John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; WGBH Forum Network; President Obama: Year One

It's great pleasure to welcome Jonathan Alter back to our stage. Jonathan is a senior editor and columnist for Newsweek and also a contributing correspondent for NBC News. He appears today as the author of his new book The Promise President Obama as your one. Jonathan's been a friend of mine for many years and I talk to him occasionally. During the time that he was writing this book. We'd meet for lunch or dinner and I'd ask him how the book was coming along. His constant refrain was that he wasn't sure he was getting the kind of behind the scenes material that he needed. He worried that not enough people were talking to him. He worried that no one would read this book. I think Jonathan worries too much. Our moderator Eleanor Clift as John's colleague in Newsweek and she joins us once again to moderate the conversation as she did with Jonathan for the 2008 the making of a present for him. She knows Washington politics as well as anyone having covered the White House and Congress for several years. Her weekly column on Newsweek dotcom copped a letter.

Analyzes the political news of the week. And she jostles weekly with her funnel panelists on the McLaughlin Report. Thank you. And I want to say how pleased I am to be here this evening and my signature line is I'm pleased to be anywhere where I get to finish the sentence uninterrupted. Jonathan and I have been colleagues at Newsweek I guess for a mere 24 25 years. Twenty seven twenty seven. OK. And I've certainly been an admirer of his work and of the success that he has achieved. And this latest book is another example of it. He's been fettered in Washington. I'm going to hear him at my local bookstore Politics and Prose and then there was a Washington book party so that I could almost give his introduction on my own. And this is what he wanted to accomplish with this book three things right John.

One he wanted to find the back story of some signature events of the first year. Second he wanted to offer some insights. About who Obama is what his personality is like when we're not watching him on TV. And lastly I think he didn't want to do too much of this because this is a work in progress in a presidency in progress and that was to assess how the president is doing. So I would like to organize our conversation why I want to hear a couple of those delicious backstories. Then your interpretation of Obama the man and the leader. And then lastly what you learned this first year. Affects how you look at the Obama of today and I'm specifically thinking of the environmental tragedy that's unfolding in the Gulf. So. Have at it. Let's let's let's start with some of

those good backstory. OK. First of all thank you for coming. This is my favorite forum for this kind of thing and I've always had a great time here. Before. And I also want to you know I want to thank David in the interest of full disclosure he was my college roommate. So you know we have to disclose our business so there's no nepotism at work here. And I also want to acknowledge that my daughter Charlotte Alter. Is in the audience tonight and she is turning 21 in less than a week. So. And. So and Eleanor it has been my treasured colleague for so more years than I think either of us would. Care to remember. And she is. From her days in in the Atlanta bureau and she was an assistant. And there was nobody else to put on the screen and Jimmy Carter and they put the office's

system on it and she did such a spectacular job that she became you know one of the great American political reporters over the last few decades. And also one of the absolute most delightful people I know so I could not be happier. Can't you say that. That means a solid politician leading it on. But I just had to say that. So. OK. Well in answer to that question and answered your question. I really did want to give a sense as much of a fly on the wall as I could. I was not allowed to sit in on meetings at the White House but I talked to many people who see the president every day or every couple of days. And to get a sense of what he's like. Too. And so I didn't use. Second hand stories when if the president is quoted in the book it's either from. An interview with me.

Or if the quotes are short. I think that. People are interviewed. Who can remember tenderly tend to remember what the president says especially if unlike historians I'm talking to them about it a couple of weeks later it's still fresh in their minds. So that's mostly what I tried to do and I guess I would start out with a Massachusetts related story. On in in January of this year about two weeks before the Massachusetts election. They've gotten some polls in the White House showing that. Maybe Martha Coakley wasn't going to win going away but she was still leading in most polls. And Obama likes to manage by walking around. And so he. Likes to sort of grab an apple off the desk in the Oval Office and start roaming the West Wing. And if you're if you're in the West Wing there's a decent chance if he's in town you're going to run

into him in the hall or one day. In 2009 I was in David Axelrod's office he just walks in you know and and he jokes with Pete Rouse who is his. The fourth of the big four and the least known the big four are Valerie Jarrett Rahm Emanuel David Axelrod and Pete Rouse and Pete doesn't like. To go places he didn't even go to the inauguration you could have sat in the front row we watched it on TV. Doesn't like to travel. At all. In fact the president jokes that he so dislikes travel that he won't even travel down the hall to see him in the Oval Office. So he has to go down to Pete's office or X as they call his office. So one day in January he wanders into AXS office to discuss something else and X is reading the Boston Globe on line. And he reads a sentence from that morning's paper. When asked why

she wasn't campaigning or meeting more voters. Coakley replied. What stands out in the cold shaking hands in front of Fenway Park. I don't think so. And so he resists the president. The president is a shrewd politician. He knows that Fenway Park is a shrine here and people do pray at Fenway Park and that and he knows in an instant. That it's all over the elections not for two weeks but he knows it's done he can come up here and campaign all he wants for Martha Coakley. She's dead politically and she was but he knew that in an instant and he grabs Axelrod by the shirt and says. Tell me she didn't say that challenge me that's not true. People think of him as being very calm. But in this case he was in a highly agitated state. That can't be right. That can't be true.

And it says it's true. So it was that sort of scene that I was looking for just to tell you you know on health care which seemed like his dreams were shattered at that point. And then that he and Nancy Pelosi were able to work their way back in the next couple of months. But. The big surprise for me was that he did this over the objections of everybody around him. Joe Biden told him you don't have to do this this year. You know the American people will give you a pass you only promised to do it by the end of your four year term. Rahm Emanuel told me quote I begged the president not to do this. AXELROD wanted to do energy first. Christina Romer the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers reminded him that Franklin Roosevelt waited two years after he became president before introducing his Social Security plan. And so I asked Obama why did you do it. And he said well I told Nancy Pelosi said go down 10 to 15

points in the polls as he did and that I might not get re-elected. So I said OK Mr. President why did you do it. You said because if we didn't do it now it simply wouldn't have happened. And I found that extraordinary. And in your book that there was that much push back because when I were in here we are in the Kennedy Library and I look back on the campaign me a defining moment was when. Senator Kennedy endorsed Obama it was like giving permission to a lot of Democrats that it was OK to move from Hillary to Obama and health care was the cause of his life. He was holding meetings before a Democrat was elected on the expectation that this would be a pressing issue. And so I. It's unimaginable to me that they could have considered doing otherwise. I think the political pushback would have been extraordinary if they came in and said well we're just going to move.

That was the issue. And just describe it as pushback would be too strong. The only one. With the balls to really push back was Rahm Emanuel and he. In August for about a week he said let's compromise. You know use a stripped down version. He actually had an 800 page secret plan that was done that summer that Rahm had put together but he had what they called the women and children first idea the time the Titanic you know save the women and children first later when it looked like the whole thing was going down. They didn't like to brag that that had been their name for it initially but would insure about 10 million instead of 30 once it wasn't abandoned. So it wasn't an initial thought that we shouldn't do this. Now I know that initially there was a struggle as well over whether to put it in the budget. And Obama in a very emotional meeting with Tom Daschle in the first week of his presidency when Daschle had been town attending to his brother who had brain cancer. And he says he puts it to him he says you know are you going to do this and Obama

kind of hugs him and says. I'm doing this. And so it wasn't like there was this rear guard action all year long. And once Rahm realized that the president was going to do it he moved heaven and earth to try to make it happen so it wasn't like you know. He was enthusiastic but at one point when the polls are just plummeting and they made a number of tactical mistakes. And Obama always like to say I'm feeling lucky. And so Rahm Emanuel says. Are you still feeling lucky Mr. President. And he said Obama says. My name is Barack Hussein Obama and I'm sitting here. So yeah I'm feeling lucky. And you know it's a it's a major achievement and yet I think at the signing ceremony President Obama said as an aside to someone that I think we're smart for another for a month and it was Axelrod or somebody said oh maybe two weeks.

I don't think it was even to wait. No. And that brings me to the Washington Post review of your book. The title was a gifted orator who can't make his point. Why can't he get credit for doing something that's pretty wonderful. I think for the country you know it's a great question. And to me the biggest surprise of Obama's first year was that we expected that he was going to ace communications. Be the silver tongued order that he was during the campaign and that he was going to struggle in executive leadership because you don't have any management experience. Never run anything. And instead it turned out to be the reverse. He was quite a natural executive. The people who dealt with him. Thought that his true great strength was running a meeting and he was very crisp. And an effective effective executive. And yet he he as Valerie Jarrett told me could never find the right vocabulary to describe health care and to frame that issue. And I also don't

think he did a very good job of framing the stimulus. So the stimulus is also a major accomplishment. But he was at that time who was more interested in speed than credit and with health care the lack of speed the fact that dragged out and and everybody focused on the sausage factory of Congress. And the sausage making stunk so bad it spoiled everybody's appetite for the meal. Right. And the stimulus package which is a terrible name but they didn't want to call it that you describe in the book how if you break it up into like four pieces of legislation that was the biggest and the biggest that it was those that was it was the biggest energy bill ever in terms of clean energy. It was the biggest infrastructure bill since the Interstate Highway Act of the 1950s. It's the biggest education bill since the 1960s. It was the biggest tax cut since Reagan and by some arguments the 300 billion

in tax cuts was actually much more for the middle class than Reagan provided. And yet it went through so fast that nobody could really digest it. They didn't sell it well. And. You know. These were. Historic times and it's hard sometimes to realize when you're. Going through history that it's happening at the Washington book party that you mentioned. One of the guests was Senator Harris Wofford. Who some of you may remember was a Pennsylvania senator a lesser known fact is that he was responsible more than any other person outside the Kennedy family for John F. Kennedy being elected in 1960. There's a lot of historical misinformation about this. If Nixon had carried Illinois where supposedly Daley stole the election. Kennedy still would have been elected he had enough electoral votes to win. So it was not Illinois.

What made the difference is that a very large number of African-Americans moved from the Republican Party the party of Lincoln. Jackie Robinson had been for Nixon Daddy King had been for Nixon. They moved to the Democratic Party because Harris Wofford advised JFK to call Coretta Scott King when Martin Luther King was in jail. And over Bobby Kennedy's objections he did this. It was just a natural move by Kennedy a compassionate move and it yielded huge political benefits that they didn't anticipate. They thought it would be a negative in the south. It ended up winning the election for them. So flash forward to this book party last week and. Harris Wofford is in his 80s and he stumbled and he had a bad fall and he had to be taken to the hospital. And as we were waiting for the ambulance to come. To make sure that he he you know stayed conscious didn't go into shock. And he had blood all over him and I said as bloody as you were at Salma and he said no. When I was with King at

Selma I didn't I didn't get hit. And you know I managed to avoid it so much bloodier now than it was when we talked you told this long story. About Selma and afterward I realized. You know at the time that waffer who was with King SLM or when he was with JFK in 1960 they weren't thinking this was history. It was just part of his daily life and that's what the events of the last year and a half. They are part. They will be part of. Real American. History. When you look at the most the largest piece of social legislation. In 45 years since Medicare and Medicaid that was passed when you had let's look at national service they added 250000 young people. Through the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act that was signed. It got no notice when FDR added 250000 in 1933 to the civilian conservation corps. It was front page news everywhere but events were moving. His big historical events were

moving so fast last year that none of us could digest them. So what I wanted to do in this book was to try to like look at it like a historian and say yes this will be history. Do I know for sure which parts of it will loom large with the benefit of time. No but I try to take some educated guesses on what we will think of as major historical events. And yet this is all lumped together by the critics as too much government. Big government. And they haven't really had an effective response. And one of the things I wonder is was the rise of the Tea Party kind of inevitable or could they have done something that sort of cushion the blow of all this government coming in to help you to make people not be threatened. To see it as a positive thing I think I think he could have. You know Richard knew that he was the head of the Kennedy transition in 1960 and 61 died a couple of years ago.

He was my one of my absolute favorite professors. He said that the president's only power real power has the power to persuade. And Obama failed to persuade. But I think that what he. Was looking at was it was it was a Chicago approach. The late Mayor Daley said good government is good politics. So he figures if he delivers for the people that eventually he'll get credit and he tries to take a kind of a longer view. And you know we still have 10 percent unemployment. But at the time Obama took office the economy was losing in January of 2009. Seven hundred and forty thousand jobs a month if we stayed on that pace we would have been in another Great Depression. No exaggeration by the end of 2009. Currently we're adding about 250000 jobs a month we still have a long way to go to get above water but we're moving in the right direction. So I think he's confident that even though.

Change is painful and there was this reaction that he will prevail he attributed it when I asked him about this and he called them the teabaggers which got him in a lot of trouble with. Conservatives. He meant no sexual insult. You know where he came out he said that it started very early when there was no cooperation from the Republicans on the stimulus. The very first week of his presidency he went over to meet with the House Republican caucus. No Democrats unprecedented move and they decided before he got there that they were going to read John Boehner the minority leader said told them beforehand no cooperation. No votes. And indeed he got zero votes. So even though Ronald Reagan's economic adviser Martin Feldstein and John McCain's economic adviser Mark Zandi they thought we needed this stimulus. No Republicans went for it. And so Obama said that the whole Tea Party thing kind of grew out of that. And I think he's right. He said. He thought the biggest surprise of

his presidency for him is he thought the other side would be more interested in governing and they wouldn't just be obstructionist. I would go further and this is this book is not a lot of punditry because I sort of took my pundit had off and you know got off as my wife said Get off your high horse and gave it a rest you know and. I tried not to but. And I didn't say this in the book but what I believe is it wasn't just that they didn't want to govern. I think that the opposition was fundamentally unpatriotic fundamentally unpatriotic. And. That. You know. It's one thing for them to negotiate. And he offered them he made a big mistake. You offered them $300 billion in tax cuts at the front end and he thought well that'll be a show of good faith and then we'll negotiate over the rest of the stimulus package. They refused to negotiate when the company when the country is flat on its back. I can understand politically why they wanted to do it because they figure they get no credit if it worked.

And they'd share the blame if it failed. So in very crass political terms it made sense for them to play to the 2010 midterms and just be the party of NO. Understandable but if you're actually looking at it like what is the responsible thing to do when the country is in crisis. It was deeply irresponsible. Do you see any change in the president from the beginning of the year to the end that he might have been more naive about what he could accomplish with the Republicans where the scales lifted from his eyes. I don't think the scales were lifted from his eyes. He always believed that whether they cooperate or not because of the way he ran his campaign and the way he had. Positioned himself. Remember when we first got to know this guy in 2004 he said. You know in his speech at the 2004 convention was beyond red and blue. Right. We don't live in blue states we don't live in red states

we live in the United States of America. And I did the first cover story on him. You might remember in Newsweek in late 2004 and the cover line was seeing purple. So. He put his whole idea was that he had to reach out. And even if they rejected him he had to reach out. So I don't think he was naive and reaching out. But I do think that he. Didn't have a good contingency plan for how to deal with it when they brushed his hand away. OK. And the back stories that I promised the audience you have a good one around the lengthy Afghanistan deliberations and the escalation of the troops in Afghanistan and whose idea was that really to escalate. Well.

First of all you know Obama found himself at the beginning of the year kind of slipping into a bigger commitment in Afghanistan and he and his people realized that. In neither the Vietnam War. Or in the Iraq war was there ever a period where they actually had a series of meetings to question the assumptions of the war the war there was literally I remember I interviewed McNamara once about the beginning of the Iraq war and he said the biggest mistake they're made is the same thing we made in Vietnam they never surfaced the issues for debate for full debate. It's hard to believe you think people in the government would debate these things but they didn't. And either of those wars. So in the summer Obama decided as he. Put it to me that he would slow everything down. Rather than slipping into this. And he undertook what was the most sustained examination of a foreign policy national security question since the Cuban Missile Crisis in

1962 when JFK held 13 days of meetings. And it added up to about the same. Amount of time about 20 hours of meetings. In this case in the SITUATION ROOM. And they examined every assumption. Behind Afghanistan and. It was kind of a good cop bad cop thing with Joe Biden. They sent the Pentagon back over and over again. For more information. And they considered and rejected the Vietnam analogy. Which is West Point speech he explicitly rejected because his point was the Viet Cong really were not a national security threat to us. But al-Qaida is they want to kill us. And. So he saw it not as a war on terror but a war on al Qaeda. And that in order to. The question was. In order to fight that war. What do you have to do vis a vis the Taliban. And there were a whole series. Of questions and so I try to walk the reader through what happened in the SITUATION ROOM. But some of that had come out

last fall. There were stories in the Times Post about this. One did not come out and what was a totally fresh revelation to me. Was that the Pentagon was trying to manipulate the president and box him in. And when I asked him I said were you jammed by the Pentagon. His record his answer was quote. I will neither confirm nor deny that I was jammed by the Pentagon you know. So they. It's a long story short. General McChrystal gave a speech in London and the question and answer session he was asked could you support was called a counterterrorism plan the Biden plan. Very few troops. Predator drones small commitment. And he says commanding general in a word no wait a minute. Let's get this straight. The commanding general is saying that if the president sides with the vice president in these deliberations he cannot support that.

Now there's a word for that. That word is insubordination. And. That that's not the word that the president used but he was absolutely livid. And after meeting with McChrystal and determining that it wasn't his fault and that he was a little naive. We dealt with the press. He focused on General Admiral Mullen the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he summoned them to the Oval Office with Gates in attendance and he dressed him down hard. He said I am exceedingly unhappy with your conduct. I need to know here and now that your conduct will stop. And that you will not be trying to. You know use the press to. Effect a policy that has not yet been determined and it's doing a grave disservice to our men and women in uniform and to our country quote unquote from somebody who was in this meeting in the Oval Office and Mullen and Gates and Petraeus who we also blame for this went out and they as Mullen described

himself afterward as chagrinned and this was described to me as the most direct confrontation between the military the president and the military since Truman fired MacArthur in 1951. And the question was raised. Waiting for somebody. And the answer was Joe Biden wanted him to fire somebody over this. But they had just fired General McKiernan who was McChrystal predecessor six months earlier. And it would have been very disruptive for them to just have heads rolling at the Pentagon he needs to maintain a good relationship with them. But what he did determine was. To as he put it move the bell curve to the left and what he meant by that was in Fast out fast. So he put a lot of pressure on them to escalate this year. Still a lot of tension over that. And then to begin withdrawing next year most people don't believe he will. I'm convinced that he was a presidential order and that he's even if things are not

going that well on the ground that would be evidence that more troops 100000 troops didn't work and it would actually bolster his case for starting to withdraw troops next year. Well it looks like they're going to stick to the withdrawal date from Iraq of getting the troops out engaged in combat operations. And they don't have a government there yet. So that looks kind of shaky. But this is a good point for you to talk about some of the by play with the vice president Vice President Biden for Washington journalists is the gift that keeps the. Got that right. And but they do have a good relationship is Biden an important player and talk about that. Well it started out as a bad. Not a bad relationship and Biden didn't respect Obama. He had no business running for president. He just arrived in the Senate you know and barely. Found the bathroom before he's running for president. And after Biden loses in

Iowa. He's neutral. But I found out that he actually wasn't neutral and was secretly advising Hillary Clinton for months and then. Obama with Caroline Kennedy's help decided to put him on the ticket for a variety of reasons. They still didn't have a good relationship. They had some words on the phone because Biden made some stupid gaffes about how Obama was going to be tested. You know it made it seem like he was untested and he just was not disciplined on the campaign Obama's highly disciplined and he doesn't respect that about Biden. Then something really interesting happened. First in the after the economy collapsed. And Biden watched. Obama on on these conference calls with Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker and watched his command and he called him the next day after the first when he said you sold me sucker.

Just sort of the wind turbine and then. And then later he tells his aide Ron Klain they got the ticket in the right order. I have to admit they've got the tick in the right order and he did overnight. He restored American prestige in the world overnight. And by and told me that it would have taken me. Two years to do that. And Hillary Clinton for years a little jab at Hillary and then he admitted you know what we couldn't have done it. He was the right man for the moment so he acknowledged that. So his view of Obama changes first and then Obama is still kind of annoyed at him for you know. This. Joke he made about Chief Justice Roberts flubbing the administration of the the oath of office and Obama didn't want him making fun of Roberts in public for that. And. And then over time what happened is. That Obama realized that even though Biden has a big mouth. Oh and in the transition you learn that he excluded Biden from personnel decisions because he was worried about leaks.

Then what happened was he started meeting with them. You know they have lunch every week. Seeing him in these meetings and he realized what I. Realized about Joe Biden a few years ago. He only seems like a blowhard. You know he's actually really extraordinarily well-informed guy and his. I was sitting in his office one day when he was talking. To one of the leaders of Iraq and he was so skillful on the phone the way he was dealing with this this guy. So he really understands foreign policy. He was giving Obama very solid advice on that. He was very helpful in the Senate where he would tell his old colleagues he couldn't give me this. Bullshit about a public option. I've been talking to you about health care for the last 20 years and you never mentioned a public option until now. You know so he was really helpful on that. Then when they get into these Afghanistan deliberations even though he doesn't adopt the Biden

plan he's Obama's really impressed by the way Biden is is pushing the Pentagon. And challenging all of their assumptions. And so at this point they have. Quite a good relationship. And Biden makes the connection with ordinary Americans and big F-ing deal. I was very good and I maybe the White House was taken aback initially but then they put it on their Web site. Yes I think they were selling T-shirts. It was very smart at politics and prose the bookstore that you spoke and there was a gentleman who came and asked the question who was asking about the present President Obama's confidence level. And he said that he knew his father. He knew his father and father was at the Kennedy School. And he said his father was so confident supremely confident just like the son he said that the father was in your face about it where Obama is more subtle.

And I thought that was quite fascinating. He really is very confident in what he's thinking and how he's approaching things. And I guess we saw that during the campaign. But he's been rock solid. It's really interesting and there's no you know I have this chapter Zen temperament and I try to get at some of these questions but I have to be pretty tentative when I'm making these assessments. But I was struck by. One of their close friends told me that Michelle said you know Barack spent so much time alone when he was a kid. Sometimes I think he was raised by wolves. And. She didn't mean that you know to. Diss his mother or his grandparents because he had this really interesting combination of a lot of love but also a kind of an abandonment by them that now. We. Now days

where you know if you're if you're a teenager you know go to the store by themselves you get all nervous about it. And these yuppie parents are so overprotective and so involved in their kids lives that. I'm not sure they grow up as independent as as those who are you know more my age or or Obama's age. And he had to learn independence. And you know he's sent to live with his grandparents when he's 12 years old I guess it was. And I think that he. He had some issues but he worked them out when he wrote that first book. And so he. He went through this kind of. Catharsis. Earlier. And so now. You know I don't know if I would say that he's more psychologically. Healthy than the people in this room than the average person but he's clearly more psychologically healthy than the

average politician or the average president may be. So. You know. He's he's just not in most of these guys Eleanor knows even more of them than I do. Messed up in the head one way or another. And now they just are. Don't you think a lot of these politicians I don't think I'd put it quite that way that way. They've learned to channel whatever their dysfunction is usually in a positive way too much. But you know Obama's a bit of a control freak. He is. He gets frantic about leaks. I don't know. Frantic he gets. I see. I see. He never really gets very frantic. I think that Martha Coakley moment might have been the most frantic. OK. OK he's angry about this. Yeah he gets angry but the way he gets angry is so I have this one shepherd called the an Buh-Bye try to contrast Obama. And I think the comparison to Bush is not very interesting but the comparison to Clinton is fascinating to me and Clinton has what they call purple fits where he takes people's heads

off. He gets really angry. But then you feel that warm embrace. I love you man. You know and you know that sure you know that you're back with him right. And Obama it's like a constant 60 degrees. It's not cold. It's not even chilly but it's it's cool. And so when he does. Get angry and he says you know come on guys or something and he has you staring at people when there's a leak which he's very intolerant I think it's a huge waste of time for him to worry about this. And he looks at everybody in the office does he think it's me. Does he think it's me. And it's scary because there's an icy. An icy air. It's not a rage. He no I was not able to find anybody who has ever worked with him who say that he ever ridden. He just doesn't operate that way. And it's one of the reasons why people like working for him generally. But if you sit quietly in a meeting and you don't ask questions or

engage you're not going to be invited back. It's looking for intellectual Yes it's the meetings to me and I maybe I spend too much time on this but they were just fascinating because normally in a Washington meeting you know you get together in the Cabinet Room or the Roosevelt Room and you've got the principals. They call them Cabinet secretaries members of Congress they're around the table and then on the wall are the assistant secretaries and the aides and the principals do all the talking the experts and other experts economists and then they maybe were for a little bit too on a particular question to the people on the wall and an Obama meeting the principals maybe get to say one thing and then Obama in a Socratic dialogue kind of way is asking questions without going down the row just kind of like a professor asking questions of different people in the room and if you don't come to play and you don't have something good to say you're full of jargon or something. You might not be invited

back. But the good news is. That when you get home at night and your wife her husband says so you are in a meeting with the president did you say anything you don't have to say as in prior administrations now and say anything and I get to say Yeah I talked to the president about this and I. Because he really does want to drill down into an issue and talk to the issue experts might have a better sense of what they're talking about them than the principle. On the other hand I think on the economy he had to type of a circle. And he did not get a wide array. Of advice early on. He and so his record there was mixed. And I don't think he used his leverage over the banks the way he could have in early 2009. For somebody as eloquent as he is looking back over this year plus it's hard to come up with memorable lines. Plug the damn hole. Maybe may be the best but he has this kind of a

you point out he has this disdain for the conventions of Washington for soundbites. He has a visceral dislike for cable television chatter. But that's the way politics are played today. So I don't know how useful that is for him. This is a central to my mind a central point. It sounds like we're talking about trivial. Cable news but it's it's really central. You know during the health care debate. Obama and Rahm Emanuel and the others when liberals would come in and say you know how about a public option or why did you rule out single payer and they would say quite rightly look. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. That politics is the art of the possible. We have to deal with the world as it is not as we want it to be and the world as it is is there aren't enough votes for a public option. Half a loaf is better than nothing. And sure millions of people and it's

an improvement. So deal with the world as it is. But when it comes to the media. Obama doesn't take his own advice and he doesn't deal with the media world as it is. But as he hopes it will be. And it's not going to be that way. So his disdain for sound bites which I think is is one of his least. Helpful qualities. I date to his race speech in Philadelphia during the campaign. Which had no soundbites. And I wrote a terrible column saying the death of soundbites because I thought when I read the speech on my Blackberry Obama screwed. There are no memorable lines. He's toast you know with this Reverend Wright thing and it turns out it was a huge success. Just downloaded on YouTube. And so I thought you know maybe we're in a post soundbite era and you can can actually talk intelligently to the American people you don't have to worry about soundbites. I was totally wrong and he took the wrong lesson from that

that he forgot that Lincoln's The only house divided against itself cannot stand is a sound bite. Roosevelt's the only thing we have to fear is fear itself is a sound bite and this disdain. For encapsulating ideas that are in a way that's really memorable is really harming him. And the speeches that he gives are some of them are terrific but they're too often like fast food they wear off very quickly because there is no. Line that you can chisel into a monument. Well I want to ask you about his press conference last week about. The tragedy in the Gulf and what you learned about him in the first year as you watch him operate in this crisis whether this is what you expected or not expected and then I want to turn to the audience for questions. So the golf is well I

think that some of the problems that we've been identifying were evident in this situation and also some of his good qualities. You know clearly he was on top of it. You know the idea that it's another Katrina that he didn't know what was going on or you know was under illusions is not. True. He was. You know meeting about this early on but he didn't feel he needed to show the public. That he you know felt their anxiety and their pain. It's a little bit like what happened to him after the Christmas Day underwear bomber. You know he was on top of that right away when he was in Hawaii. But he didn't feel he doesn't believe in gestures. But I think that is kind of naive because sometimes you do have to use symbolic gestures. The theater of the presidency and it is a theater demands that you be something of an actor and engage in symbolic gestures. And that's just the nature of the modern presidency that Roosevelt arguably invented. So

Roosevelt was so good at it that. When he died and his funeral procession was moving up Constitution Avenue A. Grieving man fell to his knees and the man next to him. Helped him to his feet. And as he did so he said to the grieving man. Did you know the president. And. The first man said no. But he knew me. And here's Franklin Roosevelt He's an aristocrat. He's seemingly you know disconnected from average people but by the end of his 12 years people really felt that he had connected to them. And Obama has time to make that connection but he needs to work harder at it. And and two he. Doesn't fully get. He tries to get emotion out of his. Presidential decisions and that's a great quality of detachment

because you are much more rational effective policy maker if you look at the evidence and the substance and you don't react emotionally it's a recipe for failure in the actual decisions of office. But you have to govern with some sense of emotion. You have to lead with some sense of emotion. And I think he doesn't always understand that you can use logic. To. To. Convince somebody of your argument. But you can only only a motion will motivate people. You know what they said over DeMoss the knees when somebody else ancient Greek said. When when somebody else speaks. People clap when DeMoss when he speaks they march they move. And Obama had that capacity during the campaign. And he can have it again but he needs to attend to it more and I think we're seeing the consequences of that in this crisis.

The big question now is not aqua man. You know I don't think we can expect him to like dive down a mile beneath the surface and you know plug the leak. But this this. Crisis has two parts. This plugging the leak and then there's the massive cleanup that is coming when these tar balls start to hit. And I think that he could create a lot of jobs not just for fishermen but for many unemployed people and show leadership if he and Thad Allen and I actually think he should. Point out Al Gore even though he's going to go through a divorce you know to supervise this and because this is going to be with us this is the big story of 2010. And it's a an unbelievable disaster. And the way he responds over time will condition his presidency. And and with government so much. In the crosshairs as to how the government is government good or bad. And when you see the government not being able to

fix it it doesn't it doesn't help how government is portrayed and it morphs with the anger people feel and is such a hypocrite so they don't. They don't want government. I hate the government I hate the government. You know Uncle Sam sucks and then Uncle Sam help me help me you know. Well the classic was a caller on C-SPAN who suggested that they take the Capitol down and just put that it and the moderator very straight face says Well thank you for sharing your engineering insights with us. You know it's public it's all about temperament. I mean you know there was this public temperament and the classic story about Franklin Roosevelt was a few days after the inauguration. And he goes over to Oliver Wendell Holmes as 90 second birthday party and they have some bootleg champagne. Which That was.

Can you imagine Obama like a few days after the inauguration going over and having some smoking some weed at somebody's house anyway. So he goes over there when he leaves. Holmes. Famously remarks second class intellect. First class temperament. And meeting Churchill said meeting Roosevelt was like opening a bottle of champagne. He just made you feel better when when he talked to you. So here now we get to Obama. He has a first class intellect. He is smarter than Franklin Roosevelt. By a considerable margin. And it seemed like he had the perfect first class temperament. At the end of the campaign especially in contrast to a RADICH John McCain. You know he seemed like he had the cool temperament that we want in a crisis but we don't really know yet whether he has a first class public temperament and what whether his temperament is matched to the times and that's one of the great mysteries that we're all going to need them.

An incredible connection though with a lot of people who hadn't voted before and particularly with young people and this gives me the chance to talk about your son who spotted this talent before you did. My daughter won't be happy that I'm telling the story. Sorry Charlotte. My when my son was 13 I mentioned this cover story that I wrote Obama about Obama at the end of 2004. He had been elected to the Senate but not yet sworn in. So he was technically a state senator. And I brought Tommy my my 13 year old down. And I interviewed Obama and. My son mostly just want to go to the Chicago Bulls Washington Wizards game. But he came with me and after the interview he was so impressed he said Dad that guy's going to be president in 2008. And I. And by the time he covered politics as long as I know that there's just no chance of that

happening maybe in 2016 perhaps but not likely. And so when I went in to interview the president in November of last year it was right after Thanksgiving. And you get about a minute 30 small talk with Obama and then he says OK and it gives you a really strong signal that it's time to get down to brass tacks. It's actually kind of a refreshing quality. People like this about him. So we're in this brief Smalltalk phase we're walking in. And I suggest a good Thanksgiving. So you had a great Thanksgiving. We went to the George Washington Oregon State game his brother in law. Craig Robinson is the coach of Oregon State and Craig's mother Obama's mother in law Marian Robinson was sitting next to him and he says you know what she kept. Punching me every time the game got close. And I said look you know first of all you're hurting me.

And second of all if you don't stop this the Secret Service is going to call you out. So. I said well you know my son goes to G.W. and being a good politician is your son the one. That I met he's already in college you know. And I said yeah and I told him the story that I just told you. And he says well you tell Tommy to. Say hello. And you tell him he should have talked me out of it. And then knowing I was a reporter said Joe Joe I think we've got some mike set up if you want to begin to line up and while they're getting in place I have to ask you about Michelle Obama who you know I get the feeling as an equal partner in this enterprise. But she's been pretty careful to. Be very soft really in public and she. Her poll ratings are very high. The country loves her. So she is doing very well but there are some nice little tidbits about Michelle Obama trying to ask her about the Carla Bruni story.

OK. So answering calls from British tabloids about this. Well they they call her the supreme leader in the West Wing and she's she doesn't sit in on policy meetings the way Hillary Clinton and Rosalynn Carter did. And she's not as. You know actively involved in personnel decisions as Nancy Reagan was. But in your own quiet way she's. Very influential. So when a congressman. Congressman George Miller went over to the White House and had lunch with Obama and Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act was in his committee and he says to the president well you know Michelle Obama the first lady is very interested in the. Bill. I got some advice for you George. I'd move that bill out of committee real fast if I were you.

Right so with Carla Bruni story just very briefly is that I was very interested in Obama's interactions with world leaders and I heard that when the wife of the president of France met with Michelle Obama she is you know former model who had a CD she released recently my 30 lovers. And she says she says to. The first lady one of the things I don't like about being first lady my husband and I have less time to make love and we did that one time very recently we we kept a head of state waiting for one hour while we completely dry lovemaking. And do you and the president ever do such a thing. So actually no but. So somehow the British tabloids got it into their head that it

was the queen of England that they had kept waiting and so they kept calling me. No no it was not the Queen of England who kept the French kept her wedding or kept. Not. I don't know. She said that's just. Carla Bruni. OK. So unfortunately I know that you would like it if there was more but that's about the beginning of the end of the sex. OK. All right let's go over here and then we'll go crisscross. Hi. This is fantastic. My name's Ellen Kagan from the Cape Cape Cod. I'm really trying this but I have to tell you the most shocking thing you said tonight is that Alec was getting divorced. I mean I just can't believe it. How can that be for those who didn't get the message. It was very surprising for those. I mean you didn't expect it. No I know. But then I began to analyze myself and what I've been I been more shocked if the Clintons were divorcing and I decided I wouldn't be because they have an ongoing political

partnership and I concluded that the Gores are like a lot of people who have reached an age where they have an empty nest and they have their own interests and separate interests lead to separate lives. And I decided that you know good for them that they can be honest. But I think it's very sad it's sad for them and their family and for all of us who thought that they were the you know the company could survive all the political turmoil. So that's my thought summed up why I wish about Wall Street what is going on. I mean I don't really know what Wall Street are going to be controlled. Well you know the legislation that is about to be reconciled the House and Senate versions it's good. I don't think it's good enough. It does some good things like it has a consumer. Financial Protection Agency that presumably Elizabeth Warren.

Who's been a peer at Harvard Law School will head. And that will protect against predatory lending and some other things that have. Needed to be changed for a long time. There's some other you know new reserve capital requirements and other things. But basically. It doesn't break up. The banks. It doesn't fundamentally do anything about too big to fail. And it it could have been in my view a much better and even the transparency. Part of it is not what it should be said derivatives for instance they have some of them that will be publicly disclosed in a clearinghouse. But there's a whole category of private derivatives that can be done over the telephone. So what regulator or third party of any kind can can supervise that's really involved in this. Yes he's really involved in all this legislation and he's. Held endless meetings with members of Congress some of whom are.

Very sharp and some of whom have room temperature I accuse. And you know so it's it's a mix. But yeah he's very determined to put points on the board as they say and I'm I'm I'm interested in. You know how all that works. And so there's quite a bit in the book especially on health care and other other issues about. The way he handles legislation. But as I mentioned it's a sausage factory and the sausage usually really smells. I have heard that. One. Legislator. Is holding up all of Obama's. Appointments. What would be Obama's reaction to that. Well in the Senate as David McCain as any senator. Could can

put a hold on. Any. Bill or appointment one senator can stop the whole thing. And when you know Republicans are in control of the White House and the Senate Democrats like that because they can stop what they consider to be bad things happening. But now the Democrats are in control. It's it's very frustrating and you do have particularly a couple of senators Senator Coburn from Oklahoma I think is the person you're referring to Senator DeMint who said you know we will break the president. Health care will be his Waterloo. Very patriotic things to say my the president we want him to fail you know. So they'll do anything they can even have on final passage of passage 98 to nothing just to slow things down cause them trouble. They use whatever parliamentary techniques they can and there are some efforts to try to change the rules. Senator Harkin has a bill to do that. But you know I wouldn't bet on it being successful.

I think a lot of the frustration in the country about legislation is that people are paying attention for the first time in a long time or maybe ever and there. They don't they can't believe this is how our system works but it is how the system works. There are some efforts at reform and the filibuster reform Hap's. And by the way they've gotten so much more done in the last year than they have in prior years. It's not like you know they call it a broken branch of government and in many ways it is. But really you do have to give Pelosi and Reid a fair amount of credit for moving an awful lot of legislation great. Would you tell us a little bit about how you perceive the relationship between the president and Hillary Clinton and how Joe Biden is involved in all of that politically as well as personally. I do have a chapter picking Hillary. You know obviously it was done. Over the objections of a lot of people in the Obama campaign who just. Couldn't believe that. After all the bad feeling that Obama would do this is very

characteristic of him to want to look ahead. He had no. Real recriminations. His relationship with Bill Clinton. Continued to be not very good and it didn't leak at all in the first three months of the administration and there was just a lot of bad feeling there when. You know Clinton Bill Clinton called Obama the chosen one in a very contemptuous way. And when Obama was asked who was spreading. Dirt about him in the Jewish community during the campaign he said it's the Clintons. You know when he was just talking about Bill and but with Hillary Hillary's mind in Obama's mind kind of work in the same way they're both deductive thinkers. Whereas Bill Clinton is an inductive. Thinker and an Obama when he was asked you know OK so why by top people so. You know when they're deliberating over whether to choose or he says look. Let's just end this. She's the most

qualified. OK I'm picking her. You know it wasn't really any more complicated than that. And then the relationship which was a little tentative at first and somebody who observed it said it was a little bit like teenagers on the first date. Now it's gotten more comfortable. It's surprisingly fraught. And I wish there was more drama there I would have had more to write about and that part of the book. But I think they actually get together get along pretty well. Their staffs are really at each other and there's real bad still bad feeling between the State Department and the White House. At the at the staff level. But you know she's. Very able and it's all hands on deck and she has helped them to repair America's position in the world. Together they've also made their share of mistakes but they also have some real accomplishments that they don't think are very well understood the most important of which to me is that they drove a wedge between Russia and Iran. Which is very very much

in the national interest of the United States and now. There are all these recriminations between those two countries. Which is. Just what we want. Because we need to build an international and they've got China to agree to put to join the international sanctions and inspection regimes. So there have been a number of accomplishments. The Middle East has not obviously gone well this event yesterday doesn't help but on foreign policy. I think they've. They had a pretty good year. Yes. Thank you. My name is terrible. And also from the Cape. And first just thank you for bringing a different point of view. All the weekends that we watch both of you on television. It's very boring to me. My question is it's sort of like on a Weegee question in a way after the elections are coming up this fall does some of your colleagues are talking about Rahm Emanuel stepping

down or Valerie Jarrett moving in or do you see any sort of shakeup of the inner inner circle of Obama regardless of the results of the November elections. It's really hard to say. You know we're always asked to predict things and that's why I was more comfortable. Trying to tell people what actually happened rather than what will happen is like predicting the stock market. What I can say about Rahm Emanuel is that he very much and he stayed in this public way and he had told me this privately months ago you very much wants to be mayor of Chicago. And if. Mayor Daley decides not to run for re-election at the end of this year then he will move back home and run for mayor of Chicago. If he doesn't he could stay a while longer but we'll probably leave sometime next year. I wouldn't predict. Valerie Jarrett is chief of staff. I don't think that's going to happen. But I don't know who will be and don't have a good sense and I know that Obama's still very much likes Rahm Emanuel have a whole chapter called Rambo which is x

rated. So I can't really tell you about it this. Is on video but you know it's very profane and very amusing. Pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth. And Obama just really. Believes that he was the right choice and that he compliments that his skill set. And kind of get it done. Qualities are what he continues to need in that job. And those are killer jobs. Talk about the kind of hours that they keep in this White House whether it's worse than previous about it's. You know I think people always. Work hard but it's it's really really rough. You know. At one point Obama said I want a family friendly White House and Rahm said publicly Yeah for your family you know. And they're they're. Often pretty late at night. The president said I can take the reader through the

president's day. He works very late into the evening and in the family quarters. And then he kind of starts later in the morning. But it's not a morning person. My neighbors any one says exercise. Yes the exercise in the morning. But his staff you know gets going. Very early. And it was a hard part of the book for me was not that you know they were trying to stiff me or didn't want to talk to me but they routinely canceled interviews just because they had so much work and there was there was so much water. Coming over the side of the boat every day and especially. At the beginning. Obama is more of a centrist then guess many of us would hope for or you know had hoped for. Would you say that he intellectually and politically is really a centrist. I actually think that I think he's a progressive a

pragmatic progressive. And I think that the best description of Obama is comes from JFK. When. When. Kennedy and. Jackie were dating. According to Arthur Schlesinger's book A Thousand Days. At. Jack told Jackie when she asked How would you describe yourself. And he said I'm an idealist without illusions. And I think that's Obama as well and they share a lot of. Traits that are sort of cool fact and very pragmatic. Skeptical of dreamy liberals but not against you know the goal certainly for the goals of of liberalism. But. I do think there was. Without being too critical of of liberals. I think there was a naivete throughout much

of liberal America in the last year and a half about the way things actually work in Washington and what's possible in Washington and they believe too many of them maybe not the people in this room but too many of them believed in what they call the magic wand theory Oh we elected Barack Obama. He can wave his magic wand and change all of these things and it's Miller time for us. You know we can sit on our hands so last summer. Who showed up at the town meetings even in liberal districts. The Tea Party people the conservatives. You know Obama said we are the ones we've been waiting for and we didn't show up. They thought their job was done. But he kept telling people during the campaign. Look this isn't going to be easy. Change isn't easy it's not. About me. This is about all of us doing this. And somehow a lot of folks forgot that. And they didn't really understand the way supermajorities worked in the Senate and all the details the messy smelly details of

governing and they got very frustrated. And looked at the glass. I think too often as half empty I think a progressive really should look at the glass as half. Full. I mean we're going to look back I think in a few years. And say can you believe that for decades and decades we lived in a country where if your kid got cancer you had to sell your house. How could we have lived in a country. Where if you had pre-existing condition. Some insurance company. Could. Throw you off the insurance roles. So you get sick and then you get whacked economically right. I mean it's kind of unimaginable already just a couple of months later. That era is now in the past. Now if that's not a progressive accomplishment I don't know what is. Thank you. Romney also from the Cape could you please shed some light on

Obama's view and commitment to bringing about peace in the Middle East. And the Middle East. Do you want to tackle that. I didn't go when I talked to him about it. He said it was the only area in foreign policy where he quote failed. And he's got George Mitchell over there. And you know is. It's just very very tough. And I think you've just got a lot. Tougher. And his relationship with Netanyahu has not been good. Something that I learned after the book. Went to press and I'm going to put in the new the new additions that are starting to come out. Is that there's a picture of Obama in the Oval Office with his feet up on the desk like Abraham Lincoln who always did this with his law partners. And I don't know if this was Obama was consciously imitating Lincoln but he always goes in one of

his aides of his and he puts his feet up on their desk. And in this case he has feet up on his own desk and he's talking on the phone to Netanyahu in this picture who runs around the world and in the Middle East as I think. Many of you know if you do this. Is a grave insult to show the soles of your feet in both Arab and. Israeli culture. Just part of the culture of the Middle East. So. Bibi Netanyahu thought actually believed. That the president was dissing him. Was intentionally trying to insult him by showing him the soles of his feet which is ridiculous. The president was not doing that. But that gives you some idea. Of the miscommunication and the level of. Distrust. And Obama thinks of Bibi as somebody like a ward healing politician was how he described him. You know Chicago politician. Who's just looking to please his constituents and he feels like he can deal with them

but he hasn't successfully. And you know there are some advances on the Arab side where there's some Finally some more moderate leadership on the West Bank and Gaza is entirely in the hands of Hamas and they just want to destroy Israel and are not in a position yet to make peace. It seems like there are a lot of what has happened to Obama has been the direct result of what the Bush people did and really he had all these things to deal with Wall Street and now the Gulf with. Oil companies and so on. Does the White House there talk. I mean I don't but I don't hear the administration blaming the past administrations for a lot of the issues they've had to deal with. That's a great really important question and actually you're very much in tune with Obama after the Massachusetts debacle. I was very interested in finding out you know what was Obama saying privately. And his one of his big points was

we didn't blame Bush enough. You know Roosevelt spent many years trashing Herbert Hoover. Ronald Reagan trashed Jimmy Carter at every opportunity. And Obama said we were so busy you know trying to drive out of the ditch that we didn't educate the American people on how we went into the ditch in the first place. He's going to try to do that now much more during the campaign you may have heard him say one of his soundbites that he is using is you know they drove it into the ditch. Why will why should we give them the keys. You know and that that's going to be one of his arguments. But you're right that so much of that first year was what I call show actually Don Regan who was Ronald Reagan's chief of staff called the shovel brigade cleaning up after the elephants elephants crap at the end of the circus right. And so I mean look at these bailouts you know. I mean they paid the money back. But 700 American public doesn't

know that. And Obama described them to me as toxic and political suicide this bailout and suddenly we own 60 percent of General Motors. How did that happen. You know that's because they completely kicked the can down the road. And there was they never imposed any kind of reckoning on the auto industry. So all of this was dropped into Obama's lap or on the energy side. You know you had people at the Minerals Management Service in Denver who are literally sleeping with the with the with the oil industry not figuratively literally in bed with the oil industry. And I remembered a story from that I did in Periscope in Newsweek several years ago where somebody told me that. And I confirmed that in the Bush transition. When Bush came in and he was selecting a new head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and he had somebody interviewing candidates for that job. The person he designated to interview candidates

was a guy named Ken Lay and. I mean you can't make it up you know so they had put in. The industry the extraction industry had completely decimated the regulatory agency so that you know this is this is what we what we get. You know no backup plan. All kinds of waivers. A lot of it's Congress's fault because they're in the pocket of the oil and gas industry as well. But the you know the legacy of all of that is something that. I think is Obama's biggest regret. And one of the main reasons he did health care he wanted to do something that he wanted to do instead of just cleaning up after Bush had a very effective opposition on the right basically saying every time you blame Bush Oh you're blaming Bush said taking ownership is not taking responsibility. So they should have said right away. And he was never one to seem bent on blaming Bush. That's right. He and think getting defensive.

Yeah he thinks that that would be too comparably or getting to the end of our time so we have two quick questions here. I'm Kathy Backley I've been to the Cape. I have been to the Cape. I'm interested in finding out how urgently President Obama feels about addressing the issue of climate change. Climate change. Well I do think he's very concerned about it. And I'll just tell a quick story because I think it says something about Obama and it was kind of amusing. Remember that the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was going really badly and the first Obama wasn't even going to go because they didn't have a climate change bill and it only passed the House not the Senate and it was Hillary told him it's failing. But then they said well you went to Copenhagen for the Olympics for Chicago and you can't go to Copenhagen to save the planet you know.

So he shows up and things are going really poorly and he wants to meet with Premier Wen of China who's been dead. Number two he's been designated on this issue. They had met in Beijing a few weeks earlier. And as he's getting ready to go to the room where the meeting was to take place he finds out that. Premier Wen. Zuma the head of state of South Africa Lula of Brazil and Singh of India who they thought had actually already gone to the airport because the conference was such a failure on meeting Obama that says I'm going to crash this meeting and he just walks in. And with Hillary and two aides. And. The environment minister of China says in a mixture of Chinese and English. Out to the president United States. Obama ignores that and works way. Lula I guess. No chairs. OK I'll pull up a chair with my friend Lula and he just sits down and they begin this

negotiation. Now by this point they had scaled back their goals and what they wanted and what they ended up getting was simply a registry so that the Chinese and other developing countries for the first time ever would have to at least record their carbon emissions. Elemental transparency so that people can could assess better what was going on with climate change and they're negotiating here is negotiating they're getting down to the short strokes and suddenly the environment minister minister she starts screaming in Chinese Premier Wen. And premier when everybody looks at the interpreter and Premier Wen says something in Chinese to an interpreter and the interpreter says for internal use only internal discussion on it. And at that point Obama without missing a beat says. I'll take that to mean we have an agreement. Stood up. Walked out of the room

which was pretty slick move. No he didn't give them any time to back off where they had come to that point in the negotiation and the Chinese. Agreed. So the prospects of of carbon putting a price on carbon which he and everybody else knows that we need to do. Are not good this year. But. You know depending on how the midterms go he's very determined and I'll just say that if you ask what is. Barack Obama's. Philosophy this might sound vague but he says quote I believe in the philosophy of persistence. So he has not given up trying to get climate change legislation. And he's made plenty of mistakes we haven't talked about them too much tonight. But he is pretty good when it comes to sticking with something. And he clearly believes that a clean energy future is absolutely central economically and for the health of the planet.

OK. You have the last word. Very big topic. Got to break it down just down can I book club recently bad debt free book. One hundred years right. OK. Yes the next 100 years. Wow I found it extremely disturbing. GARRETT get back. Home. All that's going on. All countries say it doesn't seem to leave any room for vidual action. And if you have read the book you might know what it feels to be. I could say it could do and why. Well you know I I guess I just completely reject that I'm first of all I'm very suspicious of

anybody who tries to predict the future. You know next week much less the next 100 years. You know one of my favorite examples from last year is when they did this cash for clunkers program. All the experts said that the billion dollars that Congress appropriated for it would last for nine months. It lasted for nine days. You know. So this idea that we can all live with the right studies figure out what's going to happen. And in terms of individual actors look at the Obama campaign and look at the difference that you know it started out with just a few people standing up. If you look at American business over the last. 25 years I don't think Obama talks enough about entrepreneurship but think about the look at Mark Zuckerberg. You know a. Harvard drop and he starts this thing Facebook and I mean you know individuals still have immense I think actually in some ways more power than they did in the

1950s when we lived in a more kind of company man. You know corporate ties structure we have more room for individual actors to make change. The internet is fantastic for individuals you know who have the right persuasive powers have the right ideas to make big change and empowers people individuals as never before. So I guess I would just say that I reject that premise and I reject doomsday thinking which sells more books but I don't think is is appropriate for our condition. There's a lot of huge challenges. Which. You know. I think Eleanor and I both. Are in some ways when we when we write for Newsweek where we're daunted by the problems but also we've been around long enough to know that. There are plenty of

situations where things. Work out a lot better than we had any. Reason to expect. And I think the same will be true moving forward. Thank you John