coming up tonight onto cspan 3, american history in prime time with a look at the presidency. first how presidents make important decisions such as a change in their cabinet or a decision to go to war. also the connection between the white house and the cia, dating back to president harry truman. former defense secretary leon panetta led a discussion with former presidential advisors and chiefs of staff about the presidential decision-making process. each detailed their own relationship with their presidency served and their time in the white house. from the panetta institute for public policy, this is an hour and 45 minutes.

>> thank you, thank you all very much. and i welcome all of you to our final forum of our lecture series this year. our theme as you all know is looking at 100 years since world war 1, 2014, 1914, an awful lot of history has occurred during that time. and to onanalyze the changes th have been made, we looked at war and peace and the changes in that arena, we have looked at government and we have also looked at the issue of freedom versus security. tonight we're going to look at the president of the united states and how presidents make decisions. and presidents very frankly influence all of those other areas that we just talked about. the president of the united states has today assumed incredible responsibilities in facing incredible pressures in

that position. since 1914, we have had 17 presidents. of the united states, all of whom will have various places in history. we have gone from wilson to harding, truman to roosevelt, kennedy to carter and reagan, johnson to bush and obama. what can we learn from all those presidents? and how is the presidency changed in terms of the responsibilities that have to be confronted. well look at the challenges of the modern presidency, through the eyes of four top aides. all of us have served presidents of the united states. and we have seen the qualities of what it takes for a president to be able to govern, we have seen qualities both good and bad. and i guess that's what i want to begin with.

is looking at presidents that each of these individuals served. what was their great herself strength and what was their greatest weakness? and how do you think history is going to look at them? talking about president reagan, president clinton, president bush and president obama. let's start with president reagan. >> thank you very much. leave it to leon and sylvia to put together an alphabet panel. david axelrod, a, end card and doober stein, d. and p for panetta.

it is an absolute thrill and a joy to be here in monterrey and with leon and sylvia and with all of you. ronald reagan's great et cetera strength. he knew why he ran for the presidency. and he knew what he would do once he was president. he would focus the country and the world on the united states rebuilding its economy and creating respect for america around the world. cutting the rate of spending increase, cutting taxes, rebuilding our national security, building up to build down. and finding overburdensome regulations. he stayed focused on those priorities. he was able to put in practice, along with the private sector,

obviously, 18 million new jobs, an economy that he inherited that was double digit inflation, double digit interest rates and america was as jimmy carter said suffering malaise. at the end of the carter administration, most people suggested that the presidency might be too big in this modern era for any one person. they stopped saying that under ronald reagan and for all of us and our presidents who conserved thereafter. ronald reagan also understood that he was elected not just to make statements, but in fact to govern and get things done. he knew that in order to forge consensus in washington, he

needed to build consensus throughout america. and that would put pressure on washington. he understood that governing -- well, let me put it this way, tip o'neill used to say i don't like compromising with ronald reagan, because every time i compromise with him, reagan gets 80% of what he wants. and ronald reagan would say that me and jim baker and ed niece and mike beaver and others. well, i'll take 80% every time and come back the next time for the additional 20. that's what governing is all about and that was a hallmark of ronald reagan. >> okay, so what was his weakness? achkd his weakness was that he had a tendency to trust everybody and that's why nancy

and i were the verifiers. but he trusted everybody. until proven otherwise. and so you sometimes had to unwind things because they just didn't add up. >> there's only one reason that leon asked me to come out here. he called me up and he saider skin, we're having this panel and i want you to talk about bill clinton. i said leon, you never everything about bill clinton. he said yeah, you got it. that's why i want you to talk. you can get the phone calls. i love leon panetta, you guys are lucky to have him. imtelling you, everything i know -- everything i know and anything i say that you don't like, you can blame it on me

because he taught me it all. greatest strengths. for me, president clinton's greatest strength was his intellectual curiosity. and his absolute ability to do the home work it takes to understand a problem from all angles. achkd his willingness to accept advice from people of all walks of life. you know, we could walk into the oval office and give him a piece of advice and we would say red, yellow and green and he would say orange, and we would say wow. he could take a problem of any magnitude and he could distill it down into a set of facts that he could communicate so that anybody could understand it. that is a unique skill. we could have nobel scientists

in any subject coming in two weeks from now. and we couldn't get him to hit a lick of the snake for the first 13 days, we wouldn't do anything, but on that 14th day, you would see books from the white house library stacked up this high on his desk. and he reads like that old evelyn woods reading course, i don't know how many of you remember it, and reads so quickly you can't believe it and can retain it. then he would call people on the periphery of the subject and you look at his phone logs that night, and he would have talked to people that you just couldn't believe. but we know but when those people could come in, for the first 45 minutes, he would just listen to them.

but the last 15 minutes he would say something to profound that it would make you so proud you couldn't stand it. it was that intellectual curiosity and to do his home work and to listen to people on all sides of the subject before he made his decision. >> and the weakness? >> there's a one-word answer. >> i think that's pretty easy, yeah. >> history speaks to that. >> president bush? >> george w. bush was a man of conviction, he was very grounded. he was also very deliberate and disciplined. he's also very courageous, because he has the kurjs to mco make a decision. and i would say his flaws is

that he allowed there to be a myth that he couldn't read or that he didn't read when he was very well read and took time to read while he was president and it was usually relevant to the responsibility that he had. but he also kind of preferred to be from west texas when he really was well-educated at yale. so he allowed a perception that he wasn't really engaged, but i think the strength of having the courage to make a decision, not to allow poll teches itics to d decision, but to-they were impossibly difficult decisions. >> david? >> well, first of all,v"émf let say a word about lee kwlon as w because i had an opportunity to serve with him. he's a perfect guy to be running an institute like this.

congressman, budget director, cia director, chief of staff, secretary of defense. and it makes you wonder, why can't you hold a job?h2nn÷ but i'm the director at the institu institute -- and the goal is very much the same, which is trying to inspire young men and women to go into careers of public service and you're a great exemplar for them, so thank you for that. and i also sigh there are a lot of young servicemen and women in the audience tonight, and i want to thank you for your service too because you inspire all of us. thank you. listening to erskin talk about president clinton and his intellect and his intellectual curiosity had that same feeling to me.

i have that sooirm feeling about president obama. i never sat in a meeting where i felt he was overmatched or unprepared and he was as stimulated by the whole array of issues that come before a president as anybody i could imagine. but i would say -- i was going to say that his strengths were that he's incredibly bright, thoughtful and deliberative and makes deliberate decisions. the quality that i most admire about him was that he was willing and has been willing to make decisions that are in the best interests of the country, despite very, very negative politics. at a time when we absolutely had to make those decisions. and i think the american people tend to find leaders at the right time to make those kinds of decisions and he made them, we lived through some terrible crises, and i always felt good to be at his side because i felt

he would get to the right answer, and regardless of the politics and i was mostly the guy who told him the politics, and i was almost always ignored. and i admired him for that. i said earlier that what i like about him best is that he listens to me so little. but i believe, leon, that everyone's strength is often also their weakness. and so i think that, you know, the criticism of the president is the same, that he's deliberative, that he's thoughtful, that he's not spontaneous enough in his decision making. i think it's a good tradeoff. but i would say that that is the criticism that i most often hear. >> you have all mention crisis us and in many ways the president is tested by crises. i would like you to reflect on,

what was the worst crisis you saw a president have to handle during the time that you were there and how did he handle it and how will history speak to that? erskin, let's start with you. >> i these i'll go international. >> that's a good place to b. >> i don't know how many of you can think back this long ago. but this is before osama bin laden was well known, in this country at least. and we had a chance to get him in afghanistan once, but to do that, we had to launch some missiles and send them over pakistan, where we had a shaky relationship at best. and since there was a -- was

that shaky relationship, we wanted to make sure that we didn't alert the packs too early so that the information we were going after him would leak out. so we sent the vice admiral at the air force academy in to have denver with the president of pakistan. and he told him exactly three seconds before the missiles crossed pakistan. and when those missiles landed, we missed bin laden by literally minutes. and the reason i always looked at that as a decision that took real guts is that we knew the chances were 50/50 we would get him. two, we ran a real chance of disrupting the relationships with a very important country that we were having to deal with. and three, this was during the

time of the monica crisis. and we also knew that if we were unsuccessful, that republican house and senate would accuse us of trying to divert people's attention. and u if you remember, there's a movie out there called "wag the dog" and that's what happened. but it only took a few minutes to make the decision. he knew it was the right thing to do. >> i'm glad we were able to finish the job, thank you. end, crisis? >> first of all -- >> i know the headlines on 24 one. >> a president comeses to office focused on what they talked about as they were campaigning to be president. and then the reality sets in when they take the oath of office. and the truth is when they take the oath of office, they probably think more about their

inaugural address than the oath they took. but after the inaugural address is over, then the burdens of the job show up. and president bush had some significant burdens show up. and how was he going to react? what was going to happen? now not a crisis, it could have been. he managed it well by being restrained and listening and seeking counsel and making phone calls, the chinese were very slow to answer them. but then you have other crises that come, i don't want to say you don't anticipate them, but they're usually storms. and the greatest crisis that caused the biggest storm for the president is hurricane katrina. and the frustration with that crisis is that the president alone does not dictate the response. under our laws, the federal emergency management agency must find a request from a government

to offer support and that request has to follow a particular protocol that congress outlined, the stafford act. and we had a hard time getting one governor to make the right response or the right question or ask for the right information, yet the public only sees the president's response. they don't really appreciate i'm going to say the governor's response. so that was frustrating. but probably the greatest crisis that any president faces and i pray that presidents don't have to face this crisis, but too many do. how do you have to meet your constitutional responsibilities on a policy that you did not invite, but it requires the president to keep an oath. if he cannot keep it without the fine men and women who take other oaths to help him keep his oath, to call him into service. and that's going to war. and any time a young man is or a young woman is put into harm's way, and they're invited to make

sacrifices that the president would never invite on anyone, it's a burden the president takes. and going to war is always a crisis. and that weighs heavily on the president and i watched it weigh very, very heavily on president george w. bush and i watched it weigh heavily on his dad as well. so i would say that's the crisis, one that the law doesn't allow you to respond the way you would like to. hurricane. and another one that the constitution says you have the sole responsibility to respond, but you can't do it yourself, you have to count on other people to make sacrifices, and that burden ends up being the burden. >> david? >> well, since bin laden is taken--no, i the truth is for better or worse, there are a lot of crises to choose from under

this presidency and it's not over yet. but on december 16, 2008, we got together with the president electric and the vice president elect just a few days after he celebrated in grant park, with his economic team together and they gave us a briefing of the state of the economy. and christina romer, who was going to be head of the council of economic advisors spoke and she was an expert on the great aggression, and in the end, she said, mr. president i think we're in a recession as deep as anything we have faced since the great depression. larry somers coming in as head of the national economic council, talking about what that would mean for the economy, trillion dollar hole in the economy in 2009, trillion dollar hole in the economy in 2010. tim gieithner spoke and said th banking system is locked up, and

are on the verge of collapse. and the budget director said this will add this and the steps we will take to deal with it will add significantly to the debt and deficits. at this point, the president entertained and dismissed the notion of asking for a recount. >> and what began was, we basically became a triage unit trying to write the economy, but in the quarter before we took office, the economy shrunk by 8.9%, the worst quarter since 1930, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. the stock market was headed to 6,500. and we had millions of foreclosures and it was the worst situation any president had faced since roosevelt in 1933. and what followed was a recovery

act, a large spending program at a time when people were concerned about deficits, but necessary to plug the hole in the economy. we had to take steps to stand up the financial industry which was reviled at the time for the role they played or seemed to have played in the financial crisis and the train wreck of the economy. and the rust au.s. auto industr on the brink and they were weeks away from bankruptcy. and so you add all those things -- and so we had to step in and save them, and none of these steps were popular. they were all difficult. but they were what his responsibility required and he took them and he took them with eyes open, knowing that the politics were bad. and he never once really asked about the politics and would. allow us to foist the politics

on him, because this was what is he was elected to do. >> president reagan. >> just a few quick vignettes, as much as reagan became loved during the campaign of 1980, i think the country really felt -- we saw the grace and dignity of president reagan after the assassination attempt which was the first major crisis of the administration. who can forget president reagan who was being wheeled in on the gurney at the hospital saying i hope all you doctors are republicans. the other part of that story is the surgeon leaned down and said, today we are all republicans or having seen nancy for the first time, saying, honey, i forgot to duck. but that caught on with the american people.

another crisis is when we lost the challenger. and ronald reagan became the chaplin to the country. in that most eloquent address, comforting america on the loss of those wonderful astronauts. then ronald reagan was accused of walking away on a deal with a strategic arms negotiation with michaele gorbachev because he would have had to sacrifice his defense initiative program, which he thought would keep more pressure on the soviet union. he was criticized but ultimately he was proved right because it got gorbachev back to the table. the next one that i want to

mention quickly, everybody knows the signature line of the reagan years, his visit to the berlin wall, but let me suggest to you that it wasn't that's si. the state department and the national security folks all opposed that one paragraph in the speech. because they thought it would undercut gorbachev's efforts on parastryka and. i showed that speech and the offending paragraph to the president and i said what do you think? he said i think it's a hell of a line. i said, well, you're president, you get to decide. and he called me back an hour later to come back to the oval office, and he said, i think

we'll leave it in, and i explained the objections of the national security people and the state department. and ronald reagan said, no this will help to find gorbachev and put him even more to bargaining and negotiation. we went to berlin the night before there had been massive riots against the united states. because we had put pursing 2 missiles in germany and else wrchlt george schulz called me on the phone and said will you tell the president that i share my department's objection to the speech to that paragraph in the speech and i hope you will convey my views to the president. and as everybody on this panel knows, when a cabinet secretary doesn't ask for ten minutes on the president's calendar but

asks you to convey the information, it means i've covered myself with the bureaucracy, and if the line fails and there's a major world crisis, it's on your shoulders. we have all had that experience. as president reagan and i were driving to the brandenburg gate in the presidential motorcade, he was reviewing his speech one more time. and he got to that paragraph and he turned to me and said, it's going to drive the state department boys crazy, but i'm going to leave it in. mr. gorbachev tear down this wall. ronald reagan fundamentally ended the cold war and brought gorbachev to the bargaining table so we got a strategic arms

agreement. >> but since i was the chief of staff, i'll give you a small little element, when i had just gotten appointed chief of staff, and i was at home, this was about 2:00, 2:30 in the morning and i got a call from the secret service and secret service said, mr. panetta, because, you know when you get a call at that time in the evening, it's not good news. said mr. panetta, i'm sorry to tell you but a plane just went into the white house, i said what the hell was it, a 747 what kind of a plane went into the white house? he said no, it's a light plane, it went up against the white house, we think it may have damaged the jackson magnolia tree. i said wait a minute, this could be a terror attack on the president. have you looked in the plane, is there explosives in the plane?

and the answer was, well, according to cnn news -- >> it's true. >> true. i said no, i would appreciate it if you get off your butt and go out there and check the plane to make sure that has not happened. >> leon, if it makes you feel good, there's a great story that colin powell tells, being at a wedding at a church, he was national security adviser. an aid comes during the ceremony and says, there's an urgent phone call for you. and everybody's eye follow the national security director as he leaves the church. and he comes back ten minutes later and alma powell leans over and says what's going on. collin says, well, there's been a coup in x country.

she said, oh, i heard that on cnn before we left. but leon, we should also underscore that, while we can pick iconic crises and challenges, what makes the presidency what it is, is every skinningal day is filled with, -- i can guarantee you that when we were running for president, we didn't talk a lot about pirates, that was something that came up later. and all of a sudden, the president has ten minutes to decide whether or not he should give the order to try and take out captain phillips captors and he had snipers bobbing on a boat who were pretty sure they could get the bad guys but might get captain phillips and he's got ten minutes to decide, or someone walks in the office when you're dealing with a financial crisis and a war, and tells you that we may have a h1n1

pandemic, that is the nature of the presidency, and that is why it's such an incredibly challenging job. >> andy, let me ask you about that, because it's the whole question of, what is the process that a president uses to come to a decision? and you know, we have heard a little bit of it discussed here, but presidents have to face countless decisions on administrative issues on legislative issues, on -- as commander in chief, on foreign policy, political decisions, et cetera, et cetera. what was the -- what's the process that the president uses in order to come to a decision? i mean, you know, the perceptions are these, reagan kind of had this core set of beliefs that ken talked about. clinton kind of reached out for a review, bush we thought operated by his gut, obama the law professor's approach, what

was the process that you sauce a president use in order to come to a decision? >> first i want to say that it's up to the chief of staff to know the president, the personality, kind of what their thinking process is and you want to make sure the president, in my opinion, i wanted to always make sure that the president wasn't making a decision when he was angry, hungry, lonely or tired, and since that's 24 hours a day, it's a burden. i always want him to make a decision in the best possible mood he could be in. i didn't want a pessimistic president makings a decision, i wanted it to be an optimistic decision. so i focused on the president's lifestyle. it's a 24-hour a day job for the chief of staff. and you don't know when he's going to have to make a decision, and you want him to be in the best possible mood. i focused on it every single

day, 24 hours a day, to make sure that the president could be as prepared as possible when we didn't know what he had to be prepared to do. but ultimately the would try not to allow emotions to drive the response. he would seek counsel that was not monolithic. so i would make sure that he wasn't getting monolithic counsel, he was getting information to be able to make a decision, rather than be presented a decision, and i wanted to make sure that he understood when the decision was necessary, whether it was in ten minute ors two hours or six days or three months. and give the president an opportunity then to adjust the process that he had to go through to make a decision in time. because if you make a decision to late, it's irrelevant. if you make it too early, it may not be mature the way it should have been at the time the decision was put into motion. so i tried to pay attention to, you know, kind of goldilocks and the three bears, i was always

looking for the perfect porridge to feed him. but ultimately the president had to be comforted that he had the information, the best information available at the time, from people who we could trust but were not just feeding him a response. and he had to understand the con tra strants that were there. what were the consequences of a decision being made too early or too late and what are the consequences of the decision if it's wrong. but probably whispering into the president's ear on 9/11 is an example of delivering a message that the president is not prepared to hear. it wasn't a statement he expected to hear from his chief of staff, sitting in front of second grade students with an audience of press pool folks watching every move. and i couldn't present him the information and ask to have a discussion.

or enter into a dialogue. i had to drop a message and then back off and let him accept that message and wrestle with what his constitutional response would be and how he should respond while i tried to give him all of the tools in the other room where the staff was busy getting ready to help the president do his job. >> erskin? >> people used to ask me all the time, was this tv show the west wing, was it accurate? and i said it does a pretty good job of capturing the velocity of the place, it's like faster than the dotcom world. and the breadth of issues you have to deal with in a day, you know, in an average day for leon and for me, you know, we deal with bosnia, northern ireland, taxation, the budget, some kind of environmental issue, then we would have lunch.

and you know, we always said thank god it's friday, only two more workdays until monday. and if you were doing one of these sunday shows, god, you know, all the stuff you would have done on saturday, you had to do on sunday. so it really was a seven-day a week job. but i think what this guy next to me did when he came into the white house was remarkable. leon came in and brought hrlickey and myself in as his two deputies, and when we arrived, we saw a white house where every 15 minutes of every day was scheduled. and you can imagine in a world that's changing as o'and evolving as much as the one these guys described, clearly if you have every a minutes scheduled, it gives you no time to think, reflect, react to a changing world and it also means that u you're going to be or appear to be late to meeting

after meeting when it's really just poor staff work. the second thing that leon and i saw, was we had some members of the staff, i know this will come to a great surprise to you guys, who were leaking what was going on in various meetings, meetings they weren't even in. and one of the purposes of that was to lock the president into where they wanted him to go as opposed to where he might want to go. and therefore if he actually made the opposite decision, it looked like he flip-flopped. and finally, we found a white house where people would wanter into the oval office, the president would get a little information here, a little information there. and it would take him longer to make worse decisions. and so leon changed that, he made sure that the president got all his event information in context, we freed up three to four hours every single stay for him to think, reflect and react to a changing world.

and we made sure that in theory that less is often better than more, that instead of doing two or three events a day and therefore stepping on his message that he was trying to get out, that he would do maybe two a week. and that if he was saying something in new york that was quite important, that instead of having bob rice and bob ruben saying the exact opposite thing in new orleans and new mexico, that they all said the same thing. and that ways we were able to get control. we were able to establish some discipline, some organization structure and focus. and the president went on to have a successful second year. >> ken? >> erskin reminds me about west wing. and i had the privilege of being a consultant for the story line for three years. the first time i went out to hollywood, i met with seven

writers, none of whom was more than 35 years of age and only two of the seven had ever been in washington. and i spent several hours, as we started to chart out the year. and at the end, i said i had to go back to washington and this wonderful, very pretty young writer, woman, got up and gave me a hug. and one of the male writers said mr. duberstein, who immediately made me feel old, said,down how lucky you are? no, she's never kissed a republican before in her life. everybody walks into the oval office almost everybody and gets colt on the -- cotton in their mouth. they tell -- to say, it doesn't add up.

everybody walk into the oval office, almost everybody, and says, you know, mr. president, it's in your best interest to do this. and our job was to figure out why it was in their best interest first, and the president second. ronald reagan was a voracious reader. he read all the memos. all the decision memos we all falked about. but the key to reagan was listening to the argumentses in person. because an actor, he looked at people's eyes, he heard their tone and he could start sorting out what really added up and what didn't. he never liked the argument, mr. president this is the best politics for you.

he would end the conversation. the answer was make sure at our level that he had the right options, and then let them argue -- let people argue it out in front of him in the oval office and then later he would make a decision. >> well, i think -- and we have all -- some of it has to do with the input, right? there's so much information, and part of the staff's job is to filter the information, but filter it fairly so he gets a feel for the sweep of arguments. and, you know, obama, i mean one of the things that has been very good for him in the presidency is that he had been a legislator for 11 years before he became president and so he was either in springfield or washington much of the time. this was the first time in his life that he was actually living with his family on a regular

basis. so he would go home every night at 6:30 to have dinner with his family, and then he would dive into this thick folder and well into the night, reviewing all of the stuff for the next day. and he was always well briefed on what was in that package. but as ken suggests, i think the conversations were very important to him. and leon, you're asking a question that you know the answer to because you were involved in many of these conversations. you said he has a law professor, in the sense that he drills down into these issues, that's true, but there's a sort of dispassionate implication to that that wasn't true, he was very well aware of the implications of his decisions and he wanted to hear people argue them out. and whoever was in the room, he presumed they were there for a reason, and he wanted to know what everybody thought. he didn't just want one dominant voice to speak, but he wanted to hear the discussions and when he

thought he had enough information, he would make a decision. >> no, it was, i mean again, just from my own insights, when we were looking at the bin laden decision, the reality is we did not have 100% intelligence that bin laden was there and it was considered a very risky decision. but many in the national security council said it was too risky and that we shouldn't do it. and so he continued to go around. and i remember when he asked me, i said mr. president, i have an old formula that i used when i was in congress, which was, if i'm facing a tough decision, ask the average citizen in my district what would you do if you knew what i did? and i thought, if i told the average citizen that we had the best intelligence and a location of bin laden since tora bora, i think the average citizen would say you have to do it, you

can't, you know, make the mistake of not taking this on. and i told the president that and i said in addition to that, i have tremendous confidence in the ability of the s.e.a.l.s to make that decision. and he didn't make a decision that day, but he called the next day and said it's a go. let me just ask, you were all members of presidents who were elected to a second term. and second term, you know, frankly, turns out to be pretty rough. it's a bumpy ride. things catch up to you, you know, in the last four years, that you didn't have to worry about the first four years. you know, for reagan, iran contra. clinton obviously lewinsky, bush, iraq, katrina, we talked about that, obama health care, veteran's care. >> you're bumming everybody out, leon.

>> how does a president stay relevant in the second term? and not -- and not seem like, you know, basically things are going to happen without the president directing policy in the country. i mean how does the president stay relevant? let me ask you, david. >> well, first of all, let me say that presidents today have an even more difficult task because of the pace at which the media churns. it is so easy to be overexposed because of the way the media churns and people get tired, you know, we live in a society where people are always looking for new and they get tired and by six years, you know, you have to deal with that element and then we have got the kind of deep polarization that we have today. so it's difficult for any president, certainly been

difficult for this president. but on the question of relevance, i think this is a sir republican dip to us day to talk about this, because the president today talked about emissions from coal fired plants that is pretty profound in its implications and i'm sure will be very controversial as well. but no one can argue that it wasn't a meaningful act or gesture, it was a very important one, and i think it will go down in the sort of annals of discussion on climate change as a big step forward. to i think that you have to use the tools that are available to you to advance to the things that you feel are important. the other element, by the way, on this, is and this is a failing of our political system, we now have a permanent election campaign. we have elections, we have a few

weeks of governing as an interlude and then more elections. so part of what happens is people get bored because this president isn't going to be running anymore so. they're already thinking about, and you may ask us about it, what about the next presidential election? this guy's like yesterday's news. so that's something else, you know, in this environment in which we're constantly churning about elections and politics, it makes it hard for a second term president. >> andy? >> a second term is always a challenge, george w. bush had the changes of trying to get some of his favorite programs passed, he called for social security reform and wasn't able to build momentum, he called for immigration reform, wasn't able to build momentum. obviously he was dealing with two wars and he was trying to manage a transition, we had actually kind of won the hot war and we couldn't win the peace. so those were challenges.

but then he had the crisis in our economy that hit after the republican and the democratic conventions, after the two nominees of the major parties had already been selected and we had an economic crisis and he had to deal with that. so he did not have a lot of positive momentum going to get anything done with congress or to mobilize interest, never mind support from the american people. he was trying to clean up two wars, help secure peace in two places that didn't want to embrace peace and then he had an economic crisis that very few people anticipated would come. i think that what he did do was manage with a calm deliberate, president george w. bush and barack obama very different philosophies, very different parties, but president bush tried to make sure that

president obama wasn't given, i'm going to say an empty bask to play with. he actually told him what was in the basket. so focused on the transition. and he actually started to do that quite early. and it was probably to the well, i've said, you know this andy because i said this to you, i will always be profoundly grateful for the way the transition was handled. not only was the president generous to president obama but all of our counterparts were generous to us in terms of briefing us on their jobs and bringing us up to date on things that were relevant for us moving forward. so i was proud of the -- i was grateful to him and proud of our country because of the way that transition was handled. frankly we had beaten the bejesus out of him in our campaign. we were very critical of his policies. and and it said something about

our country that despite all that we did work together on something very important at the end of that administration. you mentioned the financial crisis. >> but also the intelligence side. >> right. but on the -- after leeman collapsed. the treasure secretary reached out beforehand to brief obama. and obama was as supportive as he could be in terms of trying to rally democrats and hold democrats together for that solution. and so, you know, i'm going to make -- i'm going to break all this comedy with a t and make one partisan point, which is, democrats in large numbers came to the support of president bush on the tarp, which was a very tough vote. it was a time of crisis for the country and i think that was a good example that's worth following. >> so my transition was that the

second term is about getting ready to pass the baton. and a good president will make sure the president is not dropped the day that it's passed and i think that that's a very important thing to do when you are a lame-duck president getting ready to support a new president that you may or may not like but you will respect. how do you stel relevant that second term? >> you governor as if it was your first day in office, not your last day in office. yes we had to bump the major hurdle of iran contra. but before that, we also had tax reform with marty russo. and one of the most fundamental tax bills in american history, at least modern, and it took place in the second term. so did immigration reform. so did welfare reform.

social security. social security reform all were the first two, two and a half years of the second term. he did it in part because he realized that the white house and he needed new blood and fresh ideas. and the credibility of frank and colin powell and howard baker and myself, not just as managers, but somebody who could figure out a strategy to make those last two years important. when i came back to the white house, who people were writing about was that ronald regan wasn't a lame duck, he was a dead duck. why? because he just lost the united states senate to the democrats for the last two years of his term.

regan went out of his way to rebuild a presidency so that we did the canada/u.s. free trade agreement. in hindsight it looks easy. except jim baker, my wonderful predecessor and secretary of the treasure couldn't push it over the line. it took the president to do it. the president had built up a trusting relationship with the congress on both sides of the aisle. he did the strategic arms. we got a supreme court nominee, anthony kennedy from here and california and northern california approved overwhelmingly by a democratic senate. and i know this is going to sound weird, but we had all 13

appropriation bills passed on time. not bad for a b-movie actor in the last two years of his term. [ applause ]. >> you were there. >> well, we balanced the budget. >> there you go. [ laughter ]. [ applause ]. >> that's true. >> yeah. and to get that done, i had to spend months and months and months locked up in conference rooms locked up with newt gingrich. you all owe me a lot for that. i'm telling you. president clinton loved being president. he loved mitt dedelighted in it. he wanted to use everyday to make this country a better place to live and work and raise your

family. i mean, i'll give you an example of something that shows his humanity. you know, every -- literally almost every day he would come over from the east wing to the west wing and he would have articles of various newspapers from around the country. little teeny papers that he had ripped out and it had been somebody who had gotten some kind of bad deal. he would give me articles and say, go fix this. nobody would know the president of this country cared enough about their problems to try to make it better. and that's what he did. and i think he had a successful second term inspite of the fact that we were going through -- people say it's so partisan now. felt a little partisan then. they were impeaching him. but we were able to work with the republican house and senate.

because the president knew what he wanted to accomplish in that term. the proudest i ever saw him, leon -- >> let me ask this -- >> before i get there, let me just ask this question. we all know that the presidency is a very isolating job. presidents get elected. they suddenly go to the white house, secret service is all around them. they can't go any place. they can't walk like truman used to walk around the place. they're basically in some ways trapped in the office itself. and as a result, you know,give

me the shortest answer you can with regards to how did your president protect the human side of that individual in a situation where there is all this isolation and this -- these pressures of the job? >> ronald regan loved to call congressmen and senators but not in washington. the white house switchboard -- oh the white house is on the phone. you call in a district. you guys know, marty, it's a big deal. regan would insist upon talking to the receptionist first. what's going on in your town?

what's happening? i know it's president regan but tell me. you get the congressman on the phone. what did you hear in your town hall meeting? what did you hear when you're walking the streets or going to a rally? what do i need to know? all of a sudden there was chatter all over. the president of the united states called congressman panetta. congressman russo. you know, what did you tell them? you told them you're going to support him, didn't you? that's how you start getting the consensus in america to impact the congressman in the hometown. that's also how we kept regan grounded. not from his california kitchen cabinet but much more from the rank and file. where is ted?

i used to go home to brooklyn, new york, near ted's house. and i used to sit on a luncheon counter. people knew me when i was 18 years old. what are you hearing? what's going on? what do i need to know back in washington? and i'm sitting there in a pair of jeans and a baseball cap. people will open up to you. and then i would share it with the president. >> erskine? >> i think i just gave one good example. we did everything we possibly could to keep the president in touch with everyday folks. we never had a problem with him wanting to hear people from different walks of life. he wanted your opinion. he wanted to bark on, bark off. he wanted to know what you really felt. but as i think ken said a few minutes ago, you know, when any of you all walk into the oval office, you know, you might have

spent 20 minutes with leon and me first and we might say, now, look when grow in there, you tell him exactly what you told us first. okay? then you walk in the oval office and the president says, how am i doing? so it's hard. >> you got that right. >> we tried everything. we tried pulling people off the rope line, who were going through the white house to come meet the president. >> that worked out well for you, didn't it? >> yeah, really good. [ laughter ]. >> that was one of my best ideas. >> let's move on. [ laughter ]. >> i tried to make sure the president always had time with his wife and time to pay attention to his daughters. no scheduler scheduled time for

the president to spend quality time with his daughters or his wife. they didn't schedule time for him to talk to a friend. or to see a movie or even to read a book. so i tried to make sure the president had time to see friends that were not part of the political community. yes, he had friends in congress and, yes, that was a little bit like work. but i really wanted him to have time to talk to people that weren't carrying the burdens of the office but were carrying the concerns of the nation. and we tried to do that. he enjoyed going away to camp g crawford, to his ranch. but he really liked being with friends that were not there using him so that he could befriend him. that is a hard thing to schedule because time is short, the decisions are important and the policy concerns are great. but i really tried to focus on

allowing the president to interact with people that had concerns that were not nationally-driven concerns, instead they were personally-driven interests in a great country. >> well, first of all, i mentioned the family, very, very important to him. kept him very much grounded. in the same vain, his old friends were his friends and he got together some friends he grew up with would come periodically. he was very close. but in terms of keeping in touch with the country the president said i want ten letters a night that are representative of the letters that we're getting. and he would -- sometimes he would write handwritten notes back, other times he would call. he would respond to all these letters. more importantly, he would circulate these letters around the white house. and if we were in a discussion on the economic crisis and he was told that small business lending was moving forward a

pace. and he had had four letters from people who couldn't get any credit, you know, and he would have those checked out. and he would come back with these stories. so these letters became very important to him and also very difficult for him because they were heart breaking about people struggling out there. and he would cite them often in private conversations he would talk to me. finally, you know, i think traveling and actually interacting with people is really, really important. i went in the summer of 2009 with a poll to say we're taking on some water on this health care thing. and this was not news to him, by the way. he said, i know you're right but i just got back from green bay, wisconsin. i met a woman 36 years old, married, two jobs, also has stage 4 breast cancer and now hit her life time cap and is worried about dying and leaving

her family bankrupt. by now i feel him -- he had his hand in the small of my back easing me out of his office. but on the way out the door, he said, so let's keep fighting. this is a country we believe in. so i think that human interaction is very important. >> no, it is. absolutely. let me take a quick break here to recognize our question review team who are the people that are responsible for selecting questions that will present to our speakers. and i would ask you to hold your applause until i introduce the entire group. they are julie copeland who is the city editor. mary duwan. doug mcknight. don miller, executive editor. jeff mitchell. if you would all thank them, please.

[ applause ]. there was some comment about some of the students in the audience. they are from -- they are military and we have -- we were able to host them in terms of talking about some of the issues that we talked about. let me introduce -- first of all, let me have them all stand, if i could. [ applause ]. >> let me -- let me personally thank you for your service to this country. we deeply appreciate it. they are students from the defense language institute and the navy post graduate school. thank you. you may be seated. [ applause ]. and lastly, if i could mention, that throughout our lecture

series, obviously the student participation in these events is possible only because of the generous support of our lecture series sponsors. so sylvia and i are very grateful for the sponsorship we get students from high schools, colleges, universities, military institutions throughout northern california to be able to participate and to be able to learn about the political issues facing this country. so i would appreciate it if you give our sponsors a hand as well. [ applause ]. let me turn to some questions from our audience, if i could. let's talk about one of the more ust seen in washington with secretary sin

secky and the veteran's administration. obviously there was a scandal at the veteran's administration. it seemed to take weeks for the president and the secretary to act. shouldn't he have been fired earlier? david? >> why me? [ laughter ]. >> i didn't know. you see, i didn't applaud for the panel that screened the questions because i want to hear the questions first. you know, the god's honest truth is if you're talking about pure politics, probably would have made sense because there's nothing that washington loves or demands more than a body to be thrown out when ever there's a problem. now, the fact is that general shinseki had done many things well. he had administered the post 9/11 g.i. bill in taking 2 million more veterans new policies related to agent orange

and ptsd. and, you know so he had done a lot of things well. and, you know, it is the president's habit and practice not to throw bodies out just because if there's blood lost in washington. so, as a matter of pure politics, yeah. the play would have been to fire someone quickly. but the decent and honorable thing was to really look at the facts and see what was known, what wasn't known, what was done and what wasn't done and that's what he did. >> let me ask you -- go ahead, ken. >> i think the tipping point came, though -- and i agree with what david said. but the tipping point came not when so many republicans came out for the resignation of shinseki, but when the democrats in very contested senate seats and vulnerable house democrats started lining up to impose shinseki, that is the tipping

scale that wound up with -- >> i didn't say blood lost was a partisan pursuit. all of washington engages in it. >> ken, let me ask you this. did regan like to fire people? >> hated it because it showed loyalty to his cabinet, loyalty to some white house staff, but when confronted with it, eventually it was the job of the chief of staff to say -- time to go. [ laughter ]. >> and whether that was i'll ignore it or john point dexter, regan, he did have to fire as well as occasional cabinet officer. but he held out in a sense of loyalty and importance of making sure that they could make right before he let them go. >> erskine, bill clinton?

>> i learned something about politics from al simpson. he described politics to me. he said it came from the greek word poly meaning many and ticks meaning insects. my experience is that most poll tixs got to where they are by saying yes. and not by saying no. and so i always felt it was my responsibility that if something like this had to be done that i would take care of it. but i would be the guy that said no or i would be the guy to let somebody go. and that's the way we did it. but that also means that you also have the responsibility when you're dealing with the president himself and it's just the two of you in the room you can't be afraid of losing your job.

you have to stand up and say, mr. president, i don't think this is the right way for us to go. >> andy? >> presidents really don't like to fire anybody. sometimes they have to. and they come to recognize it. i think general shinseki, first of all he is a patriot and did great job in service to our country. he did an awful lot of veteran's administration, did an outstanding job for much of what he did. however, he ended up personifying the problem. once you start personifying the problem, congress doesn't see the solution. and so i think that it was the right thing for secretary shinseki to tender his resignation. i don't know whether president obama asked for it or not, but i'm going to say that he tendered his resignation. since all of us who have served served at the pleasure of the president for the time being. that's what our little document says that hangs on our wall and it's redundant in its insecurity. and i think secretary shinseki's

time being arrived. and i don't know if the pleasure was gone but the time being arrived. i think it was appropriate for him to leave. but no president likes to say good-bye to a staffer. and i've watched presidents hold on to people they shouldn't have held on to very long but they did and others who agonized over the good-bye longer than they should have. >> yep. >> i would only add that even though erskine is an abor ration at his height, every chief of staff started out to be erskine's height and we're now 5'9". we talked about two terms for the president. here is a question. should the president's term be changed to a single six-year term? andy? >> i don't think it should be. because then it would make the president a lame duck on year one of a six-year term.

and congress would not pay as much attention as they should. we watch the president's authority wane as his political support wanes. and people already start to be looking at who the next president would be, which we'll talk about before we end up leaving. but, no, i do not support a six-year term. i think it's important for the president to be conscious of the pulse of america the same way members of congress have to be conscious of it. they just have to be paranoid about it. president shouldn't be paranoid. >> yeah. i mean, there was actually a column about this recently and i thought about it because there is some -- i mean, you know, basically you spend the last year of your first-term running for re-election and then you run into the problems that we talked to in your second term. but i actually thought that it was an important exercise for the president to go back to the

country and run for re-election. i don't think we want to divorce the president from the electric after that first election. >> i am strongly opposed to a six-year term for all the reasons that andy gave and david gave. i just want to take the opportunity, though, to also talk that the challenge, whether it's president obama or when president reagan had it, was to try to make sure that he is succeeded by somebody of his own party. reagan was able to do that with george herbert walker bush, but you have to go back about 50 years before that is true before -- >> two terms. >> two-term to be succeeded by somebody of his own party. that is one of the measures also of the importance of a second term that you've mentioned before about staying relevant. >> erskine you feel any

different? >> yeah. i do. i have the complete opposite opinion on that. if i felt the president just spent the last year of a four-year term running for re-election i might feel the same way that david does. but i don't. i feel like the campaign almost started the day they're re-elected or day they're elected. and therefore i -- i also think too many presidents make decisions based on, you know, what kind of effect it will have on their re-election as opposed to what they might think is the best for the country. i would really like to see one six-year term. i think it would really be very positive. >> i'm influenced by the fact that we made a bunch of disastrous political decisions. >> this is a good question. how does social media, instant reporting, 24-hour news affect the presidential decision process? does it affect just the public affairs piece or the decision

overall? we are living at a time when, you know, as i mentioned to you earlier, we've moved beyond fire side chats. we've got blogs. we've got twitter. we've got facebook. we've got everything that immediately reports things. how does all of that affect the presidential decision-making process? erskine, we'll start with you. >> when we talked about this earlier, i thought andy had the absolute best answer to that about the lid. can andy tell that story first and then we'll go on to it? >> sure. >> i went to the white house for a forgettable campaign for the governor of massachusetts in 1928 and i showed up in august of 1983 very excited to be working at the white house for president reagan. at around 4:30 in the afternoon of r over a loud speaker system that went through the west wing of the white house and old executive office building where

the white house staffers are, there would be an announcement from the press secretary's conference that would say the lid is on. the lid is on. that meant news for the day had ended. reporters were putting stuff into their editorial teams and editors and the evening news was getting ready to be broadcast, so there was no more news. and it was like everybody in the white house -- whew. there was also a discipline that you could tell reporters practiced strong ethics because they wouldn't run a story unless you had two sources and you could find out they had one source and they were trolling hard for that second-confirming source, but they wouldn't run it if they didn't have two confirming sources. then all of a sudden cable nudes came along and they couldn't run the loop enough over the course of the day and maintain eyeballs and ears, so they had to put alert. that meant they had to have something new to say every once in a while. >> breaking news. >> breaking news.

>> so they made a conscious -- >> i'm going to move my chair over. [ laughter ]. >> they made a decision to go with one source, not two. and then other cable news outlets came along and radio talk show and they said, heck, we're just going to go with a good rumor if anybody responds to it. [ laughter ]. >> and so all of a sudden the momentum changed and it was a 24-hour cycle and the lid was never put on. now we have opportunities to communicate instantaneously. we can offer a bert and it showed up in a tweet and somebody is offered to respond to it. we respond without thinking and all of a sudden the response comes out in 140 characters. i said 40 characters before. 140 characters and the person who puts them out owns the response and they refuse to move off of it even if they know it was wrong and so they don't allow good judgment to be used.

so we are communicating instantaneously with our emotions and congress is the most paranoid so they communicate the most with your emotions and they echo them. and judgment, which is what our republic was founded on, we were founded as a democracy that had representatives represent us offering some judgment before they made a decision and then senators took a longer time to consider judgment and the president could exercise judgment after watching what happened in congress. now we're reacting to emotions very quickly and people get stuck on stupid with the responses that they make and we don't taste words before we spit them out and our thumbs are not restrained as we punch and our hashtag is used before we rehash. [ applause ]. but like -- >> how do you feel about it?

>> we can't put that jeannie back in the bottle. so our democracy looks less like a judgment-informed republic and emotionally driven and people do get stuck on stupid and government doesn't work. >> i think the worst -- there are many bad manifestations of this. i started off as a newspaper reporters covering politics back in the early '80s, late '70s, early '80s. when we had 24 hours to report our our story or generally as much time as we needed and there wasn't this deadline pressure every ten minutes, every ten seconds with every tweet, every rumor. but the other thing that's happened is because of cable competition and so on, everything gets blown into a humongous story. so everyday is election day in washington. every story is going to define the presidency. and the thing i always

remember -- the example i always use -- now, this wasn't a small thing by any stretch. but when the oil leak happened in the gulf, this was -- i don't mean to touch on -- it was called obama's katrina, this was going to be the end of his presidency. do you know that it came. it was dealt with. and i don't think it came up once in the 2012 campaign. and one of the things that -- one of the disciplines you have to learn when you are in the white house is to evaluate these rabbits and not chase them down the hole. there really aren't that many defining stories that come along the course of the presidency and shouldn't get ain a panic along with the rest of the community and the journalists and pseudo journalists. >> every year i lived there i came to believe that human ert humphry was really right 26

square miles, surrounded by reality is how he described it. >> ken, any thoughts? >> my problem is because of modern media, when you have the arab spring and cairo and tahrir square and you have a protester arguing against the united states and you have a split screen and the white house podium in the press room is responding to a protester in instant time, if you're in the white house, you don't have to think about winning the second or the minute but you need to win the month, the six months, the years. you need a consistent strategy. and you don't know who this protester is.

you don't know who he or she stands for. and to equate that person with the podium of the president of the united states and having the press secretary responding, seems to me to be dangerous for governing especially in america. >> social media has affected the presidency in another way and you touched on it which is the arab springs started -- >> social media. >> a fruit peddler in tunisia who lit himself on fire. this went viral. and the whole region went up. and this is another thing that makes the presidency, i think, much more difficult today than its ever been before. >> talking about the press, obviously presidents rely a great deal when they're running in a campaign on the press. and when they suddenly go into the white house. in part the press turns fickle against that particular president and the president starts to get a little paranoid about the press. and presidents begin to then --

you know, they don't go out. they don't do as many press conferences. they don't go out and deal with the press as much. tell me the relationship, you know, between a president you served and the press. how did he regard the press, what was the relationship like, ken? >> ronald reagan really respected the press. it wasn't adversarial relationship, but he loved a whole bunch of the press people. first and foremost, believe it or not, was sam donaldson. who always gave him the shouted question. and you remember reagan with his ear cup, i can't hear you, sam. the reality, which i said to sam in a panel like this, was when we didn't want reagan to answer the question as he was leaving for camp david on the helicopter, before we walked outside the dip room, i ordered the pilot of the helicopter to

start his engines. >> it's true. >> because you never want to make the president of the united states a liar. i can't hear you. well, he couldn't hear him. the president encouraged all of us to spend time with the press because even on an off-the-record, if we couldn't answer their questions, we better go back and do more homework. the last thing i'll say, one of my fondest vignettes of the press and reagan was sam donaldson, lou cannon of the washington post, andrea mitchell of nbc news were all fighting about who was going to do the last pool report on air force one or 26,000 as we headed back to california at the end of the reagan presidency. and my lasting memory on a portable typewriter was sam

donaldson on the floor of air force one typing the final pool report and reagan came back to say thank you. that's the kind of relationship, even though it gets tough, iran contra, my job in the aftermath of iran contra was to remind reagan before he went within shouting distance of sam or andrea or anybody else, remember if you answer the question on iran contra, you might as well not give the speech you're giving today because nobody is going to cover it. so you're wasting your time if you answer it. and i used to do this on a daily basis and he would be good for about five, six weeks and then sam would hit something and, bam. >> that would take care of it. >> and that night upstairs from the residence after talking with nancy, i would get a phone call, yeah, i really messed up today. i won't do it again.

and i knew we were good for another four or five weeks. >> erskine, clinton and the press? >> you can answer this one. you know, when i was about 12 years old and you were chief of staff, ken --. [ laughter ]. >> and reagan was president, you know, i always felt the press, you know, because they were so liberal that they didn't like reagan because he was conservative. and i found out when i became chief of staff that was not true. look, i think it's very tough. you want to make sure that you always tell the truth. that you keep the press informed. you've got to feed a hungry beast. but they are insatiable. and it's -- i found it to be a real challenge. i can tell you that no sin or deed goes unpunished or

unpublished in the white house. and you just got to work at it and you got to always wake up everyday and decide you're going to do the right thing and you're always going to tell the truth. and if you do that, you're going to be all right. but it ain't always pleasant. >> we used to brief -- when the president did a press conference, we used to have a group around the table and president would sit there and we would fire questions that were going to come from the press. fire questions at the president. and, of course, they could be very uncomfortable questions. and the president would just, you know, lift up off the floor. and he would circle around. and i remember, al gore used to say, oh, that's a fine answer, mr. president. that will make the news. [ laughter ]. >> and then president would settle down and come back and he would get the right answer in his head. and, you know, he would be good. but it was really almost a therapy session. >> yeah, it was. >> to try to deal with what the

press was going to ask. andy? >> i found the president liked the reporters but didn't like the way they did their job all the time. [ laughter ]. >> if you were on the good side of president bush, you had a nickname and almost every reporter had a nickname, so he really liked them. but he also viewed their relationship with him as cynical because he knew they were very cynical of him. and so he was cautious and friendly. but it was not something that he was always comfortable at doing, but he did not shy away from talking to the press. he had more press conferences than a lot of people realized. he was actually more accessible to the press than president obama by quite a factor actually. but it wasn't anything that he relished doing. their relationship -- they're institutionally not allowed to see themselves as friendly to

any administration. so i think they're always going to be hostile. it's the nature of the medium. it's part of our democracy. i always thought it was a mistake to invite them into the white house rather than have them just cover the white house because their offices are in the white house and that means that they have access to people who can't help themselves from leaking and that's always a problem for a chief of staff. >> david? >> well, i have the perspective of having been a reporter and so i spent a lot of my career before and in the white house explaining to clients what the job of reporters is. and it's not really to befriend the person they're covering. it's to -- you know, so -- you know, i'm a believer in interaction between the principal and the press. the thing that's complicated today is the thing we talked about before because it's different than when ronald reagan was president. the deadline pressures, the competitive pressures, the lack

of editorial judgment on some of these organizations that can drive a news cycle even though nobody quite knows what it is or who is running it or whether it's credible or not makes it difficult. and i will say this, every -- and we -- and i think for obama perhaps it's been a little stinging at times because he got such a good ride for such a long time. you know, we got incredible treatment when he ran for president. you know, i think -- when they started behaving the way reporters do, he was taken aback i think a little bit. but i think everyone here would say every president says i don't read that stuff. and then they'll quote some -- like, the third para graph in some blog. one great advance in press/presidential relations would be to remove the

presidential ipad. >> i agree with that. interesting question, what one piece of advice that you gave the president that he rejected that you almost resigned over? you might have to think about that for a while. [ laughter ]. >> well, you know, i think probably the way to ask it is did you ever feel you were close to walking out of the place? >> i didn't agree with every decision the president made. i respected how he made the decisions and i respected that they were his decisions to make. in terms of a tough decision that he made that i voiced my objection was around stem cell research. and this was not an emergency crisis-type issue. this was an issue that was presented in the context of the federal budget. no money had ever been spent on stem cell research by the

federal government. nih and other institutions were looking to see if they could spend money on research and it was presented as a budget question. the president said he would take under consideration. he asked me when the decision had to be made. i said it has to be made before we send the budget to congress, so we had plenty of time. we planned the process. he brought in lots of expertise, people from the clergy, people from the medical profession, parents of children with diabetes, members of congress, ethics, researchers, spent a lot of time doing home work, he read lots of material, there were lots of debates, he had staff working on the issue. number one, he was struggling in the oval office because he was pro-life and didn't want to allow the collection of stem cells from embryos and aborted fetuses and so he was very

concerned. so he wrestled with the decision. he finally brought -- i think there were 20 people in the oval office, which was unusual, and for one last debate and everybody offered their views. he then announced that he wanted everybody's opinion. so he went person by person around the room and asked, what would you do? what would you do? and the opinions were all over the place. and he came to me. i was literally the last person. mr. president, we go in the back room and i basically tell him this person was afraid to speak up because somebody was bullying them or i was being the honest broker. and he said, well, i want everybody to hear what you have to say. so i told them that i would support funding stem cell research. and he said, thank you very much. and then he said, okay. i'll have an answer for you tomorrow. and he walked out of the oval office. the next morning he came in and i would always greet him really

optimistically because i wanted him to be in a good mood. good morning, mr. president. top of the morning, mr. president. >> sure he's glad to see you. [ laughter ]. >> and he said you're going to be mad at me today. you won't like what i'm doing. i said, excuse me, mr. president? >> he said, i made my decision and i won't like it. and i said, yes, mr. president. he said, i'm not going to fund stem cell research except for the seven lines that have already been collected. i'll allow for funding of that but i'm not going to allow for any more stem cells to be collected unless they come from adult stem cells. and he said, i'm sorry to disappoint you. i said, you didn't disappoint me. it was your decision to make. it wasn't my decision. and i respect how you made the decision. i'm comfortable with it. i tell you that as an example.

i never close to resigning over that decision, but it was one where we disagreed. there were many other times when we disagreed and would have conflict, but i can honestly not say there was one time where i felt that i was either ethically or philosophically challenged to the point where i couldn't respect the president's decisions were his decisions and that i should be able to implement them or have other implement them to live up to his expectation. >> erskine? >> you know, i've always believed that every president deserves somebody he can have a confidential conversation with. and so the president and i had many of those. and i've never written any books or not going to because i really do think it's important for a president to have some people that he feels comfortable really working out his feelings on. and i think everybody who works for a president, you know, ought

to feel they can express their opinion. so, you know, i had many issues that the president and i didn't see quite eye to eye on, but i never came to the point on any of those where i felt i should leave because my job at the end of the day was to express my opinion. if he decided it was his administration, that's what he wanted to do then my job was to support it. and so i did. >> ken, same thing? >> absolutely the same thing as erskine and andy. i would only point out, even though i never came close to resigning, remember when howard and i -- when howard came to the white house, howard baker and i came back. we did not know the truth about iran contra.

and so we questioned the president every which way of sunday up and down, trying to see whether or not he was telling the truth that he did not know. i told this to an audience not long ago and somebody shouted -- yeah, but he was an actor. and i said, yeah, but he was a b-movie actor. you know? [ laughter ]. we became convinced over a period of weeks that, in fact, he was telling the truth. if we had found out otherwise, it was our integrity and our duty to the country to leave. but fortunately that never happened. and we were able to convince reagan -- all of us had had this

experience. when a president makes a mistake, convincing them to do mia koe pa to the american people is like ten root canals. i told you we all used to be 5'9" except for erskine. and we got reagan to do that and the american people gave him the benefit of the doubt. >> i used to be 6'7". >> any moment? >> as i said earlier, my job was to provide political counsel. i was deeply, deeply frightened about entering into the health care issue in part because of the president that president clinton had had and six other presidents dating back 65 years. and because of of what i knew from the data and so on. i just felt it was a really, really risky political proposition and it was a painful thing for me to give them that advice because i have a child

with a chronic condition and i've been through some of the hell that we were trying to deal with. so you know, i gave them what the politics were and i was really proud that he rejected that and said there were things more important than that. and that's why i worked for him in the first place because i wanted to work for a president who was willing to look at the politics and say, this is more important for the country. so, you know, i never, ever there was never a point where i said i can't abide that decision. and almost always he made decisions that i appreciated. so, no. >> we've been talking about obviously the presidents that we all served. 2016, presidential campaign. who do you think will be the nominees for both parties?

and who would you like to be the nominees of both parties, probably a better way to say it? >> i'm for panetta. [ cheers and applause ]. >> look, i believe that if hillary clinton runs for president on the democratic side, she is as overwhelming a favorite as that i've seen, you know, in my life time for an open seat like this, which is probably dooms her to say that. but i really believe that she is well positioned to win the nomination. i don't see anybody emerging who would challenge her in a serious way for the nomination. and i don't know you want to talk about the republicans. that's a very hard process to

handicap because, you know, if jeb bush runs, i think it's one kind of race. if he doesn't run, i think it's another kind of race that's not as obvious. here is what i believe, though, i believe that it is unlikely that the next president will come out of the congress. i really believe in a kind of opposites theory, which is that elections are defined by the outgoing incumbent and never do people choose the replica of what they have. they always choose the remedy. and so this is not judge mental but after bush, people wanted someone who was more nuanced, who saw the complexities, who was different than what they perceived they had. i think it's likely this time people are going to look for someone with more of an executive mentality, a govern, and i think in that sense hilary's experience as secretary of the state is useful because it took her out of that legislative realm. >> andy? >> well, first of all, i want to

say america has been a great country that we have a constitution that is an invitation. most powerful word in the constitution is the first word, we. it's our government and the we is all inclusive and it's a noble call to serve the american people. there's no one who personifies noble service better than leon panetta and i think george hue bert walker bush did that, i think the presidents that we served have done that. but we're in the process of picking the next noble servant. and it will end upcoming down to a bindery choice. i think the most qualified person to be president is john ellis. and most of you say, you don't know him. the truth is, he's got a great resume. and he's a great leader. but his name is john ellis bush, jeb. and if you were john ellis, i

think he would be your first choice. because he is john ellis bush, i hope he would be a bindery option for you to choose between. i'm encouraging him to run. that doesn't mean he will. but he is the person i think has the best resume, temperament, policy commitment, grounded in values and would be a good president and i'm trying not to be a bush sinker fan in doing that. there are others i would look to on the republican side. i like going to the pool of governors we have more than i do the congressmen, congress ladies or people who are serving on capitol hill. but i think the process is relatively wide open on the republican side. it's not unlike what happened in 1979 and '80. i can still remember most of these people. you will forget they ran for president. phil crane. larry pressler. >> john conley.

howard baker. bob dole. we had ronald reagan. george bush. there was a lot of people were running. and ronald reagan was not the favorite but he was the front runner. and so this process will probably churn for quite a while and a front-runner will emerge that will be the nominee and then it will be a bindery choice. on the democrat side, i remember being with leon in i think we were in tennessee some place and about this time in the calendar year -- >> that's about right. >> and the question came up, who do you think will be the next president of the united states? and leon proudly said, hillary clinton. >> eight years ago. >> that's right. and i said way too early to make that prediction. oh, no. it's going to happen. and i can remember howard dean was going to be president. as i gave speeches around. it's very early.

we'll get there. jeb bush would be my choice and i hope he runs. >> we have a few minutes here. what do you think, erskine, quickly. >> just to comment on jeb bush. i've done several of these events on him particularly on education and he's a very impressive person and i think has the kind of experience that you would want to see candidate for president. i'm all in for hillary clinton. i think she's extraordinary. what most of you all haven't seen that you and i have, is her genuine warmth. i can remember one some of the kids in the white house were just in the toilet and all be damn, she would know and show up and get their spirits up and they would be ready to go. at the same time, when we were facing a tough decision, her judgment was terrific. so i'm for hillary. >> ken? >> jeb.

i hope he runs and i think he would be a hell of a president. hillary, i think has the democratic nomination. if not, it's a free fall. >> can i just say one thing about jeb bush. >> go ahead. >> i share erskine's view. the great challenge for him can he -- nothing tells me he couldn't, can he resist what the other candidates on the other republican sides have yielded to in the last few cycles, can he maintain his positions rather than trying to indicator to the right wing of the party. if he does that, i think he would be a very formidable candidate. [ applause ]. >> ladies and gentlemen, we've had, i think, a fascinating discussion this evening. you know, we've all served different presidents who will have a different place in history. but i can tell you one thing, i think it was an honor for all of us to be able to serve the president of the united states. thank you very much. see you next year. [ applause ].

on the next "washington journal" the on-going air strikes against isis. then a discussion about the upcoming mid-term elections with steve horsford on issues related to the campaigns. we'll also take your phone calls, look for your comments on facebook and twitter. starting live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. this weekend on the c-span networks, saturday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a national town hall on the critical and historic impact of voting. sunday evening at 8:00 p.m., on q and a, washington post columnist, sally quinn. and saturday night at 10:00 p.m. on book tv's afterwards, matt richtel. and sunday at 1:00 p.m. eastern, the ninth annual brooklyn book

festival. saturday night at 10:00 p.m. eastern, on american history tv on c-span3, author jonathan white on the role of the union army in abraham lincoln's after eastern, author annette dunlop looksality first lady's fashion. let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us. e-mail us. or send us a tweet at. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. each week reel america brings you archival films to tell the story of the 20th century. ♪ >> governor stevenson takes time out from his strenuous campaign