remember what happened in malta in 1989. the secret meeting with mikhail gorbachev and relationships he was able to broker. ho did he wed those things, make them work together? >> relying heavily on james baker, his close friend from their young days together in houston, but through his days as chief of staff at the white house and then treasury secretary under ronald reagan, when bush was vice president, but then one of the really preeminent secretary of state. blended policy and a knowledge bush had, of course, of the military and intelligence from his experiences in the military and also as cia director. i think both personal relationships and respect for multilateralism. respect for nato and for those institutions, those postworld war ii institutions. foreign aid was not to help other countries alone primarily in america's interests to spend money, like half of 1% of the budget, on foreign aid to help as the marshall plan did, to rebuild. and a strong ally an economic powerhouse which wouldn't have happened, europe would not have been rebuilt would you american help and japan, witho

what he did in building on what ronald reagan did with mikhail gorbachev and leading to the fall of the berlin wall under president bush and the reunification of germany, a brave decision which changed the face of europe and the world. >> i'll take the segue there and turn to ambassador bruins in massachusetts this morning. earlier, andrea was talking about his faith in alliances. and you and ambassador burns, ambassador to nato for some time. talk about his view of that, the importance of having international relationships when he was in office. >> david, president bush has an extraordinary legacy in foreign policy. i think you have to say the most successful of our modern presidents on the international stage and andrea has recounted some of these. he brought the colder war to a peaceful end and that was not all assured. it could have been a violent ends. but it was his dexterity that enabled that to happen. he negotiated the unification of germany, a country that had been divided by the cold war for nearly five decades. he defeated saddam hussein in the desert and then he had the

taking advantage of mikhail gorbachev's interest in bringing the soviet union, mother russia, closer to the west and he understood that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. he knew he'd be fighting against hardliners that didn't want to go in that direction. i think one of the great things he did was put himself in gorbachev's shoes at the time and manage this in such a way to get the tremendous results that he did, which was a complete collapse of the soviet union, the unwinding of the evil empire so to speak without firing a shot and in a way that allowed not on the collapse of the soviet union but the reunification of germany, which was a complicated issue in its own right. >> you know, john, so many have spoken with me today periodically and have said how this president, bush 41, was remembered for his remarkable success on the foreign policy stage. not so much was he remembered for domestic acts, although he did meet with significant success there, the americans with disability act, clean a act. he was environmentally conscious certainly. why do you think it is that he tended

years ago to the day, today general that president bush held that press conference with mikhail gorbachev. we have some images of that. it was heralded as the end of the cold war. this is something that president obama talked about in his "60 minutes" piece that aired. i want to play you a little bit of that. >> what people don't appreciate fully, even within his own party is the degree to which he had to land the plane when the berlin wall comes down. you have chaos, potentially, in the former soviet union. and russia. and uncertainty in europe. all those things could have gone haywire at any point and the restraint, the caution, the lack of spiking the football that they showed was, i think, an enormous achievement. >> john, you were there when president obama visited president bush just a week and a half ago. >> last week. last tuesday. six days ago. what's remarkable is the consistent civilian obama's message there. he talked about how much he appreciated the way the president had handled the end of the cold war. talked about how -- >> with president bush? >> yes. president

cataclysm is mikhail gorbachev but a major part goes to president bush. >> michael cohen pled guilty to lying to congress about the trump organization's effort to build a trump tower in moscow back in 2015, 2016. this was happening at the same time that donald trump was running for president. here's what a former federal prosecutor, ken white, observed in "the atlantic" and i'm curious if you agree. this conclusion, at least, is inescapable. the president, who has followed this drama obsessively, knew that his personal lawyer was lying to congress about his business activities and stood by while it happened. do you agree with that assessment? and does that look like obstruction of justice to you? >> well, i do agree with that assessment. you know, we have a president who lies incessantly to the american people about big matters and small matters, who surrounds himself with people who lie incessantly to the american people. the key fact now is that the time that he can get away with lying to the american people all the time and evading accountability is coming to an end. and i do think t

was mikhail gorbachev. but a lot of it was george bush and jim baker and their enormous skillfulness in the way they did not gloat. imagine if they had danced in the end zone. on the night the berlin wall came down, they are very modest. they let gorbachev save face and thereby turn over power. >> of course they also helped helmut kohl. people like me, anyone who studied the 20th century, was very nervous about germany coming back together in full strength. certainly they came back together with a lot of strength after world war i, to the country's detrimen adetriment a world's detriment. what inspired him to say, we're going to bring the two germanys together because it's a good thing to do? >> that's one of the great ironies about bush, he did have the vision thing, which was his dismissive phrase about it. you're laying out margaret thatcher's view, franÇois mitterand's view, we don't want germany to be unified again. they said the purpose of nato is to keep the americans in, the germans down, and the russians out. bush always looked forward. my friend jeff engel at smu makes a m

actually managed to put a broader interest ahead of his own and our interests first, which was let mikhail gorbachev have some room to breathe. it's a code that began -- and if you have any doubt that character is destiny, george h.w. bush who at andover helped a kid who was beelgiing bullied pulled a kid out of a barrel who was stuck in it because he didn't want to embarrass the kid by running past him, that boy was the man who knew that gorbachev needed room to both because gorbachev needed room to breathe that didn't want to see russian greatness go away. if you doubt me, i refer you to vladimir putin who was one of those folks. and so his failure to get up and give the big speech and declare victory in what kennedy called the long twilight struggle, it hurt him politically in the short the short-term, but historically he will receive enormous credit. same on domestic policy. find a republican president or a democratic president in this polarized era who could sign something like the clean air act or the americans with disabilities act with two houses of congress in en my hands. i don't

still part of the soviet orbit. george bush created this relationship with mikhail go gorbachev and said if you do further things like take down the berlin wall, let germany be reunified within nato, things we never thought could be possible 12, 24 months before then, bush said i will not exploit this and embarrass you, mr. gorbachev. so he did. when these things happened, bush did not take credit. had he taken more credit he might have made himself stronger for re-election. >> it's important to put this into the context of the present day. george h.w. bush was president at one of the high points in american leadership around the world. he was a noted coalition builder, particularly in his work in the gulf war. his willingness to write handwritten letters to world leaders, pick up the phone and talk to them. we are no in a place where some say america is giving up that leadership role. tell me about the importance of what george h.w. bush was doing at the time in terms of america's role, leadership role in the world. >> it never would have occurred to george h.w. bush to do any of t