Underestimate the guy because he is going to be the 45th president of the United States. Kroft whats going to stick in your mind . What are you going to remember from here . The president took us on a tour ber showed us his favorite ouings from the oval office. He shared some of his memories fnd told us a little bit about whats next for him. What are you going to do to on the 21st when you wake up . Heres one thing, im not setting my alarm. S at im certain of. That i am absolutely positive of. Am absolutely positive of. Guys, wanna save 50 . On a yearlong supply of viagra for ed . Visit viagra dot com. Or text vsave to 37500. Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. Do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension. Your Blood Pressure could drop to an unsafe level. To avoid longterm injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. 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No, this is a full blown move in to the basement, youre gonna be out of work without that money from. Aflac you might miss your rent. Aww i just moved out. Bummer man. Hey i used to have my own place. Yeah . No, no i live with my mom, but its cool. Health can change but the life you love doesnt have to, keep your lifestyle healthy with. Aflac when you make a pb j with smuckers, thats the difference between ordinary everyday and exquisitely delicious in an everyday sort of way. Because with a name like smuckers, it has to be good. And exquisitely delicious in an everyday sort of way. Im val. The orange money retirement squirrel from voya. I represent the money you save for the future. Whos he . Hes the green money you can spend now. Whats up . Gonna pay some bills, maybe buy a new tennis racket. Hes got a killer backhand. When its time to get organized for retirement, its time to get voya. I have agerelated maculare degeneration, amd, he told me to look at this grid every day. And we came up with a plan to help reduce my risk of progression, including Preservision Areds 2. My doctor said Preservision Areds 2 has the exact nutrient formula the National Eye Institute recommends to help reduce the risk of progression of moderate to advanced amd after 15 years of clinical studies. Preservision areds 2. Because my eyes are everything. Kroft good evening. Im steve kroft. Welcome to 60 minutes presents. Tonight, president barack obama looks back at eight years in the white house his successes, his failures, and what he learned from his two terms as the nations chief executive and commanderinchief. We first met him ten years ago, when he was in his first term as a u. S. Senator from illinois and launching an unlikely campaign for president. As we said at the time, there had never been another president ial candidate quite like him. His last name rhymed with osama and his middle name was hussein. He was half black, half white, and in terms of political experience, very green. Barack obama steve kroft. Kroft hey we sat down with president obama monday afternoon in the state dining room at the white house. It marked our 12th and final interview with him since he was elected president. We began by showing him a picture. Kroft i got something i want to show you. Obama what do we got here . Look at that. I got to say that. I feel as if i couldnt take this kind of chicago winter right now. laughs kroft it was taken super bowl sunday 2007 on a frigid day on the south side of chicago, one of the last times he could walk a street without attracting a big crowd, unencumbered by secret service or an entourage. It was a week before he declared his formal candidacy for president. Kroft that was ten years ago. Obama i think thats right. Thats my motherinlaws house, that block, i think. Kroft nobody around, nobody. Nobody cared. Obama they didnt. How about that . Kroft he was an audaciously hopeful junior senator from illinois, splitting his time between his tiny apartment in washington. Malia obama hey kroft . And the chicago home where he had two young daughters. What else does he make besides tuna fish . Malia chili, and thats it. Kroft his wife michelle was a working mom, a hospital executive, and major breadwinner in the family. She wasnt crazy about her husband being in politics. Has it put strains on the marriage from time to time . Michelle obama oh, no. Obama absolutely, it has. Kroft but youd let him go ahead and do this . Michelle obama i think if i werent married to him, id want him to be in there. So i dont want to stand in the way of that because we have to work out a few things. Weve had those arguments and. Obama and ive lost them all. Kroft it all seems like a long time ago. So whats the difference between this guy and the guy you are now . How much smarter are you than this guy standing on the Street Corner . Obama well, lets see. Obviously im grayer, a few more wrinkles. You know, ill be honest with you, steve. One of the things im proud about is that i think my basic character and outlook actually have not changed much. Andand people who are closest to me will tell you that the guy who came here is the same guy whos leaving. Andand the reason i take pride for that is one of the things you worry about when youre in the bubble, and theres all this pomp and circumstance and hail to the chief, is do you lose touch with what you thought was important and what brought you here . And iim proud that i dont think i have lost touch. Kroft if you had to write a brief description of this job beginning with wanted. laughs how would you describe the position . And what are the tasks . And what skills do you think you need . Obama thick skin helps. Kroft thick skin, stamina. Obama stamina. There is a greater physical element to this job than you would think, just being able to grind it out. And i think your ability to not just mentally and emotionally but physically be able to say, we got this. Were going to be okay. Kroft did you learn the executive stuff on the job . Because when we first talked, i must have asked you 100 times. Your only executive experience was running the harvard law review and running your own campaign. Did you have to learn a lot of this on the job . Obama the campaign was a more significant Training Ground than i think people give it credit for. By the time i got here i think i had a pretty good sense of what was required. But the circumstances in which i came in were different than most executives, right . Thethe enterprise was in the midst of a major crisis. And so those First Six Months were a fire drill. Kroft beside the two wars he inherited in iraq and afghanistan and promised to end a financial crisis at home had pushed the United States to the brink of another great depression. When we spoke with the new president in march of 2009, the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month, the government was throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at failing banks, and the Auto Industry was on the verge of collapse. Politically pummeled from all sides, obama did his best to keep a sense of humor. Obama i just want to say that the only thing less popular than putting money into banks is putting money into the Auto Industry. So. Kroft but 18 are in favor, 76 against. Obama itits not a high number. Kroft youre sitting here and youreyou are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, i mean, hes sitting there just making jokes about money. How do you deal with that . Obama no, no, no. Kroft i mean, what. Explain thethethe. Obama well. Kroft . The mood in your laughter. Obama yeah, i mean, theres got to be. Kroft are you punchdrunk . Obama no, no, theres got to be a little gallows humor to get you through the day. Kroft a political candidacy built around hope and change and compromise would eventually become a presidency of crisis and confrontation. Is there anything that surprised you about this job . Obama i was surprised and and continue to be surprised by the severity of partisanship in this town. And ii think that id been warned about it. Youll remember, in the campaign back in 2007, 2008, people would say, oh, hes being naive. He thinks that theres no red states and blue states. And wait till he gets here. And i will confess that i didnt fully appreciate the ways in which individual senators or members of congress now areare pushed to the extremes by their their voter bases. I did not expect, particularly in the midst of crisis, just how severe that partisanship would be. Kroft you came into this office trying to unify the country. Youyou said that many times during the campaign. You wanted to bring people together. You wanted to change washington. You talked about transformative change. And you became the focal point for some of the division. Obama i became a lightning rod for some partisan battles. I could not be prouder of the track record weve put together. By almost every measure, the country is significantly better off than when i came in. If you can look back and say, the economys better. Our securitys better. The environments better. Ourour kids education is better, if you can say that youve made things better, then considering all the challenges out there, you should feel good. But im the first to acknowledge that i did not crack the code in terms of reducing this partisan fever. Kroft you didnt change washington. Obama you know i changed those things that were in direct. My direct control. I mean, i. Look, im proud of the fact that with two weeks to go, were probably the First Administration in modern history that hasnt had a major scandal in the white house. In that sense, we changed some things. I wouldve liked to have gotten that one last Supreme Court justice in there. Id like the Supreme Court to take a look at. Kroft you couldnt even get a hearing. Obama but we couldnt even get a hearing. Trying to get the other side of the aisle to work with us on issues, in some cases, that they professed, originally, an interest in andand saying to them, hold on a second. You guys used to think this was a good idea. Now, just because im supporting it you cant change your mind. But they did. Andand what that did, i think, made me appreciate. And iive said this before. Butbut its worth repeating. Because this is on me. Part of the Job Description is also shaping Public Opinion. And we were very effective, and i was very effective, in shaping Public Opinion around my campaigns. But there were big stretches, while governing, where even though we were doing the right thing, we werent able to mobilize Public Opinion firmly enough behind us to weaken the resolve of the republicans to stop opposing us or to cooperate with us. And there were times during my presidency where i lost the p. R. Battle. Kroft and losing the p. R. Battles, particularly about health care, translated into losing his democratic majorities in congress, beginning with a republican landslide in the Midterm Election of 2010. Kroft there is this feeling in, particularly among people who are among your hardened supporters. Obama right. Kroft . Who feel a little disappointed that they think that youve lost your mojo. That youve lost your ability, that touch you had during the campaign to inspire. Obama . Yeah. Kroft . Andand lead that. You know, everybody in washington writes about thethe sort of aloofness that you have and im sure that drives you crazy. That youve let other people define you, that you havent sold your successes well enough. Obama i think its. I think its a fair argument. You know, ii think that over the course of two years we were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that, you know, leadership isnt just legislation, that its a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence, and bringing them together and setting a tone. Kroft for the next six years, there would be legislative gridlock, and by 2016, the people who had looked to obama for change were looking somewhere else. Donald trump, if you take away the particulars, was elected to the office, basically, on the same program that you were, of change. He wants to change washington. Obama well, i mean, thats a lot of particulars youre taking away. laughs fair enough. Kroft but do you think. Obama he was a change candidate. Kroft do you think anybody can change washington . Obama i think the American People can change washington. But i th. I think that it is not going to change, because somebody from on high directs that change. Members of congress, on both sides of the aisle, are motivated by all kinds of issues. Theyre sincerely interested in the economy, in terrorism, in social issues. But the one overriding thing theyre interested in is getting reelected. And if they think that its harder for them to get reelected by cooperating with each other, then they wont cooperate. Kroft a lot of people think the system is broken, that the system, thethe political system is broken. That seemed to be the message that you heard throughout this campaign. Obama well. Kroft and you seem to be saying, in some ways, maybe it is broken. Obama in the first two years, when i had a Strong Majority in the house and the senate, we were as productive as any administration has been since the 60s. I mean, we got a lot done. And so you can get a lot of stuff done through this system. But to sustain a governing majority, that requires an ability for republicans and democrats to find some common ground. And right now, the structure of the system is such where it makes it really hard for people to work together. And we mentioned an example earlier the Supreme Court nominations. I mean, the fact that Mitch Mcconnell the leader of the republicans was able to just stop a nomination almost a year before the next election and really not pay a political price for it, thats a sign that the incentives for politicians in this town to be so sharply partisan have gotten so out of hand thatthat were weakening ourselves. Kroft how serious do you think this is . I mean, how stable do you think that the political system, the democratic system, is . Obama look, i think its stable, because the framers, in their wisdom, designed the system so that powers pretty disbursed. You know, we have states. And we have cities. And we have counties. And we have the private sector. Andand so the country still works even when washingtons dysfunctional. But thethe problem is is that, over time, big pieces of business that have to get done, without leadership from washington, dont get done. Kroft i want to go back just briefly on this. But i think, look, this last election, you had a political system. Wellwell, first of all the people elected somebody who went around saying that the system was rigged. Obama yeah. Kroft you had two of the most unpopular president ial candidates selected by the two parties in history. Doesnt that say somethings wrong, something serious is wrong . Obama it indicates that there is a lot of cynicism out there. It indicates that the corrosive nature of everything from talk radio to fake news to negative advertising has made people lack confidence in a lot of our existing institutions. I think itit indicates, at least on the democratic side, that weve got more work to do to strengthen our grassroots networks. In some ways, the Democratic Party hadnt constructed itself to get that message out to the places it needed to get to. The tea party i have huge disagreements with, obviously. But i give them credit for having activated themselves. And they made a difference in terms of moving thethe republican party, inin terms of moving the country in a particular direction. Its a direction i disagreed with. But it showed that, in fact, you get involved, if your voice is heard, itit has an impact. Kroft do you feel the same way about donald trump . Obama well, ii think that he clearly was able to tap into a lot of grievances. And he has a talent for making a connection with his supporters that overrode some of the traditional benchmarks of how youd run a campaign or conduct yourself asas a president ial candidate. What will be interesting to see is how that plays out during the course of his presidency. We are moving into an era where a lot of people get their information through tweets and sound bites and some headline that comes over their phone. And i think that theres a power in that. Theres also a danger, what generates a headline or stirs up a controversy and gets attention isnt the same as the process required to actually solve the problem. Kroft you said you dont know how hes going to do when he governs, but were in this transition period and one of the first things that he has done in this transition period is to pick a fight with the intelligence agencies. Do you think that thats a smart move . Obama youre not going to be able to make good decisions without building some relationship of trust between yourself and that community. Kroft do you see that happening . Obama not yet, but, you know, again, hehe hasnt gotten sworn into office yet. Kroft when we come back, president obama talks about one of the strangest transitions in white house history, and he acknowledges some mistakes. Cbs money watch update sponsored by lincoln financial. Youre in charge. Quijano good evening. Some analysts warn a trump correction is coming following the postelection trump bump. Ibm and netflix report earnings this week. And after 146 years, the ringling brothers circus is folding up its tent, citing falling ticket sales. Im elaine quijano, cbs news. Kroft at the white house on monday, crates and boxes l