Former Presidents Bill Clinton (left) and George W. Bush
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Landov
09/09/2014 AT 02:25 PM EDT
At the Washington, D.C., Newseum for Monday’s launch of a Presidential Leadership Scholars program, two men who each once held the most powerful office in the world talked about another job with great responsibility: Granddad.
“Be prepared to fall completely in love again. Get ready also to be, like, the lowest person in the pecking order in your family,” George W. Bush warned his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who is due to become a grandparent when daughter, Chelsea, gives birth this fall.
Bush – who, like Clinton, is 68 – already is a grandfather, to Mila, daughter Jenna Bush Hager’s 16-month-old daughter.
During the event – for a new educational partnership between the presidential centers of Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Lyndon B. Johnson – Clinton’s cell phone rang, and he joked “only two people have this number and they are related to me.”
To a chorus of laughs, he added: “I hope I’m not being told I’m about to become a premature grandfather.”
Clinton had said that before the event he and Bush, “were laughing about … having to spend our time taking selfies” with fans they encounter at restaurants.
Without skipping a beat, the 43rd President told the 42nd: “At least they are still asking, you know.”
