But what I'd say to the person who is out of a job right now is we are going to be doing everything we can to create the environment where the private sector can come in and start creating jobs. And until they can find a job, I expect to be held accountable. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sparked a firestorm this week when he said there are enough seats in play in the fall to give Republicans control of the House. During our interview in Michigan, I asked ENTITY if he is prepared for the midterms to be a referendum on both him and his policies. Well, first of all, we have got a long ways before the election, number one. You disagree with Robert Gibbs' assessment? Number two, we have got -- number two, this is going to be a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that are getting us out of this mess. And I think if you look at the vast majority of Americans, even those who are dissatisfied with the pace of progress, they will say that the policies that got us into this mess, we cannot go back to. They understand that, because they remember that even before the financial crisis, wages were flat-lined. And so now, when they look at Holland, Michigan and they say, Instead of jobs moving overseas, we are seeing jobs move from South Korea here to the United States, that is something that gives them a sense of a future, a vision in which America is strong; it is competing. That is the kind of future I think Americans want. So you are prepared for November to be called a referendum on your policies and this presidency. ENTITY, you are not listening to me. What I am prepared is to be held accountable for the policies that I have put in place. But Americans do not have selective memory here. They are going to remember the policies that got us into this mess as well. And they sure as heck do not want to go back to those. Either you did not want a debate about health care again on Capitol Hill, which got a little raucous a year ago, or, You know what, the Senate process is broken and we have got to go around it ?


Well, what is true is when it comes specifically to appointments, whether it is judges or critical positions in national security, Homeland Security, FBI, there have been more delays, obstruction and stalling when it comes to just appointing people to run the day-to-day aspects of Washington than any president has experienced in history. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that I cannot play political games with the Senate on these issues. I have got a government to run. And at a certain point, we have to go ahead and just make sure that people are in place to deal with the enormous challenges that are ahead. Well, here is what I am ready to say, that Washington has spent an inordinate amount of time on politics -- who is up, who is down -- and not enough on how are we delivering for the American people. The good news is that, despite no cooperation from the other side, we have, over the last two years, stopped an economic free fall, stabilized the financial sector. We are on the verge of passing a financial regulatory bill that provides consumers the kind of protections they deserve -- Probably will be passed by the time people see this. Will be passed, potentially, by the time we land, I get back to Washington; a health-care bill that not only is going to make sure that everybody has access to coverage, but also is reducing costs. So when you look at the list of things we have been able to accomplish, it does show that when people are determined and are willing to take tough votes even when it is politically inconvenient, we can still get things done. You have had an enormous amount of legislative victories. It is comparable to any president in history. It is not translated into political capital with the public. Is it -- honestly, are you frustrated by that? You know, I am not frustrated, because we were in such a deep hole that even if we got three-quarters of the way up out of the hole, even if I know we are going in the right direction, people are still feeling things are tough. Now, look, when I -- before I was sworn in, I remember talking to some of my guys, and we had just gotten the estimates from the economists about what we might be seeing in terms of not only job losses, but economic contraction.

Interview With Chuck Todd on MSNBC's The Daily Rundown


I think people would anticipate -- you do not have to be a savvy political analyst like ENTITY to say if unemployment is at 9.5 percent, the party in power is going to have some problems, regardless of how much progress we have made and how much worse it would be if the other side had been in charge. I want to talk about the terrorist attack in Uganda. Clearly your administration is taking this al-Shabab very seriously. You have had a senior official tell us the organization -- the operational abilities of that entity out there is maybe stronger than any other -- -- al Qaeda. Should we be doing more militarily in Yemen than we are now? Well, here is what we have done. Part of the reason that an analyst would say that al Qaeda is stronger in Yemen than just about anywhere else is because we have actually been pretty successful at forcing al Qaeda in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan to hunker down. They have been pinned down, and it is hard for them to carry out big operations. We have got to keep that pressure up. It is absolutely true, though, that al Qaeda in Yemen is dangerous. And what they have been able to do is not mount huge-scale attacks, but they are successfully recruiting individuals who may carry out low-level attacks -- Well, it is scarier, oddly enough, for some people. Well, in some ways it is harder because these are people whose name are not on a list. Abdulmutallab, the guy who tried to blow up the plane over Detroit, is a classic example of the kind of person that al Qaeda in Yemen is recruiting. Many people are traveling to Yemen, getting indoctrinated, and then being sent back to the West. So we have been cooperating with the Yemeni government. We want to make sure that we are entirely on top of it. Are they cooperating with us? Its terrain is a little bit like Afghanistan's. They have got their own ethnic problems there. And so this is a tough part of the world. But we are building up capacity, working with them to make sure that we do not take our eye off the ball, even as we continue to put pressure between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I know the first lady was down there touting it in Panama City, Florida. Are we going to see you guys down there? When we were in Pensacola, the beach looked as pretty as any beach that I have seen.


Last time I sat down with you here in the White House and had a long conversation, it was just right after Wye, and you were feeling real good and real happy and really accomplished and, today, considerably different. Yes, Friday night I was up all night talking to them. I slept an hour, and then maybe I slept another 30 or 40 minutes in different snippets. Prime Minister Barak had a Cabinet meeting that lasted almost all night last night. And in the middle of it, he came out and announced that the Israelis would suspend their ultimatum, because they had some encouragement and there was so much effort being made by the world diplomatic community. What are you doing from here, in Washington, at your desk talking on the phone with these guys? I mean, how are you able to effect this, and what do you see your role as now? Well, I have spent so much time with both of them, and I know quite a bit about what makes them tick. And I think I understand the pressures they are both under, and I believe I understand what happened here, how they both came to see themselves and their people as victims in this. I think that they both became concerned about 24 hours ago, maybe a little more, that this thing could really slide into a much deeper conflict. So at least today we have pulled back from the precipice. Kofi Annan is out there, and I think he is doing some good work there. So I feel good today, as compared with yesterday. Although, if we can end the violence and if we can get agreement between the two sides on some sort of factfinding commission to figure out how this happened and how to keep it from happening again which was the thing that the U.N. resolution called for, that, in fact, Barak and Arafat had agreed to in Paris. Although they had not agreed to the composition of the commission, they had agreed that it ought to be done. If we can do that, the next big step is to begin the negotiations, the peace negotiations, as immediately as possible, because otherwise the sort of public pressures, both within the Middle East and beyond, will get worse. I was surprised that the feelings on both sides could be stripped to the core as quickly as they did, because they have made so much progress and they got so close.

Interview With Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone Magazine


But in a funny way, I think that from the Israeli point of view, Camp David made them feel even more vulnerable because Barak, at Camp David and since, went further by far than any Israeli Prime Minister had gone before. And I think the Palestinians, number one, really thought it was not enough to make a peace agreement but also have a different strategy since basically the physical concessions have to be made by Israel except for what the Palestinians have to agree on security, in terms of joint security presence in what would become a Palestinian area in the West Bank. They have to make agreements on the West Bank territory, on the right-of-return language in the U.N. resolutions, who gets to come back, and if they do not come back, what is their compensation. They have to resolve Jerusalem, and they have to deal with security. Interestingly enough, because it was the most concrete with the fewest number of unpredictable consequences in the future, they made more progress at Camp David on security than anything else. They also had a habit of working together on security and getting along. But I think that the Israelis sort of felt aggrieved that they did not get more done, because they offered so much. Then the Palestinians felt provoked by what happened on the Temple Mount with Let us not get too far into this   We do not have to get into the weeds, but the point is that then a whole series of events happened where each side began with each successive event it seemed that each side misunderstood the other more. Does any of it tend to piss you off about the relationships that you formed with you formed a very strong relationship with Arafat and also Barak. Did it change your mind any, when you get into this goddammit, Yasser you have the same interpreter, right, that you used to share? So you have got a close relationship. This will all be settled by the time this comes out, so just speak your mind. It will all be settled, or it will not by the time this comes out. The whole thing is frustrating, but you have got to realize we are dealing with fundamental questions of identity. What Jack Lew was saying at Rosh Hashanah, though the Jews go back and read the story of Abraham and Sarah giving birth to Isaac . I was thinking it is interesting how the circumstances under which the sons of Abraham were born and became separated. And it sounds like sort of epic family tragedy, and they just sort of keep replaying it down through the years.


That is the thing that bothers me. I just hope that somehow, you know, at this moment, however long it takes, we will get beyond that. To the outsider who cares about them both, it seems so self-evident that the only acceptable answer is for them to find a way to live together in peace. When you are out of office, what are the three or four issues you think you are going to want to most focus on and be most concerned with? Well, first of all, I have not quite figured out what to do and how to do it, because I am so into what I have been doing. I have laid the basic plans for my library and policy center. And I know I am going to have an office in New York, because I will be there, as well. And I have talked to a lot of people in general terms about it. But I decided that I would try to be effective in this job right up until the end. And in order to do it, I cannot be spending vast amounts of time kind of planning out my next step. I also think I probably need a couple months to kind of just rest, relax, sleep rest, get a little perspective. I have thought a lot about ex-Presidencies. There have been two really great ones in history, John Quincy Adams and Jimmy Carter, and they were very different. Quincy Adams went back to the House of Representatives and became the leading spokesman for abolition. You see the Washington Monument right behind us that actually, in his last term in Congress, was Abraham Lincoln's only term in the House, and they stood together on that mound when the Washington Monument was dedicated. But Jimmy Carter used the Carter Center to do very specific things. He works on human rights, election monitoring, getting rid of river blindness in Africa, agricultural self-sufficiency. From time to time, he is engaged in various peace issues, primarily in Africa. And he works here at home on Habitat for Humanity, which is now, by the way, the third-biggest homebuilder in America stunning thing and also involved all over the world. I have been to Habitat sites in Africa, or one in Africa, but there are more than one. So the challenge is to trade power and authority broadly spread for influence and impact tightly concentrated.


And I am sure I will be interested; I will try to do a lot on the areas that I have always been involved in, this whole area of racial and religious reconciliation at home and around the world, economic empowerment of poor people, something I am very interested in here and around the world. As we speak, I still do not know for sure whether the new markets initiative that the Speaker of the House and I have built such a broad bipartisan coalition for will pass. We have got 300-some votes for it in the House. It is really got a chance to be one of the signature achievements of this Congress, and it is something that Republicans ought to like, because it basically involves getting private capital into poor areas in America. And then I have got a big initiative to relieve the debt of the world's poorest countries that will put the money into education, health care, and development back home, if they get the debt relief. So that is something that I have always been very interested in. We make 2 million microcredit loans a year around the world, under AID in my administration. The Grameen Bank model. We set up a community development financial institution program here in America, and we fund those here in America, as well. So we have done a lot of work on that. And I am very interested in this whole idea of the relationship of energy to economic growth and the challenge of global warming, which I believe is real. And I believe we can break the iron link between how nations get rich and how they deal with the environment. I do not think I think the energy realities of the world have changed drastically in the last 10 years, and they are about to really change with the development of fuel cell engines, alternative fuels. And there is also we have funded a lot of research on biofuels not just ethanol from corn, but you can make biofuels out of grass. You can cut the grass out here and make fuel out of it. It takes about 7 gallons of gasoline to make about 8 gallons of biofuel. But they are working on research which would lead to one gallon of gasoline making 8 gallons. So I am interested in all that. I am interested in the breakdown of public health systems around the world. ENTITY, TB, and malaria kill one in every four people that die every year now, those three diseases. So you would set up something like you are very mindful of the Carter Center.


I do not know how I am going to do it. I am thinking about it. I have explored a lot of ideas, but I am going to take some time when I get out to think about it. I also want to make sure that whatever I do, I give the next President time to be President, and whatever I do, I do not get in the way of the next President, because a country can only have one President at a time, and I want to be supportive of that. Well, you must have obviously thought a lot about Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, you are or he are the youngest you are the youngest President since Teddy Roosevelt, to come out of a successful Presidency, and be in your midfifties, because of your powers, really, and energy. Do you compare yourself much to him? Have you thought much about him? Well, I think the time in which I served was very much like the time in which he served. And I think the job I had to do was quite a lot like there are some interesting historical parallels with the job he had to do, because he basically was his job was to manage the transition of America from an agricultural to an industrial power, and from essentially an isolationist to an international nation. In my time, we were managing the transition from an industrial to an information age, and from a cold-war world to a multipolar, more interdependent world. And so I have always thought these periods had a lot in common. But when Teddy Roosevelt left, he served almost 8 full years, because McKinley was killed in 1901, shortly after he was inaugurated. But he thought he really should observe the twoterm tradition that George Washington had established that his cousin would later break in the war before, the election was right before the war. anyway, Roosevelt, when he got out, then he felt Taft had betrayed his progressive legacy. So he spent a lot of the rest of his life he built a whole third-party-new-political movement and promoted what he called the New Nationalism around America. But I think in some ways the impact he might have had was a little tempered by his evident disappointment at not being President anymore. And I think that is not an option for me, because I cannot run again, because now there is the 22d amendment. Roosevelt did not have the 22d amendment. So it is not a real issue for me.


So I have got to try to use whatever influence and networks and friendships and support I have built up around the world and here at home just to have a positive impact, to be an effective citizen. And I think I will find a way to do it. On the other hand, you have got the advantages of the incumbency; you have got the highest popularity rating of any President; the economy is doing good. It looks like you would have won in a walk. Is it really consistent with democracy, to have this kind of term limit on a President? Congressional? I have never supported legislative term limits. But I think the arguments for executive term limits, on balance, are pretty compelling. I mean, I have an extra amount of energy, and I love this job, and I love the nature of this work. But maybe it is better to leave when you are in pretty good shape, too. Better to leave when you are in good shape. I think maybe they should maybe they should put consecutive there. Maybe they should limit it to two consecutive terms. Because now what is going to happen is see, Teddy Roosevelt was young but not so young for his time. He was the youngest person to have been President, but he died at 61. Now, anybody that lives to be 65 has a life expectancy of 82. So you are going to see people who most people mature, politically and it is like all different activities have gymnasts are tops at 14 or 15, basketball players at 25 or 28. In their early fifties, most Presidents do their best. And now you are going to have more and more people, particularly that come after me, living much longer lives. Is that enough time to repeal the 22d amendment, get that through? This is not really about me, because my time is up. But I think that if you cannot predict all the challenges the country will face in the future and whether someone uniquely suited to a given moment will be there. So maybe they should but I am just saying, you may have people operating at a very high level of efficiency, in politics, from age 50 to age 80 in the future, because of the changes in the human life cycle that are going to come about as a result of the human genome and pharmaceutical developments and all kind of other things we are learning. We may be able to reverse Parkinson's. We may be able to reverse Alzheimer's. So there is going to be a lot of things that are different about aging in the future.


We are going to have to totally rethink it in ways we cannot imagine. And if it seems appropriate, then I think some future Congress may give the States a chance to at least limit the President to two consecutive terms, and then if the people need a person, a man or a woman, to come back in the future, they can bring them back. It may take decades, but it would not surprise me if it happened simply because of the lifestyle, the length of life we are looking at. Not to drag this out people say that you love campaigning. I mean, that you do not stop campaigning in all aspects. I mean, how are you going to sort of withdraw from that in the next couple of years? I do like politics. But I like governance, too. I like policy. I liked it all. That is one of the reasons why I have been so fortunate in my life; I got to do something that was basically about politics and policy and governing, and in executive positions, being a Governor for a dozen years and President for 8. I got to deal with politics, policy, and governing, the three things that I really loved. And I think I got better at it all as I went along. I am very interested I think I will spend a lot of time helping other people. I am thrilled about Hillary running as we do this interview. I have worked very hard with Tony Blair to try to build this network around the world of kind of likeminded political leaders, and if I can be helpful to them, I want to be. So I am sure that, from time to time, I will get a chance to do a little politics after I leave here. But I am also looking forward to a different chapter in my life. I am still young enough to learn how to do new and different things. And it is exciting to me. There is never been a period in my life that I did not enjoy and find challenging and rewarding. And so I just need a little time to get my bearings and hope I am not too old to change. Going back to the beginning, one of the first things you did in your earlier term was trying to overthrow the military ban on gay people. Why did this backfire, and what did you learn from that? Well, I think it backfired partly because the people that were against it were clever enough to force it, force the pace of it.


I tried to slow it down, but the first week I was President, Senator Dole, who saw it as, I think, an opportunity, pushed a vote in the Senate disapproving of it. And I tried to put it off for 6 months, and the Joint Chiefs came down and raised hell about it. And I wanted to do it the way Harry Truman Harry Truman issued an order saying, Integrate the military. Come back in 3 years or 2 years, whatever, and tell me how you are going to do it. And a lot of the gay groups wanted it done right away and had no earthly idea of what kind of I think they were shocked by the amount of congressional opposition. So a lot of people think I just sort of compromised with the military because they asked me to. A lot of people have forgotten that. We knew that there were at least 75 percent of the House would vote against my policy. So if I were going to sustain a different policy and have it withstand congressional action, I had to have a veto-proof minority in one House or another. But what happened was, the Senate voted 68-32 against my policy, which meant that I could not sustain my policy in either House, which meant they were going to enact it over my they were going to, in a sense, ratify the status quo in law. And it was only at that time that I worked out with Colin Powell this do not ask, do not tell thing, went to the War College, and explained what the policy was going to be based on, what we had agreed the agreement we had reached together. And then they wrote that into law. And then we had several years of problems where it was not being implemented in any way consistent with my speech at the War College, which General Powell agreed with every word of, which we'd worked out. So Bill Cohen has now changed the training and a lot of the other elements that contributed to the fact that this policy continued to have a lot of abuse in it, and I think it is better now. I think the policy I implemented originally, that I wanted to implement was the right policy. Would you do it any differently? Do you wish you could have done it differently? I think that what I would like to do, what I wish I had been able to do, is to get an agreement on the part of everybody involved to take this out of politics and look at it.


But the Republicans decided that they did not want me to have a honeymoon, that they wanted to make me the first President without one, that we were living in a 24-hour news cycle, and that the press would happily go along with my not getting a honeymoon and that they would make this the opening salvo. And they understood and I did not understand exactly what I know now about how what we do here plays out in the country. Because they have added up, first but because it was one of my campaign commitments and I refused to back off of it, the message out in the country was, We elected this guy to turn the economy around, and his top priority is gays in the military. Bob Dole's top priority was making this the controversy that would consume the early days of my Presidency, and it was a brilliant political move by him, because at the time I was not experienced enough in the ways of Washington to know how to explain to the American people what was going on. If it happened to me again, I would say, Why is this the Republicans' top priority? I do not want to deal with this now. We can deal with this in 6 months when the study is done; let us take care of the American people now. And if it happened now, all the gay groups, who are now much more sophisticated about dealing in Washington than they were then, would come in and say, That is absolutely right. Why is he doing this? We want to deal with and we would put it back on them. They would be in the hot box, and we could win it. But the country has come a long way on gay rights issues since '93. Because keep in mind, we did drop the ban on gays in security positions, national security positions. We had done a whole lot of other things to advance a lot of the causes that the gay rights community wanted. So we have made a lot of progress there plus all the people I have appointed. And I think the country has moved on that issue. The country is overwhelmingly for hate crimes legislation. The country supports employment nondiscrimination legislation. The only reason that we cannot get those through the Congress is that the leadership of the Republican Party is way to the right of the country. You know, historically, politicians have never, ever done much for gay rights. But gay issues are in the mainstream certainly, for instance, Reagan, who was very funny with gay people and had lots of experience in Hollywood.


Why did you take it upon yourself, particularly in light of the political heat, to advance the causes of gay people? I believed in it. I just said, from the time I was a kid, I had known people who were gay, and I believed that their lives were hard enough without having to be hassled about it. I saw it as a civil rights issue. I also did not buy the kind of conservative attack on them, that this was sort of a conscious choice to have a depraved lifestyle. I had had enough gay friends since I was a young man to know that to believe, at least, that that is not the case. So I saw it as a civil rights issue. I believed in it. I also thought that as a white southern Protestant, who could obviously talk to a lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats, the people we had lost that came back, that I was in a unique position to do it. And Al Gore, I must say, reinforced that, because he felt it at least as strongly as I did, and he wanted to do something about it. And we thought that we could do that for the same reason we thought we ought to take on the NRA. You know, that if we could not do it, coming from where we came from with our backgrounds and kind of out of the culture we came from, and understanding that opposing elements, who could do it? You know, if that whole gaysin-the-military thing came up today, I do not think it would be handled in the same way. It might not be that we could win it today, but today we would get a civilized response, and we'd have a long study. People would handle this straight. It would not just be a it would be handled in a whole different way today. What about what is going on with the Boy Scouts? Were you disappointed with the Supreme Court decision, and what do you think you, as President, can do about that? Well, I cannot do anything as President about the Supreme Court decision. Were you disappointed with it not about the decision but about the Boy Scouts? I think what the Boy Scouts were reacting to was one of these stereotypes for which there is no evidence whatever, which is that adult gay adults are more likely to abuse children than straight adults, sexually. But I think that I think that is what was behind that. Now, apparently, the Girl Scouts have no such prohibitions and have had no known problems.


I am not sure about that. I doubt that. Is there something does not the President have an official capacity with the Boy Scouts as, like, an honorary chairperson or something like that? And the gay groups asked me not the gay groups, the press asked me if I would whether I should resign from that. The President is always the honorary chairman of the Boy Scouts. And it is going to be interesting when we have our first woman President, if they make her the honorary chair of the Girl Scouts, or she gets to be the honorary chair of the Boy Scouts. Because I think that first, I think the Scouts do a world of good, and in our time they have begun to be more active in the cities, which I think is really important, to go into a lot of these places where the kids do not have a lot of family or community support. And I think that it is near the end of my term, so it would just be like a symbolic thing that would, in my view, probably cause more harm than good. And I think it is better for me to say I disagree with the position they took and try to persuade them to change their position, which I hope they will do, because I think It seems like there are so many States and communities that are moving to pressure them. Yes, I think there should be a lot of grassroots pressure on them to change. They will change at the grassroots level. But what is happening is look, the overwhelming thing which changes people's attitudes on these issues is personal contact, personal experience. I will tell you a little story. When we did the gays-in-the-military thing, I got not my pollster, another guy that I knew sent me a poll he had done saying this is a political disaster for you, and here is why but that is not the reason, the point I am telling you. The polls showed by 48 to 45, people agreed with my position in 1993. But when asked, do you strongly so I won it, 48-45. But among those who felt intensely, I lost it 36-18 or 15 36-15. No, but for the antis, it was a single-issue vote. For the pros, it was, You know, I am broadminded; I have got a lot of other things on my mind. They are still mad at Cheney for what he said the other day. What did Cheney say?


He was not hard over against he was not hard enough over against gay marriage or civil unions. Let me make the larger point. But in this poll, interestingly enough now, again, this was '93 there was not a huge gender gap; there was not even a huge regional gap, as you might expect with the South being way bigger than anyplace else. People who identified themselves as evangelical Christians were 72-22 against my position. People who said yes to the question, Have you personally known a gay person? were 66-33 for my position. So this is a matter of personal experience, and the country will come to this. They will come to the right place on this. Most gay people kept their sexual preference secret for a long time. A lot of venerable institutions in society that worry about their respectability and impact and the Boy Scouts is such a venerable institution what they are really dealing with is people coming out much more than affirmative prejudice. It is like, Hey, let us go back to the way it used to be where people did not say and I did not have to deal with this. That is what I believe, anyway. Because I remember I grew up in a southern town. One of my teachers was gay. There was a gay doctor in my hometown that some people knew and did not talk about. So we are dealing with a huge kind of and this goes to the core of how people think about themselves and how you work through all this. But it is a matter of personal contact. In your first year in office, you regularly talked with Richard Nixon. What did you two talk about, and what were your impressions? Do you remember that? He came to the White House. I had Nixon back at the White House. I have got a letter that I treasure that Nixon wrote me about Russia a month to the day before he died. Have you ever seen that letter, Jake? You know, it was sort of his take on where Russia was and the early part of my Presidency. ENTITY He went to Russia right before he died. He wrote me a letter about where he thought things were, and a month later he was gone. Well, I had him back here. I just thought that I ought to do it. He lived kind of in the he had lived what I thought was a fundamentally constructive life in his years out of the White House. He had written all these books. He tried to and he tried to be a constructive force in world affairs.


And I thought that he had paid quite a high price for what he did, and I just thought it would be a good thing for the country to invite him back. So when he came up, what was it like when he came here? Was that the first time you had met him, in a way that spend any time? Actually it is funny, because I had had two other chances in my life to meet him. We were somewhere in 1969 we were at a dinner. I was working here in the summer 1970 and there was a dinner where he was, and I did not go shake hands with him, because I was young and mad about the Vietnam war. And then in the 1980's sometime, we were in the same hotel in Hong Kong. We were staying in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. I was there on a trade mission, and I was supposed to meet him, and somehow or another it got messed up. But when he came here, what was that like? What was he like? He met my daughter, who was then going to Sidwell, and his mother was a Quaker, and I think his children went there, or at least had some association with Quaker schools. So he had this long talk with Chelsea about who was then 13 about Sidwell and Quaker schools. But it was rather touching, because he seemed still, after all this time, somewhat ill at ease in personal conversations with people he did not know. But it was obvious to me that he had thought about what he would say when he met my daughter. How was he like to you? I mean, did he treat you like the young man, or was he nervous? He sort of identified it is interesting, he told me he identified with me because he thought the press had been too hard on me in '92 and that I had refused to die, and he liked that. He said a lot of life was just hanging on. So we had a good talk about that. But I found it interesting I always thought that he could have been he did some good things, and I always thought he could have been a great President if he had been more, somehow, trusting of the American people, you know. I thought that somewhere way back there, his something happened in terms of his ability to just feel at home, at ease with the ebb and flow of human life and popular opinion.


And I think also, some of his weaknesses were reinforced by the way he rose to national prominence, because he got elected to Congress by convincing people Jerry Voorhees was soft on communism, and he got elected to the Senate by convincing people that Helen Gahagan Douglas was soft on communism. Then he busted Alger Hiss and got to be Vice President when he was, I do not know, 38 years old 37. Nixon would have been, had he won in '60, would have been as young as I was when he got elected. So I think all of a sudden, boom, one term in the Congress, a couple years as a Senator, boom, you are Vice President, 8 years as Vice President, and how did you do this? You did this by sort of whipping popular opinion up into this frenzy by demonizing your opponent as being a little pink. And I think that kind of reinforced some of his weaknesses. Whereas, if he had had to run like I did, in a little State, where you had to go to every country crossroads, people expect you to run the Governor's office like a country store, and you were used to brutal campaigns and used to trusting people to sort of see through them, if you fought them out hard enough, I think it might have rounded him in a different way. I think it might have prepared him a little. By all accounts, he was a nicer guy before the Jerry Voorhees campaign and that there is something in that. Well, look, when he ran for President, he got 35 percent of the black vote. If he had a good record on civil rights and for a Republican, he had a good record in the House and the Senate. And you know, there is no when he got to be President, he signed the EPA and OSHA and a lot of other stuff. The guy had some and he had a very fertile policy mind. He could get out of his ideological box. Remember, it was Nixon that imposed wage and price controls in 1971. He understood that. He understood that only a Republican could go to China. Which Presidents do you feel the most affinity for, in terms of the way the problems they faced and the way they have handled them? We spoke a little bit about the similarity with Teddy Roosevelt. Are there any others that you feel a particular kinship to? Well, I think Roosevelt and Wilson except I did not have a war, thank God.


But Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had the same during that whole period, they were dealing with the kinds of challenges that I have dealt with, both at home and around the world. And so I identified with them a lot. There are a lot of others that I like, but I think Harry Truman, in a funny way even though most of the ideas, like the U.N. and the international institutions, a lot of them were hatched and germinated when Roosevelt was still alive Truman also had to create a new era, had to organize a world where our commitment to the world was not an option after the Second World War. But we had to create a set of international institutions where we could be leaders, but in which we were also interdependent. And that is what not only the U.N. but also NATO, the Marshall plan, and the Bretton Woods institutions that have been that we have tried so hard to modify in my time. And Truman I liked Truman a lot. I am from Arkansas, and we border Missouri. I was raised on Harry Truman. David McCulloch did a great job on that book. If you read Merle Miller's Plain Speaking it is a much earlier book it also made him look pretty good, and he was an old man when he did a lot of that talking. Have you read Wilson and FDR, and it ends in Johnson I cannot remember if he put Truman or Kennedy in it or not but this whole sort of tradition of progressivism, of using Government as an instrument of social justice and economic progress. And so they were Princeton, where obviously where Woodrow Wilson was president, did a seminar, or a 2-day symposium, excuse me, on the Progressive Era, on the Presidencies of Roosevelt and Wilson. So they asked me to come and speak about that and about the relevance of that for the work I had done. So I talked about that. But I also said that they were part of a larger tradition that I also felt that this time was a part of, which was defining the Union, defining what America was. When we started the after we ratified the Constitution, there was a huge debate early on between George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Marshall on the one hand, and Thomas Jefferson and all his allies on the other, about whether we would have a strong nation and what did that mean. And


you know, John Marshall subsequently became Chief Justice, and wrote all the great nationbuilding decisions of the first 20 years of the 19th century. But even before that and Alexander Hamilton you remember, wanted to build a great, strong national financial system. George Washington supported him. They wanted a Federal Government that was strong. The Republicans wanted more than the Articles of Confederation, but not all that much more. Now, as I said, when Thomas Jefferson got elected President, he was glad the other side won, because he used that to buy Louisiana and send Lewis and Clark out, which are two of the most important things in the first half of the 19th century that were done. And Louisiana cost only $15 million, but that was one year's Federal budget at that time. Can you imagine what the Congress would say if I said, Hey, I have got a deal for you, and it just costs $1.9 trillion. Let us go do this ? The second battle was the battle to define the Union in terms of who was part of it. That is what Abraham Lincoln, you know, lived and died for. Gary Wills has argued brilliantly that he, in effect, rewrote the Constitution, the common meaning of the Constitution, for the Gettysburg Address, and brought it closer to the natural meaning of the words the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Then the third time we had to redefine the Union was under Woodrow Wilson Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, whom we had one, we moved into an industrial era, and we had this huge wave of immigrants coming into our cities, into our factories. And we had to define, number one, what the role of the Nation was in incorporating all these people and defining the conditions of civilized life child labor, minimum work week, all that stuff. And number two, what the role of the Government was in mediating between the industrial society and the civil society, which was the antitrust laws, in an economic sense, and in a larger sense, all that land Teddy Roosevelt set aside, when people first began to worry about pollution and using natural resources and all that. Teddy Roosevelt partly was able to be our first great conservation President, because people could see that growth in pollution could take away some of our natural resources. And then, of course, Wilson built on that with a social agenda and then defining our responsibilities in the world in terms of World War I and his argument for the League of Nations, which ultimately prevailed, even though he lost it.


And then the third great time was Roosevelt in the Depression and in World War II, and afterward, Roosevelt and Truman had this excuse me, the fourth time. You had the beginning, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Then you had the fourth great period, was this period, because what they were doing is, they had first to essentially bring the Government into the heart of the management of the economy. That is what the Federal Reserve and all that had been created, but we did not really manage the economy until the Depression. Then there was this whole idea that the responsibility of the Government was to help build and sustain a middle class society, everything from Social Security to the GI bill. Then, after the war, what they had to do was create the conditions of permanent involvement of America in the world, because Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson got us involved in the world in a leadership way, and then we just walked away from it and paid the consequences. So the cold war was on us after the war. So basically Roosevelt and Harry Truman built the structures within which America could lead and operate in an interdependent world. And I would argue that this period is the fifth great period of nation-defining. Because we have to define what the role of Government is in an information global society, both in terms of empowering people to make the most of their own lives, dealing with a far greater array of racial and religious and social diversity than we have ever had before, and dealing with a world that is very different than the world of the cold war, or the world before that that we used to move in and out of. So we had to have the permanence of involvement that we had in the cold war, with a greater degree of interdependence than we had in the cold war, because it is not a bipolar world. So we have a different set of challenges. And my election spawned a reaction in the Gingrich revolution, or the Gingrich counterrevolution, where if you go back and look at all their arguments for weakening the Federal Government, for toughening stands against immigrants, for turning away from the civil rights claims of gays, for refusing to strictly enforce the civil rights laws and strengthen laws protecting women, the whole social and economic agenda they had and Government is bad the private sector is good basically, they were trying to rewrite the Progressive Era that we built up over this time, and we, I think, essentially defeated them in three stages.


One was when they shut the Government down, and we beat their budget back. Then we went on to get a bipartisan welfare reform and Balanced Budget Act and the biggest expansion in child health under the Gingrich Congress, the biggest expansion in child health since Medicaid. And three was when, after Gingrich was gone, I vetoed their big tax cut last year, and the public stuck with me. Now, I do not know if you saw it, but earlier this week Al Hunt had a piece on Rick Santorum saying, Where have all the conservatives gone? , in pointing out that all these guys with these rightwing records were out there running away from what they did, running as the new moderates. And in a way, that is a form of flattery. But the point is, every forward progress in this country has always sparked a reaction. And they won some of their reactions. I did not prevail on health care. I did not prevail on gays in the military. I have not won every fight I have been in. But the big things that would have taken us down and taken the country in a different direction the budget and Government shutdown, impeachment, and the big tax cut those three things were the seminal battles, and we prevailed. And if you look at it, if you look at the arguments that we are having, you can go all the way back to the beginning, and it is the same sort of thing that you saw in the fight that Washington and Marshall and Hamilton had with Jefferson and his crowd; that Lincoln had with the people that were against him, and you know, divided the country; that Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had with the people against them; that FDR and Truman had with the people against them. And there is a story about him going to did I tell you this? In the New York Times, in the story about it, about how everybody that hates me or hates her or hates us both, this is their big deal, so they want to give money to Lazio. So he is at a fundraiser in Alabama Alabama. And there is a guy that says, I just cannot stand him. He says, She is a carpetbagger and he did not mean to New York; he meant to Arkansas and he is a scalawag. Now, the scalawags were the Southerners who supported the Union in the Civil War.


And after the Civil War, all the Southerners who fought for the Confederacy were disenfranchised. So that guy was actually exhibit A of my argument that I am making. And one of the reasons they dislike me so intensely, that crowd, is they think I betrayed they worked very hard, under the cover of Reagan, being quite nice, to basically have the old, conservative, white southern male culture dominate the political life of America. And they see me as an apostate, which I welcome. I mean, we have this so when I take on the NRA or do something for gay rights, to them it is worse if I do it. So when he said I was a scalawag, the guy knew exactly what he was saying, and he did for anybody that read it, did a great service, because he was absolutely accurate. I have no quarrel with what he said. Like Roosevelt, you are a traitor to your class? But it is very interesting, when you see sometime when an adversary of yours says something that you 100 percent agree with, the guy is absolutely right. That is why he is against me, and that is what I have tried to be in my whole life. I mean, I had a grandfather with a fourth grade education, fifth grade education, who was for integration of the schools. And we were still having the Lincoln fight in the South, when I was a boy in school. They are trying to drag you out of here. I owe it to him. We will do one more. I just love Rolling Stone. They have been so good to me. I'd just like the long view and your philosophy about where we are going, what you have seen, and what you think about America. I want to ask you questions about, you know, what have you learned about the American people. You have had a unique exposure to them that nobody else has ever had. I will tell you this. When I leave office, on January 20th, I will leave even more idealistic than I was the day I took the oath of office, 8 years earlier. Because the American people almost they are fundamentally good, and they almost always get it right if they have enough time and enough information. Now, they have got to have enough information. They have got to have enough time. They have to have a way to access it.


Can you tell us a little bit about how you have gone about intellectually preparing for your second term as president? I am not sure it is an intellectual exercise as much as it is reminding myself of why I ran for president and tapping into what I consider to be the innate common sense of the American people. The truth is that most of the big issues that are going to make a difference in the life of this country for the next thirty or forty years are complicated and require tough decisions, but are not rocket science. that we have the most competitive workforce in the world, that we have a better education system, that we are investing in research and development, that we have got world-class infrastructure, that we are reducing our health care costs, and that we are expanding our exports. On issues like immigration, we have a pretty good sense of what is broken in the system and how to fix it. On climate change, it is a daunting task. But we know what releases carbon into the atmosphere, and we have tools right now that would start scaling that back, although we'd still need some big technological breakthrough. So the question is not, Do we have policies that might work? It is, can we mobilize the political will to act? And so, I have been spending a lot of time just thinking about how do I communicate more effectively with the American people? How do I try to bridge some of the divides that are longstanding in our culture? How do I project a sense of confidence in our future at a time when people are feeling anxious? They are more questions of values and emotions and tapping into people's spirit. Have you looked back in history, particularly at the second terms of other presidents, for inspiration? I have said this before, but one of the things that happened in the first term was that we had so many fires going on at the same time that we were focusing on policy and getting it right, which means that we were spending less time communicating with the American people about why we were doing what we were doing and how it tied together with our overarching desire of strengthening our middle class and making the economy work. I always read a lot of Lincoln, and I am reminded of his adage that, with public opinion, there is nothing you cannot accomplish; without it, you are not going to get very far.

Interview with Franklin Foer and Chris Hughes


And spending a lot more time in terms of being in a conversation with the American people as opposed to just playing an insider game here in Washington is an example of the kinds of change in orientation that I think we have undergone, not just me personally, but the entire White House. Let us talk about that in terms of guns. How do you speak to gun owners in a way that does not make them feel as if you are impinging upon their liberty? Well, in our comments today, I was very explicit about believing that the Second Amendment was important, that we respect the rights of responsible gun owners. In formulating our plans, Joe Biden met with a wide range of constituencies, including sportsmen and hunters. So much of the challenge that we have in our politics right now is that people feel as if the game here in Washington is completely detached from their day-to-day realities. So everything we do combines both a legislative strategy with a broad-based communications and outreach strategy to get people engaged and involved, so that it is not Washington over here and the rest of America over there. That does not mean that you do not have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they are really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies. There are going to be a whole bunch of initiatives where I can get more than fifty percent support of the country, but I cannot get enough votes out of the House of Representatives to actually get something passed. You spoke last summer about your election potentially breaking the fever of the Republicans. The hope being that, once you were reelected, they would seek to do more than just block your presidency. Do you feel that you have made headway on that? And the Republican Party is undergoing a still-early effort at reexamining what their agenda is and what they care about. I think there is still shock on the part of some in the party that I won reelection. There is been a little bit of self-examination among some in the party, but that has not gone to the party as a whole yet.


And I think part of the reason that it is going to take a little bit of time is that, almost immediately after the election, we went straight to core issues around taxes and spending and size of government, which are central to how today's Republicans think about their party. Those issues are harder to find common ground on. But if we can get through this first period and arrive at a sensible package that reduces our deficits, stabilizes our debts, and involves smart reforms to Medicare and judicious spending cuts with some increased revenues and maybe tax reform, and you can get a package together that does not satisfy either Democrats or Republicans entirely, but puts us on a growth trajectory because it leaves enough spending on education, research and development, and infrastructure to boost growth now, but also deals with our long-term challenges on health care costs, then you can imagine the Republicans saying to themselves, OK, we need to get on the side of the American majority on issues like immigration. We need to make progress on rebuilding our roads and bridges. There are going to be some areas where that change is going to be very hard for Republicans. I suspect, for example, that already there are some Republicans who embrace the changing attitudes in the country as a whole around LGBT issues and same-sex marriage. But there is a big chunk of their constituency that is going to be deeply opposed to that, and they are going to have to figure out how they navigate what could end up being divisions in their own party. And that will play itself out over years. Are there any forces for reform within the Republican Party, people you have been able to establish some sort of working relationship with? Well, look, I have always believed that there are a bunch of Republicans of goodwill who would rather get something done than suffer through the sort of nasty atmosphere that prevails in Washington right now. It is not a fun time to be a member of Congress. And I think if you talk privately to Democrats and Republicans, particularly those who have been around for a while, they long for the days when they could socialize and introduce bipartisan legislation and feel productive. So I do not think the issue is whether or not there are people of goodwill in either party that want to get something done. I think what we really have to do is change some of the incentive structures so that people feel liberated to pursue some common ground. One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates.


If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you will see more of them doing it. I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama. The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side. And I think at least leaders like myself-and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this-are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done. You inspired a lot of people in your first presidential campaign, and with your books, by talking about a new kind of politics. And now, four years later, it is a time in Washington that is characterized by nastiness more often that not. How do you reconcile those two things four years in? I believe that what I talked about in 2008 is still where the country is. And it describes my real-world view of how politics should work. I have always been suspicious of absolutism. I have always been suspicious of ideological litmus tests. I am not somebody-when I look back on American history-who believes that one party has got a monopoly on wisdom. So I guess the issue is not that the concept in 2008 was wrong. I think the issue is that we have these institutional barriers that prevent what the American people want from happening. Some of them are internal to Congress, like the filibuster in the Senate. Some of them have to do with our media and what gets attention. Nobody gets on TV saying, I agree with my colleague from the other party. People get on TV for calling each other names and saying the most outlandish things. Even on issues like the response to Hurricane Sandy, Chris Christie was getting hammered by certain members of his own party and media outlets for cooperating with me to respond to his constituents. That gives you an indication of how difficult I think the political environment has become for a lot of these folks. And I think what will change that is politicians seeing more upside to cooperation than downside, and right now that is not the case. Public opinion is going to be what changes that. When you talk about Washington, oftentimes you use it as a way to describe this type of dysfunction.


It can seem as if you are apportioning blame not just to one party, but to both parties- In fact, that is one of the biggest problems we have got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, A plague on both their houses. On almost every issue, it is , Well, Democrats and Republicans cannot agree -as opposed to looking at why is it that they cannot agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing? And I want to be very clear here that Democrats, we have got a lot of warts, and some of the bad habits here in Washington when it comes to lobbyists and money and access really goes to the political system generally. It is not unique to one party. But when it comes to certain positions on issues, when it comes to trying to do what is best for the country, when it comes to really trying to make decisions based on fact as opposed to ideology, when it comes to being willing to compromise, the Democrats, not just here in this White House, but I would say in Congress also, have shown themselves consistently to be willing to do tough things even when it is not convenient, because it is the right thing to do. And we have not seen that same kind of attitude on the other side. Until Republicans feel that there is a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you will probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it. It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again. I disagree with them, and I think the cost to the country has been enormous. But if you look at the most recent fiscal deal, I presented to Speaker Boehner a package that would have called for $1.2 trillion in new revenue-less than I actually think we need, but in the spirit of compromise-and over nine hundred billion dollars in spending cuts, some of which are very difficult. And yet, I am confident we could have gotten Democratic votes for that package, despite the fact that we were going after some Democratic sacred cows. And had we gotten that done, it would have been good for the economy, and I think it would have changed the political environment in this town.


Democrats, as painful as it was, as much as we got attacked by some of our core constituencies, were willing to step up because it was the right thing to do. And the other side could not do that. It seems as if you are relying more on executive orders to get around these problems. You have done it for gun control, for immigration. Has your view on executive authority changed now that you have been president for four years? I continue to believe that whenever we can codify something through legislation, it is on firmer ground. It is not going to be reversed by a future president. So a great example of that is the work we did on do not ask, do not tell. There were advocates in the LGBT community who were furious at me, saying, Why do not you just sign with a pen ordering the Pentagon to do this? And my argument was that we could build a coalition to get this done, that having the Pentagon on our side and having them work through that process so that they felt confident they could continue to carry out their missions effectively would make it last and make it work for the brave men and women, gays and lesbians, who were serving not just now but in the future. And the proof of the pudding here is that not only did we get the law passed, but it is caused almost no controversy. It is been almost thoroughly embraced, whereas had I just moved ahead with an executive order, there would have been a huge blowback that might have set back the cause for a long time. But what I do see is that there are certain issues where a judicious use of executive power can move the argument forward or solve problems that are of immediate-enough import that we cannot afford not to do it. And today, just to take an example, the notion that we would not be collecting information on gun violence just to understand how it happens, why it happens, what might reduce it-that makes no sense. We should not require legislation for the CDC to be able to gather information about one of the leading causes of death in the United States of America. Have you ever fired a gun? Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time. Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.


Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were ten, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that. So it is trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes. Sticking with the culture of violence, but on a much less dramatic scale: I am wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players. I am a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe will not have to examine our consciences quite as much. I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they are grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies. You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That is something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about.3 The last question is about Syria. I wonder if you can speak about how you personally, morally, wrestle with the ongoing violence there. Every morning, I have what is called the PDB-presidential daily briefing-and our intelligence and national security teams come in here and they essentially brief me on the events of the previous day. And a big chunk of my day is occupied by news of war, terrorism, ethnic clashes, violence done to innocents.


We just had a few things we wanted to get your views on. What has Sullivan told you about his views on Roe versus Wade? Can you straighten that out? Exactly what you heard him say when he was announced. He has supported my position 100 percent. The only thing he said, and that is what he said. So, you do not envision dropping him under any circumstances? I have not heard one single person suggest that. If Roe versus Wade is overturned, as you support, how concerned would you be about women being allowed to have abortions in cases of rape, incest, and -- -- We will have to wait and see what the decision is on Roe versus Wade. Obviously you have to comply with the law, and what the law is is defined by the courts. What about this new Brady option we are hearing about on S&L's -- the idea of charging for insurance for depositors? It has not come to me as a formal recommendation. And so, I am not going to say what I am going to do, but that is one option. I will answer the question with a question. Is it a tax when the person pays the fee to go to Yosemite Park? Using the park -- there will be a lively debate on this, but I would simply leave that rhetorical question out as one way of answering your question. I do not want to signal that this is what we are going to do. I am not trying to suggest that. But it sounds like you are receptive to the idea, though? I am receptive to any idea that will solve this problem. I am not receptive to a tax increase. Governor Sununu said over the weekend -- he was talking about whether your no-tax pledge increase is a 1-year increase or is it throughout your term. Can you sort of clarify your thinking on that? I am not thinking beyond anything other than to say I will not raise taxes, and I have got to stay with that approach. And again, we are going to, you know, just send a proposal up there that solves this budget problem without raising taxes. And the fundamental reason for that is, I want to keep the economy going. I want to keep the recovery -- not recovery, but the growth going in this economy. I do not want to kill off investment or employment opportunity. And the higher the taxes, the more you do that.

Interview With Gerald Boyd of the New York Times and Katherine Lewis of the Houston Post


So, I really feel strong on that particular point, and I have not thought beyond 1 year, Jerry, or anything of that nature. You mentioned in your Inaugural Address that you wanted to eliminate the scourge of drugs. How can you do that? I mean, what do you have in mind when President Reagan was unable to eliminate drugs? I think the elimination of drugs is going to stem from vigorous change in the society's approach to narcotics. The answer to the problem of drugs lies more on solving the demand side of the equation than it does on the supply side, than it does on interdiction or sealing the borders or something of that nature. And so, it is going to have to be a major educational effort, and the private sector and the schools are all going to have to be involved in this. I would like to think that we can funnel more money into it, but I also have this overriding problem of the deficit to contend with. So, the question is, we cannot permit the measure of concern on any issue -- drugs or education or environment -- to be determined simply by how much Federal money goes after the problem. We cannot do it. We have got to use this office to encourage all elements in our society to participate in the fight against drugs, in the fight to improve education, or working to make the environment better. Because we are dealing with scarce resources in terms of Federal money. And the law has constraints on all of us in that regard. Secretary Baker said in the confirmation hearing that he was concerned about going ahead with the Moscow summit on human rights in 1991. Are you concerned about that? Well, I think that we need to look for performance. And I think the Soviets know that we feel this way after the Secretary's testimony. And I think that Mr. Gorbachev knows of my commitment to human rights because I had several meetings with him. And I'd say that there has been definite improvement in some ways there. But let us see what develops as we move towards that conference date. What are your views on Mr. Greenspan's comments on inflation from yesterday? I have not read them yet, and I want to be sure to read them. I must say I am encouraged that the markets, at least recently, have been saying that things are reasonably stable and certainly not there is no signals out there in the markets that this economy is in real trouble.


I have not talked to Alan lately, but I do not want to see us move so strongly against fear of inflation that we impede growth. We have to keep expanding opportunities for the working men and women of this country. I just saw this little summary of what Greenspan said. That is what I was told. That is why I do not want to get into commenting on his -- -- Visit to China Are we going to China? We may have it. We may have something on that -- you know, yea or nay -- before the close of business today. There is talk that you are hitting the ground walking. Where'd you get we ? November. There is a lot of talk that you are hitting the ground walking rather than running, that you are taking -- or that you are starting slow. Are you concerned about that? No, but you are not moving ahead on the budget. You are not moving ahead on any agenda. Moving ahead on the budget -- I mean, we are spending a lot of time on it. I know we have got some meetings -- meeting with budget team, 10 a.m. But you mean in terms of sending up legislation or -- -- Yes, and that there is no sort of an active agenda that you are pursuing from day one and that you are putting things off, you are studying things, you are waiting. Well, I have been a President since January 20th, and I think it is a little early to make conclusions one way or another on all that. The environmentalists say they are going to be making a litmus test out of ANWR . Is there any chance you are going to reconsider the Interior seat? I am in favor of prudent development there. I remember the pipeline. I remember the arguments against it. And I also know the effect it did not have on the caribou. You may remember that. Phrases that lived on from campaign history about caribou bumping up against the pipeline. A lot's been made about how you are doing things differently -- you have a different way of doing business. Was it important to you to particularly demonstrate that in this first week in office? Not to do it differently, but it is important to me to do it my way. And that is what we are trying to do, and what I will do. I have to do that.


That is the stuff you are going to remember is taking them to the park and pushing them on a swing and hearing them laugh. That is going to be what is most precious in your life, and you just want to make sure you do not miss out on that. Let us talk about My Brother's Keeper. It is an initiative that you said gets to the very heart of why you ran for president. The truth is is that a lot of young men of color are not doing well, partly because they do not have dads in their lives, partly because they do not have networks of support. It is important to me partly because, you know, I grew up without a dad, and I know that I went through my own struggles. You talked about the cycle, but you have broken the cycle for your own family. I try every day for Michelle and my girls to be what my father was not for my mother and me. Does this I mean, the fact that you did not have a dad has it changed your life as a father yourself? Yeah, you know, I I made a decision in young adulthood that it was going to be important for me to make sure that I was there for my kids. I have really tried to make sure that I did not miss parent-teacher conferences, that I did not miss the ballet recitals or the soccer games. I tried to be disciplined about, if I am in town, being home for dinner every single night. And I think it is made a difference. You know, the one thing the girls know about me is I love them to death. How do you think your girls would describe you? I think they would say that I am a good, fun dad who teeters on the edge of being embarrassing sometimes. You know, we set, you know, some pretty firm rules early on in their lives about cleaning up after themselves and making their beds and waking up on time. They have got their acts together. And we really do not have to check on their homework or nag them too much about stuff. They handle their business. So we are really proud of them. Right. What is harder, being and I think my dad would maybe have a comment on this but being a protective father of teenagers or president of the United States?

Interview with Jenna Bush Hager of NBC's Today


Well, as you know from experience and you may have chafed under this a little bit they do have a Secret Service detail, which I have joked the main reason I ran for reelection was to sustain that all the way through their high school years. You know, I do not worry too much about their social lives. They are growing up in a place I once called home. And my sister Barbara and I gave Sasha and Malia a tour when their father became president. I actually met them in this very room when your wife brought them here to tour their new home. And I taught them how to slide down the banister. So you can thank me later. Yes, I very much appreciate that. They have not broken any bones, thanks to those lessons that you gave. Yeah, I taught them the proper way, right? Safety first in this house. One of the things we said is to enjoy every minute. You know, you are living history. But are they enjoying their life here? What is been great is the fact that they have been able to have a pretty normal life. They have got great friends. They have got sleepovers here. They go over to their friends' house to sleep over. They go to the mall. And what I have been really proud of is the fact that they have not gotten an attitude. They do not take this for granted. Finally, the main point of that letter was to, you know, ignore the polls And I know that for Barbara and me it was hard to listen to people criticize our dear dad. Can they stay away from that? Do they or do they take the criticism to heart? They do not really feel deeply burdened by some of the chatter in the news, because it is really not part of their lives. But I am sure that the letter you wrote, you and Barbara wrote, and the example you guys set sure helped them a lot. And Chelsea Clinton, you know, had dinner with Malia one time, which was really generous. You guys are a fairly exclusive club of people who had to put up with this nonsense and turned out to be just amazing young women.


Let us talk about ISIS to begin with. Did they bring down that Russian plane? Well, we do not know that yet. I think we are still looking at all the details. Any kind of aviation tragedy like this requires a lot of forensic work. It becomes more difficult when we are not actively involved on the ground. We are offering full cooperation with the Egyptians, with the Russians and others. But a lot of this is peace work. But there is a possibility that they may have taken place. A lot of the intelligence community seems to think it is more of a probability. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence Committee thinks it is. And he told me last week that this would mean that ISIS has fully eclipsed Al Qaeda as the greatest terror threat in the world. Number two, what we have known for a long time, since the duration of my presidency and before that, is that a small network of people if they have got some skills and bomb making capabilities can carry out some big damage. And this is why we have ramped up our aviation security not just here in the United States but overseas. If there is a carrier coming here, then we are working with that airlines and that airport to make sure that they have got certain procedures. Now, we do not fly directly over the Sinai to the United States, and as a consequence we do not have those same arrangements at those airports. But this is something that we have known is a consistent vulnerability in this modern era. And that is part of the reason why we invest so much in not only putting safeguards in place but also learning each time there is an incident like this to see how this might have happened. But if ISIS with affiliates in so many countries right now, even Afghanistan, if they decided now to go to international terror, that is a game changer, is not it? Well I have to tell you, ENTITY AQAP in Yemen Al Qaeda in Yemen we know has had plots consistently over the last several years to try to bring down an airliner. I think that one of the challenges of these international terrorist organizations is that they do not have to have a huge amount of personnel. If there is a crack in the system, then they potentially can exploit it. And they are looking for these cracks to exploit. What makes ISIL the challenge that it is right now is primarily the fact that they are occupying territory in two countries that are not governed effectively in those spaces.

Interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC


All right, so in Iraq, when you get into the Sunni areas of Iraq there is not strong governance. And their ability to sustain themselves in those areas are the primary and principle concern we have. with respect to ISIL. that Vladimir Putin will start to take them on? Well Putin, I think, from the start has been sincere in seeing ISIL as a threat. The reason he went into Syria is not primarily because of ISIL, but to prop up Assad. And part of our goal is to underscore for him and for everyone in the region that ISIL is the primary threat and you cannot solve the ISIL problem if, in fact, you have got a country that is governed by somebody who is illegitimate and that the majority of Syrians reject. Can you convince him? What is interesting is we have already seen I think a growing awareness on the part of the Russians after several weeks now of fairly high paced bombing that they are not going to win this militarily. I think they understand that. They may not admit it publicly, but you are already starting to see indications of that. And it is a modestly positive sign that they have engaged with us, the Saudis the Turks and others to try to broker a political transition plan. Now, they have not yet come to the conclusion that Assad cannot be part of a new Syria. And I think it is going to take some time for them to get there. But our goal here, and John Kerry, I think's, done outstanding work in starting to create a platform and a set of principles whereby we agree that a political s solution is what is required, that it has to be inclusive, that there is going to be a transition phase. And, by bringing in the Iranians and the Russians, which is tough for us and tough for a number of our coalition allies they are now at the table. We are starting to shape who are the groups that could responsibly govern Syria.  And some of your critics say, even your friendly critics say, like Fareed Zakaria, that what you have on the ground now is not going to be enough. Every couple of months you are going to be faced with the same choice of back down or double down. I think what is true is that this has always been a multi-year project precisely because the governance structures in the Sunni areas of Iraq are weak, and there are none in Syria.


And we do not have ground forces there in in sufficient numbers so simply march into Al-Raqqah in Syria and clean the whole place out. And as a consequence, we have always understood that our goal has to be militarily constraining ISIL's capabilities, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing at the same time as we are putting a political track together in Syria and fortifying the best impulses in Baghdad so that we can, not just win militarily, but also win by improving governance- But ISIS is gaining strength, are not they? Well, no, I do not think they are gaining strength. What is true is that from the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it they will come in, they will leave. But you do not see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain. What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We have made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters. But one of the things that I will be talking about when I see President Erdogan in Turkey and discuss this with the G20 is that we have still got to do more work in controlling the border so that the influx of foreign fighters is much more reduced. And you know, what we also have to do is frankly work with the Iraqis to strengthen their capabilities. Because one of the big challenges throughout this campaign has been that the Iraqi military has proven itself to be effective in protecting Baghdad. But it is much harder for them, because they are primarily Shia, to move out into Sunni areas. And part of our goal has to be to recruit more effective Sunni partners in Iraq to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense. So what do you think when you hear someone like Ben Carson get up in a debate and say, Hey, this would be easy. We can take ISIL out just by bombing their oil fields in Anbar, that is what a general told him. What I think is that he does not know much about it. And look ENTITY, I think it is fair to say that over the last several years I have had access to all the best military minds in the country and all the best foreign policy minds in the country. And I am not running for office. And so my only interest is in success.


And if I am down in the Situation Room talking with people who have worked in these regions and have run major military operations from the chairman of my joint chiefs of staff Joe Dunford to, you know, individuals like General Allen, who was involved in Iraqi operations back in 2007/2008, and they do not think it is easy, then it is probably not easy. And what we have been able to do is to shape a strategy that first and foremost contained the momentum that ISIL had gained. We are now in a position where slowly, incrementally we are pushing back against areas where we know we have got some solid partners like the Kurds and the Peshmerga. But until we get the Syria political situation resolved and until Assad is no longer a lightning rod for Sunnis in Syria and the that entire region is not longer a proxy war for Shia/Sunni conflict we are going to continue to have problems. That could take a generation. That is not going to happen anytime soon with making sure that ISIL continues to shrink in its scope of operations until it no longer poses the kind of threat that it does, not just primarily to us, but to neighbors in the region like Jordan or Saudi Arabia and that the humanitarian crisis that is taking place with millions of people who are fleeing the country that that can be relieved. You are not running for office. But as you know, the Republican candidates are putting your foreign policy on the ballot. If you were up on that stage, how would you respond? Well, what I would say is that America is not weaker; it is stronger around the world than when I came into office. And that can be measured by the influence that we have on a whole range of transnational issues, the cooperation that we get on not just counterterrorism, but on critical issues like climate change the work that we are doing in Asia that I will be traveling to talk about in terms of creating the kinds of rule based systems that preserve our freedom of navigation and try to push back against Chinese efforts that may threaten the peace and prosperity of the region. You know, there was a lot of talk among these Republicans about the success of Putin's strategy in the Ukraine. But in fact, because we were able to mobilize the entire international community, we have been able to you know, not only reduce the fighting in Ukraine, but now we are still on track to potentially resolve that peacefully.


So you know, one of the things that is striking to me, ENTITY, is that pub public opinion around the world about the United States is significantly higher than it was when I came into office. We have not seen the kinds of big threats against the United States that sadly we saw during something like 9/11. We have been able to take more than 180,000 troops or 150, 60, 70,000 troops out of harm's way while still maintaining coalition partnerships. And in everywhere from Latin America to Africa we helped to shape the agenda for a more peaceful, prosperous world. So when you hear rhetoric like this, ENTITY, about America's never been in greater danger that is rhetoric. But when you think about it, when you reflect on it, where have you fallen short? You did not expect to have several thousand troops in Afghanistan, more than 3,500 troops in Iraq. Well, I think actually in Afghanistan let us take Afghanistan as an example. I do not think any of us were ever under any illusion that we could withdraw every single troop out of Afghanistan and that country, which is one of the poorest in the world, that has gone through 30 or 40 year so fighting would be completely stable. Our very premise, our strategy was always that we were going to have to provide the kinds of advice the kinds of training, the kinds of military support that would be required so that this nascent democracy began to work. And that is exactly what we are doing. I when I consider where we have fallen short, what is absolutely true is that in the Middle East and in Syria in particular the you know, enormous changes that took place post Arab Spring were ones that do not happen, you know, every ten years. And we have not been able to get the kind of success on the ground with countries that were fragile to begin with that were governed by dictators to create the kind of civil society that would allow for a functioning, if not perfectly democratic, then at least civil society and government. And when you hear the Republicans talk about well, you know, we'd go in and fix this right away. We are going to win in Middle East. What is clear is that you do not have any sense of how difficult it is. And they do not have a lot of sense of history, including the recent history of our efforts in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Donald Trump is speaking about history. He wants to bring back Operation Wetback from President Eisenhower and deportation force.


What would that mean? Well, I think the name of the operation tells you something about the dangers of looking backwards. And the notion that we are going to deport 11, 12 million people from this country, first of all I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money's going to come from. It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that. Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children and putting them in what, detention centers and then systematically sending them out. Nobody thinks that that is realistic, but more importantly, that is not who we are as Americans. What do you think when you hear people cheer for that? Well, what I think is that there is always been a strain of anti-immigrant sentiment in America, ironically from folks who themselves two generations back or even one generation back were immigrants themselves. And it is the job of leaders not to play into that sentiment. And given what happened in 2007, 2008, given the fact that despite the recovery, I think people still have some post-traumatic stress and are still concerned about prospects for jobs and economic security in the future it is easy to play on those fears. But that is not that is not what you want from your president. And to their credit Republican and as well as Democratic senators and or presidents in the past, including Ronald Reagan, including George H.W. Bush, including George W. Bush have understood that we are a nation of laws, but we are also a nation of immigrants and that proposing radical and necessarily cruel solutions to a problem that can be solved by some good, old-fashioned legislation of the sort that passed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate and I would've been able to sign two years ago if the House Republicans had allowed it to come to the floor 'cause there was a majority on that floor to vote for it we do not want I think, a president or any person in a position of leadership to play on those kinds of fears. You say we are a nation of laws. On the issue of Guantanamo, one of your big promises, closing Guantanamo Speaker Ryan says you cannot close it on your own, do not have the authority. Do you have the authority to close it on your own? Well, here is what I know is that we need to close it. If you take a survey of retired generals folks who are currently in uniform they will tell you that this is a consistent recruitment tool for jihadists.


It is contrary to our values. It costs huge amounts of money. So it is my job to, first and foremost, work with Congress to try to find a solution. And what we have been able to do during the course of this administration is to systematically transfer and draw down the numbers who are there. My hope is that by the end of this year we are seeing close to under 100 prisoners remaining and detainees remaining. And when they say no? Well they I am not going to one of the things that I have been consistently trying to do is to give Congress the chance to do the right thing before I then look at my next options. And Congress is going to have an opportunity, I think when they look at the numbers, when they look at how much it costs for us to detain these individuals, when they hear from both current and retired military officers who say this is not what we should be doing they are going to have the ability to make their own assumptions. So you are not ruling out doing it on your own? My job right now is to make sure that Congress has a chance to look at a serious plan and look at all the facts and we will take it from there. Will you rule out executive action? We will take it from there. You have called Hillary Clinton a good friend, strong friend, one of America's finest secretaries of state and said she'd make a great president. ENTITY, I am not going to make endorsements when, you know, I have said in the past it is important for the process to play itself out. Would he make a great president? You know, I think Bernie is capturing a sense among the American people that they want to know the government's on their side, that it is not bought and paid for, that you know, our focus has to be on hard working, middle class Americans not getting' a raw deal. I think Martin O'Malley has important things to say. I am confident that we are going to have a good, strong Democratic candidate, and that they will be able to win in November. Finally-- when you were a student, you spoke out, you protested apartheid in South Africa. If you were on the campus of University of Missouri today, would you be a protestor? Without knowing all the facts I have read enough to know that there is clearly a problem at-- the University of Missouri. And, that is not just coming from students. That is coming from some faculty.


And I think it is entirely appropriate for students in a thoughtful, peaceful way to protest-- what they see as injustices or inattention to serious problems in their midst. I want-- an activist student body just like I want an activist citizenry And, you know I'd rather see them err on the side of activism than being passive. I think that what you saw with the University of Missouri football team, and the coach, you know, standing up for something that they think is right-- harkens back to a powerful tradition that helped to bring about great change in this country. See, that is what I wanted to ask you- --and making sure that you are engaging in a dialogue, because that is also how change happens. The civil rights movement happened because there was civil disobedience, because people were willing to get to go to jail, because there were events like Bloody Sunday. But it was also because the leadership of the movement consistently stayed open to the possibility of reconciliation and sought to understand the views even views that were appalling to them of the other side. Because there does seem to be a strain on some of these campuses of a kind of militant political correctness where you shut down the other side. And I disagree with that. You know, I have now got, you know, daughters who-- one is about to go to college-- the other one's-- you know, going to be on her way in a few years. And then we talk about this at the dinner table. And I say to them, Listen, if you hear somebody using a racial epithet, if you hear somebody who is anti-Semitic, if you see an injustice, I want you to speak out. And I want you to be firm and clear and I want you to protect people who may not have voices themselves. I want you to be somebody who is strong and sees themselves as somebody who is looking out for the vulnerable. But I tell 'em-- I want you also to be able to listen. I do not want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side.


And so when I hear, for example, you know, folks on college campuses saying, We are not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas-- you know, I think that is a recipe for dogmatism. And so, but I want to be clear here 'cause, and it is a tough issue because, you know, there are two values that I care about. I care about civil rights and I care about kids not being discriminated against or having swastikas painted on their doors or nooses hung-- thinking it is a joke. I think it is entirely appropriate for-- any institution, including universities, to say, Do not walk around in black face. It offends people. Do not wear a headdress and beat your chest if Native American students have said, you know, 'This hurts us. This bothers us. But we also have these values of free speech. And it is not free speech in the abstract. The purpose of that kind of free speech is to make sure that we are forced to use argument and reason and words in making our democracy work. And you know, the you do not have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas. Make the case as to why they are wrong. That is how-- that is how things work in-- in-- in a democracy. And I do worry if young people start getting trained to think that if somebody says something I do not like if somebody says something that hurts my feelings that my only recourse is to shut them up, avoid them, push them away, call on a higher power to protect me from that. You know, and yes, does that put more of a burden on minority students or gay students or Jewish students or others in a majority that may be blind to history and blind to their hurt? It may put a slightly higher burden on them. But you are not going to make the kinds of deep changes in society-- that those students want, without taking it on, in a full and clear and courageous way. And you know, I tell you I trust Malia in an argument. If a knucklehead on a college campus starts talking about her, I guarantee you she will give as good as she gets. Sounds like you have been having some good dinner table conversations.