Excerpts: Gibson's Interview With Former Presidents Bush and Clinton
Read excerpts of Charlie Gibson's exclusive interview with former presidents.
Sept. 24, 2008— -- The following excerpts are from an interview by ABC News' Charles Gibson of former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton for ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson" on Sept. 24, 2008.
GIBSON: So you guys have put the act together for a good cause.
CLINTON: It's his people's, and he called me about it, and I think it's a good thing. I think most Americans, because we didn't have a repeat of Katrina times two, the waves weren't as bad, most Americans haven't absorbed how many people have really been hurt down there.
GIBSON: Well, how bad -- Ike, Gustav -- how bad is it down there?
BUSH: Well, it's bad. It's terrible. I wrote down just a couple of numbers here: $40 billion in Texas alone. That doesn't include the neighboring Louisiana coast. Tens of thousands lost homes. Final numbers are not known yet. They're still going about checking things out. Seven-hundred-and-seventy communities in 22 counties assumed major damage. So it's bad. It's bad, Charlie. Fortunately, there's not that big a loss of human life. There's plenty lost, but it's not as overwhelming as some previous storms.
GIBSON: I'm very struck: The mayor of Galveston is letting people back in today [with] 75 percent of the homes uninhabitable. And when they tell you, if you're coming in, one thing you ought to bring with you is rat poison, that makes you take pause.
BUSH: You've even got some alligators wandering around there, too. So it's serious. It's a big-time disaster.
GIBSON: And water not drinkable.
BUSH: No, no.
CLINTON: A long time. Power is complicating the ability to have clean water. President Bush's own foundation office doesn't even have the electricity back yet.
GIBSON: Well, the headlines in the local Texas papers today, two great big headlines: No power, no water. It's going to be a long time.
BUSH: It's going to be a long time and it's devastating. We take it for granted -- electricity and water and all these things. It's given. But when it's not there, you miss it. I mean, it's bad.
GIBSON: When you think about the idea that 75 percent of the homes are uninhabitable, you think about Katrina and how almost impossible it is for that city to come back to where it was originally. Has this changed the landscape of Texas, or that part of Texas?
BUSH: I don't think it's changed it forever. Certainly, the Galveston area, Bolivar Peninsula, all that is devastated and flattened in Galveston for a lot of it, but it will bounce back. We've got good, spirited people down there, and I think it'll come back. It might look different, but a lot of it will be the same.
It's not as though people are just saying, "We don't want to go there anymore; we don't want to live there anymore because of another hurricane coming up." People have a better spirit than that.
GIBSON: Yes, but when 75 percent of the homes are uninhabitable, that really--
CLINTON: Well, I think what will happen here is what we saw in the Katrina area, and when we did the tsunami. Any time you have this kind of disaster, the toughest part are the homes. That's what takes the longest to redo, to get everybody back in their homes. Then I think it also is an opportunity to try to do it and do it in the right way, make them more storm resistant and all of that.
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