There have been 42 Presidents of the United States.
Some touched by greatness.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Others remembered as failures.
There can be no whitewash at the White House.
What makes the difference? What is the secret of Presidential success?
For those seeking the White House,
what lessons does the past offer for How To Be A Good President?
The British have long been fascinated by the Americans.
We even have a museum dedicated to them.
Perched on a hill near Bath,
the American Museum aims to deepen our understanding of the United States.
But there's one part of the American setup we struggle to understand -
the Presidency.
We have nothing quite like it, and the role is hardly straightforward.
The demands on it are evolving all the time.
That's especially tricky for the people who have to do the job.
It's been said the presidency is now so complicated,
nobody can do it well.
Nevertheless, some have been much better than others.
Who have been the effective ones, and who found wanting?
What are the qualities that count?
That's a question that matters to Americans, of course,
but given America's role in the world,
it matters to the rest of us.
We've asked 11 experts to choose a president each,
describing the strengths they brought to the Oval Office.
First up, Theodore Roosevelt.
At 42, the youngest ever President of the United States.
Among his achievements, the Panama Canal and a Nobel Peace Prize.
He was also an environmental trailblazer,
placing 230 million acres of countryside under Federal protection.
# Oh give me land Lots of land
# Under starry skies above
# Don't fence me in... #
His concerns about America's natural heritage about the land,
the wide open spaces, are central to him
because they reveal his feelings about the way human societies have to live in the world
over which they have stewardship.
It was a very modern idea, in fact.
Also they reveal his belief that a president can do things.
"I can establish a national park.
"I can make sure this is some sort of sanctuary that is never despoiled."
So, on the one hand, he was able to kindle in many Americans
a sense that they lived in a place of precious beauty.
And at the same time to say,
"Look if there's one thing I can do, I've been elected here, this is it.
"I'm going to leave this country in a better state than I found it."
He believed that what the presidency was,
was an opportunity to lead and persuade.
He talked about daring to fail greatly.
And that's what made him, I think,
one of the most remarkable presidents either of the 19th century or the 20th.
By all accounts he was an absolutely entrancing figure.
He was big, he was ebullient, effervescent.
He was a president who understood that the ways of communicating with your people
were changing very, very fast,
and they were becoming much more complicated.
But they were also becoming rather more enticing.
It was a society alive with commentary and news.
And of course that's what he adored. He enjoyed speaking, meeting people,
pressing the flesh, going on trains across the country
and all the rest of it.
And it fitted his personality like a glove.
I think he was a great president because what he demonstrated
was that a serious office needs serious people.
He was a big man, not just in physique
but in brain and in emotion.
And I think that what he showed was that those qualities
are of the essence.
Doesn't mean you won't make mistakes or take a wrong turning.
If you don't have that you're not big enough for the job.
It's worth remembering that the President is not a glorified Prime Minister.
The job is completely different.
For one thing, he's head of state.
His office is meant to be above petty partisan politics.
Its symbols, the White House or Air Force One,
are symbols of America itself.
But here's the paradox.
We may call the President of the United States the "most powerful man in the world"
but he can have less direct power,
especially over domestic policy, than even his British counterpart.
In Britain, a new Prime Minister
commands a majority in the House of Commons. By definition.
He has party whips to keep his MPs in line.
But a new president can face hostile majorities
in both Houses Of Congress.
Those senators and congressmen are elected separately from him.
They owe him nothing.
As a result, even members of the president's own party
can feel no obligation to follow his lead.
For Theodore Roosevelt, that meant relying on what he called the "bully pulpit",
preaching his message directly to the American people.
If you could get the public on side, the politicians would soon follow.
Theodore's distant cousin,
Franklin D Roosevelt, was a master of persuasion.
It looks, my friends, like a real landslide this time.
Franklin Roosevelt became President of the United States
in March of 1933, in the absolute depths of the great recession
following the great Wall Street crash of 1929,
millions of people unemployed.
Despair, poverty.
'At his family home in Hyde Park,
'President Roosevelt received the congratulations of his fellow townsmen.'
He came from this immensely patrician New York family
and he had been reared, as it were,
with every privilege and self confidence
that came from that advantage of education and that, no doubt,
helped him not to be scared of anybody.
'The banks closed. President Roosevelt taking financial measures against the Depression.
'Social security founded as he instituted a series of New Deal reforms.'
Our capacity is limited only by our ability to work together.
What is needed is the will. I propose to sail ahead.
I feel sure that your hopes and your help are with me.
For to reach a port, we must sail.
Sail, not lie at anchor.
Sail, not drift.
Well, I think he understood that in order to fight the Depression
the big vested interests of the American economy.
It is cruel that the toes of some people are being stepped on
and are going to be stepped on.
But these toes belong to the comparative few.
I mean he made himself fantastically unpopular.
He was hated by American Conservatives during his time
with a degree of hostility that is hard to comprehend.
This was a politician absolutely embattled in the rigours
and, if you like dirty work, of hard politics with ruthless opponents.
For me, Franklin Roosevelt was undoubtedly the greatest president
of the 20th century, perhaps of any American century.
He confronted the two great challenges,
two greatest challenges, in my opinion, of American history
the Great Depression, and Adolf Hitler.
And it was a crisis of confidence,
a crisis of self-confidence, of a whole country.
And his overriding gift and genius as a leader
was to be able to find the words
and the body language, and the style
which the United States for a while seemed to have lost.
First of all, let me assert my firm belief
that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
So, I think the name of Franklin Roosevelt
will ring down the centuries for a very long time to come,
as long as the history of the United States is written.
After FDR, the job was never the same again.
Historians speak of the Imperial Presidency -
a larger, more muscular institution
that saw itself as responsible for managing the economy
or providing for the poor.
That expansion of the executive endured,
and the presidency itself has only got larger.
When Roosevelt died,
the weight of that great office descended on his Vice President,
a man who would demonstrate the value of political modesty.
Tragic fate has thrust upon us grave responsibilities.
We must carry on.
APPLAUSE
I think Truman is the perfect example
of somebody who is underrated before he becomes president.
One of the very first things that happens was the bombing of Japan.
And that was regarded, I think,
as extraordinarily controversial to this day.
People still ask whether it was really necessary.
Truman was driven by fear
of what was expected to be huge casualties among Allied troops
if they attempted to invade mainland Japan.
I think to this day we simply don't know.
As a result of that, Truman became very, very determined
to try to avoid war if he possibly could.
So, the next major threat came in 1948,
when the Russians blockaded Berlin....
'Berlin becomes a city of darkness
'as all ground communication is severed and industry comes to a standstill.'
Don't forget this is three years after the end of the Second World War
and here is the single largest army on the surface of the globe.
Truman was offered several options, one of which was to do nothing,
the second of which was to start a Third World War with the Soviet Union,
and the other one of which he thought up himself,
and that was the breaking of that blockade by the most astonishing airlift.
Which went on for some six months or more,
conducted mainly by the United States and the British air forces,
which brought enough food and materials into Berlin to keep it alive
month after month until, after six months, the Russians finally lifted the blockade.
'The blockade of Berlin is due to end,
'as crowds gather at the Russian-British frontier.'
It was a brilliant way of showing that you can have a huge challenge and deal with it,
without the obvious ways of military force.
'President Truman signs the bill that puts the Marshall aid plan into operation.'
'American resources, machinery, food, necessities,
'to back up countries on the side of freedom.'
His greatest up, probably his greatest single achievement,
was the launching of the Marshall plan.
Now, two things a new president could learn from that.
One was that Truman deliberately did not take credit for it much of the time.
He left Marshall, the great war hero of the Second World War in the United States,
to take the lead in the selling of the Marshall plan.
And because Marshall was close to being godlike in the United States at that time,
there was far less opposition to the Marshall plan than one might have expected.
So that, I think, is chalked up to Truman's credit
and it shows the astonishing capacity of a man
who is more modest than his actual talents deserve him to be.
Without a doubt, the Marshall plan can be described
as the great peacetime victory of the Western World
and particularly the recovery of Western Europe.
'Parading with old-time comrades,
'veterans of the 35th Division with whom young Harry Truman served in France
'in the First World War...'
He is then faced with the certainty all over America
he's going to be defeated.
His Gallup Poll readings are low,
and he goes into election with the absolute assumption
from all corners of the United States, that he's going to lose.
'I want to say to you, that for the next four years
'there'll be a Democrat in the White House, and you're looking at him.'
CHEERING
He campaigns vigorously,
nobody else believes in him but he believes in himself.
He goes on talking like somebody who's going to be the next President,
the newspapers go on talking like somebody who knows that Dewey will be the next President,
to the actually extraordinary point that the Chicago Tribune carried a headline which said, "Dewey wins"
the very night that Truman won, and won by a fair majority.
'Came home from his great victory with Vice President Barclay.
'Washington turned out in its hundreds of thousands to welcome him.'
But what does it all add up to?
One is that if you let other people take the credit you can do an amazing amount,
you should never be a slave to the polls, as those two examples show very clearly.
And thirdly, you have to have the ability to ride with and then dominate events,
and the events that, as it were, besieged Truman's period as President
were, by any standards, extraordinary in their scale and their threat,
and therefore, I think one can say that he was actually,
modest though he was, underestimated though he was, quite a great President.
Of course, a President, like any politician,
is at the mercy of events.
'It's weary business chasing Red bandits and liberating a country
'whose only wish is freedom from aggression.'
During the Cold War,
Americans looked to the man in the White House to be their protector.
Steady in the face of danger from abroad, pragmatic at home.
'When the ballots had been counted and the nation had spoken,
'General Ike rolled up a majority of six million votes
'over his Democratic opponent.
'After 20 years, the administration had changed hands
'and the public met its new President and the incoming First Lady of the land.'
The key point about Eisenhower is this -
he is probably the most underestimated of all the Presidents
in the entire American history.
He is portrayed and seen as a bland,
rather aimless President,
but he brought extraordinary qualities to the job
which are only now properly appreciated.
# Straight down the middle
# It went straight down the middle... #
Eisenhower wasn't a political machinator.
Moderation in all things is not quite the description,
but he was constantly seeking for the Golden Mean.
# It went straight down the middle like they said... #
The key factor throughout his entire career
was that he was non-ideological.
He was extraordinarily pragmatic, in the very best American sense.
He'd grown up in that kind of environment of pragmatism,
independence and had learned to respect that in the army.
You can't get by on ideology in the army.
You get by on things that work,
so he brought that attitude to the presidency.
'Little Rock, Arkansas, and the first phase of the trouble.
'The white population are determined to prevent coloured students
'from going to the school their own children attend.
'Any coloured person anywhere near the school came in for violent abuse.
'President Eisenhower sends 500 troops to keep order
'and to see that the law of the land is obeyed.'
The first great racial crisis at Little Rock,
I was in the South at the time.
It was a tinderbox.
There was no question about it,
that the blacks were being discriminated against and brutally treated.
You could have easily had something like a second civil war in the South
if the pressure on the bigoted, entrenched whites
who feared what was happening, had been too intense.
So, in a sense, he fudged it politically,
but I think it was good to do that.
Leadership is a word and a concept
that's been more argued than almost any other I know.
I am not one of the desk-pounding types
that likes to stick out his jaw and look like he is bossing the show.
I would far rather get behind and, recognising the frailties
and the requirements of human nature,
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along.
Because once I've persuaded him, he'll stick.
If I scare him, he'll stay just as long as he's scared, and then he's gone.
The important thing about Eisenhower
is not to be confused by the public image,
which was a benign, importantly benign, public image.
Privately, he was enormously shrewd and visionary, too.
I mean, you think of the Cold War, what could have happened.
'The suspenseful moment when East and West meet
'in the form of the Eisenhower-Khrushchev venture into personal diplomacy.'
So, Eisenhower could see there was no point in getting into a war with the Soviet Union,
so he didn't do any vainglorious gestures,
but quietly he tried to work on peaceful aspects
where there could be a communion of common interests
between the Soviet Union and the West.
I'm looking forward to the talks we will have together.
to stick to maintaining America's defence without being provocative.
I trust that a full and frank exchange of views on many subjects
may contribute to better understanding on both sides
of unresolved international questions.
I think that the ability to inspire the American people,
that they were going somewhere in the right direction,
and that their ideals of fairness, equality and of peace meant something.
And maintaining peace in a dangerous and hostile world,
are things through which whoever is President
must draw sustenance from the way Eisenhower did it.
# God bless America
# My home sweet home. #
Some political skills are truly indispensable.
Before you can be a great President,
you have to get the job in the first place,
and that takes a talent for winning elections -
even a gift for play-acting.
It means seeming like an ordinary Joe, even as you claim extraordinary talents.
You have to persuade Americans you could be their affable next door neighbour,
the kind of guy they'd want at their barbecue sharing a beer.
Add to that good looks, an easy manner
and a glamorous partner, and you're made.
# Everyone is voting for Jack
# Cos he's got what all the rest lack
# Everyone wants to back Jack
# Jack is on the right track... #
The man who had it all, the full package,
was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
When this little-known Senator ran against Eisenhower's sitting Vice President, Richard Nixon,
the contrast was remarkable.
Like everybody else, I was hugely influenced
by this charismatic figure
who seemed to offer tremendous hope for the future.
Here was a man who recognised the importance of television,
recognised the importance of the media
and was able to exploit that dramatically,
assisted by his good looks, his physical presence,
and by his rhetorical skills.
My fellow citizens of the world,
ask not what America will do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
People also wanted to be persuaded
that this was really an exciting threshold,
and not for just America, of course. There was the global impact as well.
And that was the force of not only his personal charisma,
but his charisma as transmitted through the media,
and that wouldn't have been possible in a previous generation.
'The evidence is incontrovertible.
'Aerial cameras in American military reconnaissance planes
'made remarkable photographs,
'such as this one of a medium-range ballistic missile base
'which documents the Soviet offensive build-up in Cuba.'
It could have been the beginning of a nuclear holocaust.
The World could have been destroyed
in the days and weeks of the Cuban missile crisis.
I don't think that's being alarmist.
The President is surrounded by advisers,
and a lot of the advice he was getting
was calling for strikes against the Soviet missiles within Cuba,
to just destroy them rather than have a diplomatic solution.
Kennedy came to the conclusion that,
while you could not rule out a missile strike
against the Soviet missiles,
that would have to be a last resort
if the diplomatic options were getting nowhere.
So the decision to go for a blockade,
to actually blockade Cuba, to make sure that no new missiles could be brought to the island,
that ultimately did the trick in a non-violent way,
and it is to Kennedy's credit that he overruled advice
even from within his administration and realised that their advice,
actually, was far more dangerous than the policy that he chose.
And it's not just that he delivered a good result or the right result.
the way in which that result was processed,
The way in which decisions were reached in Washington,
owes a considerable amount to Kennedy's statesmanlike qualities.
CROWD: We want Kennedy! We want Kennedy!
This is a crucial question both in the United States and the UK
- what do the public want from their political leaders?
And so you can have Presidents or Prime Ministers who have great intellectual ability,
but if they don't have that ability to communicate and to inspire,
then they will end up delivering far less.
And Kennedy had that ability.
It was most exercised in the sphere of international affairs,
and the world was the better for it, as a result of his presidency.
But I think that was the most powerful quality that he could exhibit.
In November 1963, John F Kennedy was assassinated.
A few hours later, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One.
Of course, this was the most emotional takeover, probably, in the history of the United States.
Kennedy shot, and then Lyndon Johnson having to take over,
a very different character.
So it was all very dramatic,
and he must have felt such a mixture, I think, of emotions.
How do you replace this mythical Kennedy name?
All I have, I would have given gladly
not to be standing here today.
And I don't think he's had the credit that he's due
for much of the inspirational stuff that has come out of the United States.
For some reason, the Kennedys have always been credited with it
'Mr Johnson proposes an education programme that will ensure every American
'full development of his mind and skills.'
He had a vision, he called it his Vision of the Great Society.
And what was remarkable about this Texan, you know,
was that he was very aware the American Dream had not delivered
for large swathes of the population - for the old, for blacks, for the poor.
And he really deeply felt that America could not call itself great
unless it had delivered to all these other sons and daughters.
The new bill expands the 30-year-old social security programme to provide hospital care,
nursing home care, home nursing service
and out-patient treatment for those over 65.
He passed legislation on Medicare.
For the children of the poor, he had this amazing vision that they should be educated beyond their means.
Congress passes the most sweeping Civil Rights Bill ever to be written into the law,
and thus reaffirms the conception of equality
for all men that began with Lincoln and the Civil War 100 years ago.
Now, with the civil rights, where Kennedy had been promising blacks
all sorts of things but really been playing political games,
this big Texan decided time was ready, he'd do it.
Because it's not just negroes but, really, it's all of us
who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
The Kennedys talked and Johnson did.
Remarkable!
Johnson was not a very nice man.
He was crude, he was rude, apparently he told filthy jokes.
He arm twisted, sometimes physically,
you know, kind of almost imposing his great physical presence on people.
And he said... He said that he was a dominating personality
who believed not in following public opinion
but in making public opinion follow him.
Doors open in 30 TG. In 30 TG.
Johnson was one of those leaders
who had incredible ideals,
but also a totally misguided obsession about a war
that he should have ended and instead chose to accelerate.
# I got a letter from LBJ It said this is your lucky day
# Time to put your khaki trousers on
# We've got a job for you to do Dean Rusk has caught the Asian flu
# And we are sending you to Vietnam... #
think Vietnam was the most amazing... amazing, popular...
anti-war movement that, probably, the world has ever seen.
And he was helpless before it, in the end.
And...and...he never recovered.
I shall not seek
and I will not accept
the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
I can think of no other President, post-war President,
who pushed through so much legislation
which has changed the way we think about equality,
equal rights, human dignity.
And I think that is a huge accolade
for a politician and an American President.
And I don't forgive him Vietnam,
but I do think that one has to give him credit for what he has left behind, really,
for the progressives of the world.
# There's something happening here
# But what it is ain't exactly clear
# There's a man with a gun over there... #
This is what the war in Vietnam is all about.
The Marines have burned this old couple's cottage
because fire was coming from here.
Constitutionally, a President has a much tighter grip on foreign policy
than he does on matters closer to home.
A foreign policy triumph can transform
a reputation, as both Truman and JFK proved. So foreign policy success
books you a place among the presidential greats, right?
Wrong. Take Richard Nixon.
Before he came into office he set himself three goals -
end the war in Vietnam, strike a balance of power
with the Soviet Union and open up a relationship with China.
He achieved all three, and yet Richard Nixon is remembered for Watergate.
I think he came into consciousness
when I was at university, and he was running for President.
And our university professor said to us,
"This man will bring disgrace on the presidency."
And we were all just, you know, university kids, and we were sort of looking at each other
thinking, "We know he's uncool, but is it worse than that?"
There can be no whitewash at the White House.
Nixon had a very lovely, authoritative voice. It was a familiar voice, as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't realise so many of you would stay up so late.
I mean, like Fat Tony mobster shady.
He came across as uneasy in his skin.
He came across as calculating.
Why do I feel so deeply?
Why do I feel that in spite of the smears, the misunderstanding,
the necessity for a man to come up here and bare his soul as I have,
why is it necessary for me to continue this fight?
And I want to tell you why - because, you see, I love my country.
But he had a wonderful speaking voice, so when you heard him on the radio, you'd listen to him
and you thought, "That's my guy."
The people who voted for him were the people who approved of McCarthyism.
And I think maybe, in a way, the civil rights struggle,
the anti-war struggle, the rise of women, the coming-of-age of these teenagers,
I think it drove the nation to the arms of Richard Nixon, and so Richard Nixon represented stability.
And they wanted to roll back the JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy years.
It was those people saying, "We want our country back again."
So let us pledge together, your Congress,
our Congress, at the end of its term will be able to look back
He'd been around a long, long time, and he'd worked his way up from the bottom.
He was a guy who wasn't in JFK's money loop or looks or anything, you know?
The typical loser who actually makes it.
It's down to character.
And if you wanna say anything, Nixon had stamina. He had stick-to-itness.
he believed in himself, and that's what really kept him going.
# Well, I won't back down
# No, I won't back down... #
I welcome this kind of examination, People have got to know whether or not their President's a crook.
Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.
And so, for me, in that sense, he strips away all the facade and the...
the bamboozle of the American presidency and reveals
its sort of sweaty, gritty kind of slog which you have to be
to become President of the United States.
You have to have enormous stamina.
# ..No, I won't back down... #
Of course, persistence was not enough to save Nixon from Watergate,
with its political dirty tricks and cover-up,
a scandal that eventually made him the first president ever to resign.
After two years of Gerald Ford,
the American public was desperate for a fresh start and for decency in the White House.
This inauguration ceremony marks a new beginning.
There's a time in the politics of every country
when suddenly the electorate decides it wants a change.
And it didn't take much leading in that direction
once you'd had the Nixon presidency.
People wanted someone as different from Nixon as you could be,
someone open, who believed in the essential goodness of mankind,
someone who wouldn't lie to the American people.
Let us learn together, and laugh together, and work together
and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together.
One of his great problems was that he got to Washington and he thought,
"Right, this place is full of devious, nasty,
"conspiratorial scumbags," basically and, of course, he's right.
But to be a successful president, you've got to deal with those people,
and he was always unwilling to do that
and he couldn't make friends.
He'd get senators into the White House and he'd beg them
to support some bill or other that he was promoting,
and at the end he'd say, "Thank you. Goodbye."
And they'd think, "Well, isn't he even gonna offer me a drink?
"Isn't he even gonna share a few anecdotes with me or give me a few judgments on other politicians?"
That's what they expect, that's the way Washington works.
It works on the oil and grease of friendship and favours.
Carter didn't want to play that game, which was in one way
why he was so admirable and another reason why he failed so often.
# Trouble
# Trouble, trouble, trouble... #
Petrol queues are a daily ordeal for millions of motorists,
where the wait can last for up to five hours and are confronting
Mr Carter with the greatest domestic crisis of his presidency.
# ..Worry
# Worry, worry, worry, worry... #
Carter had all the vision and none of the competence,
So, for example, when the Ayatollah went back to Iran, they seized
the American embassy hostages, he sent an assault team to try and rescue them.
Late yesterday, I cancelled a carefully planned operation which was under way in Iran
to position our rescue team for later withdrawal of American hostages.
A wonderful idea, the most daring rescue imaginable,
but it was a complete failure.
# ..Trouble
# Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble... #
He was famous for being obsessed by detail.
And there's a famous story about a well-known New York Democrat,
who had come to offer money to Carter for his campaign,
who found him sitting at a desk with, up to his knees,
thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of the US Air Force appropriations account,
and Carter said proudly, "I've read every page."
That's crazy.
Presidents should worry about whether to spend 40 billion
on developing a new Stealth fighter or 40 billion on a few new aircraft carriers,
not worrying about the cost of appropriating Styrofoam cups.
They came down from the mountain with Mr Begin and Mr Sadat reconciled.
Although for a full nine days at Camp David,
they hadn't negotiated face-to-face at all.
They were led by their host to the East Room of the White House for a ceremony to mark a success
which President Carter said had answered their prayers and been beyond any expectations.
Camp David was a great success, of course. Probably only Carter, with his amazing goodwill
and this sense he had that there was no argument so divisive that we needed to go to war on it,
those things which were very, very close to the heart of Jimmy Carter.
No getting away from it, his absolute belief in justice for mankind -
that can't be taken away from him. Decency, honesty, hard work - all true.
In the end, they proved, A, not enough and, B, sometimes too much.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to express to you the gratitude I feel.
Thank you, fellow citizens, and farewell.
# Please don't talk about me when I'm gone
# Ooh, baby Though our friendship ceases
# From now on... #
It's an exhausting business being president. It takes real stamina.
Jimmy Carter used to schedule in 16 hours of work a day.
LBJ's press secretary said there was no limit to how hard you could push a president.
But are the hardest workers the highest achievers?
Ronald Reagan took a famously relaxed approach.
They say that by five o'clock in the afternoon, you'd find him snoozing in his chair.
It's morning again in America.
Today, more men and women will go to work
than ever before in our country's history.
With interest rates and inflation down, more people are buying
new homes, and their new families can have confidence in the future.
America today is prouder and stronger and better.
Why would we want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?
Well, he was really a friend of the families. When he was governor in California,
I got to know him that way. I was running automobile dealerships
at the time and actually sold him a car on a couple of occasions.
I've never felt more strongly that America's best days and democracy's best days lie ahead.
He was called the Great Communicator.
He had the idea to make very complex issues understandable to the public.
We will carry on a tradition of a good and worthy people who brought light where there was darkness,
warmth where there was cold, medicine where there was disease,
food where there was hunger and peace where there was only bloodshed.
Remember, he'd been doing it for 40 or 50 years,
started as a radio commentator, became a film actor and then did
GE Theatre, so he had thousands and thousands of hours on TV communicating.
I would like to have a crusade today,
and it would be one to take government off the backs
of the great people of this country and turn you loose again.
Sure he was a master on TV.
He was an optimistic person, he was a fun person to be around, he was an easy person to be around.
He made you feel good about yourself.
I Will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit,
for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.
I think if there was ever a crisis, he'd say,
"How are we going to fix this? How will we handle it?" He was not a person
to brood, he was a person to say, "How are we gonna do better?" "How are we gonna do better tomorrow?"
That was a key to his leadership.
The story was an American and a Russian arguing about their two countries, and the American said,
"I can walk into the Oval office, pound the President's desk
"and say, 'Mr President, I don't like the way you run the country.'"
And the Russian said, "I can do that." The American says, "You can?"
And he says, "Yes. I can go into the Kremlin, to the General Secretary's office,
"pound his desk and say, 'Mr General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan runs his country.'"
I think that he contributed greatly to ending the Cold War without a shot being fired.
He saw that the Soviet Union, really, truly he did believe it was the evil empire,
because he thought that freedom was something innate, that if you gave human beings a chance,
what they would like is freedom of speech, free enterprise, freedom to vote,
and so he saw that the Soviet Union had really enslaved millions of people.
Let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy
of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man
and predict its eventual domination over all peoples on the Earth,
they are the focus of evil in the modern world.
I think history has been very kind to Ronald Reagan
and people have seen how he helped change the world.
# I can change the world
# With my own two hands... #
How can we not believe in the greatness of America?
How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last, best hope of men on earth?
I think if you went around Eastern Europe, that he is great hero.
I think that the time that he was President, when he talked about the evil empire
and when he put the missile, intermediate-range missiles into Germany,
there was lots of disturbances and lots of people angry, but I think even people today
who maybe still wouldn't vote for him have grudgingly seen
what a difference he made and how many people are free today
because of the ideals, and the strengths,
and the ability to communicate and the policies of Ronald Reagan.
How could we do less?
We're Americans. APPLAUSE
When it comes to winning the top job, it helps to have been number two.
The office of vice-president has historically been ceremonial and often frustrating.
Dan Quayle warned Dick Cheney
that he wouldn't have much to do. Cheney replied, "I have a different understanding with the President."
Whether or not it's a proper job, being vice-president is a pretty reliable route to the presidency.
It worked for Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman,
Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, LBJ
and, of course, George Bush Senior.
I've had more experience. I'd be more stable at the helm of the United States of America.
I'd know how better to deal with the United Kingdom and the rest of our NATO allies.
I've been there, I've seen the presidential decisions.
Bush came with an impressive CV. He'd been Ambassador to the UN,
Envoy to China and Director of the CIA.
And in the White House, foreign policy experience can only help.
I don't think I met George Bush before he was president,
but once he was president
I saw him reasonably often.
The kind of leadership we got from the United States
when he was its president was, I think, just about ideal.
It's what we wanted and what we need now, too.
He just had the right way of getting people onside,
getting people to trust him and respond to the leadership he gave.
Iraq will not be permitted to annexe Kuwait.
And that's not a threat, it's not a boast, that's just the way it's going to be.
Maybe that came from his past experience at China, at the UN, in foreign affairs.
But in foreign affairs, he had THE touch, the touch
which we British needed, the touch which the world needed.
Two thirds of Kuwait's oil wells are still burning.
But he was not a visionary,
he wasn't really a strategist.
He said, I remember, "I'm not very good at this vision thing."
What he was very good at was handling the actual situations,
handling a Soviet Union in decay, handling German unification but above all handling the Gulf War,
when Saddam Hussain - in a clear act of aggression - just swallowed up Kuwait, a small country.
Let no-one doubt our staying power.
We will stand by our friends.
One way or another, the leader of Iraq must learn this fundamental truth.
He got the US Congress onside with difficulty, he got all the Europeans onside, with our help,
he got the UN Security Council onside in a way which we failed to do in the second Iraq war.
And he got most of the world onside.
It was a formidable act of leadership by a quiet, determined man.
for the economic package with which he hopes to strangle Iraq.
As it happened, I was in the White House the day the war ended, and I was actually there
when he consulted informally the commander-in-chief, vice-president,
the secretaries of state, of defence, the State Department,
as to whether we'd won and whether the war should come to an end,
and I was very impressed as a fly on the wall in the way he did that -
a mixture of firmness and humanity which I thought was excellent.
The Bush team thanked Mr Hurd for Britain's contribution and for the special relationship.
It's deep and it's profound and it's a manifestation
of a relationship that all of us in this country treasure.
He wasn't posturing,
he wasn't always worrying about the media.
If he was engaged in something, he wanted it to succeed, and this fact showed itself to other people,
created an atmosphere of trust. That was his strength.
He wasn't a great strategic thinker, he wasn't a visionary,
as he admitted himself, but because he created this atmosphere of trust,
he could do things which a lot of people with great vision simply can't manage.
# People all over the world join in... #
George Herbert Walker Bush came from a wealthy and influential family.
In fact, the majority of post-War presidents were millionaires before they took office.
Still, a humble start can be a great asset.
# Love, love to love you, baby... #
The great American narrative is of the guy
who's a really poor kid and he makes it, he makes it big.
And he makes it big because of education,
because of the great land of opportunities
that America is, and Bill Clinton's story really personifies this.
You know, here is a young boy who is born in one of the poorest states,
and because he's so bright, by golly, he's going to make it, and he does.
On this day,
with high hopes and brave hearts,
in massive numbers,
the American people have voted to make a new beginning.
CHEERING
Here is a man who manages to double the economy.
Under his watch, the stock exchange grows three fold.
Unemployment is halved to 4%.
He goes from deficit to surplus in the federal budget.
You know, here is a man who really knew his onions when it came to economics.
We must now break the habits of both political parties and say there can be no more something for nothing.
And admit frankly we are all in this together.
I think that when we say that he was a superb political manipulator,
we should also add a superb emotional manipulator.
I mean, this man knew how to play people's hearts like a violin.
He guessed where you were coming from.
He guessed what you were feeling, what you wanted, and gave it to you.
And he might not deliver, but boy could he promise you that that is what he was going to give you.
All of our efforts to strengthen the economy will fail...
Let me say this again.
I feel so strongly about this.
All of our efforts to strengthen the economy will fail
unless we also take this year, not next year, not five years from now,
but this year, bold steps to reform our healthcare system.
He had immense cross-party, cross-gender appeal
and he managed it.
Of course he had to manage it, because, guess what, his Senate, his Congress was Republican.
So he had to deal with the enemy at all times.
I defy anybody to come up with another political figure,
certainly in this century, who could have managed the enemy
the way that Bill Clinton managed his enemies.
It's incredible to think that a 21-year-old intern,
a girl with, you know, lots of hair and very little else in her head,
should have ruined a man and a presidency,
but that is exactly what she did.
And no matter how sophisticated and Continental people on this side of the Atlantic were about the scandal,
in America, people were ashamed.
It was shameful because here was their president having to testify in court.
I mean, they'd never had this before. It had never happened.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
Here was a president having to, well, first lie, and then admit to having lied.
I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression.
It was like Oprah Winfrey gone mad.
It was really tasteless.
You know, the office of the President,
to an American, is a very sacred thing.
I mean, you've got God, the flag, and then the office of the President.
And he besmirched it.
It was a real betrayal of public trust.
He had been caught out and he no longer had the confidence of the people,
the confidence of the Congress. He no longer had his self-confidence.
If we hadn't had the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
this man would have gone down in history as a great president,
because he connected with people
in such a way that I believe that the whole of the political, um...
agenda would have changed.
If it hadn't been for that scandal, for the belittling
of him and of his office,
I think that Clinton would have come away as a huge president,
as one of the greats.
Perhaps Clinton should have taken up poker.
An essential requirement of the job is an ability to read other people.
It helps if you can bluff,
hanging tough even when fate or politics has dealt you a rough hand.
Little wonder then, that some of the great presidents have also been pretty accomplished poker players.
Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Eisenhower and LBJ among them.
Harry Truman used to host poker games at the White House,
often with all three branches of the federal government represented.
They'd play with chips embossed with the presidential seal.
Recent candidates have avoided any connection with gambling,
although Barack Obama has confessed to a talent at the poker table.
It's said he's got a good poker face.
That would be a useful asset for any president,
but it's one of only dozens of qualities on the presidential checklist.
A great president needs to be pragmatic and yet have vision.
He needs great cunning, but must stay on the right side of the ethical line.
A mastery of foreign policy, yet never neglecting the American people.
A good war helps, but so does keeping the peace.
And of course, you should learn from your predecessors. The question is - which ones?
If you're going to try to make a judgement about the best president of the 20th century,
you're dealing partly with character, with, um...
honesty, but also with the way you handle the cards you're dealt,
the world that confronts you and how you deal with it.
And by those criteria, I think you've got to turn to Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
who seems to me to be, all things considered,
the biggest president of the 20th century.
If I had a mountain onto which I was carving those American Presidents
who did leave the world a better place,
and I don't just mean the United States,
then Johnson would have to be there.
The 20th century presidents, for me it's Theodore Roosevelt,
because Theodore Roosevelt saved the forests of America,
loved and appreciated the beauty,
and had this balance of power appreciation of foreign policy.
Franklin Roosevelt, pretty obviously,
the greatest figure of the 20th century in the political world.
I think overall one has to say that this president, Roosevelt,
faced both an international and a national catastrophe on a huge scale
and managed to overcome them both.
For me, the best president of the 20th century is FDR. He was an inspiring president.
He made you think that there was this thing called America that was actually worth being a part of.
I know people say Ronald Reagan made you feel that, but Ronald Reagan was an actor.
This guy was for real, a real statesman.
I suppose in terms of sheer delivery,
FDR, Roosevelt.
I would put my money on George Bush Senior in terms of actual quality and achievement.
I think FDR achieved the most, but Clinton could have.
And I think he's not so much the Comeback Kid as the What If Kid.
This may sound crazy, but...
Bill Clinton.
Made some terrible mistakes but he left the world
more or less at peace,
and he left the American budget more or less in the black.
And since then, everything's gone to hell in a handcart.
If today's commentators were ranking him,
they'd doubtless score him low on our list of presidential qualities.
Harry Truman is a textbook example of a president who got the thumbs down as he left office,
only for history later to revise its verdict.
If the past is any guide, Bush may well look rather better in future than he does today.
What does that depend on? Well, a big factor is the fate of the president who succeeds him.
# And so I made it to Iraq In time for one more snake attack
# And to my old battalion I was sent
# We'd drive around in our Humvees
# Listening to the Black Eyed Peas
# And speaking fondly of our President
# George W told the nation, this is not an escalation
# This is just a surge t'ward victory
# Just to win my little war I'm sending 20,000 more
# To help me save Iraq from Iraqis. #