film and an idea that the show has looked at over the years in terms of whether it's the effort by sam nunnand others to draw down nuclear weapons or weather it's the nature of the start treaty which your timing is impeccable. >> it's amazing. when we first started making the movie three years ago, then senator obama, many thought he would not win the primary, lets alone president, and here he is today taking such a strong direction on the subject and we're coming out right when all that is happening. it's great. he's done some historic things, as i'm sure you know. in the last eight months, in september, he preside over the treaty council. an american president has never done that and got a unanimous decision to go to zero. >> rose: as he got that decision saying it may not happen in my lifetime, my presidency or my lifetime but... >> he did say that, but we believe it could happen in our lifetime. and there are actually people we interviewed in the movie. we took this part out because it was honestly a little too depressing, but there are a lot of people-- some in the movie and others we

mississippi but there was really some, as they call them, whales, the sam irvin, richard rull succeeded by sam nunn and moderate republicans, case, hatfield, later bill cohen. and they really would work together on some issues. bill cohen and gary hart wrote books together when they were in the senate, republican and democrat. i think all that in today's senate is almost unimaginable. >> rose: is this why you left the senate >> it's one of the reasons i left the senate. when i was growing up, if you couldn't be president of the united states, the next best thing would be a united states senator. in the good old days you left the senate one of two ways, you either died in office or you were defeated. you rarely left voluntarily. but in 1996 there were 14 of us who retired that year. there were different reasons but there was a common core element as well and that was what one writer called the demosclerosis. the sclerotic dysfunctionalty of what was taking place. and it happened over a period of time, al and george are talking about the good old days and everybody thinks about the good old days but