0 would accumulated political capital in the election and what he intended to spend his political capital on was privatizing social security. which became an obsessive focus of the bush second term, in which failed completely as proposed policy and as politics, they really just never recovered. it was the first press conference after he was reelected where he launched the privatize social security plan, and it turned out very poorly, very quickly, and it never got better. well, today president obama stepped into that particular page of the history books, when he he would his first press conference after being re-elected. he waited longer than any of his modern predecessors to hold the first post-re-election press conference, was he did follow the tradition when he convened the press corps today, and he did so in the midst of the controversy over the sudden resignation of his cia chief, who's also the former commander of the iraq war and the afghanistan war. the highest profile military and intelligence figure in the country. so david petraeus' old job of running the cia is now suddenly an available job in this administration and the same scandal that created that vacancy at the cia has also now touched the current top u.s. commanding general in afghanistan, whose successor for that job is due to have his confirmation hearings in washington tomorrow. well, today at his first post-re-election press conference, the president largely deflected questions about who he would be appointing to all the top jobs in the administration for his second term. he deflected those questions today with one notable exception. one notable exception that just about took the roof off that room today. did you see this? >> senator john mccain and senator lindsey graham both said today that they want to have watergate-style hearings on the attack at the u.s. consulate in benghazi. and that if you nominate susan rice for secretary of state, they will do everything in their power to block her nomination. as senator graham said, he simply doesn't trust ambassador rice after what she said about benghazi. i would like your reaction to that and would those threats deter from making a nomination like that? >> first of all, i'm not going to comment at this point on various nominations that i'll put forward to fill out my cabinet for the second term. those are things that are still being discussed. but let me say specifically about susan rice. she has done exemplary work. she has represented the united states and our interests in the united nations with skill and professionalism and toughness and grace. as i've said before, she made an appearance at the request of the white house in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her. if senator mccain and senator graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. for something like this happening at an american diplomatic facility were not enough to protect the lives of the four americans who died, including the ambassador. those are the questions the congressional committee's looking at that attack are going to be asking tomorrow, when those hearings convene, including expected from david petraeus himself, who is now the former head of the cia. but what does not follow rationally, from the anger and concern over the attack in september is that john mccain and conservative media assaults on the american ambassador to the united nations, susan rice, who had nothing to do with the attack or with anything about preparing consular facilities for potential security problems. but who john mccain has nevertheless been furiously denouncing as unqualified, and as a person who doesn't understand things well enough, like he does. he went on cbs today and called her not very bright, which you will recall is the exact same thing that john sununu said about president obama and his role in the mitt romney campaign. he called him not very bright. the president's response to john mccain's attempted destruction of susan rice and his pledge to block her nomination, and mccain's pledge to block her nomination as secretary of state, the president's response to that has not been to say, i don't want to talk about benghazi, nothing to see here, his reaction has been to say, yes, we should talk about what happened in libya. but the idea that susan rice is going to be your scapegoat here when she has done nothing wrong, that's the part that is nonsense and i'm not going to go along with that. and you're not using something made up about her to destroy a career that is still on its way up. picking a fight is what they're calling this in the beltway media, right? picking a fight would be installing paul krugman at treasury. picking a fight would be like picking eliot spitzer for attorney general. picking a fight would be moving camp david to hawaii so the president could get in more beach time. picking susan rice for secretary of state if the president decides he wants to do that would not be picking a fight. it would be more, drawing a line in the sand. it would say starting now, starting day one of this second term, that i just won in a big national election that you lost, starting now we will fight about policy, we will fight about differences of opinion, we will fight about priorities, but we will not have anymore fights based on nonsense that the right made up to entertain itself. if we have a real beef, we will fight it out. but if it's made-up, that made-up stuff will no longer be entertained at the level of national policy. joining us now is bill bergman, a senior strategist for a pro-obama super pac. he previously served as the deputy press secretary for this president and for national press secretary for mr. obama's campaign in 2008. mr. burton, congratulations. >> thank you very much. >> you had a big year. >> it was a good election. one other presidential clip that you could have shown would have been from "the american president," when andrew shepard says, "i am andrew shepard and i am the president." >> and not born in kenya. i think the president is saying, you know what, the birth certificate thing is not going the paradigm for the kinds of fights we have here. we're to the going to fight about whether the new black panther party stole the election in pennsylvania. we're not going to fight about this stuff that so animated the right. we're going to focus on, we're going to put that stuff aside. he's essentially challenging the republican party to have an adult debate. i see that dynamic at work, at large, and specifically on this susan rice issue. do you think that's happening? >> absolutely. i think the president wants to have grown-up conversations about big issues that affect the country. and i think if you look at how he took this issue on, he said, let's talk about the facts and let's take a hard look at what happened here. but getting distracted by all this nonsense, which john mccain has gotten himself distracted on since the 2008 presidential election and before, is not something he's going to engage in. and for john mccain to be the tip of the sphere on this fight, the man who brought us sarah palin, and he's going to talk about someone's qualifications on national security, i don't think any of us need to have that either. >> what about the beltway critique that nominating susan rice, and we don't know that the president is going to, but nominating susan rice would be expending political capital that might affect the president's overall ability to get his agenda moved in the second term. do you see it that way? do you see it as something that would be a political advantage or a political cost? >> you know, a lot of times presidents, president obama included, get more political capital by winning political fights. and that's not to say that susan rice would be a huge political fight. it seem obvious that there are some republicans who have real political motivations, who are involved in it right now. but, you know, obviously john kerry would be a great candidate. susan rice would be a great candidate. but what the president said today was, if i choose susan rice, it's because i think she's the most qualified person for the job, and i'm not going to let your bs stand in the way of me nominating her for that. >> in terms of the tone that we're hearing from the president here, i am not one of those people who believes in like following body language as opposed to following policy fights, but it is striking that we saw the president at that debate with mitt romney, where it quickly spiralled into the false fact check and the please proceed and everything. we saw the president at that debate and we saw the president again today sort of bring the room to a halt, stop everybody, and look really pissed. i have not seen that very much in covering him as president. are there instances -- you've worked with and around him since going back to 2007. is there a pattern to when he gets mad about stuff? >> well, he has only a certain tolerance for some of the idiocy that the beltway gets itself engorged in, to borrow a presidential term. and what you saw -- well, you've seen him at his strongest moments, and we also saw him at sort of his weakest. that first debate when he was up against mitt romney, and he wasn't as certain of the points he was making. it wasn't that he felt he was on the wrong side of the argument, but he definitely wasn't as self-assured as we saw him today. and today was the exact opposite of that, it was like that second debate. and what the president saw was, this is a moment where i have faith in the american people that they're going to see beyond the stupid politics of this. another example of that was in the primary in 2008. right before the ohio and texas primaries, when there was a debate over whether or not we should get rid of the federal gas tax, and it's 2 cents per gallon or something like that, the polls all said we should do it, because they were spiking up back then. and the president said, no, this is stupid, if we do that we with bankrupt all the money the federal government has to build roads and infrastructure. 2 cents per gallon isn't something i'm going to engage in this stupidity for. and he engaged in the fight and won that fight and went on to win the nomination. >> at a time when everybody was saying, this is a dumb fight to pick. >> exactly. >> there is a little bit of a pattern here. what happens to you next? >> i'm going to try to be a dark overlord somewhere else. i don't know. pet stores, maybe. >> could be a dark scene. bill burton, senior strategist for priorities usa action and a man with a bright but uncertain future at this point. good to have you here. >> thanks, rachel. good to be here. >> all right. dan rather is going to be joining us for a few minutes tonight, just a few minutes tonight for the interview. that's coming up. stay with us. 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