walter isaacson is president of the aspen institute.iographer of steve jobs, albert einstein, benjamin franklin and henry kissinger. nancy gibbs is the editor of "time" magazine, and has co-authored a great book on former presidents. jeffrey goldberg is the editor in jeff of the atlantic. and dan senor is an author, investor and foreign policy adviser to mitt romney, paul ryan and marco rubio. welcome to you all. so when we look at this presidency, at some level we've never seen anything like it, right? the freak shows, the tweets, does any of that matter? you've looked at a lot of colorful characters. is that just going to get chalked up to, well, he was a weird, strange personality, or is this something consequential? >> i think it's consequential. it's demeaning the office of the presidency. it also makes it harder for him to get stuff done. we don't see a great strategic coherence in the foreign policy. so far he's had trouble passing legislation. and even things like the immigration restrictions, i'll call them, that have come to p

joining us into this conversation we want to welcome from the aspen institute, president and ceo walter isaacsonl aspen. busy day for amazon and jeff bezos. how does the rest of retail compete, with already such high penetration of amazon prime day. >> what you said earlier was so right. they're building an ecosystem. and one of the cool things about prime day today is that if you do it with alexa start talking to it a two-hour head start. once again they're adding a little piece of the puzzle to the ecosystem. it was about 18 years ago today, that when i was at "time" magazine, i was the editor, we decided to make jeff bezos man of the year. and people were saying, well that's nuts. the internet bubble might burst. and one of my colleagues said, he's not in the internet business he's in the customer service business he'll be around in 20 years. he is. >> walter, i'm wondering for some historical perspective, didn't department stores kind of invent the modern holiday season and santa claus and reindeer are we seeing another wave of that from alibaba and from amazon, inventing these sort of e-com

joining me now are some smart strategists, big thinkers and brilliant historians, walter isaacson isent of the historic institute. nancy gibbs is the editor of "time" magazine and has co-authored a great book on former presidents. jeffrey goldberg is the editor-in-chief of the atlantic, and dan seenor is the author, investment and former policy advisor to mitt romney, paul ryan and marco rubio. when we look at this presidency, at some level, we have never seen anything like it. the freak shows, the tweets. does any of that matter, walter? you have looked at a lot of colorful characters. is that just going to get chalked up to he was a weird, strange personality or is this something consequence shall? >> i think it's consequential, it's demeaning the office of the president and it's also making it harder for him to get thing zone. we don't see a strategic coherence in the foreign policy and even things like the immigration restrictions, that have come to pass, seem to be a weirdly tweeted policy, as opposed to a well thought out policy? >> what do you think of the tweets? >> i these t

walter isaacson, president and ceo of the aspen institute and author of the upcoming book, leonardo dafor your time today. julia: is rising consumer debt a threat to the u.s. economy? we will be exploring the issue. from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪ joe: "what'd you miss?" is rising consumer leverage a threat to stability? it certainly looks that way on paper. our next guest says those fears are overblown. professor at the university of oregon, he wrote a paper arguing this point. he joins us now. great to have you back on the show. private sector debt, household debt, always people concerned about it. you are not concerned. what is the key thing people are missing? , as aouple of things percentage of disposable income, it's not growing quickly relative to the recession. on face for you, it is not a problem, but there are other reasons. joe: before you get to them, i want to point out to gears that we are looking at a chart that is crucial to your argument. percentage of disposable personal income, you make the point and this chart shows a, we are still deleveraging. >> right. that i

year walter isaacson spoke to him at the aspen ideas festival back in june about the possibility of joining>> there's a lot like somebody like me has to offer in a place like tech or health care or something like that, but as i've thought about it, really my foucs is going to do one thing well. >> so, in other words, take to scale a company that's either in tech or health that might need adult soupe vision or something, eric schmidt did that. is that the mod snell. >> that's kind of the model, and i like at all the change going on in tech, all the change that's going on in health care, and in some ways i've kind of experienced that and lived through that on my own, and i just think that there's a lot that i can offer to that, and i want to be purposeful. >> joining us for more now is jeffrey conn from elevate partners and greg benzinger. greg, i'll start with you, how serious and likely a consideration is this? >> it is a serious consideration. the company needs a ceo. they need one quickly. he is a proven proven leader he's overseeing global operations and they are very concerned with havi