ofshall not forget the life robert s. strauss again and we shall not see the likes of robert s. strauss again for he has fought the good fight. he has finished his course. he has kept the pace. astonishingly an productive years, robert strauss has closed his last deal. negotiated his last merger, served his last president, hired his last editor, flattered his last secretary, given his last interview, bet on his last horse, drunk his last martini, shared his last holiday dinner

wit thh the family he adored. reflecting back on his life, strauss would say he liked the whole damn deal. we liked it, too. we are honored to have shared with him. washington and the world would not be the same without robert s. strauss. >> next, white house press secretary jay carney talking to students at george washington university. inter-capitalist tom perkins on what he calls the demonization of the one percent. see formernce to secretary of state james baker and vernon jordan speaking at the funeral for robert strauss. >> what we're seeing right now where we are embedding

capabilities more and more into our environment. some technologies disagree on this but i personally consider the smart phones that we all carry around with us or at least 70% of the american population, should be a trademark example of the internet of things. we are becoming human centers because we are caring around an extremely powerful computer in our pocket but it also takes the form of different centers that exist in the physical ward around us -- world around us. we pass underneath when we access ezpass on the new jersey turnpike. it takes the form of sensors that are all around us. certainly, surveillance and cameras that collect data and send that somewhere else. this is all part of the internet of things which is basically the embedding of computers into our real world. or the deputy at her -- edit patrick tucker on the world and debate -- anticipates your every

move. online, our book club selection is "the wrong war." live, sunday, may 4, look for next in depth the guest, former gang member turned author and poet. you back.elease calls book tv, every weekend on c-span 2. jay carney recently spoke at george washington university students about media and public affairs. he is president obama second white house press secretary replacing robert. mr. carney served as director of publications for vice president biden and he worked i want -- as washington bureau chief for time magazine. this is about an hour and a half. [applause]

>> jay, i must tell you, it's unfamiliar for me to look at you from this vantage point. thank you very much for having us come here. we're going to have an informal conversation before all of you about white house press issues, jay's transformation from being a journalist to being a spokesman for the vice president and then the president. then we will take questions. the methodology we are going to use is we will have you write your questions down on cards. and welcome to our c-span audience watching live. it is, as i said at the top, a privilege to be here. jay, i see that you brought the magic briefing book. we will get into that in just a minute. first of all, was that your

aspiration ever as a journalist to do what you do now? and when you're are presented with that opportunity come how did you weight it? and having been a reporter, makes it more difficult or easier for your current job? >> i will start with the beginning of your question. no, i was a reporter, as you know, 21 years, 20 of them at "time" magazine. i loved being a reporter. my formative experience was as a correspondent based in moscow for "time" magazine during the collapse of the soviet union. i studied russian in college which was the advantage i had that helped move my reporting career forward. then i came to washington in the mid 90's and covered president clinton, congress, president bush.

i had never really at all thought about serving inside of an administration. certainly not as a job. but as you will find, life happens and serendipity occurs. and shortly after the election in 2008, the day after, a close friend of mine who had been working on the foreign policy deal under clinton and had been working on senate foreign relations committee as a top staffer, democratic staffer, working for senator joe biden. the summer of 2008, biden is picked, they win. i am congratulating my friend the next day. that was the first time the idea was put to me about coming in. at the time i thought perhaps it would be kind of exciting and maybe something in the

foreign-policy arena, but it quickly became an opportunity to be the vice president's communications director, which was obviously a huge change for me. but a fantastic opportunity and a great, great decision in part because i woke up every morning for probably six months wondering if i knew what i was doing, was cut out for the job. i think what you think as a reporter covering the white house that you really understand, as reporters do, how the white house works, how communications work how interaction with the media works from that side, when you get on the other side you find out it's not quite as you imagined and it's more complex than you realized and there is a lot to learn. i had the great opportunity when i worked for the vice president and a job that was not like the one i have now, a public spokesperson job, to learn with some great mentors, both folks

who worked for the vice president and president obama. after two years, when the president was looking for another second press secretary, this happened. it's been an extraordinary experience. >> does it make it better having been a reporter, or does that create hurdles with you about questions with press access, trying to balance with the white house conveys with our never-ending desire to be closer or more proximate to the president and vice president? >> better or worse is for others to say. i think it makes me more aware of where reporters are coming from, having been there. i used to sit in the briefing room. obviously, and then more broadly, covering politics, covering what houses. i have empathy, if not always sympathy, and -- [laughter]

i think it helps in the decisions we make collectively. it's not just me. we have a team of people who make decisions about press access and interviews, and also how we describe what we're doing as an administration. >> let me stop you there. a decision you made yesterday on an interview, an excellent decision. >> we are still reviewing whether that was such a wise choice. [laughter] if you don't know, major was with us at an event with vice president biden. nature had an opportunity to interview the president at length and the two men together, which is something we had not done, so the first time. that was at a community college outside of pittsburgh where the president was talking about an initiative the vice president was helping lead to make job-training programs more jobs-focused and job-driven and

connecting community colleges and other academic institutions with businesses around the country so we can maximize the potential of our people coming out of college, so they have the skills they need for the best and highest paying jobs. >> you mentioned there are things you learn once you were on the inside you never appreciate it or sensed on the outside as a reporter. can you give an example? >> sure. i think basically the complexity of strategic communications was probably greater than i expected. and that there is just a lot more that goes into planning into the future about how you are going to roll out policies and talk about what you're doing and deal with all the incoming. i think when you are covering it, you sort of think about --

maybe this is not true for you, but i think about the communicators in the white house, the administration or other institutions come all they do is respond to questions, but there is a lot more to it than that. i learned a lot and continue to learn a lot from the most competent and passionate people you will ever encounter. and just the diversity of the media, as a representative of traditional national media organization, "time" magazine, i was suffering from a myopic perspective where i had a very national media perspective and traditional media perspective on how the interaction between elected officials in washington and national figures and the rest of the country operated and should operate. what we found, for a couple reasons, what i discovered, is people get their news in a

variety of ways, and regional media is still hugely important. any president or white house that doesn't pay great attention to that is missing a huge opportunity in terms how to reach americans out there. and also something that has happened explosively since president obama took office, but it was obviously happening before he took office, part of his campaign in 2008, the diversification of media, the advent of social media and how it drives news coverage and turns everything into kind of a warp speed interaction between events, coverage, reaction, and i think it makes the job i do the job that our team does, the communications team in the press office, it makes it a lot different from what it was when i first covered the white house in president clinton's first

term. and even the second time i came back and cover the white house, president george w. bush's first term. the world has changed quite a lot. >> let me ask a couple things about the social media aspect of communications from the president. you and the white house were very pleased with the between two firms interview with the president. it would be inaccurate to suggest that people in the white house have not done things of a similarly informal or conversational way. richard nixon was on last minute as a candidate in 1960 eight, bill clinton famously showed up on the arsenio hall show. does the presidency as an institution in any way become diminished as something as kind of a send-up piece? that is the first question. the second one come yesterday, coming back from the event in oakdale, pennsylvania, the

president and vice president take a selfie in the back of "the beast" the presidential limousine. that suggests a ubiquitousness of the president and the social media universe. do you weigh any of those things as over saturating the public, the president making his constant presence on social media? is that something you worry about or try to drive? and talk about how you probably anticipated the reaction from the fuddy-duddy media -- me -- and what you actually found in the "real world." >> on the first question, i think saturation would be a first-class problem we don't have. the fact is the president could come here today and give a speech covered by cbs, all the cables, everybody, and most

americans wouldn't even know what happened. that's just a fact. they certainly wouldn't see it or hear it. they might come if they watch the evening news, see 30 seconds of it, maybe. maybe. you know how it works. most speeches you guys don't even put on the evening news. even the cables don't necessarily carry them live. and then they will get covered, maybe on the inside if at all, the major newspapers come original. which is not a critique of the media. it's just a statement of where we are and the media environment of anybody who is trying to break you has to deal with. you have to find ways to communicate, to reach people. when it came to the decision to do the between two phones show with zach galifianakis, we obviously look at ideas and we have some ideas we don't take -- >> please name one.

[laughter] >> but i think there is an advantage to pushing the envelope. >> did they approach the white house or did you approach them? >> there was a conversation about wanting to help and do something. it was their idea. it was presented to the president. he has pretty good compass on his own. the ability to judge what is right for him. but he also has faith in his team. we knew there was some risk associated with it, but it was also a smart thing to do. i'm hoping that almost all of you solve this, but the numbers would suggest you did, but we were trying to reach you. more people watch "funny or die" and the "between two ferns" interviews in your age group than the evening news or the morning shows.

it was an opportunity to get that message out and talk to young adults about the need to enroll in health insurance, the wisdom of having health insurance, the fact that none of you are invincible, though some days you probably feel like you are because you don't have the aches and pains that major and i do. but, obviously in retrospect, we all think it was a brilliant idea. >> it worked. >> and it also worked -- >> it worked in what metric? >> in terms of reaching people and getting a lot of views and clicks. we also have metrics that show that it drove a lot of direct traffic to healthcare.gov and contributed to some of you -- some of you may know, a huge surge in enrollment in march. you probably know less about that then how bad it was in

october, but the good news does not get the kind of coverage bad news does. it worked, and it also worked because we asked the president because we knew he would be good at it. you have to understand when you are doing these things, you have to have the right principle, if you will, somebody who can pull it off. we were confident he could, and he did. and obviously, zach and his team were fantastic doing it, but what it wasn't and never was presented as was a political interview with the media. i remember we had some discussion during 2012 about, well, is it appropriate for the sitting president and candidate to give interviews to jon stewart and others. the answer was yes, again, because the young voters are more likely to watch the "the daily show" than some other news shows, but also i think if you look back at 2012 in the series

of interviews the sitting president of the united states gave, probably the most subsequent interview he had was jon stewart. it was with the anchor of "the daily show." >> what does that tell you? >> uh -- [laughter] i think you all should examine it and write about it. i think it's a broader discussion about where the traditional media are today. it's also a reflection of the fact that somebody like jon stewart is a very smart, sophisticated, good consumer of an percent are of the news. he presents it in a way that drawls eyeballs, young eyeballs, which is what we're looking for. >> the ubiquity of social media? >> i wish we were ubiquitous. >> what were you trying to tell people with a selfie in the back of the presidential limo? >> well --

>> which i'm sure it is. >> i think the purpose of that is the same as the purpose of a photograph of the president and vice president that might have been released in the 1940's or 1970's or 1990's. including a casual one as opposed to a stiff meeting. but it is translating that into the way that pictures are taken and distributed in 2014, as opposed to the way they used to be done. i think it also was a great way to show -- you know, i was not even in the limo when they took that picture. that photo captured the relationship, which is an amazing relationship. these are men of two generations, remarkably different backgrounds and experiences who have forged a very powerful working

relationship and partnership, but also a true friendship. i think what appealed to me about that photo when i signed off on it was it seems so real. >> did you think for a moment how hillary clinton might react to it? >> no, not for a minute. [laughter] unlike the press, we don't spend a lot of time picking about 2016. >> i'm sure that's true. talk to us about the briefing book. i will confess something that i'm probably sure other reporters have told you, sometimes we feel there is something less spontaneous when we are questioning. having you read from the briefing book. as you know, we sometimes go back and forth at you, to try to pull you out of the contours of what is in the briefing book and do everything in our power intellectually and persuasively and every other way to get you

off the talking points and say something more revealing about what's happening within the building or the administration. >> how are you doing with that? [laughter] >> i would say lukewarm success is probably the best i have ever achieved with that. how is that put together? why do you sometimes have to stay within those parameters, and do you even flirt even momentarily with the notion of jumping outside the lines of what's in the briefing book? >> a few things about it. the briefing book exists because on any given day -- this is yesterday's -- i could be asked, this is just a compilation of subjects that i might be asked about, based on what we are getting in terms of incoming

questions during the day, what is the news of the week. there are probably 60 subjects here. i think i have a pretty good retention, and yet i know i'm not going to remember everything about what our policy positions are and all the latest incremental developments on a particular news area or subject. so it is basically there for me to refer to if needed if i get a question about, you know, the plane in malaysia. i have not talked about it in a few days. i may have had a brief verbal update on it in the morning, but there may be specifics about what kind of assets from the defense department we are deploying that i'm going to have

to look in the book to find. >> you have the exhaustive potential list defensively, just so you are prepared -- >> yes, a matter of being prepared. >> there is a little percentage i would imagine of the things you have there that we ask on. >> well, when you say percentage, i would say, you know, some days all of the questions are on subjects within here, but it could just be two subjects. even though my briefings last close to an hour, if it is a grab bag day and there is not anything or any subject or set of subjects that are driving the news, i could get 20 different subjects in a briefing. what often, as is the case the day before yesterday, i think, i think 80% of the briefing was ukraine, and in many ways the same three questions posed differently.

that's because ukraine was driving the news. on the other thing -- >> there are subjects because they are alive everyday, the affordable care act, economic issues, development, ukraine, that kind of stuff that i have and i can speak comfortably about in terms of discussing where the president is, new developers, what our objectives are. and you will see that i will open the book less on things like that. if there are things, specific things i need to say, and this can be especially true with national security or the language sometimes has to be very precise, i will, in order to be precise, consult the book. that will not be on every subject, but it will be an objective on a particular issue i want to achieve, and the language can be especially on foreign affairs very important in terms of what you are telegraphing to allies or opponents and what you are not. that is one of the purposes of

having the briefing book. >> let's go to a recent example. monday we asked about something that i think more than half of us did not think you would necessarily be able to confirm, john brennan, the cia director, was in kiev. typically when we ask a question like that, it is we don't discuss the travel plans of the cia director, check with the agency, a brush-off. but internally you made a decision to communicate that, confirm it, and push back on whatever russian characterization had been made of it. walk us through that process. >> it's true that we don't discuss the travel of the director of the cia as a rule. in this case it had been pretty well-publicized he had visited. so you do, and making decisions like this, sometimes we have to just go on the record conceding what everybody knows or acknowledging what everybody knows. but the broader purpose of doing that was to point out that the russian response to that and

attempt to use that as something that it wasn't, it needed to be knocked down, in the same way that some russian government officials have said lately about events on the ground in ukraine have been fictional, fabricated. the kind of sort of heavy-handed propaganda that you used to see at a time long since passed in the soviet union. so that was the reason. it was out there, we needed to explain what was and wasn't. heads of intelligence services, ours and others, meat and travel all the time. it was just another opportunity to point out the distance between fact and reality that we

were seeing out of russian rhetoric. >> but it was also meant to send a signal in our interest and what is going on there. you don't send the cia director willy-nilly to places. >> that's true, we have cooperative relationships on national security issues, including intelligence issues with many, many countries around the world. i think in terms of the signal that our commitment to ukraine's sovereignty, the symbol of that will be more powerful i think than john brennan's visit will be the vice president's visit early next week. that serves the purpose to send the signal that we strongly support the ukrainian government, we strongly support

ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and as a representation of that the vice president of the united states will be in kiev. >> the relationship between president obama and president putin has been a long-running discussion long before this crisis is in ukraine exploded on the front pages. today, putin said trust in that relationship broke down long before the disagreement over crimea and ukraine and there is essentially no relationship now on a fundamental working basis to join the united states and russia. how do you evaluate those comments? do you believe the relationship broke down before ukraine or should be viewed historically is a tipping point? >> there's no question that russia's actions in ukraine are of an entirely different order in terms of the severity of them. and the opposition they have brought from the united states and the rest of the world, compared to other things, although similar in many respects to georgia. but the other disagreements we have had -- syria, missile

defense, and the like -- have been challenges in the relationship between the u.s. and russia, but this is obviously the most significant divide we have seen in a long time. but i think it's a simple fact that our relationship with russia has always been one, in the recent past, of some cooperation and alongside significant disagreement. we have gone down again and again the appalling support for the brutal, homicidal assad regime in syria. its refusal to allow united nations security council resolutions pass, condemning what they are doing and support the syrian people. we did not hide the ball on that at all. we haven't in any of the disagreements we have had with russia, predating ukraine. i do not see everything that

president putin said, but i think the context here is important. >> let's talk about the affordable care act for a minute. how grim was it for you when it became clear to you that all the briefings we had received before the rollout of the health care website were false, because we had been treated to this behind the scenes assessment there may be some glitches but structurally it was sound? you find out it's not. you go for a week saying we are getting our arms around it, but how did you have to adapt to what you knew was probably going to be a month if not longer of pointed questions, criticism, and that you would just have to,

as the chief spokesman for the white house, take all that in? >> a couple things. first of all, the briefings turned out to be -- >> less than accurate. [laughter] >> what i think the use of that word suggests is that the people giving the briefings were misleading the press. the people in the briefings believed this was going to work with some glitches. not saying that nobody expected, certainly among those who briefed the press on it, that we would see the severity and the kind of problems we saw. to answer your question, i think as you recall, this was all happening concurrently with the

shutdown of the government. so these were two major things happening at once. once the government reopened, it became quite clear both internally and publicly how significant the problems were with healthcare.gov. i will not lie, that was probably one of the most difficult moments for not just me but for everybody in the administration who worked on these issues, because this was entirely on us. it was our fault, if you will. it was supposed to work far better than it did. it did not meet anything like the standards that were set for it. therefore, it was our responsibility from the president on down to get it right, to fix it. that made this unique because a lot of the more challenging times we face have to do with external events, things like that. this was something we controlled and did not get right at the start, and that made it difficult, but all the more important that we get it right as soon as possible.

the president instilled that message to everyone, that for the millions of people who were demonstrating by coming to the website that they wanted quality affordable health insurance but were not able to get it because the website was not functioning, we owed it to them to fix it and get it right. it is a rather remarkable story, i think, a focus and perseverance by those on the team that fixed it, that we are where we are today. is 7.5 million americans enrolled in the marketplaces, despite the fact that we basically gave up two months at the beginning. that is the good news story. >> having covered the president as a candidate and this white house -- i'm sure you have a better sense of it. what is it about the president's approach to leadership that you gleaned from his decision not to fire anyone in the heat of the

crisis, when many people, not just critics, but friends and allies of the white house thought it would be helpful both politically and as a leadership tool to fire one or a number of people responsible for bungling this rollout. >> the president was not and never is interested in the ephemeral satisfaction of being praised by his critics or friends. what mattered to him was fixing the problem. firing some people would have actually set back the cause of fixing the problem. the team that was responsible for healthcare.gov had a lot of expertise. they were added to by a surge of tech experts, but everybody felt responsible. everybody roll their sleeves up and got to work fixing the problem. that was far more important than

winning the newsday by saying, the president fired somebody or some number of people. he is not into pointing fingers. he is into results. the website was merely a tool, and is a tool to provide access to folks to quality, affordable health insurance. it was our responsibility to knock the obstacles down and make the website work, but it was just about fixing the website, not to diminish the size of the problem -- i should note since we were here that open enrollment is closed and the period of open enrollment that was still open for those in line by the march 31 deadline has ended on april 15. but some of you will be affected by this. it is still possible if you have

a life-changing event, graduation, marriage, birth, loss of health insurance, or maybe this applies to graduate students. because of the affordable care act if you are 26 or under you can stay on your parent's insurance policy, but once you age out, get old, turn 27, you have to be responsible for your own health insurance. that is an event that would mean you are able to enroll even when open enrollment is over, as it is now. keep that in mind, and if you are one of those people, i urge you to go to healthcare.gov. >> i want you to recall your days as a reporter. you and i covered a lot of events together. you are a competitor, and a very good one. you know the satisfaction that

comes from the, i got them now, moment, or something approximating that. you probably as a reporter would have looked at politifact identifying if you like your plan you can keep it as the political lie of the year different than now. reporters say, that seems about right. for you, you view that differently. talk to me about the political lie of the year, if you think it is fair, and if you were a journalist would you view it differently? >> i view a lot of things differently in this job because i come at things with a different perspective. on that particular issue, a lie is one of intent, and that is what the president believed the policy would deliver. when it became clear that it did not and things needed to be

fixed to help those individuals, which according to rand is somewhere under one million people in the all caps or he, it out to be done. but i am not going to -- obviously not every item out there is one we think is accurate or fair, but as a rule, coming from the press i recognize there are a lot of serious reporters who do very good work even if i do not agree with every story they write or broadcast. >> talk to me about how you believe the media has changed just in your time in government. do you, does any administration worry about the contraction of the media, how it is changing, if the traditional forms previous white houses used to have to rely on, the evening

news or newspapers, are less important. you talked about regional media. anybody in my business knows regional newspapers have shrunk dramatically. coverage is different. how do those things strike you from the government's perspective, the white house perspective. do you have any concerns about how the media is changing and what it means for any white house to communicate with the country? >> so there are a variety of ways of looking at this question. i think as a citizen i am concerned about some of the transformations that we have seen in the media over the last five or six years. in fact, the last 10 or 15 years. a lot of the major organizations that used to cover the world do not anymore. they do not have people overseas, the bureaus they used to have.

i think we are all poorer for that. that is a direct result of the financial pressures on the media that were particularly severe 2007-2009. thanks to the fact we avoided a depression, the president did, put the economy on the right track again so we have been growing and creating jobs, the media has benefited from that turnaround as well. we are not nearly where we need to be economically yet, but we are on a far better trajectory. that kind of crisis atmosphere financially for the mainstream media is not nearly as severe as it was five years ago. there are different baskets here.

i think a generally very positive and world changing potentially development is social media when it comes to the ability for anybody to have access to information that they could not even have imagined having access to just five or 10 years ago. that is true in the united states, but very importantly, true around the globe, including in repressed countries where they experience political oppression. that makes it much more challenging for oppressive regimes to control their citizenry, and that is obviously a positive thing. we have seen how that can affect and transform societies in a positive way. what it has also done, and we talked about this earlier, the hyperspeed of the news cycle we live in now.

few things last for very long. that can be good or bad from our perspective. something that seems -- one of the things that i do every day and we do as a team in the white house is we see the incoming, we monitor twitter, we have to decide fairly quickly, certainly much more quickly than our predecessors, about what merits a reaction and what does not. part of it is predicting when this thing is going to burn out, whatever it is. often, as my colleague dan pfeiffer said recently, the fires burn brightly but also burnout faster. >> is that convenient for you? >> it can be good and bad, like i said. it can mean a great deal of attention on something positive can dissipate very quickly.

as well as a story that is not as good. but for ask him it means having some judgment and perspective of that, and resisting the impulse to react or overreact to something that seems like it is becoming a big deal or blowing up on social media, and sometimes just knowing when we need to jump in either through twitter or through a statement or all the different means we have, going up to eight presidential statement. or wait and see what it is going to turn out to be. >> if you want to bring up questions, i will take some now. you are touching on something i experienced at the white house. i am wondering if you would agree. you and i came to washington in the early 1990's, there was a common phrase -- the great question, will it have legs? is there a tidal force to something building momentum and

holding front page on the "new york times" or the networks. is that less of a concern, the story getting leg, because things have this quality where they are driven by social media and they can rise and fall in the course of a morning or afternoon? >> less of a concern if you mean -- you mean in terms of legs, like a problem story? sometimes stories do have legs, even in this environment, and they last longer than a few hours or a few days, again, this is a double-edged sword, because that means that also makes it more and more challenging for us to keep stories alive about what the president's agenda is and what he is trying to do, and what we think are positive developments,

or important developments, whether they are good or bad. another problem we have is because of this ratcheting up in action and reaction we see, especially on twitter and other forms of media, cable, we have stories that build to, you know, huge proportion's really quickly, and then there is a temptation in the media to label everything a scandal or a gate this or gate that. i would point to one year ago and the three stories that consumed the presidency and focused a great deal of minutes on broadcast. about how potentially damaging they were. they are not the subject of anything or much coverage at

all, because they ended up not being what they were reported to be. obviously i am talking about some of the issues republicans tried to say were scandals, but were not. for us, we just have to focus on getting out the information as quickly as we can, and sort of muscling through that static. >> isn't that how the process works? issues are raised, questions are posed, you deal with them, and there is a sorting out of what is or what is not. >> within one hour you get people on cable tv saying, i cannot tell you how many times the president has -- >> i have never written that. >> i am just saying, there is that intensity.

social media and the current structure of the media contributes to and makes it worse. i am not saying it did not exist in the past, where there were stories that did not have legs and got knocked down in the past, but there is a race to the top or the bottom, depending on how you look at it. >> questions, we will start out with a light one. what is your favorite place to eat in d.c.? >> a shout out to the wonderful people of the u.s. navy -- >> i have never been invited. >> you are not allowed. but i could bring you a burger if you came to my office. >> that is all right. >> that and my kitchen with my kids. >> got it. [laughter] this is on c-span. he knows what he is doing. i will ask this once -- what advice you have for a gw student

who wants your job in 30 years? shorten it to 20 years? >> i think i ended up in the position i am in -- not in a traditional way. by imagining i would end up there. so i am not sure if i'm the right person to ask, but if you are interested in policy and politics, get involved. >> but you were not. >> i'm saying i'm the wrong person. i would not say go become a newsmagazine journalist and see what happens. [laughter] but look, i think one of the things that has been enormously gratifying about how my life and career changed has been that i joined a team that has a reputation of being insular, and turned out to be anything but, which took me in and taught me a lot.

i have made really strong friendships and have learned an enormous amount from people who have been doing this work for a lot longer than i have. with whom i would work and struggle and fight on a lot of different fronts in the future because they believe in what they are doing and they are there for the right reason and they are enormously talented. we all develop cynicism in this profession, and i mean this political journalistic sphere, not just on my side of the divide, and i believe it is important to remember, we are not doing this, we should not be doing this for any other reason than to help people and help make the country better. that is what i see. if people ask me what is the most surprising thing about

being on the inside, the surprising thing has been from the beginning how human an enterprise it is. in the end it is a handful of people sitting with the president of the united states, trying to help him and informed him and discuss with him as he has to make incredibly difficult decisions. people are there giving him the best advice they can and doing it from the right reasons and the right place. it might not always lead to the right answer, but when i walk away from this, i will walk away from this with a lot of reaffirmation and faith in the capacity of people to come to washington and do the best they can for all the right reasons. >> has the vice president ever given you a nickname? [laughter] >> i don't think so. >> you would know.

>> i have a very good relationship with the vice president and i'm hugely grateful to him for taking me on and he is one of the most decent and bighearted and wise individuals you will ever find in politics. what i admire about him, he has been doing this for a long time and he brings to it a passion and energy that if some of you going to politics you will be lucky to match at 22 or 23. he is not somebody who cashed in or got too cynical to make a difference. he has been the opposite of that. he is a great public servant. >> have you ever knowingly deceived the american public? if so, was it justified? >> the answer to that is no, i have not.

look, i think credibility is important. a lesson i learned very early is when you are asked a question to which you do not know the answer, do not guess. say i do not know and i will get back to you. if you are asked a question you cannot answer for national security or other reasons, you do not mislead. you simply don't answer, or use a forthrightly, i cannot discuss that, i will not discuss covert programs, or something like that. i think that doesn't mean that something i said or anyone else i work with speaking on the record said did not turn out to be wrong, but that is different from intentionally saying something wrong.

>> is the flak jacket a real press secretary tradition? >> it would not stop much. there is a flak jacket, but it is like a dress flak jacket, not the kind you would see in theater. >> the "west wing," what is your favorite episode, and favorite character? >> got to say c.j. >> i would think so. >> who is fantastic, and who i do not know. i know some of the folks. brad is a terrific person. we did a thing you may remember, the big block of cheese. i have a fried who wrote for "the west wing." there is one episode with constant references to a congressman james carney, which was a friend's way of inserting the into an episode. and the one where the reporter

is going to go to jail because he will not testify or divulge something and he is talking to c.j. i get choked up. [laughter] when you have kids, you will know. >> here is a question we have with some frequency. because this is a parallel universe, i will ask you. will president obama sign an executive order banning federal contractors from engaging in discrimination against lgbt americans? >> as you know, the president strongly supports action taken by the senate to pass the

employment nondiscrimination act and urges the house to follow suit. those who oppose this legislation are profoundly on the wrong side of history and will be seen as such in a very short time if they do not already feel it. that is what the president believes. it is certainly what i believe. as is the case with any prospective or speculated about executive order, i do not have anything for you on that today. >> understood. the obama administration came to washington promising transparency. in your view, has the administration fallen short? can you update us on the status of the white house correspondents association complaint regarding journalists and photographic access to the president? >> there is no question.

i covered the previous two administrations and know a thing or two about ones before that. there has never been a more transparent administration. that does not mean we provide more information about the waves record. they are the records held by the secret service on individuals cleared for meetings in the white house. those have never been released before. it is fair to say the release of that information has made this white house far more transparent than any other white house. that does not mean it is perfectly transparent. it creates headaches for us. ridiculous stories on fox news and elsewhere about, the waves records show hillary clinton was only in the white house five times, whereas secretary so and so was here this many times. people like hillary clinton and most cabinet secretaries literally get waved in, they are not entered in the logs.

secretary clinton and her successor were in the white house every week. it leads to challenges, because the records were not devised to be a complete picture because of the way individuals who are part of the administration enter and depart the white house, but they provide a lot more information about who visits the white house than has ever been provided before. in a variety of different ways, we provide a lot more information. which does not mean we or any white house is ever going to be able to be completely transparent. this blends with the other question. it is absolutely the case today and will always, has always been the case that the white house press corps will not be satisfied with the level of access it has to the president or the rest of a president's team.

the reason why it will never be the case is because there will always be meetings, there will always be a limit on the number of interviews or press conferences that the press is not a part of. it is simply impossible for any president or white house to function otherwise. but the press should keep pressing for more access. that is the right and responsible thing to do. when we get into debates about levels of access that this white house is given compared to previous ones, i like to cite that president obama has given more than two times as many interviews as his immediate predecessors, and even more than bill clinton at this stage in his presidency. he has given more full-blown, stand up hour-long pressers than president george w. bush. which does not mean you guys should be satisfied and think we

are getting enough, because you absolutely are doing your jobs by asking for more. >> i will get to the numbers in a minute, but for those of you who do not know, i have been part of the conversations we have been having with the white house. jay has been a part of almost every single one of them. i want to bring up for this audience something that i know you have a perspective on and we have a perspective on. not limited to photographic access to the president. this dovetails with the earlier conversation about social media and the flexibility it gives any white house and any future white house to use the immediate mechanism of social media photography, photography on social media to work around those in the building every day. whether you are streaming

something live we are not there for or you have the white house photographer shoot something that the press corps is present for, you can pump that out and that becomes a declarative statement or image of the white house we were not involved in. we obviously chafed against that, not just professionally but for a matter of principle, which i know you can understand. how do you measure those things, and do you find yourself likely to go more in our direction, giving us more entree to those events that had been much more white house photographer-driven? >> i am sure most of you have not followed this to the degree of detail that major and i have. here is what i will say. what we do is use tools that we and all of you have that did not exist in previous white houses. flickr accounts, twitter, instagram. every white house after us will do that. the next white house and the one after that will have tools

available to it, as well as most of you, that we cannot even imagine when it comes to distributing information. it would be malpractice not to take advantage of those tools. starting with photographs. when we release a picture taken by the white house photographer, one of the white house photographers, online, we are doing nothing different than what our current chief white house photographer did when he was president reagan's white house photographer. he would make prints and hand them out in the briefing room. the difference is those prints would be delivered to news organizations who would then decide whether to publish them, but now because of the internet we can put them online and you all get to see them. it is not up to the ap or cbs or others to decide. i understand that creates tension.

i'm hugely sympathetic to the financial pressures that are on the organizations, but i think -- there was an interesting exchange over photographer access where someone said she would've been fine with no press coverage of this event if we had not released a white house photo which is a weird way to talk about transparency. if our reporter was not allowed in here, then nobody should see the event. i don't think that is good for the american people. i think consumers out there can judge for themselves whether what to make of the picture that is taken by a white house photographer versus somebody

from the independent press. they are not substitutes for one another. we are doing would previous white houses have done but we are using tools that are available to us that were not available before. having said that, know you and i work closely, i and everyone else is committed to trying to do as much as we can to expand access and we have done that to some degree. we are going to continue to try to do that. >> that's the president's preferred mode of conversation. others were more willing -- >> he has given more full-length press conferences. >> i wish we could see more of

it. i want to ask you about the president's thoughts on this. >> having any money these with a president or foreign leader or any event, taking one or two questions on the news of the day which interferes necessarily and by definition with whatever you are trying to drive and went to work very carefully behind the scenes trying to push out there. he seems less comfortable with that, your team seems less comfortable. bill clinton did a lot of those things. of course, for anyone that is in the building every day as a reporter, that is what we crave the most. the chance to put the question of the day whenever the news is to the president and get his reaction. that seems to happen less frequently. why is that? >> is not a matter of comfort. at least on our part. the president is comfortable taking questions with the press just like he was with you yesterday. i think if you turn it around,

especially with some of the president predecessors, you have to decide what -- i think it is worth looking at what benefit is greater? when the president stands up and takes multiple questions for many hours allowing follow-ups, i think i would be willing to go head to head with past presidents on the number of minutes this president has spent answering questions from the free press compared to the number of minutes in his presidency that his predescessors have. reporters dig deep and present follow-ups whereas the news of the day -- i know that is an important thing and i know that is what folks who cover the white house on a daily basis need that day. what it does allow for any president, and you might suggest one of the president

predecessors preferred that mode because it allows just this, it allows for a quick answer and there is no follow-up, there was no pressing, no depth to the exchange. we make decisions all the time. the president will have a lot of encounters with press and multiple foreign leader press conferences on his trip to asia that begins next week. it is all about balancing the most valuable commodity we have, at least in the communication sphere which is the president's time. >> lots of questions here. have you do with the ethical dilemma of having to profess stances that you might personally disagree with? has that ever happened? >> no. i am not a policy expert. our president's administration has to work in. i can't say i have sophisticated opinions about every policy that we pursue, but i have been completely supportive personally of all of the major things this president has done. that clearly makes it easier to

do my job. having said that, you know, everyone who serves as president has to decide for himself or herself what, why they are there, what greater interests you are serving because if you are an expert in her up -- in an arena of the domestic policy, they're obviously heated debates about what course of action should be taken, which policy is the better approach. not everybody around the table is getting get what they want. i think that is the way the process should work. if you don't get 100% of what you want, i don't think that means you get up and leave because you want to contribute to the process.

>> a very direct question. how can i get a job with you or your staff? [laughter] whoever wrote that has a promising future. >> well -- >> tackle them after the event. [laughter] >> we have internships that you can find on whitehouse.gov. you know, otherwise send your resume. >> have you had spokespersons from other countries, prime ministers and presidents, any appearances of working together with them or stories? how different or similar are there jobs compared to yours? >> i met a lot of great people who are spokesman or woman for other leaders. it depends on the country. i don't know there are that many where there is a press secretary or spokesman who is giving briefings everyday.

i find there is more regular briefings of the kind we have. it is really interesting. i usually have these encounters when traveling and the president is going to have a press conference with a foreign leader. my counterpart and i traded notes about what to expect in what order the questions will come in because -- i'm thinking most recently when we were in the netherlands and i was with my dutch counterpart and she was saying, here is what we are interested in and protocol has the visiting leader go first and the host leader go second. those kinds of things.

i think one thing that is a little difficult or challenging for our counterparts is that when you have the president of the united states taking questions with another leader, there is sometimes an eeriness on the part of the foreign press corps to ask our president questions as well as the white house press corps asking the president questions. sometimes the other leader is standing next to the president is spending a lot of time listening to the u.s. president answering questions which can be a little awkward. it is not delicate. i think it is just -- >> you have the massage that either before or after. >> i think it is useful for our press. major, i think you have done this. it is good to hear the perspective of a foreign leader on some of these things and the issues that are at stake. the two countries may be working on it together or may have a conflict over. i think that kind of only go for the u.s. president can lead to less interesting press

conferences. >> i'm going to ask one of my own. did you have an ambivalent reaction when you saw "the washington post" and "the guardian" got pulitzer prizes due to the leaks by edward snowden? >> our views on mr. snowden have not changed. >> you walked in both places. >> i think i will refrain from commenting on each individual award. they are prestigious awards. my view in general is that the best of those awards go to reporters who break new ground through the shoe leather reporting of the past. who develops sources to find information. who devote hours and days and weeks and months to get a story right. i think year after year you see the pulitzers and other similar

awards that meet those standards. >> does the white house support casting sibelius? sibelius? >> we don't speculate on candidacies that are only speculated about. i would wait to see who is going to run in any individual race. the president spoke very clearly the other day about secretary sibelius and a dedication she showed through a remarkable period of change that she helped bring about. she has been in the hotspot for a long time, not just because of the healthcare.gov challenges, but through the development of the legislation, the incredibly

fraught period when that legislation was passed and through its implementation. the president truly appreciates her services. >> which former press secretary do you consider to be a model for the job you do? >> they are all great. [laughter] >> how much consulting to do with them before you took the job? >> i spoke with every living predecessor. or tried to. >> was there a singular thread of powerfully important advice? >> to answer the first question, probably because of when i came in to cover the white house and i had always admired mike mccurry and joe lockhart. marlon fitzwater as well as reagan's last press secretary was exceptional. what each of those secretaries would tell you is that the world has changed tremendously.

one of the things that bill clinton's press secretary told each of his successors is that he apologizes for having been the press secretary who agreed to allow the briefing to be broadcast in full on television because prior to that decision, the white house daily briefing was only broadcast for the first 10 minutes was on air the cameras would be turned off. that was so tv correspondents could get what they need at the news and the rest of the briefing was off-camera.

i think it is fair to say and i've experienced this every week, the difference in tenor and combativeness and that you see but that's between briefings we have in the briefing room in the white house that are on camera versus the ones i do when we travel on air force one is stark. i think that is partly because folks in the briefing room are where the camera is on and it becomes a little more of a performance. >> i have no idea what he is talking about. [laughter] >> some people have noted, sometimes they ask the same questions that the previous correspondents have asked. what i say in defense of them when -- although that can be frustrating -- is that each of them may need that for their piece. i understand why it often happens but when you don't get what is happening and you're watching like why the person

is asking the same question as the woman down the road asked. they're going to keep asking the same questions until they find something. >> this is a question from someone who not only watch as the white house briefings, but also watches the state department briefings. the press briefings tend to feature more competition between reporters and the press -- more confrontation between reporters and the press secretaries. is there a different expectation of respect for white house secretaries? >> i didn't know that was the case. i know that jen and marie are up to the challenge. i don't think so. we have had our contentious days in the white house briefing room. i think that -- >> the state department tends to be more granular. >> there was a level of expertise on narrow subject matters that you can find in a state department briefing.

for the most part, people have a sense of where they are. there is at least a minimum level of decorum. you are the west wing of the white house and that is a special place to be for everyone. >> one of my favorites -- do you watch "scandal?" the b6 13 reel. >> i haven't seen it yet. i watch "house of cards" which is excellent. >> especially the last episode. >> i'm catching it, don't say that. [laughter] >> you will understand when you get to it. >> i have a lot of things i need to watch and read at some point when i have a little more time. >> this one is from someone who

might also be a psychology student. describe yourself in three senses without talking about your role in the white house or previous journalism positions. [laughter] >> i am just a messenger. >> i'm a -- i'm a husband and father of two. proud native of virginia. a boston red sox fan. [applause] >> very good. what is the best way to think on your feet and field a tough question? did you have to teach yourself how to do that or to the fact that you ask tough questions before give you a particular capability that maybe others didn't have?

>> as a reporter, i had, even though i was a print reporter, i had done it on a roundtable on tv. it is a different thing entirely. what is true is when you go on a sunday show as a reporter and say something it turns out to be completed wrong and nobody cares. it is not that way when you are the press secretary. it takes practice. when i was named press secretary, there was a 2.5 week gap between that day and the day i briefed for the first time. during that time, i benefited greatly from mock press conferences that i had, briefings that i had with staff.

including my predecessor, who knew from personal experience just the kind of question to ask that would completely unsettle me. >> you mention it in a moment ago that the things you have to read and watch. i want to ask you about the pace of the job. does it ever come near to -- it is not breaking you, wearing you down, and could you describe the tension of a position like yours or any position in the white house and relationship to the -- to why you're actually trying to conduct as a father and normal human being? >> these are demanding jobs, but they're wonderful jobs to have. there is not a person i know who works in the white house who doesn't feel anything but lucky to be there. and, it is tough on family. the sort of trade-off i made was that everything else gets put

aside. i have a close friend that lives in washington. i am sure i haven't seen him this calendar year yet. we get on the phone every once in a while. i make a point of doing my job the best of my ability and that requires a lot of hours on the road and office. making as much time as i can to be there for my family as well. what that means is that everything else like movies and books and friends get put on hold. but, you know, i think it's a challenge for everyone who does the job and not just those of us with kids but for everyone. >> what are your thoughts on new projects like ezra klein's website or some of these other platforms where reporters who believe they have created a brand identity is sufficient to

make themselves commercially independent from either where they started, do you think that is something that is going to become more prevalent? some critics believe if there is any business model beneath that. >> i'm not a good judge of what will succeed commercially, but i do greatly appreciate that kind of development because in the two examples you gave, these are efforts to go broad and deep on issues and policies and subjects in a way that you often don't see or get through traditional mainstream media or even a lot of the new media which can be almost by definition, if we are talking about twitter, short and to the point and superficial because how much can you really say in 140 characters? i think explanatory journalism

is hugely valuable. the matter how steep in the news you may be, and you and i are a steep as one can be, there are going to be subjects where he read the newspaper in the morning and the story starts with what happened yesterday and the subject has been going on for a long time and you may not know the back story. you are not going to get it from the store that you read that day. some of these sites are because of the infinite capacity of the internet are able to in a few clicks bring you up to speed in a way that is uniquely possible with the internet. i think that is a good thing. can they succeed on their own? i don't know. >> i have one more question before we wrap it up. you mentioned there were three stories about one year ago that took on from your perspective and outsized importance compared to what they actually were.

one of them was obtaining records of reporters and either prosecuting sources that talk to reporters. this administration has done it more than its predecessors numerically. do you feel that is a legitimate issue? do you feel comfortable defending the initiations approach to tracking down those leaks and trying to find a prosecutorial trail? where do you come down on that application of the power of the federal government? >> on the broader subject, i think some of the shorthand is misleading when it comes to the number of active investigations. the fact is a number of them were inherited from the bush administration. imagine what would've happened if a new president had come into office and either he or his attorney general had ended investigations and the national

security leaks. there is that. on the issue of the press, i think you are aware of what the president and attorney general have said about their concern about the need to provide greater protections for the press and that no reporter reporting the president should be prosecuted for doing his job. that is the president's view. on the flipside, and this is separate from reporters at least directly, we as a country, and i think reporters also specifically need to decide when they talk about this issue and frame it in a way that makes it seem like the only issue here is press freedom and the ability to do the job, whether or not it

should be against the law to divulge classified information. because it shouldn't be. we shouldn't have classified information then and we shouldn't have secrets. think about that and whether that is even possible for any government to function? >> do you see it then evolves into coming to government? >> i think i have become more sensitized to the damage that can be done by leaks of classified information. the president has spoken on the issue of the disclosures that have come out of the nsa story that the debate that has been intensified because of this disclosure is a very important debate to have. the reviews that spawned have been very important and that led to significant changes already instituted by the president. there is also no questioning the

fact that harm has been done to our national security interests. you cannot be dismissive of that. that is real and it involves our ability -- the government's ability to keep american safe, to achieve objectives that are very important in the national security arena towards, not just keeping americans safe, but our allies safe. so there are costs. >> the last question -- i want the person to raise their hand. the question goes like this -- can i have a selfie with you? i am the cute blonde in the middle -- i'm sorry. how did i jump to that? she is right there. thank you very much for your time. >> it's been a pleasure. [applause]

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