ended up with a trillion dollars at the end of the decade, with the help of newt gingrich and the republicans i might add. bill clinton is a pretty good model whereby partisan approach gave us fiscal conservatives and surplus that's an important message to republicans to embrace. >> laura: i think lanny touched on interesting point. bill clinton understood at some point he had to actually work with the politics as it faced him. right? the republicans on the hill. he actually had to work with them. now we have reports that president obama hasn't spoken to republic leadership in a real way in about a year. and pretty much isn't talking all that often to democrats either. it seems like is he just going forward campaigning, raising money doing his own unilateral moves but not working for that financial consensus that i think president clinton did. >> well, yeah, it wasn't just that bill clinton was willing to talk to them. i think he was actually to meet in the middle and even sometimes come a little bit over to their side of things