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