>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> josh has given me the "who has been naughty and who has been nice" list, and i'm going to use it to take your

questions. >> thank you, mr. president. north korea seems to be the biggest topic today. what does a proportional response look like to the sony hack? did sony make the right decision in pulling the movie, or does it set a dangerous precedent based on the current situation? >> let me address the second question first. sony is a corporation, and it suffered significant damage from the threats against its employees. i'm sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. having said all that, yes, i think they made a mistake. in this interconnected, digital

world, there are going to be opportunities for hackers to engage in cyber a false both in --asaults both in the private sector and the public sector. our first order of business is making sure that we do everything to prevent those kinds of attacks from taking place. when i came into office, i set up a cyber security interagency team to look at everything that we could do at the government level to prevent these kinds of attacks. we have been coordinating with the private sector, but a lot more needs to be done. we are not even close to where we need to be. we cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the united states. because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of

releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don't like that says something interesting about north korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring seth rogen and james franco. i love seth and i love james, but the notion that that was a threat to them, i think, gives you some sense of the kind of regime we are talking about. they caused a lot of damage. and we will respond. we will respond proportionally and we will respond in a place and time and manner that we choose. it is not something that i will announce here today at a press conference. with respect to cuba, we are

glad that the cuban government has released slightly over 50 dissidents, that they will be allowing the international red cross and the united nations human rights agencies to operate more freely inside of cuba and monitor what has taken place. i share the concerns of dissidents there and human rights activists that this is still a regime that represses its people. as i said when i made the announcement, i don't anticipate overnight changes. but what i know deep in my bones is that if you have done the same thing for 50 years and nothing has changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome. this gives us an opportunity for different outcome, because

suddenly cuba is open to the world in ways that it has not been before. it's open to americans traveling there in ways that it has not been before. it's open to church groups visiting, their fellow believers inside of cuba in ways they have not been before. it offers the prospect of telecommunications and the internet being more widely available in cuba in a way it has not been. over time that chips away at this hermetically sealed society, and i believe offers the best prospects then of leading to greater freedom on the part of the cuban people. i think it will happen in fits and starts, but through

engagement we have a better chance of bringing about change and we would have otherwise. it is not resident in for the --precedented for the president of the united states and the president of cuba to make an announcement at the same time that they are moving towards normalizing relations. there hasn't been anything like this in the past. that doesn't mean that over the next two years we can anticipate them taking certain actions that we may end up finding deeply troubling. either inside of cuba or with respect to their foreign policy. that could put significant strains on the relationship. but that's true of a lot of countries out there where we have an embassy. the whole point of normalizing relations is that it gives us a

greater opportunity to have influence with that government than not. i would be surprised if the cuban government purposely tries to undermine what is now effectively policy. i wouldn't be surprised if they take actions that we think are a problem. we will be in a position to respond to whatever actions they take, the same way we do with a whole range of countries around the world, when they do things that we think are wrong. but, the point is that we will be in a better position to actually have some influence. there maybe carrots as well as sticks that we can apply.

>> have you concluded it is not possible to break the partisan gridlock here in washington? >> i think there are real opportunities to get things done in congress. i think speaker boehner and mitch mcconnell said they want to get things done. i think the american people would like to see that things get done. the question is going to be, are we able to separate out those areas where we disagree and those areas where we agree. there will be some tough fights on areas where we disagree. if republicans seek to take healthcare way from people who just got it -- they will meet stiff resistance from me. if they tried to water down consumer protection that we put in place in the aftermath of the financial crisis, i will say no,

and i'm confident that i will build uphold the veto on those types of provisions. on increasing american exports, simplifying our tax system, rebuilding our infrastructure, my hope is that we can get some things done. i have never been persuaded by this argument that if it weren't for the executive actions, they would have been more productive -- there's no evidence of that. i intend to continue to do what i have been doing. where i see a big problem, and an opportunity to help the american people, and is within my lawful authority to do something, i will do it. side-by-side, i will reach out to members of congress, and say, let's work together, i would like to work with you.

>> six years ago i asked you what is the state of black america in the oval office, and you said it was the best of times and the worst of times. you said there has never been more opportunity for african-americans to receive a good education, and the worst of times for unemployment and the lack of opportunity. in the 2014 congress what do you say to black americans as we talk about those issues? >> like the rest of america, black life in america in the aggregate is better than it was when i took office. the jobs that have been created, the people who got health insurance, the housing equity that's been recovered, the 401 pensions that have been recovered, a lot of those folks are african-americans here and they are better off than they were. the gap between income and wealth of white and black america persists.

we've got more work to do on that front. obviously how we're thinking about race relations right now has been colored by ferguson, the garner case in new york, a growing awareness in the broader population of what many communities of color have understood for a long time, and that is that there are specific instances at least where law enforcement doesn't feel as if it is being applied in a colorblind fashion. the task force that i formed is supposed to report back to me in 90 days. not with a bunch of abstract musings about race relations, but some concrete practical things that police departments

and law enforcement agencies can begin implementing right now to rebuild trust between these -- between communities of color and the police department. one of the great things about the job is that you get to meet the american people. you meet folks from all walks of life in every region of the country. what i don't think is always captured in our political debate is the vast majority of people are just trying to do the right thing. people are basically good, and have good intentions. sometimes our institutions and our systems do not work as well as they should. sometimes, you have a police department that has gotten into bad habits over periods of time. and has not maybe surfaced some hidden biases that we all carry around.

but, if you offer practical solutions, i think people want to fix these problems. part of what i hope, as we reflect on the new year, is that we should generate some confidence. america knows how to solve problems. when we work together, we cannot be stopped. now i'm going to go on vacation. [laughter] thank you, everybody. >> joel klein is here. he is the ceo of amplify and also executive vice president of news corp.. he served as chancellor of the new york city school district. he writes about this in a new book called "lessons of hope." i'm pleased to have joel klein back at our table. welcome. what did you learn with respect

to the eight years that you were chancellor here? what did you try, what did you succeed at? not so much a record of your administration, but really a sense of what you learned about how we educate. and secondly, some sense of how far behind are we and how do we catch up? >> first of all, it's really a pleasure to be here. let me start with what i learned, which really surprised me, charlie. we are far behind, and is not just our poorest kids who are behind. across the board we are not doing well. countries like poland and vietnam outperform us. it is hard to believe. despite that, there is a real resistance to change. there is a real sense that we ought to move slowly, that we don't need to get ahead of the game. to me, this is the most troubling thing. every day you and me are talking about inequality.

one of the things we need to do that is really critical is improve education, particularly for kids to grow up in challenged communities. the things that work, there are several of them. the things that have been documented to work are creating more options for families. we opened up some 600 schools in new york city. in the course of 12 years, that is more schools in most cities have period, and we open them up. that created a lot of options for families and got more parents involved. 150 were charter schools and those charter schools are doing really well. so increased competition. the second big and we did is increase innovation, trying new and different ways to educate kids. schools that are tied much more to careers for kids to give them high motivation. not everyone is going to a four-year college. those are the big initiatives. there are lots of other things we did, but those had a big impact.

>> i want you to underline what you and condoleezza rice said in a report, that is of what is at stake here. the u.s. future economic prosperity am a global position and physical safety. the u.s. will not be able to keep pace, much less lead globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long. that's the consequence of not doing anything. >> absolutely. and it's staring us right in the eye right now. we are seeing day by day more and more kids falling behind, kids who are going to be unprepared. right now, and the thing in the report that secretary rice and i did, three out of four kids in america or not even able to apply to the military, even if they wanted to get in. it is an amazing thing how underprepared we are. and the other issue secretary rice felt very strongly about,

she always said in america it's not where you come from, it's where you're going to. less opportunity and less social mobility. >> here is one issue we talked about. school systems in america are a government-run monopoly, dominated by unions and political interest and not subject to the kinds of accountability and competitive advantage that breed successful organizations. >> it's absolutely true. steve jobs said the same thing. ink about it, and america, people want choices. everyone i know wanted a choice for his or her child when it came to schools. the kids in the worst neighborhoods, it's one and done, a monopoly set up. if you give people a choice, two things follow. parents get more involved in their kids education and you begin to be a competitive environment. that's why those 650 schools

that mayor bloomberg opened for all critical. they were all schools of choice. they were schools of choice and nobody had to go there. and those schools all got results. that's why we need to open up the system, let it air out and stop thinking that only the government on school and be successful. >> there are people who say that the unions have a more future look and an entrepreneurial look and are open to more competition than they are given credit for. >> i hope that's true. there were some things in new york that led me to think that. i think it's a mixed racket. i talked a lot in the book about the most famous of the union leaders in new york city. he was a visionary on these issues. he was the one who actually called to support charter schools.

i think the hope is that the unions, quite frankly, a lot of people really want to see education improve. i will give you one fact that i think would shock most people. half the people who go into teaching leave in the first five years. if half our doctors or lawyers left their careers, we would have a crisis. the teach for america kids, many of whom teach for several years, are one part of a multipart solution. is all this in new york. recent studies show that under mayor bloomberg, the number of teachers who were higher performing were doing better in college, better on the sats, increased or medically. so we can do this, but it's going to take willingness. i always tell people, what i learned is, despite the need for compelling change, big change,

the resistance to change at the bureaucratic, political, and union level was high. >> with all those things bind, i --combined i assume the unions had political power and therefore at the electoral level, people are -- >> you got it. >> what would change that? >> several things. more information, getting. parents more involved. you saw in new york when they tried to curtail charter schools. 11,000 parents went to albany to protest. getting clearance involved, getting people involved, being able to match it. seeing democratic mayors like cory booker, kevin johnson, rahm emanuel. these people are taking on -- >> michelle rhee in washington. >> they are taking on these issues. i think you are seeing the change. there is beginning to be a growing urgency. people know the course we are on

is not a winning course. you ask if or how bad it is. --before how bad it is. it's really bad, and a lot of our kids are unprepared. when i started school in new york city in the 1950's, about 60% of our workforce were high school dropouts. that's no longer the case. kids are underprepared in college. kids who don't have the requisite skills are going to get dealt out of the labor market. >> talk about professionalize teaching. >> if we don't get beyond collective-bargaining to a true profession like lawyers and doctors, with the kind of thing like a bar exam, with rigorous requirement. if you look at a place like finland, like korea, these are places that are perfection lies --proffesionalize their teaching core. differentiate their pay, enabled them to progress, pay them more, which we are not doing right now. all of those things.

if you really want to change one major thing, make teaching a profession. >> how about principals? >> no school works without great leadership. >> charter schools are one choice and there are other choices you can list. there are those who say that those who are in favor of charter schools are too quick to be blinded to the fact that many of them are not as good as they ought to be, and then it's not a 100 percent success story. >> i agree with that completely. in new york we have studies that show that as a group they did much better. i think it is a false dichotomy. whether it's charter schools are traditional public schools, what parents want, what anybody wants is a good school. charter schools give you the opportunity to increase the numbers. in your state of north carolina,

one school is doing an incredible job and in a rural community is getting great results. that's what parents want. politics or what charter schools are about. what i'm about is good schools. get as many of them as we can and let's give people choices. everybody i know says i would never pick a neighborhood school for my kid if it is good. if it's not good, i'll move worked with him in private school or whatever. why should poor people be told, it's one and you are done. >> oh therefore the answer for poor people in their neighborhood is to improve their schools, all offer them an alternative in their neighborhood, or bust them somewhere else? >> offer an alternative in their neighborhood. in new york city, for 20,000 charter school seats, 70,000 families applied. that speaks volumes. >> how many schools were under your jurisdiction? >> when we finished, about 1750. >> how many do you think were

performing at a level of success that was appropriate or satisfactory? >> that is the critical question. the first answer is, a lot more than when we started. probably around 60-70%. >> so you ended up with 60-70% doing as well as they ought to do. >> exactly. when we started, it would have been about a third. so almost a doubling. there are still a lot of schools in new york that need a lot of improvement. >> the difference between success and failure was what? >> basically poor academic standards in the school. >> i'm not talking about measurement, i'm talking about what you were able to do to impact change. >> getting good quality teachers on leadership, if parents didn't want to go to school, --

>> in some schools you could do that and some you could not. in those in which you could not, it was because? >> it's a large, complicated system and your ability to replace schools -- we closed 150 schools in our time because they were not performing well. you have to have a whole poplin --pipeline to come in behind him to make sure they are right. if you don't have the right mix of schools, you cannot just shut things down. we made a lot of changes, but what i say in the book, which is true, we made real progress, but not enough. we have to accelerate the progress. >> number two, creating a system of choices, number three is the use of technology which is the area you're working with now in the private sector. give us a report card on the use of technology in our public schools. >> this is really the earliest stages. everybody has been through digital revolution in america. every industry has changed. education has been the resistor.

but that is beginning to change. bringing in technology to help these kids and help these teachers. give teachers the tools. we ask a lot of teachers. let's give them a curriculum that's rich and engaging. do the kind of school we did with ibm, which has become a national model. a kid goes through four years of high school, two years of community college, and gets a certificate by ibm and they get a job at ibm. let's develop those kind of new and different models. >> how long would it take for technology to transform education? >> are beginning to see it at the college level already. i read in the paper the other day where people at yale are taking a course online at harvard. imagine that. >> silicon valley has a lot of

people with a real interest in education. mark zuckerberg dropped 200 $20 million on public education in new york and san francisco. that's a lot of money, but he can afford. reed hastings is an outstanding spokesman for charter schools. handing out scholarships to kids who are willing to give up the university in favor of self-education. >> bill gates and the people who educate themselves all dropped out of college and they did just fine. and i think peter's idea is interesting. what zuckerberg is doing, i think trying to get behind us and support people, he gave us $150 million in new york. i talk in the book about having wanted to sue bill gates. >> we were on the show together at one point back then.

>> he has backed it up with money. >> i put a blurb on the back of my book. what reid hastings is doing for charter schools, and he is also doing technology, it's really powerful stuff. >> what about this company called amplify? >> it is education technology, just what we were talking about. we are developing curriculum and applications. >> who is it for? >> for teachers in public schools in the country. >> so if you are a teacher you can go to amplify and by what? --buy what? >> software that will sync with lessons. it's mostly brought by the school district, not at the teacher level, but it's a complete, comprehensive curriculum. for example, while your teaching shakespeare, you can have it acted on the same page as it is written. a lot of the work that a teacher

might otherwise have to do, we do for you. >> is your heart more in education than anything else? is that where your head and heart is? >> it is. it is the issue for this country. there is no more pressing issue for america. >> when he came to this, how --you came to this, how much experience if you have an education, other than your own personal experience? >> not a lot. i had done some teaching, but not much. i came to it with a passion, but i came as an outsider. i think he wanted someone who was not going to be captive to the bureaucracy, not someone he thought was going to be basically looking at a small set of changes. what i heard from the mayor was that he needed someone to come in with energy who is unafraid to tackle a lot of politically entrenched interests. i would have to hire people who knew teaching and learning.

i put together a team. he wanted leadership at the top that was really prepared to make the big changes and not the small changes. >> what is the difference between the positions on education as expressed by prior mayor mike bloomberg and present mayor, bill de blasio. how are they different in the policies they want to see to improve education? >> probably the main difference is, the former mayor, mayor bloomberg, was very much in favor of creating new options and a lot of new choice-based schools. this mayor is much more focused on fixing the schools that are in the system now. the former mayor shut down 150 schools. this mayor says he doesn't want to go that way. he does not like to shut down schools, is what he says. >> what is the difference as you as school chancellor while you were there and the new school chancellor?

>> pretty similar in the main policies. there was an alignment between mayor bloomberg and me and there is an alignment between this chancellor and the mayor. >> do you have different views on charter schools? >> fundamentally. we were eager to share space with them. >> to utilize space and make it available. >> it was critical to what we were doing. in new york, real estate is prohibitively expensive. the way we grew the charter sector was by providing space. we wanted to create options and one of the things i'm most proud of is that 75,000 families are applying for 20,000 seats in those charter schools. these are families in harlem and bedford stuyvesant and crown heights. these are not families with lots of options. so it speaks volumes, i think. >> should there be public support of charter schools?

>> of course there should be public support. the money basically should follow the child, it shouldn't follow the school. when you can create more options and give kids and families options, that's the right way to do it. what does it matter to me if the kid can get a good education in ps 8, that's great. if she wants to go to success charter, that is even greater. >> what should the public sector pay for? the facilities, the teachers? >> let's say the average kid in new york cost $20,000. >> what if it is a religious school? >> that raises other issues. in new york we did not push for taking it to the private sector but we did take into public charter schools. you can make an argument, there are places in the country where people are taking those

additional dollars and going to private schools. in your, we did not go that way. >> has president obama done everything that you think he could have done to change education? >> i think he has done a lot. he has pushed hard on pre-k, which i am big on. we are starting kits way too --kids way too late. the average kid from the poor immunity started school with about 20% vocabulary for middle-class communities. that is a huge gap. so starting them earlier. second, the race to the top. i thought president obama hit all the right notes where he did support charter schools but he did support accountability in holding people to account based on student progress. no president is going to do everything you want, but i think this president and secretary duncan have done a good job. >> where have they failed? >> i think we need to accelerate the pace.

i would like to see more federal money's committee. --committed. i would like to see more money paid. for example, we have shortages of good math and science teachers. you know from all the work you're doing, stem, science, technology, engineering and math, is so critical to the future of this country. talking about silicon valley, the capital of the stem world. we are short in new york and chicago and elsewhere. federal governments should create stipends to get our best educators into science and math. >> joel klein, thank you. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪

>> there's one person who probably sees the president of the united states more than the first lady, his children, or chief of staff. he is pete souza, the official white house photographer. he was also ronald reagan's white house photographer. we are pleased to have you here, pete. you are omnipresent at the white house, virtually every day. do you blend in, or are they always cognizant that you are

there? >> i try to blend in. i work with what i call a small footprint. i don't use flash, i use quiet cameras, and i try to blend in as much as i can. i think everybody now is used to me being around after six years. >> you see more history than almost anyone. recently you were in the oval office. you took a picture, the president was there, his national security advisers were on the sofas and chairs, and he was talking to raul castro. was there a sense that it was an extraordinarily historic moment at the time? >> i think there was. there was definitely a sense of this is history happening. during that call. you say i took a picture, actually i took many pictures. the challenge sometimes is trying to find the right picture

for the occasion. in this particular one, i went directly behind him for a few shots, because i thought that added to the weight of the moment. here we are in the oval office, you don't even need to see his face. just the fact that he's talking for the first time in 50 years to a leader in cuba, and that's the picture that we decided to release. >> the picture will be shown for decades and decades. one of the most poignant of many of the poignant pictures you have taken was in nelson mandela's cell, robben island. the president is hugging his daughter, sasha. that must've been quite an emotional moment. >> it was. the interesting thing is that the tour guide was actually a former prisoner of robben island, someone who had served in prison with nelson mandela.

the fact that he was able to take his girls to that cell and have them hear firsthand from someone who was also in prison there, i think was just a very emotional tour for them. >> the whole day must've have been emotional, but that particular picture -- >> it's one of those things where it's just a moment in time, where they are having this tour, and i don't know exactly what the tour guide had said, and sasha just kind of leaned into her dad and he gave her a hug. it was a split-second moment that fortunately i was able to capture from just outside the cell. >> another picture i thought was quite poignant that you captured was in the oval office. the president is talking to a group of, i think, young black students. what was so striking about the picture was, you had a bust of

martin luther king, a portrait of abraham lincoln on the wall, and america's first african-american president talking to these black students. >> one of the things i'm cognizant of when i'm photographing at the white house is trying to incorporate the historical elements that are on the walls into my photographs. this was actually a group of young civil rights leaders, any of them who had protested in ferguson, many had protested in dc. he invited these young civil rights leaders to the oval office for i think it was an hour-long meeting. this was when the meeting had just broken up. throughout the meeting, i was trying to get martin luther king into my photographs, the bust, and it just wasn't working the way where the focus was. i thought about that ahead of time. then at the very end when they were getting ready to leave, the president stopped momentarily to

say a last few words to them and that was the moment i made sure that i positioned myself to get in front of the mlk bust and used that as a crucial part of the photograph. >> with lincoln on the wall. do you ever tell the president ahead of time that you want to do a certain angle? >> i don't. all the documentary photographs that i have made our candid. i don't direct anything. >> does he ever complain about your pictures? >> occasionally. [laughter] >> you didn't get the right angle? >> no, just sometimes my artistic ability is not always greatly appreciated. >> you have been there for some very tense moments, too. there's a classic picture you took as they were awaiting in the white house word on whether bin laden raid was successful or

not. the president sitting there, hillary clinton has her hands on her face. there was just great tension. describe the scene that day. >> the situation room is actually comprised of three different conference rooms. normally the president is in the large conference room, but for this, they had a mutations point link that was linked into the small conference room. so that all left the conference room and walked across the hall and as you can see in the photograph, there's not a lot of space in this room. i had to make a split-second decision on which corner of the room to go into, and i think i ended up choosing the right side of the room. a lot of people have made comments about two things. one, why isn't the president seated at the head of the table.

the reason was that this brigadier general who was kind of monitoring the communications, he was about to give up his seat for the president, and the president said no, you stay where you are. i will just pull up a chair over here. the other comment people have made is, why does hillary have her hand up to her face? she and i had talked about it, and we went back through all the pictures. if you go through the whole take, throughout the 40 minutes they were in that room, you know, bob gates, joe biden, they all had their hand up to their face at some point. it was very tense in there. >> was there much conversation? >> very little conversation. occasionally the brigadier general would say this is what is taking place, but very little conversation. just intense focus on what they were watching on the screen. the other thing that i sort of

take pride in, one of the things that hillary did say was that she didn't even realize there was a photographer in the room. i feel i was doing my job of blending in. >> you had to airbrush out a document which because it was a classified document sitting on the table. is that controversy all? does that happen often? >> we have never done it before and have not done it since. i actually tried to get the document declassified, but the cia didn't want to declassify the document at that time. i just felt that it was such an important photograph, as did my colleagues in the communications office, that we decided to pixillize the document so you couldn't see it, but then make sure that people understood that we had done that. we put that in the caption that we had obscured the document,

and the new york times ran it, as did multiple magazines. i think they felt that it was not an impediment to using the photograph. >> who makes the decision to distribute a photograph? >> ultimately it is the press office. i have a big role in which photographs you choose, but i always make sure that someone has eyes on the photograph. >> can someone just veto it if they don't want it out? >> it happens very rarely. it just doesn't happen that often. >> speaking of tense moments, you also have just a stunning picture of ronald reagan and mikhail gorbachev after the reykjavik summit collapse. that is a grim looking

president. >> to put it mildly, he was -- the way the summit ended. they came close to a huge agreement and it kind of blew up at the end. it just feels very cold warlike as they're walking to the limousine and having the last conversation. this is the photograph that you referred to. >> you didn't see that side of reagan often, did you? that really angry -- >> no, his disposition was much like president obama's in the fact that he didn't get really mad that often. but occasionally he did. >> you're with him right afterwards. was that anger evident in his conversations as well as the pictures? >> yeah, right after the photograph was taken, they stopped in front of the

president's limousine and had a final conversation, he and gorbachev. he was the only u.s. person there, and i helped larry speaks , was a deputy press secretary at the time, i helped explain to him what was said. it was very tense at the end, for sure. >> there are some fun moments, too. there's a great picture you have of john travolta and princess diana dancing with the president and nancy reagan looking on, just a wonderfully festive moment at the white house. >> that was quite the night. this was all a mrs. reagan ploy, in that princess diana, one of her favorite actors was john travolta. she made sure that john travolta

was invited to this dinner, and she made sure that the marine band that you see on the right side there played a medley from "saturday night fever," which is what they were playing when travolta then went and asked her to dance. you see him whirling her around the dance floor. >> and she was sure you were going to take a picture of that? >> well, this picture was not released until the end of the administration. i think the thought was at the time that this was not a state dinner, because the prince of wales is not a head of state. it was a private dinner. there was some agreement with buckingham palace not to make any of these pictures public, and then at the end of the administration, "life" magazine made a big push to try to publish this photo in the 80's decade issue. they went to buckingham palace

and asked if this photo could be released, and that's when it was released. i think it was in 1989, so it was like three years later. but you also have a couple of wonderful pictures of the gipper riding horseback. he was never happier, was he, than when he was out there riding his horse? >> he loved going to rancho de cielo and riding his horse, ll bean. he definitely enjoyed riding horses. >> there is a shot, a picture of barack obama being attacked by a young spiderman. tell us the background, who was it? >> this is the son of one of his aides.

just a little bit of the back story, every year the white house hosts a halloween party in the old executive office building, which is part of the white house complex, for aides to bring their kids. it doesn't involve the white house per se, it's in the executive office building, but the president's secretary invited him to bring his son over to the oval office just to see the president. he was dressed as spiderman, so there was this kind of moment where the president said, "why don't you tangle me in your web?" >> and the president puts his hands up. >> it was kind of fortunate that he is also reflected in the mirror, which became just a nice little element to that photograph. >> there's a number of pictures, one of obama standing at the

desk in the oval office, one of reagan sitting there. you see them often when they are alone. there is a lonely quality to commander in chief. >> there is, but i think both president that i have covered closely from the inside are very comfortable in their own skin. it is lonely in terms of making big decisions, because ultimately it comes down to you, but i think there is that famous photograph of john kennedy with his back to the camera leaning on the little table behind the resolute desk, and it evokes that loneliness. at the fact of the matter is, he was reading a newspaper. the reason he was standing was

because of his bad back. the point being, it's easy to read into a photograph and say the presidency is so lonely, when he interacts with so many people throughout the day. >> some of your old pals, you are still pals, your colleagues, complain about managed photojournalism. that they don't get enough access. is that a fair complaint? >> i think it's always ok to make that argument. i work for the chicago tribune for nine years. i covered a little bit of clinton and a little bit of bush 43 so i understand those frustrations. but i fundamentally disagree, i really think this administration has done a really good job of trying to bring photographers in.

kelly covered the first 100 days. and essentially has the same access i did for three months. we have done that with a dozen different photographers throughout this administration. you mentioned the castro announcement the other day. doug mills from the new york times was able to photograph the announcement as it happened. that was something that never happened before in this administration. they would always bring the photographers into the room after the speech to essentially do a fake photo of the president rereading his address or whatever. now, there is always one photographer in the room in the speech is taking place. >> what was the biggest thrill for you, getting married in the rose garden, or being at fenway park and watching world series with the boston red sox? >> i cannot answer that, it was

getting married in the rose garden. >> you have had an extraordinary seat in history, and you do it superbly. pete souza, thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. ♪

>> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west." i'm cory johnson. here is a check of your top headlines, is there trouble ahead in the housing market? sales of previously owned homes fell 6% in november from a rate of just under 5 million sales.