. from washington, the mclaughlin group, the american original for over three decades, the sharpest minds, best sources, hardest talk. issue 1, state of the union, a forecast. this coming tuesday, january 28, president obama will deliver his fifth state of the union address. in it he'll lay out to both houses of congress and the public his plan of objection for the coming year. the speech comes as mr. obama weathers storms over his presidency including the glitch ridden rollout of his signature affordable care act web site

and the revelations of widespread surveillance of the american public by the national security agency, the nsa. polls show our president with higher disapproval marks than approval. 54% disapprove of the way he's handling his job. 40% approve. the president nevertheless seems unbooted as he addressed his remaining three years in office in an engrossing interview with the editor of the new yorker magazine.. quote president obama, the conventional wisdom is that the president's second term is a matter of minimizing damage and playing defense rather than offense but as i've reminded hi my team the day after i was inaugurated after the second term, we're in charge of the largest organization on earth and our capacity to do some good both domestically and around the world is unsurpassed

even if nobody is paying attention. unquote so says mr. obama. question if you were advising the president on his state of the union address next week, and the remainder of his second term in general, what would you advise him to emphasize pat? >> john, i would say stay away from the iran negotiations and syria because they're divisive d problematic. what you focus on is domestic policy in the beginning of his speech and you start off and say the american economy is recovering. our growth is one of the fastest in the western world. however, we've got problems and one of the main problems is income and wealth and equality and here's how we're going to deal with it. we're going extend unemployment benefits. we're going to deal with the hispanics in this country who are undocumented. bring them out of the shadows. we want to raise the minimum wage and i want to work with you in congress on these things, but i have to tell you that if you don't work with me, i have a pen, and i have a phone and i'm going to do my

best by executive order to keep this economy moving and keep it going forward but i want your support. >> that will win a lot of support. >> clarence is going crazy over there. >> eleanor. >> pat's an old presidential speech writer and that was actually right on the mark. >> so was i. >> well. >> believe me, that's not the way to win friends and influence people. >> i thought that was pretty good. the president has to fully own obamacare, which i believe he will, and there will be recipients of obamacare in the audience sitting with the first lady because we're embarking now on a yearlong, you know, war that will culminate in the november elections as to whether it's an up or down vote on obamacare. and then secondly he's got to ask the congress for immigration reform, for extended unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage but he's got to make clear he's prepared to go on his own, that he can act without congress and

he's got to try to rekindle some of the lost promise of the last year to show that he's still got some juice, and the people who have given up on him, it's too early. still lots he can do with that pen and that phone. >> what would you advise him to emphasize. >> i would have him particularly focus on education and how that is the key for a lot of people who are coming out of very low income families or moderate income families who want to have up ward mobility for all the americans of that generation and everybody needs to get behind that particular issue. that's the one issue i would really focus on, particularly education and science, technology, engineering, mathematics, that's where the future of a lot of people can be and it will be a successful future. >> what about the scarring of our children on education when

placed in the international context? you seen any of those discouraging results in. >> they are discouraging because particularly our public education in elementary and high school is quite weak when measured against everybody else and if the key to the future of not only the individuals but of the country. >> well, i can't hardly improve on what everyone has said already. i would just add that in the education area, i'd love to ea i think one area he has not touched on much is in job training. he's talked about how we've fallen behind as far as the high school graduation gap and college costs of course are soaring. i hope he addresses that. but also in between job training. you've got to have some schooling beyond high school in your life. i'd like to see something like subsidizing private businesses

that have job training programs and thus they bring in workers perhaps on reduced salary while they're learning a trade, learning to do something with their hands. this also has tone -- done wonders for closing the gender gap. girls are doing better than boys now as far as -- >> people want to know what are the new ideas and if they have new ones they haven't telegraphed them yet and short of new ideas they're going to repeat all the old ones and i think that's fine. i mean i think that basically a lot of people are going to be tuning in not only just watching tv. the way this white house is going to disseminate this speech through all the social media, it's not just the ratings, the tv ratings you have to look at. you have to look at the ways they get the message out, and they've got to energize young people to vote next november which is almost a year from now. >> i'm hearing things that are good ideas but i'm not sure

we've hit one hard enough, and that is fix obamacare. he's got to almost apologize for saying that if you like your insurance, you can keep it. he should stress that obamacare can be -- can be corrected. it can be made a useful instrument of this democracy. >> but don't be too defensive. i mean, look -- >> i'm very defensive. oh, don't be too defensive. okay. you might be correct when you say look mistakes have clearly been made in the handling of this but 2 million people have signed up. more are signing up. if we've got problems with it why don't we work together to fix it. >> pat, i think you've just jumped appears here. >> look, you asked me to write the speech. >> i know. the check's in the mail. >> well, you know, he mislead people. he mislead them. >> they are improving. >> it was not intentional, and he has apologized endlessly for that. he's poked fun at himself.

so i don't know -- >> now it's kind of floating out there be itself. >> he used it in 25 speeches before it became famous, and you have to and yourself not only that he said it but nobody in his staff checked out what he was saying when it was wrong. >> actually, there was an internal conflict about that. >> but what it did is not only affected his respect, it affected the competency ask. >> he can also stress some of the good things and that is getting out of afghanistan. >> okay. but foreign policy is deeply divisive. i think clarence is on to be to something to be honest. frankly i think row vocational schools and high school and things like that if they're not learning the academic stuff, you can teach them things. we had plenty in d. c. our problem is we lost manufacturing jobs in the first

century of the decade. >> i've got to move this forward. we're not striking all the right notes. one sure state of the union scene will be economic, i believe, inequality. >> let me repeat. the combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the american dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the globe. >> so said president obama in december last month and the theme of economic inequality will be one he repeats next tuesday during his state of the union address. the president's focus comes just as a major study from oxfan international an antipublic group working in more than 90 countries released some startling stats. get this, the richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the poorest top of the

entire world's population. oxfam has also found that 7 in 10 people live in countries where economic inequality has widened, and the u.s. tops that list. in the u.s. the richest 1% "captured 95% of the post financial crisis growth since 2009." while the bottom 90%'s wealth decreased. it's not all dire news, however. that's if you believe bill gates. gates attributes better farming methods and new vaccinations and the digital revolution to back up his big prediction, "by 2035 there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer." question, not to parse words but what's the most recent

research on economic mobility? and is president obama right when he says it is slowing down? mort. >> well, there is frankly very limited economic mobility and fragly it goes back to what i was saying before. the educational differences in america are staggering and that is the pathway and the ladder to economic mobility. we've had the least amount of economic mobile in the last -- certain will i during his presidency that we've had since the end of world war ii. >> a recent study but the study that came out this week showed there's an enormous amount of economic mobility. let's take a look at the last 50 years. all of eastern europe is free. their standard of living is up. the whole soviet union came apart. communist china, i was there. you had great equality there when nixon and i were there in 1972. now you have billionaires and millionaires and people making 100,000 and people making nothing. inequality is not the problem

as long as everybody is moving up. who cares that north has a billion dollars and you and i may not. >> you go too far pat. >> don't understate the man's wealth. >> inequality is not the issue. jobs are the issue, and education is the issue. those are the kinds of issues we have to deal with. >> the fact that jobs and income are not working the way they're supposed to. we've created this huge gap and we're now looking like a banana republic which is not what this country is about. the president is n that new yorker article, meeting with academics and asking how can i talk about this growing inequality without everybody screaming class warfare. i think now republicans agree it's a problem too. now the debate is about what do you do about it. and democrats, you have progressives who want to raise taxes on people who make over $500,000. i think it's a great idea but that's not enough, and you've got the old hillary clinton bill clinton, you know, sen tryst who feel it's all about

job growth. this president has put these job plans before congress. he can't get them through congress. he's left to plead raise the minimum wage. it's hard to get new jobs programs. >> you're making so many excuses for him. he's a very very skilled resident russian, rhetorician n. >> will president emphasize pro growth, economic equality, to create opportunity or economic redistribution. as barack said to joe the plumber. >> i think he's going to emphasize the economy's growing. he isn't going to say let's redistribute the wealth. he's going to say here's minimum wage, here's immigration reform, here's unemployment benefits. here's education. he's not going to say let's redistribute the wealth. >> it's not either or, and there's a lot of good economic

news he can point to. we're on our way to becoming energy independent. the deficit has come down more in the last year than in some time. he's already frowning over here but i think there's expectation that growth is going to be much higher this coming year. i think it's looking good. he can't say it's perfect because it's not. >> you better think. >> on the front page of the financial times today, they point out that the willingness of american business to spend on plant and equipment, which is a multimrier of all multipliers in the economy is at the lowest level since the end of world war ii. 1.2%. this is unbelievably a statement about what the business people who know what their industries are like, what they think about the economic future. there is a lot of apprehension about where this economy is going and we are growing at a very low rate. the average rate of growth in the four years coming out of every recession we've had, there were eight of them, since the end of world war ii, four years on average was 4.1%.

we've been growing at a rate of about 2.2%. that's a huge decline in the rate of growth. >> they'll invest in an uncertain future. i think the more obama shows that we're not going to have so much uncertainty, that we're going to have more stability over the next year, going to see more confidence. wall street's doing great. heist that because people with money -- >> not the last two days clarence, they're down 40 points. >> look at the last year pat. >> the other thing is the immediacy by obama. he's going to be settling into the strict lame duck phase. who's going to run in 2016. he's going to be a lame duck in a year. >> john, i was with ronald reagan in his second term. he wasn't any lame duck. he's going to russia. he's getting arms control agreements. he's got a huge tax cut. you're a lame duck if you've got the attitude of a lame

duck. >> he likes reagan by the way. >> that's who he ought to sound like. >> you ought to tell him that. >> i try. >> when we come back, how goes the syria peace talk.

issue 2, syria. >> he has long since because of his choice of weapons, because of what he has done lost any

legitimacy. who can imagine that tomorrow or in a week or in a month you can suddenly say, oh, okay. it's all right. you can lead syria. >> in the opening day of talks to resolve the syria syrian civil war, secretary of state john kerry demanded that bashar al-assad step down. "bashar assad will not be part of that transition government." kerry's position reflects the international consensus of the 2012 geneva communique which calls for the conference to establish a cease fire and interim government for syria. the cease talks convened by the united nations got off to a testy start when syria's foreign minister refuse today give up the microphone after the un secretary general chaid

him for exceeding his time. traded charges of terrorism and war crimes over the course of the three-yearlong civil war in which some 130,000 syrians have died. syria has complied with demands that is surrenders its chemical weapons and syria government troops have the upper hand in the fighting. syria's information minister was blunt, "there will be no transfer of power and president bashar assad is staying." further more, the obama administration hopes for assad to turn over power with delta setbacks days before the talks open. when iran refuse today send a delegation to switzerland because of the precondition that it abide by the objective of creating a post assad government. iran is a staunch ally of bashar al-assad.

iranian troops are fighting in syria, and iranian aircraft keep assad regimes supplied with aide and weapons. negotiations with iran over ending its nuclear program are progressing. with un monitoring verifying this week that iran has stopped down its uranium enrichment. question, can a truce be broken in syria without iran's agreement? pat buchanan. >> no, it can't, john. and i think is a truce is possible but i think john kerry made a terrible mistake going over there. first he's ineffectual. he denounces this guy but can't do a thing about it. if you're going to have to negotiations you at least ought to start on a stately note rather than that attack. i do think -- look, there's been atrocities on all sides but i do think the syrian government because it has the whip hand right now, is probably ready for local truces and things like that. i think the best we can hope out of this thing is to stop

the killing and slaughter in various places, get humanitarian aid in there, and anything that contributes to that is a good end. why iran was disinvited, one reason is the opposition syrians would have walked out if iran would have walked in. and ultimately think and a he has boll la and russia have got to be on board if there's going to be a peace agreement. >> aren't they all on board? >> iran is not even in there. the russians are there. but it's heavily weighted on the other side. >> clearly iran's on board. >> you should have the saudis and i can tars. that's not the decision that the diplomats made. i give kerry a lot of credit for punishing for -- pushing ahead on this. it was the same tenor as all the other players there. these are the o'opening bids he's there. we're not. i think if they could get some sort of reprieve to get humanitarian aid and medicine through, assad and the rebels

too to some extent are using food and medicine as weapons of war. it almost -- almost worse than the chemical weapons. it's really a brutal scene over there. >> that's why you want a truce. >> absolutely or a reprieve if you want to call it something other than a truce. >> i couldn't agree with you more that is a brutal scene. what is going on on the ground, what has been going on on the ground, the number of people who have been killed, the way they've been killed. the number of people whose families have been wiped out. i don't see how it's going to get better. the only way that the syrian government will move is if there is some real threat to their livelihood and existence, and that threat does not exist. as long as we can't find a way to put pressure on them i don't think there's going to be much home we're going to get anything of substance under this negotiation. >> or if assad is giving some assurance he can stay. i think this administration is far out on a limb saying he has to go. but i don't know that getting rid of him right now improve the situation. >> do we want assad to fall? do we want assad to fall?

>> no, we do not. >> look, the victors will be al- qaeda and these jihadists. the guy who runs al-qaeda urged his allies to go against iran, against assad, against russia. these are our enemies. if our ally's cade al-qaeda what kind of war do we want to get into? >> we need solidarity to isolate assad. you're right, we're not going to be sending troops in there and we're not going to necessarily right away get him to step down and we've got to begin the process, which is happening now. as long as we're still talking, there's hope. >> the internal conflicts within iran -- not iran, but within syria are so great that without assad, the whole situation bowl fly out of control. >> you could say same thing in iraq, afghanistan. >> we'll be right back with

predictions. j

who can beat hill in '16? >> right now no one. >> only hillary can beat hillary. >> if she messed up her campaign she would have trouble. >> that's a good answer. >> that's kind of what happened last time. >> there could be a dark horse coming somewhere. i don't know who that is. >> we are both clinging to you

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welcome to government contracting weekly, sponsored by aoc key solutions, inc. government contracting weekly is the only television program devoted exclusively to the competitive and dynamic world of government contracting, a world where coming in second place is not an option, but where principle-centered winning is the only approach. good morning and welcome to government contracting weekly. i'm jim mccarthy, the owner and technical director of key solutions. in today's show we're going to be talking with two experts in the dynamic area of business development. let's get right to it. good morning. i'm here with polo morales from sra international and bill washburn from octo consulting. gentlemen, welcome.