join us for in-depth, fiction addition with brad meltzer, live sunday, from noon to 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> former president barack obama sat down with former secretary of state james baker and presidential historian john meacham at rice university in texas. the conversation is part of a celebration of 25 years of the baker institute for public policy at rice university.

[applause] mr. meacham: thank you. mr. president, welcome to texas. mr. obama: it is good to be back in houston. congratulations on the texas victory yesterday. mr. meacham: they beat the titans so no, sir, we don't want that. tennesseans say, if it weren't for us, you would be part of spain. made that joke to george bush when he was governor and he said, that's funny, asshole. mr. baker: if it weren't for us, you wouldn't be saying y'all. mr. meacham: president reagan used to say that when he was in hollywood, he would get a call to come to dinner and speak and perform and reagan would say, but i don't sing or dance. the organizer would say, we know, but you can introduce someone who can.

my job is to introduce to people who can. i wanted to start with secretary baker, and thank him for the remarkable institute. more important -- [applause] mr. meacham: the half-century of service to america and to the world. mr. baker: thank you. [applause] mr. meacham: it is -- as someone who spends most of his time thinking about the past and talking to dead people, it is when they talk back that you are in trouble. i must say, it is hard to imagine, and it is a great tribute to our country, that two such different people come to the pinnacle of power and are able to lead the nation and the world in such a remarkable way. we have a man from texas, princeton, a marine, who served republican administrations.

we have the 44th president of the united states from hawaii by way of the ivy league. what brings them together is what i think brings the country together, a shared sense that we have to push forward to a more perfect union. the subject of a more perfect union is what i would like to talk about tonight. mr. secretary, ordinarily the president would go first, but in an age before beauty moment, i would like to ask -- mr. baker: you got that right. mr. meacham: what i would first like to talk about is how the world worked on your watches, how washington worked on your watches, and how they didn't work, and what we can learn from those positive and negative experiences. when you went to washington in 1981 as chief of staff, what was the ambient reality of washington for you?

it wasn't perfect. it wasn't a great bipartisan valhalla. but what did it feel like and how hard was it to get things done? mr. baker: thank you. before i answer that question, let me simply say, mr. president, you honor us by being here tonight and we are very -- [applause] mr. baker: we are very appreciative and very grateful for your being here. we were having dinner and when ed was announcing all those big dollar numbers, i looked at the president and said, mr. president, 10% of that is yours. he said, the hell it is, i'm not letting you off that cheap. i want the rolodex. mr. obama: jim still uses a rolodex, by the way.

[laughter] [applause] mr. baker: john, what was it like? i think it is fair to say, considerably different than it is today. it was not, as you pointed out, a big kumbaya movement. i worked for a president who was considered to be an ideologue. he was considered such a hard-line conservative that he used to joke, our administration is so conservative that the right wing never knows what the far right wing is doing. he was able to reach across the aisle. people forget this, but president reagan had a democratic house for his entire presidency.

tip o'neill was the speaker of the house. he and president reagan really didn't see anything hardly eye to eye on policy, but they both arrived at washington wanting to get something done for the country. they would fight like hell during the day, then they would retire somewhere at 5:00, start making irish jokes and drinking bourbon, and find a way to get the nation's business done. in foreign policy i think it was an easier time. having said that, nobody should have any nostalgia for the cold war. i am old enough to remember those days when we had drills and schoolkids hiding under desks. nuclear annihilation was a distinct threat.

in foreign policy, perhaps we had it a little bit easier in formulating the policy because we knew what we were for. we were for whatever the soviets were against. we were against whatever the soviets were for. the implementation of that policy was extremely difficult, even back in those days, just as it is today. things were different. i think that perhaps a few more things got done on a bipartisan basis. i'm reminded of domestic policy of how president reagan's 1986 tax reform act was passed with democratic votes. it was a tax reform that was a true tax reform. it didn't jack up the budget

deficit or the debt of the united states. it was revenue neutral. also, how he and tip o'neill were able to come together and protect for 30 years the financial solvency of social security by republicans getting a little bit more in contributions and taxes, democrats giving a little bit more in jacking up the retirement age. it worked for 30 years. i believe it was from the standpoint of bipartisanship, that it was an issue dear to president obama's heart, that there were more opportunities to see some of that happen. it didn't happen totally in foreign policy. when president bush 41 decided

he was going to address iraqi aggression in kuwait, both the house and senate were controlled by democrats and both said, no you are not. how many lives is it worth, mr. secretary, to do what you want to do? president bush was wise enough and adroit enough to go out and get the rest of the world on board first and then bring the congress alone. he wanted the congress, not that he thought he needed it, because he thought he could do it under his commander-in-chief powers, but he wanted the congress to be able to say he had the support of the american people. mr. meacham: mr. president, you took power in -- [applause] mr. meacham: 16 years after the reagan-bush 41 era. pretty clearly, something happened in the 1990-1994

period, the rise of gingrichism and the revolt against 41 in 1990. how much of secretary baker's description of washington was true for you when you came to power and how much does it sound like we are describing thermopylae? mr. obama: not much. first, let me complement jim, not only for the extraordinary work being done here at the institute, as well as the ambassador and all those who support what you are doing. i had a chance to meet some of the young people who are interning here, the excitement that they have about the prospect of serving their country in various ways got me

excited and inspired. also, let me complement jim for the extraordinary service he rendered the country. i had the pleasure of visiting my buddy, 41, briefly this afternoon. i have said this to you, jon, in the book that you wrote, and i continue to believe it. when it comes to foreign policy, the work that president george h w bush did with jim at his side was as important and as deft, and as effective a set of foreign policy initiatives as we saw in recent years. they deserve enormous credit for

navigating the end of the cold war. one of the challenges when you are president or working for a president is you don't get credit when nothing happens. and nothing happening is good a lot of times. what i would say -- and what i'm saying here is not particular ly original -- by the time i took office, there were a number of trends that had started to advance what commentators are calling the great sorting. what i mean by that is, when jim

arrives in washington in 1981, you still had a whole bunch of conservative democrats, many of them from the south. you had republicans, many from the north, who were extraordinarily liberal on environmental issues or civil rights issues on a whole range of topics. political scientists use to get angry about the fact that american parties don't make any sense. there's just this hodgepodge of various interest groups that are all kind of stuck together. there's not always any rhyme or reason for it. but the advantage of that was that you had overlapping

ideological spectrum so there would be some democrats who you would have a conversation with who would put pressure on tip o'neill and say, if i'm trying to keep my seat in tennessee, you are going to have to give a little bit because reagan is really popular down there. conversely, democrats will have to deal with the fact that they have to reach across the aisle because they have the same view on certain issues. there are a range of reasons why that changed. some of it had to do with, frankly, the shift in the media, because in 1981, your new cycle was still governed by the

stories that were going to be filed by ap, washington post, maybe new york times, and the three broadcast stations. whether it was cronkite, brinkley, what have you, there was a common set of facts, a baseline around which both parties had to adapt and respond to. by the time i take office, what you increasingly have is a media environment in which, if you are a fox news viewer, you have an entirely different reality than if you are a new york times reader. it means the basis of each respective party had become more ideological. it means that, because of gerrymandering, members of congress now are entirely sure

they will win their seat if they get the nomination. what they have to worry about is, do i have somebody from farther to my right or farther to my left that is going to run against me in a primary? they then are not willing to stray from whatever the party line has become. you have folks like limbaugh and others who are enforcing what they consider to be ideological purity of some sort. when you combine that with the perpetual campaign that is fueled by highly ideological, very wealthy donors, what you had by the time i arrived was a congress that has difficulty getting out of campaign mode and into government.

-- and into governance mode. we saw that even when we were in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression. i still feel bad for charlie crist down in florida, the governor, hugely popular, that hadn't gotten the memo that he wasn't supposed to cooperate with me, and supported the recovery act at a time when the economy was contracting faster than it did right after the crash in 1929. the poor guy, he's looking at it saying, this is good for florida, our housing market is tanking, i've got to make sure we shore things up. our budget is imploded. we need the federal help, this makes sense. i think the fact that i gave him a little bro hug, that was it. [laughter]

mr. meacham: typhoid mary. a red state. mr. obama: i felt bad for the guy because he became a cause celebre inside the limbaugh, fox news media world, which is how marco rubio got elected, essentially saying you are not a true believer. i think the challenge we continue to have -- it has gotten worse, not better, now with the internet and all these things taking place. one of these things you discover as president is that the post-world war ii order that was constructed by fdr, truman, and

eisenhower, and george marshall, that that basic notion of liberal -- not liberal in partisan terms, but a pluralistic, liberal, market-based, rule of law-based democracy and those sets of universal principles, democratic and republican leaders believed in those things. and the running thread basically from 1945, all the way through reagan. there were certain ideas met jim, regardless of how it was viewed, whether it was far right or right, there were certain ideals you assumed you had to follow because that was part of

american leadership in the world and it was part of what made us a great country. those are now being contested, in part because of the fact that we don't have this common base of information, and i think the biggest challenge we will have over the next 10, 15, 20 years is to return to a civic conversation in which if i say this is a chair, we agree that it is a chair. [laughter] mr. obama: we can disagree on -- [applause] mr. obama: we can disagree on whether it is a nice chair, whether you would like to replace the chair, move it over there, but we cannot say it is an elephant. mr. meacham: i thought we were against obama chair. [laughter] mr. obama: that was a good

chair, by the way. [laughter] mr. obama: they tried to move at this last election but they didn't have a good time. [applause] [laughter] mr. obama: anyway. but i do -- one thing i realized when i got to congress, which is part of the reason i didn't stay very long -- [laughter] mr. obama: is that, and i am making a great generalization, there are some wonderful people in congress. but the fact is, members of congress are primarily motivated around keeping their seat. >> yes, and it is getting worse and worse. mr. obama: i cannot tell you how many times during my presidency i would have former colleagues

of mine in the senate who are good people, and sensible people, come up and say, mr. president, i would love to help you, but i would get killed doing this. and i think that kind of pressure, jim, i may be -- it did not't exist, at least not on every vote. once in a while get an ideological vote where the leader would come in and say, look, we are -- you have to toe the line here. but that was not on every single item, in the way it is today. mr. meacham: i totally agree with that, mr. president. another way to say that, is that perhaps the responsible center in american politics has disappeared. and it is because of the -- [applause] mr. baker: it is due to a lot of things.

we are a pretty evenly divided country, red state, blue state. we do have a constitutional requirements to redistrict. if you live in a state dominated by republicans, they will draw more and more safe districts on the right. and for democrats, more and more safe districts on the left. people go in washington today to represent us in congress and they longer take their families up there. there is no longer any social interaction in washington between the two parties. and the next to last thing, you have the advent of the internet. and that really makes it easy to be divisive. divisiveness sells. comity does not sell. if someone says something outrageous, they can get on tv.

and lastly, part of this problem is the responsibility of the media. our media today are no longer objective reporters of the facts the way they were when i was there. [applause] mr. baker: they are, as you pointed out, they are players. you tune into fox news, you think you are listening to the house organ of the republican party. tune into msnbc, you would know you are listening to the house organ of the democratic party. mr. obama: i changed that around -- those kind of slick moves are what made baker so effective as a -- [laughter] mr. baker that is why we are here. mr. obama: that is exactly right. mr. baker: trying to say cnn, not msnbc.

well, it is -- the observation you made about not moving family there, look, when i was senator, i did not move my family there, in part, by the way, for a healthy reason, which a lot of spouses now have careers. was like, yo, i got a job. but part of it, jim, i think is also that there is a -- the perpetual campaign that takes place, which puts enormous pressure on every member of congress. they know they were being watched every minute, being scorecarded and graded by whatever ideological group is out there every single minute. they don't feel like they can afford to be away from -- if you

move your family, someone will say, the guy has gone to washington and he doesn't believe that we are important anymore. so you create this hothouse atmosphere in which folks are running scared all the time. the ability to step back and reflect, to compromise, is reduced. now, i will say that the gerrymandering issue is a solvable problem, jim, unlike some of these issues. there are larger forces at work that are also creating this great story. we have an economy that has created differences of

opportunity in urban versus rural areas, for example. those trends, because of technology, globalization and a whole bunch of forces will probably not reverse themselves anytime soon, and that has created divides in the country. but gerrymandering is one thing you can actually solve. california shifted to a nonpartisan, independent commission that carries out gerrymandering. i am actually a strong proponent and have been supportive of eric holder's efforts to try to get more states to adopt a nonpartisan way to do that. and i say that as -- when it comes to gerrymandering, it is absolutely true that democrats do the same thing republicans do. if they are in control, they will try to maximize the number of seats they have, and vice versa.

we are in texas, by the way, which is a champion of some gerrymandering. it is a fundamentally nondemocratic approach because essentially, what happens, the elected official chooses the voters, rather than the other way around. i actually -- when people ask me what are a few things that can be done to improve the functioning of government, this is an area where you can actually have an impact and in some states, you are seeing referendums in which the average voter gets it. they think this is an important thing. mr. baker: i agree with you. [applause] mr. baker: i agree with you. i agree with you that if we could get to the point that independent commissions would draw our district lines, it would be wonderful. the problem with that, mr. president, is that it means taking power out of the hands of

the politicians. i don't know where it is going to work. i know it is beginning to work in california. mr. obama: you just had a referendum in michigan pass this. you are seeing citizen initiative behind this because in part, they recognize what is currently in place is not working. one thing i will say, my observations during the time i was in the white house, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that the problem has to do with the people who are there. and if we just kick all the bums out, it will get fixed. there are some bums, don't get me wrong, who need to get kicked out. we will not mention names.

i am sure you have a list, i have a list. some of them overlap. mr. meacham: some just got reelected. [laughter] mr. obama: right. but i will tell you this, if you don't change of the incentive structures and the underlying dynamics, then we will continue to see these problems. good people will burn out and get discouraged. and voters will continue to be frustrated. what it does is leave a vacuum for those who garner attention through the most divisive, controversial, outlandish statements to win. people ask me often, what surprised me most about the presidency? it is the degree to which the united dates underwrites the international order.

it is not always in the obvious ways. but if there is a problem around the world, people do not call callw, they do not beijing. they call washington. even our adversaries expect us to solve problems and expect us to keep things running. when you start getting dysfunction in washington, which is difficult for decisions to get made, and policy making to run in an orderly process. what is one of our greatest assets, which is an extraordinary civil service, right, career staff, say at the state department, when that begins to get undermined, that does not just weaken our influence, it provides the opportunities for disorder to start ramping up all around the world, and ultimately makes us

less safe and less prosperous. so we have a stake in making act togetherour enough. everybody else, whether they admit it or not, tends to follow our lead. mr. meacham: and there is a line between dean acheson, george marshall, jim baker, to secretary clinton and secretary kerry. that was a coherent conversation among secretaries of state. you would be here on the spectrum, but it was a coherent conversation. were you surprised in the past 24 or 28 months or so, to see the attack -- he is voldermort, i am not going to say his name. mr. baker: who is that? mr. meacham: voldermort. mr. obama: you have to read

harry potter to your kids. the junk of the institutions that you're talking about and that you drew on, the 12 resolutions during the gulf war, an extraordinary coalition with madrid itself, the peace conference -- those institutions were pretty effective through this man's presidency. now, and i am not just being clever come over the last two years, we have begun to fear the breakdown of those institutions. did you see that coming? mr. baker: i did not see that coming. i tend to agree with you. i certainly agree with you, and i know president obama would agree with you on this, american leadership in the world is absolutely imperative.

no other country can do it. everybody expects us to lead. [applause] mr. baker: everybody expects us to lead and we won the cold war because every president, from harry truman through george h.w. bush was steadfast, whether they were democrats or republicans. we won the cold war, because we had alliances that leveraged our power and that we could rely on. and those alliances were evidenced by nature, of course, -- by nato of course, but by our , security agreements with japan and korea, in the economic sphere. the world bank, the imf, so on and so forth. those institutions were created by americans in order for us to do what the rest of the world needed to have done, and what was good for america. and i think it is still good for america. i don't think we ought to be denigrating those institutions,

or attacking them. do they need some of them, reformation? absolutely. as someone who spent a lot of time working with the imf -- there is a good one, the u.n. -- there is another good one, even nato, this president is right in one respect, for sure. nato -- our european allies need to pay their way. what they have agreed to pay. we should not be required onever to pick up the tab that. but these institutions make america stronger and we ought not to be running them down. [applause] mr. meacham: mr. president, you first. here is an exam question they would have at rice. assess the validity of this statement, if you would. american politics between 1933

and 2017 can be understood as the kind of conversation between franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan. but the field on which we made most of our domestic and foreign policy decisions was regarding the use of force against, and rivals and foes. the moment between your leaving the white house and now, feels like an incoherent part of that story. do you agree that you govern in a world that was basically shaped by those american traditions? and if you agree, how does one go about recovering and restoring the conversation? mr. obama: i think it is correct that despite all the differences -- i was listening to jim talk about tip o'neill and ronald reagan going at it. the truth is, during that period

you described, the ideological band of american politics was pretty narrow compared to most other countries. there was a broad consensus around a number of core issues and principles. and there is a reason why i was comfortable asking, for example, bob gates to stay on as my when we werestate still in the middle of two wars. there was a reason why i could consult with a jim baker about a particular issue comfortably. it wasn't a strain. it was because we had a common baseline of assumptions and values around certain issues.

i think what is also true is that that consensus was hugely beneficial to the united states, and that over the course of the post-world war ii era, it was hugely beneficial to the world. it didn't mean we did not screw up or make mistakes, were not hypocritical or self-interested. they were a nationstate governed by politicians, and so the world had all kinds of opportunities and various junctures to say, oh, the united states is supporting folks who are not democrats, they are doing things for convenience, all those things. but at the end of this period, let's call it 60, 70 years, the world was wealthier, less

violent, healthier, more tolerant, more democratic. the average person's life chances were improved across the board. and yet, billions of people -- look, the chinese, essentially, were free riders on the system we built and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. it is justifiable for us now to want them to stop riding for free, yet have to carry your weight now that your status has changed. but we did something very valuable there. here is what is also true. what is also true is that, and this is true for any political system, any consensus that over time, contradictions appear, and

there are things that were not tended to. in the united states, one of the major fault lines in america was always race. we made halting leaps towards changing our laws and our customs and our culture so that we were more likely, at least, to live up to the ideals of the declaration of independence and the notion that we are all created equal, despite not getting there. now, as we started doing that, the consensus starts weakening. that is why when lyndon johnson when he signed the civil rights act of 1964, the first thing he says is, we just lost the south for the rest of my lifetime, maybe more.

because he understood that part of that old consensus had tamped down this big contradiction which is, we talk a lot about democracy, but we are not treating everybody the same. gender. part of the reason everybody could get along pretty good in congress in a 1957 or 1965 was that there weren't any women there to say, "what you guys are doing is stupid!" [laughter] [applause] mr. obama: suddenly women show start questioning things, and suddenly men are kind of uncomfortable. it changes consensus. same with lgbt issues. right? so within the united dates, we -- within the united states, we had a whole range of issues that were not being addressed as they

come up, which is a healthy thing. they could not be buried. suddenly, that consensus felt less uncomfortable. when it comes to the economy, part of what happens is that the globalization -- where you actually had a consensus between bill clinton, george h.w. bush, george w. bush and certainly elements of my administration, when we wanted to get the trans-pacific partnership done, the consensus around free-trade -- it did not fully address the fact that although net-net, the whole world was doing better because of globalization and the internet and global supply chains, there were folks whose factories were being closed and suddenly found themselves to be redundant workers.

you suddenly had a winner take all economy, where back in the 1960's, the ceo may be made 10 times more than the guy on the assembly-line, and now it is 200 times or times. 300 and the capacity of nationstates to regulate global capital so that at least they have some control and say, let us speed things up, slow things down, that is ease the transition for communities that are being hurt by whether it is automation or foreign competition, that becomes harder to do because everybody is worried about what their orderly -- quarterly reports will look like on wall street. that creates frustrations and contradictions.

i think a legitimate critique of that consensus, you know, i consider myself to be a part of -- and still believe it -- that we did not adapt quickly enough to the fact that there were people being left behind. and that frustrations were going to flare up. that all of these changes that were happening were happening really quick, and you had to address them and speak to them. in those environments, you start getting a different kind of politics. you start getting politics based on, that person is not like me. it must be their fault. you start getting the politics based on a nationalism that is not pride and country, but hatred for somebody on the other

side of the border. and you start getting -- [applause] mr. obama: the kind of politics that does not allow for compromise because it is based on passions and emotions. mr. baker: identity politics. mr. obama: which is why, by the way, when i hear people say they don't like identity politics, i think it is important to remember that identity politics does not just apply when it is black people, gay people, women, no. the folks are really originated identity politics were the folks who said, 3/5 clause, all that stuff. that was identity politics. that is still out there. maybe that was a little too controversial for houston, but -- [laughter]

mr. mr. obama: jim crow was identity politics. that is where it started. so part of what is happened is that when people feel their status is being threatened, they react. what i would agree with is that the washington consensus, whatever you want to call it, got a little too comfortable with -- there are only looking at gdp numbers and looking at the internet, and everything is looking pretty great, particularly after the cold war. after what you guys engineered, jim, you had this period of great smugness on the part of america and american elites thinking, we have this figured out. you remember the book that came out? mr. baker: the end of history. mr. obama: that came to bite us

in the back. that was kind of a long lecture. i'm sorry. after dinner conversation. i should have thrown a joke in there or something. [laughter] mr. meacham: mr. secretary, what do you want us most to remember about your public service legacy? mr. baker: you mean what are my most proud of about my public service legacy? i suppose, john, i am most proud of the fact that i had the privilege of serving two presidents of the united states as chief of staff. i had the privilege of being secretary of the treasury. i had the privilege of being secretary of state. i had the privilege of running five presidential campaigns for three republican presidents and spending 12 years in washington, and leaving washington unindicted. [laughter] [applause]

mr. obama: that was something there. good job, sir. i give you credit. mr. meacham: i think susan gets the credit for that, sir. mr. president, what about you? mr. obama: he stole my answer! no i'm a, -- look -- mr. meacham: of your eight years, what do you want us to think about, in terms of your presidency? mr. obama: there are obviously accomplishments that i am extraordinarily proud of and believe deeply in. i think the affordable care act was important. it was incomplete, but it was a starter house on the path to a smarter, more rational health

care system where we are not spending 6% 8%, 10% more than , other countries for worse outcomes. i was extraordinarily proud of the paris accords. look, i know we are an oil country and we need american energy. and by the way, american energy production, you would not always know it, but it went up every year i was president. and that whole -- suddenly america is the biggest oil producer -- that was me, people. [applause] mr. obama: sometimes you go to wall street and folks be

grumbling about antibusiness. i said, have you checked where your stocks were when i came? what are you talking about? what are you complaining about? just say thank you, please. [applause] mr. obama: because i want to raise your taxes 2% to make sure kids have a chance to go to school? but all those things -- i really secondary to what jim said, which is, michelle and i am our girls, we came out in tact. when i mean by that, the core values we brought into the office, pretty homespun values -- tell the truth and try to see

the other person's point of view, treat people kindly and with respect, work hard, think know we wereh, you , able to sustain that in a difficult environment for that to sustain. not only did i not get indicted, nobody in my administration got indicted. [applause] mr. obama: which by the way, was the only administration in modern history that that can be said about. in fact, nobody came close to being indicted. partly because the people who joined us were there for the right reasons. we were there to serve. but i guess there is a larger point to that, and i am in the process of writing right now. the first time i was in the oval

office was actually after had been elected. i had been to the white house but i hadn't been to the oval office. i had been there for several meetings. but the tradition is, shortly after the election, the current president invites his successor in. so 43 has me over. laura was with michelle. they could not be more gracious. and i have to make the point that they had set up a transition process that was flawless and generous and so that every member of 43's staff had made themselves available to the person who was going to be taking their place and had

prepared manuals and books about how things work. because, despite the political differences, which were real and significant, they recognized there was a value above those differences. when i walked into the oval office, there was a reverence there for that office. it is independent of you. and if you don't feel that, then you should not be there. because -- [applause] mr. obama: because a lot of fights, a lot of sacrifices, a lot of bloodshed is represented in that office.

not just soldiers at iwo jima, it is maids in selma, it is workers in a coal mine, it is farmers in the dust bowl. and you are carrying that vessel. and i never lost that reverence for that office. every day i would come and i would say, i am going to make mistakes, they will be decisions, compromises -- jim knows this. when you are in that office, there is never such a thing as 100% solution, because by definition, if it was easy to solve, somebody else would have solved it. it only comes to you when there is no good answer. through all of those ups and

downs, you had to have a part of you. the bushes had that. ronald reagan had that. bill clinton had that. that sense of man, this is , sacred. this is important. and there is a civic religion and a set of ideals and principles that we will not get perfect, but we should strive to perfect. and that, i think, is something i never lost throughout the time i was there. my staff, we used to put stickers on people's binders and folders saying, guard against cynicism because you have to be realistic, but you cannot be nihilistic. whether you are president,

secretary of state, or a young staffer who is there for the first time. mr. meacham: i would like to close, if i may, by giving ronald reagan the last word. which is always safe. mr. obama: well, in this crowd come anyway. "not far from here in secretary baker's office, there is a picture of that chief of staff -- secretary of treasury of the time, baker, sitting next to reagan. the picture was taken by david hume, the great political photographer in 1987. reagan looks a little puzzled and in reagan's wonderful handwriting, these fiction reads -- "dear jim, i look like i am lost, but not worried. you will straighten it out like you always do. ronald reagan." i think i speak for all of us when i think secretary baker and president obama, because they have strayed out a hell of a lot for us. thank you.

mr. obama: thank you, very much. [applause] >> c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up this morning, indiana republican congressman jim banks will be with us to talk about his recent trip to afghanistan. and then a discussion about the u.s. asylum process with your peers of the migration policy institute. commerceyland democrat member will discuss legislation to do strengthen democracy. watch washington journal live a 7:00 eastern this morning. join the discussion. >> here's a look at our live

coverage wednesday. on c-span, the house is back at noon eastern for legislative business. on the agenda, several bills including one that would direct the commerce secretary to conduct a study on the development of internet connected devices in the u.s. c-span 2, british prime minister theresa may takes questions from members of the 7:00 a.m.ommons as eastern. later, the senate returns to continue debate on the nomination of karen kelly to be deputy commerce secretary. c-span3 bang, andrew wheeler on "the washington post." later, there is a house oversight hearing on the management of federal prisons with the justice department's inspector general and the head of the federal bureau of prisons. a couple of headlines from politico, hyde-smith wins mississippi senate runoff. tops mike espyh

and racially tinged senate campaign. here is mike espy with his concession speech at the mississippi civil rights museum, then we will hear from republican incumbent hyde-smith also speaking in jackson. >> we like mike! mr. espy: thank you. well, there are number of things outstanding. the polls are going to close.