WASHINGTON – President Bill Clinton said he and President George H.W. Bush – his predecessor and one-time political foe – broke the ice during a long flight to visit those devastated by a deadly tsunami in Asia.
Clinton and the elder Bush traveled together to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people.
Bush’s son President George W. Bush had asked the two ex-presidents to go.
“So we’re flying over there. There’s one bed and he made this suggestion that we split the time in the bed,” Clinton told “60 Minutes” for a segment on the senior Bush, who died Friday at age 94. “And I said, no we’re not going to do that, you go sleep in the bed … I can lean up against the wall and sleep, I’ll be fine, I can sleep on the floor.”
This gesture, “somehow … broke the ice,” said Clinton who ended Bush’s bid for a second term in 1992.
“We were like two people circling each other wanting to reach out and shake hands and somehow the darn bed thing was the handshake,” Clinton said.
That moment inspired a friendship and a working relationship, with the two former presidents also traveling to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina the following year.
George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton with Tulane University President Scott Cowen at Tulane University’s Commencement in New Orleans in 2006.AP“And it was great. We both raised money, what money we could, for New Orleans. It was extremely rewarding and we were asked to go back and give a commencement speech at Tulane together, which was really quite wonderful,” Clinton said. “In a world where everybody is just gutting each other all the time I thought it was a good thing to show.”
Clinton said he believed history would be kind to Bush 41 and he appreciated that his one-time political rival tried to be useful after leaving the White House.
“And he befriended me,” Clinton said. “It’s been one of the great joys of my life, my friendship with him,” Clinton added.
