>> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, move moving the quality of life in our community. board-certified lawyers in your community, experienced, and tested. also by hillco partner, a texas -- and which the alice clear clearing reynolds foundation and viewers like you. i'm evan smith, he's the author of 12 number one national non-fiction best sellers and an associate editor at the washington post where he's been on staff for 43 years. he's bob woodward. this is overheard.

[applause] >> i guess we can't fire him now. >> indianapolis we can't fire him now. [laughter] the might i win an emmy. >> being on the supreme court was an improbable dream e dream. >> it's hard work. >> there's no freedom and it's journalist that is provide that information. >> a window rolls down, saying, hey! he goes to 11:00. [laughter] >> bob woodward, welcome. >> thank you,. >> nice to have you here. >> nice to be here. >> let's start with syria, if you don't mind. today, the president gave a speech to the u.n. general assembly. sounded like it could have been given by george w. bush or maybe john mccain. maybe too conservative. but two weeks ago you gave a speaker e speech after the am herself college and questioned whether the president is two enough. is he tough enough now?

>> we'll see, when i did the first book on obama's about his afghan war decision making when i interviewed him, stepped through the various high points and then at the end, i showed him -- because i'm trying to find out who he is, what's the inner obama on the issue of war. and showed him a quote from a world war ii book written by rick adkinson in which rick steps back and says war corrupts everyone. no one leaves war with their heart unstained. it's an ugly business. showed this to obama and he read it, and he said i'm sympathetic with this view. go read my nobel prize acceptance speech, 2009. i'd seen it and read it and, in fact, did not really understand it because i wept back and got it and there's thence of obama saying war is sometimes

necessary, but it is never glorious, as you may recall church him said war is glorious and obama said war is a expression of human folly and he just does not like war. and up to this point, in all of his war-making decisions, he's almost beepinged not to have a fight. >> right. >> and now -- almost begged not to have a fight and now he's in one. >> does he have a choice in this case? >> there there's always choice, the question is what's the real strategy? is this thought out and where is is going. >> i want to come to that but i want to stay with this idea whether he had a choice. >> i didn't mean whether it was his option from a procedural standpoint but when you had the two journalists beheaded on camera and that video disseminated all over the world -- >> the question is what? in bombing syria after all of

this time and this is a serve nation and we're -- a some of reign nation and we're going after the terrorists and the islamic jihaddists in syria but if you live in syria you may wander what's going on. and look, you can always do other things. there's a great book about vietnam called "lessons in disasters" about the national security advisory during much of the vietnam war for john kennedy and lyndon johnson and the bun u one of the chapter headings is that politics is the enemy of strategy. and there's a lot of politics in this. a lot of political pressure on the president and as you know in any strategy, you can't do it in a week or a couple of weeks, you have to think it out. where does this go doesn't mean it's not going to work. doesn't mean it's not done in

good faith. it does mean, and as you see with the generals who are really public say, wait a minute, no boots on the ground. that's maybe not going to work so there's a real strain there between the president and -- and the generals in terms of what's the strategy. presidents can't be military strategists. they have to go to the pentagon, the secretary of defense, generals and admirals and say this is what i want to accomplish. here's the goal, right. >> how can i best do it. and it had followed that procedure, they wouldn't have come back and said oh, just conduct an air war. >> but the suspicion is that people talk about this, miss not a short-term engagement, likely to be a longer term. quite likely. we've been there since before

9/11. the first gulf war well, bush senior, 1991. >> in some form or fashion. >> i bet you can even remember back that far. >> do i. is this likely to be obama's legacy piece? >> we'll see what happens. but you know, it's a very dangerous time and they're worried about this new al qaeda terrorist group. when i interviewed obama on that, he said oh, we can with absorb another terrorist attack. he was much criticized by the pilot right for saying that and then he said, i think this is true, what his real worry isn't a nuclear -- is an nuclear weapon going off in a american city and the intelligence, the operations and the collection are geared toward avoiding that and i think when more comes out about what the worry of this terrorist group, it will have the possible option that they were going to do something

catastrophic. >> this group that was hit today in the bombings that happened as we sit here this morning or sometime in the last day or so, they're said to have plans to blow up airplane. it's horrific to contemplate so we don't know where this goes, clearly. what about obama himself? could you feel better about him, do you understand him better over the six years he's been in office? you've covered and interviewed him and written about him, has it been a journey for him, is he the same person he was? >> everyone changes and the presidency changes people. he's got to make some tough decisions but there is a view of him in the world that he's not the mad bomber. that he's not somebody looking for a fight. in fact, i think you can argue as people do that he sent the message too often, oh, i want

diplomacy, i want drone strikes. i don't want these big ground wars. bless him, that's a good thing. who wants a big ground war? but there's the reality that the deterrent value of the u.s. military and being the sole superpower gives us incredible leverage, you know, just trying to scare the hell of people just because it's there. and obama in the sense has taken that of the table, or there's that perception, now it's changed in the last couple of weeks. >> are we a super pour as we were before? >> oh, yeah, look at what we spend on the military. we have more capable force than the -- >> you're quote can the data. i'm talking anecdotically, the sense of the rest of the world is. does the rest of the world consider us to be as fearsome and super as was the case once upon a time.

capable, but there's the question of leadership recall right, that's what it comes down to. >> and what's obama's message. i remember having a discussion with one the world leaders, one of our closest allies and he said of the record, but this is a close ally, look, obama is smart, i like him but no one is afraid of him. well, you learn quickly in any enterprise that you know, parody, for instance -- parenting, you don't want your children to shudder and be in fear of you but you want them to know there's rules and discipline. >> not a pushover. >> and it may come down to some tough love. >> was bush more of a feared fellow? i guess he was. >> well, he started a couple of wars. >> right -- [laughter] >> that does tend to shape one's view of you. was clinton more feared than

obama? >> what's interesting about clinton, in 1998 clinton ordered an operation called desert fox which was four days of intensive bombing in iraq because islam would not comply with weapons inspections and this killed all kinds of people. maybe people in islam's intelligence headquarters. it came and -- in saddam's headquarters and it was in the middle of the monica lewinsky impeachment investigation and i think it was 800sortees. that's a lot more than obama so doing. >> so coordinating the killing of bin laden was not a signal to the word that boy, this guy is tough. >> certainly people did, those in bin laden's circle. >> they got the message good.

[laughter] >> they realize it's two out there, that was a smart operation and to the credit of the president, he conducted it. because bin laden was the lead leader. but then there followed rhetoric and this is part of the problem of obama saying, oh, al qaeda is, you know, not a force. we have degraded them so much. and this new group in syria, is an al qaeda offshoot so you can't say that al qaeda went away. what would richard nixon have thought of obama? >> talk about "if" history. >> we have the luck u luxury of time, bob. >> yeah, we do. i don't know. nixon as tough. he liked to bomb. >> yeah, he did but he was also

a pragmatist. >> he was, but what is the message obama has sent to the world? he's very cerebral. when i've interviewed him. let's take something right at the core of what we're talking about. >> yeah. >> when we're -- when i'm interviewing him about the afghan decision making, he just said, oh, we're talking about the relationship between the civilian leaders, himself, and the military, and i said, let me offer some thoughts on that. and, of course, happy to have them. and he said well, i'm the first president who is not captured by vietnam. because i was not involved in the disputes of the vietnam war. obama was 13 in 1975 when ford pulled the united states out of vietnam and then obama said i don't have the baggage of

vietnam. well, here in texas, lbj library, you know, think about vietnam and what's the baggage of vietnam right now? lessons. what are the lessons of vietnam. >> right. >> and when i was interviewing obama on this, he'd been commander in chief for 18 months and there's no way you can be commander and chief and not have vietnam and what went wrong, what did we do, should we be there and i think the real core issue is do you have a system in -- is there a process to examine all of the alternatives and the consequences? do you have an national security team that works together and really hashes things out? you look at the obama administration now and it's a lot of inner circle white house people. a lot of decisions seem to get

made when the secretary of state or secretary of defense are not there. like on the initial decisions to not bomb syria a year ago. so there's a whole question of have they thought this all through? not obama himself, but everyone. do they have a decision making dynamic that really is contentious? that kind of says, look, what's -- the biggest decision a country can make is who to go to war with. that really defines us. this is a giant moment. this is one of these hinges of history and, you know, exactly how did we get there, who was listened to, what were the worries, what was the intelligence? a lot we don't know. >> that history will be filled in. you have no hesitation referring to this as a war.

we're at war recall of course. you know, anyone who tries to sugar coat that is -- >> we're at war. -- is not being real. >> truthful. i brought nixon's name up thinking i might be able to pivot the conversation, i'm now going to forcefully take the conversation. [laughter] we're sitting here 20 years after president and you've been asked in the interim to reflect on the accomplishment what you and carl and the washington post team did at the time. i wonder if you can give us the snapshot about the consequence of politics and the consequence of journalism during that period? >> do you hav an hour and a half? the consequence for politics was i think immediately after nixon's resignation, a lot of politicians felt, whoo! i better be careful. but for the grace of god go i and i think things got better,

not perfect. i think there's been people -- people don't recognize that and i think the consequences for journalism, look, journal journalism is going through a convulsion of the circulation of the washington post print edition. and i think the last 10 or so years, is half. >> right. steadily down. >> we have a new owner, jeff bezos, lots of money. $250 million buying the washington post. it's an accomplishment but you can ask whether that amount of money is enough. right, well, that was the asking price but it's 1% of his net worth and -- [laughter] >> and if as if you bought a sailboat. >> you're assuming something about my net worth. [laughter] >> a small one. >> right, yeah.

>> but, you know, this -- i mean, you were talking about syria and obama, these are big challenges for the business of journalism. of finding out in a fair but aggressive way what's going on and can i tell you honestly. i don't think we know enough about what's going on. the secrecy in the white house and institutions and businesses is greater because we have fewer reporters and reporters like to tweet and blog instead of talk to 20 people to get the story. we know less and less. >> when -- you went all jill abramson on me. it's the most see caress e curettive of times. >> i'm not saying it's not -- >> is it our fault or the institution's fault. journalismen down on the ground or institutions and people in power got better at keeping

things secret. >> they're better and we're worse. >> sure. >> there's no way, there's the responsibility? it's on our shoulders to be accurate and aggressive and fair and in journalism we can't go to obama and say, mr. president, we really think you need to open up and i think you really need to -- >> right. >> -- tell us everything that's going on and by the way, can i sit in the next national security council meeting. [laughter] in the back and take notes? it's not going to happen. so we have to develop methods and the methods are not tweeting, not blogging. the methods are finding people who -- human source who is know what's going on and developing a relationship of trust, so somebody will tell you this is what is really happening. these are the notes. this is not -- you know, the cover story or the political story that we're putting out. i -- when i go back and do these

books, and look at -- take the afghan war, after obama decided to add 30,000 troops i did a bunch of reporting what happened in 2010, and somebody in the pentagon the other day said he read the last 75 pages of the book and you realize the war in afghanistan was collapsing, this was in 2010 but they were putting out the story, oh, it's working, the surge in troops is successful and wasn't true. >> yeah, but you and carl, when you did this work back in the early '70s to uncover what became watergate, there were not a huge number of people working with you on the story. you managed as reporters to pry open the american government. >> well, we had a great editor, ben bradley. who -- >> but in terms of boots on the

ground, it was your boots and carl's boots. >> yeah, but you know, the guy at the top, bradley and the owner, katherine graham, really had a sense of this is the business we're in, i think vietnam set the stage for doubt about government and they turned us loose and if they had not published those story, you know, carl and i could have written letters to our mothers -- [laughter] >> right. >> would not have resonated and so the risk factor for them and the peril for them was great. for us, we were kids and, you know, if it didn't turn out, i could have done something like gone to law school. >> right, right. >> so, you know, which is what i -- [speaking simultaneously] >> but you're telling me two young reporters at the washington post today came upon a story with the same level of

importance, what watergate became. the editor of the paper and jeff bezos would not 100% back and provide greater resourcesness i think they would back it and -- if you got really good information. do you have sources? is there -- is there a context for all of this? remember there was the context of who nixon was and we now know too much from all of those thousands of hours of tapes. have you ever listened to any of those tapes? >> i've listened to as many as my interest would bear but at a certain point, it's hard to listen to. >> it's appalling. >> yeah. >> the dog that never barks on the nixon tapes to my knowledge no one ever says what would be good for the country? what do the people need? it was all about nixon and using the power of the presidency is an instrument of personal revenge. i mean, nixon's there a year

before watergate, they're trying to get some study about the vietnam bombing involving johnson and here nixon and his chief of chaff helderman and henry -- sheriff and henry kissinger, still -- and helderman says, you know, we can get that if we get that document, we'll blackmail lyndon johnson. blackmail. now, kissinger doesn't stand up and nixon doesn't stand up, blackmail, why we can't do that! can you imagine john adams sitting around, you know, i think we can blackmail george washington if we get this. [laughter] and nixon says i know how we've get the document, we'll break in. blow the safe! blow the safe, from the president of the united states.

i want those documents. we're going to get those -- that document on the thievery basis. and then when it doesn't happen, the tape from a couple of -- nixon, has anyone broken in yet? anyone? [laughter] come on! >> and in a world in which you're afraid to put something in an email, it's amazing to have that kind of brazen communication that ultimately gets out. >> what it was, a criminal president. >> yeah. >> an ultimate corruption -- >> right. >> -- of our constitution and system of laws and system of good will and that is rough and tough as politics get. >> for the people saying look can back over their shoulders at president nixon. other than that, what did you think of the play. other than watergate.

all admiral, except for -- but for. i think the but for. >> the better analogy is the skipper of the titanic saying, "except for that one iceberg." [laughter] >> i like your analogy. >> it was a great cruise. >> are you hopeful about journalism? >> yes, i am. >> not tweeting and being on facebook. >> we'll rise to the occasion, we always have. >> always have? >> always have and you think about journalism, i'm here to talk with r.b. brener and students at the journalism school here at the university of texas, and journalism is -- you know this -- it's the greatest profession to be in, what do you do? you get up in the morning and you try to say, what's going on? what does it mean? what don't we know about it? how can we -- in other words, you report on things that people are talking about.

and living and if you become -- you know, i mean what, what we do is make momentary entries into people's lives when they're interesting and get the hell out when they cease to be interesting. >> right. >> and if you're a doctor or lawyer, you're stuck. [laughter] stuck with clients or patients who are boring. >> right, in the end, much better than going to law school, right? >> yes. >> out of time, what a treat. that you so much. bob woodward. [applause] >> love to have you join us in the studio. visit our klru.org web/overheard and an archive of past episoded. >> vietnam was going on and that really was the beginning of the serious distrust of government and th -- the president.

the second thing is after working on watergate, i'd cone all of these books and they'd been on institutions like the cia or the white house and they're not about scandal, always, they're about how does it operate? >> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization, board-certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected and tested and also by hillco partners, texas governmental affairs consultancy and hillco health. and by the alice kleberg health. and by the alice kleberg reynolds found and viewers like

garrison keillor: kwame dawes was born in ghana and grew up in jamaica. he has published 13 books of poetry, many books of fiction, nonfiction and drama, and he's the author of the first in-depth study of the lyrics of bob marley. he teaches at the university of south carolina. he says of his poetry, "often i am not writing to describe what i have seen, but trying to voice what the work is stirring in me." "tornado child." tornado child, tornado child. i, i'm a tornado child. i come like a swirl of black and darken up your day; i whip it all up into my womb, lift you and your things, carry you where you've never been, and maybe, if i feel good, i might bring you back, all warm and scared, heart humming wild like a bird after early sudden flight. 'cause i'm a tornado child. i tremble at the elements.

when thunder rolls my mother womb trembles, remembering the tweak of contractions that tightened to a wail when my mother pushed me out into the black of a tornado night. i'm a tornado child, you can tell us from far by the crazy of our hair; couldn't tame it if we tried. even now i tie a bandanna to silence the din of anarchy in these coir-thick plaits. 'cause i'm a tornado child born in the whirl of clouds; the center crumbled, then i came. my lovers know the blast of my chaotic giving; they tremble at the whip of my supple thighs. tornado child, you cross me at your peril. i cling to light when the warm of anger lashes me into a spin, the pine trees bend to me, swept in my gyrations. 'cause i'm a tornado child. when the spirit takes my head, i hurtle into the vacuum of white sheets billowing

and paint a swirl of color, streaked with my many songs. 'cause i am a tornado child. (applause)