And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. So 11 days, today is january 9th. January 20th, a new president takes over. When i say that, 11 days left in the obama administration, what do you think . I think there is still a lot of work weve got to get done in these 11 days. I think that im glad its just about that and not many more. And i think that thank god we did as much as we did until now. Because ill tell you what, i used to say this in the start of the second term. The beauty of being around for two terms is first of all it means you got reelected but second of all you also have perspective of how quickly those first four years went and the second go even faster. So you say 11 days, a say it gives me anxiety because we have some work to do but it gives me a lot of relief too. Rose what do you have to do . Ive got to move a lot of dooments to the national archive, that is the first thing weve been worrying about. We have a team that has been working on this lit reallily this whole last calender year. Moving, you know, hundreds of millions of emails, hundreds of millions of documents be pursuant to the president ial records act which is a post water gait. Rose hundreds of millions of emails. Hundreds of millions of email. Rose all public emails go into this. Correct them all go into the national archive, they become public records, searchable by the public. Were doing their business. They get a chance to look at our emails. And so thats one thing we have got to do the other thing is we have business yet that we want to get done. Rose like what. Were making a series of good arguments this week about the Affordable Care act. Because we think that some of the debate that is beginning really today in the senate in earnest would benefit from kind of us, the insertion of the facts and experience that weve had with the act. And then the other big thing we re doing everything that we can to get the next president and his team, everything they need to be ready on january 20th as of 12 01 because he is going to be president. That is in the constitution, there are no do overs or start overs on that one. What will you miss the most . Ill miss the people. I will miss the team of people, it is an unbelievably capable committed group of people. I say this all the time. That you know, a guy we work with, says that if you can design anything about your work, you want to design the people you get to work with. You know, we spend more time together than we do with our families, you know. And if. Rose you better like them. You letter better like them and you better respect them and you better treat them with respect and with dignity. Because by the way, you know. Theyre going to see you the your best and see you at your worst. Rose tomorrow in chicago the president will give his farewell. Yeah. Rose the tradition goes all the way back to george washington. It does. Rose president s have left general eisenhower famously. Great speech. Rose great speech, industrial, what are the themes that this president who you know so well, almost like a brother, feels. Well, you know, i have seven brothers, so. Rose an four sisters. Thats right. And my so my job with the president , my relationship is im his staff guy. Ive always been that. I always understood that. I hope one day i will be his friend. Rose but he calls you his friend, he calls you his friend. And i aspire to that, believe me. But ill he is still working the speech. But i think what you will hear tomorrow is a lot of what you have heard since he started. It is partly why he wanted to go back to chicago to give the speech. Because you know, this is a place where working on the south side of chicago in the neighborhoods under, in the shadows of the abandoned steel mills as a Community Organizer with people who had been, you know, knocked out of jobs that there to for had been, you know, real paths to the middle class, that he recognized that he had a gift for organizing. He had a gift for getting people working together towards the same goal. And i think thats what you will hear a lot about from the president tomorrow. The importance of sticking together, working together, standing up for what you believe in. And then fighting like hell for it. Rose he believes america strong. He believes america strong and he believes america, america is an exceptional power. And he believes that his, as he said, numerous times his story, his personal story is possible only in this country. And i happen to believe that tooment and you see it all over this city. Rose raised by one parent. Raised by one parent, got to know his dad only sparingly. Raised by grandparents. And you know what, he got the shot that he got because he had a good education. That is part of his police kal success, he was able to make his narrative in 2008 a story of america. Yeah. Well trk is a story of america. He didnt have to make it, it is the story of america. Rose but he had to tell it. He had to tell it. Rose and make it his narrative. Is he an believable story teller. Rose he will talk about his narrative. He will talk about his narrative. He will talk about the fact that that narrative can still be true here. But again i dont want to get ahead of his speech. Hes still working it. One thing i do know is that this president , i am never going to get ahead of him and cody and the speech writers on this one, thats for sure. Rose so we will have to wait until tomorrow to see what he says. I think so. I think so. Rose my guess is he will talk about the media, not about criticizing but how its changed. And how it affects democracy because hes been talking about that theme. Yeah. Rose in some exit interviews. Even if he does it in the speech he has been talking about, weve done a good job on this in some places. But weve also been on the wrong end of this. Information is moving super fast. Stories move super fast. When i talk to my predecessors, they talk about some of them the most important set of calls they make at any given day was you know at the end of the day on friday when they call the news anchors to talk about the weekend and talk about what happened the week before and the week ahead, thats just not the e media is much moree in today. Disaggregated. Its much more specialized. People can get their media the way they want it. From the sources they want. And sometimes you dont know where the source is coming from. Thats correct. Rose as he has talked about in terms of fake news. Yeah, yeah, correct, correct. Rose and then we have a president that tweets, a president elect. Well, the president talked about that a little bit yesterday. And he said that that has been a tool that has served the president lech very well. It gets him very instantly in touch with his with his voters with the media. But he also talked a little bit about how theyve talked about. Rose 140 characters. Yeah, well, you know, i mean information is moving fast, right. Rose suppose you were giving a farewell address. What would you want to say . You have been by the side of barack obama since he was in the senate. Youve seen two campaigns. Youve seen a white house from the oval office. Youve traveled with him as he has met foreign leaders. You in some sense controlled who had access to him. What does Denis Mcdonough say in his farewell. I tell you what i would say is first of all, i dont know who it would be like an empty hall. Here is what i would say, i would say thank you, its an unbelievable opportunity to watch the president do what he is doing. Second thing is i would say as amazing as the approximates story is, that is what has always made america great. Im as unlikely a chief of staff as he is unlakely a president , i guess. Right . Ive got ten brothers and sisters. Ive got, you know, i grew up in minnesota and here i am. I didnt even really he know these jobs existed. But thats because in this country if you take a shot, you will get it. Rose what are you going to tell your grand children . There have been moments that you say to yourself i will never forget this. Yeah. You know, god willing i will have grandkids and that will be a great thing, one. Two, what i will tell them is that the things that make you get a shot to be chief of staff or a staffer in the white house or you know, staffer in the senate or the house or to be hardworking, to get smart, get as smart as you can on a topic, argue like hell your position, and if you lose the argument, you fall in behind whatever the decision is and you get on with it. Nobody needs to know a staffers position. Rose so that brings me to the question of what does the chief of staff do . I mean give us a sense of your day,s what its been like. When do you see the president , who do you see before that . Are you there for his security briefings. Yeah, so i start the morning with my security briefing. I start the morning with a workout and i get my security briefing. Then we go into a series of meetings with the senior staff. One in the cheaf of staff office, one in the roosevelt room. Then the president comes down and he has his security briefing and i join that with the National Security advisor, the Homeland Security advisor, deputy National Security advisor. And the deputy National Security advisor for Strategic Communications and the Vice President and his National Security advisor. And thats the first time i see him in the day and then you know, we go into meetings throughout the day and then i see him before he goes home at night. It depends on what is happening, right . Its a lot of what we are doing is being driven by what is happening, getting us ready or getting our arguments ready for a fight on the hill. So we have basically during the morning a lot of prep time for various press engagements and other things. In the afternoon it is really dedicated in the main toe policy development, either in our National Economic council, in our Domestic Policy Council and our National Security council. And the office of science and technology policy, everybody, every day is ng kraing out new ideas and implementing things like the Affordable Care act. Rose people say that anything, the only thing that fetes to the president s desk is something that couldnt be decided by some earlier. Thats right. Youve done a great disservices achieve of staff, it it an easy decision gets to the president. His time should be reserved for the hardest decisions. They get in there because theyre hard. And you should make sure my job is to make sure those decisions, those decisions are squared up, hetied up to him square. Not kind of uneven, its develop transparently, anybody who has a view on the matter, an equity on the matter has been heard on it. Somebody is not a paper is not going to come out, a decision is not going to come out and the president checks, you know, block a and somebody comes out and says i never got a chance to make that argument. I wanted to make an argument for block b. I wasnt given that opportunity. Rose your job is to be an honest broker. My job is partially to be an honest broker but my job will yous includes other things. But that is what i feel is my most critical assignment, to be an honest broker so when the president makes a difficult decision has all the information he needs and it istied up that everyone who wanted a shot at it has gotten a shot at it. Rose so you control access to the president. That makes you what some people call the second most powerful person in washington. You know, maybe its been different in other white houses. And maybe its because of how president obama works. I its important to me to know whats going into the president and what is coming out. I dont control access to the president though. And if i try. Rose you control the paper flow, you control what he sees, you control who he sees. Yeah. Rose you control what appointments he makes. We have a team of us that make a series of. Rose but are you the ultimate decider of this . You know who the ultimate decider around here is the president , its the president. And what. Rose the president will come to you and say i want to yeah, or i hear hes nott get n getting in, straighten this out. Rose whats the problem here. Straight ten out. He might use a little spicier language than that. Rose when is he most angry . He is most angry when you have not when he has the impression that you withheld information from him. Rose he didnt think he had everything he needed. Yeah. Yeah. Look, this is what i think this is probably an instinct of all president s. I guess reading history books but its particularly true of president obama. He wants information. He doesnt want to be he doesnt want to be given information that somebody else has managed or put together. He wants to be able to go get his own information. Rose go out the room and say i havent heard from you. Yeah, general jones used to say to people when you are going into a meeting, if you are getting close to the end of the meetk and havent said something, you better get ready because are you about to get called on by the president. Because he wants to hear, he wants to hear dissengs, he wants to hear if there are alternative views. I think its why they shall it he insisted on being able to get his own wireless. So he can get information off the internet, read what he wants to read and not be subject to whatever his staff pushes into him. Rose he goes to for dinner with the family. He does. Rose 7 00 or so. Yeah, yeah. Rose that is essential for him. Yeah. He made clear, he made that clear to me in 2013 when we talked about the job. Its really important to him to have dinner with his family every night. And so he is vig rowses about defending that time. And as somebody without grew up sitting around the table with all my family, i dont want i dont want him to miss that either. Rose and after that he goes up to. And after that he has he is working. Hes working. He goes home with a stack every night and he works his way through that. Rose does he get email to people and talk to. He does. Rose until 2 or 3 in the morning. Yeah. Rose so you get emails from the president of the United States at 2 00, at 3 00. Im not saying every day, you know, but ive surely seen them at that hour, yep. I mean he. Rose like whats going on here. Yeah, or you know, something i need to pick up with you in the morning. We all just went thrie an election. Uhhuh. Rose he has said as he said to the staff and you spoke to the staff, you know, history zigs and zaghs. Yeah. Rose why did it zagh. I think the thing that we talked about at the top of this interview, charlie, is something say that if you are working is hard at school and you are kind of rolling up your sleeves and doing your homework, playing by the rules, you could get a shot here. That was true for my parents, it was true for your parents. It is why my grandparents came here from ireland cuz they werent getting that fair shot. And i think people feel right now that its that basic bargain that you play by the rules. You work hard, you are going to get a shot. They feel like the odds are stacked, the deck is stacked against themment and i think thats what informed a lot of the loading in the fall. Rose you have been in power for eight years. Yes. Rose you had the capacity. Yes. Rose the bully pulpit. Yes. Rose to say to them thats not true. Were here to communicate with you. Were here to tell you how were trying to make things better for you. Show that failed. I the election is the result. We are not here to only to communicate with the American People. Were here to change things. And if you were to stack up, charlie, the fact that were now just last friday had the 72nd month in a row of job growth, this is now the longest streak of job growth, greater than 50 . Greater than the 48 months which is the next closest streak. We changed the healthcare system, 22 Million People have health care. We change the way we conduct foreign affairs. We changed the way wall street did business. We feel like we made a lot of changes. Never the less, the American People still dont feel that. In key ways. Rose so explain to me why that is. Look,. Rose the president s approval is as high as it has been in a child. Yeah. Rose and yet you had an election result that you had. Now he says he could have won. He would have won. He said that today but to chicago and talking about politics. I think what he said is that for two elections in a row he won the majority in the country, which is obviously not been done since eisenhower. And he feels very strongly about. Rose both the Electoral College and popular vote. Thats correct. And a majority of the popular is my point, not just a plur allity. And plurality. And he also, and he continues to feel strongly that his message of hope is the right message. And its not only right but its also timely. For precisely the reason that were talking about, charlie. Parts of the country still dont feel like theyre getting that fair shot. Is that going to be results in eight years, after the deepest recession since the great depression, probably not. Which is where we have to keep firing away at this. Rose their life should be better off and they should recognize that, if we have gone from where we were in 2008 when he was being elected to where we are in 2017 when is he handing over power. Correct. And i. Rose there is some basic disconnect here. There may be. Or it may be that as is traditionally as is the case in america where people have great as prition aspiration and have great expectation, that they always want more. And thats one of the great things about this country. Rose well there is also this. He has said that he really spent most of his time trying to govern rather than build the Democratic Party, rather than taking care of politics, except for the reelection. He had a team that helped him in 2008 and helped him again with some changes in 2012. Yeah. Rose same constituency they appealed to. Yeah. But he has simply said i was governing and didnt because the Democratic Party in his own words, and he is the head of the Democratic Party, is in bad shape. He said that. They need to rebuild. He said it. Look, he acknowledged all of the things you said, charlie. He also said he acknowledges his the role, the part of the role that he had in that. He also acknowledges that we have the best ideas in