Transcripts For CSPAN Soho Forum Hosts Debate On President Obamas Legacy 20170314

The sojo forum we begin with a warmup act from a great libertarian comic. Back by popular demand, dave smith, whose great podcast, part of the problem, i faithfully listen to, here he is, libertarian comic, dave smith. Dave, please come up. Dave oh, thank you, gene. Wow, what a great event. Wow, libertarian comic even sounds boring to me. I heard that intro and i was like, this sucks. Will this guy talk about the budget for a long time . Ok. Obama, the great debate about obama, is he great or not . I dont know. This will be a lot of fun. I cant wait to see how you guys do. Personally speaking i do think obama is great at lots of things. Like killing people with sky robots, hes amazing at that. Hes best ever, id say. Spending money, hes like a god. Spending other peoples money, hes like m. J. In 1996. Just like untouchable. Im sorry. This is more a libertarian event. I think you brought in the lefties. Finally theyre laughing. Its been years they have been suffering through trevor noah. Sorry. I am not taking shots at anybody. Im sure hes a good guy and funny in south africa. Im kidding. I like i liked obama the candidate. He was pretty good. He had a great remember that 22yearold handsome guy. He was like right out of college and was like hope and change and yes, we can. Now today its just president Morgan Freeman comes up and theres been another isis attack or something. Its not fun. He doesnt really did you see his farewell address when at the end he said, yes, we can, again, and it was the first time he said yes, we can, in i think eight years maybe. He used to say that every day. He didnt even really sell it that well this time. He would be like yes, we can. And this time it was like, yes, we can. But you could even hear like he said yes, we can, but it sounded a lot more like i cant believe donald trump is going to be president. Like this is really ridiculous. How crazy is that . Just enjoy it, ok. Were right here. Were having an open, freeflowing discussion of ideas. This is probably going to be illegal in three days. So take it in. Enjoy this, people. Lets have some fun here. Trumps coming in. But i think i kind of like the trump moment. Im enjoying it. I dont know. Its crazy. Look. Come on. We are at the end of the empire here. You might as well have some fun. I think this is what historians never count for. How did rome ever fall . They never tell you how goddamn entertaining it was. If you talked to someone how rome fell. He said, there was a lions show. It was five bucks. Youre not down for this . Are you crazy . [laughter] am i nuts we are at the end of the empire . Is there maybe a historian or two in the crowd . Tell me of the example in history where there is like a republic that becomes a great nation, then it turned into an itself way it gets too the culture collapses and then everything works out cool in the end . Like everythings fine after that . Do we have a lot of examples of that happening in history . No. Its over, baby. Lets just throw trump in there and have a good time on the way time. Theres a bar over there. Does that not make sense to me . It makes perfect sense. I dont know. Obama. I really do think obamas legacy is tied to trump. Trump came in and obama endorsed hillary who was a slightly flawed candidate, if i am being completely honest. There were signs now that you look at it in hindsight, there were signs that maybe she wasnt the right person for the job. Like i remember did you see at the d. N. C. This year where and this is not a conspiracy theory. This is what i think they were trying to do. The campaign openly said this. They said the goal of the Democratic National convention was to humanize Hillary Clinton. That was their goal. Like how terrible is your candidate when shes been in the public eye for 27 years and youre like, the big problem we are having is that other people are not believing that she is in fact one of them . They dont see her as a human. They see her as some type of pantsuit lizard creature sent from another planet to rule here and the whole convention was trying to humanize her. Bill clinton got up and he was like, i met hillary 30 years ago and we fell in love just like humans. And it was all very subtle but clearly kind of like shes totally normal. I swear. Believe me. Surround her with charming people. Like, that was her plan. Shell catch it eventually. I guess. But she lost. I dont know. Obama said he could have beaten trump if he had ran against donald trump. Thats what he said. I dont know. I dont know if anyone can beat donald trump. He found a style of debating that is just bulletproof. It doesnt matter. Do you remember the moment when ok. So rand paul who is probably like the best candidate in the race, he said he didnt do great if you paid attention. Wasnt a big win. But he there was that one point where donald trump said in the debate and he was like, the problem with t. P. P. Is that it doesnt address chinas currency manipulation and then rand paul said maybe i should point out chinas not involved in the t. P. P. And donald trump was like, whatever. You are at 1 . And the audience looked at that and said, well count that as a win for donald trump. You cant beat that. I dont know what else to say. Once i feel genes breath on my ear i was like, ok. Well start this thing up. Gene, this is a wonderful event you put on here. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks, guys. [applause] gene thank you, dave smith. The part of the problem, podcast guy, who does a terrific podcast twice a week called part of the problem. Ok. W for the main event, we are going to close the voting in a moment based on his accomplishments. Barack obama has been a great president. You are closing the voting. Speaking for the affirmative will be jonathan and speaking for the negative will be matt welch. Jonathan is a regular Political Columnist for new York Magazine and the author of the justpublished book audacity how barack obama defied his critics and created a legacy that will prevail. He will do book signing and selling. You will get a chance to talk to jonathan afterwards when those books are sold. Taking the negative will be matt welch, a reason Magazine Editor at large and featured players on the regular podcast the fifth column. Our debators decided they will do something slightly offbeat. They will get 10 minutes to do their pro and do their con and then there will be 20 minutes of informal discussion between them before we go to the 30 minutes of questions from the audience. So jonathan, you have 10 minutes to establish for the affirmative the case for the proposition. Take it away, jonathan. Thank you. [applause] jonathan if you are expecting a formal debater you will be disappointed. I dont have any experience in that. I do argue with people. And ive argued with plenty of libertarians going back to college, of course. And the thing i found about arguing with libertarians is about politics is that its a little bit like making a Group Decision about where you are going to go to dinner and someone there is kosher. That person is not going to agree with you we should go to a barbecue place no matter how good you say the barbecue place it is, they wont like the ribs. Thats an analogous situation. You have a value system which i dont agree with but i try to understand and try to respect that believes government should have a certain rule so i am not going to tell you you are going to like what barack obama did because he doesnt hold to that ideology. Those arent his rules for what government should be and he had completely different ideological starting point for what he tried to do. What i want to argue to you instead is that by Barack Obamas standards, by his own values, what he did was successful. He attempted a lot of change, and for the most part that change worked by obamas own standards. I am not going to go through the whole book but show you where the main examples what obama established their stated purposes. The economic recovery, the United States was plunging into the worst crisis, as everyone knows, in 75 years when he took office. And he took a series of measures to stop it. The stimulus, of course. Is believed by pretty much the entire economic field to have substantially mollified the scale of unemployment. The university of chicago did an Economist Survey in 2014 of what was the Unemployment Rate in 2010 . Was it lower or higher . And weighed by confidence level 97 of the economists said unemployment was lower as a result of the stimulus. A survey of macroeconomists found complete consensus. Macroeconomists who are basically paid to do this on behalf of business firms, theres no one in the macroeconomics field who think the stimulus did a lot to increase g. D. P. The range of the responses was from 2 to 3. 4 of additional growth in 2010 alone which is an absolutely enormous amount. The stress test, mostly forgotten, if you go back to early 2009, the banks were failing. Investors were terrified of risk and the ted spreads were skyrocketing because people did not know what was going to happen to the banks. And the stress test actually worked. It was mocked on saturday night live, became a punch line. They subjected every bank to a test of the assets whether it had enough liquidity. And after they were done with it, those spreads basically went down to normallike levels and the crisis in the banks was completely solved. The auto bailout, another thing, a method that libertarians object to but i dont think you could possibly object to the results. The best accounting shows they saved hundreds of billions of dollars in value. The midwest basically was going to be completely sunk when the auto firms and the chain of suppliers that led the auto firms went down that would bring down my home state, michigan, northern ohio, starts of indiana. The other thing to remember is that these firms ran their own welfare states, ran their own pension programs which were backed by the government. They ran their own Health Care Systems. So if those Auto Companies went down and their suppliers went down you would have a lot of people whose pensions would be on hook to supply, whose health care suddenly they would be Getting Health Care then through the Affordable Care act, not through the health care that they negotiated, and the payouts by the government would have been 10 times higher than what they spent to save those firms. So you could object to the method but the auto bailout worked by its own terms. The Affordable Care act. So for decades the United States has developed the cruelest and most inefficient Health Care System in the world. The United States spends vastly more in health care than the next highest country and is also the only industrialized country that doesnt have basic insurance available to all its citizens so were spending a ton and yet we had people who were suffering, people who were dying for lack of access to medical care which really shouldnt happen in an industrialized country. And they attacked both those problems with enormous amounts of progress and enormous amounts of success. I think people are most familiar with the change in the uninsured. 20 Million People gained health care who didnt have it previously. In all kinds of measures of medical distress, have you skipped a doctors appointment due to cost, medical bankruptcies, those are all way down. To access to insurance people have gotten have improved the readings and measures of how Peoples Health and peoples wellbeing. I think less wellknown is the cost side of it because thats a big part of the objection you go ahead from the right. The bill was paid for and a lot of people scoffed at the fact it was paid for but the Congressional Budget Office has revised downward its cost estimate for the Affordable Care acts coverage provisions numerous times. By hundreds of billions of dollars. The governments actually spending less than it originally projected to spend. The government is spending the federal government is spending less on health care now after obamacare was passed than it was projected to spend in 2010 before obamacare. So medical inflation has come down to the level that we actually can spend less than we were projected to spend and cover an additional 20 Million People. Why has that happened . I think the bend curve, reforms they introduced had really tremendous impact. They introduced comparative effectiveness research, different treatment rather than going in the dark or what some lobbyists told doctors walking into their office what they should use, what drug they should use, what treatment they should use. They had better funded research to see which treatments were actually doing the job. They started Accountable Care organizations so that instead of having this model where doctors get paid for every treatment, the more people come in, the more treatments you do, the more money you get, the more care you get. You had other kind of payments reforms. The clearest one to understand and its a great example of how the law has succeeded is how hospitals were traditionally paid when someone got an infection in their hospital. The patient, patient gets infected in your hospital, they get sick, where are they going to go . Back to the same hospital because thats their hospital. The hospital got more money. They changed the rules. They regave the infection rate drops. 20,000 people a year now fewer are dying from infections in hospitals. And theyre saving a lot of money because those are effective. So you had the lowest rate of medical inflation in 50 years. Some of that is large factors. We cant pin down with experimental surgery whats causing that. I think its pretty strong evidence a lot of these payment reforms actually have bent the curve of change bent the curve, changed the cost model and freed a huge amount of budget space and had unexpected savings in the health care sector. On climate, so first in the stimulus, people didnt pay much attention but they invested 90 million in green research. And the cost of Green Energy Technologies has been coming down. In the last eight years, wind and solar, theyre down 50 , 60 , 70 in cost. In many parts of the country, its cheaper to build wind turbine power plants, to build solar power plants than it is to build coal or even natural gas. Emissions, Greenhouse Gas emissions which had risen for decades forever since industrialization pretty much peaked under obama and have dropped and has continued to drop. And they built on the progress they made through a lot of those investments and changes. First, they made a bilateral deal with china in 2014 for both to reduce their emissions and they built on that to have an agreement to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. I actually think that will probably be the most important part of the legacy of this administration and both have an economic logic of their own and diplomatic logic of their own. Gene one minute to go. Jon in an there are a few more mediumsized reforms that are important. Doddfrank was a tremendous change in on wall street. The percentage of profit made by wall street firms was Financial Firms was 30 of all corporate profits. Its down to 17 which is a little bit more than half. And the spread the interest famblt by the two big too big to fail firms now have a disadvantage. Its now a penalty to be too big to fail rather than a benefit. He law is working. Ill be extremely fast. Obama raised taxes on the rich. Decreasing their income by 5 . Cut taxes on the lowest 10 . Increasing their income by 9. 7 . There were really important educational reforms which maybe i will talk about later. Gene ok. Thank you. Jonathan i lobbied to shorten my own time so i am to blame you for this. Gene you get 10 1 2 minutes. Speak for the negative, take it matt. R you, matt give a round of applause for gene epstein. [applause] matt thanks to the Smith Foundation and thanks to jonathan for writing a particularly welltimed book. It came out today and you can get copies over there and i highly recommend it. I would point out that the question on the table here, its important to get a little bit lawyerly with this is not whether barack obama was a better president than the new weird guy coming in on friday. The question is not whether hes got a pretty handsome and attractive family who seemed like nice kind of classy people compared to almost everybody else whos resided in the white house. Its not that. Its not whether we like his pop culture choices compared to george w. Bushs pop culture choices and all that kind of stuff. Its whether or not he was a great president. There is an affirmative we need to prove here. Jonathan has given his level best. Let me give my piss take a little bit on some of them. I think that in order to be a great presidency, there are probably few exceptions, maybe one i can think of off the top of my head in which a presidency can be great. Can be commonly discussed as great in which it did not is not also associated having a great achievement in Foreign Policy. Jonathan doesnt talk about this much. He has a Foreign Policy chapter. One of the most entertaining chapters. He knows he doesnt have a lot to work with. [applause] by which i mean he treats the subject very honestly and has some pretty interesting writing about the choices we make in the middle east. Not being george w. Bush may not qualify as the pinnacle of historic achievement but it certainly beats the alternative. I would suggest not having a Foreign Policy game really hurts the argument this was a great presidency. I think it is worth lingering a little bit on some of what happened in Foreign Policy. We call that barack obama was ran as i wouldnt say not a fully antiwar candidate but an antidumb war candidate, right . We will do smart wars instead of dumb wars. He got a lot of the juice in his initial Campaign Based on against speech early the iraq war. What does he do as president . He immediately surges in afghanistan. More than 2 3 of u. S. Soldiers who have died in afghanistan happened during the obama presidency. Why . Really, why . Its hard to fathom why. Its because he decided on the campaign that iraq was the dumb war. Afghanistan was the smart war. So we surged there even though the surge had an Expiration Date that everyone knew to begin with. We are basically in the status quo give or take in afghanistan right now. We have Something Like 8,000 troops. Hes passing off that war. Hes the first president to be at war every single day of his twoterm presidency as far as i know. These are human lives that have been lost for something thats actually hard to explain in any rational sense. At the 2008 democratic convention, there was a lot of talk we forget about this now in the midst of time but that happened in the wake of Vladimir Putin aagreesing against georgia. So joe biden stood up and said we will not stand for this. We will hold putin accountable for this and we will start among other things by treating them with a new found respect and all these kind of things. Obviously Vladimir Putin has not been held accountable for his expansionism in the near broad. Its a hard question. Dont get me wrong about that. But the reset with russia, much like george w. Bushs friendship with Vladimir Putin, rned out to be a big nothing burger. For people paying attention to russia for a long time. The Obama Administration was withdrawing troops and canceling missile deployment plans in the Czech Republic and poland as a thought of treating Vladimir Putin with respect. In the waning hours we are throwing troops to poland. This was strategic what we have seen with the behavior of putin in this election which certainly has been controversial. I would also put in this category of the intervention in libya. Which lowered a very, very low bar to begin with when we intervene in a place. We intervened in libya because we wanted to prevent a massacre that we thought might happen in this one city. I dont mean to say in a way under plays the horrible devastation of muammar gaddafi. But there wasnt any other reason to do this. We went in, we deposed a dictator and helped create an incredibly chaotic dynamic in the middle east. And we did so keep in mind, this is the president ial candidate who told charlie savage, the great Civil Liberties reporter now for the boston globe of course president obama would not seek to create war abroad without getting congressional approval. So much did he throughout that imperative at the time flout that imperative at the time, 60 days which is supposed to be the cutoff and said, hey, bro, we are supposed to vote on this one, he said its not any kind of warlike thing. Its a kinetic military action. So its in a different category. And this kind of gets into i think a big disappointment about barack obama and not just to libertarians but to a lot of people, the promise of obamaism, this was the constitutional law professor. He was going to roll things roll back the agrandizement of executive branch government. Look from 2007, that was the subject, right . So he said he would do this, the most Transparent Administration in history and honor on and on and he did not educe the abu grab photos in 2009. He did not have the most Transparent Administration. I am happy my friends in the press are getting excited about the president of the United States. Some free press groups have been pretty tough on obama as well. Act. s the espionage he commuted the chelsea manning. If that undercuts my argument im excited. So this promise of this constitutionist guy i think in many ways failed and hes leaving donald trump with a more loaded gun when it comes to executive power than he would have otherwise had and thats kind of the opposite of what the promise was going in. Think about this in terms of the drug war which is something i paid some attention to. Youd think a guy that was in the chung gang might not be openingly laughing about someone about legalized marijuana or tolerate states who had done so. He immediately passed george w. Bushs record in terms of raiding medical marijuana dispenseys in his first term before turning the other cheek after colorado and washington legalized. But its these promises of what he could have been. He failed to deliver. So what that leaves you with i think is jons big three which are stimulus, obamacare and global warming. Id point out on stimulus, its the great unknowable. He prevented a Great Depression. We cant run the counterfactual here. I can say in order to introduce a little bit of doubt to that narrative, if you are looking for people who said at the time that the stimulus, as enacted, the 800 billion level, would lead to might lead to disappointing japanstyle growth. You would have, among other people, maybe all three of us on this stage but i think jon nd i, we ran a cover and reason in 2009 obviously with the picture chopsticks it was probably racists. Sorry for that. The antistimulus people had at the time which is if you throw a bunch of new Government Spending out and its not ally done in the keynesian way, its throw it, if you do that it will lead to the period of stagnant, disappointing growth. And paul and christine who explicitly warned barack obama in 2009, if we dont thrust enough, if we dont stimulus enough, if we dont do a trillion and a half so that points to the counterfactual. We cant know. We dont know whether this prevented the Great Depression or not. I want to believe it did because i want the policies enacted were good but we cant prove it and base the greatness the presidency on a counterfactual. We can look at the promises associated to it that it will be 90 of the jobs will be from the private sector and such like they didnt come close to coming through. Obamacare, 1 3 of the country insurer. Ce of one the thing will get repealed in a couple of days. Its a couple of weeks, which is not obamas fault necessarily but his role in creating this law as structured made it vulnerable to the Supreme Court level. It led to the death spirals that people have worried about so i dont think as cracked up as good as jon chait presented. 10 more seconds. The biggest contributor to cut carbon in america has been fracking. [applause]. Ok. We now we now have 19 minutes for polite conversation between our two antagonists. You want the five minutes, take the five minutes. Five minutes, and five minutes. The case in my book is that obama was basically an average Foreign Policy person. Had he some successes cuba. Iran is a good success. He had some failures. The transformation came on the domestic side. In a sense youre just giving me the flip side of the argument im making in my book and thats the argument that i am and dorsing. Im not saying hes a Franklin Roosevelt with foreignpolicy. Ut on domestic policy he is. You are right counter fact use areard. You do make predictions in 2012 you wrote the true cost of our current size of government is more stupid politics and protracted recession. You talked about how obama spends the rest of the time talking about the various things the government needs to invest to create, quote, broadbased growth, is an could flict of the basic level of vision between those of us who think prosperity is a mostly private affair not improved by the exertions of a deficit spending government. Ere out of the recession. One of the highest rates of improvement for average people. So its not just a matter of counter fact use. I think we have evidence that the economy is performing better than people who didnt believe in stimulus thought it would. On obamacare, i dont accept that its facing repeal. You have had six republican senators express concerns or outright opposition to repeal without replace. And theres never going to be replace because republicans have had seven years to come up with replace and still havent. Without replace no repeal. Im not giving this law up for dead. S p did a recent analysis of the exchanges, and they found that you had a onetime price correction in the exchanges because insurers priced their premiums way too low, way lower than originally forecast. Now they are back up to the level of the original forecast. Its basically stable which is why enrollment increased and showed no signs whatsoever of a eath spiral. There is no evidence you have a ratchet in spending from the stimulus. You actually had a onetime bump in spending and went back down. I dont know why youre saying that it wasnt stimulus. It was keynesian, onetime injection of spending that receded which is why the deficit is a third of the level it was in 2010. We went from 2. 67 trillion, 2. 8 trillion in bushs last budget to 3. 6 or thereabouts in obamas. T hasnt gone below 3. 6. I can address a little bit of the Foreign Policy. I think youre giving short shrift to the things they did well. The Iran Nuclear Deal was an important achievement. Ill do a rebuttal of the comedian, of the crowd, and of that. The immediate juan was just a joke. Hes completely ignored the arguments. The comedian was a joke. Hes completely ignored the arguments. Syria was a mess. Libya, they saved tens of thousands of people. Saying im going to slaret them like rats very, very soon. They saved those people. But they didnt have the conditions to put in a stable government afterwards. Im still glad they did what they d it didnt work out quite as well. I guess i have to disagree that to be a great president as its commonly defined, that guy was a really great president , you have to have a huge Foreign Policy success. Im also wondering why a libertarian would say that because who are the great Foreign Policy president s in American History . Usually the one who is won big wars. I dont think you should have to have that kind of Foreign Policy achievement to be considered a president who, in the common vernacular, was great. Ronald reagan five minutes to you, matt. Take it away. You want to address the stimulus, go ahead. As i was saying before. Spending at the end of george w. Bushs term was 2. 8 trillion give or take. Someone will fact check me. Went to 3. 6 trillion under obama. And kind of has been in that ballpark ever since. As a percentage of g. D. P. Its down about im just counting the number. Counting the number. Barack obama in his original state of the Union Address in 2009 as did he on the campaign quite a few paragraphs talking about the necessaryity of cutting down debt. Thats what john beats him up the most for in the book is his participation in simpson bowls and deficit reduction things which i, because we disagree about a lot of fundamental things, thats one of the great successes of the obama presidency. But barack obama campaigned on a net spending cut. He said that in the third debate with john mccain after the financial crisis hit. He talked about not leaving not kicking the can down the road on entitlements under his watch. If he end of the president is he i said we need to expand Social Security. We nealed to Bernie Sanders party on that. He described george w. Bushs expansion ever debt, unamerican, his words not mine, when george w. Bush doubled it from 5 trillion or it doubled under his watch, 5 trillion to 10 trillion. It has doubled under Barack Obamas watch. 10 trillion to 20 trillion. Any Congressional Budget Office look at the longterm budget outlook or seminearterm budget outlook looks like the edward munch painting. It is grim reading. The next president s it is donald trump god help us. I know some you voted for him. Is going to face having debt service eclipse the amount of money we spend on military spending. Thats going to happen in three or four years acongressional to the Congressional Budget Office. Were getting to unprecedented levels of indebtedness. And for those who dont think thats a problem, i envy how you sleep at night because that works out great. But for the rest of us who know that occasionally Interest Rates do go up, when that moment happens, were going to look back and say what did we do . What did we do not just during Barack Obamas presidencies but george w. Bushs presidency very much. I see the two of them in tandem certainly on this issue and maybe on a couple of others. That is a failure. He did, yes, try to create this grand bargain all this stuff and it did fall apart leading to the sequestration cuts, which is one of the only good things that happened. That stimulus ended up being on net a ratchet. We got to a new plateau of spending and were still there. Were there for the Congressional Republicans just passed a 10year thing that were going to add 9 trillion in new spending out there. I think that that is going to hang over the obama lega sit moment that Interest Rates go up. The main point obama was making about longterm debt from the beginning was that mostly we have a Health Care Cost problem. Health care costs are eating up a larger and larger share of the budget. That was with he became interested in the simpsonbowles plan you said. Medicare was a big part of changes in obamacare. I know you didnt agree. You said it significantly expand federal responsibility and raises the cost curve. You said the numbers were pulled out of joe bidens pants and will be dwarfed by actual costs within a year or two. But actual costs have come in not at target, below target. And the slowing down and change had alth care spending has a dramatic effect on the budget. In fact, the longterm budget, the longterm deficit is below the level that simpson o bowles was targeting. I know youre sad that simpsonbowles failed, but you could be happy we actually succeeded in hitting the target they were shooting for. Im not happy with the longterm outlook of the federal budget. Part that have wasnt just bending that particular cost curve. It was addressing Social Security and raising retirement angseagets and doing things on the table then and were not. They are not politically by either party. Donald trump ran screaming against that. The sense between 1997 and 2013, every single state of the Union Address, emp one, you have to count some as an address. Joint session, whatever. Every single one mentioned longterm entitlement reform as a pressing issue. It used to be a thing. Its no longer a thing. In twoparty politics in america. I think thats going to come back to bite us in the rear. The original thing that you put up square quotes. Square quotes possible more like pants. Ill read the quote if you want. I think were good. Perhaps you want to address, elaborate on your point about omissions. Matt made the point about the fracking has been the main thimming thats addressed that problem. Main thing thats addressed that problem. No question the fracking changes have given us breathing time to reduce emissions. Its less than half the change in the reduction of emissions but a big part of it. And the degree to which its a part of the changes is reducing is smaller going forward. Its a big part of the initial jump but the degree to which its contributing to emissions is shrinking a bit. Do you think the Obama Administration has made wind and solar power viable and competitive and wave of the future in terms of real costbase investment . Has that happened . I think it has. The 90 billion invested in the stimulus have yielded tremendous results in temples making those technologies affordable and spreading rapidly. You are talking about 10 times the penetration of these technologies and before. In many parts of the country its cheaper only advantage that coal has is that the plants are already built. If you are build agnew plant, its much cheaper to build either gas or wind or solar. Wind and solar are coming down so fast, in many of those increasing numbers of those areas its wind and solar. Tesla is rolling out an all electric car that will be priced competitive with gasoline powered cars in the next two years. A lot of the other companies are following suit. I think you are seeing tremendous success in the investment in these technologies. They knew they didnt have time to wait for the market on its own to develop everything because emissions are rising globally so fast you have to speed up the adaptation curve. I think they have had enormous success. Matt, would you grant my question to you is, would you grant jonathans one claim that obamas nuclear deal with iran was a plus . Matt i dont know. I dont think he knows. Dont think anyone knows. I know youall have strong opinions about t i dont think we can know until five years from now, 10 years elapses and did they build or not . We know that it prevented a runup to hostilities, military between them. I know a loft people, myself included, are happy not to see us go to war again. We also know that it freed up a lot of money to one of the nastier regimes in the world and they spent it in their usual nasty ways as well. I think we dont know. I am much more willing to grant i know some of you disagree, with a with what obama has done with cuba, with ending restrictions or limiting restrictions on what americans can do in cube why which strikes me as a ridiculous policy we had for a years. 50 years. It was good to do just on our own. I think those policies have been good. In the scheme of things, when youre facing a world in which our biggest threat is probably tension of wont exy but the threat of spreading islamic terror and the other challenge is the kind of expansion of putin, i dont think that he we can say that he moved the needle in a positive direction on those two ig challenges. Im going to agree with you about the rolling back of obamacare. I dont see President Trump holding up the sanction regime to putin to say the least. That worked. Those were measures short of war which a lot of the hawks were criticizing for obama for not doing. Not arming ukraine. For not using military measures. But those were strong economic sanctions that dealt a pretty devastating blow to russias economy. Matt i want to jump on to the fracking thing. Something like 68 of the change in Carbon Emissions has to do with swapping out energy sources. The biggest part that have by far is it swapping out fracking for coal. The majority of that has been market driven. Obamas war on coal has been oversold bquite a lofment it is because fracking got cheaper. He didnt get in the way substantially of fracking. Dont think he was holding cheerleading celebrations on the white house lawn on fracking. Thats not a popular topic among the Democratic Party, particularly in the state were in. That points to something about obama which i think is interesting and will make jonathans book a little bit prescient. Especially one of his final chapters which talks about how liberals are always disappointed in every single democratic president until they are out of office and love thefment which is true and funny. I think its definitely already starting to happen with obama. He will be given credit for stuff he didnt do a lot to do. Right. He will be given credit for gay marriage, which he opposed for a long ty. Then let joe biden do the trial. He will be given credit about pot. Even though he was terrible on this issue until basically colorado and washington forced his hand. In some key moments, this is not a small thing, i give him credit for this, he did not step in the way of the of progress that americans were making on their own. But he didnt lead for them. Thats true also of fracking. Thats an Important Role for a president not to muck things up. But he didnt lead on those issues. I think its interesting just to observe. I agree on one thing. Jonathan i say in my book i dont give him credit for gay marriage. That was something could happen organically and with the courts. I dont mention that as an achievement. I think there is a lot of things that hes done that people dont understand, dont appreciate. Educational reform i didnt get to it because i used my time poorly in the opening session. That might even be something with which you have some agreement. In the stimulus they had a grant called race to the top where they it was i think a 9 billion reward for states to reform their systems. And the genius of this grant is it only went to the winners. Like 30 states say heres what we did, do we win . They say, no. Only five of you win. So they leveraged huge amounts of change. Hey only gave the money to a fraction. You have the proliferation of standards, accountability measures, Charter Schools. You never talk about t the reason is that the teachers unions hate t and obama needs the teachers unions to vote. He never talks about t and republicans who might be inclined to like it never want to admit obama did something they like. Neither side has any incentive to talk about this tremendous change in Public Education thats actually if you follow education policy i think youll find is actually one of the most dramatic reforms and improvements you are seeing in so many of the states. That is something that i think youre going to see continue to go on for decades. Matt im not sure. Ultimately its a drop in the bucket compared to how many stimulus money went out to bail out state and local governments so they can keep their 80 spending increases back when times were good and take care of their teacher pension obligations. Race to the top is small. Itt did change behavior. Good thing. I agree with jonathan. But the lasting element of it i think is pointed to by the way Hillary Clinton is designated successor ran about education reform which is to say she was steadfastly against it and talked about education like a 1975 liberal. Not even in a good 1975 liberal way. A bad way. That speaks to something we should look at here. Truly successful president , you cant point at scoreboard on this stuff. But barack obama have from the time he came into office until the time he left. The Democratic Party, which he is the most visible figure head, we have unfortunately a very president ial heavy system out there, Democratic Party has lost 6 o congresspeople around 10 senators, around 12 governorships, a bunch of state houses as well. Democraticness has been discredited as a governing idea under his watch. I think that part of his legacy points to that there isnt the legacy ultimately is people seeing in him what they want to see. And thinking that hes still this glamorous character who agree was me about the stuff i care about. But there isnt a lot of lasting institutional reform thats going to or could stuff good stuff thats going to last. Jonathan i want to respond to that. The last five president s have Left Congress in opposing Party Control because there is a natural thermostatic response of the public about which party they support. It works its way out at the local level. Ron brown measured the number of governor seats. Senate seats and other down ballot measures. Obama is in the middle. The idea he had some historic collapse is not true. Hes right in the middle. The fact hes at 60 tells you more about what the public thinks about him. Were going to have people line up. Thank you to ask questions. We have 30 minutes for that. As you are lining up, i want to throw out one question as moderator and somebody who covers the economy, main question for you, jonathan, with matt to comment, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has been warning for years that the debt is out of control. They keep stating that the direction in which were going we could face a fiscal crisis. As recently as august of last year they issued the same warning. This is after basically after all that obama did. The same warning that we face a fiscal crisis, the debt is running out of control, this is the 30year projection. Does that brother you bother you at all that the warning and danger still exists according to a nonpartisan c. B. O. . Jonathan the best measure we have of that is in rest rates. When debt starts to crowd out private capital and Interest Rates rise. Thats what happened in the early 1990s, thats what forced washington to act on the budget deal. The bipartisan budget deal of 1990. The one that republicans revolted against. That actually is what shaped the modern Republican Party. George w. Bush said Interest Rates are starting to gup. We need a budget deal. He goes to the democrats, they say were not going to put all the sacrifice in the middle class. The rich have to pay their share. Bush ultimately agrees. The entire congressional right wing caucus revolts against him. And since then they have said, we will never make a deal like that. Thats the worst thing any president has ever done. No new taxes is our religion. And thats it now and forever. So i think thats an important context, not because im trying to point the finger at that, but that tells you, those are the circumstances under which you have to and usually will act. And i think that shaped the politics of longterm debt. Because when you have one party that refuses on principle to accede to any revenue increase of any kind, obama tried in every possible way to get them to trade higher revenue for spending cuts, he went to john boehner in private, public. Commission, super commissions. Every other way. Its just religion in the Republican Party. I dont see how its incumbent on the democrats when you are looking at the United States being one of the lowest tax countries in the advanced world, in fact if we were simply an average tax country our debt problem would disappear, for them to go along with an allspending cut solution with a party that sim will i refuses to ut revenue on the table. Matt the Federal Reserve has put a pillow over the face of Interest Rates now for seven years. When we lift the pillow, were going to wonder what the hell we were doing. [applause] first question. Frame your question as a question and tell us who the question is addressed to if you can. Please take it away. A identified like mr. Chait to answer this. Im going to put out a few ideas with regard to obamacare id like to you comment on. So the question would be how do you regard these ideas . You defended obama by saying he succeeded by his own measures. Or by his own standards. I would argue that for obamacare that he fell very short of his own standards. He campaigned first against the mandate. That was a Hillary Clinton idea. He campaigned against the mandate in 2008. Thought that the mandate was unworkable. Or was authoritarian. These types of he didnt use that term but because he thought it was restrictive. One. Two, the ultimate system obviously included mandates, but they have been continue to be deferred by him through executive orders. So hes not even carrying through these what the law is saying. Hes deferring implementation of the law because they are unworkable and they would create political backlash. Three, the class act, a longterm care benefit, it could collapse before it could be implemented. It never got fund because it was unworkable from a financial standpoint. And on and on. Hat the coops collapsing. But the main thing that he campaigned on was that he was going to transcend politics. These kind of political definitions. Not a single republican voted for obamacare. It was the first piece of social legislation in our history that didnt have bipartisan support. Social security, medicare, medicaid did. Id like you to comment on some of jonathan the main goal of the legislation was to increase access and decrease the cost curve. The class act was a little side program that ted kennedy introduced and went in there and they decided wasnt going to work. They were never anything close to integral or central to the laws functioning. Thats why i say the law is doing the two main goals he articulated over and over which was to bend down the cost curve and increase access to health insurance. It worked. Its true that the Republican Party refused to support this legislation. Its true republicans met before obamas inauguration and planned out a strategy that was totally successful on its own terms where they said if we avoid putting our fingerprint on any of his legislation, it will be seen as partisan. That will make it unpopular. That will give us our best chance tree gain power. They were right about that. I think the republicans came up with a clever political tactic which no one had the guts to execute to that degree before. But that doesnt mean that obama is responsible for their choices. Again, mitt romney is the one who set up the prototype for the health care law. Mitt romney ran on a National Version of his Health Care Plan in 2008 and lots of conservatives were totally happy with t you had conservative publication saying look at all these great things. Hes going to do this at the national level. This will give our party a chance to win. Once obama embraced this model they decided these elements, especially the mandate which romney was endorsing strongly, was the most authoritarian thing the government had done. I think the republican calculation, which proved correct, was that if they opposed everything obama did, they could drive high levels of opposition. I think that has continued to reverberate among supporters of the party. I think thats something where you have to credit the republicans for coming up with a clever strategy. Matt just toss in a couple of minor things. I think its worth pointing out and criticizing that in the passage of the law i think obama acted with a mendacity that did not resonate with the same claims he was making about being a new kind of politician saying you can keep your doctor, keep your insurance. Saying that a dozen times that premiums will go down for a family by 2,500. Jonathan they went down by more. 5,000. Ill matt ill be happy to look yaurt math. Jonathan because you had the slowest Health Care Growth in 50 years. Matt also continuously saying this is a victory of the people over the special interests as if the Health Care Industry hadnt outlobbied the opposition to this 51 which they did throughout. The pharmaceutical industry was part of that. That irritated me strongly as someone who was following the events at the time. Next question. I was also struck by your reference, jonathan, to obamas accomplishments in relation to his own standards. Let me mention three news story im sure are you foom w one is the fast and furious gunwalking program a few years ago. Second is the wiretapping of james rosens telephone. The third is the i. R. S. Targeting of tea party groups. What does it say about obamas standards he says those arent scandals . How can a great president how can a president be great who claims those things arent scandals . [applause] jonathan there was no i. R. S. Targeting of tea party groups. It was fully investigated. And they found out leftwing groups had been investigated by the exact same standard, exact same degree. This is a myth that lives on in rightwing media. This is a fantacy. Not true whatsoever. I fantasy not true what somplete i realize the republicans need a scandal in their brains but this was a nonevent. They took it seriously. They looked at it and found out there was no different treatment from the rightwing groups or left wing groups. Civility, civility is the motto of the forum. Please keep it civil or well clear you out of the hall very shortly. Matt, take it away. Matt without adjudicating that claim because it seems you guys have it under control here. I would point out that a. P. Had their phones tapped. As i mentioned before, the james thing is an example of this, the Obama Administration has been incredibly disappointing on this. Blocking freedom of information act requests. Prosecuting, trying to subpoena information from reporters so that they cough up their sources. Cracking down on whistle blowers. All of this has been would be disappointing for any president , but particularly for a president who was showered prematurely not unlike he was with the Nobel Peace Prize but from transparency groups about being a wonderful transparency president before he did much of anything. Its a sign he wasnt that person. Next question. Thanks for doing this. I love that tees two blocks from my house. You guys are wonderful. Id like for you both to touch on previously Race Relations in america and how obama was either a leader or not. Matt, take that first. Matt jonathans chapter is on this super interesting. Im serious. It was. He insists you g jonathan do i have a chapter on race. Because thats the first thing that people are going to remember about barack obama. Despite the depth and breadth of his accomplishments 200 years from now. At first i think he was uncertain in how he handled it. W you had to you had this misleading video on breitbart trying to make it appear this africanamerican Civil Servant was discriminating against white people. Where they cut off the part of the video where she said thats not what she was doing. She was treating everyone equally. Obama was so scared by this attack, they fired her until they before they had the facts. That was them being uncertain in the face of this backlash that they faced. I think over the course of the presidency, they got sounder footing. Its kind of hard to summarize. I think what obama did with race what i tried to argue in my book is that race wasnt just something that happened to obama but something he did. I think he managed to weave the story of racial progress, civil rights, into the heart of the american story in a way no previous president had. He tells the story of america as a story of progress in which civil rights, the fight against slavery, is integral to the epitome of the american story. I think thats actually a change in our culture thats going to last for a long time. Matt i have found myself in his second term particularly disappointed with which the way that he and his administration in moments of high stress that we have had, basically since ferguson, that changed the way that we talk about stuff in this country and media on College Campus answer what not. Some of the best things that the Obama Administration has done is the department of justices investigations into places like ferguson. The facts that they have conjured up there showing patterns of policing for profit, shaking down poorer communities. Prosecutorial abuse and these things. And also pointing out that a lot of what people were saying about the case at hand is missed. Thats not how it went down and calling into question a lot of narratives you might hear on msnbc. Those were good things. In many moments i think the president went towards race quicker in these last couple of years than he did towards what we could have done in a real moment that we have had and i hope that we still have but i worry we dont of possibilities of criminal Justice Reform. Some other reforms that could have happened. You cant take a policy and go into someones heart and twist the key in the policy and they stop being a racist. But what you can do is you can stop having the federal judiciary, the federal cremal justice apparatus, take eyewitness testimony so seriously. Bite mark crap. Things like that. We have known a loft those reforms. What you do when you take the power away from people who may or may not be racist but may use their power in ways that have disproportionate effects, go after the power. I feel like that the president , who is in an awful, very difficult spot to put it mildly when it comes to Race Relations in this country, when looking at criminal Justice Reform, has made it more about Race Relations than he has about criminal Justice Reform in his rhetorical approach towards that. And i fear that that has led to us not having take advantage of this moment to do more than we actually could have done. Next question. [applause] just really a point of clarification on the question, debate from mr. Chait. Thinking about president obama after eight years, after seven countries bombed, after 26,000 bombs lobbed to various countries in the middle east over the last couple years, to Doctors Without Borders hospital being bombed in afghanistan by the United States, by a 16yearold american boy, american citizen being assassinated by our country in wedding beingt, a bombed. How can you reconcile all the things that have happened with Foreign Policy with this president and still say this man is great, this man is moral, hes done things that if i were president i would press that button as commander in chief and kill thousands and thousands of innocent people. Jonathan this does relate to what i said. Succeeding by the standards he set off for him sefment he didnt run on ratcheting down the war against radical islam. He ran on ratcheting it up. If you remember the president ial debate with mccain, he said, i am going to go into pakistan. I am going to get osama bin laden. And mccain said you cant go into pakistan. Were not going into pakistan t will start a war. He said thats what im going to do. He decided he was going to change the focus of george w. Bushs response to the 9 11 attacks. He didnt say it would be painless. He didnt say there would be no casualties. And there were. But i think there is a persuasive argument to be made that for all the horrors of war, when you are in a war, that they have chosen the least terrible path. Matt were at war with half dozen countries. Lord knows what were doing in yemen. I probably cant find it on the map which probably says something about me but its a problem when were constantly at undeclared wars and were doing it forget the drone thing. Were doing president is given a list. Hes given a kill list. Thats what hes handing over to donald trump. I said earlier hes handing donald trump a loaded gun. This is what i meant. We have now established as kind of a normal thing that a president will have a kill list and that there isnt really any territorial integrity that we need respect. Out there in the world. That is an incredibly, i think, ultimately pretty dangerous place to be. There will come a time where we arent the only people that control drones. We dont want to be in place where weddings are going to be subject to these things. I agree with that premise of the question. Next question, please. Despite obamas rhetoric for more of an open immigration policy, last week he increased restrictions on cuban refugees and cuban immigrants in florida tend to vote republican. What do you think of this move . Is this a shrewd political move . Does this make him great . Matt ill take it to irritate people. Anything that castros like you want to say is bad, it probably on some level is. On the other hand, Something Like 50,000 cubans walked across the u. S. Mexico border last year. And when you get across the border, if youre from cuba, you originate from there, unlike people from anywhere else, you are given a check. You are given pathway to citizenship. You can access to all kinds of things, benefits from the u. S. Welfare state. A lot of cubans, including marco rubio, including Carlos Curbelo have been and the sun sentinal in south florida have been writing about the abuses of the system. A loft cubans have been coming across the border, sweet, im are refugee, on the clock, going back to havana. Yes, it has been a precondition from the castros. Screw the screw the damn castros, i agree. At the same time, what they are doing with this policy is making cuba like venezuela. There can be a response, why dont we make everyone more like cuba . Im willing to have that argument. I understand the policy. Jeff flake last time looked is not a democrat. And is not a fan of commies. Said this is a great move. As did some other people as well. As usual obama in these negotiations doesnt get a lot from the other end. That is irritating in a moment when cuba has cracked down o on a lot of people. But most on its face, even though its an immigration restriction, and dont like them as a thing, it makes a certain amount of sense. Arguments . Jonathan i dont want to argue, but i do want to point out i think matt has in this answer and many others shown a lot of integrity. Hes not using every answer to try to score every point he can. I think hes trying to illuminate the audience. I think hes trying to answer the questions honestly. I want to say this answer especially i think, he deserves a lot of credit. We feel the love between these two guys. Matt that makes me feel uncomfortable. Next question. The gentleman earlier answered my question about Race Relations but there is another area thats a lot of tension and political relations. Obama was supposed to unite the country. Every president says that. They plan to do that. But this was his kind of big platform of his. It feels like there is more tension than ever after his presidency. How do you see his legacy playing out there . Jonathan hes at 60 approval now. Clearly people like i dont believe polls anymore. Jonathan but the polls, the final polls missed by about 1 . The final poll that Hillary Clinton winning by 23 , she won by 2. 1 . If the poll is off by 1 . Obama is up 59 . You are not going to find a polling era on the scale thats going to get that wrong. There was an intense racialization to the backlash against obama. There is a huge i tried to make the point in my book that people who oppose him have good ideological reasons to do it. And those reasons need to be taken seriously. Nonetheless, it is demonstrably the case a major source of the actual support for actual opposition to him came from race. I think look at donald trump. Look at donald trump. If you think the tea party was really about limited government and constitutional principles, if you think thats what was motivating this mass upsurge in hate toward obama, donald trump is the answer. Donald trump is the antithesis of all those values. Donald trump won the republican nomination by being the most racist. In fact, by being the only racist in the race. I dont think social scientists who looked at the correlation between racism and politics in the obama era found that br everything became racialized and the degree to which peoples racial views correlated with their political views became nearly total under obama to a much greater degree than before. Again, i say in the book that there are plenty of times when people on the left, people on my side, overlearned this point, accused people of harboring racial bias for making a statement that they could have just easily made about a white democrat. Thats happened a lot. I think people on the right have good reason to be aggravated they are being targeted this way. I think people deserve the right as an individual to have their ideas being treated seriously. And not have their mowives in motives interrogated. Nonetheless, if you want to look on the aggregate at the American Public as a whole, think its impossible to deny that racism became a huge motivating force to the opposition. I want to apologize to jonathan for the heckling. Jonathan i love it, it gives me strength. Ok. Matt, take it away. Matt briefly to answer your question. I think one of the more irritating ticks of obama, this is also on the category of disappointment precisely the way he came on the american stage, is that he was forever portraying what he would describe as false choices and make false choice of his own. He was always defining some would say that america shouldnt spend any money doing this of the then other people said, i would spend the middle amount. Goaldy locks guy. This is pretty consistent in his rhetoric and when he would get irritated, the way he would describe the people, the tenors of both sides, at any given moment, werent necessarily accurate. As soon as you were on the opposite side personally of an important issue that obama was talking about, you discovered that your position was being caricatured, i wouldnt say as bad as the person waving around a birth certificate, but you were being caricatured a lot and in the same breath he was saying we have to stop making false choices, and that tick was irritating. Whether or not how much discredit or credit i want to give him for the ineesing polarization, were in a longbig sort of people. Were right now in a really weird moment where theres a split between the cosmopolitans and the country side. The city mice and country mice are going in their respective corners now. A lot of conflict in american politics in a way thats kind of new in the modern yearshafplgt thats preeting in europe. Thats weird. I dont know how much that would have happened anyways if barack obama was a different person or whatever. But i dont think that he rose to the moments in the way that he treated people with diffing points of view. I think he carketurized the opposition. Next question, please. Sorry my friend actually just took my question. Im a cuban american. I rarely am upset with your response, but i think i take a little bit personally because im cuban american. I just want to go into a little bit about why do you consistently use the c. B. O. . Every time i see the c. B. O. As a standard, its good garbage, garbage in, garbage out. More importantly, we have had a g. D. P. At 1. 2, 1. 5. Less than 3. And over 100 Million People on federal welfare. We never had that for so long. I cant possibly imagine how you could think that president obama is a great president when we have so many people on welfare. If we didnt live in a digital age, the welfare breadlines would be around stores for who knows how long. [applause] the big, big thing is when actually. Thats it. Jonathan dont think the c. B. O. Is garbage. I think its respected by people on both sides. Justifiably so. Again, i use some statistics in my Opening Statement about the economy. One i didnt get to was mitt romney promised in 2012 if he won and his policies were enacted, if they reduced taxes, got Big Government out of the way, there was strangling growth. By the end of his term we would get below 6 unemployment. That would be the fruit of this prefree Market Report he promised. Were under 5 . If you go by mitt romneys standards we have gone beyond the measure of success. I think if you tried to look at the measures that matt was using the measures most people were use, the economy is growing at a pretty good clip. Matt im going to address your point i predict. Is that the Labor Force Participation rate is lower than its been since 1978. I forget the latest of the its around there. Some of that is due to aging. We have the damn boomers, sorry for the insulting all of you, who fit that category, they are retiring. They are exiting the work force. There is also, i think, reason to believe looking at the disability numbers for example, and some other things, that policies have contributed to people not reentering the work force. Headline ven as the Unemployment Rate looks shinier and looks shiny right now as the headline Unemployment Rate, the fact of that Labor Force Participation rate and wages have been fat for 15 years, people feel like things have ind of sucked for a while now. Thats a real feeling f that feeling wasnt there we wouldnt have had, my god, an independent socialist come close to winning the Democratic Party nomination and then who knows what donald trump is winning the republican nomination. There is a real felt sense of economic dissatisfaction. There is a world of difference between 1. 2 growth and 3. 5 growth. I think we have been feeling that. I would put some of that at the doorstep of obama era economicpolicy. Jonathan professors rhine heart did a good paper about how financial crises lead to deeper recessions than other kinds of recessions. Normal recession you have is going to be much, much worse if it has a financial crisis. This is much, much deeper effects. By that standard the recovery, we have had has been unusually strong. Of the 14 i think its the dozen countries that had systemic financial crisis in 2008, only two have recovered their g. D. P. By 2014. The United States and germany. If you look at historical countries, that have had the kind of systemic crisis that occurred before Obama Took Office, the growth pattern in the United States is ranked near the top in that recovery. That doesnt mean things are always going to be great. But the typical period can be years and years and years until you recover the standard of living thats lost. And its been sort of bad luck for president obama that he, unlike roosevelt, who took office three years after the trough of the depression, Obama Took Office right when we were plunging off the cliff. And thats not a thing are you going to get credit for. It would have been so much worse without me. Thats the situation. Matt it wasnt him it wasnt him who mitigated the damage. A eagles cues me. Sorry you asked your question. I appreciate it. Lets have the next question, please. F you want to comment later. Thanks for your time. My question is for you, im sorry i dont know your name. Jonathan jonathan. Im going to make two points and ask two quick questions. Thats basically it. Im a financial advisor. I think in terms of dollars and cents. For the most part. So everyones familiar with the concept of net worth which is assets minus liabilities. Everyone has a number. It might be 10,000. 10 million. Negative touchdown,000. Whatever. When you talk about black people and minorities in general, dont have the numbers to back this up, but im of the opinion that average net worth for black people is lower today than it was in 2008. Then if you look at black unemployment and other financial indicators, those numbers have not trended in a positive direction. Thats one point. Second point is with the ferguson stuff and blah, blah, blah, talking about riots, talking about property damage, people destroying buildings and stuff like that. What that does is that scares away capital. So when you have i vestors people say ok i want to make money. Aim geg to open up a walmart in this neighborhood. When they look on tv and see these raging fires in places across the country and these are spontaneous situations that pop up and you never know when its going to happen, thats going to drive up your insurance rate. Personally if i had a couple Million Dollars to throw around, i wouldnt do t i wouldnt invest my money to a black neighborhood right now. Oobgrousely theres the stuff with the chicago murder rates. The point i want to make is what about results . It seems to me that black people are not doing well right now and obama has not had a good effect. The question is do you feel that obama was a good leader for the quoteunquote black community . What does the Democratic Party offer black people . And why is donald trump bad nor black people for black people . Thats like a halfhour worth of responding. Jonathan let me address the obama part. Unemployment is lower among africanamericans now than it was in 2009. The uninsured rate fell disproportionately among africanamericans. I think matt and i agree mostly on the Obama Administrations response to ferguson in policing reform. Maybe we dont. You are looking at me curiously. The Obama Administration went into a loft these communities. Met with stakeholders, met with community activists, black life matters activists, met with police. Found common ground. And has been working sort of community by community on finding associations to sort of policing that could be acceptable and legitimate within the community. I think thats mostly positive. Hes never endorsed riding. Hes never endorsed shooting police officers. Hes opposed shooting police officers. When the department of justice went in and did its report, they said that the hands up dont shoot narrative that protestors said was true was not true. They were brutally honest. A loft their supporters, what do you think happened there didnt happen. What they found about the predatory practices of the government on the community there and the predatory practices of the police department, i think were well taken points. And because they were fair on both sides, i think the report on all those issues was really accepted. I think they have actually had some success with some solutions. Matt i just think the time for reports, im happy that they did reports and that they were good. But there was a lot of discussion we need to have more discussions and focus groups. No, we know what to do. One thing you do is stop the federal government working with local governments to take peoples stuff. Civil Asset Forfeiture, which was rolled back a little bit, little bit under eric holder and rolled back, loretta lynch, huge fan of Asset Forfeiture when she was working around these parts of the country. There are things we could do. What do you think a bad cop is going to do when you have a tool saying, lets see, where is jim, i dont like you, you are probably on drugs. Probably true by the way. So even though im not going to charge you with the freaking crime, im going to take your iphone and your bike and fancy camera equipment that you have and then im going to share it with my bros back home and use that money for our own police department. Thats what america has had for a long time. We know its wrong. We have had the studies and the Commission Reports and all that crap. We havent changed that at the federal government level. Im disappointed that the talks and report and things like that havent led to more like lets just fix this thing and stop giving bad people tools. Jonathan controlled at the local level. You have to be deliberative. Matt its the federal program thats Equitable Sharing Program is a federal program. That can be ripped up by its roots. Jonathan policing in general is handled at the local level. Next question. You said obama choose the least terrible path in regards to the wars. What is the least terrible bath to stop murdering women and children . When do we end the wars . Jonathan you can handle that. I dont think there is an easy answer to that question. I think you have a large group that is at war with america. In places where they are getting through. They are killing people at a higher rate. Matt its clearly failed. When do we pull out . Jonathan i dont think you can say if we halted all strikes against al qaeda we would have awk sess and they would go home. I dont think thats a reasonable, realistic program. Matt i dont think we should be droning people in countries that were not at war with. Thank you. [applause]. Next question. After the obama after the orlando massacre, there were a lot of questions about that was a freudian slip, right. There was a lot of commentary about gun rights and obama said we have to clamp down on these gun rights. But there was no mention of the terror. I was wondering since now the wife of that terrorist has been indicted, how do you feel about his relationship between guns and terrorism and whether or not he addresses one of the subjects based on what happened . Jonathan well have to let that question stand because i well have to let the question stand. Were out of time. But you might want to address that question in your summation. The positive goes first. We have five minutes of summation from jonathan. Followed by five minutes of summation from matt. Think about how youll vote as you listen to them summarize. Jonathan, take it away. Five minutes. Jonathan i have lost the thread. The resolution is, based on his record of accomplishments obama has been a great president. Thats the thread. Jonathan the case i tried to make in this book is that he had some clear successes in Foreign Policy. He had some questionable situations where its hard to figure out if there was a better path but cant be called a success. He didnt have any major failures in foreignpolicy. Domestic policy, he set out to change a lot of areas of government. He did what he wanted to do. I know people are you can tag about trump will roll it back. Hes already discovering its easier said than done. That hes probably has the votes to roll back the upper income tax increases that obama passed. Because thats something republicans care a lot about. It doesnt hurt anybody directly. Taking away insurance from 20 Million People without having a plan to replace it, which they dont, is going to produce enormous pain. Not only to the people who would have gotten that care, but to doctors, hospitals, insurers who are screaming their heads off. So i think Something Like what did he on health care is going to stand. I think the reforms he put in place on climate have their own momentum thats going to continue. That solar energy and wind energy have been stood up and they are going to continue to expand. That electric cars will continue to expand. Other countries dont want to go back to unlimited Carbon Emissions and they responded to the election of trump by saying were not going to tear up this agreement. Were going to find a way to work around it. Doddfrank reshaped the finance strifment took away the too big to fail benefit. Increased the amount of assets that the firms have to hold. Reduced the amount of risk. Reduced the amount of fraud. You need 60 votes to take that down and they dont have them in the senate. Education reform is working its way through schools across most states. And its its working. These Charter Schools that have blossomed, some are having Extraordinary Results and those students dont want those schools taken away. I dont think anybody will do that. No one will go back and bring back the 2008 financial crisis because by definition you cant go back in time and change that. I think most of what obama did contrary to what people are saying is going to stand the test of time and its going to be difficult or impossible for trump to roll it back. Ok. Thank you. Matt, you have five minutes to make your summation. Matt you should know in case you dont that im the type of person who about a year ago at this time i was a busy frantically trying to collaborate with lucy and ken just to throw two bizarre peoples names out there on a everyat would be titled president is terrible. Yes, im kind of come interesting a slightly negative point of view when it comes to assessing president s. But ive been trying to be fair in this presentation. Im going to hold up a president who i also found in my own way, especially since i was a teenager in california, near where the western white house was at the time, ronald reagan, as someone as a way of demonstrating that jonathans attempt at the premise here, again, im remindsing people who are voting there, obama presidency, great. Same sentence. Even though i wouldnt necessarily describe Ronald Reagans a as great, its not as great, its not hard. You dont have to try to prove a negative when you think of some of the things that jump out with you with rnleds reagan. Who obama was very conscious about trying to emulate. He wanted to have the same impact on american politics as ronleds reagan did. He read up on him a lot. Ronald hagen helped croak inflation, he helped croak the soviet union. And the economy ran pretty well for the last six years there, five, six years of it. The not hard to make the case. You see it. Its there. You can dispute parts of it and god knows we would and i would and i probably agree with a lot of it. But those are the big ones. With obama its we didnt prevent the Great Depression. Obamacare, which today, today, literal whereyy is the first day since its passage, as far as i know, in which 50 of americans have said, maybe i like this thing. Its only when faced with the way that the repeal and replace hamburger is being made on capitol hill, and faced with changing their health care status, which is very traumatic, people, as a lot of people learned during the implementation of obamacare, found out themselves. But its never hear, hear. But its never been popular. Its not a widely hailed law. Bill clinton was are ining was running against this. Were proving negatives. On climate, again, were talking about the biggest impact, measurable one that we now, is not getting in the way of fracking. Whether the Paris Agreement turns out to be a great thing and lasting thing, these are things were going to see in the future. The e. P. A. Regulations, whether they survive, were going to find that out. These are in the future. We might find out. We also might find out that a lot of things that dont seem like a problem now are going to look problematic in the future. Because bad things eventually happen. Doddfrank, great bill, im not so sure. Its the reason why you cant use your debit card to buy a 40ouncer anymore, right . Because of these micromanagement of interbank fees and these types of things. It didnt touch fannie mae and freddie mac. There wasnt kind of root and branch look at one of the bigger centers of the financial industry collapse. It wasnt there. We dont know if these banks are now too big to fail or not. Because were not going to see it until the next financial crisis. If you think that theres not going to be a next financial crisis, i would point to you to the signing ceremony of sarbanesoxley. When george w. Bush said, this is the most sweeping reforms that weve had since the new deal and the Great Depression and there will be no more enrons. Thats it. Were done. Were all in this shiny new future. So i fear that were going to look not just at Foreign Policy, which i dont think has been a success at all, i would characterize them like jonathan, libya as a very important failure as well as giving donald trump a loaded gun on a lot of different ways. I think were going to look five years from now when the next bad things happens, and were going to see, what did this guy do for us to help prepare that bad thing and were going to think of that behavior worse than we currently do now. Even as we remember the guy that we kind of liked as a dude. Thank you, matt. Ok. That closes the debate. [applause] please, come forward. Please look at your control phones. Vote on the resolution. For, against. Or undecided. We will give you go ill ill give my concession speech now. Give you a minute or two. You never know. These things are very unpredictable. Arguably you have the advantage, jonathan. Because one of those hecklers is voting against you right away. You have a little bit less than five minutes, actually. Ok. You look at the vote as its coming in, arent you . Yes. Ok. The polls are still open on the west coast. Ok. You can talk to your neighbor. Get some advice. From your neighbor about voting. Shortly, jonathan is going to be over there signing books as well. Those of you who asked questions, didnt get your questions answered, can talk to jonathan or matt afterwards. Theyre going to stick around. Hows it looking in terms of numbers coming in . Is camille forester in this room . Is Camille Foster in the house . Ladies and gentlemen, Camille Foster. Ok. Ok. Ok. We verified that camille is in the house. Camille, stay where you are. We just want to know youre in the house. Yes. Camille is going to be an upcoming debater. Going to be debating an issue about black lives on the campus. Thats Camille Foster in a few mobblets. Im going to be an upcoming debater too. How do we stand . Is it coming through . It looks like people are done. Can you show me the before and after . Close the voting. Show me the results. All right. Ok. The vote results. Oh, wow. Ok. The matt s though welch won the debate that matt welch won the debate. Jonathan lost some ground. He lost nine percentage points. He started with 31 and he went down to 22 . Matt went from 50 to 74 , 75 . So he picked up votes. It looks as though matt wins the tootsy roll. Congratulations, matt. Jonathan will be signing books. [applause] jonathan will be signing books. Well be over there talk with you. Jonathan, you can stand. Im sorry that 50 of you were ready to think obama was a great president. I wasnt getting that vibe but clearly ive let down the people on my side. Well post that later. All right. Jonathan will be selling books over there. Signing books. So if you want to talk to jonathan, you should walk over there. We have wine, we have food, weve got matt welch sticking around as well. If you want to beat up on him. Lets do that. Thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] now live to the Senate Finance committees confirmation hearing for Robert Lighthizer to be u. S. Trade representative. Mr. Light hieser is an attorney who lighthizer is an attorney who has also worked on capitol hill. This is live coverage on cspan