if you knew then what we knew now about why we know it, he never would have gone with megan kelly in the first place. happy national crouton day sports fans. questions, more questions and not a lot of answers. jeb bush is having another bad day on the question of iraq. he cannot seem to answer question that a lot of republicans can answer with great clarity. would he have supported the invasion knowing what he does now?

let's review the brief history of the past 72 hours. >> knowing what we know now, would you authorize the invasion? jeb bush: i would have and so would hillary clinton. >> in 2020 hindsight, you would have made a different decision. jeb bush: the simple fact is mistakes are made as they always are in life. i respect the question but if we are getting back into height of the -- hypotheticals it does a disservice to people who have sacrificed a lot. john: chris christie, ted cruz, rand paul, john kasich and a little bit marco rubio all basically said i think if we knew now, no iraq war.

would not have been for it or proposed it or done it. why is jeb bush having such a hard time coming down on the side of his rivals? mark: he does not want to be in the psychodrama of seeming to repudiate his brother. i think it is practical. he does not want to get into this topic because there are lots of questions about to you agree with your brother or not on specific things. john: on one reading of the question which is literally if you knew back then that there was no weapons of mass destruction in iraq would you have invaded the answer should have been obviously, no. maybe dick cheney would say yes but not many people would say yes because that was the pretext for the war. this should not be hard for him. mark: there is a fuzziness to

the question. he needs to get a decisive answer. the fact he gave and the answer he gave today, anyone outside his campaign would tell you these are bad answers. john: he said i am my own man. this is the single most anticipated question of the whole jeb bush campaign. he has to have a clear answer. he does not have a yet. mark: we will see if he can get an answer who works -- that works. and the first major policy speech since he became a presidential candidate. he talked about his own foreign-policy doctrine. listen to a little bit of senator rubio from a little while ago. senator rubio: tit is written in the con -- constitution that he is commander-in-chief.

mark: he did a q&a with charlie rose and with the audience. i did not hear a lot there that was specific or new. i did not hear a lot that could not have been said by many other people. what is your take away? john: the rubio doctrine consists of three pillars. ensuring american strength around the world. protecting the american economy. apple pie and now comes cherry pie, preserving the end -- moral clarity. that is vaporware. he wanted to increase the defense bus it -- budget. mark: there were a few other specifics. a lot of things, the most energized part of the speech was criticism of barack obama. beside the criticism almost anyone would say. it was not the best delivered and the room was not

electrified. for a guy who is getting high marks in foreign policy, very solid. he answered charlie rose's questions quite well but this is not a big speech that would instill in people a sense of this is our commander-in-chief. john: i thought he was better in the q&a than the prepared speech. he has moved to the right. he used to be thought of as a moderate. mark: it was not a game changer. john: in congress that trade deal that everyone is het up about it looks like the fed is striking a deal and there will be a vote tomorrow. where is the democratic party in this big issue and i am not talking about barack obama. i am talking about hillary clinton. an editorial accuses her of making an "dash for the tall grass" and missing an opportunity to find the valleys -- values of the party she would lead. hillary cannot waffle on trade

forever. she apparently thinks not saying anything on this trade deal is good politics. if she right? mark: it is -- i have to say that maybe this is the best thing for her. she is alienating both sides by not taking a position but if she took decision but there would be a firestorm and by laying low and hoping the thing goes away the press does not like it, we do not like it, we think it is a lack of leadership. i know we both agree. taking the position would be politically dangerous. john: strategist thinks -- bernie sanders would go up 20 points if she came out in favor of this agreement. i do not know that worse true. there is a looming fear of elizabeth warming -- elizabeth warren getting in this race.

no one wants to give elizabeth warren any oxygen. it is that on substance but probably sought -- smart on politics. mark: no dart -- no doubt that she is for the deal. the question is, if she took that position, how would -- bad would it be? why not come out against. she did not want to look like a flip flopper or tied her hands as president, i do not know. she is so tied in knots about it her staff will not even answer. john: the closest analogy is the iraq war vote and they are reliving that again. even with no barack obama insight, she does not want an issue that opens the door on her left. mark: do you know how many calls there have been on this matter? many. to recap today's episode. hillary clinton is in big trouble for not talking to the press and jeb bush is in bigger trouble for talking to the press

and scott walker is in trouble for avoiding the media during his recent trip to israel. jeb bush's poll numbers are not looking great. clinton and walker are holding strong n.c. state polls. while the media is up in arms about all three of them today to some extent, what would you say of the three are doing the best job in dealing with the press right now? john: you have two great this on consequence and right now the person who is scott walker. he is getting a free pass right now. there are people in his world who are trying to drum up more interest in the fact that he is not taking questions. people -- the world of his rivals, bush primarily, but others. she is getting hammered for it. he is getting hammered by making mistakes, by taking questions. scott walker so far getting off relatively scot-free. mark: in the next two days clinton will not be paying much of a price. walker will not be paying much

of a price. the best person dealing with it is walker. there were some tweets and photos. walker is considered the favorite in iowa. many people of that his fundraising and think he will be just fine. walker has the best strategy. long-term, how does he do? and there is -- you may be setting himself up for some danger in not taking questions and controlled situations right now. john: he said he will talk about it. i do think there is with the hillary clinton and jeb bush thing, there is a calculation you got to make which is this matters a lot in the echo chamber but it does not matter a lot outside the echo chamber. in the short-term, no americans are walking around in the malls of america saying i wish hillary clinton would answer more questions. that is not happening. mark: jeb bush has done nothing in the last three days, arguably

his worst three days of the campaign. so far. because people are unsettled by the fact that he does not know how to answer this question. john: if hillary quote quote -- would answer people would be unsettled by that. mark: do think that is the right answer or do you not execute? john: coming up, the spy who came in from the cold in our studio. that is next. ♪

mark: thank you for coming. mica morel is our guest. we will talk about that and some current stuff. why did you read the book?

michael morell: i think this will be a generational fight. i wanted americans to understand what the threat is and i wanted americans understand we have to keep the pressure on. the second reason is there are a lot of myths out there about the cia. one message that is we do everything right. just be james bond myth. -- the james bond myth. that is not true. and everything we touch we fail at. sort of the get smart maxwell smart myth. that is not true. and that we are a rogue agency and we do things the president does not know about and the congress does not know about. that is not true. the reality is is the cia is a

bunch of incredibly hard-working, dedicated people trying to protect the country and we get many things wrong but we get many things right. i wanted americans to understand that. the third reason is if i happen to believe and this sounds weird coming from a former spy, that former senior officials have a responsibility to tell the american people what they did when they were in government. this is a democracy and the american people need to know everybody's perspective on the decisions they made and the decisions they saw. that is important. that is what you guys do every day. john: if you're looking at a candidate, what are the two or three questions you want to ask about, say, putin? michael: i would want them to

ask me questions about putin. there is an organization called the cia where you can go and find out anything you want about somebody. what i would want to know on national security, foreign policy, national security is easy. if you say what you're thinking it can be very clear about what you think and what you know and you do what you say, you draw a red line and you follow through. and you carry a big stick. that is what i want to know from the three candidates. are you going to do those three things on national security? john: what about iran? michael: do you understand the big picture here? because the nuclear issue and this is what i would be doing if i was advising this president. the nuclear issue really important that we get our arms around it and do something around it but iran poses a

greater threat to the u.s. than just nuclear program. iran content -- conducts terrorism itself against other countries, namely israel, but also its neighbors, the rest of its neighbors. it supports international terrorist groups namely has below. hezbollah cannot exist without the support he gets from iran. it supports insurgencies throughout the middle east. it is happening in yemen right now. do you understand the bigger picture here and do you have a strategy not only to deal with the nuclear problem but do you have a strategy to deal with the bigger challenge that iran faces? john: one of the more memorable speeches was attacking for having missed on the soviet union. what explains that, how could the cia miss something in both

cases, something that big ancient americans wonder if the cia is not a little bit more maxwell smart-ish. michael: we did not miss isis. isis started out as al qaeda in iraq. al qaeda was its neighbor in 2011 when we left and we watched as soon as we left al qaeda and iraq start to great -- gain strength. one was the military pressure was reduced and two, prime minister maliki started acting up and disenfranchising sunnis and then al qaeda goes across the border and becomes isis. they changed their name. we report their growing strength

there. why? they are getting recruits and arsenals and money and we are reporting all of that. the part we missed was the collapse of the iraq he army in the face -- the iraqi army in the face of the terrorist group. the iraqi army fell apart. mark: the man that george was called -- bush called mikey. we will -- the book again by mike morrell. we will be right back. ♪

we learned the obama presidential library will be in the president's old stomping

grounds, chicago. we had an expert on the obama family in the studio recently whose new book "michelle obama a life" that is about michelle obama and her life. you said i wanted to know what michelle obama set out to accomplish and why. >> it tracks back to where she grew up. she saw inequality all the time and she sees it now. what she is trying to do in the white house is i write about in the book is to un-stack the deck. there is an element of disadvantage, dealing with this advantage kids, disadvantaged adults. very much like what barack obama is doing now. mark: how did you decide to

write a book about someone who is so covered and over-covered. peter: we have not gone so deep, we think we know it all and we move on. this was a great opportunity especially in chicago where i am based to go back into her history, her parents history and to see before she got in the white house, she had a 20 year professional career with a separate identity from barack obama. john: one of the things you decided to do is not focus so much on her time in the white house although there was a ring on that but a lot of the richer stuff is because -- before she gets to the white house and you talk a lot over the course of writing about her life, torn between two worlds. between the black world she was from and the white world she came to inhabit and also working classes. the black working-class and the elite that she joined. tell me about how that plays out

in her life and make her who she is today? peter: she was a working-class kid from the south side of chicago. chicago when she was growing up was pretty darn segregated. it was before harold washington. and at princeton and harvard and got back to chicago, she ended up walking in these different worlds. she spent 12 years at the university of chicago where she was trying to bridge this elite largely white institution that had very tough, very negative relationships with the surrounding black communities and her mission was to try and use the power that she had inside the institution to make things around in the surrounding neighborhoods a little bit better which is very much what she is trying to do now in the white house. john: meeting barack obama was the turning point. pre-meeting barack obama, what is the turning point in her life that was significant? theater: it was when she got out of south shore, when she got out of chicago, when she got into the ivy league. she talks about england late

feeling like an outsider largely as an african-american woman, but also as a daughter of the working class. she gets to princeton and she sees kids with bmws and she said i did not know adults with bmws. i think that stretched her in both places, harvard and princeton. >> there is a refrain that he is not black and afford does not do enough for lack voters. they confronted that when they ran in 2004 and she spoke up on his behalf and came out and said , i am as black as they come, he is married to me. he is black enough for you. did she understand, that is a pretty hardball political thing. she is not very political person but that was playing racial politics in and out front, aggressive way. did she understand what she was doing as nakedly political as i interpreted it? peter: she knew what she was doing and some of her

strategists consider her to have that her political instincts than barack obama himself does. they had gone through the bobby rush campaign through the -- where he lost to bobby rush by 30 points. fast forward a few years and people who are on the southside of chicago who are political competing against barack obama saying, the kid from harvard, what does he know? he thinks he lived the civil rights era. michelle obama says listen, i know what this man is about, i know what he is prepared to do, i know what he has done, let's not play that card. john: lots of talk they may not go back to chicago when they moved to this city. just not asking you to predict or speculate whether they will but if they moved here, what do you think that would say about where she is in relationship to the city in which she grew up and where they made their political name? peter: the are telling their

friends that they will move after sasha finishes, sasha wants to stay there until she graduates. chicago is not big enough for them. she thinks she can be more anonymous. there is plenty of work to do on both fronts. in new york. that said, they will put the presidential library in chicago. the fact that her large family is still there, many of their closest friends are still there, suggesting they will still take -- they will still stay tied. the blow is if they had not put the library there. that would have been seen as a betrayal. mark: the book again is "michelle obama, a life." and hatwhat mark did before he worked at the cia. way before after this. ♪

>> before our talk with mike norrell he told us about the best job he had never had. he was the snack guy. can't imagine what that was

like? >> popcorn here, get your popcorn here. >> see you tomorrow. sayonara. ♪

alix: it's coming up on 4:00 here in new york. this is the "bloomberg market day" and i'm alix steel. [closing bell ringing] alix: stocks closing with the dow off by about eight points and the nasdaq is in positive territory, up at five, the only brighter spot a mistake. i'm joined now by joe weisenthal.