>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:05 [ Silence ] ^M00:00:10 >> Good afternoon, you're in for a treat. Bob Woodward doesn't just write for the Washington Post, to those of us who know him and know of him, he is the Washington Post. [Background cheering and applause]. I'm proud to say that for a brief time in the 1980's he was my editor on the Metropolitan Desk at the Post, he only edited one story I ever did and I got sued for $30 million. [Laughter] His name was Chief Trussell, and I'm glad to say that we won that case. Bob Woodward has won every -- nearly every American Journalism Award you can have, some of them aren't worth having, but he's got some of the good ones. Bob Schieffer said of him, the CBS News, Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time. He's disarmingly polite, if he asks you a question, don't answer it. [Laughter] You will find yourself telling him everything you know and everything your Mother-in-law knows. He's co-authored about a dozen books and he's been number one best selling fiction, non-fiction [inaudible] for quite awhile, his newest work is "The Price of Politics" an examination of how President Obama and the high profile Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress clashed over the American economy, a clash that's still affecting us to this very day. Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Woodward. ^M00:01:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:39 >> Thank you. Thanks, it's great to be here, I'm going to put myself on the clock so I don't talk too long and then we have lots of time for questions. Now I want to begin by recounting something that occurred about five or six years ago, my wife and I were at one of these conferences, and the conference was on aging and how to deal with aging. Now how many people are interested in the subject of aging [background sounds], raise your hand. Okay you know, you all are -- I tell you and at age 69, I'm deeply interested in the subject of aging. And they had psychiatrists and physicians and academics on this panel and James Watson, who is the code discover of DNA, the Noble Prize Winner [Background Sound] was also on the panel. And so they had the discussion and it went on for an hour and Watson said nothing. Sat at the end, zero comments. Now you know the power of silence was just overwhelming and so finally the moderator, Charlie Rose asked him, "So Doctor Watson, you've done so much work, how do you deal with aging"? And so he leaned into the microphone and he said there's only one way to deal with aging, and that is stay away from old people. [Laughter] He nailed it. My wife Elsa and I were sitting behind Doctor Henry Kissinger, who was in the audience and they handed out these little sheets where you did self-scoring. And -- on your lifestyle, how often do you eat red meat, how many bowel movements do you have a week? [Laughter] General health questions and then you got points or lost points and you added it up and it told you how many years you had to live. Now how many people here want to know how many years you have to live? The skeptical is you might brightly be about this scoring sheet, it's very interesting and Kissinger was filling this out with all the intensity, hunched over and so Elsa and I availed our self of the reporters freedom of information act, [laughter] and looked over his shoulder to see how many years he had to live. He added it all up and it turned out he died four years ago. [Laughter] Not happy. I've seen Kissinger really unhappy because of things we've written, but this was the depth of unhappiness. And so he looked around and this was done in pencil and he erased all the answers. [Laughter] And rescored, went through and it turns out the last time he ate red meat was 1949. How often do you exercise a week, seven, eight, nine, 10 times a week and he re-scored and it turned out he had eight years to live. Now what's the lesson here? I mean Kissinger is the Master of this read his books, listen to him, he re-scores history like no one else. [Laughter] But it is the basic problem in journalism and trying to understand politics, trying to understand what's going on in the world and I was telling the story the other night about Al Gore having dinner with him, sitting next to him. Now having dinner, sitting next to Al Gore is taxing. [Laughter] And as I say it's really unpleasant. Asked him how much do we know about what really goes on in the White House, the Clinton White House and he said 1%. Whoa, I believe it's higher, but if you really kind of step back, we often don't know what's going on. And that's the dilemma, and I want to talk briefly and then answer questions about a new book I've done which is just out called "The Price of Politics", it's about three and a half years of negotiations between the Obama White House and the Republicans in Congress and the Democrats, how they essentially tried to bring the Federal Governments, financial house into some kind of order. Now the answer is they failed, we have the Federal Government who's financial house is in total disorder, total disarray, it is a historic problem, I covered these three and a half years, but we're going to be back in the soup in about four or five months, because to try to put it in English, we have $16 trillion of IOU's standing -- outstanding in the world and the negotiations last year, they agreed to raise what they called the Debt Ceiling, so the government can borrow a couple more trillion dollars. We're going to run out of that borrowing authority January or February of next year and so they're going to have to go back and get Congress to authorize more trillions of dollars of borrowing. As you know the Republicans and lots of people in Congress don't want to authorize that and so there is going to be a bloody negotiation unless they can work a deal. So in a sense this is the book about the past, but it's about the present. It's about where we're going and kind what the country's future is. And if you think about it, I would argue that if the inability of the government to fix this borrowing debt, deficit issues, the number one problem facing the country. In the book Vice President Biden's Chief of Staff, Bruce Reed runs around and says it was an economic Cuban Missile Crisis in 2011. That's exactly what it's going to be next year, and there is so much evidence that it's the biggest threat to the future of the country and something that has to be fixed. We are on the path to becoming Europe and Greece, you just can't keep borrowing money, there is a spending addiction in this country and we need some sort of intervention, serious intervention. And in the book, what I attempt to do is take people to the meetings in the White House, Congress, or the meetings between the President and the leaders and show you exactly what happens and I -- because of the luxury of time and the generosity of the Washington Post and my publisher Simon and Schuster, I have the time to get the meeting notes, to get the exact detail to interview President Obama at length , [inaudible] Speaker Boehner and the key players in this. And I just want to take one quick snapshot from what happened that we didn't know about, which is critical. And when the talks blew up last summer and the President was quite angry, quite upset, he called the Congressional Leaders to the White House over here. Saturday morning, 11 o'clock, both the Democrats and the Republicans said we have to work out something and the Democratic and Republican leaders were trying to work out their own deal and Harry Reid the Democratic leader said to the President, "Mister President, could you please leave the room"? Now I've covered Presidents for 40 years, I know of no other time anybody asked the President to leave the meeting in his own House that he had called. I asked the President about this and how did it feel to be voted off the island in your own [Background Sound] house? Because that's what happened and he said he was not going to stand on protocol, that the problem needed to be solved, but it wasn't and the next day he called the Democratic leaders to the White House, 6 o'clock on a Sunday night and Harry Reid is there, Nancy Pelosi, the House leader, and the relations between -- among the Democrats are so not solved, that Harry Reid has his Chief of Staff, man named David Krone, make a presentation on the deal that Reid is trying to work out with the Republicans. And in the course of doing that, David Krone says to the President of the United States in the oval office, in his own house, "I am disappointed in this White House and you for not having a fall back plan". Literally again, somebody reading out the President in the Oval Office for not having a plan, after the meeting Harry Reid said to his Chief of Staff, "You did a good job". Quote "You stood up to him, he needed to hear it, no one was telling him". Now think about it for a moment, why does the second most powerful Democrat in Washington, have to use his Chief of Staff as a lever to send a message to the President of the United States? I was talking to -- being interviewed by somebody from Amazon.com the other day and as you may know they take books and they divide them in red state, blue state are most of the books selling in red states Republican States or Blue States Democratic States, and I said where does this book fall, which is it? And he said "well it's purple", [laughter] because it has information about both sides and all of this and it shows that there is a war going on, not just in the Democratic party, but the Republican party, perhaps much more intense. There are scenes where John Boehner is trying to work a deal with the President to do tax reform and then settlement reform and his Deputy Eric Cantor, the majority leader, calls people like Paul Ryan, who's now running for Vice President with Governor Romney, calls Ryan and some of the other key Republican's and they say "my God we've got a speaker who's doing deals with the President, the speaker is a runaway horse, how do we get control of him"? Speaker Boehner told me that his staff was so worried that he came -- the staff members came to see him, in his office, the second floor of the Capitol and said, "You have got to stop trying to do a deal with the President if you do keep doing this, you are going to risk your speakership". The President said when I talked him, interestingly enough he said in fixing -- he realizes the magnitude of all of this as does speaker Boehner, key Democrats, key Republican's realize what it is and the President literally said to me, "I will -- would willingly lose an election if I could solve these problems", it is that serious. Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary in the book is quoted thousands of words telling the President you have got to do something about this problem, we have to fix it, you literally -- it's not that we're going to close down the Government, we will close down the American economy and in turn the Global economy, if they do not solve the issue of this runaway spending, get some way to stop borrowing in excess, he tells the President of the United States, if we default on this on our obligations to our -- in our IOU's, we will trigger a depression worse than the 1930's. Anybody here remember the 1930's depression, you probably don't, I don't, was not born, but I've read about it. It was a calamity for the world, Tim Geithner said to the President what -- if we default on this, if we do not solve this problem, we will have an economic catastrophe that will make the 2008 Financial Crisis a footnote in the history books. Anyone remember the 2008 Financial Crisis? That's coming, not from some columnist or journalist that is coming from the well-informed Secretary of the Treasury. You think about this, there is a value in running scared. If you think about after 9/11, the terrorist attacks, one thing the country did collectively, is they set up TSA, the screening at airports, there all kinds of work, very significant work done to make sure terrorists did not get into this country. It's been successful to date, it is one of an amazing achievements, if you think about September 12th, 2001 the day after 9/11, it was almost a certainty there were going to be terrorist attacks in this country. There have not been -- hundreds of billions of dollars has been thrown at it, all kinds of intelligence efforts, screening effort, thinking efforts, some of them perhaps extreme, but it worked. This was a time when the Government and its leaders in both parties ran scared. They are not running scared on this issue and if you look at it, it is the thing we know about that is going to do us in. And we've got to fix it and go for a moment to the Presidential campaign going on before us. What are they talking about? Not this, not the thing that's most evident, why are they not talking about it? I would say part of it's the responsibility of people in my business, the media. That candidates are not being asked about it enough, it's also complicated, it's also something the candidates, if you look at what they have said on this issue of both Obama and Romney's plans are vague. If I were moderating the debate that is coming October third, I would spend about half of it asking them, "What would you do specifically"? Give us the diagnosis of the plan [applause], and tell us what you're really going to do. And part of that question is there has to be a willingness to compromise, and there has to be an innate willingness to do things that are painful for your side. I'm going to stop there and we'll do questions, one more story I remember years ago the head of Simon and Schuster, after I had published one of my books, took me to dinner in New York City in one of these restaurants where you would never want to go where you have to pay. [Laughter] And he said what's your next book going to be about? And I said oh well I haven't decided, I want to do some thinking, some reading, some resort -- research and he looked at me and said, what? I said yeah I want to do thinking, reading, reporting, weighing the alternatives. And he said why are you going to waste your time? [Background laughter] I said well that's what you try to do, and he said, "No, no, no you are one of our authors. I need to know right now tonight what your next book is going to be." I said this is -- that's prepostory, he said, "I need to know". Now he's one of these people who grinds on you and you're dinner alone, no matter what would come up, he would bring the subject back to him, oh maybe you should do a book about that, what about this and he would just grind away. You may know people like this. [Laughter] You may work for somebody like that. Even better you may be married to somebody like that [laughter] who just grinds away, so he wouldn't let up, so finally at the end I said to him, "I figured out what my next book is going be". He said "Oh that's great, what"? I said my next book will be an expose of the publishing business in New York City. [Laughter] And instead of showing disappointment, he was -- so he said, "That's a terrific idea, I have a great title for you". I said, "I don't think there are any great titles left", he said, "There's one," I said, "What?" He said your book an expose on the publishing business in New York City would be called "My Last Book". [Laughter] And he meant it. Okay, [applause] the questions, open microphone, go ahead Sir. >> Yeah hi Bob, I want to ask you something that's a alluding to the off the line comment you said on Al Gore, you know that you've been studying the White House 40 years and you know people all have their own perspective, they all want to be saying things and if you're the President you have to listen to all these people. Over your 40 years, how did the President's react and which ones really did a good job listening and making decisions? >> That's a great question, I mean in journalism the great art and it's hard, is to really listen and the key to getting people to talk is to take them as seriously as they take themselves, that's one common feature every -- President's, most people in Government, they take themselves seriously. You find increasingly with all the Presidents I've tried to understand that the more time they get in office, the more they like to talk and the less they like to listen. And that's a problem and I was reading the George Cannon biography, one of the great books that he's the diplomat who really established the containment policy and at one point Cannon writes in his diary, when they made Ambassador to Yugoslavia, he says, "There is a treacherous curtain of deference that falls on you as the boss." Happens to everyone, but it happens 10 times to Presidents, that treacherous curtain of deference and everyone is -- Oh Mister President, Mister President and what a President, like any leader needs, is somebody will tell him the truth. Here. >> This upcoming election is in repair the inauguration has been described as a period of time that's going to be the lame duck session of all lame ducks. And I wanted to ask you the same question that you would ask the candidates, which would be something like we're about -- we're approaching a fiscal cliff and this is all going to happen shortly after or just prior to the inauguration or some point in time in January. What is the -- what do you see or what do you predict or what needs to be done to avoid this fiscal cliff? >> Happily I don't have to decide and I don't know, but the -- I mean the fiscal cliff is a euphemism, I mean fiscal -- it's financial, it's the basic fine financial soundness of the Government, which connects, believe me, to the value of everything you have. A house, a bank account, an investment and so forth and it is all in jeopardy, it should be called the financial time bomb, and it's tax increases, it's spending cuts, but it's also what -- I spend a lot of time in the price of politics writing about where you have to extend the debt ceiling, they -- the White House, whoever is there's going to have to go to the Congress and say, "Gee you know what, we're borrowing a trillion dollars." I mean think about -- I was trying to figure if somebody was asking, well how much is a trillion dollars, that's about $3,000 for everyone in the United States, that's a lot of money. They have to borrow that next year just to pay for what's going on and how they're going to do that, how they arrange it, I don't know, it -- it's going to be, you know, I may have my second book. Go ahead. >> [Background Sound] Hi, in your interviews and in your research I was wondering how much you came across the discussions along the leadership about dealing with the serious problem of jobs in this country, because we're in the second major depression many say since the [inaudible]. And it's sort of contrary or contradictory to be concerned about the budget deficit where you'd be taking steps that have negative effect on the economy. So how much did that affect on [inaudible] discussion? >> Excellent question and of course you create jobs by growing the economy and you have to not only grow the economy, you need to stabilize it, you can't have this situation we're in where the interest rates are right in the basement and as someone says you can't jump out of the basement. That's as low as it is and if people stop trusting U.S. Treasuries, the $16 trillion dollars of debt we have out there, interest rates are going to skyrocket, interest payments will go up annually, potentially by 100's of billions of dollars, then we would have more deficit, there would be less trust. As we haven't -- you've wrecked the Government's role in the economy, those are my secret notes, I'm going to pick them up. [Laughter] So you have to stabilize that, and then you have to figure out a way to get the economy to grow and that's a long-term proposition which will lead to more jobs. But you're right, there's some contradictions in all of this, but in trying to create more jobs, you can't mess up with the overall problem of the trustworthiness and credit worthiness -- you're shaking your head, we'll talk afterwards, next. >> Hi over the course of your career, you've had the most incredible access to all these great politicians and history and even today and I was just wondering out of everyone you've met, who surprised you the most, who is like the least like how they are perceived in history and in the current media? >> Oh wow, that's like asking the question about the creation of the universe. [Laughter]They're all interesting, they all have their -- I mean I just get fascinated with the story of government and what really works and quite frankly, what we don't know. What is hidden, I remember for a book I did called "The Agenda" on Bill Clinton and was about his economic plan, I interviewed him once and it was on background, but he's talked about it, so I have talked about it and you go into the Oval Office and this -- so this was early 1994, and Clinton drills you with this eye contact that is absolutely a gravitational force. I've never seen anyone maintain eye contact like Bill Clinton and to -- and it's unblinking and he just stares and of course it creates a sense of intimacy, it slows time down, and I remember thinking this eye contact is amazing and somebody later suggested to me, said, "Well, he wanted to be President ever since he was five, and he decided to contribute all organs in the body to the task... ^M00:28:54 [ Laughter ] ^M00:29:00 ...including the eyes. [Laughter]. And you can train yourself, you just don't blink, and so we're going through this and I thought what -- this is a great interview and he's so focused, I even started thinking oh he realizes how brilliant my questions are. [Laughter] Which they weren't, and I thought -- left this and thought oh there's this amazing interview and went back and had somebody transcribe it and I read the transcript without the eye contact and it was mush. He didn't say anything new, he didn't say anything that was particularly useful, I think I used one sentence in the whole book from the interview. But and here's the essence of the Clinton communication style, it felt good. [Laughter] It felt wonderful and if you look at the Reagan tapes, when he was President, everyone called him the great communicator. He's a nothing compared to Clinton. Clinton, I remember interviewing -- there was one meeting where about six or seven people were in the meeting with Clinton and I asked them each what happened and there was this one woman who didn't say anything. And I said what'd you think of the meeting and she said I know he agrees with me. [Laughter] Wow, I mean that's -- I mean if you can go -- anyway end of point, next. >> My question is a little bit simple, it seems to me that where we're at right now is almost at the end of the current monetary system, so my question is how much talk has there been in your circles about ending the current monetary system, stopping that issuing of at debt and perhaps going to a United States note instead of Federal Reserve notes? >> Well that's a technical economic issue, I mean you can't bail out on the $16 trillion in IOU's we have, you just can't. It won't -- it would be the disaster in the calamity. I don't think you can do this with a magic wand, I don't think -- I think the -- if you go back to the 1980's what Reagan and Tip O'Neill did to save social security, they worked a deal where payroll tax went up, the most regressive tax in the history [Background Sound] of this country and they agreed to cut back on some benefits. And part of the deal was, what's that noise? [Background Sound] Is Gordon Liddy out there somewhere? [Laughter] You're too young to remember Gordon Liddy. [Laughter] You -- O'Neill and Reagan, part of the deal was, we're raising the tax, were cutting some benefits and so O'Neill says to Reagan, look you go out and say whatever you want about what this deal is and I won't contradict you. And I'm going to go out and I'm going to say -- describe the deal the way I want it described and don't you contradict me. Deal made, it's gone, no one objected, it was voted through the Congress, people who ran -- I know a couple of Senator's who ran, I think first in 1984, like John Kerry. He said in his campaign, the issue never came up because there was no clash, there was no conflict, part of the deal was, I mean look, Obama and Speaker Boehner would have a much harder time making a deal and because they had problems in both of their parties as they say, but in talking about this with them, if they'd had what's the word, courage, to say let's make a deal and go out, get before the microphones and the cameras and say this is what it's going to be, and this is going to be painful, and we're going to ask all Democrats and Republicans to vote for it, because we have to protect our financial future. Because that's what it's about at the end, they essentially told me they thought it would work, that they could've done it and of course they did not, yes. >> Bob, that's a good lead into my question, that -- the grand bargain that came to the floor towards the end, the President put entitlements on the table, I don't recall the world unraveling from that notion, how real do you suppose that proposal was and are we likely to revisit that in the spring? >> It's gets into detail and I have a whole chapter on this and it has to do with six Senator's saying, "Gee, we can ask for more revenue," it included three more Republicans, David Plouffe who's the President's political advisor, campaign manager in 2008, has tremendous influence in the Obama White House. Am I pointing the right direction, is the White House that way? >> Yes okay, and he said, "We've got to do something, we have to ask for more revenue," and one of Clinton's -- one of Obama's other advisors came in and said, "If you don't ask for more revenue, you will be part of the Presidency, the weakest Presidency in the history of mankind." I mean imagine being in that situation, getting that advice from one of your aides, so the President picked up the phone and said, "We need more revenue," he insists it was an offer, Speaker Boehner is equally insistent that it was a demand, I talked to him, talked to all the people, now no one else was in the room, there's no secret taped recording of that phone conversation I know about. If anyone does, please give me a call. [Laughter] But why do that on the phone? You shouldn't do that on the phone, you should have other people there, so it's carefully, you know, I mean it was changing -- or making a proposal at the end, that set this off on a track. It is a very dramatic story and it brings to the floor the issues that we're going to be dealing with in three or four months. Yes? >> You may have already alluded to this somewhat in answering the previous question, but you know, Congressional approval is at record lows and people left, right, center, everywhere talk about how broken Government is, and what are those things, from your perspective, that have broken it and what are those things, that if they were removed either individual or structural that would help fix it, what's the path forward? >> You know, that's above my pay grade [laughter], if -- it's enough of a task to try to find out what happened and so forth into -- you do play in your own mind, what should have happened, what could've happened, I mean it's a pattern, it's gone on a long time. A lot of people -- and there are books on this, there's analysis saying it's all the Republican's fault, they're books and there's analysis that it's all the Democrats fault, it's all Obama's fault, I -- I'm purple on that question and in the book conclude that they both have responsibility for this [applause] and it's a shame it's not part of -- the dialogue going on in the election. We're going to pay a price for this and just you know, note on your Blackberry that we talked about this September 23rd and when the bridges start burning in four or five months it -- there -- I was saying this to somebody if you remember 9/11, in August of 2001, six weeks before 9/11, there was a top secret intelligence briefing, given to President George W. Bush, and the headline of that top secret briefing was and we ran it in the Washington Post after it became a big issue, was Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. Now think about that, you're the President of the United States, you get a top-secret report saying Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S. -- you should do something. Well we know not enough was done, we know that the Government across the board failed to do what was necessary on potential terrorism, and we had 9/11. I tell you the theme song, the big music in this book I've written, that I've tried to present is U.S. Economy About to Falter. And it's a warning and it -- it's disappointing and to be honest with you it's agonizing that it can't get into the dialogue, because we had a Presidential election six weeks ago, six weeks from now, in which whoever, whether it's Obama or Romney, they're going to have to sit there and this is what they're going to be spending their time on. Yes young Miss. >> Hi, I just -- oh 13, yes. >> Thank you. >> I just wanted to say first of all that I am right in the middle of "the Price of Politics", I am in the middle of Chapter 20, so it's an incredible book. So thank you very much for writing it. My question... >> I know lots of adults who can't read it [Laughter]. >> ... thank you so my question is I'm at the end of middle school and I want to become a journalist when I grow up, so -- [applause] okay, so you've had an incredible career and you're one of my idols, so I just wanted to ask you any tips for young people like me who want to become a journalist and want see the world? >> [Applause] You've chosen perhaps prematurely, [laughter] a great career. I've often said if somebody came from another planet to the United States and spent a year and then went back to say Mars and they said "Who are the people who have the best jobs in America"? The inter planetarium visitor would say oh the journalists, why? Because as a journalist you get to make momentary entries into people's lives when they're interesting and when they're boring get out. There's no other profession where if you're a lawyer, you're stuck with clients that may be boring, if you're a doctor you're stuck with patients that may be routine, in journalism the question, every morning when you go to work or whenever it is, what's going on -- what's going on that has meaning [Background Sound] and what don't we know about it? And so if you think about it, good luck let me know when you're looking for a job. [Applause] What's interesting, he's telling the book is 40 Chapters long and he says he's halfway through on Chapter 20. >> I'll challenge you as a nurse practitioner, you get to be involved with people at the most important times of their life, I love that job too. [Applause] But... >> Well -- well said. Well said. >> But my question is as -- is about the Freedom of Information Act, and small time people like me can't get the same information you can, so for example I represent my little citizen association, and I ask [inaudible] County for some information on where they're spending money in a certain area, and they would charge me $850 to get that. And another time I asked, they said well it would be about three thous -- three or four thousand pages of -- or boxes, not pages, boxes of stuff that you'd have to go through, how, as a small time person who already has a fulltime job, how do we work with the Freedom of Information Act to get the information we want? >> Okay, somebody from the Library of Congress, Doctor Billington was asking me, in the movie version of all the Presidents Man, the reporters go to the Library of Congress to look at what the White Books, the White House has been checking out and somebody said, "Gee, can you go to the Library of Congress and find out what other people have been checking out?" And you're horror -- of course, no. But how did we get somebody? We went to somebody and it's in the movie and we said, "Sorry Doctor Billington, how about breaking the rules? How about helping us?" We're not going to misuse this information. Go to the people who have those documents and say, "Look, why don't you help me? Give them to me. You've got them here, I'll get them Xeroxed or something like that and an appeal, it's amazing, I -- in fact think that everyone is -- in the United States is a secret Chair believer in the First Amendment and appeal to conscience." If you can't get them to help you, call me and I'll call them on your behalf, okay? [Laughter and applause] [Inaudible]. >> I'm sorry that we don't have time... >> Give my e-mail -- e-mail is WoodwardB@WashPost.com and if anybody else has any other good information [background comment] don't hesitate, last question right? >> ...no. >> Oh I'm sorry, I'm overtime, I got it. Yes, quick. >> One last question. >> Hi, Mr. Woodward, [inaudible] big fan of your work. Unlike the young man who just came before me, I still haven't had a chance to read your book, but I look forward to it. But it seems like a theme throughout this book is this sort of both sides do it, color purple, bi-partisan thing, now of course politics is very much about having two different sides with, admittedly, you know, different views of American and different policy solutions, going out into public, presenting their views and then having the public decide through elections or through civil discourse, what policy direction they want to take. So I'm interested, in terms of this sort access you've gotten to Democratic and Republican leadership, and your view of the debt ceiling debacle, whether you've found that one side or another side was more intransigent or much more stubborn to negotiation or concessions than the other side? >> That's a great question. And I do put responsibilities on both sides, but I do say at the end, that if you look at Presidents Reagan, Presidents Clinton criticize them as you might in lots of areas, by enlarge on important national business, they work their will, they found a way. And in this case Obama did not find a way, the leader of this country is the President and if things go well or not well, it's going to be that these things happened in the Obama era, not the John Boehner era. And President's have to lead and President's have to learn how and in this case we got up to the goal line, it didn't take it over the end, the finish line here and so we live in a country with [applause] those where the maximum burden is on the President, but if you -- when you -- if you look at the book you will see the dealing with the Republican's is not really an easy thing, and as a left the Oval Office [applause] President Obama said, "You know, if Bob Dole or Newt Gingrich had been here, I would have been able to work a deal." Thanks so much. [Applause]. ^M00:46:07 [ Music ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov. ^M00:46:17 [ Silence ]