Transcript: Bush on Lincoln

Gates: Few presidents have identified more strongly with Abraham Lincoln than our 43rd President George W. Bush.

George W. Bush: Come on in. So this was Lincoln’s cabinet room.

Gates: Before leaving office President Bush invited me to the Lincoln Bedroom.

Bush: . . . And it was in this room that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Gates: It just gives you gooseflesh, doesn’t it?

Bush: Ah, it’s unbelievable. People say, have you seen Lincoln’s ghost, and I say, well, I quit drinking in 1986, so I haven’t seen his ghost, but his presence is felt all throughout the house.

Gates: What is it about Abraham Lincoln that you most admire?

Bush: I admire a lot about Abraham Lincoln, but I would say I admire his moral clarity. He understood that a Civil War without you know morality would tear the nation apart forever.

I want you to see the whole Lincoln bedroom, which, by the way, Laura has re-done.

Gates: Really? How’d she do it?

Bush: She got a bunch of historians together, and this is the famous picture of Lincoln and his cabinet and if you look at the pattern of the rug and you can see the pattern of the rug and you can see what the room most likely would have looked like. And this is the famous Lincoln bed was never used by Lincoln, but it was in this bed that Willie Lincoln died. And it reminds me how difficult Lincoln’s life was during his presidency.

He was steadfast in the midst of unspeakable difficulties here in the White House

And I look at Lincoln and say to myself, my goodness, I’ve got it so easy compared to Abraham Lincoln.

Gates: It keeps you from getting down.

Bush: Yeah, don’t feel sorry for yourself, do your job, and follow the example that Abraham Lincoln set.

Gates: Mr. President, do you ever say to yourself I wonder what Lincoln would do in this situation?

Bush: Well, you know, I...I think about Lincoln’s...you know how he conducted himself in a very unpopular war. You know I’m a president during a war that is unpopular. They certainly had very vicious press.

And I tell people all the time, I say well you know my friends say, gosh the press is so hard on you, I say you ought to listen to the words that...that they said about Lincoln.

Gates: During Lincoln’s unpopular war, he was heavily criticized by some for resorting to repressive measures, earning him the nickname “Abraham the Tyrant.”

The man we remember as our greatest champion of democracy made the controversial decision in 1862 to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Long considered the cornerstone of individual liberty, habeas corpus gives a person the right to seek action against unlawful detention.

Faced with an unprecedented crisis, Lincoln closed down newspapers, and jailed hundreds of agitators and southern sympathizers, often without trial.

President Bush, too, came under withering criticism over his use of executive powers during the war on terror. As in Lincoln’s case, critics pointed to his curtailment of civil liberties and unlawful detentions.

Bush: Well, uh, you know I am a president who has been accused of excessively using presidential power. I would defend my decisions and continually defend them, and so it’s...it’s hard for me to be critical of any of the decisions Lincoln made Bush: Obviously the suspension of habeas corpus is a very difficult decision for a president to make on U.S. citizens.

I do think that history will end up judging any president in the whole, as opposed to a particular decision made.

Gates: In Lincoln’s case, much of the most heated criticism that dogged him during the civil war has been forgotten. Today, he basks in history’s glow: a moral giant.