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Very mindful of not wanting to be a lightning rod. he wants to be a facilitator for the discussion. >> reporter: which may explain the president's reluctance to wade into racial issues. still, at times, there was no escaping it. >> i'm the son of a black man from kenya and a white woman from kansas. >> reporter: in 2008, when the racially divisive sermons of his former pastor nearly brought down his first campaign for president, obama delivered this long awaited speech on race. >> this is where we are right now. it's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. >> it's a balance between a...

The story. >> this is a president who is very mindful of not wanting to be a lightning rod. he wants to be a facilitator for the discussion. >> reporter: which may explain the president's reluctance to wade into racial issues. still, at times, there was no escaping it. >> i'm the son of a black man from kenya and a white woman from kansas. >> reporter: in 2008, when the racially divisive sermons of his former pastor nearly brought down his first campaign for president, obama delivered this long awaited speech on race. >> this is where we are right now. it's a racial stalemate we've been stuck ...

I would think. with a small number. and drones do work for that kind of activity. >> okay. >> but if your objective is to create a better, more stable afghanistan that becomes a stabilizing force for pakistan -- >> iran. >> you're going to need to be there a long time and you're going to the need a lot of troops. >> not conventional troops, necessarily. certainly support troops and some conventional troops, but lots of special forces and lots of -- >> i've got to wrap this up, but what is your understanding of the clear policy objective of the state department today relative to afghanistan -- ...

Around setting the stage for a political discussion rather than setting the stage to really reform our government and bring deficits under control. and then what he did offer was a lot of gimmicks. he even talked about it in the context of 12 years when washington works on a 10-year rule for most budgets. and that's the old byrd rule. it's been around for a long time. so he's asking us to compare apples, the ryan plan, to oranges, the obama plan. and really they're not even the same -- they're not even in the same game. and so i think the president really is kind of misleading. he's got a lot ...

Political generation serving in washington right now. so i think that it was not the best policy objective for the president to have. instead, it was a political objective he put forward. >> you didn't hear much of anything about social security, which is a major issue moving forward in terms of economics. >> well, it is, but it's not a huge driver of the deficit. social security, i think, overall is in pretty good shape. little minor changes in social security. the real problem is this debt and deficit and medicare is a huge driver of that, and so is the lack of revenue. the fact that we keep...