What Obama said after his last visit with George H.W. Bush

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Former President Barack Obama paid homage to Houston's most famous resident, former President George H.W. Bush, just three days before his death.

Obama met with Bush 41 briefly Tuesday afternoon before conducting a statesman's discussion at a Rice University gala with Bush's former chief of staff and Secretary of State James Baker

During Tuesday night's discussion, Obama lauded the former president and Baker for their diplomacy.

"When it comes to foreign policy, the work that President George H.W. Bush did with Jim at his side was as important and as deft and as effective a set of foreign policy initiatives as we saw in recent years, and deserve enormous credit for navigating the end of the Cold War in a way that could have gone sideways, all kinds of ways," Obama said.

Obama said a challenge of working in the White House is not always getting credit "when nothing happens."

"And nothing happening is good," Obama said, to laughs.

Baker and the 44th president participated in a discussion about the Bush and Obama administrations, the media, and the tense political climate Americans are experiencing in the 21st century.