information appropriately, there are provisions in the law that would make sure that is taking care of.

obamas." it's just over an hour. >> welcome. i just want to say especially

for the c-span audience one minute about where we are. we are at sixth and history synagogue which is one of the oldest conservative synagogues in washington. it was a synagogue for a long time and then the congregation moved to the park a few miles northwest of here and became a baptist church i believe. it was a baptist church for quite a long time and then it was the congregation decided they would move it so they were going to sell this building and it was going to become a nightclub. and it was immediately, to great philanthropist said we cannot let it become a nightclub. let's make it a synagogue again and they refurbished it too literally to some old photographs and we were fortunate because my son, my oldest son who is now 20 was the first boy in 50 years -- and was

the first person in since world war ii to use one of the -- since then. this is meaningful to us and worth celebrating for those two gentlemen all the folks that brought this back to life. from the sublime to the polemical, let's start with today. you have written a book about the obamas. i think i like most people find it on the whole a very admiring book. the administration has i guess disagreed. they have come out with some comments about you. a what's it like to be in the middle of a political firefight. and what you make of what is happening? >> well, it is a little strange because i have been covering the obamas for five years for "the new york times" that it really started with a series we do at

the paper called the long run. it's about trying to capture the lives of the candidates and especially because candidates are so restricted now and it's so hard to get access to them. one of the ways we learn about them is through their biographies. we delve deeply into their past and their characters and we really look at the whole person, and so this book in a way as an outgrowth of those stories which i have been doing for years and years. so the goal of this book was to really write about what i would call the big change. when i started covering barack and michelle obama they really were a rock and michelle and the extraordinary thing that i was watching happened was, watching these two regular people become president and first lady of the united states and what i was seeing was that there wasn't a process that happened on inauguration day. when somebody takes an oath, is a as a huge learning curve. made all the more dramatic in the obama story because of their

freshness to national political life and also because of the fact that they are the first african-american president and first lady so we really see a couple of things happening in this book. we see two people learning to take their partnership which used to be this private thing and turn it into a white house partnership. we see michelle obama have a really tough landing initially in the white house and then actually turn it around. in the third thing in the book is really about the most fascinating thing that i find about barack obama which is his struggle with politics. after all these years i still can't get over the fact that the top politician in the country has a really complicated relationship with the business that he is then. anyway i worked on this book for two years and i published it. the white house cooperated. i have been working with all of these folks for years. lots of people in the obama inner circle gave me interviews. they knew exactly what they were getting into.

i never misrepresent what i was doing and also i fact checked the book with an assistant before publication. we publish an excerpt in the times on saturday. then a really, i guess to really interesting things happened. the first thing is that people started discussing the book without having read the book and that has never really happened to me before because a newspaper reporter -- and the other thing is that the white house did start pushing back and some really interesting ways. they haven't really challenge the reporting in the book, like i haven't gotten a phonecall from david axelrod saying you got it all the wrong and a lot of the off the record quotes are in the book is something that really surprise me happened yesterday which is that michelle obama went on tv and she said, i am paraphrasing, she said i am really tired of depictions of myself as an angry black woman.

she also protested portrayals of her fighting directly with rahm emanuel. so that was kind of fascinating to me because the book definitely does not portray her in any stereotypical way and also i am very clear to mention that the clashes between her and emanuel were really philosophical in nature. maybe i shouldn't undercut my own reporting and talk about their differences in approach to political life but that is really what they were. she did acknowledge that she didn't read the book so i have to imagine that she is responding maybe to the coverage of the book instead of the book itself. but part of the reason really i decided to be here tonight is to talk about the actual thing with you and with all of you. >> let's go to that political thing because that is one of the themes running through the book. he reminded me when theodore roosevelt ran and everyone around him said you don't want to be in politics. that is beneath people like us.

what are the qualms about politics that the obamas have? >> part of the reason i think they're qualms are important and not to just be dismissed as that they are similar to the qualms that a lot of us have about politics, right? we all see what is wrong with the political system, what is ugly about it, whether it can address social needs and what not. but you know, this is one of the many things about obama that was such a big asset in the campaign that ends up being somewhat intimidating in the presidency. time and time again in my reporting sometimes in very simple ways and sometimes in very complicated ways i found that he had kind of trouble acting like a politician. a small story in the book is about the first super bowl party in the white house. he is kind to everybody and he greets everybody but he does not want to walk the room. he has this principled

rejection. he doesn't want to be the guy who is spending the entire super bowl schmoozing and he has this idea that he wants to still hang on to a normal life in the presidency. in my reporting i just watch that idea get tested again and again and again. >> there is another story in the book where he is having dinner -- he insists on having dinner at 6:30 every night so he cannot schmooze and that is an admiral will thing. is that a constant theme? >> not only, while certainly wanting to preserve domestic life. part of the drum of the situation is that barack obama gets to washington and not only does he have got so much managerial or executive or our national security or economic experience but he has also never lived in the same house as his family in. the house they are going to live in for the first time is the white house, which is not in any

way, shape or form like a normal life. let you know i think the 6:30 rom by the way he is obviously willing to miss dinner with his family form pertinent situations and willing to miss the two nights a week. i just find it my reporting that the obamas are constantly seeking ways to kind of limit and protect themselves from political life. >> so why do you think he rand? if he is ambivalent about politics? >> i think it was a rushed decision and i think it was a hard decision. his aides say that you know the summer of 2006 he was still really dismissive of it and it was only, you know they began to sort of test the waters then but when you think about it, their decision-making process only went from maybe december of 2006 through the fall. what people kept telling him was you know, your time is now.

if you miss this window of opportunity you may never get it again. part of the drama of the situation is michelle obama is initially very opposed in part because of the family issues but in part because she thinks, she is worried about attacks from the clintons, withstanding attacks and she thinks a couple of years may benefit him. what her chief of staff said to me is the decision just really weighed on her and i find your her situation at that time so dramatic to cause the way people describe it is she really did husband would be an exceptional president and yet she really wasn't sure if it was the best thing for her family. so how do you choose between what you think might be good for the country and might be good for you? >> mitch daniels didn't run for president because his wife had veto power. do you think they have the same kinds of arguments back and forth? well yeah, the president and first lady have talked about it

and also the physical white house is almost a character in this book. i spent a lot of time describing what it is actually like to live there and what the structures like in all of the restrictions that come with that life. i will admit that is fun to report on and read and that there is a little bit of you know exploratory pleasure in getting sucked inside the house but i think there are also two very substantive things about it. this to me is sort of the argument of the book which is that the isolation of the presidency has two important effects on our system. one in is that it really limits the number of people who are willing to run for office along with all the other factors but you know the number of people who are willing to a go through presidential campaign and then live this incredibly restrictive life. it is pretty small and then the other thing is in no we consistently see these

presidents get cut off in the white house and they'll say it's not going to happen to them and it happens to all of them. >> michelle obama is one of the first, well she is certainly the youngest person to have served as first lady since the central revolution. just because of the generation she is from gucci have a more difficult time than other ladies >> it's funny because she is such a pupil of hillary clinton's in that way. in my reporting i found again and again that she and kind of everybody else in the white house have one eye on the hillary clinton situations and also the attack she went through in the 2008 campaign were really pretty painful for her and everybody around her. to be that new to public life and to watch yourself caricature that way was really, really hard. you know, they twist i think to

it though is that you know what the aides talked about was that the traditional nature of the first lady said which was so confining at first and stop protecting her because political life is so scabrous in so difficult. it's another way of limiting. it's another way of saying i don't do policy, don't have to be having this kind of discussion. i'm not going to get engaged in these kinds of debates. i think there is something you now very protective about the traditionalism of that role. now of course she is playing a much more prominent role in the presidential message which is what she wanted in the first place. >> there are moments of toughness that she displays but there are moments of sort of real vulnerability. there's one episode you describe where she is wearing normal shorts to go to the grand canyon

and i guess the post made fun of them saying that they were, i don't know, peasant shorts are normal shorts and she wondered if she let the team down. how do you weigh the balance between vulnerability and fierceness that alternate in the book? >> that is part of what i think is so fascinating. part of the reason i think, i mean let's just banish the phrase angry black woman from the culture, not only from this book at part of the reason i think the caricature of her is so wrong is it misses the vulnerability and it misses the anxiety. that is the words that are aides use. they don't call her angry. they call her anxious. the point of my report where i found her really fuming was after the scott brown loss, after the scott brown victory. scott around, a republican has

devastating consequences for the president's legislative agenda. it is all in jeopardy now and she has two issues with her husband's team. one is that she doesn't understand how they could have let this happen, how they could've sort of dropped the ball on the race but the other issue, which is so, is more interesting and goes i think to the heart of the role she plays in the presidency is that she has always had this idea that her husband is going to be a transformative president. she has never liked politics. if you are going to go into politics, you know, you have this lofty vision of who you are going to be and the administration had made these health care deals like the nebraska law that were very unpopular and barack obama starting to look like a more ordinary politician, and that is really what she was reacting to. so that is part of why i think

the partnership is so interesting. it's not that we are delving into the secrets of their marriage. we are looking at her vision of the presidency and what she stakes in two and the standards that she has and whether he can make them. >> is her influence, does it have a philosophical or ideological direction? if she left are not? >> well you know, i'm so glad you asked that because it goes to something you have written a lot about. i think you and michelle obama have a little bit of something in common. i think you know based on my reading of your work, you both have, neither of you put all of your faith in government. you know, michelle, to me, the philosophical difference between michelle and barack obama is that he has always ultimately

put stock in the legislative process to get things done. that has been his political career at very early on in this goes back to springfield, she looked at what was going on in springfield and she said, i don't believe that the legislative process can actually produce the kind of systemic change we need in our society. you know, there are a lot of stories i have heard of her, looking at good legislation that got loaded with political garbage or was defeated for bad reasons and so the interesting thing is she always took it non-governmental approach, working with the community more, working on sort of partnerships and business is. so part of the really, i think this contrast comes back to the presidency because the president is doing health care reform in the fall of 2009 and he is obviously having a really hard

time. it's not as popular as he wanted to be. at his legislative torture and she starts her own initiative. what did she start? a childhood obesity initiative, and really what is the end result of a dominating childhood obesity in america? you would have a much healthier population and you would lower health care costs because you would diminish these diseases like diabetes and heart disease, you know, that really bog down our health care system. to me she has got this kind of non-governmental answer to the problem. >> do you think she is the sort of person who in the middle of that fight, when they are upstairs together saying you have to keep the public option going. >> what are aides say is she does not back down on policy details. she is not fluent in the language of washington and policy detail. what they do say in this is where i think liberals and

progressives can take heart with her is that she really keeps him focused on the reasons he ran in the first place, to do big things in the two issues that come up in my reporting where she really backed him against political advisers are health care reform and also immigration reform. >> now i once was interviewing someone in the white house and the president was leaving at the moment ago on the helicopter in my interview was interrupted as i stood at the window just to watch the president for 15 seconds and then he came back and finish. that story typifies to me the love affair that staffers have. they just want to see the guide. has this love affair changed them? has the process that they have gone through, do you think it is change them? >> well, absolutely. the book is really a story of

transformation, and i think there is a lot of political education in -- involved in that and there is a lot of them becoming more sure in their roles in more sophisticated and better attuned to the ways of washington and then i think there is a kind of loss too because part of the reason that the obama's were so interesting in 2008 were all the ways they resisted political culture and all the reasons they wanted to do things their own way. there was once a barack obama who refuse to wear the little flag repel -- lapel pin because he said, never in these words, this is kind of cheesy, right? that barack obama is you know, that was several versions ago. your question about whether the insular nature of the white house and the deference that step has for them, that i think

is an interesting question. you know what the first lady, people in the white house to say that people can be very hesitant to confront her. but then there are people who say you know, that is completely wrong and as long as you approach things in a logical way, that is fine. >> there is a pattern in every white house i have ever covered at the president is always afraid of confrontation and firing people and the first lady is not. is that a pattern that adheres here? >> so much so and i agree with you that the history is so consistent that it is beginning to seem to me that, and there are exceptions here but it seems like you almost cannot be president without a spouse who is willing, right, to be vigilant, tough and to really watch your back.

>> one of the great mysteries of american media was held barbara bush got the reputation of a kindly old grandmother. >> i have to tell you, think one of the greatest profiles ever written, this is really sending you guys back to the archives but i have to give a shout-out to marjorie williams because her profile of barbara bush in "vanity fair" that she wrote, this was in the first bush administration, is one of the great great classics and lyrical journalism. >> marjorie williams, think she is passed away but she had two collections of books which are available. definitely work worth reading if you care about this stuff. they grow profile where she walked around the house, and certain parts of the house were on the record and certain parts were off the record. that table is off the record in that table is on the record. fantastic. let's continue with this theme of the insularity which you

mentioned. the rule but i think you said she had, no new friends. >> i think you belong to both of them and they establish their rule in 2004 when he became famous and reiterated that. >> is that a good rule? >> well, we see its benefits and its harm. on the one hand, they have this really close nurturing group of friends from very similar backgrounds. african-americans from chicago, very similar pattern coming from working-class families, all went to elite universities and did extremely well and all these people ended up in hyde park together and really bonded together. on the one hand, they have had the smart recently detected function for the obamas. i love hearing the descriptions of the obama's around their friends because the obama's are

different. they let their guard down and they are relaxed and they are loose and they are funny and they say the things you can't say in public any more. it does become an issue in the presidency because, you know when i interviewed lots of members of this group, first of all they are really, they don't want to talk to the president about his job. they say that they only raised when he does, and they'd also, they have such a perfect understanding amongst each other. they are from these really, they are from these really special backgrounds and they have had a unique set of life experiences but it's almost like the understanding among that group is so perfect that sometimes has a journalist when i have talked to them it was almost like they couldn't believe that in outsider you know, could understand them. and it does become an issue in

the presidency that the president and the first lady are not reaching out a little bit more in washington. one thing i found a little surprising is that they have never had the clintons to dinner. at least a couple of months ago when i last checked and you know that is obviously a confiscated relationship for a lot of reasons. but it speaks to a fairly introverted approach to the presidency. >> well, what is the relationship between barack obama and hillary clinton? you mentioned at the 50th birthday party you have a phrase that they had become warmer. warmer from what? >> you know the way most people in the white house describe that relationship is kind of two professionals on their best behavior. but you know there is always this sense too that it the fraught relationship is between barack obama and bill clinton.

the philosophic and especially if you are going to talk about barack obama's objections to politics. some of those are his objections to clintonism which he, starting back in the '90s in chicago, you know he is a critic of clintonism and a critic of the ways of doing things. i think that is part of by the way their relationship with rahm emanuel is difficult. it would be tempting do you know just describe it as these two totally different guys who of course work very well in some ways together and then had some real complexities to their relationship. but i think part of it is that a manual was in the clinton white house and that is how it does business and it is not how barack obama does business. >> if you want to see someone in the administration's farm say, who's smarter? and they will answer, i can tell you what they think. what about valerie jarrett?

what was her role? >> her role was really complicated and fascinating. valerie jarrett is an old friend of the obamas from chicago. she is there mentor. she really helped them get started politically in chicago, and she made in a way a transition as a real estate executive in chicago. she did have some city government experience to going and being a senior aide in the white house. you know, the theme of this book in a way is what is public and what is private in the presidency? valerie is a great -- her role there really captures how complicated it is because on the one hand she is a senior adviser in the west wing and she has got this outreach portfolio of her on and on the other hand she is one of the president and first

lady's closest friends. she often represents michelle obama's views in the west wing. she is also the highest level african-american in the obama senior circle so she is often responsible for matters of race. and you know, this was true in the presidential campaign and still true in the white house, she was kind of a newcomer to national politics and came from a very different perspective. in my reporting i have seen the tremendous, it's funny because some people in washington talk about valerie as a hanger on and i don't see her that way because i think she has given the president and first lady so much. she would run in front of a truck for them and she almost seems necessary to this transition they are going through. from 2004 to 2008, you know their daily decisions are more

than two people can deal with and she is helping them transition. but at the same time, in the west wing she is sort of constantly under suspicion because she is such a close friend and people are afraid that she is reporting back to the obamas and some aides say she does and some aides say she doesn't. it's not clear where she fits in the system and the thing though i think about valerie's story that is important to remember is that the president chose to bring her there so there is this very intent low up with robert gibbs and he is frustrated with michelle obama and the leader said he misdirected his rage and it was really at valerie. but i think the real significance of that story is the president that he could have a very nontraditional management structure, and not really a traditional, untraditional management structure but brought

his best friend into the equation and that becomes very complicated for all of them. >> you mentioned how ambivalent they are about politics and mary b. valerie jarrett is too. some people in the white house or complete political creatures. do you think there is an invisible wall or is there a tension or ambivalence between the ambivalent political creatures and the political animals they have hired just to do the job? >> well, i guess part of the answer to me is the change you have also written about which is that after the midterm elections, we suddenly see this white house become so much more overtly political. not that they have ever not been political. we don't want to be naïve about it, but the president who early in the presidency is much, wants to be authentic and do things his own way and has this kind of vision for how he is going to be different from other residents

in some ways becomes a much more conventional politician and you know, and some of it comes out in such outward ways, like we talked about the super bowl party where he does not want to schmooze. by the end of 2010 he is no longer watching the game during these kind of watching the sporting social events they have in the other thing is even the team that he roots for change. early in the presidency the first super bowl after they got to the white house, the pittsburgh steelers were playing and he always loved the steelers because of all of those great stories about the glory days of the 70s and the roomies, the family that owns the steelers in pennsylvania and it's an important time for him. he is a real sports fan and he is not going to find a neutrality. then we see two years later in the white house after he has been beaten up in the midterms, that totally changes.

he says he is going to remain neutral in the super bowl and there is a game and a lost there. on the one hand he really understands that this is what it means to be president. you don't want to trash an entire state's football team and on the other hand, you know, there's something very appealing about the old barack obama who does not want to give himself over entirely to this. >> i was in a session and there were a bunch of us sitting with senior administrative officials and obama comes in the middle sort of as a surprise, though it's a routine now it's not a surprise and we are having this high-minded discussion about some policy and he comes in like he is vince lombardi. he's a very competitive, one of the most competitive persons i've ever met. another thing i've wanted to ask you about is he is almost one of the most confident people.

do you think that has maintained or do you observe the same thing? >> well, part of the change, i think we have seen is that there are moments pretty recently read that confidence seems to have diminished. i'm thinking of the debt limit crisis. you know there are some insight reporting said the book about this phone for president was in but you saw it on tv. he is at these press conferences and the guy is just so incredibly frustrated with what is happening. the aides say that in meetings, he was upset about what had happened with the triumph of the tea party and also about, and i think things have changed now

but over the summer i think it was really hard for him to deal with the loss of support from 2008 and beginning a campaign that felt so very different. he did say that he seemed kind of sad and that he felt really misunderstood. part of the question for 2012 that we are all watching is assimilating this and rebooting the original vision for what he was supposed to be is gone now. he has to come up with a kind of affirmative vision of where he wants to take the country that still is realistic. realistic enough to be persuasive. >> do you see a process, i can't remember when you stop reporting this but do you see a process of that happening? >> well, i definitely think that the whole, we can't wait strategy, has restored some

morale to the white house and they are also telling a much more coherent story than they were, especially economically and it was clear that they were very void by weakness and confusion in the republican field. the hits that romney has taken in the fact that they were kind of beating up from the behind-the-scenes seems to have contributed to that, but i haven't yet heard, haven't yet heard him, and tell me if you have, barely articulate why he he wants another four years in a way that is truly stirring and convincing? >> they are thinking about it. but i agree. you have i would almost call it poetry and i mean that as a compliment. i don't think they have achieved a message the same hope and change message that they have been as finished reading the

book they can do that. we will have questions on the floor florida we have microphones here. one remarkable one is their kids come everyone who has any contact with their kids say they are absolutely tremendous kids, completely untouched by all of this. how have they done that? >> well, i think that the sheer force of michelle obama's protective power does have a lot to do with it. she was always intensely committed to motherhood and an intense mother. even back in chicago, the chicago friends say this is not the mom who was like sitting in the soccer stands with a latte gossiping. this is the mom who stood on the sidelines and said, this is what is going on with malia's defensive footwork. you know, so we are talking about, i may just remember almost everybody who runs for

president and their spouses, these people are much more competitive than the rest of us generally and i think she has always been a pretty intense mom but then i think when they won the senate campaign and also the presidency, she poured the full force of her conviction and personality into making sure their lives were structured normally and this is where marion robinson comes then, her mother. marion robinson has refused every media request. oprah wanted to have her on and she said no, no, no, i like being able to anonymously go to the basement on connecticut avenue just north of the white house and she said, everybody there just thinks i'm another little old lady who works in the mansion.

[laughter] meaning like everybody thinks i am the housekeeper and in fact she is the first lady's mom. what i found in my reporting is that in a way, she has to do that because she is malia and sasha's ticket to freedom. their parents can't like take them to go get a cupcake in georgetown after school or whatever. she is the person who can do that. >> i should say that it has closed in connecticut. actually now that we are in the subject one of the themes running especially through michelle obama's story is luxury. so there's the question of whether she should appear on the cover of vogue. there is the story you tell where she is at a soup kitchen and she is handing out things and she is wearing a 500-dollar sneakers from france.

who buys 500-dollar sneakers and what is that about? does she have a genuine taste for luxury or is it just something that is fun? >> she says a couple of things. you know, what she said to neighbors in chicago when her husband was starting to become famous and she was starting to come to washington, she would basically say if i have to go on and getting a new dress out of it. and you know, and so i think it's a compensatory pleasure she has to do this. this is one of the fun parts. i think it's armor. she has said looking good gives me confidence to go out in public life and also you know, she is so aware of the power of the image in a way that i'm not even sure that her husband is. she is highly attuned to both the pressures in the possibilities of being the first

african-american first lady and what she is up against is so big. when she had image problems in the 2008 campaign when she was -- is an angry black woman, the advisers to do a little image makeover on her and in a way one of them described to me later was that we are just going to make her more like the mom on the cosby show. that line really struck me as i said to myself, wait a second, in this country are we so low on positive, warm, loving accomplished images of africa net american women, do we have so few famous african-american women who are not sports or entertainment celebrities that they have got to haul mrs. cosby, who is a a fictional character and b hasn't been on television for 25 years or something, like this is the model they have to turn to.

so anyway, so mrs. obama, the vogue story is really about her wanting to represent for young girls to see an african-american woman on the cover of vogue. the fascinating thing is that, not specifically the folk thing but other areas like that, robert gibson was so concerned about that because he saw the economy and bonuses and he really became concerned about that. >> two more topics and then we will go to questions. this is equally shallow but this is something i've always wondered about. when you get this close to somebody as i have read in this is about barack obama's actual basketball abilities. [laughter] you describe a game, in fact it was his 49th birthday where he invites like all these nba stars. they put the different all-stars on different teams, combination

of pro-athletes and hangers on and lebron james is on the third, the c team and he is saying i am on the seib team? who is on a and b? he allegedly, barack obama allegedly wants his people to play as hard as they can. did he really keep up at that level, a 50-year-old guy? >> he wins the entire tournament [laughter] >> that is not an answer. >> while exactly but i think he goes, remember the story he told a couple of minutes ago about the time he ran the white house in the guy stood by the president for 15 seconds just that he could have the proximity? it's the same issue because our people treating the president like a normal human being and forgot he was president and about that birthday party i asked michael who helped organize the game, i said well if you know, what is the deal with him winning this and higher thing, because we know he is a

good basketball player. but i mean come on, lebron james. so he said, look, it was the president's birthday, nobody is really playing their hardest defense on him etc., etc.. >> this reminds me of a story when he was running maybe for the first time, he was from north carolina obviously and north carolina won the national championship one year and the next year the point guard for the teams the tar heels played in one-on-one and he told me, and you know i beat him. no you didn't. you cannot beat that guy. he always believed him and that always disturbed me. [laughter] that is a segue into the final subject which is really a summation which is really about the souls of people who art in this freakish or come stance and i want to start with edwards because i think you and i met on a bus on jan at short -- john

edwards bus and elizabeth in their two kids who were doing a similar story to this really. there was a case and what was weird about that episode, and i guess it was the second time we -- he rand was that the parents disappeared in the middle of the day and the kids were sort of laughed. i went bullying with them, but there is a case where you would say the marriage was all about the public. maybe you disagree. this seems to me, this is what the obamas are trying not to do. and so if you could just have some thoughts and then we will go to questions for the floor. the soul with people under the brutality of politics, the glare of publicity, the falseness of universal love. do you think their spiritual lives are still healthy? is there any religion in their spiritual lives we should ask in this room? how do you evaluate that? >> it's a great question because

you know, religion, like marriage, is something that, there has been kind of this context about whether it is a public or private thing for them. when barack obama first ran for president he really put his religiosity out there. june 2006 he is making this call to renewal speech and telling people he is going to be the democrat who can win over evangelicals. how is he going to do that? he is going to write this book and title it after a sermon by his pastor named jeremiah wright and we all know what happened, how that story and so religion is after the jeremiah wright affair something the obamas try to take back into the private sphere, something they discuss a little bit now but not that much any more. they don't want to showcase the washington church that they are going to join. i guess, you know if i'd have

saved once said something that really stayed with me and what he said was, once you put some part of your personal life like religiosity, out there for people, and what he meant was when you market it a little bit politically, can you ever take it back? can you ever truly put it back into the private sphere? and what is so interesting about what is happening now with the obama marriage is they are really putting it out in the public sphere because the president's personal ratings are much higher than his ratings on the handling of the economy. one of the things that his advisers are resting in and 2012 on is the appeal of the obama union and the obamas have learned how to go out there together in public and you know do this kind of public political performance together that has an

authenticity. you saw the meeting in the oval office and in this book where they discuss it. it is designed to earn votes and so i think i don't know that i can answer it definitively for them. but you are asking i think exactly the right question, which is sino can something be shared with the world so totally and used for political gain and then can you take it back and make a private, entirely private again? >> if i if i could add to max and simon opinion, i've personally believe that his upper peril and the second and thing i will say -- >> what his upper peril? >> putting anything up for -- what happens when reticence is surrendered? finally i will say it white eisenhower his last day in office he was asked, do you think the press corps has been fair to you and dwight eisenhower said, i don't think there is anything a reporter

could do to hurt me. that is absolutely the right attitude. and i'm not sure for this president who is the first president who surfs the web at night and the reaction to this book i'm not sure that is the attitude they have taken but it is certainly one they should take. quite an admiring and complicated portrayal of the obamas. let's go to the floor. one of the mics in the aisles. >> hi jody. how are you? >> i am great. >> what do you think michelle will about barack to do after the presidency? >> that is a fantastic question and i think a real source of suspense because, as she has discussed and there is more reporting in the book on that, the quality has been a real issue in the obama marriage. the best question i have ever a see there than by far is -- and

my colleague helped me write this question. it said how is it possible to have an equal marriage when one person is president and you can go read the answer in "the new york times magazine." but basically the president could not answer the question and he ended up saying, my advisers care a lot or about what michelle thinks than what i think. so, you know i think that there is a real question, especially since, you know this is the clinton history too, right? that bill clinton after his presidency decided it was sort of hillary's turn. i don't think michelle obama will ever run for public office. i'm on record saying if she ever runs for public office i'm going to eat every page of this book, but i do wonder whether in some sense it will be her turn to decide on the next step in their future. >> if i could interject, i'm reminded of one story in the bush a senior staffer who are on

his state visit to england and george w. bush was bored. he wanted to sneak around the palace just to check it out. [laughter] and he said to this guy, let's get out of here. i want to sneak around in laura said don't you dare move. he had to decide, do i obey the president or the first lady? [laughter] he said he stayed there. >> i was wondering if you could talk more about barack obama's relationship with rahm emanuel and how that affected his presidency and now he is starting on his third chief of staff's inability to find a chief of staff that he can clearly relate to has that affected his ability to accomplish things? >> i'm glad you asked partly in fact because david probably has his own perspective on his -- this issue. it would be interesting to contrast it. so, what i would say is that the

partnership with the manual was always strategic from the beginning. there was never any pretense that these two men were exactly alike or have the same philosophies, but the president had a very ambitious legislative agenda and -- so the first, for the first yearly, maybe nine months of the presidency when the legislation is really moving ahead, it works pretty well. there are some managerial problems that rahm emanuel has. he can be quite abusive and that has a real affect on the white house. a lot of white house aides told me there were things that just did not come to him on because they were worried he would low up at them so it had an inhibiting fat on him as a manager. also in fairness there was not a clear management structure where everybody reported exactly to him, but the real stress comes around the time that scott brown

wins that seat betsy because even though they squeak health care through the obama presidency becomes less of like this forward legislative drive and it becomes something else and at the same time the midterm elections are coming up. that puts tremendous stress on the relationship because emanuel had been the chair of the dccc and his life's mission before becoming chief of staff was getting democrats in congress, especially in these kind of competitive districts, and keeping these people in congress and yet you know in the presidency kind of have a different agenda. you have got to make members of congress take really hard but for example i mention immigration is a sore subject. one of the really sore subjects between them was that the president really wanted to push for immigration reform even though there was no legislation on the table.

that was a really big problem for emanuel in the summer of 2010 because he was acutely feeling his vulnerable democratr states. so the relationship did eventually become quite complicated and quite strained. david axelrod even by the summer of 2010 felt that roman, interestingly once emanuel started to run for mayor of chicago the relationship improved. was almost like the burden and the strains of the relationship lifted somewhat. >> i would just add that i wrong national nightmare of having a non-jewish chief of staff is over. [laughter] going back to josh bolten. >> given this setting i have a confession. i've not read your book yet.

>> it is for sale. >> i'd like you to comment on something i read or heard and that is that you did not interview barack or michelle. >> every journalist for every story -- the. >> is that true? >> well yeah. i've interviewed them over the course of writing about them in and i had an interview with him in 2009 and when i started this project, i was there with my publisher. i didn't know exactly how much access we were going to get and i pushed for interviews throughout. they eventually said no, but what i really found in the reporting is that their friends and aides were able to tell all kinds of stories that the president and first ladies just don't tell. if you have seen the way michelle obama gave interviews. yesterday was a real exception. usually she does a limited interview on a subject of childhood obesity for 20 minutes at a time etc., etc. and one

thing i feel basically i write profiles for living for the times in one thing i do believe in very strongly is that you can't practice access journalism, meaning you can't wet weather or not some people talk to you govern whether or not you are going to write about them because none of these candidates were these leaders really want to talk to journalists that much any more. if you are with him giving interviews -- max you you are giving interviews and they are giving interviews that are less and less in depth than they used to be so you can't let the question of whether or not somebody will sit down with you for 20 minutes control the entire story. >> i know you touched on this earlier about how you were surprised about the white house reaction, and you know i saw you on "the today show" and he said that they had not really disputed any of the facts, but

since then they have, especially with the halloween party saying that they didn't try to cover it up. they point to all the media coverage of the party and what not. what is your response to that? >> so the halloween party situation is this and "the washington post" actually did a great story about this a day or two ago that is entirely correct. just to give everybody the context, this was in the fall of 2009, the first halloween in the white house. and so there was an outside component to the party. it was a lot of washington area schoolkids who were trick-or-treating and the president and first lady were there and there was a reporter. the king -- thing they kept quiet was the party inside the white house and it was a pretty flashy party. they had tim burton and johnny depp there. they were doing their "alice in wonderland" thing. you know i think this is an area where the coverage in a way has been very distorted as the "new

york post" made it sound like it was this you know, for kids or something. they were actually doing a pretty nice thing. the kids were people since serving in the military but the white house was very nervous about anything that was seen as to hollywood into flashy so they kept the inside party very quiet. they did not distribute photos of that. ..

that's what they've said and what people have told me they are worried. a couple of white house people told me they are worried about my book itself and sort of sensationalized coverage of stuff that i've described accurately. >> i want to announce we have time for three more, so one here -- >> okay. great. >> you spoke about the transformation that obama made to accepting it a little bit more and operating in that style more, which is kind of the same moment his legislative agenda kind of stalled because scott

brown and everything else if he is reelected did he see this continue the transformation continuing to happen and on the political side of things do you think that that can contribute to him maybe being more effective publicly? she's been seen as the kind of weak competitive to the congress, so do you think that that transformation can -- >> i think you are asking the right question because i think a very big question i have the president is procreative his conception of the presidential power is both because of legislative and economic circumstances and so more

expensive sense of personal power - and that is why it is an unexpected contrast i think that is developing in my reporting with the first lady because the first lady doesn't have any officials power because he has to be extremely creative in a way in terms of establishing influence over the public. so i can't answer for you how he's going to do that but i think you are asking the right questions. >> with this transformation that you are talking about from being very personal and authentic to being more politicized and more political as a person do you think voters as they are today are going to be turned on by the ability to kind of take control

or the seeming ability to take control and make change or is it going to sort of alienate the young and maybe the a political voters that came to the forefront in his first time are now? >> that's a good question because i remember you wrote a column around the spring of 2010 when he was becoming much more overtly political, and i can't remember the specific example but i remember him giving the st. patrick's day thing where he went to meet with john boehner and he actually went over to capitol hill for the st. patrick's day luncheon and tells this jolly st. patrick's day story about how out might we are such good friends and i was like whoa, you know, i've been covering this guy for a long time and it doesn't sound like him, and so i think part of what he has to do is find a way to

satisfy the political requirements but in a way that is authentic to him and like you say appeals to the people who found him to be an original and unique place in american political life. >> thank you both for coming. i feel like everyone is almost asking the question i wanted to ask. i also wanted to ask about obama's political instincts because my impression of him is he's very intellectual like a law professor in how he approaches policy issues, and i was wondering -- you also see some stories in the news questioning what is the obama doctrine kind of looking for the common thread policy wise and so i was wondering if you could just talk about how he approaches policy issues and in particular his relationship with

very publicized aids like rahm emanuel who might be looking more towards the political affect. >> the thing i saw in the story about immigration reform is about how frustrating the kind of irrationality of politics can be for him because the story in the book is that he wants to give immigration reform a push around june, 2010. he gets the speech in july and emanuel thinks it is a terrible idea for the reason mentioned but he really wants it to happen, and it seems not only with this but with a series of problems with him there is a series of problems in the world that have very rational solutions on the table, but those things are not -- the solutions and are not happening

for the political reasons like immigration reform there's been a consensus in the country for pretty much in years about what is basically a reasonable solution to fixing our immigration system, basically revamp the system so it is more fair and less capricious, using better enforcement but you also allow people a legal way in and republicans have agreed on that in the past as well, but it's not happening for public of reasons. another example that is totally different is the israeli-palestinian conflict because the same way there has been a road map for peace in the israeli palestinian conflict for ten, 20 years now. maybe the border goes here and maybe the border goes here but everybody basically knows what a potential deal would look like and it's not happening and it can happen for political reasons and, you know, talking to the white house aides and watching

the president even talk about that on tv i think that it's hard for him because he's such an analytical person and he sees the solution to these problems is no mystery, and yet somehow we can't make it happen. >> thank you. the book is the obamas. the author is

this event was held at politics and prose in washington. >> let's get started. on one of the founders of politics and prose, and this evening we are going to have an interesting evening. we have here dr. justin frank who is a widely known expert on psychoanalysis. he practices psychoanalysis. and he previously has a book called bush on the couch which he came here for, so now he is

to make things balanced he's got obama on the couch this time and i want to emphasize first of all dr. frank is a psychoanalyst. he's not a political analyst and a second of all he had neither president bush or president obama maudine on his couch. dr. frank is a critical professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral medicine, beagle science at george washington university. after studying obama very closely, the public face of obama dr. frank has reached the conclusion president obama has

obsessive bipartisan disorder, and is a neurosis of his. his dream of bipartisan unity. but i just want to be consensus this evening and bring one other perspective into the discussion. i just happen to be reading last night a new biography of eisenhower because the author is coming in all of a sudden on eight ran across what they are saying about eisenhower that the quest for balance was a feature of the eisenhower administration and in the bill when saudi

merely mean -- he is quoting eisenhower here when i referred to the male way to beat -- mittal way i mean as it represents a practical working basis between extremists, both of whose doctrines are flatly rejected. so, as i said, i want to find out this evening might eisenhower's strength is obama's neurosis. [applause] succumb here is dr. frank to tell us all about it. [applause] >> into very much for this lovely introduction and first of all, since i am a psychoanalyst and not a political analyst, i will not predict who is going to win in 2012. but i will say that what makes

obsessive bipartisan disorder a disorder is pre-empting discussion of the book in a way but what makes it a disorder is that it becomes the driving factor in everything he thinks and does so he ends up, obama incipit negotiating with himself before he even negotiates with republicans. that's one reason it is a problem and the second reason is he thinks and we will get into this a little bit later today, he thinks that he can reason with people who actually are not interested in reasoning with him. they are only interested in defeating with him and making him a one-term president said he has a fantasy that he can reason with them and if he gives them what they want a will be doubled to get along and that is what makes it a neurosis. the thing about eisenhower

reminds me of something i wasn't prepared to talk about eisenhower in particular but in the 1956 during the second election, they were talking a lot about segregation and integration if you remember all that or if you have read about all that, and stevenson said he thought integration and the south should take place gradually. and a southern democrat said he thought it should take place moderately and eisenhower proposed a compromise between the extremes. [laughter] so that's my view on the eisenhower. i wrote this book really because

obama was a man who blazed across the national scene in 2004. i had heard of him before 2004 because my son was a student at the university of chicago and he called me up one night after a speech when obama was still a state senator. ..

everybody who is elected will be different from how they are when they run for office but, and you can't keep all your promises but in his case it seemed like he was even more different than that, especially when it came to issues about negotiations. issues about appointments. issues about backing down on guantanamo closing et cetera. and also people he hired to work before him at the beginning which were a lot of wall street experts who worked for the clinton administration and part of the economic disaster that had been happening. so i dieded i would -- decided try to figure out what that is about and what

that came from so i started reading and one of the things that happened actually during the primary when i was not thinking about a book at all, a colleague of mine suggested i read, "dreams from my father". it is one of the great books. i adored it. it was a good being book about coming of age as adolescent ever, certainly, as a nonfiction book although some people might think it is fiction. and so i decided that not only would i work by studying obama as a president, his behavior and look into his past and i would try to do a more intensive textual analysis of the book. i spent a lot of time reading the book, rereading the book, going over differentñi segues from one scene to another. things that i thought were blind spots in the book that

were left out of the a lot of times i thought something was left out and three pages later there it was and it wasn't left out and what i decided to do really was look very closely at who he is and who he thinks he is and what his efforts are to understand himself and basically in the simplest ofçó terms there's a couple of things that people just already know. one of them is that he is, was a biracial child of a mother who was a child herself. she was 18, who had a black face and was raised in a sea of white faces. his father left the home very early on in his life. was never really lived with them and then he also lived in several places. he lived in jakarta from the ages of six to 10. so he was back and forth. he was abandoned by a father. he was then taken away from a stepfather who was very

involved in, an indonesian man who the mother also met in hawaii graduate school and obamañr himself was called barry. he was extremely close to lolo and even talked about him in his autobiography was somebody like the ground. he was always there. there was something elemental and earth think about him. he was essentially someone who came from mixed race. came from two broken homes and then the thing that really struck me more than those things which sort of most people know a little bit was how absent his mother was from his growing up life and at the same time how present she was. so she was really intensely present when she was with him and intensely absent and not because she was a working mother but because she was really away. she was away for a long time. sometimes a year or two during his growing up years. so he really had this experience of this intense

relationship and then abandonment. he in a way had to deal with abandonment throughout his growing up in one form or another. and because of that he was extremely sensitive to ban don'tment and belonging to groups -- abandonment. he wrote about it fairly honestly. he wrote in a poignant moment how he shoved away a fourth grade girl classmate because people were saying, oh, she is barry's girlfriend and he said no, she is not. and dissed her and disconnected from her and he able to talk about that even talked about fear when he was older. he said he was never really afraid of being physically hurt even when he was in the middle of the projects in chicago. he talked about being afraid of not belonging to a group. that was his biggest fear, of not being connected. and row man sized families.

so here is a person who wanted to be in a family, who roman sized families and wanted to find ways for people to get along. he wanted to heal his internal self. we all do. why do you think a lot of people become psychoanalysts whatever we do, we try to heal things from our lives and past. he is not different from anybody else in that sense but he was dedicated to healing his internal self and he was very focused on communities. so he was a community organizer because he wanted to bring disparate communities together. it was very important to him. it was fundamental to him and he felt he could do it and that was his goal. he also wanted to marry into a, with a woman who had a real devotion to family. who would not ever leave her children. i thinkñi that he would never do to his children what his

father and was done to him by his stepfather but what his father did to him. so he made real vows inside himself to be different. to really make a difference both in his other than personal life and to make the difference in the world because he felt that people could get along much better than they did. one of the reasons he felt that people could get along better than they did started from early on in his childhood. and that is, that his mother wanted to make sure that he was proud of his black heritage and she wanted to make sure since his father was absent to know there was a lot to be proud of historically about the american civil rights movement and all of that. and so she spent a lot of time talking about these things. picture books. telling him stories. they talked about the civil rights movement, et cetera, et cetera but there was a story in particular that was

important that was told to him by her father and then corroborated by her. he calls his father gramps, grandfather gramps. and barack,, sr. were in a bar in hawaii and at that bar barack, sr. was the only black face in the whole bar and one of the people at theñr barmaid a racial slur and the entire bar became silent. barack, sr. walked over to the guy. everybody was frightened there was going to be a fight. you know how in like a western movie or something and, and, instead of having a fight barack, sr. started talking to this man about the dangers and of racism and how terrible it is to be racist. and that it is hurtful to the person who is the victim of the racism and it is also demeaning in the long run to

the racist himself. they become dehumanized themselves, they dehumanize themselves and he was very clear about that. in fact it was so convincing that at the end of this like half hour lecture, if you will the guy was so moved that he bought everybody a round of drinks and that was a story that young barack was told regularly growing up by his mother. and the interesting thing was that even though it is a myth because, you know, we don't know about it, after his father died about a year later he writes that he got a phone call from somebody who was at that bar and he said i have been trying to locate you and find out where you are. i just wanted to tell you this story how amazing your father was. he told him the exact same story the grandfather had said. now as a psychoanalyst i

think that may really corroborate things. as a scientist we have n of two but i think that might be enough in this case and it was convincing enough to him that the triumph of reason over hate and that hate is based on ignorance in not knowing the other person that the triumph of reason over hate is so great and so possible if you just stick with it long enough and, i think he really firmly believes that. and he still does. that a he is his strength and his downfall. i think that there's some chapters in here about that problem. i call them the a accommodate tore in chief. i table talk about him having obsession with bipartisan disorder. those are all qualities of his but he has other qualities that are, those qualities themselves are really, could be very strikingly powerful but the