>> schieffer: today on face the nation thon memorial day talking politics and presidents, past, present and future. >> as summer kicks in, it is already getting hot on the campaign trail and the mud -- or was that mud? >> you know, that speech was more like a housewife distortion. >> i don't know whose record he is proud of the most, mine or his. >> if you look at him now he doesn't have a clue what to do to get this economy going. i do. >> bottom line, the polls are closer than ever, and the campaign nastier, romney's people love painting the president as a european socialist and the president's people actually compare romney's old company to a bloodsucking

bat. >> it is like watching a friend bleed to death. >> schieffer: we will check in first with top advisors from both campaigns, former gop party chair ed gillespie and the president's one time press secretary robert gibbs. we will talk with indiana's long time senator richard lugar, who lost his primary earlier this month to a candidate who wants less, not more compromise to break the washington gridlock. then on page 2, our summer sunday book break, as we talk with the authors of three new books. robert merry, author of the upcoming where they stand .. the american president in the eyes of voters and historians, time magazine's nancy gibbs and michael duffy, authors of the president's club, and cbs news contributor and presidential

historian, douglas brinkley whose new biography cronkite comes out this week, it is summertime in washington, and this is face the nation. captioning sponsored by cbs from cbs news in washington, "face the nation" with bob schieffer. chieffer, and good morning, again, and welcome to face the nation and what better time to talk a little politics. top advisors to both candidates are with us here this morning, we are going start with robert gibbs who is the senior advisor to the obama campaign, then we will hear from ed gill less city senior advisor to the romney campaign. mr. gibbs, last week, several democrats weighed in, and expressed really some dismay with the tone that the obama campaign's attack ads have taken, particularly the ones attacking mitt romney's tenure at bain capital, quite a bit of

it in the beginning of the broadcast, but the wall street journal reported yesterday the campaign would actually become more aggressive with these attacks. they seem to be buying more time for these ads. have you done some polling? why so aggressive so soon? >> bob, i don't think you need polling to understand why people will have a visceral reaction to mitt romney's time as head of bain capital and let's be clear, this is the central and only point that mitt romney brings up that in the words of his campaign would make him an economic savior for this country. you saw that tape with some steel workers whose plant in kansas city was loaded one debt, jammed into bankruptcy, mitt romney and his investors walked away with tens of millions of dollars and, look, they were very good at that, making money for themselves and for the investors, but what bain capital never did was focus on job creation. that is not what bain capital

does. it loads up companies with debt, it takes money out of those companies and pays those investors. it is not about job creation, and that is what mitt romney is running on. and look, we have seen this experiment in massachusetts. he did the same thing when he ran in 2002 in massachusetts and took that state's job creation numbers to 47th in the country. so we have seen this experiment, we have seen it in massachusetts quite frankly, we saw it in 2007 and 2008 where we turned our economy over to speculators and it crashed on the middle class. >> why, then, are some republicans seem to be so concerned about it? like corey booker, the, you know, the mayor of newark? they say it is painting the president as being anti-business. i mean, chuck schumer and senator, the two senators from new york have even declined to comment on these ads. >> well, this is nothing to do with being anti-business. this is a criticism and a good

criticism, quite honestly of mitt romney's only thesis for being president of the united states, that he is some kind of economic savior. he is very good at making money for his partners. he is not so good at creating jobs. we have seen that time and time again, and i think the american people and voters deserve to understand what mitt romney means when he says he has the keys to the being economic savior. >> schieffer: one other, one of the refreshing changes when the president was elected, he talked about hope and change. whatever happened to hope and change? now it seems he is just coming right out of the box with these old-fashioned negative ads, all campaigns seem to think or are the basis of all campaigns. >> bob there is going to be a choice in this election, mitt romney has been running for president for many years of his life, and has been very critical of this president's tenure of this president's policies, and we are certainly happy to talk a

little bit about mitt romney and his record of not creating jobs in virtually every step of his life. that is what this campaign is going to be about. are you going to be better -- who are you going to be better off with in the next four years and i don't think there is any doubt that when this election is said and done it will be close. but people of this country will reject the sort of speculation type economic gains that mitt romney is quite good at for himself and for his investors and instead look for an economy that is growing, that is built to last, that continues t to the job creation we have seen and not quite frankly return to the failed policies of the past. >> schieffer: let me read you something that tom friedman wrote in "the new york times" this morning. he said, and i quote, barack obama is a great or for, orator but he is the boston president i have ever seen when it comes to explaining his achievements putting them in context, connecting with people on a gut level through repetition and

there by defining how the public views an issue. is he right about that? >> no. i appreciate mr. friedman's free advice, but, look, if you look at the ad that we have got running in battle ground states right now it talks about exactly what this president inherited and what he achieved in saving an auto industry that mitt romney wanted to go bankrupt and have a million jobs leave with it, in creating 25 consecutive months of private sector job growth, making sure that financial reform is instituted so we don't go back to the time in which wall street was writing its own rules. all of those things, that is what mitt romney wants to do, mitt romney wants to go back to the failed economic policies of 2007 and 2008, explode our debt with these huge tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires that didn't work the first time. that theory failed, it crashed right on the middle class, it was the worst economic crisis

that i think most people in this country will ever live through and mitt romney wants to use his speculation background at off shoring and outsourcing and go back to those times. and the american people don't want that. >> let me ask you this. what do you think will be the impact, if the supreme court throws out the healthcare law? you know, bob, i don't know what the impact would be on either side of that. i think that if one listens to the full argument that was made in front of the supreme court that they are likely to uphold the healthcare law and i think it is important for millions of americans who have things like preexisting conditions, who now can get health insurance and can't be told by an insurance company that for instance they are no longer -- they can't be covered because they have some sort of preexisting condition. >> schieffer: all right. mr. gibbs, thank you and now as paul harvey used to say here is the other side of the story. here is ed gillespie. so what is your side of -- >> there are a lot of different things to talk about there, bob,

but number one let's start with the attack on governor romney as, you know, in terms of his experience in the private sector. the fact is that bain capital, there were a number of investments that didn't perform well, in the case of bain it was less than five percent of the investments that ended up in bankruptcy, the fact is 80 percent of the companies he invested in grew, and that means that jobs were created if you look for example at sports authority, 15,000 jobs, if you look at brighter horizons 15,000 jobs, staples nearly 90,000 jobs created, this is a reflection of the factness and i think what you alluded to with mayor booker, rendell and others the concern hostile's rhetoric to private investment and job creators is highlighting the fact his policies are hostile to private investment and job creators, that's why we have been at eight percent unemployment or higher for the past 39 months. that is why there are 23 million americans today who are either unemployed or underemployed or

left the work force entirely and why millions of people have lost their home and ended up in food stamps and poverty because this president is hostile to job creators, in his policies and in his rhetoric if you look at the obama care bill he passed the congressional budget says it cost our country 800,000 jobs if you look at the punitive taxes he wants to impose on small business owners that generates two out of every three new jobs in our country historically and on the keystone pipeline to keep that from going forward, thousands of jobs almost immediately that is the problem that i think mayor booker and rendell were trying to warn us about. >> schieffer: isn't ate fair thing to say that governor romney is the one who started this? i mean, he is the one who came and started talking about all of these jobs he had created. when, in fact, i mean, venture capitalists don't sit down at the table and say let's think about some plan to see how we can create a bunch of jobs. they sit down and say, let's figure out how we can make some money here. i am not saying that is a bad thing but that is

-- that is reality. >> there is correlation, bob, between making money and growing a company and job creation. that is what president obama doesn't understand because he never has been in the private sector and doesn't really understand how it works i think that is why his policies are so hostile to job creation, in his view we would be better off if we had political appointees making decision on where our money was spent like so lind dra, solyndra he touted as a success story from his failed stimulus package it has gone bankrupt over 1,000 employees have lost their jobs and taxpayers lost $535 million over half a billion dollars, because that is their view of the world, we would be better off with political appoint t's deciding to put our taxpayer money at risk and reward campaign donors as was the case in solyndra to put private capital at work. >> schieffer: let me get your take from something the president said last week, let's watch this. >> he doesn't want to talk about what he did in massachusetts. but he does talk about being a business, a business guy.

he says that it gives him a special understanding of what it takes to create jobs and grow the economy. even if he is unable to offer a single new idea about how to dor that, no matter how many times he is asked about it he says he knows how to do it. >> schieffer: so i mean, what is yourñi reaction? doesn't he have to start talking about something that he is going to do and not just what the president has done wrong? >> well, bob, maybe you haven't machine the first two ads of the romney campaign which talked about what governor romney would do if he were president on day one. repeal the job killing obama care bill, make sure that we do start deficit reduction by slowing, you know, by cutting government spending as opposed to mounting up piles of debt, you know, nearly doubling our debt already in just three and a half years of president obama's term, and fair trade with china make sure they are not manipulating their currency, approve the keystone pipeline and start these jobs, and his two ads are substantive and

about policy and going forward in an agenda for the future, in contrast to what we have seen from obama. >> schieffer: he doesn't talk much about passing the healthcare law in massachusetts and doesn't talk much about -- >> he does actually if you look at the qualifications that we cite for governor romney to be the next president it is the private sector experience which is important but it is also his time as governor, the fact is, during his time as governor, the unemployment rate zero dropped to nearly six percent to 4.7 percent, there was net job creation of about 40,000 jobs, that is more than one state in his one term as governor than president obama has been able to generate in the country during his time in office so that is a pretty good contrast, balance the budget in massachusetts without raising taxes and did that with a democratic legislature, the fact is his record in massachusetts as well as his business experience and as well as the leadership he displayed in staving the olympics for the united states in leading it in the salt lake city olympics when the international olympic committee was threatening to pull it from the united states which would have been a huge embarrassment

for our country and turned it around that is one of his successes as well and that's why many americans see him as a strong leader with a positive agenda going forward. >> schieffer: do you think we will ever see him on one of these sunday morning interview shows? i know he does fox, but we would love to have him sometime. >> i am sure you would. >> schieffer: as would meet the press and the -- >> you know, the fact is we will take our message to the american people, you see him and saw him talking to school children last week, giving a speech on education reform and how, have great respect for the shows and proud to be with you today but the fact is how we get our message to the american people and convey that to to the voters we will have to consider a in number of options in that regard and i am sure the sunday shows are one of them. >> schieffer: well i know the school children are always happy to see him i want to make sure he knows we would be happy to see him too. >> i will carry that back to boston. >> schieffer: thanks to both of you for being here today i think we saw the outline for what this campaign is going to be about and we will be back in one minute with senator richard lugar.

>> schieffer: and we are back now with indiana republican senator richard lugar, senator lugar, thanks for being here with us this morning. you, i must say compiled a remarkable record in the years that you spent in the senate, the legislation that just you and democrat san nunn offered to help the soviet union destroy nuclear weapons that could have fallen in the hands of terrorists may well have changed the course of history, and yet here you were beaten in a primary by an opponent who said what the country needs is not more compromise, but fewer compromises. on reflection, do you think you could have done something to turn this around? how did this happen, senator? >> well, it happened in large part because we had a republican

primary, a large portion of the republican party of indiana believed apparently in the idea of individualism as opposed to community, a sense of compromise or a sense of talking across the aisle in the past most hoosiers and i think that is still true of a majority of them had supported me in our efforts both in foreign policy, farm policy, their situations to forge things that worked, and so i intend to continue to do that. we have opportunities in the weeks and months ahead while i am still in the senate to try to make a difference as our country really heads toward the rocks and the economy, and we have foreign policy problems and even while the campaign is going on with the president, we have got a potential for war, for conflict, for real difficulty. >> schieffer: well, do you think that perhaps it was something other than ideology? i mean, some said that you were kind of out of touch with your

state. >> yes. some said i was 80 years of age which is correct, that i served far too long for 35 or 36 years, far more than you want to. and furthermore, some county chairman says we haven't seen you dick at our lincoln day dinners for a while, you have been so busy touring over in russia or ukraine or belarus or in asia or what have you, doing during your recesses we wanted to see mor more of you and i understand that and they make a point. i am just saying that in terms of service to the country as i saw it the, i think our priorities were right, we have been very much involved in indiana throughout this period overtime with all sorts of programs, but this was just not a year in which -- >> schieffer: it does say something about the republican party, do you think, or is this something unique? >> well, i think indiana was unique in the sense that the outside groups, whether it was freedom works or club for growth or grover nordquist group or

what had you had no other playgrounds, indiana was it because this was a place where there was a incumbent republican senator, not many running in fact so they are able to come in early on with hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars with negative ads which turned around what usually was an approval that i had from 60 to 70 percent for all of these years, and it went down real fast in the last two or three weeks under that barrage. >> schieffer: so do you see that as the reason you got beat, these outside groups that came in, these super pacs? i guess what i am driving at, and because we are seeing what appears to be a very negative campaign shaping up for the presidency right now, do you think it is possible to be re-elected running -- or be elected running a positive campaign anymore? >> i think it is very difficult, if my example is any solace to anybody. obviously i still think it is possible and there is a lot to

be done. in other words, the country really is looking for answers, whether it be the taxation problem, the budget problem, our problems with our allies, our enmy abroad, there have to be people who are putting it together, who bring about a sense of community in addition to individualism. this was the beauty i thought of the ronald reagan administration. the russian outlining all the ways in which reagan, not only was able to compromise but bring about extraordinary results by bringing people together. and that is clearly true of the time sam nunn nun and i came together and we were sent by reagan to geneva and began our talks with the russian. that has been a 20 year period and still goes on. .. >> schieffer: the situation in syria right now what are your thoughts on that? >> essentially that the united nations situation is not working out very well, it appears that our country is attempting to

suggest to the russians that they ought to get with us and try to work out something, such as happened in yemen or other countries in which the assad regime would decide to reresign but at the same time would not be murdered in the process, that there would be some potential evolution. >> schieffer: has the president done enough? has he shown enough leadership in this situation? >> i think he has been very cautious and i think he is cautious because he is in the process of withdrawing our troops along with nato from afghanistan, pivoting our policy toward the china and the east, toward a situation of using robots and the ability not to have to send in troops. it is a difficult situation. but when you talk about syria and talk about troops or intervention, the president has been very cautious. i think properly so. >> schieffer: are you going to campaign for the man who beat you in the primary, richard

murdoch or are you even going to vote for him? >> well, i indicated that i hope that republicans in indiana will support him because i have worked -- my leader mitch mcconnell in getting a republican majority, i would say that i have offered advice to my former opponent and now candidate as to trying a way he could be a constructive senator and how he could make any difference whatsoever, i hope he will, in fact, begin to adopt some of those ideas, but for the time being, i don't plan an active campaign. >> schieffer: senator, thank you so much, and we want to wish you the very best. >> thank you very much, bob. >> schieffer: we will be back in a moment with some thoughts about memorial day.

>> today is going to be an important day for us.

>> schieffer: on this day, when we remember those who gave their lives for their country, let us also remember the families they left behind. in 1972, vice president biden lost his wife and infant daughter in a horrible car wreck. friday he talked to a group of military families about the kind of loss that only those who have experienced it can ever really comprehend. >> the christmas shopping and the tractor trailer broadsided them in one incident, kiltd two of them and, well, i have to tell you, i used to resent, i knew people meant well they would come up to you and say, joe, i know how you feel, right?

>> i knew they meant well and you knew they were genuine but you knew they didn't have any damned idea. right? isn't that true? i mean, that, that black hole you feel in your chest like you are being sucked back into it. for the first time if my life i understood how someone could consciously decide how to commit suicide, not because they were deranged, not because they were not nuts, but because they had been to the top of the mountain and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again, there was never going to get, never going to be that way ever again. there will come a day, i promise you, and you parents as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. it will happen. my prayer for you is that day

will come sooner or later. >> schieffer: and may that be the wish, the prayer from each of us on this memorial day. back to you. this portion of face the nation is sponsored by xerox, with xerox you are ready for real business.

>> schieffer: and some of our stations will be leaving us now, for most of you we will be back with a the panel on president's past, president and future, stay ♪ [ male announcer ] for our families... our neighbors... and our communities... america's beverage companies have created a wide range of new choices.

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disblo and welcome back to page 2 of face the nation, and now that face the nation has expanded to an hour we have the time to do what i have always wanted to do and that is to bring our viewers up to date from time to time. on books we think that you will find of interest. nancy gibbs and michael duffy, both time magazine editors, have collaborated on a new book called the president's club, with a new take on the relationship of past and current presidents, chockful of surprises on the far right robert merry editor of the national interest magazine, author of the upcoming book "where they stand" the american presidents in the eyes of voters and historians. it examines how we rate our presidents and rounding out the panel, cbs news contributor and presidential historian douglas

brinkley, who has a new book out, and it is about walter cronkite, it is called cronkite and he is the man, of course who covered all of the presidents from truman to johnson, to mixon and finally ronald reagan, and i will start with you, doug, because my biases are clearly showing, walter cronkite was my mentor, he was my role model, he was who i wanted to be when i was a young reporter and he is who i still want to be, and so let's talk a little bit about your book. it has got some stuff in it, i thought i knew a lot about walter cronkite and found some things i didn't know but since we are talking about presidents and so forth this morning, walter had access and really enjoyed a very good relationship with all of the presidents of his time. i wonder, did you as you were writing this book, how do you think has the relationship between presidents and the press changed since walter? was he

the last one to enjoy those kind of relationships? >> i think he may have been the last one. you know, his first president he got to interview in 1951 was harry truman, and cronkite was from missouri and, you know, truman was the boy from independence, and he got to do a divided tour, truman gave cronkite the white house but walter was so nervous he could barely talk he was a cub reporter basically and he would ask truman things like did the clocks work and, you know, in the white house and he was very sad about his performance, but by the time it clicked into gears in the eisenhower years he got close to eisenhower because the head of cbs used to work for eisenhower in world war ii and had great success with ike, even later went to normandy with him famous by but john f. kennedy, the first television president, and walter got him, he got a huge interview on cbs, months before kennedy died and he did as you mentioned all the presidents threw up to ronald reagan who gave himñr a great

good-bye interview when he stepped down. >> you know, knowing walter, it does not surprise me that he asked harry truman how the clocks worked. walter was the most curious person i have ever met. he wanted to know how everything worked, if there was a car wreck outside this bureau right now, walter would want to run out and see what happened. it would be like the first car wreck he ever saw. so that does not surprise me, but, you know, walter could get presidents on the telephone. it is not that way anymore. michael, you and nancy, you deal with this every day, we will talk about your book in a minute. >> it has been a long time since i ever got a president or even imagined to. it is much more staged now than it was in those days much more controlled their relationships between the white house and any president, any party, and the reporters, even the anchor men who cover them. >> schieffer: yes. and robert, do you find that surprising, the kind of relationships that the press wants, once enjoyed with our presidency? >> it is not that way anymore.

for one thing there are so many more reporters, there are no deadlines anymore. it seems to me that the wall between the press and elected officials is much higher than it ever was. >> absolutely. in one sense the effort has been more democratized because there are more people with reporting power and more outlets and more access to the audience but in other ways it is less democratic in a sense these people don't have the access to the news makers that they used to have. i wrote a book some years ago on jones stewart alsa who were giants of their time in the print realm and they had immense access and a lot of people said at the time when the book came out, well, right, but the american people weren't really invited into those salons and into those interviews. but they gave good fare for the money now everybody is a newsman and they don't have the access that they, but they have opinions so they are throwing out a lot of that stuff. >> schieffer: nancy, your book that you and michael have

written and i understand it was five years in the making, it has an entirely new take on the presidency, because it makes you realize that, especially in modern times, people who were president have become very close to the people who happened to be president, and this has happened several times, one of the things that i remember is when lyndon johnson became president, one of the first things he did was call the president who had come before he and kennedy, dwight eisenhower and said i really need your help. eisenhower came down, but there were -- when was the first time that former presidents and whoever happened to be in office decided to work together? >> that actually goes back to, you know, john adams calling up george washington to ask him for help, but it is different in the modern age, because you can pick up the phone and the things that former presidents can do for a sitting president are much greater, both privately and

publicly, but what we found that surprised us most is how often the more different presidents are, different generations, different parties, different personalities, the more likely they seemed to be able to work together, and we see this going back to harry truman, reaching out to herbert hoover, who was a pariah still and secretly mailing him a letter asking him to come to the white house. >> schieffer: tell us about that, because this is something i didn't know about. >> it was remarkable, there is truman who suddenly finds himself in office in to the spring of 1945 and facing this catastrophe in europe as the war is ending, and he is secretly writes to hoover saying can you come help me figure out how we are going to get food to the countries that need it? >> they are very suspicious of each other, again they have nothing at all in common, and yet they end up forming this partnership that you could say probably saved more lives than any two men in the 20th century and worked very closely together throughout truman's presidency. so that is really -- that is how the modern president's club at

least really started. >> schieffer: robert, now your book is a different kind of book, because you write about how do we rate presidents? how do we decide who was this successful president and who wasn't? and i think most list makers would always say washington, lincoln, and roosevelt and in some order were probably the three presidents that are most admired in history in some order, jefferson probably gets in there, shortly after that. >> jackson and tr. >> schieffer: yes but how is it that we decide these were the presidents that mattered? >> well, we have a body of literature which comes out of the polls that historians do who are the great presidents? you are a historian, you know this, rate the presidents. and so we have a body of literature that has been going on since 1948 when arthur schlessinger began this little exercise and it has generated a lot of interest over the years. what my book tries to posit is that's plate, that's fine, as the good index but what were the

voters thinking at the time? because the voters were either re-electing the guy or they were rejecting the guy, they might re-elect him but then his party falls down at the next election, so i tried to look at what the voters were saying at the time and compare those two indices to determine whether they overlap or whether there is some disparities. >> schieffer: so what would you consider successful president? what constitutes greatness? >> i have three tests in my book, must be one, from the voters perspective a two term president succeeded by his own party indicating that he had two successful terms in the voters' judgment. >> schieffer: and that is fairly rare, isn't it? >> it is very difficult in the 20th century only two presidents who really pulled it off, roosevelt, franklin roosevelt and reagan, if you add partial terms tr would have been in that category as well so only three in the 20th sthurt fit that test. from a standpoint of historians,

are they consistently in the upper reaches of the historian lists? and then via third test which i insert, the great presidents, the one i call leaders of destiny are the ones who changed the political landscape and redirected the country. >> schieffer: and who would you list as those who did? >> in that category, i have washington, who set it all in motion, jefferson, jackson, lincoln, tr, fdr and then i have a little asterisk because i say reagan met the voters test, he met my test of redirecting the country, but he hasn't yet risen up to those upper levels consistently in the historian polls. >> schieffer: you know, doug brinkley, in your book about cronkite, and i have no problem with talking about walter cronkite while we are talking about presidents, walter cronkite had considerable influence, did he not, on events? he had influence on presidents, and i thought it was always interesting that, you

know, while ed murrow, we thought of him as a great journalist because he expressed opinions. walter's great power was that he so seldom expressed opinions. absolutely. he was steady eddie and presidents could count on doing an interview with him and getting a fair shake. lyndon johnson, talk about changing culture lbj would call cronkite directly to complain about something but it was really that world war ii generation of reporters who were, that we are all in this together, we fought together and we are trying to make america good, vietnam war corroded that when you started seeing vietnam and finally, you know, famously, february 27th, 1968 when the tet offensive occurred and he came back, walter cronkite and called vietnam a stalemate, many people connected johnson's clams with this objective mr. center now turning on the war and then, of course, watergate and nixon's hatred of the press and the unleashing of conspiracy row

agnew and it became a war against the fourth estate and who won? the media, woodrow and bernstein and walter cronkite, so presidents have gotten skeptical of the press, it is now a very antagonistic relationship, much more so .. than it was when they wouldn't show franklin roosevelt in a wheelchair in a photo and everybody knew about jack kennedy's affairs but wouldn't do them today in a youtube internet world every missed smile a president does is going to be all over. >> schieffer: and that story, when walter cronkite came back from vietnam and george christian, president johnson's press secretary told lyndon johnson about what walter had said, lyndon johnson said if i have lost walter i have lost the american people. he understood at that point. >> and we didn't have diversified media and tv, some cities only got cbs, i mean, and so cronkite was the guy that you turned to every night he was in your living room, they called

vietnam the living room war and the politicians didn't adjust quickly to what television actually meant, and so, you know, whether it was fighting for civil rights or vietnam or space, which became our national pageant, cronkite seemed to be the maestro of it all. >> schieffer: when we come back we will talk some more about this cooperation between presidents and former presidents in one minute.

>> schieffer: and we are back now. michael duffy, you talk about this exclusive club, people who have been presidents, and i guess one reason they have some empathy for each other is that it is a very lonely job, and really only someone who has done it could possibly know how difficult it is. >> it is almost automatic sympathy between the current president and the men, so far only men who preceded him, they all study each other, because

they have their own rating system they compare themselves to each other and they read each other's biographies and me mowers careful ally and looking for lessons and sympathy and understanding, george once asked george w. bush not long after being in office do you think differendifferently about bill n now. >> oh i think differently about all of them so they extend to each other especially after they have done the job for a while a certain understanding they don't come into office with about just how hard it is to do this job. >> schieffer: i want to play a little something for you, i think one of the lessons that probably all of us recognize is that if you -- i wrote a book once about ronald reagan that came out the month that george bush was inaugurated, the book, i think, everything in the book is accurate, but it is not entirely true, because we didn't know at that time that the soviet union was going to fall in, i don't give reagan, total credit for that but certainly

his policies had a part in it, i think you really run a risk when you start trying to judge a presidency too soon. i want to run this. this is what barack obama last december told steve kroft of 60 minutes, i want to get your reaction to it. >> i would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president, with the possible exceptions of johnson, fdr and lincoln, but, you know, just in terms of what we have gotten done in modern history. >> schieffer: so as incumbent presidents often do they give themselves good reviews. can anyone say even in the middle of a presidency this is going to be a successful or unsuccessful presidency? >> no. you really can't. you can't say even some years afterwards there has to be a given time for history to make a judgment, but a good president i think has to have a strong sense of who he is and what he is

accomplishing and that indicates that this president certainly does have that. >> schieffer: he does have a good sense of what he was striving to. >> for six weeks it could look different. >> if the supreme court acts in a certain way on healthcare some of those accomplishment it is president was talking about might not be as lengthy, and so time helps, and as someone who told me it is best to wait five or ten years at least before really judging a president in historical terms. >> and i think he would drop lyndon johnson, when he dropped that he thought h he had the oba care, huge healthcare initiative that put him in the lbj range but this would be, badly the president's relationship with congress, i don't think he is lbj like, for theodore roosevelt like as we saw in the kansas speech, meaning executive orders, me, myself versus congress, six percent, so i think he is now in harry truman mode, the know nothing congress, it is the congress versus me, so his precedence are shifting since that was the bite.

>> you know, i was reminded when you say how historians doing the measuring, he was asked to rank the presidents and he said he wouldn't do it, he said i don't think anybody has any business judging presidents unless they see what went across their desk and saw what they were basing their decisions on a lot of which is not declassified until many years later so the judgments in real-time are very tricky because we see through that glass darkly, and so what historians are saying, and this is why i think what you do with such a smart idea what voters can see in real-time and the credits see in real-time versus what becomes clear from a certain distance. >> schieffer: robert, what makes a successful presidency? is there any formula? do people going into it looking to establish some kind of legacy do any better than those that just deal with the problems that confront them? >> the first thing a president has to do to be successful he has to understand his time, he

has to understand what the voters are hungry for, what the electorate wants, what american people are looking for, and then he has got to try to do thatable now sometimes that means heroic effort along the lines of what barack obama says he accomplished, sometimes the american people are not looking for that, if they are in a satisfied mood, so that is number one. secondly, i think you have got to poll, pull the levers and figure out how to get your hands on the levers of power and move the country in the direction that is indicated. and that is not very easy to do. >> when we interviewed bill clinton for his book we were in his office in harlem and surrounded by biographies of other presidents, almost like a temple of the presidency, and one of the things he started talking about was a president to be successful, his temperament has to match the times, now i think what he meant by that he has to be able to read the public and be able to work with his opposition which clinton said was always trying to kill you, and you had to know yourself and knew where your limits were and he said it was

much less about what you accomplished than sort of whether your outlook on life matched that era in which you were governing. which i thought was interesting. reelection matters a lot. if barack obama gets re-elected he is going to be seen as this incredibly large historic figure, if he loses it is sort of the referendum he didn't do well enough, and so it is harder to build yourself up in the polls, the standard of voting presidents is william harry harrison only president for a month and died of pneumonia, you don't want to be rated below william harry harrison and there are a number of presidents that are, and just gamble free which the obama campaign has done saves you from warren hardings faith, in a black hole that you won't get out of it, george w. bush is struggling and very, very low because people still continue see that the iraq war was a good venture and the economy collapsed in 2008 on him. but harrison was beloved when he left the presidency. >> yes, after a month. >> doug, i want to get off

presidents a bit and talk about your book because it is the trove of information, not just about walter cronkite and his dealings with the leaders, world leaders and the influence that he had, but it is also kind of a mini history of broadcast journalism, and one of the things that i found of interest, i knew that edward r murrow this great figure in broadcast journally basically invented how we covered the news, and walter never really got along, murrow always looked down a bit on walter as being this grub by wire service guy, and walter kind of understood that is how murrow felt about him .. but what i didn't know is it all went, maybe all started way back there, when walter -- when ed murrow was putting together his team and he offered walter a job. >> well, that's right. it was wartime london and walter cronkite was doing logging stories for the press and did a little hit on radio and call

murrow's attention and all of a sudden walter cronkite a dropout from the university of texas, only two years, no college degree, murrow, a college degree and all of the great reporters were college people, some even roads scholars and murrow invited to him a gentleman's club in london, and he was nervous at lunch and offered him a job to go to stalingrad and be the cbs news reporter for russia during world war ii and walter said yes, and then he went home -- >> schieffer: they shook on it. >> handshake agreement and went back to his hotel in london and suddenly the up, in new york, and they said you are not quitting we will get you more money, the head of the press called cronkite so he changed his mind and he reneged on murrow and edward murrow never really forgave him for it and edward murrow, murrow didn't believe in live covered he demurdoch on the 52 convention, for example, thinking it would be more of an infomercial where

walter seized the day so cronkite became the voice of tv in the fifties while edward r murrow started found everything and by 1960, hoss an democratic convention cronkite locked the door, they blocked murrow out of the anchor booth so he wouldn't cobroadcast with him storks they had a great feud, murrow and cronkite that only partially healed, they were two very different men. >> schieffer: i want to thank all of you for being with us this morning, it is really fun to talk to all of you and congratulations for what you have done here. >> thank you. >> schieffer: we will be back in a minute with our face the nation flashback.

>> schieffer: 40 years ago this weekend, democrats hubert humphrey and george mcgovern appeared together on face the nation. >> for cbs television in hollywood. >> face nation. >> they were campaigning the democratic presidential nomination to oppose richard nixon and that is our face the nation flashback. >> we see. >> schieffer: richard nixon just opened the door to china,

forged a new arms agreement with the soviets and the war in vietnam was winding down. >> the presidential nomination. >> so it is no wonder that moderator george herman began -- >> can either of you uh gentlemen under this situation beatniks son? >> of course he is beatable. the economy is in disarray. the american people have great doubts about many of the policies of this administration. his record, his experience, his ability, his credibility, and i am confident that under those terms i can win the nomination and i can win the presidency. >> well i have no doubt that president nixon can be defeated. i think the people are sick and tired of a war that never ends. it is president nixon that has not ended. i think they are tired of an attack system that favors the powerful and penalizes the rest of us, the tax system, i think

they are tired of a leadership that tells us one thing in public while following a different course in private, and i believe the people of this country will respond to the kind of leadership that appeals to what is best in it, in lincoln's phrase the better angels of our nature. >> schieffer: mcgovern went on to win the nomination, of course, the party threw out all of its long time leaders and nixon won reelection in a landslide. >> well i am not a crook. >> schieffer: only to resign in disgraceless than two years later because of the watergate scandal. our face the nation flashback.

>> schieffer: and that's it for us. but before we go, we want to take note of a big birthday out in california. it turns out the golden gate bridge is 75 years old today. that's it for us today. have a great captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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