A Pastor’s View Of The Presidents Graham’s Book Details Relationships With Leaders

Billy Graham advised Richard Nixon on a running mate. He prayed with George Bush the night the Gulf War began. And just weeks before John Kennedy’s assassination, he warned the young president about going to Dallas.

In his upcoming autobiography, “Just As I Am,” Graham details each of these events and dozens of other meetings with the nation’s last 10 presidents, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton. Excerpts are published in the May 5 issue of U.S. News and World Report magazine, which appears on newsstands Monday.

Graham said when he first met President Clinton in a 1985 governors’ conference, he was immediately won over by his “quick mind and warm personality.” But Clinton made the biggest impression during the Oklahoma City bombing tragedy.

Graham said watching the president console victims and their families during a memorial service void of television cameras and reporters demonstrated Clinton’s compassion and desire to serve God.

“I felt that he, not I, was the real pastor that day,” Graham wrote. “I couldn’t help but wonder if his own years of hardship and pain as a child had given him an understanding of the heartache and pain of those who suffer, whatever the cause.”

Clinton’s predecessor, George Bush, helped reveal what a solitary job being president can be. Graham said he verbally stumbled the first time he addressed Bush, a long time friend, as “Mr. President.”

“He knew my dilemma, since many of his other friends felt the same way,” Graham said. “He looked a bit wistful, and his gaze went to the far distance. No matter how much a president might wish it otherwise, there is a loneliness to that office that can never be completely overcome.”

Not all meetings with presidents proved successful.

Graham said he was never asked back to the White House by Harry Truman after he divulged too many details to the press about their 1950 introductory meeting.

“The president was offended that I had quoted him without authorization,” he said. “Now I was persona non grata at the White House.”

Graham said he often used golf as a tool to deliver subtle sermons to presidents, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower.

“Golf gave me not only a way to relax but also, when played with well-known people, a chance to exercise my ministry in a relaxed, informal way,” Graham said.

It was during a golf game that he encouraged Nixon to consider running for office again, even though losses in the 1960 presidential race and a run for California governor two years later still stung.

When Nixon did announce his candidacy for president, Graham advised him to choose Sen. Mark Hatfield as his running mate. The Oregon lawmaker eventually lost out to Spiro Agnew.

Years later, Graham said he was crushed by news of Watergate and felt “deeply distressed” when he heard about the contents on White House tapes.

“The thing that surprised and shook me most was the vulgar language he used. Never, in all the times I was with him, did he use language even close to that,” Graham said.

“I felt physically sick and went into the seclusion of my study at the back of the house.”