communication director and i worked for president clinton. [applause] john edwards presidential campaign and in some ways it s a lot. nancy pelosi would say the same thing. you kind of grow and think about and learn from the losses in the tough situations more than other situations. and then the victories which come a little easier. susan and i come i first met her [inaudible] sara asked me if i would moderated and i was likee susan page? talking about nancy pelosi this is definitely my wheelhouse. i d on experiences of working for hillary and the second book she proclaims the declaration of independence. not a declaration of war and thats is what it s about. there s just something about her i don t like. sometimes there s just something about her that s incredible and there s something about her that is incredible and incredibly effective. and susan and i talked about this and thought for our discussion of madam speaker madam speaker to start with the question of what
Help me welcome leon panetta and mike allen. [applause] a thank you very much. Appreciate it very much good will come to you in lifestream land and all of you who are here. Somebody pointed out to me this is more expensive than hbo on demand, so we will try to make that worthwhile. Mr. Secretary, before we start here, do you want to say hello . [laughter] i would love to say hello to my rabbi, jeremy pasha was the chief of staff and his lovely wife, robyn. [applause] and jeremys parents are here as well and i thank you for coming. We want to thank politics prose and six van eyck for this amazing setting. Welcome to all of you in the balcony as well. We kick off, mr. Secretary youve been off for a week now talking about were the fights. Another week to go to head to california. Earlier today did you get tougher questions from the readers at gw . [laughter] cosco was kind of tough. People were shopping big, shopping for big things they are. They want you to deliver the best product you c
We wooel weel well look at challenges of the presidency. Four top aides, all of usveat sd president s of the tooits United States and weve seen the ities qualities of what takes for a r president to be able to govern. Weve seen qualities both good and bad. And i guess thats what i want to begin with. Is looking at president s that each of these individuals serve. What was their greatest strengtt and what was their greatest weakness . And how do you think history is going to look at them . We are talking about president reagan, president clent kbron, president bush and president le obama. Lets start with president reagan. Ken . Leon, thank you very much. Leave it to leon and sylvia to put together an alpha bet panbe. David axle rod, a. Ber skin boels, b. Rod, andy card, c. And duber steen, d. M aep p for pa netta. All of it is an absolutely joying to here with leon and ray and all of you. Ronald reagans greasest strengths. He knew why he ran for the presidency. And he knew what he would
Thank you, thank you all very much. And i welcome all of you to our final forum of our lecture series this year. Our theme as you all know is looking at 100 years since world war 1, 2014, 1914, an awful lot of history has occurred during that time. And to onanalyze the changes th have been made, we looked at war and peace and the changes in that arena, we have looked at government and we have also looked at the issue of freedom versus security. Tonight were going to look at the president of the United States and how president s make decisions. And president s very frankly influence all of those other areas that we just talked about. The president of the United States has today assumed incredible responsibilities in facing incredible pressures in that position. Since 1914, we have had 17 president s. Of the United States, all of whom will have various places in history. We have gone from wilson to harding, truman to roosevelt, kennedy to carter and reagan, johnson to bush and obama. Wha
The most important Strategic Initiative of any president over the last 40, 50 years, it was the strategic triangle of nixon and kissinger to allow the United States to build better relations with both china and the soviet union than they had with each other. And it was cia intelligence that provided the impetus to suggest that we could do this and as a result the soviet union would have to engage us which they did in terms of the treaty of berlin and the arms control agreements and we would end up with very good bilateral relations with both of them. So, the cia can be effective as a support instrument in this area. In terms of what needs to be done, because im running out of my time, i think we could do ourselves a lot of good by going back to that oped that president truman wrote in december of 1963. The warning about covert action, the warning that covert action is policy. And covert action, therefore, can taint clandestine collection and even taint intelligence analysis. That the c