[applause]
MAY 4, 2015
[Letterman] Let me ask, what'll you do when you're not president?
Well, I was thinking you and me, we could play some dominoes together,
-Dominoes. All right. -You know, and...
We...
We can...
you know, go to the local Starbucks.
[phone keypad beeps]
[phone rings]
2 YEARS LATER
Mr. President, this is Mr. Letterman.
How are you?
No, sir, I have not shaved.
I've been looking around for two years,
and I haven't been sure what I want to do,
and now I've got six shows.
Okay.
Right.
Okay, I appreciate your time. God bless you, sir. Take care.
Thank you very much. Same to you. Bye-bye.
[man] How did he react?
You know, he's so busy, got so many things to do.
He can't make a decision yet. He'll let me know in two or three weeks.
Would love to work with me. Doesn't know how, doesn't know when.
It was-- I think a qualified...
I think it was a no.
[jazzy theme music plays]
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
[audience applauds]
Thank you very-- No, no, no.
Thank you very much.
That's very kind of you. Thank you.
I'm Dave Letterman.
I had a show for a while, then I got fired. And...
And now here I am, and I have not so much what I regard as a show,
but there's something called-- Have you ever heard of anything called Netflix?
I don't know what it is.
I don't even care how it works.
All I know is that when it does work,
the danger of radioactive poisoning soars in your home.
[audience laughs]
Does anybody have any idea who's coming out here?
[audience whoops]
Oh, you do? So you do know? Who do you think's coming out, sir?
Is there any way you can approach the stage and whisper it to me?
Just come right over here. Be careful.
This guy claims to know.
And by the way, if he does know, he's gone.
-Just give me a hint. -William Jefferson Clinton.
Yeah, okay. Okay.
Son of a bitch.
One more and then let's go.
Yes, sir, right here.
Oh, you're with the staff.
Boy, that's a sad day when the staff has a question.
Okay, I think we're ready.
God knows I'm ready.
I've been waiting for this for quite a long time.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my next guest,
the 44th president of the United States of America...
Barack Obama.
Dave Letterman.
[audience cheers]
Mr. President.
-[Obama] How you doing? -I'm good. Thank you very much.
Hey.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
So...
[audience cheers]
-Good to see you. -Good to see you.
How are you?
I'm great.
Now, what I want to know is...
-You and I recently left long-term jobs. -We did.
-The first day you wake up-- -I was not fired though.
I... I couldn't...
I just want to...
The first day you wake up not as president:
like any other day? Like a different day?
What was that first day like?
You're not president. Your feet hit the floor, "I'm not president."
It was later. I slept in...
which I was pretty happy about.
And I took Michelle on a holiday.
'Cause I missed my wife.
We hadn't kind of hung out.
So we spent ten days, and just had a wonderful time.
-And then-- -Where'd you go?
We went to the British Virgin Islands.
-Very nice. -And it was...
You got...
There you go.
And then we got back, and because Sasha,
my younger daughter, is still in high school, we didn't move.
So we're still living in D.C., and we've gotten a house
a few blocks from where I used to live.
-[chuckles] -And...
-Same neighborhood. -Same neighborhood.
Same general vicinity. And...
And, you know, it was great.
I did not miss the trappings of the office.
I sort of enjoyed puttering around the house, trying to figure out
how does the coffee maker work, and...
fighting with Michelle for closet space, and...
Relief? Any relief here?
I don't think "relief's" the right word.
I think there was a sense that I'd run the race.
I had completed it.
I was proud of the work that we had done.
And that I was ready for the next stage.
Mm.
The stereotype of former presidents
is you're kind of sitting around your house, and...
waiting for somebody to call,
and you're kind of lonely,
-and don't know what to do. -No, that's me.
But... But you know the truth is, it felt exciting.
Now, I will say everything felt like it was moving in slow motion.
The guy who is representing me in a possible book publishing deal,
he calls me, says, "Look, these publishers are chomping at the bit.
We've got to meet with them right away.
You know, right now. Things are really hot."
I said, "Okay, how about tomorrow?"
"No, no, no. It's gonna take two weeks to set it up."
And I explained to him, I said,
"Well, where I'm coming from, 'right away' means
if we don't do something in half an hour, somebody dies."
-So... -Yeah. Let's get this done before lunch.
Yeah. Well, I...
Right after the... There was palpable sadness on my part.
I think a lot of people experienced it.
And I think that happens with any major shift.
And then I see you--
You're hang gliding, and you're climbing volcanoes,
and you're windsurfing, and you're wrestling sharks,
and you're on somebody's private island,
and I'm at Bed Bath & Beyond looking at...
Picking out hangers, you know, and I...
Something's wrong here.
How did you spend your time--
Seriously, how did you spend your time after your last show?
Did you take a deliberate break with the wife and son?
Did you... just brood
in the dark somewhere?
-I mean, what was-- -What have you heard?
I don't know. What was your strategy?
-What was your approach? -Even before retirement,
there was a certain amount of brooding in the dark, but...
No, it coincided with Harry's vacation. We traveled.
We went to a lot of fascinating, interesting places.
We visited Japan.
Had not been to Japan before. Went to an island off of Newfoundland.
Fogo Island. Had never heard of it before.
Saw icebergs.
Now, here's how this is gonna work.
I'm gonna ask you stuff...
[audience laughs]
-and then you-- You respond to stuff. -People were interested.
They... It's a whole new ball game now, man.
No, I know.
You know, you have a different set, there's no band.
No, no band.
You know.
Now, I was talking to your wife not so long ago,
and I said to her--
They always talk about the presidential briefing.
-Yes. -Right after the inauguration...
-Right. -...bang, zoom...
-Yes. -...you get the presidential briefing.
-Yeah. -And they say it changes lives.
I said, "Do they do that for the first lady?"
She says, "No, they don't."
Well, right there is a mistake.
Am I supposed-- Is now when I'm supposed to respond?
Yes.
-Yes, now you can talk. -Okay, all right.
[Letterman chuckles]
Well, look...
For the first lady, you are a very public figure.
You are expected to help to shape
the public conversation on issues that are important,
but people don't want you to be too political.
They don't want you to be too controversial.
As Michelle always pointed out...
first ladies do not get paid.
What's definitely true is that she had to figure out...
Right.
...how was she gonna use
the power of her office and her personality
and ability to persuade,
and she did a magnificent job.
I'm still in awe of the work that she did.
[audience applauds]
So...
I mean, it doesn't...
It doesn't make any difference, but I've known of presidents going back--
Eisenhower was the first one I was aware of,
and his wife was Mamie. Mamie was the first lady.
I'm sure she was a fine first lady,
but made no-- Virtually no impact on my life.
Mamie Eisenhower,
-you may be stunned to hear this, but-- -I am surprised.
You are surprised.
But your wife, not only an impact on me,
but I think far beyond what is expected
or usually happens with the first lady.
And one of the things that Michelle figured out,
in some ways faster than I did,
was, you know, part of your ability to lead the country...
doesn't have to do with legislation, doesn't have to do with regulations.
It has to do with shaping attitudes, shaping culture,
-increasing awareness. -Right.
It's behavior. We watch the behavior and we learn from that.
And the planting of the garden, that's a big gesture.
Well, and it's something that people can relate to.
It's something they can see and feel and touch.
And meanwhile, while she's doing all this cool stuff,
I'm standing behind a podium...
and I'm droning on and on about...
"Well, the legislative strategy for such and such and..."
And people are clicking the television, you know, trying to find something else,
or tweeting something that has nothing to do with
-what I was talking about. -Once again, you're talking about me.
So...
when you become president, and you're in the Oval Office,
you feel, "Okay, now I have to act presidential."
And we lost track of what have gotten us there,
and that was our ability to tell stories and relate to people.
Now, in fairness, part of it was the world economy was collapsing,
and I had two wars that I had to deal with.
And so, that'll make you kind of serious.
Two wars and a collapsing economy.
-Yeah, it was a... -Welcome to the gig.
Yeah, right. Yeah. It...
Where's the handbook on that?
Well, I think people forget how bad things were.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
It turns out the economy was collapsing...
faster than it did during the Great Depression.
The month I took office, we had lost 800,000 jobs just in that month.
One of the things I'm proudest about is the fact that
within a year, we actually had the economy growing again,
and within about a year and a half...
we were actually adding jobs again instead of losing them.
But, look, there was a lot of pain at that time,
and a lot of anguish, and a lot of stress,
and there wasn't a good blueprint for how to do that.
You know, I fall prey to a cliché which I believe I first heard from you,
and it goes like this:
"My son, in 20 years, will say to me,
'Wait a minute. You knew this was a problem,
but you didn't do anything about it.'"
And I apply that to all manner of circumstances
in life and in the world.
Are we safe from the same thing repeating itself?
There's some long-term trends that are still a problem.
You still have growing inequality.
The combination of technology and globalization...
-Yeah. -...means that
there are entire industries
and categories of jobs that are being eliminated.
The cost of college, the cost of health care are still going up,
although not as fast as they were when I came into office.
And so, in that environment...
if all the money is going to a handful of people at the top,
and they're investing in all kinds of stuff,
because they want to maximize their return,
that's how you start getting bubbles,
that's how you start getting an overheated financial system.
The challenge that we still have to address is,
how do we make an economy in this globalized technological environment
that's working for everybody?
To hear you describe this in a way that I can understand...
just makes me so happy you're still president, because...
[audience laughs]
Let's just say...
there's a democracy,
and the voting process
is being monkeyed with by foreign countries.
Mm-hmm.
-Hypothetically. -Hypothetically.
What is more damaging to that democracy?
Would it be the diminishment
by the head of the democracy of the press?
Or would it be somebody screwing around with the actual voting process?
One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy...
is the degree to which we don't share...
a common baseline of facts.
There's a well-known senator from New York,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
And one time, he was debating one of his less capable colleagues,
and the guy got flustered
and said, "Well, Senator Moynihan, that's just your opinion.
And I have mine."
And Moynihan says,
"Sir, you are entitled to your own opinion,
but you are not entitled to your own facts."
What the Russians exploited,
but it was already here,
is we are operating
in completely different information universes.
If you watch Fox News,
you are living on a different planet...
than you are if you, you know, listen to NPR. Now...
It used to be...
Again, when we were young.
Although you're a little older than me.
You and I are the same age.
Just you got this-- He's got this Biblical beard, you know.
-I'm regarded-- -Do you have a staff? You're like...
[audience laughs]
-The waters part. -I'm a holy man now.
Yeah.
In our campaign in 2007, 2008,
we were some of the earliest adapters of social media.
And we were reliant on...
...a bunch of 22- and 23-year-olds...
...and volunteers who we were sending out,
and they'd just go.
And they were communicating entirely through social media,
and we essentially built
what ended up being the most effective
political campaign probably in modern political history.
So I had a very optimistic feeling about it.
And I think that what we missed was the degree to which...
people who are in power, people... Special interests...
-foreign governments, et cetera... -Yeah.
...can, in fact, manipulate that...
-Propagandize. -...and propagandize.
I was under the impression that Twitter
would be the mechanism by which truth was told around the world.
[audience laughs]
If you are getting all your information
off algorithms being sent through a phone,
and it is just reinforcing whatever biases you have,
which is the pattern that develops--
There was an interesting experiment,
not a big scientific experiment,
but just an experiment that somebody did
during the revolution that was taking place in Egypt,
in Tahrir Square.
Somebody took a liberal, a conservative, and quote-unquote "a moderate,"
and sent them on a Google search.
"Egypt, type it in."
And for the conservative, it came up "Muslim Brotherhood."
And for the liberal, it came up "Tahrir Square."
And for the moderate, it came up
"vacation spots on the Nile."
But whatever your biases were, that's what-- Where you were being sent.
And that gets more and more reinforced over time.
That's what's happening with these Facebook pages
where more and more people are getting their news from.
At a certain point, you just live in a bubble.
And that's part of why our politics is so polarized right now.
I think it is a solvable problem, but I think it's a...
It's... one that we have to spend a lot of time thinking about.
It seems like a valuable tool that has turned against us.
-Yeah. -I read a book you wrote,
-Dreams from My Father. -Yeah.
It was such...
What an odyssey, your life.
What an odyssey, your early life.
How well-written and how dense each period of your life.
And one of many things that I was taken by
was your relationship with your mother.
Tell me about that relationship, and how you feel now about it.
Yeah, it's interesting.
The book's called Dreams from My Father,
because it was a... exploration,
or a chronicle of me trying to figure out who my dad was,
and, as a consequence, how I got this name,
and what it meant to be an African-American
whose father was African, and-- You know, how did all that work?
It was only after I wrote it,
and then, even more profoundly,
after my mom had passed away,
I realized she's actually the guiding spirit in my life.
The father was the absent one, and so I was chasing that,
and took this for granted.
My mother was a fascinating woman. Born in Kansas.
Traveled around a lot when she was young.
So she ends up in Hawaii.
She's a student, she meets this...
-...African-- -First African student
to be admitted to the University of Hawaii.
And they have this brief affair,
they get married quickly,
divorced quickly.
I'm a byproduct of that.
And then he's gone.
And so she, along with my grandparents, basically raised me.
She remarries again, this time to an Indonesian,
and we traveled to Jakarta in 1967.
I lived there for four years before moving back to Hawaii.
And she ended up specializing in women's development issues.
She's... She was one of the pioneers in microfinancing,
where you'd go into a village,
and women who were doing all kinds of work
but they weren't getting paid for it,
figuring out how they could monetize what they were doing,
and ended up being a tool to, you know, empower them
and create more development in poor countries.
And, you know, when I think about the values that carried me forward...
they trace to her.
She was very much a child of the '60s
and a little bit of a skeptic about a lot of things,
but what was interesting was she hung on to some very basic
kind of Midwestern values.
Be honest, be kind, be useful,
be responsible, work hard, treat everybody with respect.
When I think about the work that I ended up doing,
there's no doubt that some of that rubbed off.
There-- In the book, there are many examples of what you have described,
two of which touched me, and I'm not sure why.
She said that from her...
She's being very modest about her role in your life.
From her you got your eyebrows.
See, she did-- She was very proud of the fact that my eyebrows were strong.
[audience laughs]
Which was an important asset
that I have now passed on to my daughters.
She also said that the brains...
I'm not sure that was the word.
...came from your father.
I think from my father, who I only met for a month, I--
And-- Or the stories that were told about me.
And a lot of-- My mother was very generous
in telling stories that put him in the best light,
and not the bad ones.
And it wasn't-- It was only later that I learned the bad ones, not from her.
But, you know, what I came to appreciate was the degree to which...
I wanted to be present in my children's life.
That's not something he taught me directly.
He taught me by his absence.
The other thing that stuck with me--
I believe you were in Indonesia.
You moved to Indonesia when you were-- Is it six?
-Six years old. -Six years old.
And your mother, bless her heart,
is worried about the quality of education you're getting there.
So, every morning,
she wakes you up at like five, like six,
-before you go to school in Indonesia... -Yeah.
...and she teaches you, like, a full day's curriculum.
It's basically homeschooling.
Homeschooling before you go to school.
Because she was so worried about the welfare of her son
-and the education he was getting. -Yeah. Well...
So, we'd wake up, and she'd go-- I'd do all those lessons,
-and-- -That's sweet though.
Well, it was... In retrospect, you think, "Isn't that wonderful?"
At the time, I thought, "This is terrible.
I've got two schools..." You know, I'd start complaining.
I'd be like, "I'm tired. I don't want to do this."
And she made the obvious point,
which when you're seven or eight
you don't think about, which is,
-"This is no picnic for me either." -Yeah.
-Exactly. -My mother
-had great faith in education. -Yeah.
And I was an indifferent student in high school.
Partied a lot.
Started getting a little more serious in college,
and I started reading a lot...
and was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement.
When I graduated, I thought to myself,
"I can't think of anything more worthy of my efforts...
than what those young Freedom Riders did,
voter registrars and people who risked everything
to try to advance our democracy."
I was inspired by it, but there was no movement around.
Recently, I did something that was so important to me.
It has to do with Congressman John Lewis.
I went to Selma, Alabama...
and the congressman and I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
I've met people who have received...
the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he is as great a hero...
John Lewis is an extraordinary American.
He is a great friend of mine, and I'm lucky for it.
[newscaster] On Sunday, March 7th,
state troopers and sheriff's deputies...
...advanced on a column of demonstrators who had planned a 50-mile march
to Montgomery, the capital.
[man] We, the Negro citizens of Dallas County
and other Alabama counties,
are marching today from Selma to Montgomery.
We're marching to our state capital
to dramatize to our nation and to the world
our determination to win first-class citizenship.
[newscaster] The match lasted only minutes before being turned back
by state troopers and sheriff's possemen.
[crowd clamors]
[newscaster] With teargas, Selma ceased to be an obscure Southern city
and became a symbol.
[Letterman] How many times have you walked this bridge?
[John Lewis] Many, many times.
Since 1965, only missed one year and not returning.
-This is where it all happened. -If you don't mind,
let's talk a little bit about that day.
How old were you? You were 22 when you made this walk?
When I made the walk across the bridge, I was 25.
-Twenty-five years old. -Twenty-five.
You know, that day, I was wearing a light trench coat.
-You had the trench coat on. -Trench coat.
-You had the backpack. -Had a backpack.
In the backpack, I had an apple, an orange,
toothpaste and toothbrush,
and two books.
I thought we were gonna be arrested and go to jail.
-You'd go to jail. -Go to jail.
You and your friends were not breaking any laws when you made this march?
No, we were walking here on the sidewalk.
Barack Obama would have been with you had he been the right age, wouldn't he?
-Oh, he would have been here. -Yeah.
He would have been an unbelievable spokesperson.
Unbelievable leader of the movement.
-We're getting close to the confrontation. -Yes.
And is this about where you said that you saw death?
What does that feel like?
I thought I was going to die.
It was something-- Some force that was just pushing us on.
Sometimes, you have to be inspired and lifted up...
-Well... -...by what I call the spirit of history.
Yeah, I'll tell you, being here with you is inspiring.
[John Lewis] We had been taught not to be afraid...
but be determined...
and be orderly, peaceful,
and abide by the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence.
But can you teach not to be afraid?
I mean, pretending to not be afraid
is as good as actually not being afraid, isn't it?
-Well, it is. -Yeah.
[man] Troopers here,
advance towards the group.
See that they turn around and disperse.
[crowd clamoring]
[John Lewis] I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick.
My legs went from under me,
and all these years later, I don't know how I got up.
And I don't know how I made it back across the bridge to the church.
And when I got back at the church...
...someone asked me to say something.
And I stood up and said, "I don't understand it.
How President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam,
and cannot send troops to Selma, Alabama
to protect people whose only desire is to register to vote."
And the next thing I knew,
I'd been admitted to the Good Samaritan Hospital.
[Letterman] And then it was on everybody's TV that evening.
[John Lewis] And it became known as Bloody Sunday in Selma.
[Letterman] What was the total number of the marchers on the fin--
-The second pass. -Right.
[John Lewis] By the time we made it to Montgomery on the final march,
there were probably more than 20,000 people.
[Letterman] Twenty thousand?
That's remarkable.
Symbolically...
when the march was completed successfully,
what is on the other side of the bridge?
The vote.
-Barack Obama. -Yeah.
If it hadn't been for the march from Selma to Montgomery,
there probably... no Barack Obama as president of the United States.
John Lewis is absolutely right, that...
he and all those other folks that marched carried me across that bridge.
Well, they carried America across that bridge.
And so...
[audience applauds]
You know, the interesting thing about John for me
was that he was really the inspiration
to take the path that I took.
And in fact, where we are, at City Colleges of New York,
here in the Amsterdam campus, is where I got my first organizing job.
And I didn't work here long,
and I was pretty miserable at what I did, I was terrible.
I organized some meeting about poverty or something.
I was really-- Passed out fliers, I was really energized,
and like four people came,
which was fewer than the panelists I had arranged,
and it was depressing.
But the reason I mention this with respect to John is that
it was actually what carried me through multiple failures,
not just as an organizer, but then my early efforts in politics...
was reminding myself that, well, look, the burdens I'm going through...
-Yeah. -Nobody's siccing dogs on me.
-Right. -Nobody's beating me...
half to death.
You go to that museum on the other side of the bridge,
-Yeah. -And you-- You're alive
with the movement when you are there.
And I said to the congressman, "We can define racism,
but can we explain it?"
And he said to me something I think he just said to me
because he knew I would never understand it.
He said, "It's just the difference in skin color."
And I said...
"It can't possibly be that simplistic."
Well, yeah, look, the long view on human history...
it turns out that we come up with all kinds of reasons
to try to put ourselves over other people.
Racism is a profound example of that...
but obviously, biologically,
there's no actual reality to it, other than we made this thing up.
We made it up.
Over time, what happens is,
because it manifests itself in very concrete ways,
slavery, Jim Crow, subjugation,
it becomes a social reality,
and it ends up having very real impacts.
It is true that African-Americans,
on average, are poorer than other Americans.
Well, it's not because of the race, it's because of the social constructs...
over the course of three, four hundred years that made them poor.
And so, John Lewis, Dr. King,
what they teach us is...
to ask ourselves questions
if we see cruelty, if we see inequalities, if we see injustice.
"Why is that?
Am I a part of this? Am I willing to do something about it?
Are there sacrifices I'm willing to make to change it?"
And that's not always easy,
but it's necessary.
That's how progress is made.
And that's why I always say that
the way America has become more perfect...
Not perfect, but more perfect.
...typically has to do with ordinary people deciding,
"You know what? That's not right."
There's another cliché that I'm fond of invoking,
which is, "Nothing right in the world
-ever occurs without a fight." -Or at least some discomfort.
Yes.
Because there's a reason--
Somebody's benefiting from the status quo.
[Obama] In one afternoon 50 years ago,
so much of our turbulent history met on this bridge.
We gather here to honor the courage of ordinary Americans
willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod...
tear gas, and the trampling hoof.
The idea held by generations of citizens...
who believe that America is a constant work-in-progress...
who believe that loving this country
requires more than singing its praises, or avoiding uncomfortable truths.
It requires the occasional disruption,
the willingness to speak out for what is right,
to shake up the status quo.
That's America.
The way he represented me as an American,
-I haven't experienced that before. -Yeah.
Well, I never saw a president
so committed, so fair, so dedicated.
I'd just never seen anyone like him.
Without being just flat out specific about this,
how big a setback is the current administration?
It is a major setback to the hopes, the dream, and aspiration of a people.
Not just African-America,
-but all America. -Yeah.
Because I think what has happened in America today,
is a threat not just to our own country, but to the planet.
Kind of the genesis of this, Congressman,
is when you decided you weren't going to attend Donald Trump's inauguration.
And that ridiculous quote, "John Lewis, just another...
all-talk, no-action congressman," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I found that very upsetting.
How did you react to that?
Well, I just...
sort of had what I call "an executive session" with myself,
and I said, you know...
"This man, he doesn't know anything about me."
All my life, I've been acting and speaking up...
I was arrested and jailed 40 times during the '60s,
and five times since I've been in Congress.
You think, okay, the Civil Rights Act...
Voter Registration Act,
okay, things get better as we move away from sadness and tragedy.
Things get better, things seem to get better.
And then all of a sudden,
it seems like, well, wait a minute,
things are not better, not only are they not better,
in Insidious ways, they may be worse.
I think in the whole struggle, there may be some setbacks,
some delays, some interruption...
-Yeah. -...but you take a long hard look,
we will get there.
We will redeem the soul of America.
We will...
...make this little piece of real estate...
we call America, and the world, a little better.
We all have a role to play.
We all can do something, we all can make a contribution.
-But I'm making a contribution... -You're making a contribution.
...because you're nice enough to let me walk across the bridge with you.
The march across the bridge was voter rights.
And there were changes to the voting law in 2013...
...because, I think the understanding was
that some of these provisions no longer apply.
We've outgrown them, we're smarter,
-we be-- -That was the argument that the Supreme--
-This Supreme Court accepted. -Right.
And I talked to him about that,
and I was stunned.
He says, "That setback cost us a hundred years."
Now, he may have been invoking hyperbole.
Let's say it's 50 years, let's say it's ten years.
Yeah, I-- Well, look,
we're the only advanced democracy that deliberately discourages...
people from voting.
We create all these barriers and difficulties,
and the reason is, is that's all directly related to our history.
Initially, there were a very small category of people who could vote.
White men with property.
Then expanded to white men without property.
And then we kept on expanding the franchise,
but those vestiges of thinking that
only some of us are worthy of having a say...
you know, that carries on.
And the fact that we have a very narrow window to vote
in a lot of places...
You know, if you're a working single mom
who's taking the bus to work,
and you got to get your kids ready for school,
and you got to punch a clock...
and you don't have a break,
and now on a Tuesday, and it's snowing...
There's no reason for that other than we just want to--
It's petty.
-Yeah. -It's so petty.
Well, you know, but, look, what ends up happening
is we have some of the lowest voting rates of any democracy on Earth.
The truth is, is that people opt out themselves
because they just don't think anything can happen.
They figure, "My voice doesn't matter, my vote doesn't matter,
Washington's broken, rich people are gonna make decisions."
So if you go to Selma...
the lesson to draw...
has less to do with the particulars of the laws
that were changed or not changed,
has more to do with the spirit that said, "Okay...
I'm a Pullman porter, I'm a maid...
but if enough maids and Pullman porters walk
and pray and sing and show this injustice,
we can awaken the conscience of a nation."
Now, Mr. President...
I know you have to get back to the Oval Office.
[audience laughs]
Yeah, the...
[audience applauds]
You know...
Let me just say this,
that if it were not for the Constitution...
there'd be Michelle.
Oh!
No, no, no. No, you...
You guys are misunderstanding me.
What I'm saying is I'm prevented from running again by the Constitution.
But even if it were not for that Amendment...
Michelle would leave me. And...
Oh, well, okay. I can-- I understand that now.
-Yeah. Yeah. -I want her around.
Yeah.
As well you should.
Now...
Let's talk about something you and I have in common: kids.
We-- Yes.
You took your older daughter away to college
And as moving-- More moving than you thought it would be?
Did...
It was...
It was like open heart surgery, man. I mean, it was...
One of the best descriptions I ever heard of children
is it's like having your heart outside your body.
And they're not that smart, and they're kind of wandering around,
and crossing streets, and getting on airplanes,
and you're like, "Come--"
You want to put them...
Put them back in. And it was interesting to see
how everybody handled things differently.
All right. So, Michelle...
she had like a cleaning glove, you know.
One of those, you know, yellow ones, and she's got--
She's scouring the bathroom,
and, you know, has all these plans about how everything should be.
And Sasha...
It was really touching, 'cause Sasha tries to be cool,
so she didn't want to admit that she was gonna miss her sister.
She's neater than her sister,
so she was helping to make the bed and fold clothes,
and just being really quiet about it,
but in a way that was really moving and touching.
And I was basically useless, right? I wasn't-- There was no...
And everybody had seen me, you know, crying and misting up
for the previous three weeks, and so...
Malia was very thoughtful. She says,
"Hey, Dad, you know, I've got this...
lamp in this box, and, you know, put the desk lamp together."
You know. I said, "Sure," you know.
So I...
So I grab it, and...
You know, it should have taken like five minutes or three minutes.
It had one of those little wrenches that are in-- The little--
-It comes with the tool. -The little tool.
And... And it only had four parts or something.
And I'm sitting there, and I'm...
just toiling away at this thing, and it's taken half an hour.
And meanwhile, Michelle's finished scrubbing,
and she's organizing closets and all this.
And I was just pretty pathetic.
And I held it together in front of Malia, and then,
when we drove away...
you know, Secret Service is in the front, and they're just looking ahead.
They're pretending that they can't hear me in the back...
[imitates crying]
you know, sniveling.
But...
the ritual of it was powerful.
How do you feel now about it?
What's changed, I think, from when we were kids
is that... is technology.
All right. So, I get home,
she knows I'm pathetic, so she's texted me...
you know, hearts and...
it's all great and...
You know, so, we're talking on a regular basis.
When we were kids, you had to go down to the end of the hall of the dorm.
-That's right. -You had to...
And my grandmother, who had grown up during the Depression,
she hated long-distance calls,
'cause she figured it was a waste of money, it was way too expensive.
All right. So, if you called collect,
you weren't sure whether she was gonna accept.
"What is it you want?" You know.
Yeah.
Like you're calling from jail or something.
"I'm wishing you happy birthday."
Now, what is...
I have a story about Malia that I've not told anyone.
But I want to get to devices,
because my son...
is a device guy,
-and your daughter's... -Yes.
well-schooled in devices.
Everybody-- You know, they're everywhere.
They're called smartphones, Dave.
-You don't have to call them devices. -They're not devices?
I mean... I mean...
[audience applauds]
Technically they're devices.
Took you a half an hour to assemble a four-part lamp.
This is true.
That's a decent point.
-We were at a function at the White House. -Yeah.
-I had never met either of your daughters. -Yeah.
-And I see Malia. -Yeah.
And I think, "I just want to say hello."
Thank you. I go over,
and I say, "You don't know who I am. I know your mother and father.
My name is Dave Letterman, and I am very happy to be here
at the party, and thank you for inviting me to the party."
And she says, "Yeah, you look like a guy who really knows how to party."
[audience laughs]
-That was a pretty good line. -She really did.
And I'm telling you, I loved it.
-Yeah. -It was...
-It was absolutely delightful. -She actually is...
-She's a riot. -Yeah.
She is funny.
-Are they both funny? -They're funny in different ways.
So here's a good example.
They are both extraordinary writers.
Malia will write something.
She'll come in and say, "Dad, I wrote this.
I want to... I want you to read it right away... see what you think."
And I'll read it, and I'll have comments,
and then we'll go in, and we'll go back and forth, and,
"Oh, Dad, that's really helpful."
Sasha, we'll be at dinner, and Michelle will say...
"Your teacher just called.
Wanted to see if that extraordinary poem you wrote should be--
If we could include it in our literary magazine."
"What poem?"
"It's nothing."
"Well, what do you mean? Your teacher just said
they want to include it in the literary magazine.
Can you show me the poem?"
"No."
"What do you mean, 'no'?"
"Okay, you can read it,
but you can't talk to me about it at all.
If I give it to you, will you promise not to say anything to me
about the poem?"
"Well, what if I think it's great? What if I..."
"I don't want to hear anything about it."
So, that's kind of the...
It's irritating, because I go through the same thing.
Harry has that same whatever that is,
and I would like it to leave...
where-- "Don't say that again."
"Harry, congratulations. I heard you did well on the math test."
"Don't talk to me about the math test."
"Okay."
That's why I wish Harry had a sibling,
because I had assumed and had hoped that he would be just like me.
-Well... -Yeah.
-He's not just like me. -No.
And I'm not sure any of us
-hope that either. -Yeah.
[audience laughs]
Oh, buddy I saw a picture of you in the Pete Souza book.
And, uh...
[Obama] Pete Souza, for those who don't know,
-was the White House photographer. -Yeah.
And we paid him tax dollars,
and now he's making a billion dollars with the damn book.
Who owns the negatives? I don't get any of it.
But there's a picture of you dancing,
and the guy playing the band to whom--
Leading the band to whom you're dancing
-is Prince. -Is Prince, yeah.
And I thought I was blessed to have Paul Shaffer with me every night,
-but honest to God-- -That was a fun night.
Yeah.
So, this was probably
three or four months before he died.
And Prince asks Sasha to come up and dance,
and she's an excellent dancer.
Then Sasha pulls me up...
which surprises me, because she always mocks my dancing, but...
-I have dad moves. -Yeah.
And I think the key is...
Is what we call "staying in the pocket."
Stay... Staying in the pocket.
You got to stay in the pocket, because...
I think everybody here knows dads who get out of the pocket.
[audience laughs]
And they're trying stuff that they can't really pull off.
Yeah.
And they start doing like karate kicks
-and all kinds of stuff. -Really? Karate kicks?
Is that one of the things you do?
But the point is, is that...
that's not cool, 'cause you cannot pull that off at your age.
Now, I had hoped to talk about the Foundation.
I know a little bit about the Foundation.
I know that the Foundation is not just a library
where we can go look at pictures.
The Foundation is a living organism.
It's bringing life back to an area of the South Side of Chicago.
I know we're putting young people to work,
and we're teaching young people how to cope with the future,
-and what to do-- -You know a lot.
You're doing great.
I'm not as dumb as people think I am.
So, I'm gonna leave this to you now.
I'm being threatened now that it's-- We're way late.
-So, it's entirely up to you-- -Who's threatening--
Has the Secret Service pulled a gun on you, or...
I didn't notice that red dot on your forehead.
-Now, look-- -They had a little talk
before the evening.
Even as I was approaching the end of my term,
I had asked myself...
"What will be most impactful?
What will be most useful?
What I realized is the thing that I could probably do uniquely,
is work to train the next generation of leaders...
to bring about change, because...
Because...
You know, during...
During my presidency, I would travel all around the country,
and I'd travel all around the world,
and I-- We made a habit
of me having town halls with young people.
Some of them had already accomplished remarkable things.
And they'd meet each other, and they'd trade ideas,
and excite each other, and stay in contact.
And over time, we had networks of... hundreds of thousands
of these young leaders all around the world and around the country.
And we thought, "How could we kind of make that more systematic?"
So, really, it's designed to be sort of a hub
for young people who want to learn how they can have an impact
to convene, get trained, get mentored, get supported.
But the key point I want to make on this,
because you mentioned John Lewis...
every once in a while, you'll find
in every period in our history,
in every era, in every country...
these extraordinary folks like a John Lewis
who, against all odds, change history.
There are so many more young people who would like to get involved...
but don't know how...
or aren't quite as courageous as a John Lewis is,
but maybe if they had some encouragement, would participate.
And not everybody is gonna march and go into politics.
They might volunteer in their community to do something good.
They might encourage their friends and neighbors
to learn about the issues and vote.
We were talking earlier about
the whole issue of racism
and the silence that some people, who probably knew better, felt,
and so, they just let things continue as they were.
The interesting thing is the reverse happens.
'Cause we're social animals,
and if we see others who are volunteering...
we'll think, "Well, maybe we'll volunteer."
If they see others voting... "Maybe I'll vote."
If they feel as if there's a community around them
that says this is the norm,
for us to feel like we have a say
in our lives and we can connect with people,
even if they don't look exactly like we do,
or worship in the exact same way,
or have the same sexual orientation,
but we have these common interests involved,
and that's the habits of the heart that we've developed...
you know, it works that way, too.
So, that's what the Foundation is going to try to promote in a systematic way.
You invoke the phrase "against all odds,
maybe someone who can change or make history."
You, of course, described yourself.
I...
[audience cheers]
We've been lucky.
Don't-- Don't you...
You know, I...
[audience continues cheering]
Can I say-- I wanted to ask Dave a lot of questions.
He got grumpy at the beginning.
I couldn't ask him questions.
But here's one question I did have in...
'Cause we're wrapping up, is...
Don't you say to yourself, "Boy, am I lucky"?
And one of the things that I think
I always am surprised by
is when I see people who have been successful
in business, or entertainment, or politics...
and they're absolutely convinced that it's all because they were so smart.
And I'm always saying,
"Well, look, I worked hard, and I've got some talent,
but there are a lot of hardworking talented people out there."
There was this element of chance to it. There was this element of...
Of serendipity.
And I wonder whether you feel that sometimes, where--
And the reason that, for me at least, is important,
is so: A, I don't feel too self-important; but B...
you know, you want to see if you can maybe...
figure out how to sprinkle that stardust
-on other people. -Okay.
Mr. President, this is what I am struggling with at this point in my life.
I have been nothing but lucky.
When John Lewis and his friends, in April of '65--
March of '65, were marching across that bridge,
in April of '65,
me and my friends were driving to Florida
to get on a cruise ship to go to the Bahamas
because there was no age limit to purchase alcohol,
and we spent the entire week...
-pardon my French, shit-faced. -Right.
[audience laughs]
Why wasn't I in Alabama?
Why was I not aware?
I have been nothing but lucky,
and the luck continues here this evening.
And I will tell you one thing.
When I was a kid, and it's still taught today,
irrespective of the man or woman who holds the office,
you have to respect the office of president.
Without a question of a doubt,
you are the first president
-I truly and fully respect. -That means a lot.
Thank you.
[audience cheers]
Thank you, brother.
That was fun.
Hey.
Thank you.
[jazzy theme music plays]
Thank you, New York.
-Hey, get these cameras out of here. -Get these cameras out.
-What are they doing? -Where are we going? Someone--
Wait a minute, you can beat 'em up. Go ahead, beat 'em up.
No, no, they actually look...
-We're going this way? -They look harmless.
We should redo this. The... Come on, we'll...
-What are we--? -What they want--
They want a shot of us walking into the sunset together.
How do you know this and I don't know this?
Come on, we're gonna go this way.
This is the way that we're going.
And this way, they will be able to create this poignant moment.
Ladies and gentlemen, do me a favor,
please welcome my next guest, George Clooney.
I get it, you go away,
you want to grow a beard, I get it.
-You're back, clean it up a little. -That's right.