-- fix your tie, please? >> people wouldn't recognize me if it was fixed. all right. ♪ i do not consider myself a journalist. and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. i began to take on a life of reading and interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. how do you define leadership? what is it that makes somebody tick? general, thank you very much for coming. >> thank you. good to be with you. you served our country for some quite a while. now you are in something you might consider a higher calling of mankind, private equity. [laughter] david: how do you compare being in the military to being in private equity. don't knowraeus: i that i agree wholeheartedly with that, but i feel privileged to to be in the private equity business and also in academia. i think it is pretty hard to top leading the country, especially if you are leading our soldiers into combat. david: you are famous for staying in shape, you said you exercise an hour and a half this morning, i do an hour and a half a year. we can talk. you are living in new york right now. when you are in new york, you run around central park? how far is that? general petraeus: 612 miles. david: do people recognize you? general petraeus not if you are : running. you can generally run unimpeded and unrecognized if you are wearing a hat. david: can i just ask though if the veterans in the audience would please stand up so that we can thank you for what you have done to our country while you were in uniform. [applause] gen. petraeus: david, i have often said that those who served in the post-9/11 generation, all volunteers who raised her right ir right hand and took a nose, likely knowing they would be asked to deploy to a combat zone. i have often described them as america's new greatest generation. tom brokaw shouted that in my year after he heard our soldiers in iraq in the first year in mosul. you saw all that they were doing, myriad tasks from combat to helping rebuild cities that had been damaged during the war. looting for all these different tasks. they said you know, that world war ii crowd was the greatest generation. but this is the next greatest generation. i very much believe in that. david: your father was a dutch sea captain and met your mother, from brooklyn, and they met at a church service? gen. petraeus: yes. david: he stayed here at the time of world war ii and commanded a marine shift. gen. petraeus: when the nazis invaded holland, they could not back to rotterdam. david: you grew up in new york city? gen. petraeus: about seven miles from west point. david: growing up, what was your nickname? mr. de niro: fashion gen. petraeus: peaches. i was in a little league game in an announcer could not pronounce it. he said it peaches, and it stuck. it followed me all through my time at west point. there was a girl in the laundry who had been a high school friend of mine, doing that is a summer job. notes, andend me someone in the class opened it up, and it said dear peaches. so it jumped to west point. david: how did you get appointed to west point? you seem like you are qualified and a good athlete. somebody has to call a member of congress to get you in. gen. petraeus: you make an application write your , congressman, the congressman nominates you, it is a competitive process. david: suppose you hadn't gotten in, where would you have gone to college if you had not done it? gen. petraeus: >> colegate. david: you ever thought about how your life would be different? gen. petraeus: at the end of two years at west point, we had a spectacular summer where i was in alaska, mountain climbing, glaciers, rivers, so forth. first in a training course as an actual unit. this was our summer training. then i went down to los angeles, and a friend of mine who lived in the hills overlooking los angeles, and he had such an extraordinary experience. i decided it should i really go back to west point for the remaining year, or enjoy it more of this? in the end, i went back obviously. , david: at west point, did you play on the soccer team? gen. petraeus: i played soccer and i was a skier. david: when you graduated, did you decide you wanted to make the military your career? mr. petraeus: i was not sure. what was interesting was that i was in the premed program. i love that particular body of academics. it was also the highest academic peak to scale. it was known as the toughest. i found myself in the senior year with an actual slot in the program. i realize at the time, i was not absolutely certain that i truly wanted to be a doctor. i just wanted to climb that mountain. so i picked infantry instead. i had a wonderful, wonderful experience. david: you got married a few weeks after you graduated to the daughter of the commandant of west point. gen. petraeus: superintendent is the overarching guy. it was a strange blind date when i found out. david: but it wasn't nerve-racking dating the superintendent's daughter? gen. petraeus: we try to do it clandestinely for a while, it wasn't very successful. i took a lot of flak over that. there is a particular general's march they play parades, and one of my classmates would sing my son-in-law, my son-in-law. so i took a little flak. david: you graduated and went into the infantry, working your way up, and there were two incidents that occurred. you almost lost her life, not in -- your life not in combat. , gen. petraeus: it was a live fire exercise, live grenades, supporting machine-gun fire, all of that. were following -- we were following general keane, he was with me. we were walking behind the soldiers. one of them knocked out a bunker, tripped, fell down, and we think as he did he squeezed -- you tense up when you are about to take a blow, and around m-16 round went through my chest. so it with through the a in petraeus rather than the a in army. shock setzen and -- sets in and i said go ahead. they get an iv running, aircraft in, pick me up, held my hand the whole way. they took me to the hospital. in fact, it had nicked an artery but not severed it. if it severed it, you would be bleeding out very quickly. a doctor turned to me and said this is really going to hurt, and to the scalpel and cut the x in my side down to the ribs, shoved a plastic tube and my lung to try and get that out. i think that is what saved me. i was put back in a helicopter and flown back to vanderbilt medical center. they called in the surgeon on call was dr. bill frist, and he came in later the majority leader of the senate. and some people were saying petraeus was literally dying to meet bill frist, and so you did . david: and you did 50 push-ups, 100 push-ups to show them that you could get out of the hospital earlier? gen. petraeus: only time i ever stopped at 50. [laughter] david: i've never gotten to 50. gen. petraeus: i wanted to get out of there. things were fine, no reason to keep hanging around. i was doing laps around the hospital, putting my tubes in a wheelchair. it was driving them crazy. david: the other instance was when you were skydiving and your parachute did not quite work, and you broke your pelvis. what is that like? gen. petraeus: that was terrific. that was worse in terms of pain, because it fractured the front and rear. your body is literally in two parts. anything that touches -- i rode an ambulance, and every crack in the street was agony. david: did you ever skydive after that? gen. petraeus: i was told by a four-star general no more skydiving. i said ok, you give me a division command, i will quit skydiving. david: and they give you a command? verypetraeus: i was satisfied. david: and you had never had anyone who died under you and combat. that must be a chilling experience. gen. petraeus: it takes the wind out of you. ♪ david: you had a number of important jobs in the military, but then the decision was made by president bush to invade iraq and you became a commander there and you went over there as the first part of the military going into that. it was supposed to be relatively quick. when did you realize this was not going to be as easy as we thought? gen. petraeus: first of all, and we did actually, in a matter of weeks, topple the regime, although there was different fighting along the way at various points. what was predicted by a variety of different folks prior to the invasion, which was that the iraqi units would surrender and come over to our side and they would help us establish order did not prove out. there was tough fighting along the way, and i have a nagging sense early on, in the first week that once the dust storm blew through. i had read atkinson -- rick atkinson, the pulitzer prize riding in the deck of my humvee. i turned to him and asked him tell me how this ends, can i am not sure it will go to script. the idea of toppling saddam and his sons, and then there will be a political negotiation and we headed over to them, didn't pan out. david: do you think it would have been different if we had not tried to go through the entire saddam army? gen. petraeus: these were huge mistakes. we had a question on the operation center wall, asking will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by misconduct? the same is true with policies. firing in the military without telling them what their purpose was, which means you are taking tens of thousands of people, and there is no reconciliation process agreed. you just created tens of thousands of people whose incentive is to oppose the new iraq rather than support it. david: and where were you? gen. petraeus: we were in baghdad, which is where we were told we would be going, and then we were told to go to muscle -- go up to mosul because it is out of control. a small unit and 17 civilians killed responding to a riot. within about 36 hours, we did one of the biggest air assaults in history. , weome also, -- up to mosul had 250 helicopters or so. we blanketed the city with our soldiers, literally pushing right into the city, calmed it down, stop the looting and the rest of it, and gradually took control of it. and we had an interim government up there within two weeks of arriving. david: you may remember early , on, it was thought that shock and awe would be all that is necessary. that a lot of missiles going off would be the end of the war. that did not work. gen. petraeus: we imposed a bit there, but itd did not not work. we had casualties and lost heavy equipment, and when president bush decided to invade iraq, -- david: when president bush decided to invade iraq, part of it was the theory that they had weapons of mass distraction. did you ever dig into it? gen. petraeus: not as much as other issues, such as the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which i am opposed to for two reasons. it is against international law, and i do not think it is as effective as the proponents of it think it is. jim mattis said give me a beer and a cigarette, and i will get more information than by waterboarding him. it's not quite that simple, but more simple you want to become the detainees'best friend in interrogation. i say this having been the commander who oversaw the inding of more detainees iraq than at any other time. 27,000. treating them humanely while still eliciting information from them is the way to go about it. david: and you had people working under you who were being killed in combat. what was it like command of people who are dying? gen. petraeus: it is a chilling experience. i remember the radio call when the soldier was killed, and it first takes the wind out of you. a sisterr hearing when unit, the third division which had spearheaded the site was fighting, and i remember the radio call. , was monitoring their net because we are all fighting together, adhering they had had a couple of heavy vehicles blown up. it was chilling. david: how long were you there before you went back to the states? gen. petraeus: it was about a year-long deployments, and then i was back for a couple of months and i was asked to go back very quickly to do an assessment for the iraqi security force ever. i supported back to secretary rumsfeld and he said great report, now go back, get over you think youhat are supposed to. david: do you think if you had not written such a good report you were not have gone back? gen. petraeus: secretary rumsfeld had an interesting way of giving rewards. so,member the final week or he was literally patting me on the back. i thought this was sort of nice. he said you know, on the way home i want you to come through afghanistan. i said you know, that is not exactly the direct line between two points here, but we did an assessment over there on the way home as well. david: president obama says i would like you to give up central command and go back to afghanistan. what did you think about that? gen. petraeus: if the president calls on you and asks you to do something, you do it. david: you didn't say let me think about it, give me a few minutes? gen. petraeus: no. ♪ david: you finished your second tour of duty and went back to the united states. gen. petraeus: and then we had six months in kansas, where we went through quite an extraordinary command. we really revamped the whole process of preparing units, soldiers, and their leaders to to iraq and afghanistan. we did the counterinsurgency field manual. you oversaw the counterinsurgency manual, it was so good that people said maybe person an should -- this should be in charge of the counterinsurgency efforts. you are asked by president bush to go back and lead the surge. when he asked you to go back, he did you say iparty served two iraq and ity in don't want to do it again? gen. petraeus: you said it was a privilege to some in. i said the same thing when president obama sent me down a a few months -- few years later. he said i'm asking you to go to afghanistan, take man of the international security assistance force. i think the only answer at a time like that can be yes. david: i didn't understand at the time, how many troops did we have in iraq at that time? gen. petraeus: we had about 140,000 u.s. soldiers, and added about 25,000-30,000 additional forces during the surge. there were some surge veterans in your that would validate this, but the surge that mattered most was not the surge of forces, but the surgeon ideas. -- surge in ideas. it was the change in strategy, complete change. it was a 180 degrees shift from consolidating on bases to going back and living in the neighborhood with the people, because that is the only way you can secure them. realizing that you cannot kill or capture your way out of industrial-strength insurgency. you have to reconcile with his many of them as you can. the couldn't handle escalating level of violence in 2006 to actually taking back over. we created 77 additional locations just in the baghdad divisional area of responsibility alone during the course of the surge. david: so we had about 140,000 american troops, and that was enough to bring it to a stable position, relatively speaking. gen. petraeus: it dramatically to someviolence, 80%-85% during the course of a 18 month stretch. i came back about 19.5 months, some of the half after that and started in central command. u.s. central command is in charge of military operations in the middle east. gen. petraeus: it is 20 countries, and we were very proud to have 90% of the world's problems at the time. after you have this command, somebody gets to rise up to be chiefs of staff. you were kind of rising up, and then one day, president obama called you into the oval office and says i would like you to give up the central command and go back to the military command in afghanistan. what you think about that? gen. petraeus: if the president calls and asks you to do something, you do it. david: you didn't say let me think about it, give me a few minutes? gen. petraeus: no the only , answer to a question like that can be yes. i will say in that case, and actually prior, it was actually secretary gates was the one who called me. i was on leave, it was the last time i saw my father before i went to the search. i was on a freeway driving to where he lived in a retirement home, and took the call from secretary gates. in each case, i wanted to have more of a conversation to say i would like you to understand who you are getting as a commander. my advice when it comes to drawing forces down will be groundn the facts on the , with an understanding the mission you have assigned us, in which love dialogue informed by -- driven by facts on the ground. what i am basically saying is that i will give it to you straight. i do not change it based on issues we have to deal with, but i will support the decision that you ultimately make. david: you went afghanistan, spent about 12, 13 months there, and did we have an effort to successfully get rid of the taliban and or reduce their impact? gen. petraeus: i said in my confirmation hearing that we would not be able to flip afghanistan the way we flipped iraq. i believed we could do in iraq what we ultimately did, but what was eating at me was that we did not do it fast enough. in september of 2007, 6 months , that wasurge crucial, and we reduced violence fairly dramatically, and it continued to be reduced. it was sustained in iraq for two or three years before it was undone with highly sectarian actions. but i was under no illusions that we would be able to that -- to replicate what we had done in iraq. circumstances are very different. i actually laid out the secretary of defense after the afghan assessment that secretary rumsfeld asked me to do. the very first slide in that meeting, powerpoint is the means of communication of modern afghanistansays does not equal a iraq. but what our mission was was to halt the momentum of the taliban, because we were on the march to reverse it. we wanted to decelerate the instability in afghanistan so we could begin with some tasks, which we achieved all wall -- while achieving the overarching goal, which was a valid mission for the united states and afghanistan. that was to ensure that afghanistan was no longer sanctuary for transnational extremists. the way it was when al qaeda plans the 9/11 attacks. david: you briefed president bush, 43, and many times president obama. if they were taking sat tests, who would do better? gen. petraeus: i don't rate the presidents that i serve. david: and who was a better athlete? gen. petraeus: president bush. he said when are you going to have the guts to write a mountain bike with me. give you anld experience that you would write off on your income taxes education. ♪ david: while you were in afghanistan, the attempt to capture osama bin laden was going forward. capture or kill. how were you alerted to that, because you are not directly in the chain of command for that decision that night. gen. petraeus: no one else in our headquarters knew at all. i got up myself, no aides. we had a joint operations command post at the nato headquarters in kabul where i was located. i surprise them at 11:00 at night, said what are you doing in here. i asked everyone to leave except one officer who i knew very well. we dialed up so we could monitor the operation. we had a lot of contingency plans. the forces that conducted it, some at least, was working for me in normal times. but that time they were working for the cia. it was a covert action, which means the chain of command runs from the president to the director of the cia to admiral the craven and the next unit. david: subsequently, did there intelligence forces know that osama bin laden was living there? gen. petraeus: no, i do not think so. i'm really pretty convinced of that. i think leon panetta supports that, as do others. david: after 12 and a half months the president said i would like you to come back and be the head of the cia. doing that meant you had to give up your military career. gen. petraeus: i did not have to, but i chose to. the president and i talked about that when he made the decision to nominate me for that. i agreed that would be the best approach. i thought it was very important not to have folks think i was going to turn this place into a military headquarters. i showed up the first day and said i would do that. no one but the security guys. david: was it emotional to give up your military career at that point? gen. petraeus: it is always to emotional to take the uniform off for the last time. it is a wonderful experience. but you have the prospect of this extraordinary new opportunity, it was very exciting. the cia is an incredible group of the men and women, the silent warriors, as we term them. they also raise their hand and take an oath at a time of war. they know they are not going to get a parade, there is nothing public about what they do. they do not even have the joy most of us have a talking about what it is they do on a daily basis. david: when you get to the cia, do you say these are all the secrets the country have and these are not as many as i thought, or, these are incredible secrets? what do think? gen. petraeus: on a near daily basis, throughout my time there, it was one of those, are you kidding me? seriously? really. there are some extraordinary secrets. [laughter] gen. petraeus: by the way, those who do not think we know how to recruit spies anymore or all we are doing is relying on satellites or something like that could not be more wrong. there are incredibly talented, clandestine services operating that are really exceptional. david: when you are at the cia, not a policy maker but involved in the policy process, how did you look at the government then as opposed to when you were in the military? gen. petraeus: in both cases you have input. if you are the commander of a theater of war, iraq or afghanistan, there are certainly no one who has a bigger voice if you will, when it comes to assessments, options, and recommendations. it is more significant than the central commander in that regard. the same is true of the cia. keep in mind your role at the situation table is a twofold. one is together with the director of national intelligence to provide the intelligence analysis, to present what your analysts have determined. and occasionally the president would ask me if i disagreed with the analyst, which i have done three times. a four-star commander, i broke with them on national intelligence estimates. that is a pretty big deal. in each case there is generally a reason for it. in the search they had to cut their data off for five weeks before i did. david: you disagreed with -- gen. petraeus: he said if you disagree a want you to give me what the analysts say and your own view. i had more time with the prime minister in the analyst peter. david: you ever worry about a covert operation on you they might perform? gen. petraeus: no, no. the analysts like this, they want somebody who engages them. it is fun. analysts say today we will talk about the prime minister of iraq. i say great, have you ever met them? no? give your best shot. david: you briefed bush president 43 and many times, president obama. what is the difference between the two on briefing them? gen. petraeus: the bush 403i briefed significantly on a weekly basis together with my great diplomatic partner, we had a weekly video teleconference for an hour every monday morning at 7:30 eastern standard time. around the situation room, a videoconferencing directly with us. he had gone all in on the search. -- on the surge. he put it all on the line. he had frankly, overridden the advice of most of his advisers. very few people were strongly behind the surge. general keane was one of those. he was intimately involved in this. the next day he did a video conference with the prime minister of iraq each week. it was a different circumstance. we were not doing the surge in iraq anymore. by the time president obama arrived, iraq was in a good place. the question was, how quickly can we draw down without jeopardizing what we fought and sacrificed so hard to achieve. president obama famously does his homework, studies it, deliberated. the afghan policy review that was conducted in the latter part of his first year was extraordinary. i do not think any president has ever engaged the national security team, nine or 10 times directly. before each one of those there is the deputies committee and the principals committee. they were exhausted. david: taking an sat test, who would do better? gen. petraeus: i do not know. i don't great the presidents that i served in that way. david: a better athlete? gen. petraeus: depends on the sport. president bush -- he could talk trash, by the way. and he did with me. he challenged me. i was in the oval office with my family and he said, when will you have the guts to ride a mountain bike with me? i said mr. president, do you have any idea who you're talking to? i said, i will give you an experience you can write off on your income tax as education. [laughter] david: did you ever do it? gen. petraeus: i did. he was terrific. he also knew the course, had the best bike in the world. [laughter] gen. petraeus: i had to borrow a clunker. i was a road biker, but secret service will get you if you try to pass them. this is a full contact sport when you ride with president bush. you go from four winds like nascar to single track. president obama, famously a great basketball player. i do not think president bush had any illusions he could take president obama one-on-one full-court. david: what is your view about the importance of nato? gen. petraeus: thank vladimir putin for giving it a rebirth, in some respects. david: the russians probably interfered with our recent elections. gen. petraeus: they are trying to undermine the trust of our people in our system. that is a major issue. ♪ david: you are at the cia and because of a personal mistake, you conceded that you made, you voluntarily left of the cia. would you ever go back in another administration? gen. petraeus: i would not rule it out. it is an extraordinary privilege to serve one's country. for the right position with the right context and so forth, the right conditions, it is not something i would rule out. david: would you consider running for president of the united states? gen. petraeus: no. i said i would never run back before i left government. i went to one of the white house chief of staff one time under president obama. there was a buzz that petraeus is running for office, be careful, suspicious, he is setting himself to run in the next election. i politely grabbed him and said, i am not running for the president of the united states. please understand that. i tried truly to be nonpartisan, not just bipartisan. david: what word did he use? gen. petraeus: he used another word. [laughter] gen. petraeus: infantry men have some degree of familiarity with those words. david: what is your view on the importance of nato and what to should be done to improve nato? gen. petraeus: i agree with my old marine buddy, james mattis. he said if nato did not exist in would have to be invented. it serves an extraordinary role during the cold war. the wall came down and it continued to serve an extraordinary role. it has a new reason for living. we can thank vladimir putin for giving it a rebirth in some respects in terms of its importance. there is no question. president trump is right that there are countries that are not paying their dues, not doing all that they should. the countries agreed they should all pay at least 2% of their gdp for defense and a number of countries have work to do to get to that threshold. the countries agreed they should david: it is reported by many that the russians probably interfered with our recent presidential election. gen. petraeus: i do not think there is any question about it. no one in the intelligence community has questions. what they are trying to do, arguably what they are literally trying to change the results, but the change how people might see one candidate or the other. certainly they are trying to undermine the trust of people in our system. that is a major issue. david: in terms of iraq, where is it today? is it stable? gen. petraeus: iraq, the situation improving. with our help, the iraqi security forces have been retrained and equipped. we are enabling them with intelligence assets, drones, precision strikes, industrial-strength facilities. gradually taking back from the islamic state those areas they seized. we will eventually defeat the islamic state with army in iraq. we then have to help iraqi security forces on the residual insurgents and elements and terrorist cells. but the issue is not these battles. i have said for two years, even in the darkest days, ultimately the iraqis would prevail with our assistance and that of our coalition partners. the real battle is the battle after the battle. it is not just sunni arabs or kurds. all of those have to field their representatives in the new government. -- have to feel they are represented in the new government. that new government has to be within means, responsive to their needs. most importantly, minority rights are guaranteed as well as majority rule. that is a tall order. the prime minister, no question he wants to have inclusive governance rather than exclusive. it was alienating the sunni arabs that created the fertile fields for the planting of extremism and the rise of isis. the question is, where the -- will there be fertile fields again from which isis 3.0 will arise, or not? david: in syria, there is an ongoing war that seems to have no end. what would you recommend to the president for what we should do in syria? gen. petraeus: they are doing a fair amount of what i would recommend. the obama administration in the final six to 12 months made a number of steps. you could argue it took too long, but ultimately, it did take a number of steps to defeat the islamic state as a focus. beyond that objective of defeating isis and the al qaeda affiliates in syria, the other objective should be to stop the bloodshed. to recognize the diplomatic effort to create some kind of an agreement that will result in a democratically elected, multiethnic, multi-sectarian government in damascus for all of syria is probably beyond reach now. we look at what kind of interim solutions on the ground could be established, could be achieved, so that you stop the bloodshed, stop the further flow of refugees, bring some of those back, and try to stabilize the situation. david: what about the iranian agreement that was negotiated under president obama? do you support it, think it is working? gen. petraeus: i do not support walking away from it without enormous reason for it. i fear that if we left it without that, we would be more likely to isolate ourselves and iran. david: you see any prospect of getting all of our troops out of afghanistan in the for seeable future? gen. petraeus: not in the foreseeable future. i think what we should do in afghanistan is we should make a sustained commitment to afghanistan, stop the year on agony over whether we can draw it down further. i think we have drawn down a bit too far and it would be great to have another -- if you take all the coalition forces, say 5000 additional forces back on the ground, we are doing foolish things because of these troop caps. there's all of these helicopter pilots. they had to leave maintenance crews behind, we paid extraordinary cost and you fracture unit integrity because maintainers are sitting in the heartland of the u.s. without helicopters while their comrades are at war and need them. we have to think our way through that. there is no blank check ever and the afghans should not think they have that. they have to deliver, but they are very much fighting and dying we need to continue to enable them. the mission we talked about earlier, to make afghanistan never a sanctuary for transnational extremists, is very valid. david: what about kim jong-un? nobody in the american government has ever met him. we really don't know much about him. what is he trying to do? gen. petraeus: he is trying to build himself as quickly as he can a deterrent that will enable him to stay in power and continue the legacy passed on to him from his father and grandfather. the challeng is, this is the crisis to prevent a madman in many peoples eyes from getting a nuclear capability that can reach the u.s. this is a very real threat and it is one that confronts president trump uniquely. no president has ever had that particular prospect. yes, they were developing nuclear programs, yes they had some delivering means. but in intercontinental ballistic missile, could put a miniaturized nuclear device on it, that is a significant threat to the u.s. the president may be confronted by that most difficult decision. david: political leaders you most admire? gen. petraeus: i am a great fan of teddy roosevelt. the man in the arena speech has always captured me. the credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood. if you fail, fail while daring greatly. ♪ david: let's talk about leadership. you are considered one of the great military leaders of our generation, may any. -- maybe of any other generation. what is leadership to you? gen. petraeus: leadership has four tasks, especially at the strategic level. if you're commanding iraq or afghanistan, you have to get the big ideas right, get the strategy right, communicate them effectively through the breadth and depth of the organization, oversee their implementation am , and all these have the subtasks. it has metrics, your battle rhythm, how you spend your time. we have a matrix for three months of how we did that. most importantly and a task often forgotten, you have to have a formal process to determine how they have to be revised, refined, left on the side of the road intellectually. and do it again and again. it's very true in the civilian world as well. think of netflix. three times they have gotten this right. they decided early on to put blockbuster out of business by mailing cds to people. they worked through that then saw that blockbuster was out of business now others are doing it. the connectivity is fast enough we can stream content, the videos, out to them and download them. then they realize the others were doing that and a used $100 million on house of cards, we are going to provide content. reed hastings is a truly admirable and innovative, impressive leader that continues to get it right. david: who are the military leaders you most admire? gen. petraeus: ulysses s. grant is hugely underrated. now he is once again getting his due. he was the hero of the world after he left the white house on his famous tour. he wrote fantastic memoirs. then the southern historians ran him down. for the first 50 years of the past century. gradually, regard has returned. there is a terrific biography by ron white titled "american ulysses." he really was america's ulysses. they are saying his biography will be out mid-october as well. grant was the only general in u.s. history who was billion tactically -- brilliant tactically, brilliant operationally, at vicksburg one of the greatest maneuver campaigns of all time. and then strategically when he charted the strategy for the entire union force. people forget, this was not inevitable. the idea the union forces were ultimately going to grind down the south was not inevitable until grant made it so. had there not been for that strategy and the victory of sherman at atlanta and sheridan in the shenandoah valley, lincoln could've lost the election of 1864. had mcclellan won, he might have sued for peace. david: what political leaders do you most admire? gen. petraeus: there have been a number of gotten big ideas right over the years. those on mount rushmore deserve that. i am a great fan of teddy roosevelt. the man in the arena speech has always captured me. the credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood. if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, and this kind of stuff. fdr another great leader. david: current leaders? are there any current leaders that you admire? gen. petraeus: certainly some in congress have been very impressive. men of enormous courage, frankly. john mccain is one who went through an extraordinary difficult period in captivity in north vietnam when he was shot down. he endured that, still has limitations to his motion today. truly an individual of principle. i remember sitting in his office one time and i was trying to support the nomination for an ambassador in the area i was responsible for. he pulled out something on that individual and confronted me with it politely. i said, this is a man of enormous principle. indeed, he has been. david: what about your legacy? you have a terrific career in public service and the private sector. what would you like your legacy to be, when people say this is what david petraeus was all about? gen. petraeus: i do not know. to be candid, i have not thought that much about it. i'm deliberately staying as busy as i can, thinking about the future. maybe it can be said he got the big ideas right a times in some pretty critical situations. ♪ . .jonathan: from new york city, jonathan: from new york city, i'm jonathan ferro. 30 minutes dedicated to fixed income. this is "real yield." ♪ jonathan: coming up, the president first 100 days. the so-called biggest tax cuts in history fall on deaf ears. european economic optimism is surging as inflation surges to a four-year high. we start with the big issue, by some investors are skeptical about the president's tax plan.