that president bush has not maintain -- president obama has not maintained campaign promises. he presents this evidence at the jerome l. green performance space of wnyc in new york city. it's about an hour, 15 minutes. ..

that kind of thing. it became a real dynamic hub for political strategies to get those policies put into place. we just incorporated a few months ago and when the process of expanding that this is our first program that we've done in the nature and were delighted to have both of you with us. thank you so much. and just a quick reminder to the folks in the audience, even though i'm sure you party type, check your cell phone when my time and make sure it's off if you don't mind. and then also for those of you in the audience, we have somebody selling both of these great books, so be sure to head they are when done. and so we are here at a really interesting moment. the midterms are mere weeks away and according to polls we have an ecs and gap, which liberals would say is because obama has

not done quite what they expect it and conservative democrats and independent voters would say he's been far too radical. so what better time to have the debate than a few weeks before the midterm so people can sort out their feelings about it. these are two great authors we have with us tonight to talk about it. first i'll introduce jonathan alter, who is the author at "the promise." he's also the author of the best-selling book, the defining moment: fdr's final days in the triumph of hope goody's accomplice for "newsweek." and roger hodge, his book came out today. his book is called "the mendacity of hope." he was editor in chief of "harper's magazine" from 2006 to 2010. he joined the staff of harper's in 1996, created the magazine column as well as online weekly review and was national magazine

finalist for criticism in 2006. but back to kick us off i may just read two very different opening sections of your book. for jonathan, your book came out first. can you say, barack obama's political fate in 2009 turned out it. ask the comes not from politics, but from the world of philosophy and physics. what happens when an irresistible force meets an alienable object. irresistible force being obama and the immovable object, official washington. you say he put more dense and not immovable object since reagan and is proof you say he prevented the both accurate great depression in the first major form of health care since medicare 1965 and also had five major pieces of legislation sort of all wrapped in one package around the recovery act. and roger, you quite disagree.

you see as president with few exceptions, obama has merely changed the wallpaper and rearrange the furniture in the white house. his financial policies are in essence though set in motion by george w. bush. when it comes to the eternal global war on terror, he has embraced the unconstitutional war powers claimed by his predecessor, the door open for the quite options and later date. so the first question, is there anything you to agree on? just kidding. jonathan, tell us about -- i know the answer, no reason to go there. >> that actually might help set the parameters of the debate a little. there's a lot i agree i'm with roger. >> the liberals are all getting along. >> i'm not so sure because my problem with roger's book is not the details in it, which i agree with.

it's the attitude that's reflected in the title, "the mendacity of hope." mendacity means lying. so the assumption behind knight is somehow obama is lacking integrity and he is promising something that he can't deliver and my take is quite different. so i think we need to make a distinction between some of the particulars on the economy and the way he did continue a number of bush policies, particularly at both the banks, but the distinction between the substance of some of the particulars, quite a bit of which i agree with and the talent. but tone is really relevant in this debate. i guess they were just sort of open by saying i have a kind of makeshift distinction within liberalism and i consider myself a liberal, between what i call pragmatic liberals and movement

liberals. and both kinds of liberals have their assets and are part of, you know, what is made liberals some great and made the country great. most liberals would be some mixture of the two. but i think the movement liberals are for great contributions to american might, civil rights movement and so forth, are often naïve about the way politics really works and what's possible, where reasonable expectation and what are reasonable at dictation. can we say that politics always have in 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 compromise in my view is not a sellout. it was in a cellar franklin roosevelt who competed with everything he got to. and the impugning of 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 may be too long winded of an answer to your question, but i think we agree on a lot actually on the particular points. >> so jonathan has kicked it up with a softball for you both had a bad attitude and/or are naïve and no better way to start a great relationship, rideshare. >> answer the question of mendacity, mendacity has a double meaning in the book. part of my argument is that obama did in fact promise something that he has not delivered on and that he did engage in this rhetoric and that

he has betrayed the trust of many of his supporters. the other side of that mendacious equation is that his supporters were fooling themselves, that they were lying to themselves, they were ignoring the evidence that obama was not this change agent, that he was a conventional politician in many, many ways, that when he came to washington counties set up a standard, democratic corporate machine. he plays transactional politics as well as anyone in washington. and as to the question of 90 k., whatever. last night i may be naïve, that's fine. but when a president promises to roll back the really unconstitutional and dangerous

policies of his predecessor and then comes into office and embraces him, fundamentally embraces him, that's mendacious. [applause] >> so, duplicitous rhetoric, the agenda project was founded on the principle of politicians in the least important part of politics and that a lot of what happens in our countries national conversation is set long before they ever get to the playing field. so you say there is duplicitous rhetoric. i mean, that is no different than any other politician, if it? >> no, it's just like any other politician. >> jonathan, do you agree he's just like any other politician? >> no, i don't think he's, you know, jesus christ come down off the cross to save those of us who are christians. but i do, you know, i do think

he's actually more a man of his word than the vast majority of politicians. i say that again, reiterating that i hardly approve of everything he's done by any stretch. but there's an outfit called politicized, which 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, as the major ones in his first year in office and he is well on his way to making good on many of the others. and so i think it was kind of a sort of make believe quality to a lot of the liberal expectations, where people weren't listening closely enough. roger points this out in his book. he never promised to win 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 it. now in health care, he actually delivered sooner -- just to finish the health care point. in health care he promised a program very similar to what is now law. by the end of his first four years, he actually got it done earlier. so the big question since much of his 80 didn't want him to do it was why he did it at all. and i hope later in the conversation, wicked to the absolute folly of preferring to have killed the bill, to what we

have, which is what robbers position is. >> okay, where do i start? for many supporters of obama and i was not particularly enthusiastic about his candidacy. i was very skeptical. i did vote for him because i thought we had a better chance with him of rolling back the bush views than we did with hillary. one of the central promises was to end torture, to an indefinite detention. he criticized the military tribunals. i don't know if that's an official promise for politicized or not. i'm not so concerned about discrete promises as a unit but the principles of the candidacy. indefinite detention continues. we now 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 you know, if the evidence is not so good, it's acquired under torture or in a military court or will keep them in the legal black hole forever. promise to close guantánamo. we know he's sort of try to close guantánamo. but the principle of guantánamo is more important than the physical space in cuba. the principle of guantánamo was not abandoned. indefinite detention was going to continue whether it isn't some super max prison in the u.s. or in backroom airbase in afghanistan, whereby as we have learned over the last two years, black sites have continued to exist. the executive order that obama signed in the first few hours of his presidency closed the cia's black sites. but we have good reporting,

indicating they have black sites that have continued to exist. so we have these very dangerous precedent that were set in the bush administration that has now been institutionalized and legitimize and becoming an accepted part of the washington consensus under barack obama. it is as if, and i read about this in the book, as if thomas jefferson had come into office in 1800 immediately used the sedition act to persecute the federalists. it was a tremendous opportunity in to return us to a constitutional status quo. now as i argue in the book, kings have not been particularly great constitutionally for a long time. i mean, it's one long degeneration throughout american history. but there was an opportunity to return to a less bad situation

with obama's state jury and he squandered it. >> let's put a pen and not for a minute. roger, you called the unitary executive to partial-birth abortion of the constitution? >> yes. >> this book has a lot of phrases in it worth underlining. jonathan, why don't you react to that? just explained the unitary fricative concept for anyone who's not familiar. >> at the concept with a president is above the law. it's kind of a tape cheney -- i think it's a wonderful description of the executive theory. and i don't disagree with any anything that you said. but to fill it out as little more. remember, the difference between rogers spoke in my book is roger's book is an argument book. he's making a strong argument. my book has a little bit of

argument that most than trying to give people more information on which to make their own decisions so minus what is called a reporting vote. i talked to 200 people and found out what is exactly going on in the white house. i didn't find up is going on in the black sites. it's a little harder and that's all good reporting that harbors has done. but for a little more context and to try to explain why when you send in the introduction that the fact that barack obama is not as bad as george w. bush is beside the point, quote, unquote. i've got a problem with that. so on his first day in office, not only did he sign an executive order closing some of these sites, but a closed executive order banning torture. now you rightly point out that to try steve ejections are these countries that we sometimes export or what's called rendition of our terror suspect

to trust them not to torture is your trusty fire. but to suggest it's no different than bush is at odds with the facts. the second point that i think is necessary for clarity is a conceptual point. i get the point of how obama suffers to roll back its national security state, rollback some of the problems you're talking about, ran into a buzz saw over a group of gitmo detainees, who were known as uighurs. they are chinese muslims. i'm not sure everybody here has necessarily even heard of the uighurs. what happened where there were some uighurs very early on last year in the administration who obama and the white house agreed could be brought, released from

gitmo and brought and resettled in the united states. a judge determined that they were of no danger, that they've been wrongly imprisoned there. and so, plans were made to come to the united states. a guy from virginia named frank wolf raised such a stink, that in the first rebuke to obama and his presidency, more than 90 senators voted no. the uighurs are not going to come to the united states. so they worked out a compromise where they took him for resettlement in bermuda. why do i mention this? presidents have to deal with a hand that was dealt them. and that can sometimes be a rationalization for some decisions that i wouldn't agree with. but i would argue an awful lot of the time, liberals have not recognized that that is obama's state, historically come is to deal with this hand that was

dealt, particularly on the economy. but across his presidency. as he said before he even ran for president, 80% of his job would be reactive, reacted to events, political necessity, reactive to what was presented to him. you can either go and be an ineffective president who is what i call a gesture politician, who makes everybody in his base happy because he is landing punches. he's coming you know, standing up all the time for the right thing. emiko heaston for the right thing. you can be that president or a guy who literally wants to get as much done as he can and whose great fear in his own life is who's going to be in his late 50s, having left the presidency after one or two terms and say it could have done more. i could've put more more points on the board. and so, i think he's overcome faded and it's not been nearly as inspiration as he needs to

be, has not framed issues nearly as well as he needs to. and he lost a lot of energy by getting too involved with congress. but he wanted to move to nato, which is all a president can hope to do. not with a magic wand and have everything change 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 has to be more contextual and their understanding of our politics. >> well, i think it is fine to human as a president, to put things into his personal contacts, but his hopes and fears are come his anxieties about his old age, that is fine. and i don't mean to be contentious. i am contemptuous of certain

gestures in that direction. but i have a tremendous respect for the work you did on the book. but politicians are not like you and me. they play with money like it was monopoly money. they play with lines like they are broken toy soldiers. these people are dying. people are our imprisoned lives are destroyed and i feel sorry for the president, but i don't feel as sorry for the president as i feel for the people who are imprisoned unjustly and tortured by our security apparatus. and so you know, the uighurs -- it was hard to get rid of the uighurs. it is hard to get rid of people who have been imprisoned unjustly, but we continue to do those things. and the president, right after he came into office, escalated the strong water. and there's been a lot of discussion are the last couple

weeks about the fact there is an american citizen who has been targeted for assassination. now, this is just really beyond the pale. i don't know why the administration let us know about that because it was quite deliberate. it was leaked. it seems to have been a gesture. talk about gestural politics. it seems to up in a gesture at the right to say look how tough we are. we're 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 to sue on behalf of the fund would be assassinated, whether he's a terrorist or not, actively plotting, wiring up ied is personally, there is a constitution in this country and you cannot arbitrarily and summarily execute a citizen without showing that he's an imminent threat. and it's on the battlefield, he's in yemen. the department of justice didn't really want to deal with the

question. and so they about the state secret privilege is and say that we can't even submit us. we can even let this go forward and have judicial review of this extraordinary statement of executive power. >> i completely agree with everything you just said. [laughter] [applause] >> and so jonathan, do you not see that as the president caving on something he fundamentally didn't need to cave on? what is the difference between washboard in some in michigan and sending them to egypt to give underreported they are. >> well, there is a difference. >> is there a difference between the prisoners? >> on this issue of the child, i think one of the best things or at least less bad links that have been in this period was that we literally had b-1 bombers dropping 5000-pound

bombs on afghanistan at the end of the bush administration. and when it happened at the beginning, the obama administration are just killing scores of innocent civilians. you know, this is not. if we're going to fight this war, we're going to do with the latest technology and the drone program. but i have real problems, as roger does, with targeting american citizens and engaging in basically an undeclared war in yemen. and they think these are all areas that required a lot more reporting. it is a good talking point to use against conservatives who claim against any evidence that obama is wimpy on foreign policy. he has killed a lot more terrorists already been pushed it, which, you know, 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 when we service small group of al qaeda. the other thing i think he's done well on this if he is retired the war on terror frame and he's very focused on this theme a 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 we can't, you know, trash the constitution in pursuit of them. >> so let's move onto some domestic issues and economic issues, that a horrible financial crisis a couple years ago and then obama comes into office. jonathan, you say when he appointed larry summers, tim geithner and gary kinsler. gary kinsler has had a good commodities training future

commission, he said he didn't care that they were avid advocates of deregulation under clinton and therefore responsible in large measure to what happened with the financial crisis, do you say obama didn't care as long as it didn't threaten any confirmation say. they would you look at how liberals are reacting to the administration, we talked some about what happens in the national security state. and i think another big problem the left has is with these appointments. people who cause the problem are being caught on to go unfolded. >> first of all, it's not true that they called the problem. did they contribute to the problem by some of their policy choices in the 90s? yes. some of them like gary kinsler, who is very aggressive head of the stc learned their lesson. others were a little slower and kinsler is more like a joe kennedy fdr put in charge of the

fcc at the beginning because he had been such a scoundrel on wall street himself. so there is something to be said that it takes a thief to catch a thief. on the regulatory side. so diet accept the premise that i bid the blame for that, but clinton didn't certainly didn't cover themselves in glory. and the question became and i think it's legitimate to second-guess this on obama's part. do you bring in total outsiders, who have no connection to wall street. and remember, kiker never worked on wall street. as i point out, they were in this world, the same cozy new work world, even though they didn't work there. do you go outside that world and kit i don't know who

>> joe stiglitz, who wasn't exactly an outsider. >> well, joe stiglitz -- and i'm very critical of them for keeping stiglitz and voelker out, but i'm trying to eliminate the choice he had. or do you, in the middle of a crisis, when, you know, the hide of the imf will be facing a global meltdown. people think things are bad now. they forget about two years ago when everybody was the third poorer >> when you're a democrat walking into office just two choices. he chose the team over the liberal team. >> i think he could've quit vibration and joe stiglitz in charge and it would've been interesting to see what they did. my bigger problem them, aside from the personnel because they think we all get hung up on personal because were also used

to bush who has led us around on a string by the people around him that we assume the president is public. and that's another problem i have with roger's book. he is not a puppet. he is making his own decisions. i still am critical of -- very critical of the book of his not having a waiter circle of economic advisers. and he does have jerry bernstein from the progressive policy institute and some liberals. and there, jerry bernstein is in there every day. >> you say in the book he runs from abc -- >> runs from a to b. >> roger, what would make you happy? leaving that aside for a second, would you have written "the mendacity of hope" if you do have a different economical team quite >> i think i would have. because after he got going, i

think the handling of the financial crisis has been, you know, fairly adequate. i think he put in place all the wrong people. and there's an auditorium filled with economists that he could have put in there. you mentioned the roosevelt institute is jampacked with perfectly competent economist who i worked in government, who know how it works, who worked on wall street, who know how it works who could have done it. that was a fundamental error. >> was it an error to have gone with a bush tarpley bailout, should they have just abandoned not? >> i think that part is a very small part of the bailout. t.a.r.p. was really a fraction of the bailout. there's been a lot of press recently because t.a.r.p. has

ended. tickets pointed out a lot actually because it's the most successful government program in recent memory and so on. the american voters may or may not. there're still $3.7 trillion of outstanding commitments, either actual money that has been distributed by treasury or the fed or various other agencies were serious exposure and is potentially much larger >> well, its loan guarantees. there's not anywhere close to that in terms of money. >> accredits the account. but t.a.r.p. -- t.a.r.p. is relatively small in terms of the overall picture. so i think it's a mistake to get hung up on t.a.r.p. >> here's mine, you know,

concerned about the way this has been framed by liberals like paul krugman. again, on the merits, the circle deiced. i'm sure obama should use leverage, open banks when he had it for regulatory reform, financial reform. in 2009 can rather than two dozen 10. he lost his liver to make on a much weaker bill. that's all true. or certain other things that come probably because powell is so influential is smart in "the new york times." he gets this idea, obama really put a not having a bigger stimulus. if they don't have a trillion dollars stimulus, we wouldn't have 9.6 -- 9.7% unemployment. >> with $700 billion stimulus instead of a -- >> with a $787 billion stimulus. >> much of that, at least 40%% tax cuts.

>> so we can argue about that and i wouldn't disagree that it would have been nicer if more of us would've been in infrastructure, although your point that they were delaying the kicking into the infrastructure projects so that the economy would be peaked too soon and jeopardize obama's reelection in 2012 but that was beyond cynical. but the -- he said to me in an interview. he said the biggest lie in washington is shovel ready projects. you know, he felt that because it yurok rescission on the contracting problems come he believed he was frustrated they couldn't get the money out the door faster than the rest. but he is so influential with liberals. you know, it's a little bit like the public option, which i'm

sure we're going to talk about. a trillion dollars or $1.2 trillion which cristina roman pointed out would've been great. the only problem with it was that was totally unrealistic. the key republicans to getting it approved, snowe, collins, your, were adamant that they couldn't go over the 787 billion. 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've happened in one loveland, but it couldn't have been. and by the way, ed rendell, great infrastructure governor would've been delighted with the $300 billion stimulus in the fall of 2008 and ended up getting over well over twice as much as we hope for and respond to streams. so i just mention this. i know it's a little detail

oriented. liberals need to be careful to be chivalrous, these ideas that get implanted somehow and what we'll lead and see, that although tory disappointment and i would argue my u.k. about our political process and what is possible. >> let me just respond a little very briefly. i don't want to get all folksy, i grew up in a ranching community. and if your horse trading, you don't start though. you start high. >> totally agree. i relates to the tax cuts. he played terrible poker in the stimulus coming up for the total amount. because they did start high. and you know, the democrats were telling them -- they were negotiating with the democrats. you know, they made the mistake of trying to negotiate with republicans, which is a different story. but the democrats were not just evil from the manual. the democrats on the hill were

saying you can't have more than a trillion dollars. so to blame this on the president i just think is wrong. you've got to blame it on the culture of washington, what is possible in washington in 2008 and 2009. >> is this kind of are we going to do x amount or explicit enough. jonathan, you say in your book -- he talked some about goldman sachs and you say gagner didn't believe in punishing goldman sachs because in his heart he didn't believe the banking industry was broken. and so, there may be some sort of philosophical divide between a paul rent and some of the economists at the roosevelt institute and tim geithner's larry summers and the president. where do you fall in the divide and do you think that argument is the move to launch inside the oval office? >> i think the mistake was really to think that the financial industry was not

broken. i mean, that is really the sort of -- i mean, for me, the question of the stimulus being -- >> we found an area of agreement. >> that's a legitimate gripe, but it is certainly not the essential problem. the central problem with putting things back the way they work with a little bit of tinkering around the margins, without restructuring things so that we won't have this happen again. >> so speaking of restructuring because i what to make sure we get to the topic on everybody's mind. >> and i just make a point? i completely agree with that. the reason i disagree with that is because he's a puppet dancing on the streets of wall street and his campaign contributors. he put on a footnote that 53% of his contributions were under $200. and many say those people have no leverage. and big contributors have leverage as if he doesn't give a

shit about wall street. talk about mendacious. it's unfair i think to have. that's the problem is going to notice. >> parsis subsidies. this is a big problem that liberals frankly have. they got bought up all the time. >> robert mentioned about, action is the ultimate proof and tangible should not be taken into town. >> i think what obama wants, wishes, train, i don't care. i really bracket that. i think you have to look at something object is. who are his investors? who invested in this candidacy and who got a return on investment? and if you look at his top contributors, they are all -- it is a who's who of the financial industry and they are the ones who have made out like bandits.

it is not bad. it's really not that cynical. it's just objective. look who pays and who has influence. >> the liberals wanted many of them wanted nationalization. this struck me as really an interesting debate here because when i wrote my book about roosevelt, the new dealers, particularly the new york new dealers wanted nationalization -- i mean, talk about the banks screwing the country. he closed them for a week. he said nasser chance. nationalize, take them over. you know what roosevelt said? when in the conservative traction. he said no nationalization. exactly the same as obama. now you say, is that because roosevelt and obama were both just the tools of wall street? no, it was because they made a judgment that that would be better for the country for banking to be in private hands. and it was a trillion dollars

that would've cost us if we had gone down the nationalization group. turned out tanks were healthier, stress tests work, geiger did some good things, some bad things, real bad things, but also some good things. turned out to be really smart. they came back to. we think a trillion dollars by not nationalizing. >> talk about shibboleth, nationalization was a shibboleth. this is not what people were asking for. but people were demanding was that the zombie banks, and saw the pink speed taken into receivership. you clear up the management, with both the stockholders. the bondholders become the stockholders. you put in place the new owners put in place management. you segregate the bad assets, created that bank and put the thing back in business.

you don't take it over and known it. it's not like becoming -- we actually own a lot of banks now. i mean, we actually nationalize a major financial entities. but what people were demanding was that 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 they were zombie banks, too. and i thought this argument was i was trying to pretend like i educated myself on a good day, bad bank system in all kinds of things i don't know a lot about. turned out the situation was not as dire. and today they're saying that the aig money, even some of which i thought was long gone by come back. and so there were certain that the bomb in may. i like to focus because i am critical of them for not doing more bank regulation early on.

at the out of bailout, you know, not all bailouts were bad. i mean, those turned out to be pretty successful. so i just think that it's -- >> it's so early in the game. >> it is. >> we can't have a conversation with two liberals disagreeing without talking about health care. so who wants to grab it? roger, do you want to start? >> my position is so far outside the washington consensus on this subject, that it may be very hard to have a conversation about it. but i am very critical in the book of the health care boondoggle because -- >> you say it's unconstitutional basically quite >> no, that's really not the point. i am outraged by the mandate.

i think the mandate is appalling. but the whole bill is appalling. the problem is -- the problem with our health system is not the people don't have insurance. it's that we have insurance. insurance is the problem. insurance companies are the problem. if you have an insurance policy, that does not guarantee health care. that does not guarantee good health care. they used to work for an insurance company. insurance companies will drive you just as quick as you turn around. their whole business model is based on denying claims. they cannot make money if they cannot deny claims. and it's unstated. what's not exactly unstated. it's never put in writing. as a claim adjuster come your whole job is to deny claims. and some companies are more appreciative than others. but is just completely irrational and to enshrine assurance, especially

employer-based insurance. >> would you say that it wasn't enshrine before and now it is more enshrined? >> it is this thing did this happen by accident. >> better or worse before it passed? >> we don't know. i mean -- >> we do know. >> first of all, i completely agree with you about insurance. i've been a single-payer man myself for more than 20 years. what does that have to do with anything? you know, again, the line that obama used to make the perfect enemy 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 at the patient. i'm a cancer survivor. and it's going to take a little while to fully get implemented, about three years as they roll

it out. and the details of that are very important for liberals to stay focused on because there a lot of ways as roger points out in his book for them to use loopholes to go back on what they supposedly passed. but the legislation does the legislation does create an historic change, where should i lose my job given the state of "newsweek" as a possibility, you know, but i will not have to sell my house if i have to have another bone marrow transplant which cost $250,000. under the previous -- under the status quo before the passage of the bill, which roger doesn't seem to think is that much worse than what we have with the bill. i would've been completely uninsurable. and same with anyone else. so this is discrimination against the state. we've had this for decades a

terrible, i think, violation of basic civil rights when people are down they should be kicked down further. your child gets sick and they lose their jobs, disgusting state of affairs. to solve the problem would've been better to take a insurance companies and destroy them? yes. but let's look at the real world. >> we could have destroyed the legislation. >> and the country wasn't going to do that. we've been trying to get this for 75 years. and if this bill had passed, it would've been another 75 years before anything changed. for this to me was a real acid test of liberalism and whether liberalism as pragmatism, fdr style pragmatism at its core or whether it's going to go off into dreamland and howard d. kill the bill kind of thinking,

which doesn't do anybody, especially to people were supposed to be protect teens, the more vulnerable americans, doesn't do them any good. it's just her politics at its absolute worst. and that applies to the public option, too. the plain reality which tom daschle admitted today is they gave up on the public option a long time ago. why? because the votes weren't there. it was a nonstarter. they needed 60 and they didn't even have 53 votes for a public option in the senate. so you know, you've got to deal with the world as it is. and there's a lot of great stuff in this bill that the press has completely ignored. just to give you a tiny example is something that has gotten zero attention. other abuse, parents, grandparents are getting the kicked out of them in the nursing home, you know. and there is no legislation on the books to do anything about this. this is part of the 2000 page

bill and is one of ted kennedy's people said they're about 50/50 other things like that that nobody knows about that are now law. this was a major achievement that nobody can take away from barack obama. he won ugly, 31 and it will be a part of his legacy. >> well, time will tell. the issue really for me was the sellout of the public option. there's this constant refrain among obama files that with this i'm sorry, this horrible cliché, don't let the perfect enemy of the good. it's a question of fighting, fighting for something. obama traded away the public option so long ago. we knew that. mitchell's great piece in harper's on health care really just laid it all out.

and it was a capitulation and i didn't have to be that way. i mean, reject that idea. >> you know, it doesn't do any good to try and imagine. >> no, it's called politics, fight, rollover your opponents. >> you've got these -- conservative democrats. i mean, lyndon johnson, when he passed any big legislation from a major piece of legislation is that the 60 democrats put a whole bunch of liberal democrats. it was close to 75 votes and he only needed 51 and 1965 and he almost didn't make it with medicare. >> here's one point where i agree with emmanuel. he shouldn't have gone for a purse. if it focused on the economy, got people back to work and created some real momentum,

maybe rahm emanuel was right. >> he was totally wrong. i'm usually in a position on defending him on some of these things worries hit. [inaudible] >> then the whole thing is about how many seat for democrats. how to get something done. but this supposed to be about something. he didn't get things done. well now you're saying no objective should be to protect democrats and not do something that might cause them to lose seats. the economy, you'd like to create jobs in the would 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's distracted by health care. if only he had spent more time on the economy, then we wouldn't have 9.6% unemployment. he would've gotten another stimulus to repeat and 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 getting the sheets on if you want. i agree with you on some things he needs to stand and fight. i think that's a very legitimate criticism of him and you can say i'm 13 tactical matters he should have. but to have gone down flags flying on the public option would've meant no bill because of is such a close call and it was such a miracle. >> may i just jump in? i would not say the only thing is that he spent all of his political capital on his bill that may end up costing him his majority. just tactically -- >> if he loses majority won't be because of health care. >> well, there's lots of assertions flying around. but we don't know whether he would've been able to get more if you'd focused on building momentum first by getting out of

this recession. yes okay, they say the economy is growing again. that doesn't mean the recession is over. there's still people suffering out there. the great recession wasn't over once the economy started growing again. -- to make all these assertions but it could have been otherwise, we don't know it could have been otherwise because he didn't try. >> i want to make sure the audience is time to ask a few questions. if you have a question, go up to the microphones. and when you are after coming back to top right into the microphone so i friends who are not with us in the studio can hear you. >> this is for roger. on the subject of motives, there seem to be for possible reasons for president obama not undertake any actions he thought he should take based on what he promised. one was he's callous and duplicitous and had no intention

of doing it or is inconvenient. one is to use ineffectual and can't fight the congress or can't fight the bureaucracy. one is he's not intelligent enough and is misguided. on 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 in this 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 think it's intelligence. he seems to be reasonably intelligent. everyone's so. the issue is really -- did he serve our interest?

and if you didn't serve our interests, it's our job to demand that he serve our interests. that's what politics is. that's what the competing interests is. >> jonathan, any thoughts? >> on that, while i think it's some combination of those, excluding, you know, the motive that he doesn't care that is something this a really cool competence. you could argue that as rogers suggested that he plates about poker on the stimulus early on and paid something of a price for trying to stay bipartisan longer than he should have. but those are more in the realm of type takes. >> bill. >> what is the likelihood for either of her perspective that you will not run for reelection

in 2012? >> there's no question about it. >> i mean, i have a quote in my book from one of his friends from law school obama said late last year, i guess i'm going to go run otherwise other eyes that romney will go in here to get credit for all the good things we started after we been through all this was obama's attitude. >> i like your take on two additional factors i think are important for this conversation. the first of the political will in congress and the role of the filibuster in the senate for the use of republicans are abstract which would be majority rule. and secondly, what happened to liberals on the left after november 2008 unlike the tea party and the rights come away with the mobilization on the left and how does that play into the stories?

>> can i answer that because i think you raise a hugely important point. summer of 2009, all of these town meetings, even a democratic districts, there are the tea party folks at the town meetings they said we did our job. we elected obama, now we can go about our business and it is up to him. well, that's not the way politics works. that is magic wand thinking. and you know, franklin roosevelt famously said, depending on which version of the storya philip randolph, when they came in and objected to his policies he said will make me. make me do not mean writing articles in the nation or "newsweek" or getting up at

forums like this and talking about how disappointed they are the president. >> no, that's exactly -- >> that is not. it is early to bed early to rise, work like and organize. and that is part of it. but it's mostly kidding people, you know, out like this demonstration this weekend. i was a good sign, getting people out, organizing, showing up to town meetings, knocking on doors, not just whining. >> it's not a question of whining. it's a question of arguments in mobilizing public opinion. the right makes arguments all the time. they push, they pushed, the push. until recently, the push has all been for the right. and you have to push from the left. >> jonathan come i largely agreed with your point of view tonight.

i understood why the political reality is part of it. but one thing that i really haven't heard addressed as you allude to it is the use of the bully pulpit. and maybe i am naïve about how that actually is used, but it does seem to me that just take the health care debate you talked about. there's only 53 votes. that's the reality. but i do agree with roger in the sense that i don't think obama did enough early on in the did they do use his incredible communication skills to go out early, before the tea party got a hold of the messaging and to go out and saw the health care plan, including the public option and really to that lake and keep using the skills he has. if he still wasn't there, i agree. i've been in the public option and go along. the oil spill was a tragic missed opportunity to go out for the first time in 20 decades and say listen, we have an

opportunity to not just follow the climate change problem for a dependence on foreign oil, but actually to reestablish america's hegemony as the world's greatest economy, by investing in this new energy. i want to know, yes it's true the votes aren't there. but doesn't he have a responsibility to drive those, especially that it's organized on the left quite >> just come he does. i completely agree on both accounts. on health care, he did give some speeches early on and they took a big one before the joint session of congress. >> i thought that didn't count? >> sorry? >> i thought we had to go out and organize the net is that the county. >> paper the questionnaire that it's important for the president to use the bully pulpit.

my disagreement with obama as we expected him to be this fantastic communicator and he's fallen down on that part of the job. but that would be included on that. in energy, as a sign of his communication challenge he gave a speech where he said exactly what you just said. and i wrote a column about it at that time, but it didn't breakthrough. they have it find the right vocabulary. he forgets that house divided against itself cannot stand abraham lincoln was a sound bite. and so it's kind of lofty disdain, the soundbites i think i really hurt him because he hasn't been able to break through for the reasons you describe.

>> that is all i talk about. >> so what i'm missing here is that obama is not just operating as an individual unto himself, but he's operating in a structural context here which has not been mentioned. and the example that i haven't heard referenced here once on tonight, nancy pelosi has called for prosecution on the foreclosure crisis. 14 million american families in or about to be in foreclosure. so it's not just the house divided against cannot stand, the house itself cannot stand in this particular crisis. [laughter] there's been crime on wall

street, there's been financial fraud that's massive. nobody's talking about it. should we be? >> yes. >> yes. >> very nice, short answers. >> saying what we have here is the world's biggest example of accounting control fraud. that the financial crisis is a crime of fraud more than anything. >> and i'll just -- >> why don't -- don't anybody talk about itsome. >> roger and i agree on that, where i disagree i don't believe corporate america has bought off the president. >> what about the court? >> the courts, i'm not sure they've walking them off, but the supreme court seems like a branch -- [inaudible conversations] >> supreme court is, actually, it's been true for -- >> it's a long-term lease to own. >> it's been true for most of american history that the supreme court has sided with business, and even though i'm more favorably disposed toward

business than roger is based on his book, i do think that, you know, corporate america has too much power right now. >> and -- >> the issue, really, is not that business shouldn't pursue its interests, it's that we've been taught to just permit business to pursue its interests and not the people are not expected to pursue their interests. and what my argument -- the place that i land in the book is, and this goes back to the question of mendacity that we've been fooling ourselves, and can this is what jonathan was talking about when we elected obama and then we had a party and forgot all about politics. people have to pursue their interests. they have to fight for what will benefit them materially. if majority of americans fight for their material interests, it will, there will be change. but it takes the majority of americans fighting for their material interests. >> can and i'll just put in a plug for a movie that starts on friday which is called inside

job to pick up on what danny said. >> i put in a plug for waiting for superman -- >> any more plugs for the movies? [laughter] okay, joe. >> joe. again, to the question of five today, and this is for jon. don't you think it was naive, and you can 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 party has been clear for a long time both during the election campaign of 2008, before that during the bush administration, before that when clinton was president. to come in and act as if we have the same bipartisan arrangement with republicans as existed in the 1965 which you alluded to before is five today at its worst. and i want to know if you think

they were naive in their pursuit of a bipartisan agenda. >> well, some, i guess not novel scoop up to a point. i think they were partly naive. obama said to a few columnists right after the stimulus passed, you know, in the first month of his presidency, you know, i'm not a sap. and the fact he had to say i'm not a sap suggested that question of whether they had been taken advantage of by this republican strategy of obstruction, you know, was a legitimate one. but i'm 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. >> [inaudible] >> but i'm not sure how much more -- let's say they'd gone in

and just been unvarnished partisans from the get to go. the premise of your question is that they would have gotten more that way, and i 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 ten moderate democrats this the senate who simply didn't sign up for that, for a partisan democratic agenda. so while, again, it would have been a nice gesture, it would have made us all feel better, all of us want to see obama deck somebody, land a punch, then we'll feel good -- >> no. no, no -- >> jonathan, rahm emanuel -- >> the argument that way. that's not the argument. the argument is you go in and fight and push back, and you discipline some of these people -- >> here's the problem. >> public option was a very popular program. >> joe, by the way, is a good friend, so we're not -- >> very close friends. >> here's the problem with that

disciplining thing, okay? franklin roosevelt, 1938, tried to do it, tried to discipline six conservative democrats who weren't going along, and they were stopping some important new deal programs. how many of them do you think won anyway? point of view -- five of them. it doesn't work. >> he was trying to get -- >> it doesn't work. especially in today's culture. >> he wasn't disciplining them -- >> but, jonathan -- >> you've got, you have nothing over them. >> jonathan, it's a different question though. rahm emanuel lived through the quote-unquote vast right-wing conspiracy that came about because of a $300 million infrastructure be that conservatives built, and he went into the white house. and this white house did absolutely thog to build a structure -- 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 -- >> it was inept. >> you're talking about they didn't informs -- invest in

think tanks? >> when reagan was in office, he helped build an infrastructure. >> well, obama would go to john podesta's cap and headline their fundraiser. >> there's been a very clear signal from the white house. >> that takes us back to the fundamental problems -- >> they told major donors not to fund infrastructure organizations. last question. >> i'm not sure, erica, that that's true. >> it is, but okay. [laughter] >> sorry you guys didn't get more hundred, but i'm not sure they gave those instructions. >> i've been living with some of the criminality of the bush administration in the national security area in what i'm working on, and to see that we've accepted the fact that cia operate oives who torture people can't be prosecuted, they can't even be -- whatever they've done can't even be talked about,

can't be reported, can't be thought about, and i'm feeling, i feel, you know, censorship of what i'm -- i'm a film maker, and i'm feeling censorship coming in on the way my work is being promoted by the people who aren't even in the goth. and i -- government. and i feel that there's a kind of fear that has crept in to american life that obama was hired to fix, and he didn't. and he's afraid. i can feel it. he is afraid. he's afraid of doing his job. and he's afraid, and he's, you know, trying to dodge bullets and trying not to piss off the military industrial complex, but i can tell he's afraid. the country can tell he's afraid. we know he's afraid. >> so for context and another movie plug, the producer of "fair game" which is about

valerie plame that is coming out -- >> november 5th. [laughter] >> is he afraid, roger? >> well, 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, i do get the impression that this is a timidity and an unwillingness to fight. and whether it's fear or whether it's because he actually agrees with this stuff now -- >> jonathan? >> i don't know. i just have to look at what he did, what he does and can get it if i agree with it. >> i think in some cases there is some timidity. like the elizabeth warren case, they should have just appointed her to head the agency and said, bring it on, let's have a night over this. it would have been a good fight. so times there is timidity, but i think it's wrong to

characterize the entire administration by timidity. timid would have been to do what, you know, bill clinton did onst -- on health care and just fold the tent. the if he had lost on that, it would have been such a stunning rebuke on him, and the losses in the midterms would have been even worse because he would have looked completely ineffective. he's willing to take some rests. you could argue he's maybe oversensitive to the politics in some cases but good presidents are good politicians. be they're not good at politics, they're not going to succeed. so my questions about him are really more about whether he can be more skillful politician, maybe a more skillful barack obama would not have gotten himself into quite this hole on the midterms, and we'll see over the next couple of years how

skillful he is. but let's draw distinction. let's be muscular liberals and draw a distinction between a skillful president and a pure president. and i would just, i guess, argue that what we want mostly is a skillful president who moves us forward even if it's not as far as we would hope. >> roger, closing words. >> i would just say there's no such thing as a pure president or pure politician. i don't think anybody expects that or is arguing for that. they're just arguing for someone who believes in something and will actually fight for it rather than just putting marks on the board and so that he can be reassured in old age that he actually accomplished something. the -- >> it's harder to believe something and get with nothing than to accomplish something. i just don't get that, roger. this is the nub of our debate this evening, and maybe we can end by trying to find some

synthesis of this. that's my basic question to you, why is it better to say the right thing but achieve nothing than to get something? >> are you on the payroll, man? [laughter] i mean, let me -- >> that's kind of harsh. >> before we get harsh and personal -- >> just let me say something here. >> i think we can all agree -- >> there is a tendency among obamaphiles this the press to defend him to matter what. >> i don't think i've done that tonight. >> there's got to be some good explanation for why he's doing bad things. it might just be that he's not the pure person that you think he is. you say you don't want a pure president, but apparently he is pure. he is not concerned with glory, he is not concerned with power. he is the politician, he's the president of the united states. he did not get where he is without being blood thirsty and power hungry. it just doesn't happen.

and, you know, joan gideon has a line about the kind of rose bud moment that access journalists lay out for the public, and she calls it -- i'm not saying this directly about you, but -- >> of course not. >> -- please, don't get mad. she calls it writing political pornography. why? because it creates a false intimacy with this politician. it's a false intimacy. we don't really know him. jonathan might because he's this office all the time. we don't know what his motives are. all we know is what he does, and all this personal my thos around presidents is dangerous. it is a dangerous supplement which -- >> but, roger, you're the one who's claiming that you know him, he's mendacious and a liar. >> i'm judging his -- >> so -- >> [inaudib