Weekend, on cspan 3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Next on the president s how do make decisions, whether it is firing cabinet officials or going to war . We will hear from advisers to president s Ronald Reagan, bill clinton, george w. Bush, and barack obama. Former secretary of defense leon panetta moderated the discussion. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, and i welcome all of you to the final forum of our lecture series this year. I think, as you all know, we are looking at 100 years since world war i, 2014 to 1914, an awful lot of history. The changes that have been made, we have looked at war and peace and the changes in that arena. We have looked at the role of government, and we have also looked at the issue of freedom versus security. To take ae are going look at the president of the United States and how president s make decisions, and residents, frankly, influence all of those other areas that we just talked about. The president of the United States has today assumed andedible responsibilities facing incredible pressures in that position. Since 1914, we have had 17 president s of the United States, all of whom, you know, will have various places in history. We have gone from willison to harding, truman to eisenhower and nixon, kennedy to carter and reagan, johnson to clinton, bush, and obama. What can we learn from all of hase president s . And how the presidency changed in terms of the responsibilities that have to be confronted . We will look at the challenges throughodern presidency the eyes of a for you our top aides, all of whom have served president s of the United States, through the eyes of four top aides, all of whom who have served president s of the United States, and we are looking at president s that each of these individuals served. What was their greatest strength, and what was their greatest weakness . And how do you think history is going to look at them . Were talking about president reagan, president clinton, president bush, and president obama. Thank you very much. And sylvia toon put together an alphabet panel. [laughter] axelrod, a, etc. It is an absolute thrill and a joy to be here in monterey and with leon and sylvia and with all of you. Ronald reagans greatest strength. He knew why he ran for the presidency, and he knew what he would do once he was president. He would focus the country and on the United States rebuilding its economy and creating respect for america around the world. Cutting the rate of spending increase, cutting taxes, rebuilding our National Security, building up, and finding over burdensome regulations to eliminate. Ed all eightcus years to those priorities. He was able to put in practice, along with the private sector, obviously, 18 million new jobs in an economy that he inherited that with double digit inflation, double digit interest , and america was, as jimmy carter said, suffering malaise. At the end of the carter administration, most people suggested that the presidency might be too big in this modern era for any one person. They stopped saying that with and for all of the president s who served thereafter. Ronald reagan also understood that he was elected not just to make statements but, in fact, to govern and get things done. He knew that in order to forge consensus in washington, he needed to build consensus throughout america, and that would put pressure on washington. Understood the governing. Well, let me put it this way. Tip oneill, the venerable speaker of the house, used to say, i dont like compromising with Ronald Reagan, because every time i compromise with him, reagan gets 80 of what he wants. [laughter] and Ronald Reagan would say to us, well, ill take 80 any time and come back the next year for the additional 20 . Governing. That was a hallmark. All right, what was his weakness . His weakness was he had a tendency to trust everybody, and but why nancy and i he trusted everyone until proven and sometimes things just did not add up president clinton . Only one reason that leon asked me to come out here. He called me up, and he said, we are having this panel, and i want you to talk about bill clinton, and i said, but, leon, you know everything about bill clinton. And he said, that is why i want you to talk, so you will get the phone calls. I love leon panetta. You guys are lucky to have him. [applause] know, anything i say, you can blame it on him, because he taught me it all. Greatest strength. Clintonsesident greatest strength was his intellectual curiosity. And his absolute ability to do the homework it takes to understand a problem from all angles and his willingness to accept advice from people of all walks of life. Theknow, we could walk into oval office and give them a piece of advice, and we could say red, yellow, and green, and he would see orange, and then he would say wow. He could take a problem of no matter what magnitude, and he could distill it down into some facts that he could communicate it so that anybody could understand it, and that is a unique skill. We could have nobel scientists in any subject coming in two weeks from now, and we could not get him to hit a lick at a snake for the first 13 days. We would not do anything, but on would seeday, you books from the White House Library stacked up this high on thatesk, and he reads like old evelyn woods reading course. I do not know how many of you remember that, but so quick that you cannot believe he can retain it, and then he would call people on the periphery of the , and you would look at his phone logs that night, and he will have talked with people you just couldnt believe. [laughter] but people would come in for the first 45 minutes, he just listened to them, but the last 15 minutes, he would Say Something so profound that it would make you so proud that you could not stand it, and it was that intellectual curiosity and willingness to do his homework and to listen to people on all sides of the subject before he made a decision. And the weakness . [laughter] a oneword answer. Yes. History speaks to that. Andy, president bush . First president bush was a man of conviction. He was very grounded. He was also very deliberate and disciplined. Very courageous, and he had the courage to make a decision, and i would say his flaws were that he allow there to be a myth that he could not read when he was a very well read and took time to read while he was president , and it was usually relevant to the responsibilities he had, but he also kind of prefer to be from west texas when he really was well educated at yale, and so he allow there to be a perception that he was not as engaged as he was, in fact, but i think the great strength and notent to make a decision, to allow politics to drive a decision, but to allow conscience, character, and what he thought was right for the country to give definition to the decisions he had to make, and they were impossibly difficult decisions. First of all, let me say a word about leon, as well, because i had the opportunity to serve with him, and he is really the embodiment of public service, so he is the perfect guy to be running and if you like this. Director,n, budget cia director, chief of staff, secretary of the defense, and it makes you wonder, why cant you hold a job . [laughter] at them a director university of chicago department, and it is very much the same, our goals, which is to try to inspire young men and public service, and you are a great exemplar for that, so thank you for that. [applause] are an awfulere lot of young servicemen and women in the audience tonight, and i want to thank you, as well, again as you inspire us. [applause] talk, histo erskine intellectual curiosity was very familiar to me, because i have that same feeling about president obama. I have never sat in a meeting where i felt that he was overmatched or unprepared, and he was as stimulated by the whole array of issues that come before a president as anybody i could imagine, but i would say i was going to say that his strengths were that he is incredibly bright, thoughtful, and makesrative deliberative decisions, but i really think given the history of the moment in which he has served, the quality that i most admire about him was that he was willing and has been willing to make decisions that are in the best interest of the country, despite very, very negative politics at a time when we absolutely had to make those decisions, and i think the American People tend to find leaders at the right times to make those kinds of decisions, and he made those, and we went through some terrible crises, and i always felt good to be at his side, because i felt he would get to the right answer regardless of the politics, and i was mostly the guy telling in the politics, and i was almost always ignored, and i admire him for that. I likedarlier what about him best was that he listened to me so little, but i stringsthat everyones is also often their weakness, and so i think that the criticism of the president is the same, that he is deliberative, that he is notghtful, that he is spontaneous enough in his decisionmaking. I think it is a good tradeoff, but i would say that that is the criticism you most often here. You have all mentioned crises, and in many ways, a president is really tested by crisis, and what i would like to do is have you reflect on what was the worst crisis that you saw a president have to handle during the time that you were there, and how did he handle it . How will history speak to that . Kine, lets start with you. I think i will go international. [laughter] you know, i do not know how many of you can think that, but this was before Osama Bin Laden was wellknown, in this country, toleast, and we had a chance get him in afghanistan once, but to do that, we had to launch missiles and send them over pakistan, with whom we had a andy relationship, at rest, since there was that shaky relationship at best, and since there was a shaky relationship, we did not want to alert them to your early so that the information we had would leak out, so we sent the vice at rumble vice admiral at the air force academy to have dinner with the president of pakistan, and he told him exactly three seconds before the missiles crossed pakistan, and when those missiles landed, we missed osama minutes, i literally and the reason i always looked at that as a decision that took thatreal guts is we knew the chances were 50 50 that we would get him. Two, we ran a real chance of disrupting the relationships with a very important country that we were having to deal with, and three, this was during monica crisis, and we also knew that if we were that the Republican House and senate would accuse us of trying to divert peoples attention, and as you know, there was a movie out there dog, and hehe never hesitated a second. Glad we were able to finish the job. [laughter] [applause] andy . Crisis. , a president ll comes to office focused on what they talked about as they were campaigning to be president , and then reality sets in when they take the oath of office, and the truth is, when they take the oath of office, they probably think more about their inaugural address than the oath they took, but after the address is over, then the burdens of the job dark and president bush had significant burdens that showed up. The chinese forcing a plane down , and how was he going to react . What was going to happen . And president bush had significant burdens that showed up. Not a crisis. But it could have been. He was restrained and was seeking counsel and making phone calls, and the chinese were very slow to answer him, but then you have other crises that come i do not want to say you never anticipate them. They are usually storms, and probably the greatest crisis that caused the greatest concern for the president was hurricane katrina, and the frustration with that crisis was the president alone does not dictate the response, and there are laws that the federal Emergency Management agency must find a request from a governor to offer support, and that request has to follow a specific protocol that congress outlines, and we had a hard time getting one governor to make the right response or their right question or ask for the right information, and yet the public only sees the president s response. Do not appreciate the governors response, so that was frustrating. Probably the greatest crisis that any president faces, and i pray that president dont have to face this crisis, but too many do, how do you meet your Constitutional Responsibilities on a policy you did not invite, but it reads wires the president to keep that oath that he cannot keep without the fine men and women who take other oath to keep his oath and call them into service . And that is going to war, and any time a young man or a young woman is put into harms way, and they are invited to make sacrifices that the president would never invite on anyone, it is a burden the president takes, and going to war is always a crisis. Heavily on the president , and i watched it weigh very heavily on president george w. Bush, and i watched it weigh heavily on his dad, as well, so i would say that is the crisis, one that the law does not allow you to respond the way you would like to, a hurricane, and another one is the constitution says you have the sole responsibility to respond, but you cannot do it yourself, you have to count on other people to make sacrifices, and that word and ends up being the burden. Well, since bin laden is that word and ends up being the burden. Well, since bin laden is the truth is, for better or worse, there are a lot of crises to choose from under this presidency, and it is not over yet, but on december 16, 2008, we got together with the president elect and the Vice President elect, just a few weeks after we celebrated in grant park for the first time with his Economic Team together, and they gave us a briefing on the state of the economy, and christina romer, who was going to be with the council of economic advisers, spoke first. She was an expert on the great depression, and she went through all of her charts, and at the end, she said, mr. President , i think were in the midst of a recession that is going to be like anything we have seen not going to be like anything we have seen since the great depression, and they talked trillion, millions of jobs lost, and Timothy Geithner spoke, the treasury secretary incoming, and he said that Banking System is locked up, and it could collapse. No loans are being given, and then peter or zach, the incoming budget director said, peter the incoming budget director, said this will add to so at this point in time, the president entertained them and dismissed a recount. [laughter] and we basically became a triage unit trying to right the economy, and it shrunk by 8. 9 , and we were losing 800,000 jobs per month. The stock market was heading to millions of had foreclosures, and it was the worst situation any president in faced since roosevelt 1933, and what followed was a recovery act, a large Spending Program at a time when people were concerned about deficits but necessary to plug the hole in the economy. We had to take steps to stand up to the financial industry, which was reviled at the time for the role it played were perceived to have played in the financial crisis and the train wreck of , and the u. S. Auto industry was on the brink, and chrysler and gm were weeks away so you atuptcy, and all of those things, and we had to step in and save them, and none of these steps were positive. They were all difficult, but it is what his responsibility required, and he took them, and he took them with eyes open, knowing that the politics was bad, and he never asked about the politics or allowed us to put the politics on him, because this is what he was elected to do. President Ronald Reagan. Reagan became beloved during the campaign in 1980, i think the country really fell in love with him when they saw the grace and dignity and humor after the assassination attempt, which is clearly a major first crisis for the administration. Reagan forget president as he was being wheeled in on the gurney to gw hospital saying, i hope all of you doctors are republicans. [laughter] of the story is that the surgeon leaned down and said, today, we are all republicans, or what he said to forgot toney, if duck. We lostcrisis is when the challenger, and Ronald Reagan became the chaplain to the country in that address, comforting america on the loss of those wonderful astronauts, and then there was where Ronald Reagan was accused of walking away from a deal, a strategic arms negotiation, with Mikael Gorbachev because he would have to sacrifices sdi, strategic defense initiative, which he thought would keep more pressure on the soviet union. He was criticized, but ultimately, it got gorbachev back to the table. The next one that i want to Everybody Knows the signature line of the reagan years. His visit to the berlin wall. But let me suggest to you that it wasnt that easy. The state department and the National Security folks all opposed that one paragraph in that speech, because they thought it would undercut gorbachevs efforts with peers toward the and glass noticed glasnost, and he asked me, and i said you are president. You get to decide. And then he said, i think we will leave it in, and i explained the objections of the others, and Ronald Reagan said, no, this will help and put him even more strongly towards bargaining and negotiating. We went to berlin. The night before, there had been massive riot against the United States because we had put pershing two missiles in germany and elsewhere. George shultz called me on the phone and said, will you tell that i share my departments objection to that speech, to the paragraph in that speech, and i hope you will convey my views to the president , and as everyone on this panel knows, when a cabinet secretary does not ask for 10 minutes of the president calendar but asked you to convey the information, it means i have covered myself with the bureaucracy. [laughter] if the line fails, and it is a major road crises, it is on your shoulder. We have all had tha