Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 02:20 AM Report

Michael tells us two traits: competitiveness and self-discipline. Breath taking discipline, self-regulation and the President constrains himself in unnatural ways.

This sounds like a military man not a guy named Barry who smoked dope.

I hope he can get off the Nicorette soon because I can understand why he might relapse.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 02:10 AM Report

"I suppose I didn't appreciate just how insane the job was. It's - I think it's more insane than it's ever been. It's because of technology, because of the way news is speeded up."

Michael, in an insane society those who are sane will appear insane.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 02:05 AM Report

What a crazy job in a very, very crazy world:

"You are reminded - this is - you are reminded over and over when you're with a president of the morbidity of the - I mean, you've got press following him because he might get shot.

You've got, you know, a place for his coffin in the plane.

You know, you are - that's the thing that kind of - one of the strange things about this job is the way, when you're in it, you are constantly reminded that people want you dead."

Hail to the Chief, indeed!

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 01:59 AM Report

"But he's already, for example, decided that nothing on cable news is worth listening to. He doesn't watch it. He thinks it's totally toxic, like it affects your brain, and he won't turn on the TV. But he does read the newspapers."

Well obesity and cable news . . . poor America.

Charlie, we should write POTUS about your show and the great comments on your website.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 01:54 AM Report

Indeed, the bully pulpit.

How best to fracture it?

Fox News and the Republicans have made sure it does not function.

So if Obama advocates for anything the Obstructionists go into full attack and the American people permit it all the while hating Congress into single digits of approval.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 01:44 AM Report

"And what was so interesting about this, in addition to the president having to solicit an option that his advisor didn't give him, was that there wasn't anybody who - no senior person in his administration who wanted him to do what he ends up doing.

He has no constituency to go and save those people."

Michael Lewis, are you sure you are not an Obama Super-PAC?

This speaks to the Republican leadership complaint like it has been scripted.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 01:37 AM Report

Mother-in-law?

Bullet holes in the wall?

Charlie, buddy . . .

"And we get off the elevator, and luckily Michelle is not there, but his mother-in-law is there, and she's clearly shocked. You know, who's Barack bringing in? And I said to her, you know, I'm sorry to invade your house. And she kind of laughed and says, it's his house, he can do what he wants.

And he starts walking me around the residence and takes me out to his favorite place. And he loves the Truman Balcony, it turns out, because it's the one place in presidential life where he feels - you kind of feel outside. He says you feel outside the bubble. And it's true. You step - it's gorgeous, surrounded by trees. You just - you can see crowds down below the South Lawn. You feel - it's almost a normal place to be sitting.

And as he's showing me this sanctuary of his, he turns around and he points to the spot where the gunman's bullet hit a year ago. A guy with - a crazy guy with a gun, high-powered rifle, had shot at the Truman Balcony and hit basically where Obama would be sitting in his sanctuary. And I just realized this is his one spot, and he still gets shot at here. And I started to feel guilty about being this writer invading his space.

And I told him, I said I feel - you know, I feel a little creepy being here because you clearly value this space. You work very hard to preserve a sense of normalcy in this very abnormal job, and here I am screwing it up for you. And he got it. He laughed. But he persisted, and once he had me in the place, just kind of showing me what was important to him in the place."

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=161003362

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/14/2012 01:31 AM Report

"So he was coaching the fifth and eighth grade basketball teams at his children's school."

What Michael?

POTUS coaching two girls basketball teams? Does he have a body double?

I am having trouble in the belief department with this claim.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=161003362

Max83  09/13/2012 07:11 PM Report

I went to Barnes&Noble today to buy the October 2012 Vanity Fair issue, but I could not find it in the ''Current Affairs'' section so I asked a clerk to show me where I could find the Vanity Fair magazine and surprisingly he led me to the ''History'' section and I asked: ''Why is it here in the History section and not in Current Affairs?'' He just smiled at me and shrug his shoulders.

I then went to the check out and told the cashier that the Vanity Fair was in the ''History'' section and asked her if she knew why and she told me that the people that came in the shop and bought the Vanity Fair this month bought it mostly because of the Michael Lewis piece on Obama. She replied that that was probably the reason she thought that the October issue was in the History section, because of the current ''historic'' Michael Lewis piece on Mr.Obama.

Very interesting and I will read it tonight. Great to be able to have watched Michael Lewis before I read the article.

gsl64  09/13/2012 01:50 PM Report

Excellent cross examination Charlie as this witness was clearly exposed for why the White House selected him to do this puff piece just prior to an election. He happens to mention as an aside that quotes by Obama had to be cleared by the White House?!?!?! Lewis matter-of-factly asserts that Obama was best writer among Presidents since Lincoln? You could see how taken aback he was at being questioned who was second. Grant's memoirs are asserted by Gore Vidal & other noted literary critics as being the best American non-fiction ever written. Charlie had to get Lewis to reluctantly concede that thinking oneself always the smartest man in the room could be very problematic for a President. Lewis also gushes about how Obama is so empathetic and listens well but also conceded to Charlie's point that many assert that he doesn't listen and gets bored easily. Did Lewis see any of these short stories that Obama submitted for publication that apparently reaffirm in Lewis's eyes Obama's literary credentials? Curiously, it used to be controversial to say that Kennedy didn't write his own books and one would be branded a Kennedy hater if you did (JFK won Pulitzer for Profiles in Courage) which Lewis mentioned as if it were acknowledged fact. I have read many of Lewis's books and have always admired him as a writer but his agenda here is apparently not to reveal anything unflattering in his Obama profile.

REMant  09/13/2012 11:05 AM Report

Books tho just aren't what they used to be. More on a par with going to the movies or a game, or a dinner out. Long gone are the days when a circuit-riding Patrick Henry would spend all day digesting a few sentences of Montesquieu imbibed with breakfast. Clearly this book is well-timed. A lot of ppl, however, have made the point a president hasn't got any time to learn anything, but IMHO it's a pretty poor way to run anything sitting all day passing judgment like Solomon or Arafat.

Herbert Hoover, incidentally, wrote 16 books himself, including three volumes of memoirs, a 1000-page tome criticizing FDR's handling of the Second World War and a bestseller on Woodrow Wilson. Eisenhower, was considered an excellent writer, and published three volumes of memoirs too. Both conservative Republicans from the nation's heartland it should be noted. Truman, Nixon and Coolidge also wrote memoirs and Grant's was a bestseller, but I'm sure Hoover beats all those after Adams and Jefferson, including the academic Wilson. I think what makes a great writer above all else is having something to say, not the ability to craft great sentences.