> we touched on the politics they're going back to the rate administration, you spoke at the clinton inaugural1993. how important was that for you? "that was a moment for america. we had 12 years of what i thought were the darkest political years of my country in my lifetime. we had no idea that bush and cheney were on the horizon and actually trumped his father. to be able to welcome in someone who was relatively liberal minded or least moderate, as the clinton administration started out to be, was a great moment for america. >> this is a great moment for politics. this is a great moment for that right now, isn't it? >> it is always easy to write about politics in the opposition. even though we are huge friends -- fans of president obama, the fact is that he has been stymied by the minority, which seems inherently unfair to us and this is just as irritating as having a majority be the problem. >> you're not abandoning obama. >> not at all. >> you would support him next year? >> absolutely. >> he is in trouble, isn't he? >> he will not say up front that the administration that he followed scre

clinton term. just a month before the inauguration of "the new york times" ran a headline gloomy prospect seemed forth worldwide in 93. 50.1% of americans live in poverty. a number that went down by a quarter under those eight years and now is back up to 15.1%. college graduates were having the worst job market in 20 years, 75% of americans said they had little trust in washington's ability to do what was right. and that was the america that governor clinton was facing when he walked down to the stage in front of the old state house that day, and he promised to focus on the forgotten middle class, built his speech about a value to framework which was no to all of us who worked for him, which was that he promised to build a society that would provide opportunity for all, expect responsibly from all and build a community of all. and he also did something in his speech, or this or i want to start and start with the question to bruce, he was quite specific in the program that the he was putting forward. he promised to modernize government, to challenge the bureaucratic status quo, to invest in people, e

was supposed to inaugurate a new political age, after a decade of war and a year of epic economic collapse. a young democratic president unscarred by the cultural conflicts of the clintonromised a post-partisan ethos, conservatism was said to be dead. except it wasn't. beginning in early 2009 dispirited republicans said while the presidency may have seemingly come ease toy to barack obama, nothing else would. the rebirth of the right is an extraordinary tale by historical standards it was a rapid shift, on par with the 1966 conservative backlash against lyndon johnson's great society after the 1964 land slide. and as conservatives well know, that drama ended with the election of a republican president in 1968. how did american politics get from the there of a new age of obama to the here of a resurgent right? that's a big question. >> it's the question, seems to me. we were all sitting around in 2009, and this was a new era. it was an entirely different time. and i think it was a implacable opposition, which is not to say it's wrong, but it was an implacable opposition, and to my mind, the president's greatest failure has been the remarkable inability to establish an e