history and presidential leadership can be applied to the day-to-day, 'cause everyone has leadership decisions they have to make, whether it's just with peers or running their own organization.

So what lessons does Bush 41's leadership, what lessons about that are accessible to this current moment and can we apply to our work, our business, our hobbies, our volunteer work, et cetera?

[00:35:29] Jeff Engel: I really thought about not only in terms of teaching and writing about the presidency, but having worked with the president, what could I learn from him to make me a better leader. I don't expect to be president of the United States, but I do run an organization. And the fact that he always used the term we, and he always said, we are doing this. It's an administration.

And he was very, very comfortable— again, 'cause he was at the top of the food chain— very comfortable giving credit to people around him for success. And, and I think he knew that when a president succeeds, the president succeeds, and the president's gonna get the credit at the end of the day, so why not turn to Bob at the moment and say, boy, Bob's the one that got this through. Boy, Bob did a great job on this. And help Bob in his career and help Julie in hers.

And that I think is one of the key lessons that I take from him, that a leader succeeds when the organization succeeds, and that you will get your own credit in time. People will recognize that your organization is good and you'll get your goodies, but the way you get there is by helping other people.

[00:36:27] Lindsay Chervinsky: What would you say to presidents that they should keep in mind in terms of legacy? How is that different than the average person?

[00:36:35] Jeff Engel: I think my first answer would be, what took you so long to call?

Um, but. I actually would suggest that presidents should go back to Washington and to the founders. I think the most important thing that I've taken from writing about this period is the importance of virtue, and the classical sense of virtue. That virtue and your reputation in that era for men of that certain class was derived from how much people thought that you were putting the nation and the community ahead of your own interests.

So I think if a president wakes up every day and doesn't ask the question, how am I gonna improve my legacy? But wakes up every day and says, how am I gonna make this a better country? A legacy will follow.

[00:37:19] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's great. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I am very grateful for your time.

[00:37:24] Jeff Engel: I'm very grateful for all the work that you do. I'm just busting out with pride every time I, I think of how great you're doing.

[00:37:30] Lindsay Chervinsky: Thank you. Well, it would not have been possible without this opportunity. For those listening, we're recording this in Dallas at the, uh, SMU library, but this is where I did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Presidential History and uh, so it's very nice to be back.

[00:37:45] Jeff Engel: It is important to note that you wouldn't have a career without us.

[00:37:48] Lindsay Chervinsky: Obviously.

[00:37:48] Jeff Engel: I mean that's, that's, yeah.

[00:37:49] Lindsay Chervinsky: Obviously.

[00:37:50] Jeff Engel: Obviously. You can cut that part out.

[00:37:56] Lindsay Chervinsky: Thank you for joining us this week on Leadership and Legacy, and thank you so much again to our guest, Jeff Engel. You can buy his books, including his excellent book on the end of the Cold War, When the World Seemed New, wherever books are sold. Just as a reminder, if your local store doesn't have a copy of the excellent books of our guests, you can always ask them to order a copy for you. They will be happy to do so.

I'm your host, Dr. Lindsey Chervinsky.

Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and Primary Source Media.

In the spirit of George Washington's leadership, we feature the perspectives of leaders from across industries and fields. As such, the thoughts expressed in this podcast are solely the views of our guests and do not reflect the opinions of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.

To learn more about Washington's leadership example, or to find out how you can bring your team to the George Washington Presidential Library, go to GW leadership institute.org. Or to find more great podcasts from Mount Vernon, visit George Washington podcast.com. You can also explore the work of Primary Source Media at primarysourcemedia.com.

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