Remarks by President George W. Bush at "Natural Gas Nation"

Thank you all. Thank you. Please be seated. I don’t think I need to give a detailed explanation as to why the Bush Center is here at SMU. I want to thank Gerald for his leadership. We wanted to — first of all, I tell people that when I got back to Crawford, after the President was sworn in, I was lying on the couch, and I said to Laura, “Free at last.” And she says, “Yeah, you’re free to go mow the lawn and take out the garbage.” I said, “Wait a minute. You’re talking to the former president.” She said, “Consider it a new domestic policy initiative.”

Truth of the matter is I am tired of politics, but we’re not interested in just retiring to Crawford. We want to be active participants in the debate that affects America. We wanted to have a policy center in which we’d be engaged for the rest of our life. It’d be a place of thought and action. I really didn’t want to be involved with a center where people just sat around and opined. I want to be involved with a center where intellectuals and policymakers would come and debate issues, out of which would come action plans. SMU is a perfect venue for such a policy center. It’s a great university. It’s a university on the rise. It’s a university in the heart of the one of the most vibrant cities in America, and it’s ably led by President Turner. We are thrilled to be associated with such a fine place.

I’m also pleased that Jim Glassman agreed to join us. It was essential that we send a signal that you didn’t have to think George Bush was a cool guy to be associated with the Bush Center or that a political party was necessary to be able to come and share your thoughts and your strategies for how to affect the world. Glassman brings intellectual heft, and naming him sends a clear signal that we’re interested in policy matters. And not only that, he is a man of action.

We’re on a roll at the Bush Center. We don’t have a building yet, and the institute is making a huge difference already. And I fully believe that 20 or 30 years from now, we’ll all be able to look back and say this center was transformative in policy, that we affected people’s lives in a positive way.

I want to thank Cary Maguire as well. This is a collaborative effort. Today’s event is a collaborative effort with the Maguire Center here at SMU, and I am confident that these discussions and these suggestions by the panelists will help affect public policy debate in a positive way here in the country. And it should. 

Glassman gave me credit for talking about natural gas. I’ve been thinking about energy independence for a long time. If you’re in the Oval Office and you’re spending an inordinate amount of time discussing the impact of Iran or Venezuela on foreign policy of the United States, it is a stark reminder that the more independent we are from foreign sources of energy, the less influential people will be in affecting the foreign policy of the world, people whose ideals are the opposite of those here in America. Secondly, for a long period of time during my presidency, I was deeply concerned that a terrorist attack overseas would affect the economy here in the United States. When you’re dependent upon somebody else to provide your energy, it means that a shock to the pricing system, a disruption in supply could affect the capacity of people here in America to find work.Throughout my presidency, I spent a lot of time figuring out how best to implement policy that would inoculate us from the whims of people who didn’t like us.

What happened during my presidency, interestingly enough, is that technology changed. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Technology is a game changer in America, and when you really think about when I first was sworn in in 2001 to when I left, 2009, technology was transformative in the capacity for America to become less dependent on foreign sources of energy, particularly because of natural gas. So I view today’s seminar and discussions and policy recommendations as important for national security reasons and economic security reasons, but I also view it as important for job creation. The truth of the matter is, when you explore for natural gas, when you develop natural gas, when you lay pipelines to transport natural gas, Americans are working.

I want to thank you all for participating in these discussions. I am honored that many of you took time to come here to Dallas. I particularly want to thank Governor Ed Rendell from the state of Pennsylvania. It was really kind of him to be here. I will join you for lunch, where I have the honor of introducing a classmate of mine from Yale University, Dan Yergin. He probably spent a lot more time in the library than I did. After all, he did get a PhD, but as I used to remind Condi, who traveled with me a lot, who, by the way, is the chairman of the institute’s board — Condi would be on the stage, or I’d be, and she’d be in the audience, and I’d say, particularly to students, I would say, “I’m honored to have an advisor who’s a PhD. I was a C student. But I want you to notice who’s the president and who’s the advisor.”

I thank you for coming today. I look forward to the product of these meetings.