Times. A recent abc News Washington post polls shows his favorable rating is 45 work 54 having an unfavorable opinion. Joining me now with a look ahead jeffmorrows inauguration, greenfield and joining us from los angeles, president ial historian john meacham. Im pleased to have each of them here on the program. Kathleen, i begin with you, youre in washington, what is the mood of expectation there . Kathleen it promises to be rainy tomorrow, if trump is wise, hes got about 900,000 umbrellas printed with trump on them or make America Great again. Everyone is trying to guess what the president elect is going to say. Especially as he claims to have written it himself. As for the 60plus democrats who are not going to attend the inauguration, im curious to see who fills those seats and most of the action is going to be on the mall with all the protest groups coming in. I think theres Something Like 90plus, including all of those that dont require a permit because there are fewer than 25 to those particular group. 200,000 women are expected to march down pennsylvania avenue saturday and protest in protest of the then new president of the United States. Charlie jeff, what would you add to that . Jeff as much as i want to be on this show, i want to go out and print up a bunch of make America Great again umbrellas, i think i could do some business tomorrow. This is capitalism. I want to stand in front of the trump hotel where i cant get in and sell umbrellas. I was just on in the capitol. Its very interesting, actually. I was obviously both covering both obama inaugurations. And it the capitol is inundated with people who have come in for inauguration. And theres a lot of red hats, there are a lot of people who have driven far distances. I talked to some of them. A lot of people came by car from, i talked to a couple from florida, i talked to some from kentucky. Theyre very excited. They are, to me they were sort of the classic examples of the felt out and are coming to washington in celebration of their sudden inness. I would just add to what kathleen said, it doesnt feel the same way as it felt certainly eight years ago when it was a couple Million People and mainly people are talking about the impenetrable security that is going up all over this city. And the the thing that everybody talks about all the time, the weather. Charlie youve done more and longer pieces, i think, about president obama than moat. Give me a sense of how hes handled this departure from eight years as our president and his own attitude about trump and the coming of the trump administration. Jeff you look back to the day after trump won where he had to gather, the president had to gather some inconsoleable Staff Members together and say, look, guys, this is the way it works. He won. Were going to hand off power smoothly. And you know, the thing about obama is no very high highs, no very low lows. The statement i always have in my head from obama is a sort of very hawaiian thing i once heard which is, you know, his understanding of the world is that the tide comes in, the tide goes out, the tide comes and then the tide goes out. Hes been very smooth, sort of had an equick equilibrium. I cant say thats true about everybody on his staff. I was in the white house yesterday, its surreal, we were standing in the west wing lobby, moving men came with bidens furniture on pa lets going out the front door. Almost knocked Dennis Mcdonough down, the chief of staff. There is this kind of surreal feeling. I was walking out of the white house with a colleague and said it had kind of a saigon 1975 feeling. You half expect a helicopter to land on the roof, pick up the obama as and head out. We joked about what it would have felt like if hillary were moving in. Would have been a big difference. I think everyone is captured by the surreal quality of this moment. Charlie 24s from now, donnell trump will be president. If you were writing his speech, what do you expect him to say and what do you think he ought to say . I expect him to say some of what he ought to say. That is, every president since jimmy carter has had a grace note about the departing president , often about their defeated rival. I think, hard as that may be for trump to do, he will likely do that charlie hes been most gracious about obama. I expect to hear notes of, bind up the wounds. I want to be president of all the people. But i also expect him to draw, and i think you should, a sharp line, no more business as usual. You elected me. To drain the swamp. You elected me to change the culture of washington. Kind of like what obama said but in a much more militant way. I do think i expect to hear him say things like that, what i devoutly hope among other things is that he does not ad lib. This is an inaugural address. This isnt a rally. If he starts veering off, say, believe me, i bet 16 republicans and nobody thought i could win which is in his d. N. A. , that would not be a good arlie and he was constantly rallying constantly ad libbing at the rallies. This is not a statement of policy. The world will be looking that the unusual and unique figure, now that hes president what does he want to tell us . And i want to see who hes talking. To john f. Kennedy only talked to the world, nothing about domestic issues. Obama addressed economic things. I want to say one thing. One thing weve watch sod carefully with president elect trump is his tone and his style and its not to say that thats more important than what he the content of what he says but it is important. Forever, throughout the campaign, this is a man who almost never smiled. Was almost angry. In order to be the aspirational president were hoping to see tomorrow, i wonder if he is going to lighten his touch a little bit . It would be very nice to see the president of the United States smile at america and when that gos to the point about who is he going to be talking to . Its always this angry even the picture he had taken of himself allegedly writing the speech with the pad poised mid air, he was looking fierce again. With the supercilious eyebrow raised. Sort of, im going to get you, attitude. I would love to see that disappear and be replaced with something nor congenial as he tries to unify the country. Can i add one thing to what jeff said . Ive talked to a number of people who said that, you know, that the president and the president elect have been speaking regularly, president obama has made it a point to try to be communicative with him and respectful to trump. I wouldnt be surprised if trump has some very nice things to say about president obama. Because most of all , he wants to be respected, as we know, and i think that might show itself tomorrow. I wouldnt be surprised. Charlie i wouldnt be surprised either he has basically said measure more than once, i like barack obama, hes been nice to me, weve had a number of conversations on the phone, i like him, i hope he likes me. They talk a lot from what i understand. Charlie about what . Do we know about what . Well, you know, i have hopes that theyre talking about north korea and china and russia and all the rest and but i think a lot of it is mechanics. A lot of it is how do you actually daytoday do the job. Charlie i want to do this even though this program will air at 11 00. Can you tell us anything about the health of president bush 41 . My sense is, he remains in the intensetive care unit at Methodist Hospital in houston the prognosis over the last 24 hours has improved. Mrs. Bush who also went in with fatigue and coughing, has been diagnosed with bronchitis. But she is, i hear, her feisty self. I am also happy to report that when former secretary of state james baker went to call on them yesterday , he announced that today he was bringing a thermos of martini. I think that gives us some sense that as ever, the bushes march forward. Thoughts and prayers, 92 and 91, so whenever pneumonia and 92 are in the same sentence you dont like it, or bronchitis and 91, you dont like it. But these are formidable people. It should be mentioned, as you have written john, after the 1992 campaign, the elder bush and clinton formed an almost brotherly or familial bond and what strikes me is were talking about the tone tomorrow, yeah, it would be nice if the new president said a nice word about his the feeted rival but we should not forget that he also in the middle of the campaign called for her criminal prosecution. Thats part of what makes this such a tricky transition and movement in that the nature of the language in this campaign and the nature of the language after the election, during the transition, has been unlike anything ive certainly ever seen and i dont think ive ever read anything like this. And your mention of the elder bush reminds me of, you know, john kennedy said in his inaugural, civility is not a sign of weakness. Im not sure President Trump believes that. Charlie because of tweets hes able to find a way to engage in controversy as he did this week with john lewis and meryl streep and others. An easy paragraph that i think all of us would like to write and hear would be to take for trump to take advantage to have the fact that president carter, president bush, president clinton, secretary clinton, and president obama are all there and again, we could offer a prar that a paragraph that said, thank you to these president s who represent the american story, a farmer from plains, a son of texas, our thoughts are with George Herbert walker bush, the son of hawaii ich would be rich in its meaning, and a son of arkansas and this formidable woman who has given her life to public service. Theres a way of making himself part, at least symbolically, of a great transition an then go and draw the line youre talking about. Im not betting were going to hear that eloquent line that mr. Meacham just articulated for some reason. I just dont think its going to come out that way. My pipeline to trump tower is a little clogged, i suspect youre right. Charlie if in fact there was someone within the trump earshot who is likely to be able to press him to do that . Would it be his daughter . Would it be his soninlaw . Who would it be . Dont you think it would be priebus. Political professionals who know how to give speeches are supposed to go. Would he listen to them . The thing that makes the line that john offered understandably cynical as jeffrey said is, he is uniquely also ahistorical. You almost never hear trump talk about other president s, what tradition hes in. He never quotes even Ronald Reagan he says reagan was a great president , its as if he is a thing unto himself. Almost a selfcreation which in some ways he is. Thats another thing id love to see at the inaugural, some sense that he understands he takes his place as part this 200plus tradition. But its something i never heard from him. Hes never given us any indication that he thinks in terms of context larger than himself and the immediate moment. He keeps say, i can act president ial if i want to. Again, viewed from his perspective, it seems as though it is an act. And hell maybe hes watching movies or something to see how president s act, or old film footage of people who he admired. Like Ronald Reagan. Yeah, watch those. I would be a happy citizen if he said something akin to, im humbled by the fact that im moving into mr. Lincolns house today. Something like that. Anything along those lines which would say he understands the gravity of the moment, the gravity of the job, the gravity of the place. One thing we havent we havent seen that kind of humility and awe. No reports of that from people, even though we might not have seen it, no one as all of us here talk to people who talk to trump, dont hear that . Theres no one saying, look, youll be surprised at the fact that he understands the moment. Hes talked to president obama, hes talked to others, he understands that this is a humbling and sobering experience hes about to engage in . The president hes talked about i have heard charlie john first, then kathleen. The Maggie Haberman story from the dinner last night has him talking about Andrew Jackson. We know that steve bannon has talked about jacksonian moment. Its the president that i have heard the most comparesons obviously. I have some fundamental differences, i think the moment is jacksonian, i think we will be very lucky as a country if trump ends up having the, ultimately the discipline of Andrew Jackson. I dont think thats possible. John, you are the biographer of Andrew Jackson, i think won a Pulitzer Prize for that. What do you think hes reading into jackson . Bannon or trump. Trump is reading into it that jackson was the first selfmade man to become president , he was the first nonvirginia planter or adams to be president , the first six were very much part of the establishment. Jackson came to washington charging that the existing system had been corrupt and that he introduced populist economics in the words of the Bank Veto Message to protect the farmers they can lay bofferers and the mechanics. And that the people themselves seem to be with jackson and jackson went over the heads of the republican lower race r, establishment that had sprung up in washington since 1800. And that theres a great jacksonian moment. My own view is that i understand how thats an interpretation of it but Andrew Jackson himself was a highly disciplined man who understood his own weaknesses and was able to leverage those. He knew how to turn his vices into virtues. We have seen very little evidence of that so far. There are different kinds of disciplines. Evidently, donald trump is highly disciplined in terms of executing a plan to win the presidency. Maybe not disciplined in terms of resisting tweeting and resisting attacking opponents when its not in his interest to do so, but in terms of pursuit of the presidency, he was highly disciplined. Its interesting. I dont know, john, whether Andrew Jackson would have been a tweeter but in one sense, trumps embrace of social media and his willingness to send these messages that quite deliberately provoke in one sense is almost jacksonian in the sense that maybe steve bannon means it. I think theres also the point that when people write about Foreign Policy traditions in america, the jacksonian tradition of Foreign Policy is pretty suspicious about international relations, a kind of nationalist view that we really arent that keen about other places and i think you get a sense of that in the way trump talks about everything from nato to the european union. So i think without getting too deep in the jackson weeds, i will say thats absolutely true in terms of the popular impression. When an true jackson had ultimate power , he, for instance, defused a war with france through quite clever diplomacy , he defused a starnedoff with South Carolina which was causing problems through careful legislative diplomacy. My question is, an its my prayer in many way is that trump has that kind of jacksonian capacity to govern beyond the image. Out here in the hinterlands of washington, d. C. , you know, i think you have to take very seriously that donald trump views this as an executive decision. He takes seriously, this is the executive barrage, i am the boss, these are the people i have delegated, i will delegate these responsibilities to. I think his presidency will be run as a business almost and he will do whatever works best for the ultimate goals of that business as defined by donald trump. I think thats one thing. And you know, as to his his personality in the oval office. Once the president is briefed on what he really does have to manage, i think it does change a person. If it doesnt change donald trump at all, then i would be questioning whether hes a human being. I remember once interviewing president george w. Bush. He was telling me that, you know, people dont like me because of all the hard some of the things ive done. Ive done the hard things. But the next president is going to be grateful because hes going to need it. When he knows what i know, hes going to need all these instruments to manage this rather mind bogglingly difficult job. Charlie theres one point about that i think is crucial. In all the misunderstanding about donald trump, one of them i was hearing from republicans was, look, hell get he wants to be president but he doesnt really want to be president. Well send him thing it is sign. Itll be like mel brooks in blazing sad lts, work, work, work. It seems to me that that may be the most fundamental misunderstanding about this gay. I mean if he thinks, if hes the president and he wants, i dont know what, replacement for obamacare or a trade policy that is at variance with every other republican, either hes going to roll over and sign what ryan sends him has got to be the biggest fantasy of all. The other thing on the briefing point , in george h. W. Bushs diary, heres a man who had run the c. I. A. , been at the u. N. , Vice President for eight year, when he was briefed on the chain of command for Nuclear Codes he was shock he said it was stark and sobering. He had been Vice President for eight years and hes talking to himself into his diary as he realizes that he is now the ultimate authority in a nuclear age. I cant believe trurp hasnt that briefing. And we still have what we have. So i think the hoax that the hopes that somehow or another theres going to be a briefing moment and hes going to emerge as Franklin Roosevelt is a little troubling. The bottom line is we have no idea. Exactly. We have to hold out hope. The words of the moment. Charlie, we have to hold out the possibility that theres an interior here and that he masks he masks the feelings of awe and humility and being overwhelmed. As a normal person would be overwhelmed at this moment. At least im hoping that there is an internal recognition that he needs other people , he needs to proceed slowly and deliberately on issues such as the use of nuclear weapons. We havent seen a great deal of thoughtfulness in his discussion about Nuclear Related issues and those of course are the the only issue ultimately that matters imm