there are demands that these processes be open and the meetings be public and the members of the committee disclose their campaign contributions. i think that will be an open process. >> for those who are hoping for a deal, the idea that there will be an eternity -- an alternative to leadership is not a bad thing. the gang of six is all well and good, but it is not law. if you want to see something actually become law, the way these deals have been done is through the leadership. if you have people essentially speaking for their leaders, patty murray speaking for harry reid, that may help make this happen, so the difference on this super committee is that it is guaranteed think a majority vote in congress, which no other plans that had that privilege. this starts with a leg up, but the idea they're representing leadership does not mean there cannot be a deal.

it means there cannot be a deal unless the leaders sign-on. >> what about the role the white house? >> the white house does not have a direct role. they are an influence in terms of setting the tone. perhaps to senator sanders' dismay, they have set the tone that they're willing to compromise. republicans on the other hand, come to the table and say i'm willing to give you tax increases and democrats say no. i think they're there to set the tone and i'm sure there will be white house aides in the room there to be whispering into the years that democrats about where the lines can be. they have gone through several rounds already where they got very close to the deal. i think question is less about how do we do it, where can we cut and more where is the

politics where we willing to do? there are plenty of ideas out there if they want to take it. >> what about his relationship with harry reid or democratic leadership in general? do they feel the pressure from senator sanders? >> he is pretty far out on the left, so i'm not sure they pay that much attention to what he says but he says that loudly, clearly and often. he can't help but get their attention from time to time and i think he does. but there is a pretty powerful political dynamic going on here and what we're going to see is this debate carrying on into next year and straight out to the election. you can easily see next year's election being almost a referendum on these too deeply divided policy decisions.

>> thank you very much it to you both. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> republican presidential candidate and former louisiana governor, but the roemer, holds a press conference at the national press club in the washington. he is expected to talk about campaign fund-raising efforts. that is light at o'clock a.m. eastern. live at 12:45, president obama begins his bus tour in minnesota, talking about u.s. jobs of the economy. full coverage of the president's remarks here on c-span. >> as an aspiring journalist, i'm already preparing myself for the very small salary will be starting out with. >> to be a good journalist, yet to be disciplined enough to put aside your bias and report the facts. >> the reason why people love fox news and movies is because

it is an experience. it is emotional. is love and hate. >> from the washington journalism and media conference, aspiring high-school journalists on ethics, the role of opinion in commentary, and where they get their news and information in today's multimedia environment. that's tonight on c-span's "q &a." >> track the latest campaign contributions on campaign 2012. it helps you navigate the political landscape with water feeds, facebook updates from the campaigns, candidate biographies and of the latest polling data and links to our media partners in the early primary and caucus states. >> next, a panel of presidential biographer's discuss how president obama is doing so far and predict how he will do in

the 2012 elections. this discussion from hampton institute is about one hour and 20 minutes. >> i looked closely and realized the bumper sticker was a little worn, a little abused by the elegance, but it was quite legible and still very red, white and blue. not to be too silly or glib, i wondered if it was some kind of metaphor for what this president is now going through. but how successful is the? elbrus is he? how, to paraphrase at koch, is he doing?

if i were president obama, i'm not sure i would want to be here this afternoon to hear the answer. with all due respect, the idea of being discussed and bisected by the biographies of lyndon baines johnson and franklin delano roosevelt and by a writer from the "new yorker close "says mr. obama is not the messianic figure many of his supporters think he is, that would be daunting to everyone. i don't mean to suggest any of these gentlemen is prepared to draw or quarter the president. in fact, some of them have written and said very findings about him and his campaign. some of them may or may not have voted for him. two of them actually had dinner with the president at the white house earlier this week. that is all i could find out from either of them about what went on there. that will be the end of that conversation. some of these gentlemen have

indicated differences between our 44th president and the men -- and of course they're all men, who preceded them. some felicitously, some not so. each of the panelists as deep insights into what a president should do, what makes a president a president, what makes him succeed and indoor and what can bring him down. so just after two and half years into the obama presidency, what better time to discuss this? we have 16 months to endure all the nonsense before the next election. what more critical subject? let's begin with an introduction. we are going to play among ourselves appear and let you listen in and talk about some very interesting point, i hope. then i will be opening up to questions from you, so get your questions ready because we want to hear from you in just a bit. i am going to introduce

everybody in the order in which we are seated. george pappas became a staff writer for the "new yorker and has covered the iraq war for the magazine. his book was named one of the top -- one of the 10 best books of 2005 by the "new york times." that is among many other awards he won for the buck. he has read about some of the most inhospitable countries and west africa. in 2003, he got to overseas press club awards. what about the operation and reconstruction of iraq and the other about this civil war in sierra leone. he is an author of his experience in africa and the book "blood of the liberals" 83 generational non-fiction history of his family and american liberalism and the 20th century, which won the robert f. kennedy book award. he has written two novels and a

new but and has served in the peace corps in west africa and togo and is working on a buck about -- working on a book about institutional decline in america. welcome to george packer. >> thank you. [applause] >> i'm glad to have beaten the traffic. >> george drove out from brooklyn and nobody gave him the back road map. bob carroll, who many of you know because he is one of us and lives out here, as you well know, has written truly adjective-busting biographees. his biographies of robert moses and lyndon johnson he twice won the pulitzer prize for biography. he has gone virtually every other married -- every other

major literary honor, including the national book award, a gold medal of biography of the national academy of arts and letters and on and on. i would love to read the mall but i would rather get to our subject in a minute. his first book was "the power broker -- robert moses and the fall of dark." the modern library called one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of the 20th-century. i would say achillea the words of many before me and still to come that is the single best book about our city, new york city, that you would ever read. to research the years of lyndon johnson, he and his wife move from new york to the texas hill country and then washington d.c. to luckily live the life lyndon johnson lived as he was growing up and getting started. -- to literally live the life he lived. his next book was called prove that we lived in a great age of biography. the second volume was called

"brilliant." no review does justice to the drama of the story, which is nothing less than how present- day politics was born. this third volume was hailed by the "london times" as a "masterpiece." truly one of the great political biographies of that age. welcome. [applause] >> he hates it when you ask when the next volume is coming out. h w brands, who assures me we can call him bill, this is his first trip to the east end of what island. he sold calorie across the american west for a while and earned graduate degrees in math and history in oregon and texas. yes, at vanderbilt, texas a&m,

and is now the university of texas at austin where he is the dixon allan anderson centennial pratt -- professor of history. he writes american history and politics. several of his books have been bestsellers. two were finalists for the pulitzer prize. he lectures his -- lectures on history and current events and you can see him on tv, hear him on the radio and he is now working on a book about yet another president, ulysses s. grant. welcome. [applause] let's start with a brief assessment from each one of view on how the president is doing. is he the peace president, the osama bin laden president or something else? >> thank you.

the only thing i can say to you is how we think he is doing is going to look a lot different in some years that it does now. it always does. if there's anything i've learned from my books is that things looked so different at the time than they do a few years down the road. i can give you an example from robert moses and lyndon johnson. robert moses was so popular in new york city, i went to horseman, and everyone at our class had to write for their junior paper, robert moses is the perfect example of the great night in literature. knight. that was the 1950's. by the 1970's, he was a great villain of new york. so everything changes. >> so you're not going to answer my question? i i will say that's things --

will say that things that look so important and vital right now in the obama presidency are going to look different. we already -- the events of the moment are what captures everyone's attention. it is seldom mentioned right now that when he took office, people were walking around worrying about whether they had more than $100,000 in the bank because the bank might fail or that he came to the office with a war in iraq or that's -- and that was really a problem. most important, he came to office, and no one mentions this, at the very crest of the tide of conservatism that you could say began near the end of the lyndon johnson presidency, about 40 years ago. it has come to a crest and is crashing in this irrationality of the street -- of the tea party movement. these are all things he has

stepped in to. however we feel about it now, history will look more and the context of those things and a lot of other things. forill, let's go to you another history point of view or not history point of view. >> i think president obama is doing about as well as any president could under the circumstances. he became president and was handed an extremely difficult hand to deal with. it was a difficult precisely because it was not absolutely terrible. you probably remember the cover -- it was either "time" or "newsweek" where he was in the franklin roosevelt pose and they photoshop something so he had a cap on his head of a cigarette holder. the caption on the cover was "franklin delano obama. but there was a thought he would

usher in a new new deal. a lot of obama supporters hope that what was what was going to happen, but it was not going to happen because things were bad, but not bad enough. if you recall, when obama was elected, the unemployment rate was 6%. wall street was teetering and nobody knew whether it was going to go over the edge not. what this meant was he had a huge challenge he had to deal with. unlike franklin roosevelt, they were not so bad that he was free to do what everyone did. franklin roosevelt was elected after the country had been in a full-blown depression for two and a half years. in part, because of this, americans generally gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted to do. he could do no wrong because things were so that they could not get worse. obama had in mind that there

were some major changes to the american financial system, to the american system of governance, but he could not undertake the steps to get there because everything he did had to be weighed, would it spooked wall street? would it make this financial crisis a full-blown depression? in fact, a full-blown depression did not occur. one can argue that with these sort of things, you never know whether it would have or would not have, but it did not occur and he ought to get some credit for the fact that it did not occur. but he is not going to get credit because in american politics, you don't get credit for things that didn't happen. you get credit or responsibility for things that did happen. he has managed the american economy about as well as i the guy could have been managed, given the opposition in congress

and the fact he's got a republican control of the house of representatives. i would say he's done about as well as could be done under the circumstances. but i know there were plenty of people who voted for him who were thinking this is going to be a transformational president. that's not going to happen and it's not going to happen because the context is not right. things are bad, but not bad enough. >> that's the first time i've heard someone say if he was worse off -- if things were worse off he would be doing better. george, how is he doing? >> he has been very surprising. he is so different from the candidate that i think it has taken a long time for the public to catch up with the real president he is as opposed to the figure who sees -- who seized the world's imagination in 2008 when he streaked to the

nomination and his media continue to rise to the election. he is not a roosevelt. he is not a figure who would fit a depression-era time. he reminds me of an earlier time, maybe a progressive era figure in his high mindedness. his cerebral qualities. he is so reasonable, his speech is so lofty, he is very comfortable moralizing. he reminds me a little bit of wilson. he is a bit remote and aloof and i think he probably would have done better if he had been governing at time closer to the progressive era when it was not one crisis after another and there was no fox news or michele bachmann.

although there were rational tendencies, it was a time when an appeal to civic minded this and political reform and those higher quality is actually had a real audience, especially among the professional middle class across the country who were the backbone of the progressive movement. instead, obama is a reasonable man speaking into a hurricane all the time. presidency hasis fallen short, i think why it has. >> you are presenting a picture of a man who is at odds at -- at odds with the time around him? >> he may be behind and ahead at the same time. he's always three steps ahead of the more ordinary politicians and perhaps the public. you mentioned that i'm writing a book -- obama may well see his job as to manage as well as he can a time and america declined.

-- in american decline. i don't think he believes we will bestride the world like a colossus again. >> he said it yesterday in his conference about the debt ceiling -- i came to it verbatim -- this is a time we have a chance to do something big. we can make a big change. not be striding the world, but -- >> meaning cutting $4 trillion from the debt. of course he says that. all american presidents have to talk that way. but there's a gap between what we expect of the president and what obama is thinking. which i cannot be sure about. the thing he failed at is a strange thing -- connecting to the public. this is what he did so well in 2008, but since then, he's had a terribly difficult time persuading people and being heard above the noise of the

hurricane which is out there which is a political hurricane, an economic hurricane, a social hurricane, a news hurricane. and obama is so awful and unwilling to descend to the sound bites and cheap phrases that a president actually needs in order to reach the public in a deep way. i think he has failed to lead in that sense and that the disappointment in his presidency. >> this is to all of the people who say i wish he would do something. i wish she would be the man he voted for. >> how many phrases can you remember from his presidency? i could quote a dozen or two dozen phrases from the first couple of years of johnson's first presidency and roosevelt. there was the new deal, there was the great society -- what phrases stick from obama? >> audacity of hope. >> that was before the game --

before he became president. >> i agree. >> since he has become president, he is so consumed with the tremendous problems inherited and coming up with in his way, reasonable policy solutions, it's almost as if he cannot do that and reach out to the broad public with those memorable phrases that are part of the job. >> bob, let me talk about the lbj comparison, which is a terrible comparison. start with the difference between the way president johnson got things done and the way this president is or isn't getting things done. >> [laughter] how did lyndon johnson get things done? i will answer you with a quote from scoop jackson who served in both the house of representatives and the senate with johnson. he said president amenity --

president kennedy was a wonderful communicator. but when he needed a vote, he would have the senators down to the white house and give them all the reasons and arguments as to why he had to have this note. but if the senator said if i give you this note, it will kill me with my constituency, kennedy would say i understand. he said lyndon johnson wouldn't understand. he said he would charmian or thread new or cajole you or bride you, he would do whatever he had to but he would get your vote. you see this with johnson over and over again. you see him getting votes in the senate that you don't believe are possible to pass this legislation. >> is that what americans want for president? do they want a london -- do they want a lyndon johnson to -- pick your verb of choice -- many worse things, or do they want a more recent diplomat, which is what our current president

appears to be? >> it depends what lyndon johnson we're talking about. if you're talking about 1964 or 1965 repast medicare and medicaid, which seemed impossible to pass or 70 separate education bills, or are you talking about the lyndon johnson of '66 and '67 and '68, where he is a figure who deceived the american public and tried to get us into a war -- got us into a war in asia, tried to do it -- after the first escalation of 125,000 troops, which he did on a saturday because he thought it would not get much coverage on sunday. james preston said the president of the united states got into a land war in asia last night in secret. there is something to be said for a president who establishes a persona. i think the persona obama has

established is awful, smart, honest, calm, and trying to negotiate his way through a hurricane as best he can. i think there's a lot to be said for that. >> you have written about another wartime president. to what extent are these wars -- is there any parallel with world war two and fdr or are these wars so utterly different that, back to the hurricane word, that he cannot make his way through it? >> the wars the united states is fighting in afghanistan and iraq and maybe libya are so different from world war two that there is no meaningful comparison. with this group, if we were not told there was a war going on in afghanistan, you would hardly know it. very few people i know have relatives who are fighting in

iraq or afghanistan. it's a war that fought by an all volunteer, professional army. i've been on college campuses teaching since the 1980's. there are no protests against the war in iraq and afghanistan. public opinion poll after public opinion poll shows the united states needs to get out of afghanistan but it gained a retraction because there is nothing to mobilize the opposition. with franklin roosevelt, one of the reasons, a principal reason he was able to get so much done during his first 100 days, which he had no idea there is going to be 100 days, he called congress into emergency session to dealing with the collapsing banking set -- the emergency banking bill. but there were still -- they were so willing to go on with what they said, he said let's try something else and one thing led to another and another and by the time he ran out of things

to send to congress, 100 days had passed. that became the yardstick for all future presidents to be gauged by. but he had majority in both houses of congress. barack obama had to deal of a divided congress from his inauguration. it's true that the democrats have majorities in both houses, but due to changes in the definition of a filibuster that still somewhat confused me -- nowadays, to get anything through the senate, you have to have 60 votes. so he had to deal with the opposition that decided to go into opposition against his presidency, and mitch mcconnell said at the beginning that the first order of business is to make sure barack obama would be a one-term president. roosevelt did not have to deal with that. about's situation was entirely different. there is something else. obama was the victim of his own brilliance as a campaigner.

i've been observing american politics since the 1960's. the first campaign i vaguely remember with a 1960 campaign and i studied a lot of them. i've never seen a politician other than a victorious general -- a play by different rules -- but an ordinary politician who came out of nowhere, before the summer of 2004, almost nobody had heard of barack obama. four years later, he is elected president of the united states. he was this individual who allowed people to project onto him their hopes for what america could be in a difficult time. his campaign slogan, "yes we can" was absolutely brilliant. yes we can what? what every want. that's fine for a candidate. but once you get elected, the operative phrase is no longer yes we can, it is no you can't.

you have to choose. when you are a candid, you don't have to choose. he let everyone believe what they want to believe. it's worth remembering and you have your own opinions, but absent the financial crisis of 2008, john mccain would be president of the united states because as long as the most salient issue was the war in iraq and afghanistan, obama's background and biography did not measure up tobut more lessons o, the ground changed. wall street shuddered. mccain's biography as a military veteran, a war hero, and all of this no longer meant anything. people were willing to give obama a closer second look. they decided it is time for change. so now he is president. all sorts of people think he is coy to bring in this brand-new revolution, this reform.

it was not going to happen, because the crisis was not quite deep enough. i happen to think obama is trying to get this debt ceiling resolved so he can move back into campaign mode. he is a brilliant campaigner, and i believe he will be able to connect with americans. >> what does he uses his campaign slogan? >> the only one in washington who is dealing with this that is reasonable. polls show that 80% of americans think that to do with the debt ceiling and the deficit there ought to be some combination of spending cuts and tax increases. but the trouble is that part of

the public is not the warm republicans in the house of representatives are responding to. they are looking at the one that will throw them out in the primaries if they vote for any way of tax increases. this will be off the table in one way or another. he can reach out to the broader american public, which i think he does well. as long as republicans split between the democrats on one side and republicans on the other, we cannot reach those republicans. >> you are saying once we get by august 2, he comes out of the exit of aid -- as a different person, or comes back to who he was? >> i think he goes back to who he was in the summer of 2008, when he can campaign instead of having to govern. >> champing at the bit. >> it is good to be hard for him

to do that. >> during the 2.5 years of his presidency, forget about the official unemployment rate. the real unemployment rate -- basically one in six americans are out of work right now, which is a staggering number. it is not quite 1930's levels, but it is the closest we have been since the 30's. that will be what he has to account for throughout the campaign. i honestly do not know what the theme of his campaign is going to be. i see it as leadership. he has not articulated a vision that americans can quickly understand and subscribe to or not. i am not sure this is a world successful campaign theme. one thing obama lacks of that jfk and fdr both had is a movement. fdr had labor behind him.

he also had all the disk contents of the 30's that in some way opposed him, but became this overwhelming majority that brought him to reelection. lbj had civil rights. pushing from below lbj behind the scenes, there was twisting arms and flattery to get things done in congress. the only movement we have had since the biggest financial crisis since the depression is the tea party, who have filled a vacuum. obama could not create a movement. i think once he became president, the list of 10 million names that was his e- mail list, which was sort of the movement that brought him to the presidency, they went home. there were no longer being asked to do anything. without a movement in a critical time like this, it is very hard

for the president to summon the troops in the thick of a campaign in which republicans are going to say one in six americans is out of work. >> would the say to the driver of this, and innumerable people i have spoken to who were and are obama supporters who are nonetheless disappointed? they say i voted for him, i will vote for him again, but i am not getting what i want from him? >> that is politics. get over it. you wanted a miracle worker. yes we can was the slogan of america worker. you have a human being who has amazing qualities. >> turning a movement into laws

-- governing in a democracy is passing laws. lyndon johnson called it writing it into the books of law. they have a civil rights movement, since reconstruction. johnson has to get this bill through. it does not matter. the southerners are not good to get it through. to watch him do that is to see genius an elected government. it can be a bad bill, but we can always go back and pass it later.

if the liberals try to mount it into a stronger bill, there will have a block of votes on their side to let them stop it. you can see it memos in the johnson library trying to figure out where to get the votes. he figures it out. there is a dam on the river between idaho and oregon. the westerners, the rocky mountain states -- you have 12 democratic votes. they've been trying to get this damn for 20 years. the south has always blocked it. he goes to the westerners and says i will give you the dim if you agree to vote for the south. they agree. he has in this one stroke made a -- he got it within three or

four votes of passing. lyndon johnson comes into play. now he has to get them one by one. to watch him know what these senators want and give them what they want or withhold what they want is to see this brutal force. the end result of it is he has got a new bill passed. >> bob told me the other day that when he won the national humanities medal in 2010, president obama said to him, "i think about reading the powerbroker back when i was 22 years old and being mesmerized. it helped shape how i think about politics." the question is what has president obama learned after all this. [laughter] >> i am sorry you asked me all

that. so far, i think the things george and bill said, the difficulties of doing this are very real. part of the problem is senator obama was only a senator for three years, and for part of that three years he was out campaigning. it is very hard to learn congress, to learn the senate. it is really another world. when you come in -- i would like to think he has been on a learning curve. >> on the job learning is not what we want for our presidents, is it? >> throwing in your story, you're great story about how lbj got the 57 civil rights bill passed -- the equivalent would be the health care bill. obama needed every last vote. i studied that carefully. i was in the senate a lot during the last votes. he did it. he got it done against great

odds. i remember what it was like when scott brown was elected in massachusetts. many democrats said forget it. we are not going to get this done. obama said we are. along with nancy pelosi. after the midterms, i went down to virginia, southwestern virginia, coal mining country. a 30-year congressman down there, tremendously popular, had been defeated by someone who did not live in the district. anyone but the democrat. why would you throw out this popular congressman who brought home a ton of bacon to a poor area? they said obama disappointed us. we thought he was a new kind of politician. instead, we saw him wheeling and dealing, trading medicaid payments and the louisiana compromise, dealing with the insurance companies at the hospitals, giving everything away to get this health care bill.

he was not supposed to be that. obama is living in an age where two hours after the deal lbj would cut with whoever was done, the whole world knew. it is stomach turning. obama had to sort of -- he mastered legislation in that case, and it killed him. >> what lyndon johnson would have said is the important thing is -- lyndon johnson was always trying to say the important thing is to get the bill passed. we can always go back and fix it. once they lose their virginity, it will be easier next time. that is the guide. he has a lot of phrases like that. he would say we got it through. my feeling is that obama could say the same thing. we have a health care bill. it will be easier to fix it then to pass a bill -- i am not saying i do not think it is a

bad bill. it is a bad bill. it will be easier to fix it then to start over again. >> is all about politics? is it all about whether he can govern, and not living up to campaign promises? how much of what we are seeing has to do with personality? is there, historically, a president who has withstood so much comment about is he too aloof, is he not down and dirty enough, is he to down and dirty, is he not part of the group? the personality thing is astounding. >> start with george washington. there is this notion that somehow this semi-monolithic media has broken into all these different fractions, and people can watch fox news if they do not want to hear cnn. you can choose your media outlet and are not confronted with opinions that disagree with yours. that was really the model of

american journalism in the 18th and 19th century. there were newspapers that were attuned -- parties have their own newspapers. presidential administrations had their own newspapers. we are reverting to that time. it was also a time of generally weak and comparatively insignificant presidents. the presidency achieved anything like its modern form only with the beginning of the 20th century. to the 19th century, congress was the dominant force in american politics. everybody thought that was the way it should be. there were brief exceptions, crises like the civil war. occasionally, you would get a force of nature like andrew jackson. until the 20th century, the president was not the center of american politics. in terms of the role of personality -- personality matters tremendously.

the personality that worked for andrew jackson did not work for abraham lincoln. abraham lincoln's personality was not at work in the days of theodore roosevelt. lyndon johnson's would not work today either. the personality has to match the time. with lyndon johnson, if you have been to the johnson library, you can see mockups of lbj's office. the thing that gets the attention of the school kids that go through is the television set with the three screens. johnson was considered such a voracious consumer of the media, he would watch all three evening news shows at the same time. imagine a president today trying to keep track of all the media outlets. it would be quite impossible. >> you would have to have a lot of lies. >> yes. the president today faces a different kind of thailand. one of franklin roosevelt secrets of success was his

mastery of the principal medium of the day, radio. roosevelt's fireside chats became legendary as roosevelts way of getting around the largely republican newspaper press of the day, and speaking directly to individuals. ronald reagan a little bit, jfk even more, was the master of television. i do not know if the media, and it is very plural today, can have a master. i will just add one thing at this point on obama. george is right that the american economy is in the worst shape it has been in since the great depression. having said that, barack obama just might get reelected.

amazing, given the context of the economy. presidents don't get reelected. historically, there should be an uprising within the democratic party. he should be having to fight off challengers for the nomination. he is not. if i were making but today, i would say obama is a point to win, in part because the republicans cannot figure out who they are, and there is a situation where the only type of candidate they are able to nominate, and this is not simply because i lived in texas and then hoping that my governor is going to go on to different things -- i think rick perry is going to get the republican nomination. we can talk about why. this is typical of where the republicans are.

they are hostage to the right wing. the only person who can get the nomination cannot win the general election. that is where we will see obama strength, reaching out to the broader public and not the fractional public. >> what right now, both in terms of governance and reelection -- what is the biggest challenge president obama faces? is it the economy? is it the tea party? is it the republican party? is it a divided congress? what do you think is the biggest thing he has to get over, any of you? >> you never know, because you do not know what the internal polls are showing. that is one of the things that's so strikes me about learning about lyndon johnson. you read the newspapers on what is happening in a certain month,

and then you go to the minutes of the meeting in the white house and the internal communications. it is like what is in the newspapers and magazines -- it is like a shot with no substance. this is what they are really thinking. one thing that occurs to meet -- there are only four or five states that are really in play in this election. ohio, michigan, pennsylvania -- they all seem to be states, the rust belt states -- >> and florida, where things are also very bad. >> i think if you're trying to get reelected, and if this is what the polls are showing, the internal polls, he has a tremendous problem in being reelected even by default. >> because of those five states? >> because of those states. >> bill, what do you think?

>> well, i am actually an optimist. if i was in obama camp, i would be an optimist. i will start with the current debt ceiling negotiations. i think things have shifted in a way that he wins almost no matter how it turns out. if they get a deal, a big deal, a medium meal, or a smaller deal, he can say we did it. if they don't, he has shifted the onus. he is the one sounding reasonable. republicans are sounding increasingly shrill. he can run against eric counter and the ones who are going to vote against anything, any kind of debt ceiling raising. a lot of bad things could have happened so far during obama's first term that did not.

foreign policy has gone reasonably well. there are still lots of reasonably bad things that could happen between now and a year from november. >> in 2009, he arrived with all the wind at his back, with not an overwhelming majority of roosevelt and johnson, but big majorities in congress, with a big majority in the popular vote, unlike anything we have seen since ronald reagan or george w. bush. we can do a counterfactual as to things he might have done in a different way that might have produced different results in terms of support.

he had been fighting a head wind from the very beginning. republicans have shamelessly created this mess and refused to do a thing to help him to clean it up. they made the calculation that if they do not help him out, the country will decide it is his burden, and when things do not get better, it will be his fault. he lost the ground he came in with. >> lost it because he lost it or because circumstances lost it for him? >> i remember those early weeks in march and april of 2009. a lot of things happened that looking back seem critical that at the time was not paying attention to, because in one

week things can make a gigantic difference. there was an uproar, the first time the anger over the financial crisis found a target. instead of harnessing it, finding a way to say i am as angry as you and we are going to do something about it, because the people who brought the country to its knees should not be profiting from taxpayer bailout money -- tim geithner went to obama and said there is nothing to do about it. larry summers said these are contracts. the house was up in arms. there were bills about 99% taxation of the bonus money, which probably would have been unconstitutional. obama decided to do the

unpopular but right thing and not touch the bonuses and not be a demagogue about it. he lost some of the public confidence. there are other things that happened around the same time. . the stimulus bill -- they never explained to the country what it would do and how it was going to work. >> it was the wrong bill. from the start, they made mistakes. >> there were more things than any human being could possibly deal with. he began to lose his hold on their public from the first days. >> when you say high-minded, do you mean that as a criticism? >> it is great to have a man who can think and articulate and is honest, for whom the english language is a friend and not an enemy, and who can write a speech accepting the nobel peace cries -- peace prize that

it is a miracleh. we have a president like this. it is a great thing. but it is not the only thing he needs. i was reading a paper about politics as a vocation. there are politicians who practice the ethic of responsibility and politicians who practice the ethic of ultimate and. obama practices the ethic of responsibility. that is the key word of his responsibility -- of his administration. it becomes an inn in itself -- end in itself to be responsible. republicans do not care about the consequences, just their convictions. >> we will turn now to audience questions.

while we start circulating with the microphone, i want to do a version of a lightning round. very quickly, what is the single best accomplishment of this administration so far? very quickly, one thing. >> to focus on long-term issues like the deficit. >> passing a health care bill. 40 million people who did not have insurance have it now. >> i would say the same, the health care bill. >> let us go to some of your questions, and then we will come back here. >> why don't we start in back, where you are. please stand back -- please stand up. >> i think bill was incorrect when he said the financial crisis was not severe enough to make a difference. when obama came in, there were three economic crises at the

same time. the first is the middle class is disappearing. the national debt to gdp ratio is now five times gdp. it is an impossible number to look at. from 2001, the private-sector stopped creating jobs. so you have no way to create jobs. you have no demand. in using summers and geithner, he paid no attention to these things. i wonder why he ignored these issues. maybe he just did not know what to do about it. >> i could not agree more. i think obama does care about those issues. he talked about them constantly during the campaign. he may not know what to do. with the stimulus, they got what they thought they could get. maybe they did not push hard enough to try for more, at a different kind of proportion of spending to tax cuts. it was too weak, given both the

short term gale force wind of the financial crisis and the long-term erosion. i do not know that politicians know how to solve this any longer joe biden runs a task force about restoring the middle class. nobody knows what they are doing. it is like they have given up the idea they are going to persuade the public that they can solve these big problems. you are right. the people he picked not only, as we all know, were some of the purveyors of policies that led to the financial crisis, but also were the types who, when it came to things like aig bonuses, persuaded the president to ignore the public and to the high-minded thing, and i think the wrong thing. his advisers do not have enough fuel for the pulse of the country. i think inevitably a president becomes isolated in the white

house. we do not hear from obama for long periods of time. on afghanistan, throughout 2009, he gave one speech on the war while he was in serious meetings, planning and escalation. he is great at those meetings. for some reason, it stays out of the public imagination. it is a weird thing, given what a public figure he was in our imagination. >> something george said earlier, the role of personality. one of the striking things about president obama is his inability to get effectively met in public. he is the great conciliator. he wants to bring people together. if you look at american history, the biggest steps forward or backward occur when a president separates the sheep from the goats. he singles out those bad people and is able to isolate them and reduce their numbers.

both roosevelts were brilliant at this. theodore roosevelt talked about the malefactors of great wealth. franklin roosevelt railed against economic royalists. politics is an emotional game. unless you can engage people's emotions, you cannot lead a movement. you cannot get people to do what they would not do on their own. obama is a very cool personality. i do not know, on the basis of anything i have seen, that he is the kind of guy who can get mad. president drawing a line and saying here is a wine, he says let's all be adults. that means there are no lines, just adults and children. >> and people get angry at him for not getting angry. you hear more and more from constituents saying, "why doesn't he tell? >> it may be an aspect of his

personality. >> it surely is. >> this is something you cannot change. >> one thing that was not mentioned is that neither of the roosevelt was black. whatever this entire whatever hour and 10 minutes, the fact that obama is our first black president was never mentioned. i do not know the answer to this, but you have to wonder how much of what you all are talking about is because he is afraid of looking like an angry black man. i do not know the answer to that. >> i think that is a critical point. >> another question. where is our microphone? >> let's get a microphone, please. >> what eric kanter got so mad about this week and all that nonsense -- >> what the president said was nothing to worry about.

but i do not know if we are supposed to believe that. >> would you guys know about that? >> you guys were just in the white house, did you find out? >> if i were invited to the white house, i would have been asking that question. >> it is a good question. the president tried to downplay it yesterday in his press conference. we have to wait for both of their memoirs to find out what really happened in that meeting. another question, please. could we have something down here? could you stand up and wait for the microphone? thank you. >> i wanted to continue with the personality issue. it seems to me much greater than not getting mad in public or being afraid to appear as an angry black man. if i look that great leaders through history -- alexander the great, julius caesar, cleopatra,

robert moses, lyndon johnson -- these are all people who were very comfortable with their aggression. it seems to me that barack obama is very tied up in his own identity as a nice guy. he was a nice muslim boy, and nice christian boy. healthcare is a nice thing to give all these programs to people. but unless one is really comfortable fighting, maybe even dying for what one believes in, there seems to be a limit to what one can accomplish. to do that, one has to be comfortable saying i have a nasty side, and i am not afraid when i have values that i want to uphold to be nasty to those who disagree. >> thank you for your comment. >> nice guy, is what i am

saying. >> does anybody want to respond to that? >> there is no question that the most forceful presence, the ones we consider to be the great presidents, had, in very many cases, but not all cases, this kind of ability to channel where you have labeled their aggression. but i will give you the example of the person considered by historians to be the greatest president of all, abraham lincoln. abraham lincoln did not have an aggressive bone in his body. he was ambitious, but he was exceedingly thoughtful, very reflective, and put the greatest priority on trying to bring the country back together. so there is no single model for presidential success. it is odd that nice is the word. people who really know obama, who have worked with him, who have a lot of dealings with him, describe him as the most and cement -- unsentimental and

ruthless man they have ever met. this is a man who will, once you are no longer going to be able to help him, we could point to jeremiah right among others, you are gone. his counsel, who was an early supporter of obama, had been a clinton guy and took the risk of becoming an obama guy, and became white house counsel. he was cut loose without a second thought, to the horror of a lot of people in the white house. this is not a softie. this is a man who has a lot of steel in his skeleton. how else could a black man get to the point where he is, without having a skeleton made of steel? >> perhaps nowhere better seen than in the campaign against osama bin laden, which from everything i am hearing -- >> how could you truly be funny the night before at the white house correspondents' dinner --

his timing was amazing, nailing joke after joke, knowing the next day might be the most fateful moment of his president. >> a very steely moment indeed. we have another question, thank you. >> i and the national director for the campus network. i graduated in 2008. thousands of young people in our network worked really hard to elect barack obama. i think a lot of us did believe we were working for a movement. you referenced movements earlier. in a lot of ways, i think the movement was not led by obama. organizing for -- was led by obama. organizing for america was part of it. it represented a new way of giving governance. locally, across the country, you could get a sense of the public interest that could allow barack obama to be courageous. since that did not work out the

way we thought it would, despite being thrilled that health care passed, thrilled that pell grants were extended, a lot of the things he accomplished in the last year's -- a lot of young people are waiting that against their disappointment. while i think the young people will come out for barack in 2012, i wonder what you think he can do to ensure the youth vote in the same numbers. >> if the young people who organized for obama in 2008 are disappointed, who will they vote for? >> i am seeing a lot of people make the decision whether to come back and join the campaign. a lot of people are. they still believe in barack obama. there is some disillusionment. >> so they may not turn out in the same numbers, which were critical at the time. >> i will say that often, especially under these economic circumstances, it is a lot harder to run as an incumbent

than someone with a blank slate upon whom people can project their own ideas and ideals. but to govern is to disillusioned people. that is just the way it goes. the case he will have to make is better me than somebody else. i did better than somebody who might have been elected in 2008 and will continue to fight the good fight. it may be that the kind of campaign he runs is the campaign of a president in the middle of a war, where you have to stay the course. victory has not yet been achieved. >> george bush in 2004. >> at least you know me. we are moving the country in the right direction. if you throw me out now, we will lose all the progress we have made and things will be worse than they would have been in the first place. >> another question. can we go over here? gentleman in the white shirt?

please stand up when you get the microphone. here is the microphone. thank you. >> what are the -- one of the major responsibilities of the president is the stewardship of foreign policy. how would you assess his handling of the palestinian- israeli negotiations and the comments that he has failed to visit israel, and second the arab spring? >> george, you can start with that. [laughter] >> i think foreign-policy has been his strongest point. he has handled two wars, a third that was laid on his table, and the most vexing relationship the united states has ever had with any "allied -- "ally" in its history, pakistan.

the arab-israeli conflict makes every president of bad, even bill clinton, who devoted every day of the last year-and-a-half of his presidency to it. obama may have made rookie mistakes in 2009, but i am not going to lay that on him. that is a situation no american president can possibly work his will on. the arab spring, he was always a step behind. i do not think he quite grasped what a world historical moment this was, and that there was an off -- an audience in the arab world paying close attention to what he might say. i think his country by country choices, some of them very tough choices -- do you push saleh out in yemen? do you push mubarak out in egypt? he has handled them well. he is a shrewd tactician in foreign policy. which again is not what we

thought he was going to be when he ran. we thought he was a visionary transformer. i do not think his foreign policy is transformational. i think it has just been very short-handed. -- sure-handed. >> if you look at things in a historical context, you can say how big is the third spring going to appear 100 years from now. if you take it in a historical context, perhaps the thing that is going to be dominant about his foreign policy is that when he came to office the united states was the subject of anger and contempt throughout the world. somehow, he has brought the united states backed into a position where everybody is cooperating. we are in a leadership role. i think that, in a broad sense, maybe the most significant thing.

>> another question, down here. >> as a look around, i may be the only african american male here. let me say this. barack obama is a type. he has been trained by his parents and his grandparents, as i was trained by my parents and grandparents, not to get to agree with white folks. right? that has the opposite effect of what we want to do. we want to be participants in american life. if i were angry and bitter and walked around frowning all day, i would not have many friends in life, or business partners. we are trained in a largely professional white world to behave a certain way. i learned that from my mother. he learned that from his mother and his grandparents. we can get angry.

my wife can attest to that. but in our public persona, we are trained. our behavior is to be upright but not uptight. the real, not phony. but also listen and try to convey we are not going to jump you. i say let's hug them, not mug them. [applause] i am 1000% a supporter of the president. i was four years ago, and i am now. he can learn. they all learn on the job. ender johnson couldn't even read. he had to be taught how to read by his wife. not every president walks in and has a bed of roses. lincoln did not have a bed of roses.

he could have been king george. -- george washington could have been king george. in america, there is a debt ceiling and there is a doubt ceiling. when are we going to get to the doubt ceiling about this man? [applause] >> these think that upbringing has handicapped him in any way? everyone's of bringing -- upbringing -- >> the question was do you think that has handicapped him in any way. >> in the sense that his grandparents schooled him on how to behave, unlike my own grandparents. my own grandparents for a african-american. his work from kansas. his mother had him in indonesia. i think it has handicapped him,

not in a pejorative sense, but in a behavior away. he has to respond -- he became the editor of the law review at harvard by doing the same thing he did as president. let us get real. he had to be diplomatic. he had to be smart about it. he had to be influential. i think it is a handicap. it was a handicap for me in business. i could not show my true feelings to a client or a colleague or a competitor. i always had that thing. fox news, come on. how would lincoln have handled fox news? how would roosevelt have handled fox news? how would ronald reagan of handle fox news? it is a cacophony in this

country. we are not about sensible solutions are sensitive solutions. we are about who has the noise of the day. it is daily noise, not daily news. we need to in this society sit back and -- he is an honorable man. he is an honest man. america would do itself and in justice not to re-elect him. that is my own view. >> i like the image of how would lincoln have handled fox news. how would lbj have handled foxman uzbeks -- fox news? >> you would of had to of had a fourth screen in the office. >> in the back, the gentleman who has not had a chance yet. i thought you had before. we will get to you. >> mr. brand touched on it briefly. you guys must have been talking

about how barack obama has been defining himself. i feel that historically barack obama is unique in that he has been almost as defined by the opposition as he has been defined by himself. he is trying to present himself as a diplomatic figure, but there have been these guys saying he is a secret muslim, a secret communist who hangs out with anarchists. i feel that while that really angers conservatives, there have been a lot of people, especially over afghanistan -- obama was always, throughout his campaign, saying we needed to get out of a rock and go to afghanistan. i think people bought into the opposition rhetoric thinking he was a total dove who was going to get us out of all our wars. they're disappointed when obama actually does what he said he was going to do.

how do you feel that the opposition narrative's have affected barack obama? >> we have talked about that a bit here. to what extent has mitch mcconnell and his decision to do whatever it would stop them from getting elected -- has that been good or bad? >> i want to draw a parallel to harry truman. truman inherited the presidency from franklin roosevelt. his first run on his own was in 1948. he won on a narrow margin. the republicans were so embittered, in large part because they had taken the high road on foreign policy. there were so sure they want -- they were going to win the did not want to spoil the ground they thought they were going to have to tread themselves.

truman squeaked past. the morning after the election, the republicans made a decision that there were going to destroy his presidency. they used the soft on communism charge against him. when the korean war began, they essentially destroyed truman's presidency. there was no constitutional ban on truman running for election again in 1952. he was so unpopular he could not have gotten the nomination even within his own party. this unrelenting opposition, unfortunately, sometimes works. it has worked pretty well against obama, despite the fact that i still think he has done about as well as anybody could have. even the head when he has been dealing with, this hurricane, he has still done remarkably well. that is not going to go away.

down here, please. please stand up, thank you. >> i listened to this discussion of having large majorities in both houses and immediately went to bob carroll saying lyndon johnson could get 12 votes but you only needed one to break the filibuster at the time when he had 59 in the senate. i heard george talk about how shrewd and ruthless obama is. i think that how close was available to him. what i want to raise the is the prospect that of obama needs to make the aig bonuses look like they are high-minded, when they are quite unethical.

citizens united is a change of the playing field. with 59 votes, you do not even feel you have all the democrats because they can go get money. lyndon johnson did not have to argue quite as hard against money when people needed $40 million to run for senate. isn't it the context of this presidency rather than a failing of personality? >> lyndon johnson did not have to worry about running against money quite so hard, partly because he always had the texas oil money behind him. but he had something just as tough, which was the southern conservative midwestern republican domination of congress. when johnson came into office, this conservative coalition was formed in 1937 in response to the supreme court bill. it stayed in power a quarter of a century. roosevelt never got a single

major domestic bill through congress after 1937. no really major legislation passed until johnson came into office. every president has huge problems facing. i just to say one thing. we always talk about being comfortable in your personality and not being afraid to be ruthless. i will tell you what being reflected for lyndon johnson. i was just listening to a tape for something i am writing now. everyone knew that if you denied him a vote he would never stop trying to pay you back. he is now president. there is a crucial moment in the finance committee. it happens to be 9-8 against him. he has to change this vote. he gets a call for a vote within the finance committee. he has five minutes to go. he calls a democrat from ohio.

he says i cannot do that, my company needs this tax break. he says i will lose face. lyndon johnson says, and you have to hear his voice on the tape -- you save my face today, all save your face tomorrow. >> you are right. the context is wildly different. it is hard to compare. money makes it different. interest groups make it different. media makes a difference. some things are permanent, like how to use power. one aspect is instilling fear. obama has this ruthlessness. i think he just uses it with the wrong people. it is more the people who work for him or who are his allies who can tell you he will cut you off if you stopped being useful to him.

the thing john boehner is afraid of obama? do you think mitch mcconnell is afraid of obama, or joe lieberman? >> should they be? >> absolutely. i asked axelrod about this when i was writing a piece about obama is first year. one thing i thought was missing was fear, his ability to let potential friends and enemies know there would be a reward for being a friend and a penalty for being an enemy. if you cannot do that, there is no price to be paid for opposing you. democrats opposed the health- care bill in ways that were terribly damaging to him. republicans have done nothing but oppose him. obama does not want, perhaps for reasons we have talked about earlier, perhaps for other reasons deep in him, does not want to be seen to be punishing people. you have to be willing to punish people.

i think it has been a missing weapon in his arsenal. it sounds a little crude to talk about politics in this way, but this is part of what it is about. i asked a number of senators is a bomb appeared on capitol hill. they said absolutely not. no one is afraid of him. >> as opposed to the former speaker of the house, pelosi. >> she was feared. she got more done than obama did. and lyndon johnson was feared. >> we are going to wrap up, if you want to include a final thought. >> this will be my final thought. obama faces a challenge lyndon johnson did not face and franklin roosevelt did not have to deal with. we have gone beyond the days when bipartisanship was at all possible. until the 1960's, both political parties included both liberals and conservatives.

it was possible, for example, for civil rights legislation to find a coalition that included people from both parties. the democratic party had all those democratic southern conservatives. but it also had liberal democrats, big city democrats. the republican party had northeastern liberals in midwestern conservatives. with the passage of civil rights, when lyndon johnson nailed the flag of the democratic party to civil rights reform, he gave southern conservatives permission to leave the democratic party. they did, with the result that they all became republicans, and the south became the center of the republican party. we have achieved a point now where if you're a conservative in this country you are republican. if you are a liberal, you are a democrat. there is effectively no overlap. the president's lift themselves

up. the perfection of gerrymandering with computers, nearly every seat in the house of representatives is safe for incumbents. republicans in congress do not have to worry about a challenge from the left. they are all looking over their right shoulder. democrats are looking over their left shoulder. the days when you could reach across the aisle to form a consensus are gone. some of the states are appointing independent commissions to draw up congressional districts. the wall dilute the power of parties, to some extent. but for now, we are stuck. you cannot expect the other party to go along with you. >> that is a subject for another panel to talk about. gentlemen, this has been wonderful. i know for a fact that bob will not be writing a biography of obama. i do not know about bill. you are quick and women through a lot of presidents.

it could fall on you as well. >> my boss already did it. i cannot show him up. >> under any circumstances, i think the biographer occasion -- i think the biographication of our president is in good hands. stay tuned. >> thank you for coming. there is a coffee break out in the garden, if you would like to join us. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> governor, a disappointing finish for you. what went wrong? >> this has been an incredible process. it has been a great honor for our team to convey the message of trying to get this country back on track. bringing my record as a two term

governor of a blue states, getting government spending under control, that message did not get the kind of lift we needed. hopefully, coming out of the straw poll, we needed to get some lift to have a path with forward. that did not happen. i am announcing this morning that i am going to be ending my campaign for president. but i am grateful for the people of iowa, the people of this country, and for my supporters, staff, and friends. i appreciate all of them. i wish it had been different. but a pass with 44 me does not exist. we're going to end the campaign. >> you had an lot of organization, some money. why stop here? >> i hope it is better than dog food. there are a lot of factors that go into a successful campaign.

we had some success rate and money, but we needed to continue. if we did not do well in ames, we would not have the fuel to keep the car going down the road. i think have brought forward a rational, established, credible, strong record of results, based on experience as a two term governor of a blue state. but i think the audience was looking for something different. >> the former governor of minnesota finished third in yesterday's straw poll, behind michele bachman and ron paul. >> what's more video of the candidates. see what political reporters are saying. tractive this campaign contributions with c-span is website. easy to use, it helps you navigate the political stream with