>> i am josh green. >> i am mark halperin. >> with all due respect to the new york giants, we do everything around here with just one hand. sports fans at the box office tonight. lindsey graham loses the anger game. according to our new hampshire poll, the gop is winning the stronger games. as the nation grapples with a decision from a grand jury in ferguson, missouri, there is other political news.

president obama announced chuck hagel is leaving his job as secretary of defense. he is departing less than two years after taking the job, and it is the first major post-midterm changeup for the obama and assertion. did chuck hagel have to go, and why? >> i think he did, and i think the reason why -- his ouster is the latest sign of obama bending to the whims of washington rather than coming in and changing them, as he originally hoped to do when elected resident. there is a long, venerable post-defeat washington tradition of finding a scapegoat. lately, that has often been a secretary of defense. remember after 2006, the war in iraq cost republicans control of congress. a couple days later, donald rumsfeld is out. >> i thought it was the first personal decision obama made the entire time. i thought hagel did not get

along well with the white house and was being overridden by top bureaucrats. i honor his service. i think he has done great things in public life. he cannot play nicely in the white house. too much to have on the plate. >> at the same time, i still think this is part of the new postelection imperial it obama -- imperial obama, who is going to get his way on immigration and climate study, show he is not a lame duck. >> do you think secretary lieberman of defense? >> i would say the first female defense secretary. other names we heard bandied about -- carter, possibly jack reed, who is democrats went back to the senate -- >> we will have our first secretary of defense, i bet, and she will get confirmed. negotiations on iran's nuclear

program were extended seven months, hours before the deadline set for the talk. secretary kerry is meeting in vienna, where talks have been pushed into next year. still negotiating over how much power iran can produce and how much free reign international inspectors should have. secretary kerry had this to say about the delay. >> we do not want just any agreement. we want the right agreement. time and again, with the day he took office, president obama has been crystal clear that we must ensure that iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon period. >> is this delay good for president obama? is it good for getting a deal? i have always thought there is no way to get a deal that the president likes, iranian hardliners like, the congress likes, and israel >>. if the president cannot get

israel's stamp of approval, i do not see how he can make it. >> i do not see how this bodes well for an agreement. you have essentially had 12 months to talk. each side knows what the other side wants and is not willing to grant it. having said that, i do not think this is a bad thing for obama personally. if you look ahead, it is becoming more and more likely that he is going to be able to walk away from the white house saying, during my presidency iran did not get a nuclear bomb. he could still get to eight years saying, it did not happen on my watch. we kept the u.s. from having to bomb iran, and we kept israel from bombing iran. that is not nothing. it is not an agreement, but it it's going to work. it seems more and more likely it that's punted to the next president. the experiments that -- skeptical. another report on the 2011

benghazi attack, the result of a two-year investigation by the house intelligence committee chaired by republican mike rogers. it found no failure of intelligence prior to the attack and seems to dispel gop claims of a cover-up. one republican who had a bee in his bonnet from the start had some choice words about the report. >> i think that report is full of crap. >> lindsey graham notwithstanding, does this report can and does he the political issue? >> that is a hornets nest buzzing around his head. late this afternoon, we got a statement from mike rogers, who is the chairman of the house intelligence committee. you can see in the statement how this is going to continue. he said, we understand people are upset about the report. we only covered the intelligence community. we found no wrongdoing. the remain unanswered questions about the state department and the white house. specifying state department that means hillary clinton's

feet are still to the fire. this is wide open for other republicans to keep prosecuting. >> and speaker boehner, who i think would like this issue not to be front and center announced shortly before we went on the air that congressman gary of south carolina will return as the chair of the select committee looking into benghazi. it has democrats on it. i think if you are a republican and worried about governing and 2016, this is never going to be a big enough issue to make it worth distracting the public from what they care more about -- the economy, jobs, and health care. that's the republican base are not going to let go of this issue, any more than on repealing obamacare. you have to keep this on, if not the front burner, the back burner. >> i would like republicans before they criticize the report, to read it. maybe that is too much to ask. president obama was asked about hillary clinton during an

interview this evening and said he would do whatever it took to get a democrat elected to succeed him. but the president said he was also realistic about just how helpful he can be. >> the american people are going to want that new car smell. they want to drive something off the lot that does not have as much mileage as me. >> i am virtually certain the founders never talked about new car smell. the senate 2016 has been on our minds, which is why we had a poll conducted by purple strategies, one of the most accurate pollsters from the 2012 cycle. here is what they found. hillary clinton, way ahead, 62%. she is a had every poll. 62 percent amongst new hampshire democrats is a very big deal. is hillary clinton's presidential bid helped or hurt by president obama?

>> i think her bid for the democratic nomination is helped. despite everything, obama is still popular with a lot of democrats, most democrats. at the same time, i do not think hillary clinton is especially worried about winning the nomination. in the general election, he is a problem. if you look at democratic senate candidates in states where obama was particularly unpopular, by and large, they lost. if you look at polls, 65% of people want policies different from the last president. that is something that is going to be difficult for clinton to achieve. >> john mccain had to distance himself from george bush. i think hillary clinton will be tying herself in knots, because she usually does about comforted things, about how to do this. president obama will cut her all the slack she wants. he does not care what she does in terms of distancing. we asked republicans who they wanted as president.

we asked with mitt romney in there, even though he said he is not going to run. a pretty dominant lead in a big deal. we took romney out, and you can see it is a three-way race, all bunched up around 15%. we asked a general electorate in 2016, which party candidate will care more about people like you. you see they are basically tied. do the republicans have a candidate or candidates who can do well, and that cares about people like you? >> potentially they do. you have chris christie, who before this bridge scandal was best known for his response to the hurricane sandy, hugging the president, in voting with people suffering in new jersey. clearly, he has got that potential. rand paul has made a great deal of effort to talk about reforming prison sentences identifying with a community of people that republicans in the last 10, 20 years have not traditionally tried to identify

with. >> watch jeb bush. watch rob portman. i think they have a history of being able to do pretty well. coming up, a man who cares about people like you. dr. ben carson, we talk about a whole bunch of stuff.

>> our guest is mr. excitement for a bunch of conservatives coast-to-coast. he's been part of his weekend in iowa, giving a big political speech. he's joining us from florida where he lives most of the year. dr. ben carson, thank you for coming on the show. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to start with this. have you ever had a run in with law enforcement that you thought was influenced at least somewhat by your race?

>> i would say there were potential run-ins with law enforcement. but i was taught as a young person how to respond appropriately to authority. therefore, it never really escalated into anything seriously. >> can you think about a situation where you had the potential to go head to head with law enforcement? what were the circumstances? >> i can remember as a teenager being stopped by police. i did not think i was doing anything particularly wrong. but rather than being confrontational about it, i said officer, what am i doing wrong? i think it was kind of put off by the fact i was so polite. that was pretty much the end of that situation.

>> would you give that same response to other people stopped by police? >> i certainly believe that for the most part, the police are good people to have. and if you do not believe that, imagine living where you live for 24 hours with no police. imagine the chaos and the horror that would ensue. are there people who are crooked? of course there are, in virtually everything. in my profession, in everything. but the vast majority are decent, law-abiding citizens. what we need to do, though, in situations like ferguson -- there are a lot of young males -- michael brown was not one of them, but a lot of young males in inner cities grew up in homes with no farther -- father figure. i never really learn how to relate to authority in a proper way. and eventually, they run into it and i'm not -- are not exactly sure how to react, or run into

someone else in the neighborhood who is better than they are. it turns out to be a disaster. that is why there were dozens of such young people killed today in america, and yesterday and tomorrow. perhaps we should be thinking about why that is occurring, and maybe we could come up with some solutions. >> does any of the onus, in your mind, lie with the government with the police, for these outcomes? >> obviously, you want to look at statistics and see how often it is occurring. and if it is occurring, if there is true evidence of discrimination, i would say to people, you have the ability to expose things, and you have the ability to vote. as you probably know, in ferguson, only 12% of the population voted in the last statewide election. that is not really exercising your power in the appropriate way. allowing oneself to be manipulated into violence which

then leads to militarization of the police, which then leads to more people in your neighborhood getting hurt or killed perhaps it is not the smartest way to go about it. maybe there are better ways to remedy an ill in society. >> dr. carson, a foreign-policy question, a bit of history. what is your understanding that the basis president bush 43 used to go into iraq with military force? was it a good idea in retrospect? >> my thinking is that he thought that there were weapons of mass destruction, and that saddam hussein was one of the people behind 9/11 and behind a lot of the mischief going on in the world. and therefore, he felt he was justified in doing that. there are a lot of people who fall on different sides of that

argument. i personally felt there were probably better ways to handle it. >> he said one reason president bush went in was because he thought saddam hussein was involved with 9/11? >> he thought that was a potential, and that he was involved with a lot of of the mischief going on in that part of the world and that he had weapons of mass destruction. >> but you think in retrospect it was a mistake for president bush to do that? >> i do not think it was a mistake to get rid of saddam hussein, but i think there are probably more effective ways of doing that. things that would not have led to -- to the loss of life and the incredible expense that we went through unnecessarily. >> the big news of the day, at least so far, is chuck hagel's ouster as defense secretary. you are a surgeon, and surgeons are not well-known for advertising their foreign-policy views. tell us if you would, why do you

think hegel had to go -- hagel had to go? >> president obama was talking about isis early on and said that they were junior league. hagel obviously disagreed with that. it appears that he was not really included in the very tightest of inner circles of the decision-makers. and they do not believe that he was all that thrilled with the micromanagement that is going on. one of the real problems with our foreign-policy -- we have an excellent military. we have an extremely smart and capable military leaders. but when you try to micromanage them, you are always going to get into these kinds of problems. you have to define a mission for them, and allow them to accomplish the mission. >> would you think the best chairmen in the history of the federal reserve was, and why?

>> well, we hear a lot about -- the last guy -- he is quite old now -- greenspan. obviously, he had a lot of good things to say, and was really kind of a legendary figure liked by members of most parties. >> is he your choice for best fed chairman? if so, why? >> well, one of the things that he did, and i think it was probably important, was try to keep the inflation under control. and you have to admit that a continuation of those policies has worked extraordinarily well. on the other hand, the manipulation of money and money markets and the printing of money perhaps in some ways is

not the best long-term strategy. one of the reasons that we as a nation are able to sustain, for instance and almost $18 trillion national debt is because we have the ability to print money, and because we are the reserve currency of the world. what if we were not? what if we did not have that ability? have you ever really stopped to think about what the implications of that would be? >> almost every night. we have to go to break. when we come back, we will go more casual with you. ♪

>> we are back with dr. ben carson, considering a run for the white house in 2016, along with other folks. talk about your wife and kids and how they feel about the

prospect of you running for president. what are they enthusiastic about? what do they have some repetition about? >> my wife of -- have some trepidation about? >> my wife of 30 nine years was not enthusiastic at all. i had a very long, arduous career in euros surgery. kept me incredibly busy. she was looking forward to retirement, when we were going to do all the things we have been putting off all those years. once we started having grandchildren, she changed her mind rather dramatically recognizing that their future was in grave jeopardy. i found that to be the case as i traveled around the country. so many people are concerned about their children and grandchildren. i have three sons. they are all married. one is an engineer, one is a financier, and one is an accountant. they all are extremely levelheaded, and understand why it is necessary sometimes to do things that are not your

favorite thing to do. >> let's get down to brass tacks. every president has a personal weakness. for ronald reagan, it was jellybeans. for barack obama, it is cigarettes on the golf course. what is your personal weakness? be honest with us. >> i am probably too nice on people. >>, on. -- come on. >> people say, how could you be considering running for president, because you are too nice? >> i am asking what your personal vice is. doughnuts pizza, rustling? -- wretsstling. >> i am nice and allow people to take advantage of that niceness but do not mistake that for lack of conviction. >> do you do any amputations? >> no.

-- do you do any imitations? do you have one that you really like, like joe piscopo's sinatra? rich little's richard nixon? >> rich little used to do a great imitation of the clinton. >> how is your bill clinton? >> he did great imitations of everybody. >> can you do a good bill clinton? can you try? >> i would not even attempt. i can say the words, but i am just not into that. >> as a brain surgeon, i am sure you spent a lifetime having people jokingly compare the difficulty of different things to brain surgery. semiserious question. harder job -- being a brain surgeon or president of the united states? >> well, it takes a lot more training to become a

neurosurgeon. there is no question about that. but when you look at the pressures that are up on someone who occupies that seat as president i do not think there is many things that would compare with that. all you have to do is look at the people who obtained that office, and how old they look for years later. it is very wearing on you. >> you had a long association with fox news, which you have now ended because you are exploring running for president. you consider their coverage to be objective, or with something of a partisan slant? >> i think they are as fair and balanced as a news organization can be. the way that you can determine that is, you look at the people who work for them. you look at the course on dense and the contributors. and you see how many represent the contrarian view. on fox, you have more than a couple dozen.

>> i am sorry. we have got to go. we will hopefully chat with you more in the coming months. thank you. ♪

>> this will always be known as the episode with josh green.

>> this is "taking stock." i am not pimm fox. i am julie hyman, filling in. in ferguson, missouri, the grand jury has made a decision whether to indict a white police officer in the killing of a black teenager. our reporter has been covering this story from the beginning. he is joining us on the phone from ferguson. we have been hearing for several hours now that we were going to get a press