out of hand. so, we don't have to agree. we are not disagreeable. >> thank you very much. >> up next, rodger hodge, former editor-in-chief of harper's magazine, argues that president obama hasn't fulfilled many of his campaign promises and instead, has maintained the author deems is the status quo in washington. he presents his arguments in a debate with jonathan alter, a columnist for newsweek and author of the promise president obama in year one. this takes place at the performance base of wnyc in new york city. it's a hot one hour and 15 minutes. >> hello everybody thinks for being here. the gathering is hosted by the agenda project beast here in new york we focus on the national public policy we started about four years ago and has an

informal discussion theory between a group of new yorkers who are interested in what was happening in the country's policy and political debate and getting together in an interdisciplinary group of people so anyone from the writers, a documentary filmmakers, organization leaders, funders, that kind of thing became a real dynamic for interesting conversations around policy in the political strategy necessary to get those policies put into place and we just incorporated about a few months ago and we are in the process of expanding so this is our first program that we have done of this nature and we are delighted to have both of you with us. thank you. a quick reminder to the folks in the audience and sure you already checked just check your cellphone one more time and make sure it's off if you don't mind, and then also for those of you in the audience i am somebody selling both of these great books right over there, so be sure to hit over there when we

are done. so we are here at a really interesting moment. the midterms are mere weeks away, and according to polls we have an enthusiasm gap which liberals would say is because obama hasn't done quite with the expected and i'm working for conservative democratic voters would say he's been for too radical so what better time to have the debate about that than a few weeks before the midterm so people can sort out their feelings about it and these are too great authors tonight to talk about it. first of all introduce jonathan alter, who is the author of "the promise," which is about obama's first year. he's also the author of the best-selling book "the defining moment fdr's 101st days in trying offer pope, astelin vv to" and his an analyst for nbc news and msnbc and rodger hodge whose book cannot today, his book is called "the mendacity of hope." and he was editor-in-chief of

harper's magazine from 2006 to 2010 he joined the staff of harper's in 1996 treated the magazine's column as well as on my weekly review. and with the national magazine finalist for criticism in 2006. so i thought to kick us off i might just read two very different opening sections of your book. so jonathan contador book came out first. you see barack obama's political fate in 2009 turned of a paradox that comes not from politics but the world of philosophy and physics. what happens when an irresistible force meets an invisible object read the irresistible force seeing obama and the invisible object of washington and you say he put more dance in that object than any president since ronald reagan and it's proof you offer he presented the second great depression, had the first major

reform of health care since medicare in 1965 and had five major pieces of legislation all wrapped in one package around the recovery act and roger you quite disagree. you see as president with a few exceptions obama has changed the wallpaper and rearrange the furniture in the white house. his financial policies are in essence those set in motion by george w. bush and when it comes to the eternal global war of terror he has increased be unconstitutional war powers claimed by his predecessor or left the door open for the quiet adoption at some later date so the first question. is their anything you agree on? [laughter] just kidding. jonathan, tell us -- i know the answer, no reason to go there. estimate there is a lot of i agree on.

speed the liberals are all getting along. there is hope for the midterm. >> i'm not so sure because my problem with roger's book is not a lot of details which i agree with it's the attitude that is reflected in the title in the mendacity of hope, mendacity is lobbying so the assumption behind it is that somehow obama's lacking integrity and promising us something to deliver and my take is quite different, the we need to make a distinction between some of the particulars on the economy and what he did continue in a number of bush policies particularly proposing the banks, but the distinction between the substance of some of the particulars according to which i agree with and the tone but tone is relevant in this debate and so i guess i would sort of open

by saying i have a kind of makeshift distinction between liberalism and i consider myself a liberal between what i call a pragmatic liberals and movement liberals and both kind of liberals have their assets and are part of what has made liberalism great and the country great. some people, most people, liberals would be an extra two but think the movement liberals for the great contributions to american life, civil-rights movement, the women's movement and so forth for often naive about the way politics really works and what possible and what are reasonable expectations and what or unreasonable expectations and politics always has and politics always will be the art of the possible and to lose sight of that is to lose

sight of the essence of politics. so compromised in my view is not a sellout, it wasn't a sellout for franklin roosevelt, repeatedly on everything he got done, and the impugning motives when they are associated with compromise i consider to be extraordinarily counterproductive for the liberal project in america when one starts accusing other liberals of mendacity so that is too longwinded answer to your question but we agree on a lot actually on the particular points. >> said jonathan has picked it off saying you both have a bad attitude and you are naive no great start a relationship, roger. [laughter] >> as for the question of mendacity, mendacity has a

double meaning and part of my argument is obama did in fact promised and he did engage in this rhetoric and that he has betrayed the trust of many of his supporters. the other side of that equation is that his supporters were lying to themselves that obama was not this change agent that he was a conventional politician in many ways that when he came to washington he set a standard democratic corporate machine he plays transactional politics as well as anyone in washington and so as to the question of my youth -- nigh yves, that's fine,

i may be naive but when the president promises to roll back there really unconstitutional and dangerous policies of its predecessor and then comes into office and embraces them i think that is mendacious. [applause] [laughter] >> so, duplicitous rhetoric, the edge in the project was founded on principles but politicians are the least important part of politics and a lot of what happens in the country's national conversation is set long before they ever get to the field so you feel there is duplicitous rhetoric but that is no different than any other politician is it? >> no. >> jonathan teaching phyllis -- >> like any other politician. >> do you agree he is like any other politician? >> no, i don't think --

>> that is surprising don't think jesus christ came down off the cross to save those of us, myself included, who were christians, but i do, you know, i do think he's actually more a man of his word than the vast majority of politicians and i see that again reiterating that i heartily approve of everything that he has done by any stretch but there is an outfit that won a pulitzer prize for doing fact checking on the campaign and they found that of his 25 major promises he fulfilled 20 of them in his first year in office and he is well on his way to making good on the others and so we think there was a kind of make

believe quality to all of the liberal expectations where people were not listening closely enough. roger points out in his book he never promised to end the war in afghanistan in fact he talked repeatedly about shifting the war from iraq to afghanistan, which is indeed what he has done. he has withdrawn 150,000 troops from iraq and added 40,000 troops to afghanistan. so that's what he said he was going to do and he did. now on health care he actually delivered sooner than he said -- just to finish the healthcare point on health care he promised a program very similar to what is now the law and by the end of his first four years he got it done earlier so the big question

since most didn't want him to do it is why did he do it at all and i hope later in the conversation we will get to the absolute folly of preferring to have killed the bill to what we have which is what roger's position is. >> okay. where do i start? many supporters of obama command wasn't enthusiastic of the candidacy, i was very skeptical. i did vote for him because i thought we had a better chance with him of rolling back the views of the and we did with hillary but one of the central promises was to end torture, in the indefinite detention. he criticized the military tribunals. i don't know if that is an official promise or not.

i'm not so concerned about the discreet promises as i am about the principles behind the candidacy. in indefinite continues we have an arbitrary system whereby the executive can decide based on whether or not the evidence is sufficient to prosecute someone in a civilian court or if the evidence is not so good or acquired under torture would be in the milledge record or keep him in the illegal black hole forever, promised to close guantanamo. now we know he's sort of tried to close guantanamo, but the principal of guantanamo is more important than the physical space in cuba. the principal of guantanamo was not abandoned indefinite detention was going to continue whether it was in some prison in the midwest or bagram airbase in afghanistan, where as we have learned over the last two years

the sites have continued to exist. the executive order that obama signed in the first few hours of his presidency closed the cia but we have good reporting indicating that he has black sites that have continued to exist. so we have these very dangerous precedents set in the bush administration that are now being institutionalized and of legitimized and becoming an accepted part of the washington consensus under barack obama and i write about this in the book thomas jefferson had come into office in 1800 the nettie fleet used the act to persecute and the federalists it is a tremendous opportunity to return us to a constitutional status quo here. as i argue in the book things have not been particularly great

constitutionally for a long time and one wrong generation throughout american history that there was an opportunity to return to a less bad situation with obama's victory and he squandered it. >> let's just put a pan that point from a. to call the unitarian executive partial birth abortion of the constitution. >> yes. >> this book has a lot of phrases that are underlined. so jonathan, react to that. >> i agree with -- >> explained the unitary executive concept. >> the concept where the president is above plan law is a kind of cheney -- i think it's a wonderful description of the executive theory and i don't

disagree with really anything said by to fill will all but more remember the difference between rogers book and my own is roger is what we would call an argument book, made a strong argument. my book has a little bit of argument but mostly i'm just trying to give people more information on which to make their own decisions a mine is what is called the reporting book. i talked to 200 people and find out what was actually going on in the white house and i didn't find out what was going on at the black sites. it's a little harder and that's all good reporting harbors has done that for a little more context, and to try to explain why when he said in your introduction that the fact that barack obama is not as bad as torch w. bush is beside the point quote on quote i've got a problem with that. so on his first day in office not only to sign an order

closing the black sites but sign executive order banning torture. now you rightly point out that to trust the egyptians and these other countries we sometimes exports through what is called rendition are tear her suspects to trust them not to torture is to trust to for but to suggest that it's no different than bush or the continuation of bush it at odds with the facts. the second point i think is necessary for clarity is a contexture will point i told the story in my book of how obama's efforts to roll back this national security state, will back some of the problems you're talking about free and into a buzz saw over a group of gitmo detainees who were known as wighurs. i am not sure every the year has

even heard of the wighurs, but what happened is there were some wighurs early on last year in the administration who obama and the white house agreed could be brought, released from gitmo and resettled in the united states. a judge determined that they were of no danger. they had been wrongly imprisoned and supplants for me to bring them to the united states in the congressman from virginia, frank wolf, reduced such a stink that in the first rebuke to obama, presidency, more than 90 senators voted no. wighurs are not going to come to the united states of the worked out a compromise the took for a settlement in bermuda. what i mentioned this? presidents have to deal with of the hand that was dealt to them and that can sometimes be a

rationalization for some decisions i wouldn't agree with but i would argue that an awful lot of time liberals have not recognized that that's obama's de feith historic please to deal with this and that was dealt to him particularly on the economy but across the presidency. and as he said before, he even started running for president at 80% of his job would be reactive to a fence and political necessity, reactive to what was presented to him, so you can either go and be in an effective president who is what i call a jester politician who makes everybody happy because he's landing punches, standing up all the time for the right thing and then you go he's in there for the -- he can be that kind of president or he can be the guy that literally wants to get as much done as he can and with a great fear in his own life is he's going to be, according to

his friends, he's going to be in his late fifties having left the presidency after one or two terms and say i could have put more points on the board. they haven't frame the issues near as well as he needs to and he lost a lot of energy by getting too involved in congress but he wanted to move the knee dole and president can hope to do, not wave a magic wand and hope to have everything changed overnight. now i don't mean to be non-idealistic because i consider myself a really idealistic person, but i think that american liberals just have to be more pragmatic and have to be more context will in their understanding of our politics. >> if it is fine to humanize the president to put things into his

personal context with his hopes and fears, anxiety about his old age. that's fine, and i don't mean to be contemptuous. i am contemptuous of certain gestures in the direction but not of yours. i have tremendous respect for the work you did in the book. but, politicians are not like you and me. the plea with money like it was monopoly money. the plea with lives like they were broken soldiers. these people are dying. people are in present, lives are destroyed, and i feel sorry for the president but i do not feel as sorry for the president as i feel for the people who are in prison unjustly and tortured by our security apparatus and so the uighurs come it was hard to get rid of the uighurs and hard to get rid of people who have

been imprisoned unjustly but we continue to do these things and the president right after he came into office escalated this drone war and there's been a lot of discussion the last couple weeks about the fact there is an american citizen who has been targeted for assassination. this is beyond the pale. i don't know why the of the penetration let us know about it because a was quite deliberate, it was leaked it seems to have been a gesture, talk about jester politics it seems to have been a gesture at the right to say see how tough we are we are going to kill this guy but then when his father challenged the execution order in court, the administration after doing a little dance about how the father didn't have any standing on behalf of his son who was going to be assassinated whether he's a terrorist or not and is actively plotting there is a constitution in this country and

you cannot arbitrarily and summarily execute a citizen without showing he is an eminent threat yet he's on the battlefield he is and yemen. the department of justice didn't really want to deal with the question so they evoked the state secret privilege and said we can't even segment, we can't let this go forward and have judicial review of this extraordinary statement of the executive power. >> i completely agree with everything you just said. [laughter] >> and so jonathan, do you not see that yes, again, the president caving on something he didn't mean to? what is the difference between waterboarding someone in michigan and sending them out of egypt to get waterboarded? >> there is a difference between the two but on the drone i am not calling for the cancellation

of the drone program because i can one of the best things or less bad things that happened in this period is we literally had b-1 bombers dropping 5,000-pound bombs on afghanistan at the end of the bush and administration, and what happened at the beginning of the obama administration is just killing scores of innocent civilians. this is nuts if we are going to fight the war we are going to do with the latest technology in the drone program by of probe problem says roger does with targeting the american citizens, and engaging in basically an undeclared war in yemen, and i think these are all areas to require a lot more reporting. it is a good talking point to use against conservatives who

claim against any evidence that obama is quinby on foreign policy. he has killed a lot more terrorists already van boesh did which in some ways if we want to make sure that we don't have another 9/11 we are in a kill or be killed situation with a group of al qaeda but anything i think that he has done well on this is that he is retired the war on terror freedom and is doherty focused on the war on al qaeda, and unfortunately i'm not sure that message has gotten through but having said that i agree with roger that just because al qaeda are the bad guys doesn't mean that you can trash the constitution in pursuit of them. >> let's move on to some domestic issues and economic issues. the horrible financial crisis a

couple of years ago and gwen obama comes into office, jonathan, you say he appointed larry summers, tim geithner and gary geslin, the head of the future commodities trading commission. he said he didn't care that they were after advocates of the regulation under clinton and therefore responsible in large measure, argue if you want to, to what happened with the financial crisis but obama didn't care as long as a didn't threaten the fight and if you look at how liberals are reacting to the administration, we talked about what happened in the national security state and i think another big problem that the left has is with these appointments people who cause the problems being called on to go and sold it. >> it's not true they solve the problem. do they contribute to the problem by some of their policy choices in the 90's?

yes. some of them are a very aggressive head of the cftc learning their lessons and others were slower and again slur is more like a joe kennedy who fdr put in charge of the sec because he had been such as count juan wall street in the 20's himself, so there is something to be said it takes a thief to catch a thief and on the regulatory side, so why don't accept the premise mostly at the feet of the republicans but clinton i certainly didn't cover themselves in glory, and the question became, and i think it is legitimate to second-guess obama's part do you bring total outsiders who have no connection to wall street, and remember geithner never worked on wall

street, but as i point out, they were in this world, the same cosy world even if they didn't literally work there. do you go outside of that world and get i don't know who but -- >> joe sestak was who isn't exactly outside washington -- >> and i am a very critical of them for keeping stiglitz and volcker out, i'm trying to eliminate the choice they had, or do you in the middle of a crisis when the head of the imf is saying we are facing a global meltdown -- people think the news or bad now but they forget what it was like two years ago when everybody was one-third poor -- >> but we do when you are a democrat walking into office you have two choices to make for your team. he chose the rubin team over the liberal team. >> well, i think that he could have put bob and joe stiglitz in

charge and would have been interesting to see what they did. my bigger problem is that he -- with them aside from the personnel because i think we all get hung up on personal because we are used to bush who was lead of around on a string by the people around him that we assume the president is just a puppet and that is another problem i have, this donley isn't a puppet, he is making his own decisions. and so, but i still am critical of, very critical in the book of his not having a wide circle of economic advisers. and he does have jared bernstein from the progressive policy and some liberals. jared and bernstein is in their everyday -- >> [inaudible] speed it runs from eight to be. >> robert, what would have made you happy? >> -- sellout because he didn't have a wider circle.

>> roger, what you have been -- would you have written "the mendacity of hope" if he had appointed a different economic team? >> recondite probably would have, because the thing they're really got me going is the civil liberties issue. but -- i think the handling of the financial crisis has been, you know, barely adequate. i think he put into play all the wrong people, and there is an auditorium filled with economists that he could have put in there. you mentioned a few. the roosevelt institute is jam packed with perfectly competent economists who have worked in government who know how it works who've worked on wall street who know how it works who could have done it. that was a fundamental error. >> is it an error to have gone with the bush t.a.r.p. the lots? should they just abandon that? >> - t.a.r.p. is a very small part of the story.

i mean, t.a.r.p. is really a fraction of the bailout. there's been a lot of press recently because t.a.r.p. has ended. >> and it's been paid back which is something that never gets pointed out. >> well that gets pointed out a lot after the. the most successful government program in recent memory and so on. >> [inaudible] >> well the american voters may or may not come up there is still $3.7 trillion of outstanding commitment, either actual money that has been distributed by treasury or the fed or various other agencies or serious exposure. >> it is loan guarantees but it's not anywhere close to that in terms of actual money. >> what they don't act of the hand out money, no.

but, so t.a.r.p. is relatively small in terms of the overall picture, but i think it is a mistake to get hung up on t.a.r.p.. >> here is my concern about the way this has been framed by liberals like paul krugman. again on the merits of should they have a bigger circle, yes. i think obama should use his leverage over the banks when he had it or the regulatory reform, financial reform 2009 rather than 2010 and he lost his leverage and we got a weak bill all the way through the tender certain other things that have become sort of shook the los probably because paul is so influential and so smart in the new york times. obama really blew it by not having a bigger stimulus. every be heard that, right? is the only hit a trillion dollars stimulus we wouldn't have 9.6, 9.7% unemployment.

>> the net $700 billion stimulus instead of -- >> spec 40% of that was in tax cuts. >> so we can argue about that and i wouldn't disagree that it would have been nicer if more of it was in infrastructure although you're point that they were dealing in the kicking in of the infrastructure project so that the economy wouldn't peak too soon and jeopardize obama's reelection in 2012 but that was beyond cenacle, so the -- i think he said to me in an interview the biggest lie in washington is schoeppel ready projects. he felt light that because of bureaucracy and the contracting problems believe me he was frustrated he couldn't get the

money out the door faster than the problems and the rest but occurred but for one second because he's influential with liberals, you know, it is a little bit like the public option which i'm sure we are going to talk about. a trillion dollars or 1.2 as christina romer it would have been great. the debris problem was a was totally unrealistic. to the key republicans were adamant that they couldn't go over the 787 billion and they brought it down from 900 billion to 787 and they were total no votes at any higher level so it simply wouldn't have happened. it's nice to see it should have happened but it couldn't happen and by the way ed rendell great infrastructure liberal, of pennsylvania, he would have been delighted with a $300 billion

stimulus in the fall of 2008 and he ended up getting well over twice as much of what he hoped for so i just mention this and i know it is kind of torian to deploy mengin this liberals need to be careful of the chivalrous ideas and what we'll see that all go towards disappointment and i would argue naivete about our political process as most as possible. >> let me respond a little bit to that very quickly. i grew up in a community if you are or straining you don't start low, you start high. >> totally agree to read that relates to the tax cuts. if you played terrible poker on the stimulus not in the total amount because the did start hi

if there was the democrats were telling them they were not negotiating with the democrats. they made the mistake of trying to negotiate with the republicans which was a difference for the democrats are telling them not just evil rahm emanuel, the democrats on the hill were saying you can't have more in a trillion dollars, so to blame this on the president i just think is long you've got to blame it on the culture of washington, what's possible in washington is in the year 2008 and 2000. -- 2,009. >> jonathan you see in your book you talk some about goldman sachs and you say that in the banking system geithner didn't believe in publishing goldman sachs because he didn't believe the banking industry was broken and so there may be some sort of a philosophical divide between a paul krugman and some of the economists at the roosevelt institute and tim geithner, larry summers and the president,

where do you fall on the divided and do you think that argument is being moved along inside of the oval office? >> at pinker mistake was to think that the financial industry wasn't broken. for me the question is the stimulus -- >> so we found an area of agreement. >> that is legitimate, great, and but certainly not an essential problem. the essential problem is putting things back the way they were with a little tinkering around the margin without restructuring things so that we won't have this happen again. >> speaking of restructuring because i want to make sure we get to the topic that is on everybody's mind. >> i agree completely rid of that. where i disagree is the reason barack obama didn't do it is because he's like a puppet dancing on the streets a campaign contributor. you put in a footnote that 53%

of his contributions were under $200 then you say those people have no leverage and the big contributors have leverage as if like he doesn't give a shit about the middle class and tool of wall street. talk about mendacious it's just unfair to him to go on motives that way. that is the problem is going up the motives. >> it is because this is a big problem that liberals frankly have. they go to motive all the time. >> roger says in his book action is the ultimate proof of principle and motivation and intangibles shouldn't be taken. >> i think the motivation of what obama wants, which is, dreams -- i don't care. i really think you have to look at something objective. who are his investors?

who invested in this candidacy and who got a return on the investment? if you look at his top contributors, they are all -- it is they who is who of the financial industry and they are the ones that need all like bandits. is really not that some call it is just objective. looks, who pays. >> how the liberals wanted nationalization. this struck me as an interesting debate because when i wrote my book about roosevelt at the first 100 days the new deal in 1933, they wanted the nationalization. the banks talk about the bank's screwing the country. he closed them for a week and when the new deal said here's your chance, national, take them over, roosevelt went into the conservative direction and said we are going to leave banks in the private hands known nationalization. exactly the same as obama.

you see is that because roosevelt and obama were both the tools of wall street? no they made a judgment that would be better for the country for banking to be in private hands and the key point was a trillion dollars that it would have cost if we had gone down the nationalization group. it turned out the banks were healthier, stress tests work, it did some good things, some bad things, real bad things but also good things come stress test turned out to be smart. they came back to help. we saved a trillion dollars by not nationalizing. i haven't actually heard people make that point during often. >> talk about the nationalization. this is not what people were asking for. what people were demanding is that the law be followed and the insolvent banks be taken into receivership. you break it up from a takeover, clear up the management, you wipe up the stockholders,

bondholders become stockholders, you put in place somewhat the new owners put in place management coming to segregate the bad assets, create a bad bank and put it back in business you don't take it over and omitted some of like becoming we actually own a lot of banks now. we actually nationalize some major financial entities what people were demanding is that the zombie banks be dismantled the way we do every friday when a bank is insolvent the fdic comes in, they shut it down -- >> i thought there were zombi banks too and i brought this argument like i was trying to pretend i educated myself on a good bank bad bank system and all kind of things i don't know a hell will about the turn of the situation was in the house by year and in the paper today

we say that the aig money which about was long gone might come back and there were bets that obama need and i like to focus, because i am critical of them for not doing more bank regulation early on, but if the automobile allowance, not all bailouts for that. that turned out to be pretty successful and so i just think it's early in the game. >> we can't have a conversation with liberals disagree in to talk about health care so who wants to grab it? roger? >> my position is so far outside the washington consensus on the subject that it may be very hard to have a conversation about but i am very critical in the book

about the health care boondoggle >> you think it's unconstitutional basically. >> that's not the point. i don't make that argument, i don't think it is unconstitutional and i am outraged by the mandate. it is appalling. but the whole bill is appalling. the problem with our health system is not that people don't have insurance it is that we do have insurance. insurance is the problem. [laughter] insurance companies or the problem. if you have an insurance policy that isn't guaranteed health care. that doesn't guarantee good health care. i used to work for the insurance company. insurance companies will rall -- rot u.s. quick as you turnaround. their whole business model was based on the mining claims. they can't make money if they do not deny the claim and is undefeated you never -- what's not unstated, it's never put in

writing but as a claims adjuster, and your whole job is to deny claims and some companies more rapacious than others but it's just completely irrational to enshrine insurance especially employer based. >> would you say that it wasn't inshrined before and know what is more inshrined? >> it happens by accident. >> better or worse before it passed? >> we don't know. >> we do know. >> we know it is better or worse? >> i agree about insurance, have been a single-payer man myself for more than 20 years, but what is that in doing anything? again, the line obama joost don't meet the enemy the perfect of the good is a really important concept for people to understand. you talked about your experience

working in the insurance industry. my experience has been as a patient on a cancer survivor and it is going to take a little while to full we get implemented but three years as they roll it out and the details of that are very important for the liberals to stay focused on because in a lot of ways as roger points out for them to lose the lead could use the polls and go back on with the supposedly passed but the legislation does create a historic change where should i lose my job and given the state of "newsweek" it is a possibility that i will not have to sell my house if i have to have another bone marrow transplant the cost $250,000. i would under the previous status quo before the passage of the bill which roger doesn't seem to think is that much worse than what we have had with the

bill i would think it is completely uninsured will and at the scene with anybody else this is discrimination against the set we have had in this country for decades a terrible i think violation of basic civil rights that when people are down they shouldn't be kicked down further if their child gets sick and they lose their job they are completely screwed and have to sell their house, disgusting state of affairs, does this solve all the problems? would it have been better to take out of insurance companies and destroy them? yes but let's live in the real world. ..

which doesn't do anybody especially to people we are supposed to be protecting, the more vulnerable american, it doesn't do them any good. it is just politics at its absolute worst and that applies to public option too. the plane reality which palm daschle really just a day is they give up on the public option a long time ago. why? because the votes weren't there. it is a nonstarter. they needed 60 if they didn't even have 53 votes for a public option in the senate, so you know you have got to deal with the world as it is and there is a lot of rate stuff in this bill that this press has completely ignored. to give you a tiny example of something that has gotten tiny,

elder abuse, grandparents getting the kicked out of them in nursing homes and there was no legislation on the books to do anything about this. this is part of his 2000 page bill and is one of ted kennedy's people said there are about 50 other things like that nobody knows about that are now law. this was a major achievement that nobody can take away from barack obama. he won ugly, but he won and it will be part of his legacy. >> time will tell. the issue really for me was the sellout of a public option. there's this constant refrain among obama files that with this, i'm sorry, this horrible cliché, don't let the perfect tv enemy of the good. it is a question of fighting, fighting for something.

obama, he traded away the public option so long ago. the news that. mitchell's great piece in "harper's" on health care really just laid it all out, and it was a capitulation. it didn't have to be that way. i reject that. it doesn't do any good to. >> a magic wand? it is called politics. is called faith, is called roll over your opponent. >> how? conservative democrats, i mainland and johnson passed medicare which was itself tough because in a big legislation major piece of legislation is always tough. he had 68 democrats plus a whole bunch of liberal republicans. he had closer to 75 votes and he only needed 51 in 1965. he almost didn't make it with medicare. >> here is one place i agree

with the man. he shouldn't have gone for it at first. if he had focus on economy and gotten people back to work and created some real momentum instead of wandering, but maybe rahm emanuel was wright's. >> he was totally wrong and i'm usually in the position of defending rahm emanuel on some of these things where he is unfairly hits. >> the whole thing is just about how many seats that democrats have? how about getting something done? i thought this was supposed to be about something. that is your whole premise is he didn't get things done or your rights and now he is saying the objective should be to protect democrats and not do something that might cause us to lose his seat. he could have created jobs he wouldn't have done it. it wasn't an either/or situation. we were going to be exactly where we were on the economy. his site was distracted. he was distracted by health care

and if only he spent more time on the economy than they would have 9.6% unemployment. he would would have gotten anotr stimulus through if he hadn't on health care? i don't think so. he did what was possible on the economy. he made a number of tactical mistakes on the health care bill which we can get into if you want, but the idea that, and i agree with you that on some things he needs to stand and fight. i think that is a very legitimate criticism of him and you could say on certain reticular tactical matters he should have but to have gone down flags flying on the public option would have meant snowe bill because it was such a close call anyway, such a miracle. >> may i just jump in? i was not saying that the only thing that counts as getting people elected. i am saying he spent all of his political capital on a bill that may end up costing him his majority. just tactically.

>> if he loses his majority pompey because of health care. >> we don't know whether he would have been able to get more if he had focused on building momentum first, by getting us out of this recession. yes okay they say the economy is growing again. that doesn't mean the recession is over. we still have people suffering out there. the great depression was not over once the economy started growing again. we are still in a whole. to make all of these assertions about oh it couldn't have been otherwise. we don't know it couldn't have been otherwise because he didn't try. >> i want to make sure that the audience has time to ask a few questions. if you all have a question go up to the microphone and when you are up there you have got to talk right into the microphone, so our friends who are with us in the studio can hear you. >> this is for roger. on the subject of motives, there

seems to be for possible reasons for president obama not undertaking the actions he felt he should take a somebody promise. one was he is callous and duplicitous and had no intention of doing it or it was inconvenient. one is he is ineffectual, and can't fight the congress or can't fight the bureaucracy. one is he is not intelligent enough and is misguided. and the fourth is as president he has learned things or he knows things that i don't know, you don't know, none of us know and has made the best judgment based on those new facts. which do you think is the correct answer or is it something else? >> i have no idea. none of us know. it might be any of the above.

i don't think it is intelligence. he seems to be reasonably intelligent, everyone says so. the issue is really, did he serve our interest and if he didn't serve our interest it is our job to demand that he serve our interests. interest. that is what politics is. that is the system, the madisonian system of competing interest. >> jonathan. >> on that, well i mean i think it is some combination of those, excluding you know, the motive that he doesn't care because i think that is something that his overly cool temperament sometimes conveys, but he does care. you could argue that as roger suggested he played it matt coker on the stimulus early on and paid something of a price for trying to stay bipartisan

longer than he should have her go but those are i think more in the realm of tactics. >> bill? >> what is the likelihood from either of your perspectives that he will not run for re-election in 2012? >> there is no question about it >> i have a quote in my book from one of my friends from law school who says that obama said late last year i guess i'm goin. otherwise mitt romney will get in here and get credit for all the good things we started after we have been through all this is obama's attitude. >> i would like your take on two additional factors that think are important for the conversation. firstly politicalization of congress and the role of the filibuster in the senate, which you know it and the use of republicans ability to obstruct what would be majority rule.

secondly what actually happened to liberals and the left after november 2008 i like the tea party on the right. where is the mobilization on the left and how does that play into the mobilization? >> can i answer that because i think you raise a hugely important point. the summer of 2000 mind all these town meetings, even in democratic districts, there are the tea party folks at the town meetings. where are the liberals? they went on miller time. they said we did our job. we elected obama. now we can go about our business and it is up to him. that is not the way politics works. that his magic wand thinking. and you know franklin roosevelt famously said, depending on which version of the story you believe, philip randolph or sidney hillman the labor leader, when they came in and objected to his policies on a matter, he

said will make me. >> now make me do it. >> make me did not mean writing articles in the nation or "newsweek" or getting up and in forums like this and talking about how disappointed they are in the president. >> that is exactly -- that is part of it. >> it is a early to bed and early to rise, work like hell and organize. that is part of it, but it is mostly getting people you know out like this demonstration this weekend. that was a good sign. getting people out, organizing, showing up to town meetings, knocking on doors. >> is not a question of why neither. is a question of making argument in mobilizing public opinion. the right makes arguments all the time. they push, they push, they push they push. until recently the push has all

been from the right and you have to push from the left. >> jonathan, i largely agree with your point if you tonight. i understand why the political realities -- one thing i haven't heard you address and what you started to allude to was the bully pulpit. maybe i'm naïve about how that is actually used but it does seem to me to take the health care debate you talked about, there are only 53 those there and that is the reality but i do agree with roger in the sense that i don't think obama did enough early on in the health debate to use his incredible communication skills to go out early before the tea party got ahold of the messaging and to go out and sell the health care plan including public option and really do that like hell and use the skills he had. benefits so wasn't there, then i

agree abandoned the public option and move on. likewise after the gulf oil spill a tragic missed opportunity to go out for the first time in 20 decades and say listen we have an opportunity not just to solve the climate change problem and our dependence on foreign oil but actually to reestablish americans hegemony is that grades economy by investing in this new energy. he just really wouldn't do that so i want to know -- guess it is true it is true the votes aren't there but this never responsibility chewed drive this post especially given as his organizational malaise. >> i completely agree on both counts but there is always an and/but. on health care, you know he did give some speeches early on indicate the big one before the joint session of congress.

>> i thought we had to go out and organize and that was the stuff that counted. >> i agree with the questioner that it is important for the president to use the bully pulpit. my disappointment with obama is we expected him to be this fantastic communicator and he has fallen down on that part of the job so that would be included in that and on energy as a sign of this communication challenge he actually gave a speech where he said exactly what you just said. and i wrote a column about it at the time but it didn't breakthrough. they haven't found the right vocabulary. his disdain sound bites, he forgets that the house divided against itself cannot stand. abraham lincoln was a soundbite so his kind of lofty disdain for the sound bites i think is really hurt him because he hasn't been able to break through for the reasons we describe. >> i am a little neurotic about time and we are running slightly over.

let's do about three more questions. danny. >> danny schechter, high. both of you talk a lot about naïveté but i hear a lot of naïveté here today. as of power in america is the presidents and certain members of the congress and that's it. there is no military industrial complex and no corporations. there is no wall street finance. there is no interest. there is only issues. there was only individuals. there is no money being spent, lobbying taking place. >> in fairness to roger --. >> what i'm missing here is that obama is not just operating as an individual unto himself but operating in a structural context here which has not been mentioned and the example that i haven't heard referenced here once tonight, today nancy pelosi is finally calling for prosecution on the foreclosure

crisis. 14 million american families in or about to be in foreclosure. it is not just a house divided itself but a house cannot stand. in this particular crisis, there has been crying on wall street and there is ben financial fraud. that is massive and nobody's talking about it. should we be? >> yes, absolutely. screaming his head off saying what we have here is the world's biggest example of counter control fraud, that the financial crisis is a crime of fraud more than anything. >> roger and i agree on that. where we disagree is i think corporate america's america spot off the congress. i don't believe they have bought out the president. it is always more complex. the courts, i am not sure they bought them off to the supreme court at this point seems like a

branch. the supreme court is actually the long-term lease. it is true for most american history that the supreme court has sided with -- and even though i more favorably disposed to business than roger is based on this book i too think that corporate america has too much power right now. >> this really is not -- business should not or sue its interest. it is that we have been taught to just permit business to pursue its interests are not the people are not expected to pursue their interest. what my argument, the place that i land in the book and this goes back to the question of mendacity that we have been fooling ourselves and this is what jonathan was talking about when we elected a bomb and then we had a party and forgot all about politics. people have to pursue their interest. they have to fight for what will benefit the material.

if the majority of americans fight for their material interests, there will be change. but it takes the majority of americans fighting for their material interests. >> inside job goes inside wall street to take up on what danny said. and we will put in a plug for "waiting for superman." any other plugs for good movies? >> joke on us in. again to the question of naïveté, this is for john. don't you think it was naïve and i don't mean to blame this on rahm emanuel or the president, for them to come in and insist on a bipartisan agenda when the character of the republican parties have been clear for a long time both during the election campaign in 2008, before that during the bush administration, before that and to come in and act as if we have the same bipartisan arrangement with republicans as existed in

1965 which you alluded to before is naïveté at its worse. by the way i agree with what he said about them naïveté with liberals sometimes. the one thing doesn't contradict the other necessarily but i want to know what you think they were naïve in their pursuit of a bipartisan agenda that was the will of the --. >> somme, i guess in the novel scoop up to the point-- they were partly naïve and obama said to a few columnists right after the stimulus passed in the first month of his presidency, you no i am not a sap and the fact that he had to say i am not a sap suggested that question of whether they have been taken advantage of by this republican strategy of obstruction was a legitimate one. i am not sure that first of all very early on they decided that they would get points with the

american people for appearing bipartisan even though they knew that the bipartisan game was up. not well, not well. but i'm not sure how much more, i'm not sure how much more -- let's say they had gone in and just spend unvarnished partisans from the get-go. the premise of your question is that they would have got more that way and they think that the problem with that premise is that it underestimates the power within the democratic party of blue dogs in the house and this group of you know eight or 10 moderate democrats in the senate who simply didn't sign up for that, for a partisan democratic agenda. while mccain it would have been a nice gesture and would have made us feel better and all of us want to see obama deck somebody, land a punch, then we will all feel good. i'm not sure it would have got more. >> jonathan, rahm emanuel.

>> that is not the argument. the argument is you fight to push back and discipline some of these people including the moderates to get on your side. the public option was a very popular program. >> joe by the ways it very good friend. but here's the problem with the disappointing thing, okay? franklin roosevelt 1938 try to do it, try to discipline six conservative democrats who weren't going along and they were stopping this important new deal. how many of you them one anyway? five of them. it doesn't work. it doesn't work. >> he wasn't disciplining them. >> by jonathan. >> you have nothing over them. >> jonathan it is a different question though. rahm emanuel that through the "right wing conspiracy" that came about because of the 300 million-dollar infrastructure that can service feldman he went into the white

house in this white house did absolutely nothing to build a structure to help support their efforts out in the field with the exception of organizing for america which they immediately turned into --. >> you are talking about. >> i'm talking about aei a. when reagan was in office he help build an infrastructure. >> obama would go to john podesta's cap and headlined their fund-raiser. >> they told their major donors not to fund major infrastructure organizations. >> i'm not sure erica but that is true. >> well, it is but okay. [laughter] >> i'm sorry you guys didn't get more money but i'm not sure they gave us structure. >> i have been living with some of the criminality of the bush

administration in the national security area and what i'm working on and to see that we have accepted the fact that cia operatives who torture people can't be prosecuted. they can't even be, whatever they have done can't be talked about can be reported, can't be thought about and i feel censorship of -- i'm a filmmaker and i'm feeling censorship. my work is being promoted by the people who aren't even in the government, and i feel that there is a kind of fear that has crept into american life that obama was hired to fix and he didn't, and he is afraid. i can feel it. he is afraid. he is afraid of doing his job and he is afraid, and he is you

know trying to dodge bullets and trying not to take off the military-industrial complex but i can tell he is afraid. the country can tell he is afraid. we know he is afraid. >> another movie plug he is the producer of fair game that sean penn is starring in that is coming out november 5. >> number every fifth. >> is he afraid, roger? >> again and again i have to say i don't know what obama feels. i don't care what obama feels but i do get the impression, to get the impression that there is a timidity and an unwillingness to fight. whether it is fear or whether it is because he actually agrees with this stuff now i don't know. i just have to look at what he did, what he does and condemn it if i disagree with it. >> i think in some cases there

are some timidity say elizabeth warren case. they gave for this job to help setup agency but they should have appointed her to head the agency and said bring it on, let's have a fight over this. it would have been a good fight. sometimes there is timidity but i think it is wrong to characterize the entire administration by timidity. timid would have been to do what bill clinton did on health care, just fold the tent because he put all the chips on the table. if he had lost on that, it would have been such a stunning rebuke of him and the losses in the midterms would have an even worse and completely ineffective. he is willing to take some risk. i think he -- i don't think he is the guy he was scared. you could argue he is oversensitive to the politics in and the situation in some cases but good president are good politicians. if they are not good at the basic hunt and thrust of

politics they are not going to succeed so my questions about him are really more about whether he can be more skillful politician and maybe a more skillful barack obama would have gotten got himself into quite this whole on the midterms. and we'll see over the next couple of years how skillful he is, but let's draw a distinction. let's be muscular liberals and draw a distinction between a skillful president than a pure president. i would just i guess argue that what we want mostly as a skillful president who moves us forward even if it is not as far as we hoped. >> i would just say a pure president or pure politician i don't think anybody expects that and i don't think anybody's arguing for that. they are just arguing for someone who believes in something and will actually fight for it rather than just putting marks on the board so that he can be reassured in old age that he actually accomplish

something. >> it's better to believe something and get nothing -- i just don't get that roger. maybe we can and by trying to find some synthesis of this. that is my basic question to you. to say the right thing but achieved nothing then to get something. >> are you on the payroll, man? >> before we get harsh and personal, i think we all agree-. >> there is a tendency among obama files in the press to defend him no matter what. there has got to be some rationale. there has got to be some rationale, some good explanation for why he is doing bad things. it might just be that he is not the pure person that he you think he is. you say you don't want a pure president but apparently he is

pure. he has no bad motives, he is not concerned with glory, is not concerned with power. he is the president of the united states. he did not get where he is without being bloodthirsty and power-hungry. it just doesn't happen, and you know joan didion has a line about the kind of gross bed, rosebud moment that acts as journalists layout for the public and she calls it, and i'm not saying this directly about you,. >> of course not. >> she calls a writing political pornography. whitish a call at pornography? because it creates a small -- intimacy. false intimacy. jonathan -- we don't know what his motives are. all they know is what he does.