office. host: michael kirk is joining us, the documentary filmmaker of this pbs frontline film, president biden, airing tonight at 10 p.m. eastern time on your local station. mr. kirk, why make this documentary? >> joining us michael kirk filmmaker of the pbs frontline film a president biden airing tonight at 10:00 o'clock p.m. eastern on your local pbs station. why make this documentary?

what was the goal? >> every four years we make a choice of the presidential candidates it's two hours right before the election in october. and essentially the idea is to get inside the life we don't interview the candidates but their friends and family and people who have known them all their life as close as we can get and we try to answer the t question the boy the father and the man if you learn to do everything you can about biden and this year trump and biden and weaver together it is a very interesting picture we've taken the best parts of the biden story and it helps people understand on the eve of the election who he is in the aspects of his life that may contribute to how he would be as president.

>> what are those aspects? >> he has made a lot of mistakes. he is learn something important in life to apologize which is very different from donald trump he freely one - - freely admits his mistakes and apologizes and maybe the most important the emotional and useful method he has is he perseveres in the face of tremendous failure to run for president two timess., a scandal and other things, joe biden kept going. if you look closely at his role in controversial policies and events, finally he is on the right side of history. and you see that come to fruition across his life. >> how is it someone who is run twice before and failed

can win on the third time? >> this is the other adage to the times make the man who did the man make the times i think donald trump try to make the times and he may have. i think joe biden, the times have made joe biden president of the united states. and all of the times he ran he didn't have a policy or ideology at the heart of his politics he's liberal segregation of senators in the senate, he was always casted foreign ideology for an idea of who he is the american people were never buying it when he ran and national campaign he was angry in

america just wasn't but it may be what happened to him this time in the face of coronavirus and a president who said a lot of stuff on fire may be a lot of people really felt they needed a grief counselor ined chief. i think that is who joe biden had become so we tell a lot of stories maybe that was enough. people finally recognized even though joe biden may not have recognized it by himself but he is prepared to be the grief counselor in chief. host: do you explore the dynamics that people voted not necessarily for joe biden but against president trump? >> no doubt about that. biden benefited from that. aside from political policy

differences, i think there were personality issues and one of the things that has changed joe biden over his life is you can watch it happen to get the restraint and the fact he would not engage with trump they kept persevering and following forward i think people who were running from trump not votingwe for biden down the restraint and biden about trump and his actions in that first debate know what happened with the coronavirus and other things, i think in a time of great fear where trump may take the country or had taken the health of the country , people went back to what they perceived, i think

as a decent if not a wonderfully charismatic leader. host: what did he learn from president obama? >> he learned i think a certain calm aspect from what we can tell, they had a very good partnership with the most important thing joe biden got from brock obamaam was the obama halo which is the halo effect that if you are that close to obama and he embraced you at a time when a lot of black people in the country were very worried about biden and who he was as a white guy and the new segregationist in the senate on the wrong side of the media and clarence thomas moment in history with the supreme court and the crime bill, a lot of things that

once obama picked him and spent time and it was clear they did have a working relationship and he was handling things obama couldn't handle, he earned the obama halo and i think that's why he has who he has in his government now. host: how well his service as vice president help or hurt his administration? >> he knows the people he has put in place. but remember i'm not sure joe biden i mean i think he believes what he hears sometimes that's a hard choice between the pressures of the ideological left in the democratic party people call it progressives and the standard middle-of-the-road democrats and the obama administration as well and he

knows how to navigate that a lot of peoplen thth that are the foot soldiers and higher are now in the biden administration and fairly high places. lots of people at that level and they have graduated themselves so this is obama two.zero a lot of things have been changed with the mere fact of donald trump who he is and was and what he did. but in terms of what he learned, i think he learned to a lot of people are and he owned sensibilities and notched back a little bit in those meetings with the kids when the beginning of the obama administration were making fun of him behind his back calling him uncleer t joe. were sleepy joe those came from the young people in the white house in the beginning

but there now senior people in the biden administration so obviously he doesn't carry a grudge. >> talking about the incoming president, joe biden the new documentary by pbs frontline is called presidential one - - president by on - - president biden california independent line you are up first go ahead. >>caller: good morning. just a comment first of all i hope the republicans and everyone for that matter practice what they preach in the sense they give mr. biden a chance, a slight comment on the last caller, the last segment, we neil for

the bible and stand for the flag. >> i will jump in so we can stay on topicpi talking about joe biden story, you heard the caller say he hopes republicans give him aub chance. how do his views working with many of the republicans in congress help them? >> i think biden is an institutionalist and he does know the ways the senate works like mitch mcconnell and others have been around a long time understand the protocols and the give-and-take and the way things work the way the power is used and abused and spread but i think the times are also very different. this is not the united states ensenate that biden rose up into become a very powerful member of. things are very different. just ask mitch mcconnell is

that the republican caucus he was on the democratic caucus. so yes biden has friends and an affinity for the institution, he has to know how to call mcconnell i'm sure they've spoken many times in the last fewti weeks or months but i think everything is slightly different and skewed in ways and not to mention what will trump to when he's out of w office and how much of his base can he hold onto? the base right now is a big part of the house of representatives may be even bigger 2022 and moving into the senate so there are those that joe biden will have to figure out or mitch mcconnell has to figurein out if you will deal with joe biden in the senate will get anythingg done.

host: democratic color new york. >>caller: good morning. i'm a great admirer of yours i have been watching your films covering presidencies in politics for decades now still seeming to be with you as the narrator your films speak with such authority with that first draft of history and i guess that makes me want to comment it is the greater national issue is the country that makes these incredible mistakes, refuses to take blame and then comes up with solutions that do as much harm as good if not more and that

is the national narrative like biden and trump fit into that creates a monster like trump and then make them president and then the stock with all the problems and then the solutions that we come up with our politicians like biden who frankly get elected because he tried everybody else we have tried so many times he's bound to hit the jackpot sooner or later . i say this because in the opening clip it just seems to be that authoritative statement where he will be placed a greater national crisis that nobody is discussing that the documentary will show is so

many of the problems he has been elected to solve them interested in your comments.s. >>. >> thank you for your continued leadership. this is the 20th family have made in the trump era we have the understanding more than january 6. the years in the machine room of democracy work, but it is a democracy. it's held at least so far and in that democracy there will be a struggle for sure to kind of fix the things and god knows, from what i can tell, he feels he has to go in and deal with, it's like you are in a triage unit in a battle zone.

he's got to do that before he can get the patients up and on their feet. we have had an entire government going the other way that at least 70 million people in america voted against v heyman lee who can't comprehend that he won. an awful lot of progressive democrats and bernie sanders voters who do not believe he's anything other than an old -- other than another old white guy. what do you do? how do you step up? you read the papers. you listen to the commentators. this is the chance for biden to be the new fdr. not only does he have the formidable task of what's actually out there and real and will require all the best efforts that he and kamala harris have put together to go out into combat on behalf of what he and she want, it's also

just, it's just amazing, the v him and sans the other side. finding a way to do that and deal with the sadness and depression that i think runs deeply through the american society, he knows, i'm certain of this, given his own moments of grief and how he has responded to situations, which you can see in the film tonight, requiring him to be a grief counselor, not giving a big policy statement but do something on behalf of the people on a one-to-one basis. that instinct in him has got to be running pretty deep right now and of people pick up on it and he rides and doesn't overreach and doesn't fall back into traditional american political camps and all the things that await any president or official who faces what america faces now

, including the deepest division ever, and formidable media and internet enemies who have come at you to twist what you say, doing real combat, conspiracies and lies out there in a way that they were not there during the obama administration. they were rising up then, largely fed by nominal trump -- by donald trump for four years. certainly in the last couple of months. it's a real problem that america is in and that democracy is in. because joe biden and his claim to be president, he said i can help with this, it faces him most directly. all eyes are on this man, including ours, measuring him not only against iie is in who he was, but what he needs to be able to do to get this done. host: and you can watch the

documentary on the eve of joe biden's inauguration and on your -- not your ration on your local pbs station. "president biden" is the title. james, democratic caller, missouri. caller: yes. i've always been a democrat and i just hope that joe biden more stays in the center with the democratic party. i think he can get more republicans maybe two provide more of a unity government that we need. he wasn't my first pick. i didn't believe he was going to win and if it wasn't for coronavirus i don't believe he would have. a lot of his policies, and i know a lot of things need to be done for the minority,, but i

hope he presents a centrist view for the whole nation. host: all right, james. michael kirk? guest: well, there's no doubt about that, it's where he's always been. he's not a flaming liberal, that's for sure and he has said some things and done some things throughout his life that prove that. his politics, looking back on it when we first started to make the film, we take six or seven months to make one of these. when i looked back he had a real ride the wave politics. whatever was happening, biden, because he didn't really have anything, any internal northstar that was driving him, in the way that, say, bernie sanders or elizabeth warren does or did, he may be the least ideological of all the democrats who ran.

what it says to me is that he's this ride the wave guide. when things were, that's what puts him on the crime bill side of the ledger. that's what puts him trying to nurture clarence thomas through his hearings, not listening to anita hill and others. it's put him where he was. deep down inside he's a centrist and i'm sure that's what they are counting on and he has created a centrist government. i'm sure that's what they are counting on for bringing back the republicans who deserted the party for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is economic trouble. huge economic problems in the post recession 2008 crash. i mean, trump is saying i've got a deal for you, i can make the economy better.

that's a deal. he's going to have to get in there and do that. i think that is what he's counting on, that people, the people who deserted the democratic party will come back to him. he thinks that's what happened during the election, i'm sure. trump got a very narrow and intense base of anywhere from 25% to 35% of the republican party. he has cornered the party and changed it, making it donald trump's party. so, that leaves a lot of room for people who didn't feel comfortable with what they saw on the sixth of january and other things coming from trump in the last year, including his policies around coronavirus. that is where joe biden can find that sweet spot for a lot of rakes, a lot of people have to start -- have to stop dieting,

getting better, getting back outdoors and back to work. certainly that appears to be their calculation. host: fran in utica, michigan, democratic caller. caller: hi, hi mr. kirk. my problem is how in the world president biden is going to fix all these things that donald trump, president trump is leaving him. every day it's more of a mess. these people getting paroled, he's like leaving him more and more mess for him to clean up and it seems as though everybody forgot about what obama and biden did. this country was in the toilet if they cleaned it up, so when they passed it off to donald trump, it was good. the day after trump got where he got, he professed that he would fix a manufacturing company and

he didn't. all of these things were already done. when he got his job, everything was smooth and he just ran it down into the ground and took credit. everything he takes credit for, it's something good to. he never takes credit for anything bad. host: your thoughts? guest: there is a lot of bad leftover, what some people would certainly call bad. but primarily as i said, yes, you are right, caller. there are a lot of things that biden and the democrats would like to turn around now and it will be interesting to see how he picks and chooses what to do as he addresses issues, like immigration yesterday when he put out a plan for a bill he wants to see get done. that was at the forefront of what donald trump came in doing,

to go the opposite direction. that alone in the early first 100 days of the biden administration is a test of his ability to power through the house of representatives and what he can get done in the senate. it will be a big test of how the biden presidency is going to go. that is one of the issues that democrats and biden feel they need to do in terms of cleaning up from donald trump, jeff sessions, steve bannon and others brought to washington in the early days of the american carnage presidency. host: how does president-elect biden view vice president elect kamala harris and the role she will play in the administration? guest: one of the things we spent a lot of time addressing in our film tonight is biden and his relationship to the issue of race, specifically black people who he has known, including barack obama, who he has known,

and kind of believed in, been a part of, made mistakes about and been foolish about, work hard to repatriate themselves with the left. his choice of kamala harris, which i'm sure that he and everyone around him thought of as truly a historic thing, is also a critical signal that he was sending not just to the black community and the women of the united states of america, and of the world, but also it was in a way a very specific kind of thing that joe biden was demonstrating. he looked to the other way and maybe agreed with this dramatic attack on him in the very first democratic debate where she

really took him down for his position on busing. an issue may be long settled in america, but it shows how long he has been around that he would have a fundamental vote on the busing issue. but she really ate him up and i think it shocked him and it hurt his feelings. and then five or six months later, however long it was, as he wins the democratic nomination, what did he do? the woman who took him down, whose fierceness and strong articulation of a position made him go there. putting him -- putting her now and the second seat right next to him. i'm gathering they work closely together. it says something about him on a personal level. forget the symbolism of it, that

is important, but put that aside for a moment. i think there is something, for our money, when we made our film , there was something personal about that as well. he changes, he apologizes, he perseveres, and