expected. i really did not understand what it meant to be a public person so i had a few mistakes. just a regular kid so i was -- and i just got here from college so when the book came out, friend of mine, college buddy and i moved into an apartment and set up a telephone and i gave them my name, and the private number, and all of a sudden we started getting these calls, literally, 20, 30, 40 calls a day. we're like, oh, how are they doing that? and realize, because your famous. and realizing what does that really mean, and when "the new york times" magazine had a photograph of me on the front, and i was on the subway in new york, and one sunday morning, and i'm sitting there, and literally everybody looked up and i got on the train. just funny to me. i played around with it because

i'm a simple person, and i will replain that way. so it was interesting. >> host: from "radiance of tomorrow" it is in the end or maybe the beginning of another story. every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a girl, a child, every story. >> guest: i believe that strongly because i think, again, going to the -- story-telling, every story is a book. you start with something you're discovering and then at the end it's full green. so every story is really giving back to something, an idea, a thought, introducing people to new landscape, we're bringing them alive. but because every story is a birth and women give birth to all of news the world, so every story starts with that.

whether directly or indirectly, comes from that, and this is from the tradition of story-telling grew up being part of, and my grandmother being a very strong female character in my life, and philosophyer. she said, you'll understand ten years from now. so that's what this is about. >> host: what is sierra leone like today? >> guest: it's coming along. we put the war behind. officially ended in 2002, and since then a lot of development has been coming slowly. a lot of young people like myself are coming back and small businesses and people are going back home but the political -- the politics are still not the ones we want to be in terms of people who can really move this country forward. who can actually be at the service of the people and the country. so that is still a problem and

these are the reasons why the war started, because we didn't have a government that cared for the people. a very small country. so if somebody is really interested in shaping this country to be one of the best countries in the world, it can be done, but we have very -- leaders that care for themselves, and how wealthy they want to be, instead of actually serving the people. so we have to redefine the idea of leadership. it doesn't mean when you are in power you're the almighty but you're at the service of the public, public service, and not there to be a tyrant or to do whatever you like and to embezzle the funds. these are the problems we're having. but the country is very safe. we have one of the elections now with no violence at all so it's been -- seems like they're moving along slowly. >> host: do you still see a lot of amputees? >> guest: yes, that remnant of the war still exists. certain parts of the country that are very remote, which i

write about. place hasn't been rennovated because they're so remote. they're not in the capitol city where development usually happens first. so, yes, see a lot of people. a lot of people who are very dig -- dignified they have come to the terms with there's nothing you can do, and that's one thing i love about my people, they're very resilient, and without that we wouldn't have champ out of the war. >> host: the second book is coming out in january of 2014.

>> jonathan alter reports on the 2012 presidential election. this event from the commonwealth club in san francisco is an hour and 15 minutes. >> good evening, and welcome to tonight's meeting of the commonwealth club of california, the place where you're in the know. i'm professor of legal communications at san francisco state university, political analyst for cbs 5 and your moderator tonight. you can find us on the internet at commonwealth club.org or download the club's app for schedule information and pod casts of past programs. now it's my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker and columnist and writer, jonathan alter. an editor -- a writer and a

contributor to the bloomberg view. author of the new book we're going to be talking about "the center holds: obama and his enemies." mr. alter is a columnist and analyst and contributing correspondent you. have seen him on nbc and msnbc, former senior editor and columnist for news week where he work for almost 30 years, writing more than 50 cover stories, also written for "the new york times" "washington post," the "atlantic" and other publics and the author of other books, "the promise, president obama, year one. " the defining moment, and the triumph of hope and several "new york times" best sellers sellerd "between the lines" he is in my judgment one of the preeminent experts in this country on president obama and we are veer pleased and honored to have him here tonight to speak about his new book. our thanks to jonathan alter for

joining us. [applause] >> the floor is yours. >> thank you very much, joe. and thanks to everybody for coming. this feels like a homecoming for me. this is my third time at the commonwealth club, going back to 2006 when my book about fdr came out. and this has to be the most literal -- literate audience on my book tour. no disrespect to the other cities i've been to. but i didn't leave my heart in san francisco but i think my writer's heart belongs to you, after chicago, which is where i'm from originally, born and raised there. relevant perhaps for this evening is that i come from a political family in chicago, and my mother was the first woman

elected in cook county in the chicago area, 40 years ago, 1972, and when she was in public office and county office, she knew a young community organizer named barack obama who couldn't get his phone calls returned by the other politicians because he was nobody, and after she died, just five days after the 2008 election, and he was president elect, he had a few other things to do, but everyone else -- whatever else one says about him, he was very nice to our family, and remembered. so, some people like to say he doesn't have much gratitude and it's true he doesn't reach out to other politicians as much as he should, and i'm going to talk about that, but in my own personal case he did, and i met him about 11 years ago or so, and he was a state senator, and

was immediately impressed by his cockiness, i guess you can say. just lost for the house of representatives and he told me he was going to be running for the u.s. senate. and we were sitting shiva for my aunt who just died and is a friend of my cousin's, and i said to him, that's some chutzpah, running for the senate. but -- so i'm, as you can tell from the roosevelt book and other things i've written about over the years, i'm very interested in history, and "the center holds "has a lot of history. it tries to put the 2012 election in historical context as what i call a hinge of history. i covered nine presidential elections, and this to me was

the most important. every four years -- and 'ery rubino who covered many elections and covered ronald reagan others lexes and he can tell you this, every four years, one of the candidates would say, there's the most important election of my lifetime, and you go, yaw, because you're running. that's why you're saying that. and -- but i actually thought this one was. because this is not your father's republican party that was trying to take the white house. and we were in a moment where a lot, maybe all of the progressive accomplishments of the 20th century were on the line and these had become bipartisan accomplishments, social security and medicare and federal aid to education,

infrastructure, which had started out as a republican idea under abraham lincoln when the republican party was founded and teddy roosevelt began, and dwight eisenhower build the highways. this republican party didn't believe in that. they saw it as wasteful spending, trying to rebuild the country. so, the vice presidential candidate on the republican side, a devotee even now of ayn rand, the and his ryan plan was very reflective of that, and then had a stranglehold over the republican party, and to certain extent still does, a guy i went to college with, grover norquist, and he believes, as he is famous for saying, that government should be made so small that it could be drowned in a bath tub. so this was a big choice. a big choice election, and i

wanted to put it in some context, but there was also some personal history of some of the major players involved that made the series of stories i wanted to tell that are not known publicly, and one i wanted to start with actually begins on a pitch black night in the florida everglades, in 2005. and a car runs off the road and plunges into a canal, and the woman driving the car -- the car sinks to the bottom of the canal, and passersby stop. one tried to open the door and breaks his arm. and the screaming for help, and the 38-year-old man working at a motorcycle dealership nearby

hears the screams and he sprints to the scene, and he is told, she is again, dude. she's gone. and he ignores what the passers-by said and he jumps into the canal, and finally, after several dives, he manages to get the door open but then the woman is still strapped in with her seatbelt so he gets back up on the canal bank, somebody has a knife and he goes back down again and cuts the seatbelt. he freeze the woman, pitch black. and she floats to the surface and is revived, and then somebody yells, baby seat, baby seat. so the man dives down again, and he is feeling with his hands around in the back seat to see if there's a baby there, and fortunately there was no baby in the car, and the man was

decorated for heroism and insurance company also gave him an award. and seven years later, this man's name is scott prudey, was working as a bartender for a catering company in south florida, and he is told, along with the others working for the catering company, that bill clinton had been in the area recently for a fundraiser and had his picture taken with the help. so this particular event was for mitt romney, and he brought his camera along, and i think you know some of the rest of the story, but i tell it in detail, and i try to convey the motivation and it goes back to,

in some ways, that event in the everglades and at one point, after many hours of conversation, scott said to me, i learned that night that if you can jump in, you must jump in. and he was going to do what it took to prevent mitt romney from becoming president. and this was all in a class context because what actually really first enraged scott that night was not the comment about the 47% which came later in the 68-minute tape, but some very complimentary things that governor romney said about an appliance factory in china that he had invested in, and that romney said the young women there were being paid what romney called a pittance, 25 to a toilet, and prudey kept

waiting for romney to say, bought the factory and improved the working conditions, but romney never said that. so it struck him that he was, to this $50,000 a head crowd, was telling them, this was a good business opportunity, and as prudey thought, maybe they'll do this in ohio if this guy is elected. so, there's a lot more to that story, which -- and i don't mean to be a tease, but i need to move on a little bit. there's a lot more to that particular story. but just to give you a sense of the context historically, it actually wasn't the first time that the 47% were mentioned in a presidential campaign. 40 years ago, 1972, richard nixon did an ad in which he said that george mcgovern would make 47% of americans eligible

for welfare, and then the announcer says, that's right, 47%. so when i saw that, i kind of realized that these events take place along a historical continuum but we really haven't had many class-based arguments in our politics in recent elections. nixon believed in the politics of resentment. mobilizing middle class. he had a hard hat, construction worker, meddle class resentment against the poor. and rich versus poor, or rich versus middle class, really began, i would argue, in actually 1896, which is william mckinley against william jennings bryan, and public

kinly's campaign manager is mark hannah, who is karl rove's role model. not a joke. i actually discussed it with karl rove. hannah went around to all the biggest corporations in america at the time and got huge donations and crushed brian with money, and hannah was famous for saying there are two things that are important in politics. money, and i can't remember what the second one is. so this election, 116 years later, was partly about that. you had a fellow on the republican side who gave $100 million, one person. and i spend quite a bit of time in the book explaining how the

obama campaign used digital technology to win. i think everybody knows they did, but i wanted to explain how they did. but to me one of the most interesting figures after they were able to increase their online fundraising tenfold over a three-or four-month period, it turn out that the average obama donation was $66, and the average romney donation, while spencer's wit, romney's treasurer, wasn't exactly sure when i asked him about it, but he said it was over $1,000 per person. so, this was a 99% versus, you could argue, man depicted as a poster boy of the top one

percent kind of election, but it also was an election that in some ways the one percent probably some have won. not just because it seemed at the beginning like they would have much more money. but because the economy remains sluggish, and on election day, for the first time, a president was re-elected when the country thought we were on the wrong track. there's right track, wrong track numbers. and that was the kind of wind that barack obama was sailing into. a year before the election, nate silver, who became a security blanket for liberals, he said that -- he wrote a cover story,

"is obama toast. "i "and he said that if the economy didn't improve very much, and turn out it did improve some -- he had a 17% chance of being re-elected. excuse me. so, there's a little bit of an inclination now, and couple of the reviewers who say, i like this book a lot, very good, but he makes it seem like it was a suspenseful election. obama won by -- it was pretty suspenseful there toward the en, and actually bill clinton, i have a scene in any book where bill clinton calls up romney after the election and says, you know, i thought you were going to win until hurricane sandy. now, clinton has been known to blow some smoke up people's you know what but there was some real concern, and romney himself

didn't even prepare a concession speech. paul ryan was so sure that they were going to win that on the night before the election, he said to -- that his only real concern was would he have to resign his house seat right away after he became vice president elect. so we wanted kind of a legal reading on that, on what the constitutional interpretation was, a little ambiguous, and then when they told him the next evening he lost, he was completely stunned. and even the president at the fairmont hotel, at 12 minutes after 11:00, my network, nbc, called the race for obama, and valerie jarrett, about whom i have a whole chapter in the book, says, you won! and the president says, i'll

believe it when i hear it on fox. [laughter] so somebody might know i'm in a little spat with roger ailes over a fox i have called "fox nation." but there was a kind of a -- you remember what happened with karl rove that evening. the whole back story to that i tell in the book. you remember that there was a sense on the right that they were in tune with the real america and this is something -- it's understandable why they would think that because the obama coalition, young people, black, latinos, women, gays, this coalition in 1972, in the mcgovern campaign i was talking about, carried one

state. this time won the election by more than five million votes but there was this kind of a sense that -- and i think some people still had the sense that little middle america is conservative and these groups that i mentioned are kind of just visiting. they're not the real america. and i would maintain that now after the last few presidential elections, this is the real america, and there's a minority of americans who are obstructing the will of the majority. so that's where we are now, and for kind of disspiritted progressives, i would just offer a thought experiment. imagine if romney was president now. if romney and ryan had won.

and there were a lot of ways it could have gone that way. for instance, if scott prudey had not turn on his camera, it's unlikely that obama would have had a seven point lead going into the dollarsous first debate, and if he lost and it got stomped the way he did, which i have a chapter about, might have been very hard for him to catch up and, and a number of other factors that contributed to his victory. but imagine he lost and romney and ryan were president. the economy is improving. not as sharply as we all would hope, but it is significantly improving, and actually the deficit has gone down by $200 billion just in the last three or four months. it's now well below a trillion dollars. it's quite likely that the bulk of the ryan plan would have been enacted into law in the early

days of the romney administration, because the same way that obamacare was passed with 51 votes under an obscure senate rule that allows it for budget and tax related legislation. this plan would have very likely passed and actually somebody in the white house said he thought it would even get some democratic votes if romney won. this plan didn't cut budgets by five or ten percent like the sequestration. we're talking 30, 40, 50, 60% cuts, elimination of programs, planned parenthood and amtrak being only the best known of them. privatizing medicare, they proposed during the campaign. so, if this bill passed in the spring, and the economy is going up, what would people be saying

now? the press and -- they would say that, got rid of that jimmy carter, barack obama fluke, we got business friendly president, and passed legislation, slashed taxes for the wealthy, slashed regulation, slashed social programs. look, the economy is going up. cause and effect. things are coming back. just like ronald reagan. bringing things back. progressive ideas would have been discredited for a generation. so, whatever frustrations progressives have right now, i think they should look at the glass half full and say that the country dodged a bullet last year, and ryan plan went from being something that was a serious possibility to being a fantasy. repealing obamacare, which they did 31 times, they could repeal

it another 131 times and wouldn't make a bit of difference. the president has the veto pen until 2017. the demographics of the country continue to move in a progressive direction. so, are these obstruction issues and the problems that the president himself has in getting his agenda through and being as effective as his supporters would like him to be, and joe and i will talk about these. but something pretty big happened, and i just want to close with a couple of stories. from the -- toward the end of the book. so, some of you remember donald trump's offer to president obama, and the subtitle of my book is" obama and his enemies"

and i have quite a bit about the social pac billionaires and what i call the voter suppression project, which was an effort in 19 states, literally 43 states in 2011, to choke the election to the republicans by making it much harder for democratic constituency groups to vote and i have most complete account of this effort which bill clinton said was worse than we had seen in the jim crow south growing up, and it's a hairy story that i stumbled on this. but there was a backlash against it. and there were no blacks who voted in 2012 higher than in 2008. al sharpton said, blacks vote out of hope, and in 2012 out of

anger so the result was a comfortable victory, and all the fears about the post election turn out to be false. but you did have until the very end of the campaign, these people suffering from what sometimes is called obama derangement syndrome. people like donald trump, who are injecking themself -- injecting themselves into our politics in a way that helped obama. when he released his birth circuit, obama put the birth certificate as memorabilia, and he said i want my mugs. he knew he helped him. but nonetheless, it really helped -- it characterized part of this year.

so trump says, i'm going to give $3 million to the charity of president obama's choice if he releases his birth certificate, which he had already done a year earlier, his college transcripts-the-sub text of which is he is black and was an aaffirmative action -- and no and some other things that trump wanted released. so a couple of nights later, my wife's boss, steven colbert, -- everytime i mention this, the audience says, what is it that guy doing up there? where his wife to tell us some good colbert stories. so that evening, colbert says, well, i have an offer for donald trump. i will give $1 million from the

colbert superpac for a better tomorrow, tomorrow, to a charity of his choice, if he dips his balls -- excuse me -- i got the line wrong -- this is why i'm not the comedian -- if he allows me to dip my balls in his mouth, that's the only way to be sure that nothing else will come out of it. [laughter] >> so fast forward to after the election, and we have the kennedy center honors and steven colbert has been asked to introduce david letterman, and he is in a receiving line with the president that i've been in a few times but never had anything as exciting as what happened this time. and he says, congratulations,

mr. president. and the president says, well, thank you, steven. and thanks for the help of the colbert superpac, and colbert says we can't talk about that. that would be coordinating. so at the president says but we can talk about your offer to donald trump. and colbert -- there's a picture of this in my book, never been published before -- of obama laughing so loud he is falling into colbert. and colbert is a little uncomfortable about this because -- they have middle school age children and they hear about all this. just then michelle obama bombs over and says, we watched that video over and over and over again. [laughter] >> and to me that kind of told me that they -- there were a lot of times when they wanted to react, they couldn't react,.

without creating a dynamic that would harm them. but you can say that you should take the gloves off more often, especially right now. should be more confrontational, but there were a series of reasons why he didn't feel it was right for him to do that, and he is playing a longer game, and you can see that on a number of issues, and just to take one, for example, the gays in the military issue. so, in 2009, took a lot of heat. why not doing something about "don't ask, don't tell." a lot of people who made that criticism said that they thought he could just with a stroke of his pen end "don't ask, don't tell." they didn't realize that he actually had to have congress do it.

it wasn't like, say, harry truman desegregating the armed forces. so he had to play a clever game and instruct the military to take he lead so he had admiral mullin, chairman of the joint chiefs, testify, and he realize if he went out there swinging there would be more opposition, because everytime he is for something, even if people on capitol hill has been for in the past, they're suddenly against it. so he kind of quietly orchestrated it. it was a little bit like eisenhower's hidden hand presidency. but by the end of 2010, they had gotten this done. so the only reason i mention this is that there's frustration at the pace of change. today i think a lot of frustration that it looks like the immigration bill might get

blocked in the house and things that speaker boehner said, but something that president barack obama auld believed is this line he likes to quote from martin luther king, that there the ark of the moral universes is long but bens toward justice. what i want for him is to have him sink in pretty much everything that he does about how he will be remembered. so i'm very upset about this snooping on reporters, criminalizing of investigative reporting, ap reporters, fox news reporter, and other issues, and we can talk about the nsa and the rest of it if you want, but i do think that he is focused on the longer term, and his greatest hope for himself and i would argue, by extension, for the country, is that he is

remembered as something more than the first african-american president. and so there will be a series of stutter steps. it will frustrate people across the spectrum at various points. but i think we'll look back on this period as an exciting and important one in our national life. so, with that, thank you so much for listening. [applause] >> was i close to -- use, i think we have time -- i don't need this. >> give me the hook. >> well, i'll assume you can hear me. and i have to do that again. so, we thank jonathan alter, columnist, author of a new book you're all going to buy, and

it's now time for the audience questions. so we have a number of questions, i'd like to get to them. let me start with one of these. we were talking before the presentation tonight about a question a lot of people ask about the president, which is his general affect. in the book you write very interestingly about the first debate, and i think most of us here probably watched the first debate and if you were an obama supporter you were more mad at him than romney supporters because there was this sense he showed up but wasn't interested in being there. >> he didn't show up. >> he showed up but he wasn't emotionally in the game and this this is a criticism that has nagged him periodically, that he seems very withdrawn, emotionally distant, doesn't seem to care. there are people who look at the racial dynamic and wondered if this is enormous control he is exerting so he doesn't enact a

racial stereo type o just who he is. low drama obama, low blood pressure. so these a criticism that seems to follow him and it creates the impression it's a move from his personality to his ability to govern. you know him. who is the true barack obama. >> i think it's true, bill daly, the former chief of staff said, this is a guy who will never have a stroke. >> even with the cigarettes? >> well, he quit. he says he quit. i think he did. so i think part of it is the kind of hawai'i culture, hawai'i upbringing. part of it is his nature. doesn't go too high or too low. very competitive, you saw a very different obama in the second and third debate, but he is not a very good actor, and the

presidency is a theater, and he has resisted this kind of all along. never liked debates. never been particularly good at debates. he his real forte' is in meetings, people talk about being in meetings with him and how effectively he runs the meeting, and i have some of that in the chapter on bin laden. but he thinks debates are unrelated to the actual work of being president, and at one point in the debate prep, where, by the way, he was 0-6 against john kerry, playing mitt romney. and his debate coaches al told me that they were certain, virtually certain, he would lose the first debate. they were so terrified. >> what chenged.

>> this is obama, the three-pointer at the buzzer, and he actually said to his people, there's a scene in the book, he says, you know, i don't like debates. i'm not that good at them. i will win second and third debates. and he said to his friend, at the dnc, you guys remember that viral video of samuel l. jackson where he shows up in a family's house and says, i don't know this is c-span2 so -- >> wake the f up, he says, wake the f up,. >> i think with steven colbert we have already -- >> i think balls were okay for c-span but i don't know about the f-word. so wake the f up. so obama says to patrick, i didn't realize he was talking to me. he understood that finally took awhile but he understood how badly he blew it, and he -- when he puts his mind to something,

he can be good at it, and it was like a different person came out for the second and third debates. there will strategic mistakes they made. got some bad advice going into the first debate. but as you said, he just didn't come to play, and my wife called me -- i was in denver for the debates, and my wife called me afterwards and the said, did you notice -- i repeated this on chris matthews immediately -- my wife, did you notice what he said at the very beginning about his -- it was his anniversary and he said, sweety, i promise you, next year we won't spend our anniversary in front of 60 million people. and he was saying, i'd rather be out for dinner with you tonight than here. i hate this. i hate prep. i hate the whole thing. and conveyed that. loudly. in that debate. and you have to want it. he was in danger of blowing the whole thing. people are not going to elect

somebody who doesn't want it. didn't mean he didn't want to be president but was not willing to make a concession to theater of the presidency that is required. this is partly show business. he is right. at one point they said the moderator, who was the chief debate coach, there to prep with kerry playing romney and obama and he says, mr. president, 30 second ons infrastructure. and obama says, 30 seconds on infrastructure? and i need 30 minutes, and that kind of conveyed his attitude. also worry evidence that his disdain for romney would come through, and they're worried it would be like another hillary moment. he liked hillary, and he really respected her. he respected mccain. he did not respect romney and they were worried this would

come through. >> we haven't had a chance to talk about all of romney's screw glops -- screwups. >> you're not asserting that he disliked campaigning. >> no. >> he is good at campaigning. he didn't like debating. >> didn't like debating. >> how are they different? >> because one is a set piece. it's like going out on a -- >> didn't get 30 minute once infrastructure. >> he has given many speeches on infrastructure for 30 minute. he would have his stump speech but he likes meeting people. it's needy politicians, entitled donors, people who think because they have a lot of money that, therefore, what they're saying must be worth more than what somebody else is saying. toes are -- those are the people he doesn't like.

he likes meeting people. he didn't get the same energy that bill clinton does but he is very good at it when he sets his mind to it and in this campaign it energized and i was with him in the last couple of weeks. >> okay. we'll start talking about the republicans. ...

>> the people suffering from bush arrangement syndrome said bush knew about 9/11 in

abeyance. but lots of people who believe the president was not born in the united states come with their zero achievements that is true for reasons we can discuss they were not only on fox but the speaker was asked about it on the at the precedent that point he said this is getting in the way of government so this arrangement has worked its way into the campaign in a way that is harmful. and rummaged through his mother's items to find the

person to forget but it is very important to understand for the critics of obama to say that's everybody who hates him that it is for reasons related to raise. i don't believe that. but they're also not never related to race and they try to show how rush limbaugh has a history because he is on the radio every day not a lot of people who take time to write down what he says that when you pull it together, it is pretty chilling and it is expected considering he is the first black president at what they say about him and his wife are pretty much beyond the pale and i think that if he

had lost a lot of that would have been validated he would have been seen as a fluke or like jimmy carter after they would repeal obamacare the idea that obamacare was socialism not socialism but baker and bob gould plays and 1995. it was not and is not socialism mitt romney so many miss were also on the line in this election. >> so you give the name obamacare but there is a point where audience members new to this as well where there romney was using that

and at some point the president just accepted the label it may have spent one of the debates i don't remember. that i am proud of it which in some ways typical way some of the power but that was not the intention to call it obamacare that was also about a policy to make a personal to him as an extension of the earlier point. >> but earlier it is easier to run against a person than against a program to keep kids on your insurance until they're 26 because when they get out of the particulars of obamacare the whole idea

thinks it is critical to get the latino vote which is another fascinating story. but obamacare worked for obama but it was easier to stigmatize the whole thing he should've taken ownership of the fraser earlier also using it in my book tour of what used the affordable care after over and over? a it is associated with him and they think he is fine with that. >> host: you mentioned rush limbaugh are you afraid of him? >> guest: afraid? [laughter] he has attacked me many times over the years. i like him. ldc pronounces the name right.

[laughter] >> host: keep talking. you will sell some books for him. [laughter] roger ailes has claimed there are embellishments in your book. >> people can believe me or roger. [laughter] for instance to give one example, rogers told "politico" that he had never worked out of a supply closet but according to two sources that had to be confidential or there would be burned at the stake with to the office one day in said he was so sure the news corporation company was

busted he totally worked out of the supply closet because it is the only place he felt sick care iaid but murdoch told the meeting so he said i'd never worked out of the supply closet? but it is true that rupert thinks i am paranoid said basically just confirming the whole thing. [laughter] he tried to do that on this serious -- a series of other things but i think it is boring i'm happy to go through the critiques but i report very carefully. roger is a bully he can dish it out the he cannot take it any time somebody does

stand-up it is pretty common they could fall to pieces when it happens and that is what happened to. >> to take you down a different path, some critics might say that you appear to like the president is that your objective as a journalist? >> i wrote a column this is important that people keep this in mind i may political commentator and columnist i have been paid to express my opinion and they do believe most good books have a point of view if they don't they will not be terribly interesting but having said that both in knight earlier obama of book and my fdr

book fair is a lot of criticism of the president called the not so great communicator about some of his inadequacies to work with congress in the more inclusive witches of problem for him and obstruction is a huge part of this, so i get frustrated people who have read the books that says you just apologize for obama if you want to read the whole book that is why they are entitled to their opinion but i don't like people making that assumption. >> i did read the book and i think that is fair and there is a difference between writing an editorial columns

i remembering 1988 tim atwater were responsible you know, what i am talking about not making it liberal a bad word. >> i believe in the sovereignty of fax and this book is very, very heavily reported sunday that has not been reported before i cannot give the money back guarantee but what you just said about roger ailes is not true he was not involved but by somebody else to work for one of the of the republicans. >> he put together and add that did not mention willie horton foote the bush campaign with sales did but

only one prisoner walking through was african-american that made contact with the camera really one that committed rape or murder. >> battle is part of the campaign they said they mentioned willie horton. >> you cannot say he made the ad when it was not about him that makes it highly objectionable i'm quibbling because i want people to understand getting these details right. >> you would carry a willie horton in a your mind but my point is you don't have that in your background ailes was clearly on the other side which to me comes from a different background than

someone in journalism the whole time see cannot even begin to compare the two of you is what i am trying to say. [laughter] >> felt that is not a bad candid comment. [laughter] >> there is no comparison. >> thank you. >> for what's that if -- for what that is worth. >> let's go to the social movement to what extent teasing the senate candidates rehab -- have the reverse coattails defect that they may have helped obama because those tea party backed candidates? >> this is an interesting question what they're referring to was tom a kid in misery but now it is

interesting that obamacare is neither of those in states but he did have assets from the gender gap and that looks like it was narrowing and obviously he did better with white men the publicity over these rape comments of the two campaigns helped obama drive the message he was better for women and the other party was living in a different time that is the other reason he stressed planned parenthood talking

about in the debates because he understood and actually earlier fifth in a flooded showdown in 2011 for john boehner and his people for wanted to end support for planned parenthood and obama said that is a deal breaker. where is his bottom line? if april of 2011 with the continuing resolution obama said no. you will not do this to planned parenthood. he knew there are a lot of women in this country that don't get abortion services but basic with his health care services from them. so all these issues contributed to the women's vote and there are stories

fifth of all the different constituency groups clef to my mind the most interesting is the analytics off -- and the chapter of the headquarters in chicago where these twentysomething geeks a.m. by a physicist in three professional poker players the way they reengineered american politics so they could find obama supporters who felt very strongly about the rape comments are the women issues and through a very inventive facebook cap could connect those supporters that felt strongly to groups

those friends in a battleground states and then tell them friend to friend when they ran out they to say not go out to every house on the block but mrs. johnson is interested in women's issues. this is what the technology did is working with the shoe leather to redefine politics >> that is the ground game it is a long way to save is not enough for him to have the senate candidates because maybe people were not engaged in politics but it was take what they said and deliver it.

>> host: the republicans i a assume will learn from that. >> they are closing the geek gap but they have a hard road because the guy who invented the term aicher targeting a republican goes to the romney campaign and tries to say why don't we get in the game? his wife was the campaign manager and they would not do it. they felt as one of his senior advisers they could not predict the sub prime crisis so it was in that mitt romney put his foot in his mouth from running a mid 20th century campaign the

ad campaign from the '80s the same men were reelected as ronald reagan but obama was on the cutting edge of what technology can do even though he did not come out of spain capital but he ran that type of campaign. >> in san francisco we would say that is a black rock campaign. [laughter] so you mentioned in the book about criticism of the president was specially after the first debate coming from the left with chris matthews yelling and why are you still doing these things? says sometimes the supporters could be harder i knew that and your opponents

if obama doesn't need to read again, then why is tpa during to is the right pushing the liberal agenda toyed with the keystone pipeline, and monsanto monsanto, wal-mart schuster in social security instead of eliminating the gap? >> those are all interesting questions. i think people need to understand he has never really been on the far left.

but is centrist. as a senator in illinois he was pro cold it had one of the largest clean energy bill by a partnership -- orders of magnitude of history and continue to be in all of the above president when they came to energy. and of the disposition has changed but sometimes there is the perception of the left that the real obama struggles to come out and there is some truth that he means the and warren beatty character suddenly has of mental breakdown and says whatever he believes. [laughter] i think part of obama with like to do that and maybe he will with keystone pipeline. so we ordered a study.

let's see what the experts say and he says drill down into a problem and what he considers to be a rational solution rather than just going off and they think that is a good thing. health care is misunderstood. i have spent a single payer over 20 years. [applause] but i did not be granted to obama at all his strategy on obamacare because look at the history. the idea of universal coverage first launched with the bull moose platform of 1912 when they nominated theodore roosevelt. seven presidents tried and failed to get universal

coverage included and franklin roosevelt obama had to do some unpleasant things to cut deals but it got done what presidents had failed to get dead half for over a century now people don't have to worry about losing their house if they get sick so this hits close to home and they think with all the noise the basics get of scared is an accomplishment with immigration reform there is another big one maybe not leaning on the banks because of the state of the economy he did not

think nationalizing the banks was a good idea but he did think of the consumer protection board that even democrats arabs wanted to strip it out. i have not to seem he says what is this progress is shipped you are talking? of the big deals is talking that way the president was angry at the idea that he

was the lackey of all street not making too many concessions but where he was wrong especially the notion the key is not blackie not just drives him around the bend said to have more meetings so that supports the president did meet with him in the roosevelt room and one of them says why not have the pearl black agenda? he says if i say black, black, of black it will not help to get it through but health care helps blacks, and at a later meeting our sharkskin told the story that was relevant that he had a friend who converted to islam and he went out to to lunch with him in he had a ham sandwich and he said you can eat pork

in he said it isn't pork is a ham sandwich. [laughter] al sharpton said just because it is not called pork in he says mr. president just because it is not called a liberal parole black agenda doesn't mean it isn't. now he does not like the pork metaphor. [laughter] hit it is a ham sandwich. >> host: we may be out of time unfortunately. your prediction on the supreme court and proposition viii and why did president obama change on this issue? >> a think he realized the country was changing and he was a little bit behind but the commentators like andrew

sullivan it is a huge just to think about how far the issue has come in such a short period of time to have an american president come out to mention gays and lesbians in the inaugural address. he looks at it like lincoln came late to the party but when you are president i think fed dolman decision will go in the right direction the correct direction but that to be on the of floating rights act this means a lot of states will move forward with these offensive voter suppression bills in the obama would not

have spin elective those statutes were on the books of this is a very important struggle from a lot of organizations and a lot of people. so that was launched right after the 2010 midterms after the shellacking. you they used their advantage in the state legislature to redraw the maps, locking in the house majority through 2020, said democrats got 1 million more votes in the house and the republicans got 55 percent that is business as usual and democrats do that also to redraw the maps but what was different is the idea of targeting certain groups to make it harder for them to

vote. i maintain it is an american and i continue and anybody who wants the background of the voter suppression struggle i try to bring it together all in one place. >> host: please join me in thanking jonathan atler. [applause] >> there are several different types of bullying it is racial they wanted it is there favorite thing. because the philosophy is based solely in completely at this point on the idea they stand up for a victimized minority blacks, jews coming days, a

minority, women so if we have these a policy -- policies than by the subsidies we hate them and that is the philosophy they put out. when