[applause] >> well, it sure is good to be here in harvard square. i -- it's nice to get out of washington these days. the white house's reaction to the book was vigorous. [laughter] so my trip here tonight's being sponsored by the witness relocation program. [laughter] know you'll find him in harvard square, that's for sure. my wife is here, our kids were born here -- all those key moments of life unfolding

happened here in harvard square, many of them really. we trolled the books -- there's fewer bookstores than 20 years ago, sorry to hear that, but, sir, this is one robust place here, isn't it? being in a bookstore and in this intellectual capitol, i'm going to read a few little portions of the book, which is something i don't do all that much, and i certainly don't do it on cable television in my four minutes of screaming. i'm mostly screamed at, but tonight i'll read a little bit, talk about the book, and then do the thing that is loveliness for me which is opening it up to questions. this is the group you want to talk with, and there's good questions in the audience. a lot of people at this point, i think, have read the book, and so we can actually talk about the book, a thing of loveliness for me. you know, the history here, the recent history is that the white

house got its copy on friday prior publication, and this is widely known i gather, and the "new york times" got it the day before. some of the disclose sure, there's lots in here not, of course, noted in the first noisy offerings, but that became this kind of dust storm of push and shove prior to publication of the book. by the time the book was ready to be in the bookstores the following tuesday, a few interesting things had happened. the president and the white house clearly had seen some of the signature quotes including the one from a person i know who is near and dear to all of you, larry summers, not here tonight? larry? lair? [laughter] where he says, now, i think famously, after an economic briefly, he said this often, the larry summers home alone riff it

was called where he would leave said briefing on various subjects and turn to a solid adviser to the left and right saying we are home alone, there's no adult in charge, and bill clinton would never make these mistakes. now, larry has a history for a framing of issues. this, i think, even for him is, you know, a pie on the charts. it's interesting because that becomes something that troubles people. you know, summer's genius is framing arguments, and that's his skill. people wondered if larry framed it right. are we home alone? this is one of the things i pause at in the book discussing the feelings about larry's home alone riff and can actually sight a specific instance where they sort of disusessed it and the follow-up to that.

i say at the end of the book, you know, the case for government is to somehow lance that fear, that all of us understand that there is no one in charge, that the things we face in this country, the global forces that buffet us are beyond anyone's control, and even management, and the case for government is that that's not the case. that someone's in charge so we can sleep at night and get on with our lives, and that case is one that this administration has tried to make. i don't think always successfully, but they get an "a" for effort, and the game is far from over, so having said that, let me read a couple little interesting parts. i don't read much, but this book follows this president prior to his being this president from his days as a senator starting

in 2007 and in the work of narrative, you try to fit together pieces to create a similar life we see every day. you do it in present tense trying not to look back saying if we knew now what we knew then, or hindsight is true, and i do that with all five books now, so you can only know what they knew and what we knew at this moment, and in 2007, in the summer, you know, barack obama is a good 30 points behind hillary clinton, an interesting guy, great speaker, the 2004 address in front of the democratic convention, but this is not working well, and he has an economic briefing on the first of august where a team, many of whom followed him to the white house, but not be the innermost circle, a little off to the side, others, gather saying, look, you know, this

economy is not all it's cracked up to be. in some ways these advisers lay out the evidence after 30 years of flat lining income or declining income for many groups, we are living on borrowed time. the response was to load up on debt, lots of debt, more than 100% of gdp, well over, more than we've ever had burdening us up until now. wall street created a terrific model for this, this great debt trading machine that was so profitable. in 2007, corporate is accounting for 27% of period of profit, unheard of. debt outnumbers equity in terms of four to one. really, the model, i'll just say is briefly, but the model now everybody understands embraces, in that capital cartel of the

financial capitol of new york, and this is two capitols, after all, washington the political capitol and new york, the financial capital, fighting it out is that new york had built an extraordinary confection where that capital from many good decades in america and some real robust growth of profits, that capital was mostly getting invested overseas. the margins are terrific overseas, no environmental regulations. you know, in china, form a union, you are going to jail. child labor, really good stuff. that's where the money was going. meanwhile in large measure network burdened even then in 2007 was shorted. that's the place where you sold debt, and not just debt, your father's or grandfather's debt, a new innovation in debt, and

that meant basically you could sell all debt, packaged, securities, and we knew the terms, but not in 2007, and the key i can sell it and make profit from it, but not be on the hook because i no longer held the risk or was held accountable of seller of debt because it moved hands to hands of unsophisticated buyers because i already made my money at the wall street house, and when it goes down, and they knew it was going to at some point in large measure, essentially, i'm off the hook. the profits are privatized, the disasters are socialized, government steps in, and the too big to fail nightmares to come. that's where we were. obama sees this, and he sees it through the eyes of characters near him. he sees the economy's hallowed out like a rickety structure with a fresh coat of paint. one good speed bump or gust of

wind, that thing's going down. he sees that. he's troubled. a few days later, he gets a call. on the 4th of august, his 46th birthday, gets a call from a wall street titan who adores him. he's got a non-sexual crush on this guy, would take a bullet for him, and a lot of people gathered around him stunned by him, what a character, not one like him in common memory, and wolf is standing on the 4th of august, on the flying deck of a 110 foot lazara -- that's a dote -- a big one from here to the door and twice over with four bedrooms, a library, and a system on the boat. he's up on the flying deck, the

hedge fund manager that worked for him at ubs. this manager is melting down. it's going bad. the great credit eruptions. this is about a week and a half before everyone starts to see it, and this guy sal, the hedge fund guy, is cursing into the phone, and robert wolf, adviser to obama, really though mostly a contributor who ran a lot of wall street money raising for obama, he seeing it, and he goes up to the flying deck of the boat, a deck at the top with a little pool on it, on the deck, and he calls obama on his birthday. i mean, they are friends. he says, happy birthday, young man. they chat for a minute about their kids, about their wives. obama called wolf on his wife's birthday two days before. he said, you know, basically, i have not been an adviser to you, but a contributor and friend. you have to see what i'm seeing from here. we have a market driven disaster

coming, a once in a lifetime event that's going to change everything, and wolf lays it out for him in plain speak, but quite brilliantly, and obama sees it. he gets a glimpse of the future. where is he? down in atlanta speaking at the southern christian leadership conference convention, another martin luther king speech, and, obama, of course, is a student of king understanding what king said at the end of his life that often was not embraced by others in the movement about economic justice, so let me just read one page. obama, in just a few days caught sight of an emerging catastrophe to draw attention to economics in justice.

no one was presented with a similarly dire and credible prediction from an axel caption of a wall street bank and the latter group having too much at stake for that level of candor, and such a market driven tidal wave would be heading for the dense shore when days before the economist so aptly described, rickety structures freshly painted with fresh credit and rotted beneath. did government in its weakened state have the power to hold this cay tas trough fee at bay? if such a tidal wave reeked disaster, would it reek moral equations by which power and wealth was long distributed and have a birth, a rebirth of the public ideal? when king spoke of giving democracy its full breath of meaning by equity, he was in his

own struggle. between the transcending character who stood at lincoln's feet to tell of a dream, deeply rooted in the american dream, and the man who spent the ensuing years of his life walking the flat earth, struggling to conjure the right courthouse actions to make real earlier days of fusion of noble purpose. a week after that national cathedral speech in washington, king's death in memphis would leave behind only the image of a man as familiar now as an old friend giving voice to an expansive dream, perhaps big enough to bridge american's own duality between noble ideal and the times of noble action, between principle and practice, word and deed. obama acutely understood how people painted their longings on to his welcoming presence. yearnings he tried now to

harness in the time of change. if he can manage it, me might cash king's prom story note to stay at the end of the other of the mall of a century's long struggle for civil equality, and as the torch bearer for king's second dream of equality of opportunity upon which to sound a truer democracy. obama had seen the longing in the eyes of the crowds already, and though he had not yet found a way to tap this longing, he understood on some level that his fortunes rested on how he could craft his narrative and himself into a sure vessel for that hunger. the forces of change were know at play. obama finished up the conversation with wolf, robert wolf, his wall street informer, and turned his attention to policy on that night's speech. like so many he'd begin, it started to conjure the spirit of

king or at least the spirit embodied in that well-worn image of the man, but now the hard questions of economic justice gathered around him. those questions of the second less familiar king, they gathered in the air like the clouds of a coming storm. obama gets a glimpse and agents. he's ahead of the curve, gathers around him in the fall of 2008 with a team led by democrats and republicans, bill donovan, robert rice, one of your favorites here, you know, they are all together. robert wolf, the ubs wall street, and they are together because they are afraid. people are feeling the shudders on the land scape, feeling it shake, and obama right from the

start are saying the things that no one else is saying. we have to reform the financial exam, reform the system of credit. we need to make it work for the american economy and american people rather than against it, kill off the volatility we feel now as we run up and down the fear just in the last few weeks. he got it, and volcker is the guy. volcker's in the book, and some people say he's a hero. i'm not big on heros orville lains, but the reporting is the reporting, and volcker speaks with force in the book. we had many, many lunches, talked across almost two years, and volcker is the kind of avatar, the champion of tough love. after greenspan's demise, for the most part, having pushed forward the bubble across 20 years, one bubble to the next, people say, what about volcker? the previous fed chairman.

volcker choked off money supply, forced a recession, but he killed inflation, and he set the predicate for so much of the expansion that reagan would take credit for. ultimately, reagan says volcker, you're out of here, not reuping you because volcker was not a believer in the deregulation that reagan was such a champion of. he said, no, no, that doesn't get us anywhere. they need rules of the road since roosevelt, and they still need them. unleashing wall street is not the answer, but he returns to stand behind obama, credibility. this team is sized up by the summer of 2008 as trouble, trouble for another team. i called him team b, and that's the team led by robert ruben,

the former goldman chair, treasury secretary under clinton, and the city group chief. they saw the volcker-led team and said, my god, if they get into office with this new president, we are toast, plain and simple. they plotted their counter attack. the counter attack was get our people in the key jobs. some of these disclosures you're like really, my goodness. is it robert ruben was offered in the latter days of the campaign a dollar a year job to have an office in the west wing when obama was thinking, hey, i might win this thing. by the late fall, by october, citi group is collapsing, but ruben's left and right hand, tim geithner and larry summers, they

get the jobs. what happened there? why did volcker and that team get washed away in favor of team b? obama will reflect in this in his memoirs, but there's evidence at this point that, well, the things that are very natural happened. you know, here's a man who is not an expert in finance or economics. he, of course, is an extraordinary brilliant man, but, you know, he broke into the lead in september by vesting mccain on these very issues spending time with his wall street gang and advisers, and mccain was no match for obama, and even republicans says, gee, that guy kind of gets it, and this other fellow, mccain is not buzz word come pliant on this stuff, and when obama breaks into the lead -- you know, the book is sympathetic to obama and feeling what he's feeling. if you feel what he's feeling as

best as a writer can rending it, you have a sense of what i call the good enough reasons. i have a rule for my books called the good enough reasons rule, and i learned it dealing with gang leaders in my first book, "hope in the unseen." it's easy to be judgmental. i said, no, no, if i'm judgmental, i don't understand their good enough reasons, good enough intent was to action the thing you can see. they may not be your reasons or mine, but they are good enough, if any you know them, you can know a person almost as well as you can know another, and you get why they do what they do, and often it's clear and concernble and rational in some cases. i'm looking for the good enough reasons in all the characters, and i want to know that about obama, the central actor of this time. you know, all the sudden, breaks into the lead like a bad robert redford candidate moments.

what do you do know? he's got to own washington. he has to tame new york. he has to keep us from what looks like a coming depression, and caution, a causen of fear grips him. how could it not? at that moment, the more progressive activist crew, and democrats and republicans both again of team a, who i don't know if i can manage that haiku, and he goes with team b, and they are very good at speaking the words of caution, pros from dover, men who had been there, we served bill clinton, we know where the levers are to push, and they get in there. larry summers, chief economic adviser, tim geithner, chief treasury secretary, he was warned against emanuel, and obama didn't listen. back when the campaign -- remember hillary and obama?

judgment versus experience. hillary clinton said experience, obama said judgment. it was a nice retorics. he was a man fused with the clarity of judgment. obama would say now, yeah, experience's important now too as well. [laughter] but he makes judgments to bring in this team, and significantly the die is cast. they are moving moments here. i was at the last rally, his last speech of the campaign. my wife and i went in virginia, a 21 month run, heroic run really out of nowhere to capture the imagination of a nation of fear. that last rally in virginia was one -- you could not avoid being moved. i mean, my eyes welled up, you

know? ten o'clock, 10:30 at night, a chilly night, his last speech before he flies 20 chicago to vote to play basketball to see where the cards for. here we are four miles away from the battlefield, 134 years before the rebel sound sounds out to start and earlier chapter of our often painful american journey, and now on this night, people come from all over drk i mean, not just the professional types like us from washington, but took five hours to go 20 miles, and we left the car miles away to just walk, but also people from trailer parks in northern virginia who can't afford to live near where we live, and of all races, you know, latino americans, asian-americans, african-americans certainly, and

then guys with confederate flags and gun racks are there too. 100,000 people in a field and obama stepped up, and the cry that went up from those hills, i can still hear it. i think many of us can hear it. which is why some of this is hard. maybe we were part of this, too. of course we are. this is a conversation between the leader and the people. we are all in it together. how can we not have painted our yearnings on this guy, in this way with all that he was able to draw from us and then send back to us in those extraordinary turns of powerful rhetoric, but the next night in grant park, you can already feel him

stepping back, the acute just burden of it, the pressure of it, he sells axelrod no fireworks. he waited for this moment and wrote his autobiography at 33. [laughter] he's already a step away assessing it. he gives a speech, a great speech, a fine speech, it was not like the night before. i was there, and then he walked off the stage, and michelle is waiting for him, it's her moment to. she goes to give him a high five, and he says no, no, not tonight. he's feeling the burden of history saying am i up to this? even the inaugural speech, 2 million people freezing their buns off screaming, cheering,

people dancing in capitals around the world, it was a flat speech. people were disappointed, but, whatever. i was there for the moment. i think what reagan would have done, shuddered to think what reagan would have done. use the inspiration, just go with it. it's amazing when he gets into office. it's like he's not going to manage the expectations. there's no way to manage them, just live with them. he couldn't predict this and be the actual president in that cornerless room, and you can see in february and march, obama's saying, you know, i can do this. i can manage this, and his object, his focus is, of course, not just unhealth care, which he says will be the priority, yes, that'll be my legacy, but then, of course, the great crisis, a

melting economy and a collapsed financial system, and, of course, a crisis of jobs we still live with, and he did some studying, some reading. he was reading a lot of paul crugman. in the economic briefings, it was larry and tim, but obama was self-schooling, give me a copy of that, yeah, that's good. what's he come up with? look, i want to be sweden, not japan, that's the big construction in february. sweden bailed out their banks, nationalize, close them, and killed off wild speculation of the business model. they turned banks into a boring spine of economy rather than a casino, sweden roars back, and they are doing what we do now, bail them out, restore them, use government, persons, effort, as best you can.

we can't live without whatever they are, whatever that business model is. we're three years now into a very similar model. obama gets this and says i want to be sweden, not japan. what happens is hack vok inside his economic team. summers and geithner, old friends like emanuel. they know each other forever. their conversations are important in some ways as anything they say to the president. well, summers and geithner embrace hippocratic risk. first, do no harm. it's difficult to challenge. almost everything does harm that's bold. obama hears this, fine, fine, but this is what i want to do. he wants to nationalize, take down, wind down some of the big banks and reopen them, kill off the fear that we'll have another lehman style disaster from a too big to fail back saying that's the fear holding us back,

keeping us from building, growing, and investing. geithner opposes him, even summers, though, jumps on the side of the president against geithner. it's everyone against geithner. the president, kristy roamer, larry summers, and kim with the guy who has the finger in the dike. advisers are there to advise. they are experts. that's why presidents hire them whether in economics or national security. they have to know more than the president. the president listens to what they say. ultimately, he, then has the lonely spot of making the decision. in this battle in mid march with the president, his 70% approval rating, 2 million people weeping in the mall saying obama has political capital that happens once in a generation saying i want to be roosevelt and i want

to rise to it, take down big banks, shows accountability flows in both directions in america. they did it to themselves. we don't need these, we are overbanked, too many banks, they can be smaller, and we have to show a kind of justice. people are hurting. this will be the step forward. basically tim geithner thinks he doesn't know what he's talking about and needs to be protected from himself. after this meeting where tim talks about his plans, the stress test, and the best way to support the banks with the federal purse, obama says fine, ultimately, he ends up backing off so it's just citi group with $200 billion less than the t.a.r.p. fund and i want to plan how to do it. a month passes. they are in the oval office, i have meeting after meeting in the book. every person cooperated with

this book. there is not a person in the room that is not in here cooperating. everyone confirms all the story. make no mistake. it's nondenial denial. remember that from all the president's men? i don't remember that, i was on venus that day, you know, i was temporarily insane, yes, that's what i was. it's here say. what's that mean? i don't know. in this meeting a month later, the president says what about that citi group wind down plan? that's a key arrow in the quiver. summer looks at omer, back and forth, nervously at one another, they have been watching over the last couple weeks and nothing's happening in treasury, and christie roamer says mr.

president, there's no plan for citi group. obama says, there better be. he's angry. what do you mean there's no plan? all the sudden kristy feels emanuel's gaze on her. they huddle. emanuel's livid. i can't believe she said that without tim geithner being here to defend himself. forget the material issues. summers reports this to roamer minutes after. yes, yes, he's with it. you can't say that without geithner here to dwefd herself. jesus, she's right, there's no plan. i asked the president about this. it was not an easy moment in the interview at the end of the process. i said you were agitated. he said i don't know if that's the exact word i'd used. how did you feel? what did you say to tim?

well, i don't remember exactly. the pure bureaucracy was not moving as fast as i wanted. i don't know that you call your treasury the bureaucracy, but it's a term of art, i suppose. this stuff was hard, ron, harder than i could have imagined to come up with solutions. talked to geithner too. he's in the book. you can read it yourself in two pages he affirm that he did what is shown in internal memos, but he slow walked the president. what's that mean? it's reflicked in a -- reflected in a memo in february of 2010 from a shadow chief the staff, a brilliant washington actor, a chief of staff in the senate office talking about the fact that mr. president you need to assert accountability in this building. when the treasury department or economic team disagrees with one of your decisions, not his pauses or wandering, but his decisions, they relitigate the

whole policy meaning they ignore you. this can't be. this cannot stand. you know, and even after that when they disagree they slow execution. they drag their feet. you need to assert leadership. you need to take control of the billing. this forms a blue print that helps obama learn to be president. look, it takes a year, year and a half for skilled men or in the future, women, former governors, you know, executives to manage this most complex organism. it's a matter of growth. the bad luck for obama and others might say for us in the wider country is that he arrives in a moment of both crisis and opportunity, thein --

ying and yang there without key experience in executing power. i mean, it's hard to get anywhere to execute power, but he didn't manage it, and there's a lot of chaos in that first year, and it's not just a take down of the banks. you know, meeting after meeting he's essentially trapped in the larry summers' debate society. now, some people might buy tickets for that, but right now we're at a difficult time, and they go back and forth. do we want to do deficit reduction or new stimulus? back and forth, back and forth, can't decide. obama naturally, again, get in his shoes saying i need the comfort of consensus essentially. i want my team to come to consensus so i feel the confidence to make these tough decisions. i'm going to push, you know, of course, he's an extraordinary interlocutor pushing them -- doesn't get consensus, and the

result is paralysis. he is in the dull drums and little occurs during that seminal first year and all the way to 2010, rows writing the memos, obama is seeming to grow and breathe deeper, and that whole team's out the door in the next couple months. the first team he brings. now, after the midterms, obama, well, people said it was like light shown in the windows in the white house. pete rouse became the chief of staff -- obama said something moving, a moment of doubt, a moment of confusion says to one of his aids, i don't want the rest of the aids -- i don't want them to see me like this, not sure of myself basically, you know, better they not see.

you know, my god, who of us would have managed better? he becomes the intern chief of staff, and obama says i can do this myself. he engages you or nay, you may disagree, but engages on the bush tax cuts trading if -- it for a lot of payroll, there's a boost, makes the trade, does it himself with mcconnell, passes something like 82 to 16 or something in the senate, unheard of, and his numbers start to go up. then he gives that extraordinary speech which many of you heard after the tragedy, after gabrielle gifford was shot in tucson, brings in a new staff, and then when i interview him in february, he's got bin laden in the cross hairs, so at the end

of the book, obama is feeling a kind of a recovery, a resurgence, and he talks bouts that in the last interview. some of it is, you know, boast illuminating, and a little unsettling too. i'll read the little part and then open it to questions. what's interesting about the last interview is he, he's dealing with this issue of confidence. that's the point of the realm, and that's why the book is called confidence men. there's men on wall street who i sort of call "con men," and i don't think any of them had here, but the fact is in the other capitol, our political capitol, the battle between the two capitols, obama understands as we all do as a confidence is the coin of the realm. it was that way, been that way

throughout history. roosevelt restores it establishing his legacy. kennedy sparks it for that great robust period he launches, and reagan, of course, is a 345*ser -- master of exuding confidence no matter what the underlying facts may be. [laughter] we have a moment in the interview, i'll tell you this funny story because it's something mentioned in some of the coverage, but i've never kind of gone through it. you know, in the interview, it's about 45 minutes, obama in the chair, i'm on a couch, and there's a media person at the end of the couch, and something happened, a stroke of good luck, is that i'm at a bookstore just like this one, i mean, it's a kin dried to this one called politics and prose. i don't know if you've been there. it's in washington. it's our harvard harvard bookstore, and i'm there, and i write in the cafe a lot. i have an office behind my house, but i need to get out

sometimes, to see another living and breathing person so i write with people there. i'm writing to an audience, a good one, just like you, and i'm writing there, tapping away, and the guy says, hey, you know, jimmy carter's upstairs. what, are you kidding? no, he's signing books, doing a reading. he's doingment preliminary signing thing. i'm like, realm, okay, so i'm about to interview obama. i know i'm going to be interviewing him soon, so i say, okay, maybe there's a bit of opportunity here. carter wrote a book called "white house diaries," and i asked carter, i see him signing away, and i say, president carter, ron -- oh, hey, how are you doing? [laughter] he's the most -- i could eat apples off his head, he's that

big. at my height, that's saying something. he said, here's the thing. i see obama is dealing a lot of the same issues we dealt with in the 70s that were never solved, and they are on his desk now. i said, i have diary entries on this stuff. i'll get the diary out. that's the diary, his book. i was like, oh, really? i'm cramming fast, got to come up with something. i light on the diary entry that he pens in there after his last debate with reagan. it's very emanuel blipmatic, and he writes in there basically, you know, we hit our policy points, and we talked about -- e what we done for our constituents, and we're going to get them to the polls, and we'll win. reagan did the optimism thing, but i think we won this thing. a month later, there's another diary entry basically saying

disregard previous entry. [laughter] i asked carter about this. i said that's a nice pairing. he said, you hit a good duo there, no doubt. i said what's going on there? he said, you know what it is, you know, it's confidence. i didn't understand how it worked really. i thought about that for 30 years. reagan got that. i didn't. you know, i thought this obama guy understood that. i thought he understood how confidence works. how it's coined around. i'm not so sure now. so in the oval office, i break out this story to obama. he's like, oh, really? [laughter] now, of course -- [laughter] comparing one self- to carter is for no good reason a dangerous thing to do for a president.

you know, carter is the thing you don't want to be. i think that's wrong, but it's just the way it is. obama talks about carter because i bring it up. he says, you know, he says, carter and clinton and i suffer from what i call the policy walks disease. he calls it a disease sort of like we feel like we're going to win like in high school in high school debaters points. you know, he says i'm getting over that. not so many words. i'm not quoting him exactly, but i don't want to be legislature in chief. you know, i have an inclination i'm working on. you know, the idea very much like kennedy with the best and brightest which they get into all of this, you know, bring the smartest people in the room, close the door, and you'll come up with a beautiful, glorious integrated solution, and it's not going to happen.

it doesn't happen. obama has spent two plus years locked in the policy room, and he says it ain't enough. then he addresses a president who's kind of floating nearby, right near the ceiling, reagan. let me say -- read what he says, and i'll be done and we'll talk to each other. he, reagan, obama says, was very comfortable in playing the role of president. i think part of that was really his actor's background. the republicans hate this thing, but that's what he says. obama says it and betrays a kind of -- in his tone, a hint of envy, like, god, that would be so easy to be able to flip that switch, but edging closer to

reagan, obama squirmed in his chair, trying to get comfortable. looking over his life, obama says, that he in his life always took pride in pushing against, and not engaging in a lot of symbolic gestures but rather thinking practically. they say that with pride as to his life, and i think that the evolution that happened in the campaign was me recognizing that if i was going to be a successful candidate, then the symbols and gestures mattered as much as what my ideas were. huh. who could deny reagan's mastery of symbols and gestures? no one can know what it's like to be president until they are one, and then they have to decide how much of what they feel sitting in that lonely cornerless room they ought to reveal.

people deep down suspect that the life of a nation, like that of each of us is shaped by forces well beyond our control, beyond earnest efforts and best laid plans just as we all tend to learn at some moment of discovery that those grown ups that seemed so assured and certain were neither. as the nation wrestled through this period of maturation, obama considered how to reconcile his ear of hard truths with a working definition of confidence in a world that often merits anything but. the age-old fear, after all, is that we are, in fact, home alone, that there is no one in charge. the role of government is to make a convincing case to the contrary to everyone can get on with their lives and manage a good night's sleep. obama, a brilliant amateur, arrived to powers pinnacle believing he'd make his case

with a show of demonstrateble answers. he launched what he called a new era of responsibility. it hadn't worked quite as he hoped. bruising the natural confidence, quite real, that more than anything is what got him elected. now firmly along any dynamic i'll do it myself model of leadership, he reached for a come pass for the course ahead going forward as president obama side straightening up in his chairs, the symbols and gestures people see coming out of this office are at least as important as the policies we put forward. i think where the evolution is taking place, president obama said timely, is understanding that leadership in this office

is not a matter of you being confident, and, of course, this is after a 45 minute interview about how his confidence has been bruised, not about you being confident, but leadership in this office is a matter of helping the american people feel confident. so thank you for listening and let's talk about your confidence in the q&a, thanks. [applause] okay. who first? how about you? yes. say your name. >> steven charlotte. >> okay. >> why is geithner still there? he's the one slow walking, the one that holds back. everybody else is gone, and he's still there, and obama wants him to stay. what's -- >> yeah, i know. it's a question i get asked a lot. you know, their relationship is

in the book. i go through it. geithner is a canny player. you know, he's got a very interesting manner, a bit of a passive aggressive thing as people talk about. you know, he laughs, and then he cuts your throat, so -- [laughter] you know, but that's what it takes. look, you know, we're the world's most powerful nation, the men around the world's most powerful men in any age of history it takes a skill set to survive up there, and geithner does. interestingly, he sizes up the situation. you know, he sees that his old pal, larry summers, who, i think -- well, it's clear he's not happy with geithner as things progress. summers, remember,mented to be beer -- benanke. he ran the selection process for whether he would replace benanke.

he's the leader. he had been treasury secretary meaning in the white house, and, yeah, i'll do this, but in the summer of the next year, i'm your man. i think summers says obama said yes, you will be, and he feels a bit betrayed, but knows geithner ran the selection process, and i think summers feels geithner was faint in his praise of summers in the fed job. there was a breach. git near's watching this best and brightest high iq debate set and obama is feeling trapped in, and geithner sets himself up as the default not saying much. he's holding the cards close, but when obama is frustrated and not sure what to do, he defaults to a geithner plan for caution.

a plan for not doing a great deal, a plan for keeping the km in america, the structure as it is, and ultimately, geithner ends up being the last man standing. their relationship, it'll be in both men's memoirs. it's something of great interest in washington. geithner did want to leave. obama said please stay, and it may have to do with the kind of relationships you do see with presidents, you know, the loneliness that obama sort of talks about. you sometimes need someone to come in the room with you and just help, explain that to me again. why are we in this box? go over that part a third time, and i think tim did that, and not in the kind of way that larry did where in many instances obama's trying to get information reports without them going to summers. yeah, so he can challenge summers effectively in the meetings. you know, summers is supposed to

get everything. he says just give me that like directly to me. is that okay, peter? will that get you into trouble? orzak goes, yeah, no, i can do that for you, mr. president. well, you know, i know, i don't want you to get into trouble, okay? [laughter] he's like, you're the president. anything you want, yeah. [laughter] part of it was that obama was trying to muscle up to challenge summers and geithner, but especially summers. geithner watches this and plays it beautifully. okay. another question. how about you? >> [inaudible] rereinvolving around leadership, and your thesis is that obama's philosophy is government, the essence of government is the force to relay the person's fears. isn't obama the government? the icon of government?

i mean, the night before, he was the moses that would part the sea of government, and then i think that's the expectation that's never been met is that he just succeeded all of that power to harry reid, to the congress, and per seifed as being overly passive to consensus seeking, where, in fact, leadership is decision making. >> that's a great point. i mean, you know, he's the man. i am france. he's the guy at that moment, and, again, it's a kind of political capital. you just, you know, i had lunch today with rob kutner, a guy here, saying this is the only opportunity in 80 years, this is more than a generational opportunity to alter the basic imbalances or structures in american life, and what's interesting is that i think obama, and he talks about i want to be a dynamic leader at the end of the book, but what he doesn't take into account, which

i think is right to your point, is you're not going to come up with a clear brilliant pristine integrated solution in the policy shop and unvail it and convention, especially, republicans, you know, that that's brilliant, and i'll follow you. it's like the upton-sin claire thing. i don't get it right, but they'll continue to oppose you. it's nothing personal, mind you, just the way it is, and obama, you know, still thinks he's so persuasive with beautiful solutions that they have to give. well, they don't. what is fore saken, what's not given credit is the dinism of leadership out of the axlerod and others saying get out there say this is what you want to do, fight, and don't flench, and what you see is the tumblers click, the plates under the surface shift and move, and that dynamic process is one that creates the opportunities of leadership. obama wasn't doing that, and ultimately, i think, he's from

thed because of it. there's fascinating moments knowing his best thing is i can give an amazing speech, and, you know, he knows that. that's my skill. what he finds like after the great cairo speech in 2009 which is just breathtaking, i've seen it and watched and read it ten times along the lines of the way of the world this guy just wrote, but i couldn't sum up anything like obama does. it's just stunning. after that speech he's like, you know, what we need is a policy that harnesses these speeches. we didn't have one. you know, the streets of iran start to royal. the words of a president can cause the capitol of one of our arch enemies to become a place of disruption, just the words, but he says we have no policy. we need policies to harness my words. again, he sees it, but can't

manage it, and the health care speech, just one more thing on this because it's fascinating is that obama, at the end of the summer, when he doesn't engage on health care, he steps aside saying 24 is -- this is my number one priority, and then vanishes and nothing happens for months leaving tom tom dash shell like where are they? it's a black hole in there. he's losing in march and april and may the most important two months in 15 years on health care after he steps up saying this is my priority with all of his power, obama, nothing happens. he forfeits that giving it to max, and i need a speech, a big one, september of 2009, biggest speech, and he says you have to

wait until the end. he says, no, i'm going to do it. makes a decision, not a lot of these, but this is one he makes. calls him the brilliant speech writer, the guys all of 14 years old. it's unbelievable. [laughter] how did that happen? he's brilliant. they have a bond. they got this bond because he's kind of the fusion of the youth sort of movement that followed obama. he's just a kid, and they are riffing off each other. it's a great speech. the ted kennedy letter, you know about that. vicki gives him the letter, obama puts that in there. what's interesting at this point, though, is there's a little debate going alongside obama because obama says i want a policy out there to harnness the speech meaning we have a health care policy. it was on the shelf. you know, they said we're not going to be specific.

we'll get arrow shotted. he still is smarting what happened with clinton, but obama's like i want the full plan released with the speech in front of the joint session. i made my decision. okay. he goes back to writing the speech, but there's a debate going on because emanuel's like, no, he's wrong. he doesn't know what he's talking about. we're releasing a two-page bullet point sheet. that's it. orzak didn't fight -- like, no, release the whole plan. no, two-page bullet points. right up to the speech there's a meeting where they are debating this. obama arrives in the meeting, and he clearly thinks they are releasing the whole plan. the speech is just right before the speech. he goes, oh, he's the president, he ought to know what's going on. but, mr. president, uh, it's