Competition and Common Ground

Photographer Mark Seliger and his team had about 10 minutes to set up the remarkable shot on our cover, so by the time President Clinton and President Bush entered the conference room at the Bush Center in Dallas, they were the only two people who looked at all relaxed.

“This feels like taking prom pictures,” Bush said as Seliger adjusted lights and positions.

“I’d have gone to prom with you,” Clinton replied, and through the course of the shoot the surprising friendship of these two distinctive, divisive men came into sharper focus.

TIME deputy managing editor Michael Duffy and I have long been intrigued by the private alliances of public men; our last book, The Presidents Club, explores the unusual friendships that developed between Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, Eisenhower and LBJ, and even Clinton and Nixon. But Clinton and Bush are uncommon even within this exclusive club, as they now watch people close to them compete for the office they both held.

Bush professed confidence that his brother Jeb and Hillary Clinton would “elevate the discourse” should they wind up in a race against each other. But that leaves the question of how he and Bill Clinton will conduct themselves, two expert retail politicians with skin in the game despite compelling reasons to stay out of it. In our interview, they talked about politics as a family business–or “calling,” as they prefer to put it–and the climate in which political combat is now conducted. “It’s great that you can get 100 media outlets,” Clinton said, “but you have to devour each other, and it puts even more pressure on people like you to turn us all into two-dimensional cartoons.”

Cartoons have their place, but this is not one of them; the players are too interesting and the stakes too high. Different as they are politically and personally, Bush and Clinton now find themselves in some ways aligned as the 2016 race unfolds. And they certainly share a view of the field in all its dimensions.

Nancy Gibbs, EDITOR

BEHIND THE SCENES

TIME’s Nancy Gibbs (below) and Michael Duffy (opposite Gibbs) interviewed Presidents Bush and Clinton in the former’s private office at the Bush Center in Dallas, shortly after the graduation ceremony for the first class of 60 Presidential Leadership Scholars–a joint venture of their libraries and those of Bush 41 and LBJ. Among the topics they discussed were shared interests (like public-health initiatives in Africa) and how much easier it is for Presidents to find common ground once they’re out of office. For more images from the shoot, visit lightbox.time.com.

NOW ON TIME.COM

We’re in hot dog season, the sweet, sweaty weeks from Memorial Day to Labor Day, when Americans consume 7 billion wieners. That’s 21 per person, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. And there are those rare occasions, as with almost any food produced in such massive numbers, when something appears inside the bun that even the most zealous hot dog lover could not find palatable. A TIME request to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service revealed some of the more unlikely items Americans have claimed to find in their food in recent years. See the list at time.com/hotdogs.

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts or samples before recycling