events for the olympics, playing tennis with his old schoolmate, but as the games draw nearer, doris johnson has a battle ahead to make sure he is an -- foresbs johnson as the battle ahead to make sure he is mayor. >> we can give you a live shot of nit romney's campaign headquarters -- of mitt romney's campaign headquarters in michigan. the news is said he has owon one of the two primaries being held in the u.s. according to early projections. the one he has one is in arizona, but the one that as being hotly contested between himself and rick santorum -- i have drawn a memory play. it is in michigan, and that is an interesting one because mitt romney's home state is michigan, where his father was governor, but that is the one being hotly contested between the two men. as soon as we get the results we will bring back to lives. stay tuned for that. >> make sense of international news. bbc.com/news. >> funding was made possible by -- the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu newman's own foundation and union bank. >> at union bank, our relationship managers use their expe

doris kearns goodwin. she worked as a white house fellow for lyndon johnson. she's rain number of books including "lyndon johnson: the american dream." and her pulitzer prize winning work on franklin delano roosevelt. joining me in new york, michael beschloss. he is a historian who has written a number of books including "presidential courage." jim fallows. he served as a speech writer for jimmy carter. he wrote a piece on president obama in the "atlantic" magazine called "obama explained." jon meacham, he is the author of "american lion: andrew jackson in the white house." it earned him a pulitzer prize. he's currently writing on george h.w. bush and thomas jefferson. finally, robert caro, he is a two-time pulitzer prize winning author and has dedicated decades to writing about lyndon johnson. his fourth volume "the passage of power," is set to come out this may. i am pleased to have them here to have this discussion about men and power, the power of the office and how those two things come together. i begin with barack obama. what did you go in search of? >>

johnson. with the debt ceiling crisis last summer made him realize that he was going to have to be as doris saidders to get things done. he couldn't be painted had a reelection cycle as a lame duck president. >> what is the defining issue of the campaign? a referendum on him or a referendum on congress he would like to see it? >> referendum on congress. it's pathetic anemic what the public thinks of congress right now. in that 99 to 1. i think warren buffett earned his place in the history books as being the trump card that the president is playing over and over again that rich people shouldn't pay less taxes than a work person. >> doris, how do we define greatness in a president if there has not been a great war as it was with lincoln and fdr? >> i mean, it's certainly much harder. what war or crisis allows a president to summon the nation together to a common purpose. even lincoln as a young man worried that his generation, he said this in the 1840s didn't have great challenges like the founding fathers. what are we going to do, modest a.m. bigs, they've done it all, created this democratic ex