George H. W. Bush in his own words: 10 stories from the updated 'All the Best, George Bush'

"All the Best, George Bush" is a collection of the personal correspondence of George H. W. Bush from his first years in the Navy in 1942 all the way to 2011. Here are 10 excerpts from the book.

10. 2008 – Bill Clinton gets a ribbing

AP

Dear Bill,

My heart went out to you when I saw you trying to keep your eyes open during an MLK Day sermon.

I could indeed "feel your pain." I have been there myself, more than once I might add, and it physically hurt as I tried to keep my eyes open. I don't remember if I ever told you about the prestigious Scowcroft Award, given during my White House days to the person that fell most soundly asleep during a meeting. Points were added for "recovery":

A standard recovery gambit was to awake from a sound sleep, and start by nodding one's head in agreement to something just said in the meeting, something you had not heard at all....

Scowcroft, of course, was hopeless. He could sleep in any meeting at any time of day....

As I heard that minister droning on I made a challenge for the trophy myself.

Your friend,

George

10 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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