guest: douglas brinkley is joining us from texas. e is also a contributor to a number of publications, including "the new york times." he also writes for the "los angeles times" book review. i want to share a piece from the "christian science monitor" with you. the piece points out that with no end in sight for the government shutdown, the partisan animosity has gotten unusually bitter and personal, even for washington. americans are angry as well. on that note, on the partisan nature of this, is it as bad as it is ever been? guest: no. the point of history is to remind us that our own times are not uniquely oppressive. i hear people saying, i can't believe how awful it is. prophets of doom and gloom. our country has been through a lot worse. sacred battlefield sites for the civil war are now shutdown. this is always going to have political feuds. we tend to over romanticized how marvelous it was between tip o'neill and ronald reagan or newt gingrich and bill clinton. sunday barack obama and congressman boehner will play well togethe

isst: douglas brinkley joining us from texas.e is also a contributor to a number of publications, including "the new york times." he also writes for the "los angeles times" book review. i want to share a piece from the "christian science monitor" with you. the piece points out that with no end in sight for the government shutdown, the partisan animosity has gotten unusually bitter and personal, even for washington. americans are angry as well. on that note, on the partisan nature of this, is it as bad as it is ever been? guest: no. the point of history is to remind us that our own times are not uniquely oppressive. i hear people saying, i can't believe how awful it is. prophets of doom and gloom here . our country has been through a lot worse. sacred battlefield sites for the civil war are now shutdown. this is always going to have political feuds. we tend to over romanticized how marvelous it was between tip o'neill and ronald reagan or newt gingrich and bill clinton. sunday barack obama and congressman boehner will play well to

we'll ball club to buck mckeon and later douglas brinkley joins the table. first bill karins. >> happy friday morning. >> i'm shaking. he just wants us to say something. >> how's the weather? let's just keep it with the weather. >> nice and simple. fortunately for areas around philadelphia, harrisburg, pennsylvania, you're the focus of this storm. it hasn't affected new york city. it's pouring this morning. rain is coming from southern jersey to delaware to harrisburg and that's where the rain will remain through much of the day today. we're dry pretty much from d.c. southward and from new york city northward. just focusing right there in the mid-atlantic. so kind of an ugly friday there. of course the airports in those regions will be affected the most including philadelphia and baltimore most significant delays. d.c. airport, dulles and reagan, kansas city watch out thunderstorms this evening could cause you minor delays. how does your weekend forecast looks? the southeast looks perfect as we go through the upcoming weekend. beautiful weather in atlanta th

we bring in douglas brinkley and gloria borger.prove of the way that the president is handling his job as president. that is down a point from june and is below 50%. how does it affect the president in the long run? and obviously the context is he has a lot of stuff going on in foreign affairs which are challenging as well. >> well, the big poll was the 2008 election in which he won and obamacare will be the law of the land. this is a last-gasp effort to derail it. and you are seeing the republican party split in two. the tea party caucus it's unstau unsustainable. you had a market analysis saying anything could happen with it. but we have -- if it's a short shutdown, obama is holding the winner's hand right now. >> gloria, what will it do to the republican party? speaker boehner more than half approve of him but 37% unfavorable rating in may. that is up to 48% now. i mean that is a big jump. the president's rating moved a point and the speaker nine points. >> i think, look, what john boehner is trying to do, doug points out, is co

. >> douglas brinkley's joining us now.ming in. >> thanks, wolf. >> let's talk about the president, his remaining three years or so in office. he came out today, he was very forceful, very tough, some say he was lecturing the republican on the 16-day government shutdown. is that a way to reach out and score legislative achievements? >> no, but the president's exhausted. he's been feeling that the hard right is trying to hold the u.s. government hostage. i think this is a president who's going to have to build a second term domestically on obama care. you have 50 million uninsured americans 500,000 supposed to be part of the obama care system. numbers are sluggish. this is huge. he has to make it become part of the fabric of american life the way social security was with fdr or medicaid or medicare with lyndon johnson. i would go on an all-out offensive if i were president obama and make sure obama care is real that it doesn't kind of fritter away or die on the vine or get wrapped into politics in the next two years. i think

and then a conversation with presidential historian douglas brinkley talking about president obama's relationship with congress and how it is to prior presidents. that plus your e-mails, calls and tweets on "washington journal," starting live at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] as a result of the government shutdown. they also continue to call for negotiations with democrats in the president over how to end the shutdown. this is 10 minutes. >> good morning. the house just took another step to try to ease the pain of the federal government shutdown, ensuring that furloughed federal employees will get their back pay. as you can see, it was a unanimous vote in the house. we also gotten word yesterday that the obama administration had been making it very foricult if not impossible chaplains to come and conduct services on government property during the shutdown. we felt that that really was an abuse of the shutdown and wanted to make sure that the fundamental constitutional right to practice your faith and religion would be upheld. i see