>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: welcome to the pam. we are live this evening from new york, boston and washington. tonight, president barack obama

delivered his seventh and final state of the union address. in his speech, he underscored many accomplishments, but tonight was less about the past than the future. here's a look. >> so let's talk about the future and four big questions that i believe we as a country have to answer, regardless of who the next president is or who controls the next congress. first, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? (applause) second, how do we make technology work for us and not against us, especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? (applause) third, how do we keep america safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman? (applause) and finally, how can we make our politics reflect what's best in

us and not what's worse? last year, vice president biden said with a new moon shot, america can cure cancer. last month, he worked with this congress to give scientists at the the national institutes of health the strongest resources they've had in over a decade. (applause) so tonight i'm announcing a new national effort to get it done, and because he's gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, i'm putting joe in charge of mission control! (cheers and applause) and that's why we need to reject any politics, any politics that targets people because of race or religion. (applause) this is not a matter of political correctness. this is a matter of understanding just what it is that makes us strong. it's one of the few regrets of my presidency that the rancor and suspicion between the

parties has gotten worse instead of better. i have no doubt a president with the gifts of lincoln or roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and i guarantee i will keep trying to be better as long as i hold this office. >> rose: governor nikki haley from south carolina delivered the response. >> there is an important lesson in this. in many parts of society today, whether popular culture, academia, the media or politics, there is a tendency to falsely akuwait noise with results. some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. that's just not true. often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. >> rose: joining me from washington, david sanger of the "new york times" and kathleen parker of the "washington post." from boston, doris kearns goodwin, she is a presidential historian and author. with me, jon meacham, author and

historian. i am pleased to have all of them as we talk about this the last state of the union by president obama, in many ways a look to the future but also, surprisingly, he talked about some of the themes he has been talking about since 2008. jon meacham, your reaction. >> i thought it was his case for his presidency. it was sort of a template, i think, for the memoir. >> rose: from healthcare to iran. >> from healthcare to his view of terrorism as an important but not existential threat. you could almost feel the right wing twittering as he said that. and the big think at the end about politics, which is where he began, when you think about it, in 2004. >> rose: and acknowledging perhaps other presidents like roosevelt or lincoln might have been able to -- >> who had their problems with partisanship, let the record be

clear. but in the sense, the tone was also combative. when he goes to that chamber, it brings out something and you can feel the iowa ad-libs coming out. >> rose: kathleen parker in washington, what do you think? >> i like to say i like the speech overall. i think there are a lot of things he left out, but republicans can point those out as we go along through the rest of this week. i tend to like the way he went about the speech, meaning i would much prefer a thematic speech, and the way he approached the four big questions, rather than a laundry list of this is what we've done, where we stand and a lot of numbers that tend to make the eyes glaze over. i think it was a prequel to the farewell address.

at the point he was talking about the economy, saying the economy is not in decline but there have been massive changes that's started a long time ago and will continue to affect us and the way we do our him say more about the global changes and how the american people have

(technical difficulty) >> it sounded more like the barack obama you heard on the trail in new hampshire and iowa in 2008. then the one whose voice has frequently been missing from some of the bigger debates of the past year or year and a half. i thought it was interesting how he struck back at the tone he's been hearing in the campaign. there was one moment where he said, "our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians," a clear reference to ted cruz. he made another clear reference without naming him to donald trump when he called for a nation of tolerance and said, once again, that this is, you know, who we are.

so, clearly, the campaign talk of the republicans in the past few months has gotten under his skin, and he wanted to use h this as a moment to sort of remind people of that air of optimism that he brought about. i thought the other really interesting thing, charlie, was that he came back to the theme that the united states can be a superpower without being an occupier. it was within that line that he said we need to remember the lessons of vietnam and iraq, the two defining moments. you know, he was in college at the very end of vietnam. obviously, as a president, he inherited the end of the iraq war. and i think something else he's seen in the campaign rhetoric of the past year are people not really contemplating very much what the lessons particularly of the iraq war were, and i think he wanted to return to the thought that the united states could be a leader without going in and trying to be a nation

builder. >> rose: doris? well, i think it's human nature for a president in their final address to want to accomplish two things -- one, to tell the story of the accomplishments they've gone through, and i think he folded that into the strengths of america, so it wasn't i did this, but americans have done this, but, nuptless, all the -- nonetheless, all the accomplishments got in there. and i think the human desire is to leave the presidency in the hands of somebody who's going to carry out the policies you care about and i think that's where the political zingers on the campaign trail came out mentioned, as david said, things that were designed against trump or cruz and talking about muslims when you insult them that it won't make us safer, america is not in decline, political is hot air. they promised before the speech it would be different, and i think that's where it changed into something else, and it remind med -- this is going to

sound ridiculous, i always think about george washington's farewell address because when he gave his final address, i'm sure meacham knows, he talked about party spirit and the worry about faction and the worry about party mischief and the dangers of what would happen if the country started splitting on geographic lines because of parties. so that last part when he talked about the system itself is in trouble and not only do we have to change congressional districts and the way they're made up and the money and the interest, but look at you guys in congress, you don't even like your jobs anymore, you all know it and, somehow, unless we change the system, he wasn't just about -- he wasn't talking about making things nicer, he was talking about systemic changes. then he comes back to i believe in change, and that's why america's good and optimistic and why i'm optimistic about america. so his rhetoric accomplished what he wanted to accomplish.

>> rose: did david hamilton write that farewell speech for george washington? >> jon meacham? yes. i only know lincoln. that's too far back. (laughter) >> hamilton did not write obama's speech. >> rose: kathleen, it is said that the best thing president obama can do for his legacy is to see that a democrat is elected president. is there some truth in that? >> well, i think so, yes. i mean, it's always proof your policies were good and will be maintained. this is what happened when bush followed reagan. it was sort of a confirmation that reagan's policies were approved of by the american

people, and i think the clear message from president obama tonight was vote for a democrat. as doris said -- or i guess it was david, too -- his zinger is toward we're clearly aimed at ted cruz and donald trump, you know, were well-placed and well-deserved, frankly. this conversation on the right where, you know, we're marginalizing certain people, making them the enemy and somehow they're the ones responsible hasn't done much good for our political system, certainly not the republican party and doesn't speak well to our political process. so i appreciate that president obama was trying to address that. i also felt a little bit like i had been spked and i felt a a little bit like it's my fault, and the recognition there are other players involved here including the president. i'm always looking for that bit

of humility. he almost came close to it when he said i don't imagine we'll agree on healthcare anytime soon. i think that's about as self-deprecating as he got. but it's always help to have your message if you can recognize you haven't been quite perfect and some of the dysfunction on capitol hill could sometimes be attributable to more than just the members of congress. >> rose: it is said by some white house watchers that president obama in the 2014 congressional elections really wanted to be there. i mean, he was the issue in that campaign in many ways and really wanted to be out there but democrats didn't want him out there and he now again wants -- he seems to really want to have a debate and he lists these four things, and these four things i think are worthy subjects for an american debate, one, everybody having a fair shot at opportunity, making technology working for us, not against us,

keeping america safe, leaving the world without a policeman. >> in that way, it was like a bill clinton speech. remember, president obama had to outsource explaining himself in 2012. the presidential candidate's nomination was an outsourced job. >> rose: became the explainer in chief. >> and to some extent -- and doris, i think, would agree, great presidents are ones who are in conversation with the culture of their time. >> rose: exactly. and bill clinton was, for give me, thomas jefferson was, franklin roosevelt was -- >> abe lincoln -- (laughter) >> so that they're not solely political actors. >> rose: when you write about doris presidents in conversation with the country, they're the

only presidents you want to write about? >> of course, you want to write about the ones who connected to their countryment because they're the ones who make the difference. i think that's absolutely true. i think in the end the presidents who have changed the course of history, it's because something came up from the society that they were able to shape but it already was bubbling and they were able to explain and teach and move it forward. >> rose: i also remember after newt gingrich had contract with america successful, bill clinton said the end of big government is upon us. >> arguably the last state of the union that really mattered was that speech. >> rose: because? because that was the moment the new democrat recovered himself and reset for the second term. >> rose: i see, after -- after newt gingrich's landslide in '94. >> the weird thing is many of these state of the unions are not memorable when you look back over history. i mean, there are some lines we remember. obviously from lincoln, f.d.r., the four freedoms, there are bad

ones we remember, but it's a hard thing to do. normally, i think it's hard because you have so many policy proposals being forced on you by all the different cabinet officers and you're trying to satisfy both them and the congress and the country, and i think tonight what made it easier for president obama was he was really just speaking to the audience of the country. i mean, he wasn't really speaking to the congress because he's not sure what he can get through there, so he was going over their heads to the country and it simplified matters for him. >> rose: was this a summing up of his presidency? >> well, it did start, you know, long ago it seemed like such a long time ago that he ran for president on the hope and change and today, you know, he brought it full circle and talked again about his hopes for the future and all the changes that have taken place but all the changes that still are to come and how we have to work together to get those. so i think that was sort of -- you know, that was his summation of his presidency in so many

words. you know, he did seem to toss it out to the american people, to a great extent, toward the end. not so much -- it was more like it's kind of your job to get this right, that's what i meant when i said i felt like it was all my fault. we have to work harder. he was talking about the unconditional love, the beautiful quote from martin luther king, jr. but, you know, hat that's a higr for most of us. >> in the middle of it, charlie, he also swang in the direction of defending the sort of common critique about him, you know, what he's been hearing for a year on the outside is this is a president who isn't tough enough, who hasn't stepped up for america. at one point, he came back and said outright, if you don't think i'm ready to go defend america, go ask osama bin laden. he raised bin ghazi.

he said the leader of benghazi is sitting if a jail right now. he talked about the leader of al queda and yemen. what did he skip in all that? he skipped the territory that i.s.i.s. has gained and in some cases lost again. he sort of went right by the fact that al queda was declared virtually dead before it was back again. but he did sort of step out to say i have not just been sitting here admiring the problem and studying it and not acting, and i'm not sure whether or not that part of the speech will resonate as much. i think certainly the last much more lyrical section of it where he talked about the american people probably has a better chance of remaining in memory, but i thought it was interesting he went in that direction. >> rose: what do you think the central indictment of barack obama's presidency is on the republican campaign trail? >> that the country has been

weakened abroad and that the economy is not recovering as it should. and that he moved us closer to a european socialist system. that's the critique. >> the foreign policy aspect is going to be the biggest issue, i think, for republicans. there was no acknowledgment -- he spoke as how we're working to pull things together in syria and iraq. syria really did sort of implode in large part because of his inaction at certain points or the red line was such a disastrous approach on his part. you know, there are so many other -- the iran deal and, of course, we all know that today we have ten sailors in custody in iran. >> rose: yes. you know, those kinds of

things will be, i think, brought out and focused on loudly in the next few days. >> rose revolutionary guard corps that these sailors were now being detained on this island where the story is they ran into engine trouble and sort of drifted on to shore, that they would be released. now, we've all seen how these things can go awry. this reminded me in many ways of what happened to george w. bush early in his presidency when a plane off the coast of china clipped the chinese plane that came in stew clos too close to t

down on an island. it took a few weeks and was pretty tense before the chinese turned the crew back. i suspect the iranians probably will turn these back, because we're just days away, charlie, from the implementation day on the nuclear deal. there is a lot of pressure within and a lot of debate within the iranian government, but a lot of pressure from president rouhani and his party to get to that day and get the $100 billion unfrozen for the iranian people and lift the sanctions. i think politically it would be very difficult for the president to do that while there are ten americans being held. >> rose: a lot of republicans are worried the 100 billion will not be for the iranian people but will be used in terms of supporting other terrorist organizations and others who are labeled as terrorist organizations.

>> money is spongeable and i'm sure it will be and there is been no let up by the iranians in their support for hezbollah and assad and what they're doing in yemen. everybody knew, going into this, that if you unfroze the upony, not all of it is going to be going to building hospitals and rebuilding highways. but president rouhani's under some pressure here to make sure that the iran anypeople feel some benefit. >> rose: right. i have my doubts, even if it got unfrozen tomorrow morning, whether there would be enough time for them to feel any benefit. >> charlie, i want to throw in there are actually 11 americans in custody in iran. we can't forget our "washington post" colleague who has been held for more than a year now and whose release is nowhere in sight. so it would be nice if those ten sailors could bring him back with them. >> rose: where are we in terms of that? are the iranians responding in any way to all the

journalistic -- >> i honestly don't know. i know these efforts are ongoing. the "washington post" is very involved in trying to get him back. he recently had a visit with his family over the holidays, i think. but he's being kept in some pretty deprived conditions and on a completely bogus charge. so, you know, we just have to keep him in mind as we look at these events. >> charlie, there is some indication that the state department is in some back-channel conversation with the iranians on this, but the iranians want the release of people they maintain are iranian prisoners in the united states. i think that's a difficult thing for the u.s. to sort of call equating issues. as kathleen points out, jason didn't do anything. >> rose: yeah. are you suggesting he was arrested in order to exchange for iranians? >> it may be he was arrested for one reason and now they're thinking up the exchange as a way to get them out of this.

>> rose: doris, you were going to say? >> i was going to say the whole sailor incident raises the problem that we still have lots of months to go in this presidency and no one knows what the outside events may be to shape the legacy in the months ahead. aware of the criticism that the republicans forged about obama being weak in foreign policy, that's when he made one of his strongest statements, "america is the most powerful nation in the world, zero, period, nobody else," as if he could just hopefully say it and it would become true. the other criticism he was aware of you asked earlier what was he doing to counter them which we've talked about is the criticism that he hasn't brought the parties together. he said gracefully, one of my few regrets, not one of my regrets, but one of my few regrets is i didn't do more to reduce the rancor and gracefully did say perhaps if i had the gift of a roosevelt or lincoln i might have done better but i

will try. so that was a gracious moment, i thought. >> rose: i want to speak to that. it is one of the questions about the obama presidency, could he have done more, if he that jeffersonian skills, would he have been able to tbrij gap, or was this congress very different because of the caucuses within the republican party that it was impossible, with john boehner did he not have enough resources to make a deal? >> that was the president's argument. one of the thing we saw that biographers will have great fun with through the years, at one level obama appears to be the man of reason put down in this crazy emotional context of politics and, yet, he is a thoroughly political creature. i have been to iowa, if y'all need any advice, i'll be here afterward. >> and loved every minute. quite prideful about his

political skills. >> rose.but in terms of relatio, f.d.r. in the speech he was supposed to deliver the day after he died, we must cultivate the science of human relationships. >> rose: the science -- the science of human relationships. it's a marvelous phrase, politics at heart is about these relationships. >> rose: you think this president did not understand that? >> i think there is very little he doesn't understand. hinge understands just about -- a lot more, certainly, than i do. >> rose: he argues that it would not have been -- >> it was not determinative. >> rose: he could have played golf every day with john boehner and -- >> right, and he was saying have a drink with mitch mcconnell, you go have a drink with mitch

mcconnell. (laughter) but he did seek the office. >> i think he would have played golf more with john boehner but as boehner was told me, he said the last thing i need to be is seen playing golf with the president, you know, that would be the worst thing i could do. i think he was trying to navigate the tea party and the opposition within his own house. anyway, go ahead. >> rose: doris, walk us through a sense of -- and you and jon both write about presidents -- how does he, not in terms of greatness, not whether he aspires to mt. rushmore, but looking at him, what's the best thing about him as we think about this last year, and what is the weakest thing about him? >> well, i think -- you know, i think partly what was just said, i think he has tried to be a man of reason, a man deliberating, not impulsive, making his decisions after getting advice, going through a very complicated

period and remaining calm, and that may, on the other hand, be what some people perceive as weakness. it may be that in the time of fighting which we're in, a time of tough conversation, the american people wanted somebody who was more of a fighter, even though it might have made things worse. so i think in 20 or 30 years, the fact that what we're really talking about is what people are going to have to sort out, did the system come to a certain point where those personal qualities that an l.b.j. or an f.d.r. had might have made things better, not just in tone, but could things have gotten accomplished more as a result, or were we just at a point in society as we were in the 1850s where no one could have briblgd the problem and the country was falling apart is that on the issue of slavery? >> yes. clearly, you can't look back and say who could have made that better? we didn't know that then. people were saying if there had

been a different person there, it would have been easier. but that's not true now. i think it will take 30, 40, 50 years, like it does for l.b.j.'s reputation, to get brought back to where it deserved to be domestically. >> rose: does this president who obviously understands politics, got elected and reelected president, and i'm just reading about the speech he made at the jefferson-jackson dinner ino -- in 2008 and how powerful that was and came to be, but kathleen, you have been in washington and covered presidents and covered him, the same question i asked doris, i mean, here is we look at this final year as he acknowledged, you know, i won't be here next time, i will be on my own trying to be a good citizen, what kind of president was he? >> well, i think whether you agree with his policies or not, he's been a very consequential president, and he must feel pretty good about his record even if he doesn't feel great about having brought the peace,

love and flowers to capitol hill. >> rose: kathleen, let me interrupt you on that. i think that's too glib. i think there is something really wrong with our politics and peace and love won't do it, because the number of people i talk to, you know, who i interview who say, you know, our national security is threatened, our economic life is threatened by this inability to deal with these fundamental issues about our future, about entitlements, about so many issues. >> you're completely right. much of the opposition to president obama's policies from the right, there are two parts to it. one is they very much disagreed with his approach to governance. he's a big government guy and, you know, started out with the healthcare reform back when we really needed to be focusing on

jobs, and that was a one-party deal. so there was that side of it. but there was also opposition by design and, you know, the republicans really just didn't want to give an inch because they felt that they had to stand firm on prince the in order to please their constituents. and it became a completely dysfunctional congress and it is not -- you know, it would be incorrect to blame president obama for that. just simply have reached a point where it was not workable for, you know, for the reasons i've described and just i think we've kind of reached a point in this country where there is -- again, you know, there is so much change aloft and so little being done to address what's happening to us culturally or, you know, what we're allowing to happen to us culturally, what's happening with the economy. these are massive problems and are never going to be solved by one man. but the one thing i wanted to say about president obama, something i agree with and that

i've really found bracing from him is that when he really took a very different approach, you know -- you know, on the one hand we can be critical of the foreign policy in certain instances, and he could have made things much worse and didn't. you know, we live in such a very different world with such different enemies and different, you know -- everything's asymmetrical, and he took a very careful approach and, you know, a multipronged, short and mid and long-term approach to how do we deal with these things without engaging in some massive land war, which i think republicans would have been happy to see us do. so i give him lots and lots of credit for being restrained in that area. >> charlie, can i -- >> rose: yes, please, david. -- pick up on that. i think when you think about what he'll be remembered for is that, after you had a president

for eight years who talked often about making decisions from his gut and listening to his generals without necessarily ever thinking about overriding them because he's commander-in-chief and may have a broader policy set of priorities, you had a president here who was, by his own boast, very science-based. in fact, he sort of tweaked the members of congress who were climate deniers tonight saying that they would be very lonely. he prided himself in being fact-based, and he prided himself in being deliberative, highly deliberative, which, of course, is the other side of the critique. you know, here in a shameless plug for another panelist's book here, i have been reading jon's brilliant book on george h.w. bush, and i was thinking as i was reading it that, you know,

this was the last -- also a president we saw who was highly deliberative about each and every step and which ones not to take, so his decision, for example, not to go after saddam hussein after they had kicked him out of kuwait, something many people criticized him for later. but i think you will see the same thing in obama, that he will be remembered, as cath rein said -- as kathleen said, for steps he wouldn't take. and i think what's interesting about the critique you're hearing of him now is that, to some degree, they don't fully consider what president obama asked people to think about again today which was what are the lessons we should emerge from the iraq war with, and, for obama, it's clearly we need to act with a very light footprint -- we can't go occupy, we can't go police and we can't go nation build.

now, people may disagree with that but there is this issue of the overextension of the u.s. and obama was bringing people back to that tonight. >> rose: he used to suggest in the first two years that he was following bush 41's pollsy. >> he's a great admirer of bush 41. i interviewed him for the book and he speaks in these wonderful paragraphs, anyway. >> refreshing. we can get a whole page done with it. >> okay, i'm done, you know, all through interview with and press forward. (laughter) but, to david's point, he absolutely believes in the significance of restraint and not doing stupid stuff. >but i think there is an appreciation -- there was an appreciation of him, in fact,

when he thought he might be a one-term president back in 2009. there was a conversation in the white house about what was it about a principled one-term president, how had that happened. you know, but to put us in biographical context here, this is a man with a public career of a dozen years nationally. >> rose: right. you know, a man who never knew his father, who will be written about as long as the english language is spoken as the first african-american president. >> rose: we haven't mentioned that yet but an historical -- >> oh, yeah. and he really came -- it was only 2004 when he came to national attention. i mean, i was thinking when i was watching his speech and just how good in that setting he is, he tells in his own memoir a story about when he went to the 2000 convention -- so only four

elections ago, he tried to rent a car and his credit card was rejected. to go to the convention that nominated al gore. four years later he's the keynoter and eight years later the nominee. this is a remarkable journey. and he's a young, young man. >> rose: a pretty good eight years. >> it's not a charlie rose eight years, but -- (laughter) no, it's remarkable. and he's such a young man. doris has written about t.r. he's going to have this fascinating post-presidency. >> rose: speculate, doris. what do you think the options are for barack obama come january 2000? >> well, clearly, i think given his interest and skill in writing, i think the memoir will be really occupying the first part of his time. i think it will be more than a duty he has to perform as president's feel and they want to get it over with to get on with what they do. i don't know he even knows what

he'll do after that. i mean, there's a library. there are problem that there are certain things presidents have to do. building a library takes time. he's so young that you hope he'll be able to find something that really attracts and makes him love again. i think the difficulty of the last eight years for him has been i think he loved politics when he started out, it showed in the campaigns and still shows on a night like tonight, but i suspect part of the days of this last eight years, how can it be for anyone in washington who loved what they were doing? i think you're right, charlie, there is something systemically wrong with our policies. if you go into politics you hope to make things better. i don't know how many times senators or even the president can feel that when they can't even have a conversation about what they should be doing. they used to call washington the city of conversation and now people can't even talk to each other. as a result, we have an economy, as he pointed out, jobs are

better, it's not working for lots of people because of the income gap and lack of mo be able to for poor people. this is a huge problem for our country, much less the foreign policy stuff that you're talking about. so something's got to break this plague i think and whether or not people will likely figure out what to do about changing the system to make the congressman and the senators and the people in washington more responsive to what needs to be done than to raising the money and spending their time dialing for dollars. i mean, the thing is crazy, we know it is, and yet somehow it isn't getting changed. >> rose: i want to raise two big issues about him that are fascinating to me and, jon, all of you. how smart is he? what's the sense -- is he one of our brightest presidents. >> absolutely. i think so. pluses and minuses. >> rose: from a ke keen

standpoint. >> keen analytical intelligence. >> rose: sometimes he's been dismissed as a president as a law professor because he simply wants to make arguments and doesn't v you know, that sense of accomplishment that comes from executive training and executive leadership. >> yeah, i think that's probably said by people who want -- >> rose: who aren't either. -- or who want to be that executive. said by a lot of former governors. >> rose: most in iowa. ight, or marco rubio looks seasick, at least from my television screen. >> what does that mean? >> rose: it's about boots, i think. (laughter) >> no, but i think -- >> rose: okay, speak to that, david and kathleen. just the sheer power of mind. >> i'll add something here that, i think -- you know, of course, he's an intellectual, but i think he also has a high va vale

of emotional intelligence. he's extremely perceptive and, you know, he's watchful. he's interested in the psychology of human motivations. i know there are some conversations, but also you can sort of see it in his deliberations, that he goes beyond the mere analytical where you're just dealing with the facts on the ground, but also tries to understand what's going on and enter the metaphysical dimension. so that gives him something, i think, relatively rare in the presidency. it's not the kind of emotional intelligence bill clinton had when he says he feels their pain, but it's sort of a hiring level of perceptive fess that he applies -- perceptiveness that he applies to his decision-making. so there is that. you know, we were talking about his speech. i was in boston when he gave the speech in 2004, and it was an

amazing speech. some of you may have been there as well. and i remember i was standing next to karl cannon who is now running clear politics and i said we've just seen our first black president speak. and he was, in fact, so young but also really beautiful when he was standing up there giving that amazing speech about we're not red, not blue, not this or that, we're the united states. he believed that. >> rose: my question is, has he lived up to that potential? the things i used to find out -- if you talked to bill clinton and would talk about potential that was not fulfilled, it would drive him crazy. if we ask the same question of barack obama -- >> i think it also drives president obama crazy, at least from what you hear from talking with hi his aides. here is someone of enormous intellectual curiosity who can pick apart arguments and is not at all concerned about taking on

the generals who come in to see him, the comifses who come in to -- the economists who come in to see him and so forth, yet the critique you hear is the intellectual curiosity can be paralyzing for decision-making. and at moments you've certainly seen that. you've heard before when kathleen talked about the red line in syria and so forth, and, you know, he was analyzing the situation from an a analytical viewpoint, probably came out in the right place. in the end, they got almost all the chemical weapons out of syria without firing a shot, but having set the red line and declared what the consequences would be, he then had to suffer from the fact that he backed away from it, and even many of his own former aides tell you today that that's problematic. you've had other cases where he's been accused of operating too slowly. now, all told, i think there are

a lot of people in america who would rather have someone with the patience to go about this slowly. you know, the iran deal we were talking about before was the ultimate example of patience. he had a six or seven-year plan to squeeze the iranians and get them where they ended up last july and, frankly, charlie, as you remember from appearances on this show, i didn't believe it was going to work and it worked. >> rose: let me pick up on several things you said and talk to doris about this. i asked someone the other day about him and said what is your central critique on president obama, someone who had some hiss historical resonance as many of you do, and he said "arrogance." and it may be intellectual arrogance or maybe an arrogance that says i just know that i know more than you do, or if you sat where i am, you would do

exactly what i do. i'm also struck by the fact that he's constantly saying, if you have a better idea, let's hear it, about every issue. this is what i believe. if you have a better idea, let's hear it. but there are those who go see him who says he doesn't hear it because of the level of intellectual arrow imans. imans -- arrogance. doris? >> i think that's an important point. confidence is what you need in a leader, self-assurance, but at times confidence can shade over into arrogance and even hubris. that confidence has served him well. it got him into the presidency. who is this guy that he could run for president? nobody without that kind of confidence could have done that or go after the full healthcare thing after he lost the vote in massachusetts but he barreled ahead, anyway. but at other times there was

that sense. he said one of the few regrets i have, not just one of the regrets i have. so he has this sense of himself, and i think it's a strengths but also can be a problem, he can see himself from the outside in, he sees himself as a character walking through history and i think that gives him enormous pleasure, and it's a self-awareness that's part of your strength, but it also means as long as you see yourself walking through history and you think you're walking in a good way, and i think he now does, he feels good about what he accomplished, he can go out into the presidency accomplishing many things he wanted to, but that means you don't have to deal with the present in a certain since because you've already made your deals. it's complicated stuff about self-assurance and hue brings and where the line gets crossed. >> rose: kathleen? i was going to say some of the arrogance, i know exactly what you're talking about, some of that is a wall, his shield, kind of his power shield that he envelops himself in to protect

himself, which probably goes way, way back to his childhood when he was a mixed-race child, living in different places, raised by his grandparents, moved him to indonesia, not knowing his father, all those things come into play, and little barack, at some point, had to figure out how to walk across that basketball court or down that school hallway and be untouchable or unflappable, and he's carried that throughout his entire life. i think sometimes the arrogance may be more that than looking down his nose. >> very interesting. >> rose: go ahead, doris. i think that may be right. i think it could well be that it is a protection and that it comes from the biography. that's what's going to be fun. i wish i were younger to be writing about this 30 years from now because it's going to be a fascinating story. >> rose: you and i both, my dear. the presidential defensiveness is perennial and doris has

forgotten more about this than we know about president johnson, but a wonderful scene, david herbert donald goes into meet j.f.k. to talk about a presidential rating system the historians are doing and kennedy loses it and says no one has a right to judge any president who has not sat at that desk and read his mail and known what he knew when he had to make those decisions. >> rose: that's right. i was just looking at this book by bruce riedel, i think, who was talking about the fact that when kennedy was handling the cuban crisis, it was also handling a crisis between the chinese and the indians statement. you know, the whole idea of how demanding it is and only the toughest things make their way up to the oval office -- >> yeah, and civil rights -- >> rose: and he did all at the same time. >> as bobby kennedy said in the cuban missile crisis, is there

any way they can hit oxford, mississippi. (laughter) >> yeah, i think you're absolutely right. no president likes this whole rating system. we've now put it on them while they're still alive. we're already talking about where they'll rank in history. one night i was talking to president clinton and a poll came out that day that ranked him in the middle, thfers before the monica lewinsky thing. i said, if you bring the dodgers back to brooklyn, i'll put you up a notch on the ranking poll. he didn't laugh. (laughter) >> rose: the same person who wished to bemoan the fact he didn't have a great challenge, he had no war because he wanted to be great. >> and charlie picked up on jon's point. after j.f.k. said that, david donald never did rating systems again. i was an undergraduate who was lucky enough to take david

donald's civil war courses, and he would never even rank lincoln, who, of course, always, you know, comes out number one or two, right? and he was the great lincoln biographer. you know, i think j.f.k. won him over. >> rose: doris, where do you rank lincoln? >> a one. i think i'd rank him one. it's tough. f.d.r. is close. lincoln saved the union, f.d.r. may have saved the western civilization along with churchill from the nazi threat. but lincoln as a human being soars among the rest of them, somehow. >> rose: i want to talk about this president and gun control, not only because -- i think he said it's given him the toughest moments of his presidency. he clearly feels strongly about it. the death of the young people at newtown had an impact on him. >> i was talking to valerie

jarrett about that and how he became very tearful when he was announcing his relatively, you know, fairly smallish gun control moves, and she said every time sandy hook comes up, you know, he does that. so that emotion is real and uh then tick -- and authentic. i think he feels what he's trying to do is the right thing and i think he will never be able to convince republicans -- well, republicans and congress who are relying to some extent on the n.r.a. for their funding sources. but, you know, the fact of the matter is most americans do think there ought to be background checks on everyone, and whatever loopholes exist in these gun shows and in online sales ought to be closed. i mean, this is really not -- you know, these are not radical ideas. in fact, i was talking to somebody in california today who

said theselase laws are the very laws obama is trying to get passed or rather these executive actions are identical to what the laws in california have been forever, for years at least, and you can, you know, people can buy a gun in california if they're not a felon. so, you know, it's a tough, tough situation. i don't know, you know, the second amendment brigades will always be out there on the fringe trying to make sure that -- they remind me of the pro-choice people who will not give one little tiny minute of compromise on abortion, and the gun people are the same. there are other ways to talk about these issues without it being an infringement on rights. >> rose: i have to interrupt you because i have less than two minutes. i do want to say, it is abou this president -- nothing makes me, in terms of the accusations against this president, is that he doesn't love the country, and when i hear that, i find it

just, you know, the lowest level of political rhetoric. i mean, clearly, everybody that goes -- is part of the american political process and i've run certainly goes to -- and everyone who goes to that office feels the heavy weight loves the country. they may make mistakes but they're trying to do what's right and they also, all of them, i think, feel deep inside the potential of the country and every time -- this president referred to it again tonight -- his predecessor felt clearly there is a richness in terms of our value, in terms of our potential, and we have to make damn sure that the politics and all those other kinds of things, you know, can have -- we minimize that. >> well said. yeah. well said. and, you know, those people who occupy the oval office, you

know, every single day have to hear the worst things that we can't imagine because we don't know what they know, and i guess that's why their hair turns grey every single time. >> rose: doris, i'll give you the last word. this has been a great conversation for me, and i thank each of you. but it's the presidency we are talking about. it's this remarkable office where people have such an opportunity. they all come wanting to do so much and never do as much as they want. even f.d.r., even lincoln. >> oh, i think there is no question about that. the gap between what they wish for and what is actually accomplished is always going to be larger than anybody would have wanted, but it's an extraordinary treasure to have been given that job, to be an american in that job and you go out as a citizen, and you have been the most powerful person in the world. we've got to remember how great the transition is in the system. so few other systems can you do that.

you're the most powerful person one day, and the next day an actual citizen. and while you're there, you have a chance to change lives. it must feel great! >> rose: thank you all. and thank you for watching this post-state of the union today. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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the following kqed production was produced in high definition. and their buns are something i have yet to find anywhere else. >> i'm not inviting you to my house for dinner. >> breaded and fried and gooey and lovely. >> in the words of arnold schwarzenegger, i'll be back. >> they knew i had to ward off some