Last night the UConn Huskies claimed their second national championship in four years in a thrilling 60-54 win over Kentucky, but arguably the most memorable moment from the game had little to do with basketball. At the beginning of the first half, CBS shocked millions of viewers by panning to Jerry Jones’s owner box, where former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were sitting together watching the game.
Though many may assume that Bush and Clinton’s stark political disagreements might preclude any sort of amicable relationship, Clinton contends that he and Bush maintain “an honest, good friendship,” and Barbara Bush has characterized President 42 as 43’s “fourth brother.”
So, how did these two bitter political rivals become such good friends? It really all started in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, when President George W. Bush tapped Clinton and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, to direct the American aid response. Even though Clinton had defeated the elder Bush in the 1992 presidential election, the two really hit it off during the trip, and their friendship blossomed once they returned stateside. Clinton began frequently calling H.W. to check in on his health, and he made visits to Bush’s residences in both Maine and Texas. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the two former presidents again teamed up and created the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to help victims of the disaster.
The warm feelings between Clinton and Bush 41 eventually spread over to the relationship between Clinton and Bush 43, and Clinton now refers to the Bushes as his second family. After the Haitian Earthquake of 2010, President Obama copied a page from W.’s old playbook by asking Clinton to pair up with the younger Bush in order to coordinate the recovery effort.
Before the national championship game, Clinton and George W. Bush were last together in public in December 2013 as members of a U.S. delegation to Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Considering that both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are weighing running for president in 2016, Americans may be seeing a lot more of both former presidents in the years to come.