Meet the press Moderator Chuck Todd is up next interviewed by guest host dan balz. Host host chuck todd, welcome to cspan. We have been on opposite sides of the table where you asked the question. Mr. Todd looking forward to it. Host the first obvious question why the title . Mr. Todd i was trying to get at something that got the idea it was an out sider and part of him is a political loaner outsider and i think he would where that with a badge in his political career. It answers the question of why has he struggled running washington . He wasnt a creature of washington which is why people gravitated toward him. Year six, going to year seven, and i think this is to try to figure out, i hope, i am trying to help people figure why he struggled to run washington and it is because he is a stranger. Host do you think he as much a stranger today as when he first came . Mr. Todd in some ways, yes. I think it came through when you saw him struggle to get a small slice of minority to sign off on a budget deal he negotiated and the Immediate Reaction from members of congress in his own party, oh, i didnt know he had my phone number. I think that representation is. I certainly dont believe i think he thinks he knows how this town runs. In some ways i dont think he cares he has been told he is not running it well. In many ways he feels washington was broken before he got here, he is upset he was able to quote unquote fix washington but in his mind he tried to operate around it. Host you are currently the post and moderator of meet the press for a number of years you had a Daily Program on msnbc and you were the chief White House Correspondent as well. How did you find time to write a serious analysis of this president . Mr. Todd part of it is i am two years late. The public thought it was coming out the december before the reelect. They thought december of 11. So there is that aspect. I had a good writing and Research Partner henry wilson. But part of it is was the luxury of television. I think i could not have done this in your job i could not have done this as a print report in some ways or even in my old job at the hot line because the little stuff i pick up along the way, one of the reviews i got where they called me out in a positive way was it struck me it was like stuff he could not get on air all of the time and he wanted to complete the story. There is part of that with television you dont get to put everything you learn on the air. I cant explain it. It wasnt a burden it just sort of stuck. I might not have felt i needed this as an outlet. Host to what extent did the project change over the time you were doing it . Mr. Todd it changed a lot. I didnt expect to end up on Hillary Clinton but it kept coming back. You were not going to know the end of the story unless you were ten years past your deadline. That was part of the challenge. My publisher pushed me and i pushed back. I thought it had to be after your six year is over. Robert was out of box and wrote this a book around bush six year later. What the presidency in the six years is what the presidency is remembered for. I think in ten years from now there might be more on the economy and now. Ten years it might be more Foreign Policy. Ten years it might be more race book. We dont fully no. I look at it this way. If what you and do every day it was only attempting to write a draft. Not the final draft. Host one of the things that intrigued me reading through this is there are moments in a sense where you step out of the narrative and provide a tuitoral. How did that come about . Was it deliberate . Mr. Todd sometimes i found myself. But it is important to include. If a reader wants to under the prison with which prism i am profiling him they need to understand howioview the system i am working for with president obama. Before getting to the specifics you deal with in the book and that is how do you sum up the president s legacy at the end of year six knowing it is not a definitive judgment . Mr. Todd i go back and say the big idea of obama was the guy going to change the politics. The guy that was going to take us out of this red and blue. It didnt work. He wasnt able to do that. There is an argument to say circumstances didnt allow it. This isnt the presidency he was going to have he thought. What he thought he was going to do and what the presidency became in the First Six Months are two different things. As ron emanual will argue saying this was thrust upon him and we have no same to save the economy. That is all good and well. That was the whole idea. On that store he failed. He hasnt lived up to his great promise. As a president , commander in chief, as somebody who implemented the economic recovery which i think over time is going to look better and better for him. I think it is focused on health care more than anything else because it is consumed at the presidency. Host i expect you thought about this. If we had not had the economic collapse we had in 2008 would that have allowed him to make more progress on bringing washington together . The theory was things are go bad the republicans and democrats will be forced to Work Together . Mr. Todd i believe it. I fully believe that the mandate would have been and he would have read that. It is about bringing washington together. Without the economic collapse, you go through the first what ifs. He wasnt have 50 democratic senators. The war game i want do is what would his relationship be republicans if he always needed 610 to vote with him from the very beginning. He didnt need them ever. And the republicans didnt have to work with him either. They had the luxury of saying they can run everything. And he had the luxury of saying i dont need to fully deal with you either. Without the gimmicked collapse, 5455 economic i think there is a lot of ways the presidency would have changed in the first year. Host you develop an essence a series of case studies. Stimulus package, health care, repeal of dont ask dont tell, arab springs, so on. Which of all of these do you think represent the best of obamas leadership style and which ones highlight the limitations . I think the arab spring does both. Dont ask dont tell was the best. When you look at the case study this was it here. What i think is his best two months working with congress turned out ought to be the best. They had a game plan on to do everything. They didnt allow anyone to bully them. They just had a plan to go about it whether it was put biden on the tax cut and get out of that jam. The bush tax cuts when they decided to punt them and then there was dont ask dont tell. And you say which one . It is in part of that and the fact they never quit and were relentless. In a way they sit there and say at other points why did that one work out the way it did . Why were they as focused on hat . Why did they have a plan that predated the losses and midterm . They did. I think they were helped by the fact there was an inevitability ability it i think in the pentagon which helped. I think that there was certainly Public Opinion in their favor on this one a little bit. And the Republican Party didnt win on it. I think it was one of those things they felt like it could go under the radar. And in many ways they did. When you end up with dont ask dont tell i was knew at covering washington but talk about something that consume consumeed consumed the first year of the clinton presidency. Totally out of nowhere for bill clinton and set the table for a disasterous first 18months for him. In behihindsight, some of the s i wrote over a five or six years period was compelling. The dont ask dont tell chapter was finished two years ago. And look at where we have gone on marriage equality. It was an important story and the one time they didnt give up. If this doesnt work in the house we will try it in the house. With the head scratchers, why didnt they have the same mindset and strategic. I make a bigger deal about it. There was a spending bill early on and the viewer knows what i am talking about hopefully but there was a leftover spending bill from the bush era, democrats wrote it, and they decided to hold it for their democratic president. They knew they were going to get a democratic president so they said we can wait, we can wait. It was loaded with earmarks. Host 9,000 of them. Mr. Todd this was the first test of washington versus obama. You said you would never sign bills are earmarks so veto it. And he said dont make the chairman of the house appropriation angry. Dont make nancy pelosi mad because it will be harder to do your job later. Obama is much more pragmatic and very cautious as an individual. He would push the envelope and pull back. Host do you think it changed the perceptions of the presidency in some way . He is seen an an independent actor here in washington. Republicans would be forced to say nice things about him. I dont want to use the toward triangulate but it would have put him more he believes to this day that he is the honest broker in the negotiating room. I think it could have been the equivalent of firing the air Traffic Controller for reagan. Host part of the argument seemed to be if you do this it will poison all of the relationships with the democrats and the rest of your agenda will be at risk particularly health care. Mr. Todd you sit here and trickle down. It empowered the Congressional Democrats and allowing them to control the time table and legislation on health care put it this way. Doddfrank, they wrote that. Many people in the Treasury Department thing only four senators understood that the system led for wall street had the ability to do it. They felt like they had the ability to do it. Part of the reason they were so aggressive at writing doddfrank is they realized they didnt have time to let it get bogged down. Host to what extent did they have a plan to get health care through and how much did they have to adapt . Mr. Todd i call it the butterfly effect. Tom daschle not getting confirmed as the health and Human Service secretary was the butterfly. Former Senate Majority leader. He was going to be in charge of the office on the policy. Host what is the significance on the west wing . Mr. Todd you have access to the president and chief of staff in a way that has that. Ask secretary clinton if she had more influence in secretary of state . Any secretary of state living now says the National Security advisor gets to be the last word. You can pull somebody aside. You are there all of the time. It is like if you work i work in washington. All of my bosses the in new york. Sometimes you have to be seen. Imagine working at a bureau outside of washington. Harder to understand the dynamics of how the editor process. Host is he able to get max bauchus who was slowing it down because he was desperate to have a bill . Kathleen sebelius is qualified for run but no washington political skills. She had not been here. They had a great plan. It is up ended because he cannot get confirmed because of a tax problem so they abandoned having a ceo of health care. If you look at the problems from the legislation passing, to writing to, to implementing it. They had the right idea and they abandoned it i would argue. Host what conclusion do you draw about the debate that went on about various points about whether to go big or go small, get what you can and not hold up the system for the big c comprehensive bill. This is too big with where the economy is. Chuck schumer made it very clear how he feels on this. If you look at the history of modern president s going back the last 50 years, most of the accomplishments in the agenda happen in the first two years and the rest are managing problems or fixes. They were right to do whatever it took, i think, the lesson a new president is going to have from this, and i think it could be the wrong lesson short term, is if you look at obamas success in Getting Health Care but failure to do immigration, capandtrade and other things, they will look back and say i should have grown more in the first two years. You only get two years to govern and get your agenda through. You have obama, bush, clinton, going back to reagan who did tax reform in the last two years. Go back to lbj. It is amazing. You get a smaller window to push your own agenda. In hindsight obama is probably saying i should have done immigration and capandtrade earlier and not been afraid to overload the system. Host you write the oil spill in the gulf is a great example of what obama is and isnt as a leader. What do you mean . Mr. Todd the product cleanup was a success. Bp paid. The gulf, we are trying to measure. It is remarkable where that oil went. Job well down. What we learned is he doesnt do th theatrics well. People were angry. And you know the guys in louisiana. There are colorful politicians there. And they were dominating the story line and they were looking angry and upset like what is bp doing. Where is the federal government . Lets not pretend it is anything else. This president , the least p political guy we have had. He is not a Political Animal in that respect. So robert, the press secretary at the time, goes into him and says mr. President you need to look angry about this oil stuff. You need to show anger. And his response was how much oil is that kombic going to clean up . And he said it isnt going to clean up any oil but it is going to buy you time and space and get these guys off my bad. The president got out there and he doesnt do angry well. But he did his best and he bought a little political time. But you know, the oil disappeared and it disappeared as a potential problem. The federal government managed this. Too well. The Energy Secretary at the time figured how to get a camera there when they needed. But the problem was seeing it every day. So it was reminded of the crisis. He handles it but their pr instincts were a mess. And part of that is he is not he said this do me before i dont do the theater well. Part of it is his upbringing. We dont know what it is like to grow up being africanamerican and having someone judge you by the color of your skin. He has. He had to learn to compartmentalize in ways many past president s havent. It is a unique skill but sometimes it can mess up perception. Host there is a lot of Foreign Policy in the book. I want to talk about two things. Afghanistan first consumed a considerable amount of time during the first year in office. Walk us through how he approached that and what it tells us about the leadership style, the approach he takes to big issue, and what lessons he took away. Mr. Todd he came in, and only a nine month process of deciding how to fix the quote unquote good war. He called iraq the dumb war that meant afghanistan in his mind, or he was leading people to believe he is not antiwar just antiiraq war. Host do you think that was genuine or a political cover because he didnt want thpeople thinking he was a pacifist . Mr. Todd i would assume it was a political state departments decision except how he pitched himself saying he would not be afraid to go into afghanistan to get an operative. He did have to do that to get osama bin laden. I dont think he is antiwar but cautious. I think he was i think he has proven he is not antiwar. In afghanistan, there was an expectation that you campaigned and we were loosing and you providing the sources we need for afghanistan. The military Industrial Complex was certainly taking advantage of what they saw was a promise they feel implied. Obama never said he felt like he was going to increase troops in afghanistan but it was implied. It was certainly implied. He took nine months. The initial recommendation was 140,000 troops and he gave them 130 troops. It took nine months. He was frustrated the pentagon only new troop level. He was it was a media creation and what we wanted was you will never meet a general who thinks this when they are running a war. I think that was a frustration. The last we couldnt get the pentagon to take seriously of only giving you 25,000 troops. Come up with a strategy only using 25,000 troops. Host he said i asked for option and you only gave me one. Mr. Todd there is a simpson episode that has president a, b, and c and they are all versions of the same option and that is what the president looked like from the pentagon. 120,000 troops, 130,000 troops, and so on. He felt boxed in. Mike mullins admits it looks like he did box him in. We never intended to. The president does get the crystal at the time. The person running the Afghanistan War at the time before getting tired gives him an end date. We wanted to send the message to the pentagon you are not going to tell me everything. You are getting your way in what you need for troops but i am going to announce an end date. Host is it your belief that setting the end date was as much aimed at the pentagon than the Democratic Base . Mr. Todd i think it was mostly aimed at the pentagon. I think he thinks he was elected to end wars and find other ways. That is why it took him so long to come around on isis and iraq because he feels almost like he is breaking a promise that he was elected to do. But i think what we took away from it and if you look at the relationship with the pentagon he has done more and near try to distance himself from the pentagon or find new leadership in the pentagon. The whole point of the chuck hagel thing, not that he wanted a weak secretary of defense, but we wanted someone and felt like it was year he wanted more influence over it. He feels like the pentagon was always against him. Host he is about the have his fourth secretary of defense. Each of the previous three had criticism about relationships with the white house and some directly critical of the president himself. Does this saytioni something ab the lack of what the president s understanding of this position is . I think it is the latter. I think it is are eminder it is hard to manage that building. This guy is cutting keith with clinton and critical of the president s leadership decisions and how he managed the pentagon. He thought the inner circle was too tight and the white house has nothing but praise for ash carter and thinks he knows the building inside and out. I think it is an acknowledgment of president obama and he learned bringing in an outside i thought it would work and it didnt. I need someone who knows everything about it. So i almost think the pick is an acknowledgment that bob gates is who you need running this. You dont need a politician. You need someone who has been a super star. I forgot until i read the book it was a question from you that prompted the red line comment on syria. Walk me through that but the question i have is was there a bigger Foreign Policy mistake that the president made or was this the biggest . Mr. Todd i think history will tell us that. The management of the arab spring is the most debated part of the Foreign Policy going forward. If not for this or that. I had a former Democratic Center to this day who believes pushing out mubaric and tell the prot protes protesters we are with you. Telling the protester of any regime we will be there. We will be there for the syrians. You cannot look at the syria decision, the nondecision to strike in 13 at the time of dealing with assad and taking sides more than just retoreically without understanding the decision process behind egypt because i think they are all one sent a message to the other and certainly sent a message to the entire region. We look back in hindsight and it is interesting and i am in the arab springs and i think that president clinton or mccain would not have publically pushed bubaric out. I am convinced, especially the more i learned about the debate. When you have Hillary Clinton, bob gates, and joe biden and old hands that knew him in the way obama didnt. They didnt have the sense of a long standing relationship with this necessary articate you to deal with sometimes. And they believed it was unevitabune inevitable. Lang standing ali and the idea that america has been criticized for standing behind totalitarian regi regimes in the middle east. This is obama being obama and i think in hindsight it turned out to be more of a dominant effect than anybody would have seen coming. Could things have been different . Worse . Would he have left on his own without the United States being involved as much . Maybe. There is a lot of ways. It is what it is. That takes us to syria. To go back to to the original question. When did he draw the line . On the 12th. The day after todd aikin used the phrase legitimate rape claiming that a womans system when being truly raped couldnt get pregnant. It became this electrify moment in the campaign. The Obama Campaign saw a way of putting romney in the corner and also the entire republican side. The white house was looking for a day that way to talk about it without looking like it. They came into the Brady Press Briefing room and made a generic statement on the economy and then he takes the first question and it is on todd aikin. We are three or four questions in and i went with the other Foreign Policy and you know these things when you are in press conferences i feel like i am not out there looking at nbc news and all of us reporting. Camping got touched on. Lets do Foreign Policy and i and about the chemical weapons and he said the use of it would be a red line. He volunteered the use of red line. I never used the phrase. He used it twice. I think, look he himself, what does he call it . He doesnt necessarily say he maybe should have bombed syria but he does admit how they handled it they didnt handle it so well. We could have gotten theater right i think on those things, he said. But you cant help but wonder would isis be bogged down in a syria civil war would iraq be more or less stable had he helped overthrow assad sooner . Host the terrible what if. Mr. Todd and who are we to war game this. Host i would like to ask you about the president and various people who have been around him or he has dealt with and i would like to start with Hillary Clinton. You said you anticipated when you started this book what is the relationship between the president and Hillary Clinton . Mr. Todd i think personal a lot better than people realize. And this is something i have the impression they are more alike as politicians than perhaps hillary and bill are. They are both come to politics from the campaign side, the theatric side of it, and they had to learn it. It is not instinctual to them. Bill clinton is instinctual populist. Just this idea of they are peoplepeople. They go into a big roomnd desperate to have everyone like them. For Hillary Clinton and it obama it is learned. They like competing but they dont love that part of it. So they bonded over part of that in the way intrusiveness made them personally. The staff, there is a lot of problem. There are people in the obama world right now that are not going to work to 2016 because they cannot bring themselves to work against or for her. What about bill clinton relationship . It was rocky. How is it now . Mr. Todd i think it is better. I write it this way because i believe it. I think they see the swaths and then the flaws first. Bill clinton looks at a obama and see as guy who is not an ex executive and doesnt understand how to explain politics to regular people. I think obama thinks here is an undisciplined guy. Smart, disciplined and how do you do yourself with that. I think they see each others flaws first. They have come to get to respect each other more. I think there is almost a lack of respect between the two of them. Host what do you think changed that . Mr. Todd obama suffering so badly in 2010. It was like now you know how it feels. And i think obama started to appreciate bill clintons talents. Host which came after that . Mr. Todd their bonding experienced happened with the meeting at the white house. A fantastic theater of where the two of them this was not obamas idea. They had called a lid which was lingo for saying we will not produce any more news today if you need to go home you can go home because you dont have to worry about us making news and bill clinton is wanting to make a statement and the key is locked. And everyone is saying you want to do watt what . It was a treat to be in the room. I had to do a stand up so i today to be there. Luckily i had to be there for the work and it was a great coincidence. But bill clintons able to explain why obama had to break the promise and not repeal the bush tax cuts it was the first time he got bill clinton to explain this and he knew he would do it better. And bill clinton was the explainer and chief of obama. Mr. Todd host what is the relationship with the Vice President and him . Mr. Todd it is better than the staff and the Vice President. Many members of the staff view Joab Joe Biden as a wonderful resource of political history but that is it. They dont see him as the person that knows how to get something done. I think some of the staffers who got older and seen the president lose battles in washington appreciate his skills more. I think what is interesting now, and it could change, but i am trying to think in the modern era, cartermondale i think is the own one with Vice President and president that like each other all the way through. Bush lost cheney and cheney lost bush around this time. Clinton and gore had their very public split. Reagan and bush were never tight. Nixon never had anything with any of this Vice President s. So this is unique. This is one of those that is a closer longer term friendlier relationship than anyone. Host this isnt the book but i want to pitch forward on this issue because of the potential tension between the Vice President and Hillary Clinton over 2016. How has the president tried to manage that . Mr. Todd he wants to give advice to biden if he plans to do it. The staff has taken advantage of the interest level enough where some of the voters meet there and the president is done with it and biden is happy. I think obama and this is where i think one of the negative legacies is going to be he is leaving the Democratic Party infrastructure worse than when he got there. He treated the Democratic National committee the way some of the bane companies treated other companies. They viewed themselves so outside of washington they were going to grow their own policy and be their own party. Host he is the first democrat since roosevelt to win the majority both times. Twice. Not just one. He is seen as somebody who keeps the party at arms length. Hasnt been a Party Building and doesnt seem to care about the party. That is what comes across. And you want to know why really looking at problems with con gregal democrats . Because that is what they see. The white house says we show up for the events and help them raise money. But they had different versions. Oit uzobama for america and then organizing for america and organizing for action. They wanted to start their own entity and they may be right the Obama Coalition is unique to obama. It became part of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. He used to to build the Republican Party. The big criticism here is it got better in 14 but a little late in the game. They almost viewed the dnc as a toxic place. Part of it was they were the nonestablishment figure in the primary and assumed all washington institutions were the same. When some staffers that was burned deep in them and part of the motivation. We are not going to play this. All of the members of the dnc are clintonites. They didnt want to take it over and take ownership of it. I know i got off on a tangent but it goes back to 16. I dont think what will be interesting with obama is he views the third term with biden. And i think he would be working i think joe biden would be asking for more help, Hillary Clinton will not ask for more help. He will be as helpful to her as she wants. But i get the sense there would be more of a personal ownership of biden as the nomiee than there will be for hillary. Host you say the way campaigns are run is positive for obama. Mr. Todd have you met a campaign, republican or democrat, that isnt trying to immolate some kind of the Obama Campaign from 2008 and to a greater extent 2015 . He redefined the idea that anal analytics are a big part. You cannot go on tv advertising anymore. Your technology should be connected with everybody. Dont be afraid to go find people outside of the world of Political Consultants to find the experts. It made the entire industry rethink itself. And you saw i dont know a liberal democrat in california or whatever you had them using the obama template. Host another interesting thing in the book was say the president is frustrated by efforts to pin him somewhere on the spectrum. How does he see himself . Mr. Todd he believes he is a progressive but a pragmatist. If you give them ten issues and say they will have the same compco compromise but get their ten different ways. He doesnt believe he is as liberal as his opponents thinks he is. But i think it knows the fact his negotiating style has been rational on one hand. It is like this is the minimum i am willing to do and lets people know. And the rules of washington assume he doesnt mean that is the millenninimaminimal. That is his opening bid. You also write about a couple points in the book the issue of communication and the different between candidate obama and president obama and the power of speech and his own frustration during this presidency at not being able to communicate more effectively. I think people think of him as an effective communicator remembering the campaign of 08 and even 2012. Why was he frustrated by it . Mr. Todd the came campaign had a simple premise. When they ran into a problem, he gave a speech and it would fix it. For the most part when you talked about a Political Campaign it worked that way. You look at framing the economy and the speech, even though president ial, was about framing the campaign. So Campaign Speeches worked for him. It was it would stop the bleeding on a political problem he was having. I think he learned the wrong lesson. When he is running on problems give a speech and that hasnt running into problems worked. This is where i think i cannot fully judge this. Are we living in an era are no president could manage the way our new media climate goes from crisis to crisis and forces the idea that a president has to respond to everything whether there are missing furl girl said in nigeria or a plane shot down and this focus of where is obama . Where is the president . I want to wait until the next president to see if somebody else is better theory of the case. I dont know if this is a manageable media climate. I am open to the idea. I think they are uniquely not good at it. I think as fast as they were to respond they are more methodical now as president and head of the government there is an argument to be made that methodical is a good thing. You dont want to be rash buchlt i think that but they never found the touch of when to untopple something. I think ebola they were upfront tried to be up front and no one noticed and the ebola case became news and he took heat. I think the