uc obama being careful with iran -- it will do only one thing. what is going on in iran right now -- obama is playing politics right now and is dangerous. asked the iraqi people who are rallying there now. do you like democratic? if they say yes, then they should accept the election. because when we have an election and the united states in the party wins, go ahead. the party who loses, if you do not like it, you do not go into the street. [unintelligible] host: before we run out of time a couple of other opinion pieces. "the wall street journal" puts it this way. the president yesterday denounced the extent of the fraud and a shocking in response of the running regime to public demonstrations. he says if ahmadinejad had made such progress why such violence? they show that the president who spoke these words was nicolas sarkozy of france. this is that the rebellion which is too soon to call a revolution is turning out to be the 3:00 a.m. phone call for mr. obama. as a french president shows up the american, his instinct in a crisis is turning out

you see a big difference -- a uc a big difference? the obama administration is pushing bush and cheney, making this big effort to connect with the public can be more transparent. there is politics in that as well. how do you judge that? >> i imagine there are differences and the differences may or may not be bigger than we think once we start seeing more clashes between the branches. you're right that when it comes to the internal task forces that the administration has set up, you are more transparent than the bush administration was and the clinton administration was prior to that. to make, the real fight is about transparency. the fight was over executive privilege when it was putting congress against the presidency. you do not normally see that when both parties told the congress and the white house. if i hope at some point that the control of the congress and the presidency come to differ over the next two years, i think you are going to see this clashes and that is when you will see whether -- with the extent to which president obama is c

what kind of attributes to uc president obama looking for in selecting judges? >> i can speak from the transition standpoint where we worked on this. it was clear that he was looking for very capable, intellectually gifted lawyers, jurists, law professors. that was first and foremost. clearly superior qualifications. i think my sense of the extra factor that -- the distinguishing factor was more just a sense that this was a person who understood -- who had a sense of why they wanted to be a judge. not just a pristine piece of paper, not just reading bricks, but understood and had some interest in the human dimensions of judging, who wanted -- had some life experience dealing with people and i have this sense the president was not that interested in -- was more interested in people who had litigated real cases and worked with people and did not have to be in the context of litigation. someone who had a sense of the human dramas and stories behind the cases. that was the extra factor. >> he has been involved in the supreme court nomination. the word empathetic has