Adequately supportive of that traditional ally. People look at the arab spring which has developed into something unsparing like. The question is how much did an american president have to do with that . What can an american president do in response to that . Those are legitimate questions and they are questions you can be sure historians will be debating for a very long time to come. But that in a curious way goes back to my point, like him or dislike him, whatever, the fact that barack obama, and whatever his legacy is will engage the interest and attention the support and hostility of historians and others for a long time to come only testifies to the significance of his presidency and the magnitude of what he has attempted. Richard norton smith is our guest talking about the reporting after the president s win on the trade bills and also the relation ship with the Supreme Court on samesex marriage and their reporting that this was his best week ever. We are discussing his legacy. You mention the Supreme Court. This is something we knowing can measure right now. For example a significant part of george w. Bush legacy is his Supreme Court. His nominations. A significant part of obamas legacy legacy will be his Supreme Court nominations. The two bush appointees canceled out the two obama appointees. Thats how history gets written. Lets hear from jay in lancaster South Carolina on the democrats line. Mr. Smith, i was at a party the other night and people were talking about great eggnog ration addresses. They were talking about fdr and jfk and and someone mentioned gerald ford. I looked it up on the cspan website and it was a pretty awesome address. I i was wondering how that came about. Its a great question. The pres. Himself used to laugh about it because first of all, you have to remember, this was a unique inauguration. More than that because of the unique circumstances surrounding the transition from nixon to ford he couldnt prepare an inaugural address. There was no time between an election and inauguration day. This was put together the last minute. It is eight minutes long and he looked at it the day before he delivered it. There was a line was a line he thought was a little bit over the top. He thought it was a little bit harsh on the soontobe former pres. Nixon. Of course. Of course its the line we all remember our Long National nightmare is over. The speechwriter who like many people around for could speak very frankly to him, he went to the mat and said thats the phrase that people will remember. Of course hartman was right and ford was wrong. He was the first to acknowledge in later years that he had misjudged it and that bob hartman was right. One other inaugural inaugural address, if you want to read a great inaugural address, read would roll wilsons first and outgrow address. Woodrow wilson. That is not in our library. You said you thought the speech was awesome. What struck out to you as being awesome about it . I liked liked the brevity of it. It was just seem to be the right person at the right time delivering the right speech at the right moment. His humanity came out in it. Im glad you called him this morning. Lets. Lets hear from john in maryland whose in our republican line. I think its a little early since he has a year and a half left and so many things can happen as weve seen with that week that was with the trade success and the two Supreme Court decisions. By the way fdr tried to stack a Supreme Court so he could get more favorable rulings out of his appointees and that didnt fly but when he put president obama put soda my r and kagan in there, obviously they were his people. They think like him. Sonia soto mayor was caught in law school saying we dont have to say this but we do make policy. That should have knocked her out in the confirmation process. Alina kagan never served as a judge. I guess guess the closest thing she came to federal politics was a solicitor general. Her main case was obama care. Of course when course when obama care came to the Supreme Court the first time she didnt recuse herself. I dont know what these people were thinking. There has been a very favorable media, it sounds like as a president ial biographer you are in the same mode as michael bash loss who when he was on with ibis in the morning he was bragging about obama being the smartest guy whoever served in the office. His iq was overthetop and don said what is his iq . Well hes gotta be the smartest guy whos ever been the president . Well what is his iq . I thought you knew since youre bragging about his iq. Any thoughts . Ill let michael speak for himself, i think who think who knows who is the smartest president. I would suggest Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams were probably the most so lead role of the american president s. Woodrow went wilson is up there as well. Lincoln and washington are the at the top, franklin and Thomas Jefferson as well. George hwb bush, clinton and reagan are also ahead of obama. Do former president s generally receive a more favorable view from the distance . Is it absence makes the heart grow fonder or what . Thats. Thats a great question because generally speaking president s leave office at the nadir of their reputation. We have fatigue wish fatigue obama fatigue. What happens is once they leave office, they cease to be in our face. They cease to be political figures party leaders. They graduate to that position of elder statesmen. They go off and visit earthquakes and raise money for charity. This is another reason why it takes time before the first draft of history, which is journalism becomes the second and the third and the fourth. The more controversial ironically a president is, the more polarizing a president is the longer, the longer it takes for those emotions to cool. Richard nixon certainly one of the more controversial president said it would take 50 years before anyone could write about him with objectivity. Well, we are coming up on 50 years and there are several new books out. Thats another i count three new books this summer there are three new books on fdr and hes been out of office for 70 years. It just reinforces my point. Im not suggesting we half to wait 50 years or 70 years 70 years to pass judgment on the Obama Presidency but its going to be a while. The Business Insider headline, the last week that cemented obamas legacy, lets hear from the republican line. Good morning. I honestly believe in the final analysis, this president will go down as the most divisive president in the history of this country. So many of us, both democrats and republicans, have spent a lifetime spent a lifetime trying to create a seamless society. A homogenous society of bringing all people together collectively it seems to me that based on his background and some of his affiliations, based on what he fails to do more than what he does, he is creating a divisive society by design. Reason . I dont know. . I dont know. What is his true politics . It sure isnt traditional democrat as my father knew and grew up in. Its very difficult for someone like myself to get a handle on what he really intends or is tending to do. I dont think the republican dislike him as much as they distrust him. Not because of his race but primarily because of his programs. How he rammed rotted through nancy pelosi, the care act. How he did all these other things without regard, without an attempt to meet with leadership on the other side of the aisle. Lets hear your thoughts. Obviously the collar is entitled to his view. I would suggest and it may come as a shock, Abraham Lincoln was the most divisive president. It caused several states to leave the union followed by several more. For most of his presidency, he was literally in half of the former union regarded as a mortal enemy. It is only in retrospect that lincoln has been to some degree, sanctified. Lyndon johnson listen to people outside say lbj, how many kids did you kill today . It doesnt get much more divisive than that. I think actually, divisiveness is in the eye of the beholder. It has become, unfortunately somewhat the norm. I think we should ask ourselves some pretty tough questions about how we got to this point, and why there is such bipartisan distrust not only toward government and People Associated with government but whoever happens to occupy the presidency at any given time. The whole industry of this country, we all know there are Cable Networks on the right and on the left that thrive on the basis of denigrating whoever happens to be president. Ronald reagan, in the preinternet era who era who could go on tv and summon thousands of people to make phone calls to southern democrats to pass his budget. Those weapons no longer are available to an american president. Part of what the caller, the caller talked about this president being different. Part of that part of that is responding to the different media environment. Its not your grandfathers presidency. The bully pulpit has been transformed in many ways by the internet and other media. So the presidency is a work in progress. Certainly some of that is social media. Another caller is saying the most divisive is legacy and contrast. They will go down as the least Productive Congress failing to repeal the healthcare law over 50 times. A couple more calls, we hear, we hear from texas on the democrat line. Its pat. Pat youre on the air. I just like to know you feel history will remember the white house with the rainbow color. Thats the first time this has ever been done. It was a little tough to hear that. How do you think history will view the white house being bathed in rainbow colored paint . Im not not sure history as opposed to the Current Media will take a great deal of notice to it. History will pay much more attention to the decision and the process that led to the decision rather than the white houses choice of colors to celebrate it. Lets have one more call from akron ohio. Heres wes. I actually think there are three parts to the obama legacy. As far as verbiage goes i think you didnt build that as one that will go down in history for me. The other i agree with the other collars that he is the most divisive president we have ever had. Rich against poor, gay against straight, mail against female. You have to admit this has to go down in history as the worst recovery of any time since the war. Lets end on the economy because we havent talked about that. Where over the course of the last seven or eight years the legacy is now for pres. Obama. Its very much a work in progress. You cannot cannot fail to contrast where the economy was on the day barack obama first took the oval office and where it is today. I think history will give this president more present credit then contemporaries want to for the economic for bringing us back from the brink. By by the way i think if both George W Bush and brock obama deserve a lot of credit for working together during those critical month between the presidencies at a time when the economy could have gone over the brink and it didnt. At the same time, there is a very legitimate argument to be had, and we will hear a lot of it in the upcoming president ial campaign about the nature of the recovery and the pace of the recovery and above all, the income inequities that people see of jobs that pay less than the jobs they are replacing. It just illustrates how fruitful a debate we will have not just in 2016 but for a very long time. Richard norton smith ran several museums. He is working on a new book on gerald ford and of course our historian on our first lady series. Thanks again for joining us this morning on washington journal. My pleasure. We have more on obamas legacy. They interview the former deputy of staff. This 90 minute discussion happened happen the week after Supreme Court rulings legalizing samesex marriage and tax subsidies to help people buy insurance. Please welcome the correspondent. Thank you very much and for coming out to the first practice of july. Welcome to july and thank you so much for being there. Welcome to all of you in live stream land. We land. We have an amazing line up on president obamas big week. Attribute to my clinical colleagues in the kind of people that are going to be here that this came together over the weekend. President obama had this amazing week and we thought we should have a conversation about this. Here we are. In just a second, standing in the wings is ambassador the u. S. Trade ambassador, and and we will have to conversation about marriage. He has been there from the beginning and worked on this for more than a decade. The president of freedom to marry. The president of the religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist convention, he will talk to us about what hes telling his pastors about how they should talk about this issue now. For the big finish, a lot of you know jim mussina who is the architect of pres. Obamas reelection. President obamas reelection. We will talk about the Progressive Agenda goes from here and how pres. Obama has changed. Before we kick off id like to thank bank of america for the support of the series, on the road, breakfast lunch, snacks and cocktails. We appreciate them supporting these conversations about the biggest issues in washington. They have been a great partner for couple years and we are very appreciative to them for making these conversations possible. Now, without further ado id like to welcome the United States trade represent vented of. Congratulations. You have always said what happened last week was going to. Some people in the press doubted it. They were wrong. You have known pres. Obama longer than just about any one. Longer than michelle obama. I wont try to compete on those grounds but we have known each other for many years. We were in law School Together. They werent just in law School Together but they were on law review so they been youve been calling him mr. Pres. For a long time. What quality does he have on the mar review that he still has now . You can see a number of the same qualities. At the time, if people remember back to the late 80s, there was a lot of division on campuses and between conservatives and liberals. He was elected president of law review in part because he was trying to bring people together from different parts of the Law School Community and have a Cohesive Group put out the journal. He did a very good job of building consensus and including everybody. I see i see some of those same traits today. Anything different besides the fact that he doesnt publicly smoke . He has much more gray hair than he did then. But he really is i think quite a bit of continuity from who he was back then to how he has evolved as a political leader cents. Will start with the news. They popped up a story that he deemed a brass copy of the tcp intellectual property his headline leaked. Is the white house going to back bat . What would the free trade deal give pharmaceutical firms protection from cheaper generic drugs . Why are you carrying water for a big farmer . We dont comment on supposedly leaked drafts. I dont know which document he has. Let me address the substance of the issue which is, when it comes to those involving pharmaceutical products, our view is on one hand we want to incentivize the development and research of life treatments. Most of that is done by americans. On the other hand we want to ensure there is access to Affordable Medicines in developing countries. That is consistent with the direction we have received from congress in regard to how to deal with this issue. We are always trying to strike a balance. We have 40 million have 40 million americans whose jobs are dependent on intellectual property. We do think that is an important set of rights to enforce to protect those jobs here in the United States, but at the same time it is critically important that we maintain and increase access to medicine. We as a country have done this in a way where now 85 of all prescriptions filled are filled by generic producers. We dont think there is a contradiction between promoting innovation and promoting access to affordable medicine. Thats the approach we take internationally as well. If we were to put subtitles it would say it was a pretty accurate leak. I dont know if i would say that. The intellectual property chapters one of the chapters among the most outstanding issues. According. According to the article that was drafted prior to our last round of negotiations and want him in june, so it has already evolved since then. It will evolve further between now and the close of negotiations. Isnt the danger of this provision that it could mean fewer generics in higher drug prices . Know, what we have found around the world as you can only have generics if you have innovative medicine. You have to have a pipeline to feed the generic medicine. That generic pipeline is critical to maintaining and controlling healthcare costs in the United States and around the world. Its something we want to encourage but we also want to encourage innovation and invention. So people in the room and in live stream land please tweet us. I have the twitter machine here. Lets set the scene here a little bit. As bit. As you know we will talk about the president s historic, talking talking about trade and marriage and the agenda ahead. We talked about obamas defining moment. This is joe klein here in time that we sought to define him politically. The very week that his socialist said the Health Care Plan was upheld his quietly proposed plan were passed by a republican congress. How did you pull that off . It was a was a very good very good week across the board for Marriage Equality and the Affordable Care act that gave healthcare to 16 million americans that didnt have it before, and the trade agenda. Its the combination of many years of work in many areas. We worked very closely with con