 Welcome to the 2021 Presidential Inauguration, Lessons of the Past and Forming Our Future, presented by Purdue University. I am David Rheingold, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and moderator for this session. Thank you for joining us. A reminder that all of today's sessions are live and will be posted here for later viewing. Now it's time for a look inside the White House, Election Day through the Inauguration with Bush 41, America's last one-term president. Joining me is Andy Mainer, a 1991 political science and communications alumnus from Purdue University. In his early 20s, he served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush and later accompanied President Bush into private life in Houston after the 1992 election. And we're delighted that he is here to share some of his experiences. Andy, it's great to see you. And I know we have a lot of students listening today. So maybe we could start off by talk a little bit about how you ended up working in the White House for your first job after graduating from Purdue. Well, thanks, David, and thanks to Purdue for putting this together. It seems like only Purdue and Mitch can do things like this is so well and so classy. What an opportunity to talk. You know, Indiana has always played a central role in politics, you think back to some of your speakers, Lee Hamilton and the quails, of course, current vice president, Evan Bay, Luger, what giants have come from Indiana. So it's appropriate that we talk about these things on this day. So thank you for putting it together. I have to admit, if there are some students on the line, I did want to wear my Purdue sport coat today after a great win over the Buckeyes last night. But alas, we're talking about the inauguration today. So as a student at Purdue, I worked, I kind of followed some simple rules. I tried to show up on time, generally, and do my best. And I tried to add experiences to my resume each year I was at Purdue and gain incremental experience and act like an adult and be on time and show up. And then probably the part that I was burdened with being kind of a naive young midwesterners, I aimed really naively high. And I just started writing letters to the president's press secretary right as I left Purdue. You see the picture there, I was hired. I had different hair back then, but I had the same demeanor. I tried to work hard. I tried to be reliable. And I moved up very, very quickly in the administration. And being very young, all of a sudden, you're part of a campaign. And then all of a sudden, you're part of a losing campaign. So I learned a lot of lessons very early, but I really did kind of try and maximize my time at Purdue. And it served me very well. So Andy, talk a little bit about election night 1992. I know that seems like forever ago, but for a lot of our students, might not be all that familiar with it. Yeah, 92 was an interesting campaign. It was very, very hard fought and it really pitted generations against one another. President Bush had been his vice president for eight years. He was a bit older and Governor Clinton sprang onto the scene with a lot of energy, a lot of vigor. He ran a really, really tremendous campaign. And it really pitted the direction of the country at kind of a key moment, right post-Cold War, post-Gulf War. And it was really a really emerging of a pretty key time in our nation's history. It's almost tough to go back to that time. The election, we were on the road basically every day for a year. Got to see the United States virtually every state. And just to kind of remind people of elections, in a popular vote, President Clinton achieved 43% of the popular vote. President Bush, nearly 38%. But a third candidate, an independent candidate, Ross Perot, people know, achieved 19% of the popular vote, yet none of the electoral votes. So the electoral votes finished 370 for Clinton to 168 for President Bush, which by any standard would be quite a dramatic election victory for President Clinton. So as a person, I was only 22 years old, that was hard to take. The highs of the campaign were fresh. We thought we had a good message. We thought we had a good record of both domestic and foreign policy accomplishments. But the mood of the country was in a different place. And I remember the moment when we had to get the press back together for President Bush to concede. We also took private photos of the president's concession call to President Clinton in the suite of the Houstonian. And it was just, as a young person, it was a dramatic moment when all of a sudden you woke up the next day and realized it was over. And I think, David, why I like the, I meant to say in the beginning, what I love about this panel is I would encourage everyone to realize the differences between a two-term president leaving office and a one-term president leaving office. Very stark differences in emotion. Emotions are much higher. So before today, the last one-term president was President Bush, my boss. And before that was Jimmy Carter in 1980. So it doesn't happen all the time. And I'm glad you focused on it because it is very different, for sure. And what was the post-election agenda like during that time? Yeah, it's important to talk about that piece of it because what happened in the what we will call that time between November 3rd and the 18th is would be that first of all, President Clinton visited the White House on November 18th. So between November 3rd and November 18th, we had two weeks where President Bush laid out what the next three weeks were like. We had a lot of foreign policy challenges in the world, which I'll talk about in a second. But more importantly, he gathered the West Wing staff together and told us his expectations for us in a transition. He was very clear that losing stinks, but he was very clear that that is what the people spoke. And he really taught us that if we loved our country and the actual grandness of our country is the peaceful transition. And he often said that the peaceful transition while it's hard is actually one of the great parts of our democracy. So he told us of what behavior he expected from us when working with the other side, the incoming president. And we were very clear on it. So when President Clinton came to the White House on November 18th, we had an agenda of how we were gonna get our counterparts, teach them about how we do things. There's always moments. I remember when they arrived at the White House, the Clinton press corps kind of trompsed in through the Rose Garden. And we reminded them that in the Rose Garden, we don't walk through the roses. So little things for a 22 year old were interesting and funny, but that's just how the transition was for us. I mentioned a foreign policy and domestic agenda. There were some pretty major things happening in the world at that moment. President Bush authorized troops into Somalia on December 4th. So less than a month after the election, he did a converse with President Clinton about that as it was happening. We also later, President traveled to Somalia for New Year's Eve. Then we went on to Russia, where he signed the START II treaty. And then he ended in Paris on January 3rd, where he met with French President Mitterrand about the Bosnian crisis. So it's just a framing for people who study history, foreign policy and whatnot that the transition didn't allow much for a break on some of these very important initiatives. So, again, the tone and tenor were set by President Bush and Mrs. Bush, and we as their staff kind of fell into line there. And so what was- Oh, God. I was gonna actually, in the spirit of making sure people who are younger who didn't know what a great man 41 was, passed away obviously two years ago, but there was a ton of fun to be had to. And he made it joyous and joyful for us around the Christmas. We all got to bring our families, of course, to the Christmas party. He played a little prank on us. If you go onto YouTube and you Google Dana Carvey at the White House, he brought him in close to Christmas as a joke. He's the guy that had impersonated him on Saturday Night Live. They introduced the President of the United States. We were used to hearing from our boss. Instead, we heard a 20 minute, hilarious monologue from Dana Carvey. So we had a lot of fun with it and that's just the kind of man he was. It's great. And so tell me a little bit about Inauguration Day 1993 and then the eventual leaving of Washington. How did the leader of the free world transition to a private life? Yeah, I mean, if you get to hear some of the other sessions, you'll hear some of the stories about how it works on Inauguration Day. It's quite scripted and there's quite a bit of tradition in it. Inauguration Day was, I'm sure, wrought with a lot of motion for President Bush. It certainly was for all of us. All of a sudden, your badge doesn't work the next day. But a couple of traditions that President Bush imparted and worked on was this now, which is a little more known. This is this passing of the letters, leaving a letter in the resolute desk to your successor, which others had done. President Bush did one. And I guess I won't, I guess I will read you just a couple of words from it, but he wrote, Dear Bill, when I walked into this office just now, I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that too. I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some presidents have described. There will be tough times made even more difficult by criticism you might not think is fair. I'm not a very good one to give advice, but just don't let the critics discourage you or push you off course. You will be our president when you read this note. I wish you well, I wish your family well. Your success now is our country's success. I am rooting hard for you. Good luck, George. So that, I can't explain more what kind of man he was than to read that. So they wrote up to the inauguration together. They took Marine One out of the east side of the Capitol. He asked the pilots to circle in a well-known story you might hear from Andy Card at some point about that. He wanted to see Washington in that way. He then had friends and family. And an interesting part for those of you who follow presidential aircraft by the time President Bush was on the plane, it was not called Air Force One. There's a picture of his arrival into Ellington Field in Houston. It was called Special Air Mission 2800 because he was no longer president. President Clinton authorized the use of that aircraft for him and his family. And President Bush had a wonderful group of friends, his closest friends, one journalist to chronicle it and one of his favorite musical acts, Oak Ridge Boys were on board singing to him and friends. So we arrived in Ellington Field in Houston and he was a private citizen and he spoke to the press and then we just headed to his new home which he had rented a home and we really had a transition from his core staff, Andy Card, Marlon Fitzwater were present, my bosses and they handed the mantle to me and President Bush put his arm around me and we went inside and began to plot our new life. So it was quite a day. I wanna show one additional picture. We did go to the office where we were setting up an office. Here's a picture of President Bush that I took. He grabbed the yellow pages which many people won't remember yellow pages but that is how you found phone numbers. And he said that he wanted to order Chinese food. This is a man who was in public service nearly 40, more than 40 years at that moment. He had been head of the CIA, ambassador to China. He had been head of the RNC. He had been a congressman. He had been vice president for eight years, president for four. He had probably not driven or ordered food in four decades and he grabbed the phone book and he wanted to order Chinese from a specific place in the Oaks in Houston. And why I think this is an important story is because I believe that that moment set the tone for how he would live and how he would carry out his former presidency. He believed that he was a very young man still, that he had a lot to do in his life and he believed that his place in history was not set on that day. And I think how you saw him act over the next three decades showed what kind of person that he was. And he believed very strongly in that. And if people are interested, I think it's public, he wrote a letter to his son, George W, in 2000 when he left office and gave him the rules of being an ex-president and they're wrought with humor, but also some pretty poignant moments which he calls the five stay rules. Stay out of the way, stay out of Washington, stay out of the news, stay away from the press, stay away from the TV and enjoy your life and your family. So that day to me really set the tone for how he would be. It's a great, great, great story. Just curious, what was his favorite Chinese food? Chinese food. I'm not sure I remember that. He was pretty adventurous on that. He liked, he would do it a fair amount and had some friends that had a restaurant right there in Houston that he always liked to order from. No, I'm mind-flighty that you were, just getting started in your career as you're sort of experiencing all of this. What were some of the lessons that have sort of carried forward for you, particularly as you're sort of reflecting on the current sort of transition of power? Yeah, and again, I'm a great spokesman for 41. I never try and put myself, I also did work for 43 here in Washington, but I try very hard to only speak about what I'm an expert on and one of the things that he taught me and I think a lot of my colleagues is the lessons we learn were never lessons about being president. They were always lessons about life. The three that really stick out to me is that he always taught me to treat people like celebrities and celebrities like people. Everyone's the same but learn the White House, Lady Gaga, whoever it is, everyone's the same. He expected that of us and he's very comfortable to be around in that way. He taught me a deep love for the nation and he also taught all of us how difficult it is to govern. Lately or people think that it's just easy. You just jump on one side or you jump on the other. Most of these issues are in the middle. They require a deaf touch. They are not right and wrong at any given point. And then he taught me a lot because I had studied political science at Purdue. I'd also gotten to study abroad at Purdue. Part of that experience when I was there in 89 studying abroad was I got to see the fall on the Berlin Wall up close. I also was in Prague and Hungary for those transitions from communism. And so I studied that pretty closely and later in life it dawned on me that he really was so poignant in that moment because he won gracefully. The Cold War, the Soviet Union collapsed and he was not there standing on the wall gloating. It was always President Bush that said, this is the Germans moment. This is not our moment. Certainly the US played an important role in it but he just believed that that's not your moment. And winning gracefully and then of course, winning quietly I guess would be the better term and then losing gracefully. I know he struggled with this post-presidency and losing and how did it happen? And many months we didn't have a very big public schedule in Houston but he really started to get on with it and have just an unbelievable life with this family. I'll also just for students of history here, I'll also point out a very unique and special relationship with Bill Clinton that grew over time and of course this is the person that defeated him soundly. Their relationship, as many know, they became very close. They did a lot of philanthropy together, certainly led a lot of fundraising after Tsunami in Southeast Asia and other Hurricane Katrina. But one of the places that their friendship was fused was that when I was there, President Bush went to Kuwait to be given a very, very high honor by the Kingdom of Kuwait with regards to liberating them from Saddam Hussein. And there was an attempt on his life that was thwarted. This was in April 19th, to be exact, of 93 that was thwarted. A pretty intense investigation was launched by US authorities and that investigation came back quite clear on who the perpetrators of that attempt were and President Clinton at no urging of President Bush responded very militarily to that action, believed it was an action against our nation to try and take the life of a former president. That was all President Clinton and his administration and that culminated in his military action two months later in June. So that sort of coming together was where it was born and it evolved over decades. And President Clinton, that many would know, has spoken about him at his death, et cetera. It's quite a unique relationship that really grew and evolved over time. And it's a great story. I think not many people are aware of that attempted assassination and sort of consequences for sort of the relationship forming among presidents. And anything else, I'm mindful of time. We've got, I think about five minutes left here. Anything else you wanna add about President Bush, 41st President and the concept of the peaceful transition of power that you observed? Yeah, I just, I always think these are snapshots in time. The country's very different. It evolves. I think what doesn't evolve too much are some of the lessons that he put out when he wrote his son about being a former president. His love for the country transcended everything. I think it was very hard for him to, and people should appreciate the discipline that his son was president for fully eight years and the attacks on his son were pretty regular and pretty poignant and I'm sure some deserved and some not. He held his tongue because he didn't believe it was his place. As he always used to say, I had my time. I can't sit here and say, oh, I should have done that. Sometimes when I watch a Purdue game, I go, oh, you should have put that guy in or put, when you're there and you're the man in the arena or the woman in the arena, it's your time. And when it's not, it's not. But I will quote a couple of things from his list of things as a former president you should abide by. He said, on inauguration day, fly home on Air Force One one more time, lie in the bed. It's gonna feel better than seat 35 F. When you get off the plane, don't forget to steal a mint. And when you get off the plane, walk down, wave, and don't think about what you were doing three hours earlier. Don't think about the fact you were just president of the United States. Enjoy it. People are gonna say welcome home to you and just say thank you. It's good to be home. It's a terrific story. So Andy, I'm mindful that we're entering the time of day when things are really getting ramped up in terms of the inauguration and we wanna make sure that we give our viewers and you a chance to partake in this historic moment. We're so proud of you and all your accomplishments as the first CFO of the Homeland Security Department and sort of playing an instrumental role in helping to stand up that reorganization of the federal government, which I think is probably the largest reorganization of the federal government in the modern time. Anyway, you've got a wealth of experience and we couldn't be prouder of your accomplishments. And every once in a while, we do get you back here on Purdue West Lafayette campus and you're always welcome to come back and continue to share your wisdom and experiences with our students and we certainly are proud of Matt Painter who's also a Purdue basketball coach who's a CLA liberal arts alum and we certainly wish him well and we're excited by the win last night. So with that, I think we will go ahead and call this session and again, wanna thank you for making time for us, sharing your experiences and your observations which are sort of witness to history in terms of what it's like to be a one-term president and for members of our audience, wanna thank you for joining us. We hope that you'll be able to come and be a part of a few other panels that are part of our day long educational programming related to this inauguration day event. So with that, Andy, it's great to see you and wish you and your family well during these most difficult times and we will end this session with a farewell. Have a good day. Thanks, David. See you.