> dan pfeiffer was senior advisor to the president until his resignation became ef">
> dan pfeiffer was senior advisor to the president until his resignation became ef" property="og:description">
> dan pfeiffer was senior advisor to the president until his resignation became ef">
>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> dan pfeiffer was senior advisor to the president until his resignation became effective last week. before that he served as the president's communications director. the former deputy chief of staff of operations called his departure the end of an era. he's the last of a select group which stayed with the president from the beginning of the campaign for the white house. announcing his resignation president obama said, he's been smart, steady, tireless, and true to the values we started with. he is a good man and a friend and i'm going to miss having him , just down the hall from me. early this week, i talked to dan pfeiffer about his years in the white house. his decision to leave and the challenges facing president obama. here's that conversation. you have had a remarkable experience. you're in your early 30's and you have, since 2007, been at the side of the president of the united states. how do you decide when to leave? dan: that's a pretty complex question. that maybe has a simple answer which is, i just knew it was time. like, just had the feeling that it was -- i'd done a lot of what i wanted to do. i had this really compelling desire to get my own life back. i'd been in an intense work situation for a very long time and i thought about it. we have these natural junctures, every two years is sort of when people decide to come or go. i thought after the mid terms in 2014, i was thinking would be my chance to go. but right after the mid terms, i felt we were in a bad place and i didn't want to leave when we were down but we had these great four or five months that helped the president regain his political standing and i saw that and thought, if i was going to leave, this was the time. but it was hard. it was a hard thing to do. charlie: we'll talk about you and about him. the best moment for you? dan: i think the best moment was when we passed health care. to me that was what validated to me that this was going to be a different sort of presidency. what really drove me in the campaign was that the president would do two things, he would take on fights other people have shied away from and he would succeed where others had failed. i had some pretty -- i questioned that capacity to be a different sort of president when it looked like health care might fail. we were able to do it, there's elation in the room. the president said to us, it -- passing health care ranks up there with winning the election. as one of his best moments. i couldn't agree more. charlie: it's what he said he came there to do in part. dan: exactly. it's one of the few times you can make a massive difference in millions of peoples' lives but it proved that what we were trying to do, the core of our campaign, could be realized. and it was really hard and took a long time. charlie: i know you believe there will not be a supreme court overturning of obamacare or the affordable care act. there are others who believe it could. here you have created something that's legacy, your high moment and it may be in peril. dan: absolutely. and a lot of focus son how this would affect the president and people who passed health care and it would be very, very hard. , now probably the more important thing, the president he enjoys, he's proud of the fact he passed health care and has given health care to millions and millions of people. we have millions of people who can't afford health care because of the supreme court that's a huge problem and we'll have to find a way to fix it. it's going to be really, really hard to solve that problem. charlie: don't really have a plan to fix it? because you don't believe it's going to happen? dan: we don't believe it will happen. we believe it shouldn't happen. we have no sort of trick up our sleeve to solve this. i mean, the fact is if the supreme court rules this way millions of people will go without health care. and we can't change that certainly in the short-term. charlie: i thought you might say the night that osama bin laden was killed. because that had been a priority for the president since almost his first meeting with the c.i.a. when he took office. and yet now he faces the challenge of isil. how was that moment? dan: that was probably one of my most surreal moments. i was in the middle of watching a movie at a movie theater on a sunday afternoon when i got an email from our deputy security advisor and said, can you come to the office for a meeting at 6:30. my first thought is, this isn't good. that's not an email you normally get. normally it would be more explicit about what the topic was and when i asked, he said he couldn't tell me over email. so i got to the office having no idea what it was going to be fearing the worst, something terrible happening during our campaign in libya at the time, a threat to the homeland. and then to find out a few minutes after you get to the white house that the president -- that the president had fulfilled this promise, done something that really helped turn the page on the decade post-9/11 and that whole experience and then leaving the white house at 2:30 in the morning, being able to hear from my office, people chanting "u.s.a." on pennsylvania avenue, it was one of the great front row seats to history that i got to have, to be able to see, not the operation, but that sort of -- that night and how it all came together with the speech and everything else. it was fascinating. charlie: how was his mood after that? exultant? dan: i don't think it's exultant. i think it was pleased for america. relief that the operation, this was as big a bet as a president could take, i think. he had to do it against, as some folks have said, against the advice of some of his cabinet. to have it work, i can only imagine what it's like for him to be sitting there, hear about the one helicopter going down, to think he'll have a situation like jimmy carter had in the -- charlie: the thought had to pass his mind, as it did with bob gates. dan: absolutely. he placed a big bet and it looked like it had failed. -- like it would fail. then to have the chance to call president bush and president clinton to talk to them about it. i think he was relieved it had gone well. i think proud that he'd been able to accomplish something that had taken so long. and happy for america. it clearly meant something powerful to the american people. you could see that as a response all across the country that night. charlie: not an easy decision. people like secretary gates had made it known he was opposed to the nature of the execution of what you wanted to do, it would be better to bomb them. dan: it was a big gamble. charlie: a lot of people raised a lot of reservations. what is it about this man that said, i'll take the risk. dan: if your name is barack husain obama and you get elected to the presidency just a few years after the illinois state senate, you have a believe and -- in your own luck, maybe and a willingness to take big risks. if he didn't take big risks you don't become president he knew this might be our only shot and we had to take it. but it came with great political risk. that is one of the things i don't think he gets enough credit for but that he is willing to, you know, risk his political standing, but his political standing at great risk. to try to do things. charlie: if he thinks it's the right thing. dan: if he thinks it's right. saving the auto industry, the raid. across the board. charlie: you have said everybody looks at things through a political filter, and therefore they give you a political motivation for doing things. whereas in fact sometimes decisions, always there's a tough decision to be made, that this guy, you know, has a certain peace of mind about decision making. dan: yeah. charlie: you've seen that since you rode around in a car with him when he was running for president. dan: right. he's very sort of deliberative and calm at the point of decision and very rarely ever looks -- even if the decision goes poorly, spends a lot of time second-guessing. he'll try learn the lessons from it but he is, you know, he'll -- his belief is to try to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. charlie: and often everything is given a political dimension so it's not necessarily they did it for the right reason. dan: one of the great frustrations for myself and for anyone who has worked, probably in any white house, the president makes a decision pause he thinks it's the right thing to do and it's interpreted with these bizarre political dimensions like the president today, you know, announced his support for -- or the president today pushed for an increase in the minimum wage in order to help fire up the populist democratic base. no, actually he did it because he thinks people need more money in their pockets. i'm confident this is not something unique to us. i'm sure president bush and president clinton's aides felt the same way. and the thing about washington most people, most of the time, politics is in the background but they're trying to do the thing they think is best for the country. charlie: diwhy did you go to work for him in the first place? dan: i was a -- sort of a frustrated democrat, i had done a couple of campaigns, i lost a couple, and it sort of felt like there was -- politics was growing boring to me. it felt like the gore-bush race was no different than the kerry-bush race, the senate races were sort of the same, it all led to a lot of stalemates. sort of out of nowhere, and i got lucky because i was working for senator bayh of indiana who was thinking about running for president and he got out about the time barack obama was thinking about getting in. it was good fortune that this -- at the exact moment i was available, a candidate who represented, who inspired me for the first time in a long time, represented a chance for something different in politics came along. it could have played out a million different ways but it just happened to be literally the exact moment i became free he started to run. charlie: tell me about the man you met then when you were applying for a job and the man you said good-bye to, i guess on air force one, to say, i'm leaving. you're on your own. dan: well, a couple of things. first is, at his core, he's the same man to me. a lot of our conversations are the same. you know, when i first started working for him, we would travel on commercial air flights to iowa and new hampshire. it would be just me, the president, reggie love, and maybe one or two others. and you know, we'd be -- sit in the lounge or wherever else, getting ready to get on the plane. we'd be talking basketball and movies and tv and stuff like that. charlie: books? dan: books. flash forward, we'll be having the same conversations, the president and i. but then i'll step back and realize we're not having them outside the gate, the southwest gate in manchester. we're on marine one or air force one flying to the vatican to meet the pope or these amazing things. in that sense he's very much the same. now there's photos that show we've all aged a lot in that time. a lot of people sent photos of me from the early 2007 days and one, i can't believe how much i aged and i can't believe they hired a child to work on that campaign. charlie: but he's battle hardened. your words. dan: he is. he's been through a lot. he's had to make tough decisions. he's been attacked -- attacked relentlessly for many, many years now, but at his core the same genuine, good person and the same faith in people. charlie: how do you explain what seems to be a visceral reaction to oppose him? dan: i think it's, the main thing, talking about congressional republicans? charlie: in part. his ratings went down across the board. dan: look, i would say, we live in an incredibly polarized -- charlie: is it personality? is it policy? the fact that he got there too young and didn't have the right experience and therefore he's not ready to be president? whatever it might be? dan: first and foremost it has to do with the polarization in the country. for our huge, massive landslide win in 2008, 47% of the country voted against the president. in our very big win against mitt romney, 49% of the people voted against him. we live in a 50-50 country. people are getting, republicans and democrats are getting more adamant in their views. a republican is much more likely to oppose a democratic president. and the reverse is true. charlie: he was in selma over the weekend. do you think race has anything to do with it? dan: i'm incredibly hesitant to ascribe, without knowing to ascribe sort of racist motivation to anyone or anything. look, i think it is -- there's no question there are people who oppose the president because he's african-american. probably also people who support him because he is. and i don't think -- but i don't think the majority of the -- i don't think racism drives the overwhelming majority. i think it's political, cultural, policy. charlie: you've been there when the prime minister of israel came to speak before the congress. susan rice said on my program -- destructive is the word she used. it's got to make you crazy if you're a president and the prime minister is coming over and speaking to congress, trying to affect policy and trying to get them to turn against the president. dan: well, i mean, i think that there's a real danger in -- charlie: and narrow his options. dan: we're, i think, in a dangerous point. in the polarization of foreign policy. the speaker inviting the prime minister, trying to really politicize and make the u.s.-israel relationship partisan. i think that's dangerous, as susan rice said. then you have the news yesterday that 40-something republican senators sent a letter to iran to try to basically work with the hard-line elements in iran to scuttle the president's diplomatic efforts. charlie: saying we'll oppose the agreement and therefore -- dan: right. i think that speaks to -- one it's a dangerous trend. but it also speaks to the nature of sort of the republicans' approach to the president. which is essentially electoral nullification. they are trying to do everything to nullify his win in 2012, whether that's to curb the power that they were totally in favor of president bush having. he's the commander in chief he's in charge of foreign policy. congress has a consultative role and they'll have a chance to vote if they bring a bill up but to actually write a letter to iran to try to scuttle a u.s. foreign policy initiative, i can't imagine -- charlie: one the president considered the most significant he could make in his presidency. dan: absolutely. certainly one of the most significant. this is a dangerous thing to do. i think, i hope people -- i hope republicans will step back and realize what exactly it is they're doing here. i can only imagine what their response would have been if democrats had done a similar thing when george w. bush was president. charlie: what can he do? it puts them in league with the hardliners in iran. dan: we have to see if we can get a deal, and we're going to have to sell it. i think the challenge, what he has done and will do again, is to say to republicans what is your alternative? if you're against the diplomatic solution are you suggesting we , use force? are you suggesting we go to war with iran? and you'll have to go to the american people and explain the consequences of that. charlie: that's what he said about the prime minister of israel, if you don't have a policy, all you have is to alter some things they'll never do and therefore if you're going to act on what you said you'll do, you have no option but military. dan: you have two choices here. a military solution and a diplomatic solution. we should at least play the diplomatic one out to see if we can come to a resolution. it is very dangerous. one of the reasons this letter is dangerous is if we don't get a deal, how the world ascribes blame for the deal is very important. because if it is seen as the united states walking away, or scuttling the deal because of actions of congressional republicans, that's going to make it harder for us to keep the wall together, to ensure, to put pressure on iran. charlie: leon panetta, bob gates, and so many other people that have been on my program over the last -- you've been with the president in this administration, have said the biggest threat to america's national security is dysfunction in washington. if the president had one goal he believed he could create bipartisanship. what happened? dan: let's stipulate, we can always do things better. the president could call more members, we could meet with more people. but the problem here is too larger -- is two larger problems. one is the republicans made a specific strategic decision, famously articulated by mitch mcconnel, that their goal was to not work for the president but do everything they could to oppose him and defeat him. they decided that was in their political interest and they followed through on that the president can do a lot. he can't really decide what the republicans' political interest is for them. that was one. and the second is, which i think exacerbated a growing problem, was the campaign finance decision from the supreme court which gave such sway to billionaires on both sides. particularly on the republican side where they're very afraid of primary challenges to have these super p.a.c.s there to sort of help push them in a more conservative place. that is part of the problem. the president in the first few years was able to get a lot done with the democratic congress. republicans came in, they had had trouble managing their own business, as we saw from the dhs bill. but this is something we've got to keep working on. it's a real problem for the country. the president talks all the time about the handful of things that any normal congress should be able to do. charlie: tell me candidly, in terms of self-analysis and his own self-analysis what you could have done more? the obvious thing people talk about is you did not stroke the republicans enough. they also say you did not call even people in your own party enough. the president doesn't like to do that. that's not in his nature. it is said that's true about even foreign leaders. that therefore he calls on himself a sense of equal blame. dan: well, i think, you know, we can obviously do more -- could have done more early on to build more deeper relationships. i do fundamentally disagree with the idea that -- and that may have helped on smaller things like nominations and things like that. and the president has taken sop -- some steps particularly in the last few months here to try to address that. we've tried to improve as time has gone on. i do fundamentally disagree with the notion that if the president just played golf with john boehner more. charlie: not playing golf but the kind of courting that lyndon johnson did. dan: i think the johnson example is unfair because he did well with a democratic majority, as the president did and when he had a mixed congress -- charlie: there was a sense of conservatives who didn't want to go where the president didn't want to go at that time. even though they were democrats. they were chairmen of committees. it was a massive selling job by the president. is that not in his nature? dan: no, he did -- i think -- when people look back at this time they'll say why couldn't you pass bills like president obama did? passing health care with zero votes to spare, something that countless presidents had taken on and failed, is a remarkable legislative achievement. it required him to sell, stroke, convince campaign -- charlie: threaten. dan: i don't know if i'd go with threaten but be very clear about the importance of voting for it. charlie: lyndon johnson threatened. abraham lincoln threatened. dan: there are a lot of things you can get away with when lincoln and johnson were president that you can't get away with now. turley you -- charlie: you have no regrets from that time. this was a central campaign theme in 2008. dan: right. look. if we could make it better, we absolutely would. looking back on it, there are of course things we could do better. i look at that, it's not just in our outreach to republicans. it's in everything. we came in at a time of tremendous crisis, trying to keep the economy from falling off a cliff. i wish we could have done more things. but we are proud of our accomplishment that we've had through the six years that i worked there. charlie: and you should be. you spent your life doing that you should be proud of what you've done. but there's a piece i read in the new york times, online. about foreign leaders, that the president is cool and businesslike. is that simply what ought to be recognized as his style and don't expect him to be something he's not? dan: he is who he is. he's a person who adores people. like if you see him campaign you see that. he adores -- charlie: voters. dan: voters, the public, interesting people he gets a chance to meet with. i think he is -- he is not a transactional human being. i think that is to his core. he is businesslike. he's smart. but he also doesn't need the admiration or affirmation of other people to get up in the morning. that is -- that has allowed him, i think, to be -- but there are always two sides of a coin here right? why doesn't -- one of the examples is why doesn't the president get more mad all the time? then people are like, good thing we have such a calm, cool-headed leader. or why isn't the president more you know, why is he so disciplined? they are either -- i think who he is serves him quite well. he's not going to be someone else. he's not going to be lyndon johnson or ronald reagan or george bush. he's going to be who he is he -- george bush was always known as a friendly guy. charlie: as bill clinton was. dan: but george bush also had horrendous relations with many leaders in countries in the world. the president has good relations. his style has worked for him. charlie: help me understand now, this is interesting. we're right at the point of understanding, you've seen him up close, up close and personal, talked about life, talked about culture, all those kinds of things. where does that come from? is that all in the first book he wrote? that explains being an outsider, explains the lifestyle he's had, is that what's in the end shaped the guy that's been president and we expect him to be things that he's not because his experiences were different? dan: i think the first book, having a president who wrote a memoir like that gives you a window into the creation of his identity and a way that you might not have for other presidents. that was the book of a person running for president. it was a raw memoir. i think he's comfortable in his own skin. because he went through a process because of, you know, as a african-american growing up in hawaii with -- charlie: hardly knew his father. dan: hardly knew his father, raised by his mother and grandmother, in the polyglot culture of hawaii. he had a chance to explore who he was, come to terms with it. he had a moment not long after he was in college when he moved to new york, you know, to transfer to school there and got, you know, sort of very serious about life. i think in that period he helped define who he is. what i think makes him -- what really defines him as president is he loves his job but doesn't need his job. because he's comfortable in being barack obama. i don't think that's true of a lot of people who seek high office in this country. charlie: what will he do when he leaves office? dan: i think he'll enjoy being a little less in the bubble. i think he'll enjoy taking on you know, a handful, some of these issues he's cared a lot about, whether in the foreign policy space or my brother's keeper is an initiative for young men of color. charlie: what does that mean to him, my brother's keeper? dan: he knows the power it can -- he can have with young african-americans and latino men. one of the most powerful things i get to see is when the president does a town hall or round table with these young men, he's done it with african-american young men latino young men and native american young men, and he can sit with them and say, i, too, didn't really know my father. i too struggled growing up. i too would get angry when people would look at me as they were getting on the elevator with me. to see the impact on these kids to think, if he can make it this far, i can make it out of school and do something with myself. that's an incredibly powerful way he can change lives. charlie: elise told me she thinks he's at heart a writer and that's what he'll do? after he leaves office. dan: i think he'll enjoy writing. i'm confident he'll write a memoir. charlie: is one of the failures of this administration that you have not been able to take the american people with a narrative that they understood and responded to? dan: i think in the first two years we all stepped back and looked at it and realized that the trees had overwhelmed the forest. we were doing health care, we were saving the auto industry, we were doing the stimulus and each one of those things were sort of their own thing. and they didn't weave a broader narrative. we got much better at that that's one reason he won re-election. but this goes to the core challenge but on the issues the president cares about, public opinion is moved significantly in his direction over the course of our time in the white house. whether it's on core economic policies. charlie: same sex marriage? dan: same sex marriage, imgation -- immigration reform, taxes whether the wealthy should pay more, we have moved aggressively there. congress has not moved in part because they're -- these are 70% issues and they're responding to the 30% who disagree because they're the ones who decide republican primaries. but he has moved the country in a direction that if we can continue it and win the next presidential election, i think we'll sort of set the four corners of political dialogue in this country for a very long time. just like ronald reagan did at the end of the 1980's. charlie: what you were able to do is identify a group of voters through, one, smart use of technology and the digital revolution, but also identifying them and finding a way to communicate with them. in fact, you have said, in things i have read, whoever gets the democratic nomination, a signal test will be whether they can put together the coalition you put together in 2008 and in 2012. but did not put together in 2010. right? dan: right. this is the challenge because this group of voters has come out, in the last four election -- they came at the last two that barack obama has been on the ballot and not in the two he wasn't on the ballot. that group of voters is the future of the democratic party and the future of the progressive vision. charlie: who is in that group? dan: millenials, young people, latinos, african-americans who return to the political process or joined for the first time because of president obama. it's a lot of single women who had not been in the political process. if you get them to come out new -- and in many cases, that is a growing population of the country that will be the -- charlie: the demographics of the future. dan: if we can turn the obama coalition into the democratic coalition that will be a powerful force for years to come. charlie: what do you think is the likelihood of that? dan: i think it's good, but a lot of work. charlie: what happened to the coalition in 2014? dan: one, it never felt particularly connected to congress. i think they sort of see it as not worth their vote because -- they understand why it makes sense to wait in line for hours to vote for the president. particularly this president. they don't see why it makes sense to wait in line to vote for congress when you don't see results. i think that's part of it. dan: how frustrated was it that he couldn't go in and out 2014 and say, this is what i believe in, make the case as a national political figure because some argue that what happened is that the republicans made him the issue, whereas democrats were trying to make it a local race and you had to make it a national race to win, that's one of the things we understand. dan: he was frustrated he -- he understood -- charlie: frustrated? dan: he understands there are states like alaska or arkansas where it wouldn't make sense for him to campaign in 2008 let alone now but broadly across the country, he was frustrated that -- charlie: express his frustration? dan: he was -- i mean, i don't know what like -- charlie: what's the most emotional you've seen this man? dan: the most emotional in terms of deeply affected would be after newtown. charlie: again, gun control. dan: and thing i think one of the most angry i've seen him was after the senate failed to pass background checks in 2013. there was probably no issue that better exemplified it. the dysfunctionality of congress. that issue with 90% support could be defeated only a few months after a tragedy like newtown. if you could not do it then, when could you possibly do it? charlie: what's it like different inside than outside? what do you see and know we don't see and know? dan: you read some of the books written by journalists about it, they are largely right in the overall arc of things and the facts are usually close to right. sometimes they seem more dramatic than the meetings were in real life. you're like, i was in that meeting, i don't remember these people yelling at each other or it being a huge thing. but you don't ever get to see the man barack obama, like in the books written by outsiders. i think david axelrod's book shows that very well. the one -- the sources are much less likely to be -- much less likely -- people close enough to be in the room with the president are not usually the ones talking. if they are talking, they generally protect the president. charlie: give us some -- take us inside the room. how is it different? whatever the decision is that we don't know. dan: well i think it is, what's different about it is how well you know, how well -- the sort of amount of thought the president puts into these things and how he wrestles with hard decisions. charlie: we knew that. he thinks about it and wrestles with it. dan: but the question is how does he wrestle with it? there are a couple of ways. one way is he will -- sometimes you'll be in the room and you don't know what his position is because he is arguing the other side. for the purpose of -- this is the law professor in him. to test out the, you know, the opposite argument. to see how strong it is. the opposite case. and he'll be arguing and he'll start calling on people to -- who he knows disagree with his position to try to get them to make the arguments to make sure, he's always pushing against the idea that he's going to get a rubber stamp from the staff. it's a fascinating thing to watch his mind work as you see him slowly work his mind around the problem from all the different sides to come to the final conclusion. charlie: here's a man seeking opinions and seeking other people's ideas because he's trying to make the best possible decision. also what comes out in terms of people who talk about him is one, the supreme confidence. bordering on, if not, arrogance. dan: i hear that a lot. i mean, i think, he's confident himself. right. i don't find it arrogant, of course. it is not a knee jerk confidence. it is not just like, my gut says this is what we're doing. it is a confidence in his own decision making process -- charlie: so it's an intellectual arrogance. dan: i think it's a confidence that he's gone -- that he's looked at the issue in a deliberative way and sought out other people's opinions and that once you've made the decision you've got to stick with that decision and -- charlie: that's why he gets criticism, that's what the red line was about. made a decision and changed his mind. for a better decision, you might argue. dan: i think that -- that actually goes, i think to the intellectual rigor. a decision was made, the entire government was heading in one direction. he did not feel comfortable with it he got a lot of opinions and stepped back from that. that ended up being a better policy. charlie: but it raised questions among foreign leaders too. dan: i hear that. he's proven his willingness to use force. charlie: one of the things i said, you said the people who succeeded in the white house and you used david hoffman as the best example of people who worked hardest and were smartest and god there earliest -- got there earliest and left latest, that's what life is about too. give some sense of that the people working for the president feel like they have a remarkable opportunity and so therefore they're there at a unique time in their life to give everything they've got. dan: it is -- that is perhaps the thing i'll miss most is the people, the sense of camaraderie. charlie: you're in the ship together. dan: you're in the ship together. and it is a group of brilliant people who were all trying to do the best they can. they also have, particularly some of the folks who are older than i with families or sort of, i'm going to spend two years or 18 months or three years doing this, they're going to dedicate their life to this man and issue they care passionately about. like nancy ann depaul who came to help health care. she had a very nice life. had left government. she came back in and gave four years of her life to pass health care, because that's what she wanted her whole life. one of the things i've taken from this experience. when the bush folks were in the white house, i think, i was like, what terrible decisions they made, why did they do that? my pledge to myself -- now i know how hard the calls are that people make here and people in the white house are dealing with a whole set of competing equities that no one on the outside that going forward whether it's republican or democrat, i will not criticize this people for the decisions they make. i may disagree with the policy. charlie: george bush has been good about that? dan: he has and for the most part his staff has been. if they disagree, they should say it, but -- charlie: talking about the president specifically. dan: the president has been great about it. i've been around him a little bit. charlie: did you change your opinion of what you thought about him? dan: 100%. charlie: how so. dan: fundamental policy disagreements, but comes off as a really good person. charlie: do you think his brother will be a powerful political candidate? dan: i think there's questions about whether the country is ready for another bush. you see that both in the republican party and polling generally. charlie: do you see the same thing about another political race between a bush and a clinton? dan: based on like actual data, people remember the clinton years much more fondly than the bush years. charlie: but we see in the polling that there are people saying, we've been there, done that. dan: i mean that is inherently going to be part of any campaign for clinton or bush. charlie: you don't want to say anything bad about hillary do you? dan: no. [laughter] i worked my tail off to beat her, but i've grown fond with her in her work for the president. charlie: what about the e-mail crisis? dan: 18 months from now, 20 months from now, when people go to the polls to vote, i can't imagine anyone will change their vote because of this. charlie: but some say it raises questions about things that may have been involved in transparency and other issues, whether it is maureen dowd or -- one thing you know, you know what the conversation is washington is about. that's part of the conversation just as a reminder of things they didn't like. dan: look. i think that -- charlie: and had misgivings about. the danger. dan: of course there's a danger but it is a much greater danger , for a candidate that no one knows when you have information like this. people, a lot of -- they've -- the public has looked at the clintons for a very long time. they looked at hillary for a long time and know a lot about her. i think this is one of the things that's happening because there's a vacuum in the political discussion right now and you know, once there's an up and running campaign, i think this will be faint memory. charlie: what does the president think of bill clinton? dan: he has come to really -- charlie: come to? meaning he was somewhere else? dan: he didn't know him. the president came out, he ran for president not long after coming to washington. he didn't have a relationship with president clinton in any way before he ran for president , and then we had a combative, competitive primary. charlie: and then suddenly in 2012 he needs him. dan: he was a huge help to us. charlie: and he needs him to explain his own policies. the president himself called bill clinton the explainer. what does that say about -- about the commander in chief. dan: it says that bill clinton is very good at doing that and it says that he is -- when you can have someone who created 20 million jobs, it is thought of as -- by both parties as someone who led the economy well can come out and validate your economic decisions -- charlie: good choice to make a speech. absolutely. charlie: but they've never gotten close. dan: they have a good relationship. there's a small president's club, there's only a handful of people on the planet who experienced what you've experienced. he enjoys his company, calls him for advice. they have conversations. charlie: does he call george bush? dan: they do talk. he probably calls clinton more for obvious reasons but he talks to bush. charlie: what is it you did for the president, from the campaign in 2007 to just a few weeks ago, you spent that as a principal advisor. essentially about communications . beginning with a policy role was broader than communications. what did you do for him? dan: i think i -- what i tried to do was to help him figure out how to explain his policy to the country, to offer him political advice about how -- and help him offer advice about how to navigate washington. but also what i tried to do, particularly in the later years as i was one of the few remaining people from the early days was try to be a touchstone to the early campaign promises. charlie: you were one of the people who had memory. dan: yeah, and i could say how important it was to our campaign to do x, y, and z. i think the last and final thing, i took it on myself for when i became senior advisor after the re-election, to try to add an additional filter to all decision making i was involved in, to try to say to myself, what would barack obama, 15 years from now when he's padding around the obama library, think about this decision? it was something that may be a little more painful politically in the short-term but years from now he'll care a lot about and try to add that perspective. try to think about how he'll feel about it years from now. charlie: give us the pfeiffer primer on how social media has changed politics. as you saw it from inside the white house. dan: this is, like, the period of time from the beginning of the campaign until now is probably the greatest change in how information is consumed and disseminated since the invention of the printing press. huge things, we started running, facebook was barely known twitter did not exist the iphone had not been invented. and you know, we have seen, it's changed in fundamental ways. what it's meant are the following things, i think. one, now people can choose the information they want. and so we have to work much harder. it's not enough to just do cbs, abc, nbc. still incredibly important because a huge percentage of people -- i don't say that just because i'm here, but a huge percentage of people get their information, but it's not enough. you have to do everything. buzzfeed, vice, and cbs. it also means that now it is -- we've moved from what we call broadcast model where just we tell people things to a network model where we tell some things a handful of people things and they share it on facebook and twitter with their friends. the network model. and that gives us an opportunity in the sense that we can talk to people a lot about things that may not be what the news is caring about exactly at that moment in time. like if ebola is leading all three network newscasts it used to be, we couldn't talk about health care. now we can use the internet to go to webmd and talk about health care. charlie: there's no message of the day. what it is now is a thousand messages of which maybe 10 are urgent messages and what we're dealing in foreign policy or domestic policy or political policy that you never could anticipate you'd have to deal with. essentially, the interesting thing, it's like the presidency. you're dealing every day, not just with one problem, one issue, every day you're battling a whole range of issues because that's the nature of the presidency. dan: and this is the way it's a good thing for people who work in the white house. it used to be everyone in the white house would work on these different things. the end result, the dream of every person working on a policy process initiative as the president is to have it be somehow communicated to the public via a presidential event or speech. but there used to be a limited menu for that. most things would never get to that level. now you can maybe, you're communicating something urgent with a presidential speech but you're doing a taped video about our anwr poll soir an interview -- policy or an interview on webmd about health care system of there are ways to get beyond the initial filter if you will. which is good because for a lot of the public, which is, you know, it cares, is passionate about an issue, would never previously get information about it because what the news was focused on, now they can. what it does is makes our job a lot harder. makes it harder to weave this coherent narrative because you can't tell one story to everyone at the same time. but i think it has real benefits for democracy. charlie: do you think you effectively communicated well this president? dan: i think, yes. obviously could we have done bet -- better in a lot of areas? no question about it. i wish i knew everything i knew now when we walked in the door. charlie: how would it be different? dan: i think you would understand how to separate, i think one of the things i talk a lot about the white house is over time you learn to separate the signal from the noise and what matters. you only have x amount of time and energy and i think of all the things we, you know, spend our time chasing down rabbit holes in the first two years because we thought they would bring the presidency down and you could sometimes ignore those and think about the things that actually matter. you can only get that with time and perspective. charlie: the other thing that interests me he said before, he said i couldn't do something because i knew how it would be perceived. for example, i wanted to do something on this policy because now you -- but i thought it would be class warfare. now you see the labels. there are those who believe that he has now, as he says the final quarter, without you there, that somehow he has -- he's unbounded now. that he's going to be what he always should have been. is there some element of truth to that, that he knows that he doesn't face another election he he knows he can't change the republicans. he knows that he has to use the executive authority, executive action as much as possible. so he is free at last, free at last. [laughter] dan: i think there's some truth to that in the sense that, look, it was very important to him that we kept the senate in 2014. that mattered to him. it would matter for his policies, it mattered because these were senators he knew were both -- good public servants. but it also held him back some. it made it harder to sort of execute aggressively his agenda. it made it harder for him to go out and make his case to the country. with that behind him, he has more space. i know he feels the ticking of the clock. the sands of the hourglass if you will, that he -- you know he, says to us all the time, you will never have a better opportunity to do more good for more people than we have right now. now all of a sudden it's like every single day matters. charlie: and do you understand what they said about r.a.f. pilots in world war ii, that their life will never be as exciting as it was when they were defending britain? dan: i worry about that i do. that, you know, i'm 39 and i probably have had the best job i'll ever have. a couple of years ago i was having lunch with reporters when a lot of people were leaving the white house asking me if i was going to leave. i said, not yet, i don't think so. and they were like, why would you? you've already written the first line of your obituary. [laughter] charlie: you'll always be known as an obama. dan: and i'm proud of that . charlie: thank you, dan. dan: thank you, charlie. charlie: dan pfeiffer for the hour. see you next time. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ cory: live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," i'm cory johnson. with a check of your bloomberg top headlines, u.s. stocks posted big gains today. after two days of losses. bank shares rallying after they passed the stress test. the dollar fell from a 12-year high against the euro. one of the upswings, poor retail sales in february which bolstered the case for keeping interest rates low. people of interest in the shooting of two cops in ferguson, missouri have been questioned. no one charged so far. >> these two officers took a very hard hit. any time yo