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Only twice in American history has a son followed his father into the presidency. The first was John Quincy Adams. The second, George W. Bush, has now written a biography of his father, George H.W. Bush. It's called 41: A Portrait of My Father.

The 43rd president of the United States traces the life of the 41st from his youth in New England through his entry into the Texas oil business, combat during World War II, party politics, diplomacy, the White House, retirement — and skydiving.

In a wide-ranging interview with Morning Edition's David Greene, former President George W. Bush discusses his father's life and legacy, and their relationship. He also addresses some of the major decisions of his own time in office, and the possibility of a third President Bush, if his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, decides to run in 2016.

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George H.W. Bush holds a young George W. in New Haven, Conn., in April 1947. Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Getty Images

George H.W. Bush holds a young George W. in New Haven, Conn., in April 1947.

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Interview Highlights

DAVID GREENE: What do you think when people compare the two wars [in Iraq] and say that your father's approach was wiser?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I can understand that, and I ask them to read the book and —

You can understand that?

Yeah, I mean, I think — sure — I think people can, you know, I can understand the comparisons between he and me. I mean, it's — it's a way to do things. I don't agree necessarily that wiser or not wiser, because the situation was different and in many ways more complex.

ON JEB BUSH'S POSSIBLE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RUN

I mean, the environment is what it is. You don't get to rewrite the environment, and so Jeb has to think about whether or not he wants to be president, just like Hillary Clinton has to think about whether she wants to be president. Some guy at one time said to me, "You know, I don't like the idea of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush." I said, "Oh, OK." I said, "How do you like the idea of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton?" And the point is that these may be the two best candidates their party has to offer.

ON RELATIONS WITH RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN

I did work to get Ukraine and Georgia to have a process to get into NATO, and Putin didn't like it. The truth of the matter is, Putin doesn't like much of what the United States does these days.

But would your father have done that, or do you think he would have said, you know, 'I need to be more careful about provoking Russia'?

Yeah, I don't think — I think at some point in time he would have recognized — I don't know. You know, he wasn't there. And it's obviously a different time and a different period and a different leader. It seemed like to me, and in many ways Gorbachev recognized that the Soviet was doomed — and it seems like to me at times Vladimir Putin was to restate the Soviet, reinstate the Soviet.

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A Portrait of My Father

by George W. Bush

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ON HIS FATHER'S LIFE NOW

He's joyful. Ninety years old. He can't walk, but he sure can laugh and smile, and he is — the basic things of life make him very content: his wife, Barbara, his children and his grandchildren.

ON THE FAILINGS OF HIS FATHER'S 1992 RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

I was very disappointed, not in him, but in the process. And he gave, he did give a flat speech [at the 1992 Republican National Convention], and it frankly wasn't full of many interesting ideas. It was kind of defensive. And there's a couple of lessons there about this moment. One is, is that if you're gonna give a big speech, get it written early and get used to it.

Get comfortable with it?

Get comfortable with it, because it enhances the delivery. And secondly, that if you expect to win political races, you better have strong policy platform. And they were playing — they were kind of playing small ball at this point, and presidents have got to have bigger agendas.

John Quincy Adams

Saddam Hussein

Vladimir Putin

George H.W. Bush

George W. Bush

Hillary Clinton

The federal government is about to put $100 million behind a simple idea: doubling the value of SNAP benefits — what used to be called food stamps — when people use them to buy local fruits and vegetables.

This idea did not start on Capitol Hill. It began as a local innovation at a few farmers' markets. But it proved remarkably popular and spread across the country.

"It's so simple, but it has such profound effects both for SNAP recipients and for local farmers," says Mike Appell, a vegetable farmer who sells his produce at a market in Tulsa, Okla.

The idea first surfaced in 2005 among workers at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. They were starting a campaign to get people to eat more fresh produce.

"I think we were trying to confront the idea that healthy foods, [like] fresh fruits and vegetables, are not affordable," says Candace Young, who was director of the department's nutrition programming at the time. (Young now works for The Food Trust in Philadelphia.)

Young recalls that one of their workers pointed out that some SNAP recipients live near farmers markets "and we thought, how about we incentivize them to use their SNAP benefits at these farmers markets?"

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Crossroads Farmers Market is located in a heavily immigrant neighborhood on the boundary between Langley Park and Takoma Park, Md. Dan Charles/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Dan Charles/NPR

Crossroads Farmers Market is located in a heavily immigrant neighborhood on the boundary between Langley Park and Takoma Park, Md.

Dan Charles/NPR

The city made a few thousand dollars available for the program. So at a few markets in the South Bronx and Harlem, when someone spent $10 of SNAP benefits, he then received an additional $4 in the form of coupons called HealthBucks, which could be used to buy more local produce.

This desire to make farmers markets more food-stamp friendly seems to have been floating in the air at that time. A farmers market in Lynn, Mass., used a $500 donation to do something similar the very next year.

Then, in 2007, the idea mutated into a form that really caught on.

It happened with the birth of the Crossroads Farmers Market, on the boundary that divides the towns of Langley Park and Takoma Park, Md. The area, just outside Washington, D.C., is home to many immigrants.

The Salt

Fresh Food Advocate Links Farmers, Doctors, Low-Income Families

"A lot of Latinos come to this market," says Michelle Dudley, the market manager. "I would say that 70 percent of our customers are Spanish-speaking, but we also see people from the Caribbean. Folks from West Africa."

Back in 2007, a man named John Hyde organized the Crossroads market with this immigrant community in mind "and then realized — these people did not have a lot of money," says Gus Schumacher, Hyde's friend and collaborator at the time. (Hyde can't tell the story himself, unfortunately. He died in 2009.)

Schumacher says he and Hyde got to talking about this money problem and had a brainstorm: If they could raise some money, they could use it to double the value of food stamps, as well as vouchers from the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program and food benefits for seniors.

Schumacher, a former top official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, used his connections to raise the money. "I asked the National Watermelon Association if they would provide a small stipend, and they were very generous. They provided $5,000," he says.

They set up a system that has remained almost unchanged ever since. On a recent visit, I see SNAP recipients lining up to speak with a market volunteer named Rosie Sanchez. They tell her how much money they want to spend from their SNAP benefits. Sanchez swipes their SNAP card and gives them wooden tokens that they can spend at the market. But she actually gives them tokens worth twice the amount that she took from their SNAP benefits; up to $15 more.

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Rosie Sanchez handles SNAP transactions at Crossroads market. She also doubles the value of vouchers from the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program. Dan Charles/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Dan Charles/NPR

Rosie Sanchez handles SNAP transactions at Crossroads market. She also doubles the value of vouchers from the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program.

Dan Charles/NPR

Sanchez is a SNAP recipient herself. This program "is very important," she says. "You know why? Because I get up to $15 for free. So I have $30 every week. With my $30, I'm able to buy fresh, local — it's not expensive. It's the best!"

Gus Schumacher loved it, too. The same year this market started, he co-founded, together with chef Michel Nischan, an organization called Wholesome Wave, which has brought this idea of doubling SNAP benefits to farmers markets from Connecticut to California.

Private foundations were happy to contribute, because they realized that their dollars could do several things at once: ease poverty, promote better health and boost the local farm economy.

The Salt

Two For One: Subsidies Help Food Stamp Recipients Buy Fresh Food

In Michigan, food activist Oran Hesterman set up the Fair Food Network, which called this idea Double Up Food Bucks and got it working in more than 100 places across the state.

"We wanted to take it from the seed of an idea to a demonstration that this is something that you could do at scale," Hesterman says.

Hesterman was thinking big. He wanted to sell this idea to the government.

He invited one of Michigan's senators — Democrat Debbie Stabenow — to see Double Up Food Bucks for herself. And last year, Stabenow, who is chairwoman of the Senate's Agriculture Committee, proposed including it in the so-called farm bill.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Republican Frank Lucas, from Oklahoma, was hearing about this idea, too.

Farmer Appell had brought Double Up Food Bucks to the Cherry Street Farmers Market in Tulsa and talked about it to a member of Lucas' staff.

"It didn't seem like it required much of a sell," Appell recalls. "They seemed to be on board with it." If the program was supporting farmers, the congressman wanted to support it.

The Salt

Nudging Detroit: Program Doubles Food Stamp Bucks In Grocery Stores

Earlier this year, the farm bill passed, and it included $100 million, over the next five years, to boost SNAP dollars when they're spent on fresh fruits and vegetables. Those taxpayer dollars have to be matched by private funding, so the program could add up to $200 million in total.

That's a huge increase. According to some estimates, it may be 10 times what these programs spend right now.

As a result, small programs like the Cherry Street Farmers Market and the Crossroads market are now applying for funding to expand. And Michigan's Fair Food Network, one of the biggest programs, is even moving beyond farmers markets. It's now working with supermarket chains to see whether SNAP recipients shopping there can double their dollars for fresh produce every day and all year round.

double up food bucks

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It's fall auction season in New York, and two Andy Warhol silkscreens are on the block at Christie's. One is of Elvis Presley — it's called Triple Elvis; the other is Four Marlons — as in Marlon Brando. In the late 1970s, a German casino bought both works for $185,000. This time around, they're expected to fetch more than $100 million. Andy Warhol's estate won't see any of that money: Unlike musicians or novelists, visual artists don't earn future royalties. But that may be about to change.

In 1973, a team of documentary filmmakers was following art maven Robert Scull for a movie called America's Pop Collector. Years before, he'd bought a painting from the artist Robert Rauschenberg for $900, and it was being auctioned at Christies for $85,000 — a windfall for the collector, not the artist. The film crew captured a legendary moment when Scull greeted the artist Robert Rauschenberg — who scolded Scull for profiting off of his artwork.

Scull argued back that the sale benefited the artist, if not directly, because his work would rise in price. Rauschenberg didn't see it that way. He spent years lobbying Congress to get royalties for artists when their works are sold down the line.

The idea didn't get any traction then, but now there's a bill in Congress, called A.R.T. — American Royalties Too — which would mandate that 5% of every auction sale go to the artists or their descendants, with a cap of $700,000. The sponsor is New York congressman Jerry Nadler, who says says the Copyright Office used to be the biggest obstacle. "Back in 1992, the Copyright Office looked into this whole matter and came out against it."

Warhol's Four Marlons is expected to sell for around $60 million — a German casino bought it (along with the Elvises above) for $185,000 in the 1970s. Christie's Images LTD. 2014 hide caption

itoggle caption Christie's Images LTD. 2014

But then Australia and the U.K. passed similar laws in favor of artists, which got the attention of the Copyright Office again. "Earlier this year, having taken a fresh look at it and looking at what other countries have done, and how it's worked out, they said this would be advantageous in the United State," Nadler says. And he adds, the bill may escape partisan gridlock. "Intellectual property is a very unusual area in Congress. You as a general rule, you can not predict where someone is going to be on an issue like this or on music licensing by knowing that he's a Democrat or Republican."

Christie's and Sotheby's would not agree to an interview. They're lobbying to kill the bill. That upsets artist Frank Stella, whose work has been auctioned for millions. "When the auction houses are against the resale right, there's a kind of not very nice preemptive stance saying that the artist doesn't count, only the collector and the auction house," he says. "I think it's not right."

But some artists are against the bill. Loren Munk says it would give money to a top echelon of artists that are already very successful, or dead. He also worries the law could discourage collectors from investing in mid-level artists. "Artists are like whores," he says, "and a lot of them are like old, old whores on the street" who would be worried about scaring away potential clients.

"I know that it doesn't take much for people to decide that something is just a little bit too much trouble to have to deal with — or if they're going to have to deal with that kind of problem, better to go with something safe."

Another concern is that royalties could drive collectors away from auction houses, towards galleries and private sales, which are exempt in the bill. University of Ohio law professor Guy Rub says at least auctions are public. "The information is public – so one of the problems with the art market is there's a lot of secrecy there. And that's not good to any market, it's not horrible but it's not good," he says.

The A.R.T. Act may get tucked into a bill that deals with larger copyright issues — but by some accounts, it does appear to have a slim chance of passing.

If you're one of the billions of people who use Facebook and Google on a daily basis, you may have noticed some new messaging coming from the websites themselves. Both companies have launched Ebola relief fund-raising campaigns in the past week, calling on their massive user logs [translation for non-social media experts: all the people who waste time on these websites every day] to donate money to the cause.

As of November 6, if you log onto Facebook, you'll see a rectangular box that says: "Eleanor, We Can Help Stop Ebola." (At least that's what my box says. Yours will probably have your name on it.) The message continues: "Let's support organizations working in West Africa so they can stop the disease and save lives."

On Facebook, users can choose to donate to the International Medical Corps, Save the Children and/or the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

And the founder of Facebook is setting a high bar. Before the Facebook button debuted, Mark Zuckerberg donated $25 million of his own money to the relief effort. In a video on his Facebook page he said: "I'm optimistic that together, the Facebook community can help stop Ebola."

Save the Children CEO Carolyn Miles shares his optimism. Her organization has built Ebola treatment units in Liberia and Sierra Leone and is now setting up systems to support children orphaned by the disease. When Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, reached out to Save the Children about a possible collaboration, Miles jumped at the chance.

"The tremendous reach that Facebook has, and the voice that they have, gives us a chance to reach a much bigger audience," says Miles. "A lot of countries, like the U.S., are just focused on what's happening here about Ebola. Facebook wants to help us direct the focus back to West Africa."

Facebook created a similar donation structure after Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines last year, though the company declined to share the results of that fund-raising campaign and refused to comment on the record for this article.

Yesterday, Google followed suit with a similar effort. The company's official blog now features a plea for donations to its campaign — and Google will match every dollar donated with $2. But there's a cap: the doubling stops when $2.5 million has been donated and Google has chipped in an additional $5 million.

The Google campaign recipients are Network for Good, a fund that will distribute the money to Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, Partners in Health and Save the Children.

Google CEO Larry Page also donated $15 million of his own money, through his family foundation.

But some say Ebola is not a problem that can be solved only with money. More than donations, volunteers are needed to travel to West Africa and work in Ebola treatment units.

"We absolutely need more manpower," says Rebecca Milner of the International Medical Corps, one of the organizations receiving donations from Facebook. "With a weak health system and low levels of resources, we need more people. But this campaign will raise awareness along with money."

Miles, of Save the Children, agrees. "We need to make people feel more comfortable in volunteering to go to West Africa, and this can help. They'll know money is being raised to help. Facebook is helping to keep the right focus on stopping the virus where it started."

The donation pleas concern some people, who worry about giving their credit card information to Facebook or Google. For now, Facebook users can opt to remove their credit card numbers after a donation has gone through, but the company is working on a way to automatically delete the information right away. Google users can pay with Google Wallet, a secure payment app, or with a credit card.

The International Medical Corps, Save the Children and the Red Cross have yet to see any funds from the four-day-old Facebook campaign and aren't quite sure how much to expect. But it's definitely drawing attention to the issue.

"Traffic on our website has increased, at least 10 to 12 times what we get in a normal day," says Milner, from the International Medical Corps. "And that's the kind of attention we want to be drawing to this issue."

ebola

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Global Health