Interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS News "Face the Nation"

SCHIEFFER: Mister President, thank you so much for joining us on the sixtieth anniversary of "Face the Nation".

THE PRESIDENT: Congratulations.

SCHIEFFER: It's a pleasure to have you.

THE PRESIDENT: Wonderful to have you here.

SCHIEFFER: Thank you. I want to start with your decision to basically double the size of the American force in Iraq and bring it up to about three thousand. When you ordered the airstrikes three months ago you didn't seem to think that was going to be necessary. What is-- what is this signal that what we've done so far hasn't worked?

THE PRESIDENT: No. Actually, what it signals is a new face. First of all, let's be clear. ISIL is a threat not only to Iraq but also the region and, ultimately, over the long term could be a threat to the United States. This is an extreme group of the sort we haven't seen before, but it also combines terrorist tactics with on-the-ground capabilities, in part, because they incorporated a lot of Saddam Hussein's old military commanders. And, you know, this is a threat that we are committed not only to degrade but, ultimately, destroy. It's going to take some time. What we knew was that phase one was getting an Iraqi government. That was inclusive and credible. And we now have done that. And so now what we've done is rather than just try to halt ISIL's momentum. We're now in a position to start going on some offense. The airstrikes have been very effective in degrading ISIL's capabilities and slowing the advance that they were making. Now what we need is ground troops, Iraqi ground troops that can start pushing them back.

SCHIEFFER: Will these Americans be going into battle with them?

THE PRESIDENT: No. So what hasn't changed is our troops are not engaged in combat. Essentially, what we're doing is we're taking four training centers with coalition members that allow us to bring in Iraqi recruits, some of the Sunni tribes that are still resisting ISIL, giving them proper training, proper equipment, helping them with strategy, helping them with logistics. We will provide them close air support once they are prepared to start going on the offense against ISIL, but what we will not be doing is having our troops do the fighting. What we learned from the previous engagement in Iraq is that our military is always the best. We can always knock out, knock back any threat. But then when we leave, that threat comes back.

SCHIEFFER: Should we expect that more troops may be needed before this is over?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, as commander-in-chief, I'm never going to say never. But what, you know, the commanders who presented the plan to me say is that we may actually see fewer troops over time because now we're seeing coalition members starting to partner with us on the training and assist effort.

SCHIEFFER: I want to get back to foreign policy but I also want to ask you about what happened on Tuesday.

THE PRESIDENT: We got beaten.

SCHIEFFER: Yeah. Harry Truman once famously said if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. And I thought of that when I heard the chief of staff of the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid say and this is his quote, "The President's approval rating is basically forty percent. What else more is there to say?" He's basically saying it was your fault. Do you feel it was your fault?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, another saying of Harry Truman's was, the buck stops with me. With me, the buck stops right here at my desk. And so whenever, as the head of the party, it doesn't do well, I've got to take responsibility for it. The message that I took from this election and we've seen this in a number of elections, successive elections, is people want to see this city work. And they feel as if it's not working. The economy has improved significantly. There's no doubt about it. We had a jobs report for October that showed that once again over two hundred thousand jobs created. We've now created more than ten million. The unemployment rate has come down faster than we could have anticipated. Just to give you some perspective, Bob, we've created more jobs in the United States than every other advanced economy combined since I came into office. And so we're making progress but people still feel like their wages haven't gone up, their incomes haven't gone up, still hard to save for retirement, still hard to send a kid to college. And then they see Washington gridlocked and they're frustrated. And, you know, they know one person in Washington and that's the President of the United States. So I've got to make this city work better for them.

SCHIEFFER: All the Presidents in-- in modern history who have been successful, I mean, in various ways, LBJ, FDR, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, they all seem to have a zest for politics. They-- they like the give and take. They like the twisting of arms. They like the cajoling. They liked all the things that Presidents do. But I don't sense that you have the same feeling that they did. It makes me wonder-- do you like politicians, do you like politics?

THE PRESIDENT: You know--

SCHIEFFER: Do you like this job?

THE PRESIDENT: Let me tell you, Bob, I love this job. And here is I think a fair statement. If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you-- you had to have liked politics in order to get into this office. And I-- I wasn't born into politics and wasn't encouraged to go into politics. I got into politics because I believed I could make a difference and I would not have been successful and would not be sitting at this desk every day if I didn't love politics. You know the-- the-- the fact is that we wouldn't have gotten health care passed if there wasn't a whole bunch of arm-twisting. We would not have been able to make progress on the deficit if I hadn't been willing to cut some deals with Republicans. I think every President that you've mentioned would also say that while they were in office, people weren't always as complimentary of them as--

SCHIEFFER: But is it what you thought it would be?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, here-- here is one thing that I will say that campaigning and governance are two different things. I've ran two successful campaigns. And anybody who has seen me on the campaign trail can tell how much I love just being with the American people. And hearing what they care about and what-- you know how passionate I am about trying to help them. When you start governing, there is a tendency sometimes for me to start thinking. As long as I get the policy right then that's what should matter. And, you know, people have asked, you know, what you need to do differently going forward and I think you do that, you got to check after every election.

SCHIEFFER: What do you need to do differently?

THE PRESIDENT: And I think that one thing that I do need to constantly remind myself and my team are is it's not enough just to build the better mousetrap. People don't automatically come beating to your door. We've got to sell it, we've got to reach out to the other side and where possible persuade. And I think there are times, there's no doubt about it where, you know, I think we have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we are trying to do and why this is the right direction. So there-- there is a failure of politics there that we have got-- we got to improve on.

SCHIEFFER: What criticisms of your administration do you think are valid?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I just mentioned one. I think that what is also true is that, you know, no matter how frustrating it can sometimes be for any President to deal with an opposition that has, yeah, pretty stubborn, and where there are really strong differences, you just got to keep on trying.

SCHIEFFER: Let's talk about immigration. You have said you are going to change immigration policy with an executive order by the end of the year, Republicans said don't do it. Mitch McConnell it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. John Boehner, when you play with matches you take the risk of burning yourself. Why not give them a chance to see what they can do on that and then take the executive order?

THE PRESIDENT: Number one, everybody agrees the immigration system is broken. And we've been talking about it for years now in terms of fixing it. We need to be able to secure our border. We need to make legal immigration system that is more efficient. And we need to make sure that the millions of people, who are here, many have been here for a decade or more, and have American kids, and for all practical purposes are part of our community, that they pay a fine, they pay any penalties, they learn English, they get to the back of the line but they have a capacity to legalize themselves here because we're not-- we don't have the capacity to deport eleven million people. Everybody agrees on that. I presided over a process in which the Senate produced a bipartisan bill. I then said to John Boehner, John, let's get this passed through the House. For a year I stood back and let him work on this. He decided not to call the Senate bill and he couldn't produce his own bill. And I told him at the time, John, if you don't do it, I've got legal authority to make improvements on the system. I prefer and still prefer to see it done through Congress, but every day that I wait we're misallocating resources. We're deporting people that shouldn't be deported. We're not deporting folks that are dangerous and need to be deported. So, John, I'm going to give you some time, but if you can't get it done before the end of the year, I'm going to have to take the steps that I can to improve the system.

SCHIEFFER: So are you saying here today, their time has run out?

THE PRESIDENT: What I am saying to them actually their time hasn't run out. I am going to do what I can do through executive action. It's not going to be everything that needs to get done. And it will take time to put that in place. And in the interim, the minute they pass a bill that addresses the problems with immigration reform, I will sign it and it supersedes whatever actions I take. And I'm encouraging them to do so. On parallel track, we're going to be implementing an executive action. But if, in fact, a bill gets passed, nobody is going to be happier than me to sign it because that means it will be permanent rather than temporary. So they have the ability, the authority, the control to supersede anything I do through my executive authority by simply carrying out their functions over there. And if, in fact, it's true that they want to pass a bill, they've got good ideas, nobody is stopping them. And the minute they do it and the minute I sign that bill, then what I've done goes away.

SCHIEFFER: You sent a secret letter to Iran's supreme commander or a supreme leader last month about our two countries' shared interest in fighting ISIS. I guess I'd ask you the first question, has he answered?

THE PRESIDENT: I tend not to comment on any communications that I have with various leaders. I'm-- I've got a whole bunch of channels where we're communicating to various leaders around the world. Let me speak more broadly about the policies vis-à-vis Iran. We have two big interests in Iran that are short term and then we got a long-term interest. Our number one priority with respect to Iran is making sure they don't get nuclear weapon. And because of the unprecedented sanctions that this administration put forward and mobilized the world to abide by, they got squeezed, their economy tanked, and they came to the table in a serious way for the first time in a very, very long time. We've now had significant negotiations. They have abided by freezing their program and, in fact, reducing their stockpile of nuclear-grade material or-- or weapons-grade nuclear material. And the question now is are we going to be able to close this final gap so that they can reenter the international community, sanctions can be slowly reduced, and we have verifiable, lock-tight assurances that they can't develop a nuclear weapon. There's still a big gap. We may-- may not be able to get there. The second thing that we have an interest in is that Iran has influence over Shia, both in Syria and in Iraq, and we do have a shared enemy in ISIL. But I've been very clear publicly and privately we are not connecting in any way the nuclear negotiations from the issue of ISIL. We're not coordinating with Iran on ISIL. There's some de-conflicting in the sense that since they have some troops or militias they control in and around Baghdad, we let them know, don't mess with us, we're not here to mess with you, we're focused on common our enemy but there's no coordination or common battle plan and there will not be because, and this brings me to the third issue, we still have big differences with Iran's behavior vis-à-vis our allies. Then, you know, poking and prodding at-- and-- and creating unrest and sponsoring terrorism in the region, around the world, their anti-Israeli rhetoric and behavior so that's a whole another set of issues which prevents us from ever being true allies but--

SCHIEFFER: Is it still our policy that we want President Assad of Syria to go?

THE PRESIDENT: It is still our policy and it's an almost absolute certainty that he has lost legitimacy with such a large portion of the country by dropping barrel bombs and killing children and destroying villages that were defenseless that he can't regain the kind of legitimacy that would stitch that country back together again. Now, obviously, our priority is to go after ISIL and so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime, we are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven in service of our strategy in Iraq. We do want to see a political settlement inside of Syria. That's a long-term proposition. We can't solve that militarily nor are we trying to.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this, you had a tough summer. We saw the rise of ISIS, the outbreak of Ebola, trouble in the Ukraine, illegal immigrants coming across the border. Did you ever go back to the residence at night and say, are we ever going to get a break here?

THE PRESIDENT: We have had a busy six years. This summer it seemed to compress even more. But, yeah, think about when I came into office. It was worse. Because the economy not just here in the United States but globally was in a free fall. I have great confidence in the American people and I have great confidence in this administration being able to work through and, eventually, solve problems. Sometimes we don't do it at the speed that keeps up with, you know, the-- the press cycle. So we've handled Ebola well. But, you know-- and then folks aren't talking about it as much now but there was a period of time where people are anxious. You'll recall just a year in office when there was a big hole in the middle of the Gulf spewing out oil. And we went through a month that was real tough. Nobody talks about it now because we actually had a really effective response against the worst environmental disaster in American history. But when you solve the problem sometimes the cameras have gone away. When the problem comes up it's tough. But-- but I tell you what keeps me going every day is to see how resilient the American people are. How hard they work. That-- nothing I go through compares to a guy who's lost his job or lost his home or lost his retirement savings or is trying to figure out how to send his kid to college. What I keep on telling my team here is, don't worry about the fact that we're overworked or we're, you know, getting picked on, yeah, that's all irrelevant. What is relevant is we have the chance to help that person every single day, and we do. And sometimes you're going to get fanfare for it and sometimes you're not. But I still consider this the best job on earth and I'm going to try to squeeze every last ounce of-- of possibility and-- and the ability to do good out of this job in these next two years.

SCHIEFFER: Six years into an administration is the time that Presidents seem to make changes, some of them trying to really shake things up, they bring in new people, they launch new programs. Do I get the sense that you're not planning something like that?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think there are always going to be changes. I mean if you look at after each election--

SCHIEFFER: That I don't see that you-- from what I've heard from you so far, you don't plan to do much different than what-- what you've done so far.

THE PRESIDENT: You know, Bob, I think that what you'll see is a constant effort to improve the way we deliver service to customers, experimenting with ways that I can reach out to Republicans more effectively, making sure that we're reaching out and using the private sector more effectively. One of the things we're learning is that there's a real power to being able to convene here in the White House, not every problem has to be solved just through a bill, just through legislation. We will be bringing in new folks here because people get tired. You know, it's a-- it's a hard job. And what I've told everybody is, you know, I want you to have as much enthusiasm and energy on the last day of this administration as you do right now or as you did when you first started, otherwise you shouldn't be here.

SCHIEFFER: You came here talking about hope and change, do you still hope, is change, was it harder than you thought it would be?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, I-- I always thought change was going to be hard. But I will tell you, Bob, when I look back over the last six years I am really proud of the fact that people have jobs who didn't have them before. People have health insurance who didn't have before. Young people are going to college who couldn't afford it before. So we've made big changes, but what makes me hopeful is the American people. And change is inevitable because we got the best cards, we got the best workers. We got the-- we got the-- this incredible system that attracts talent from around the world. We continue to be a beacon for freedom and-- and democracy. We've got an extraordinary military. We've got an economy that is growing faster than anybody else's. We've got these incredible natural resources and we are the most innovative than anybody on Earth. So there's no reason for us not to succeed. And change will happen. But America is always at the forefront of change. That's-- that's our trademark. Even after, over two hundred years we're still a young country and-- and we don't fear the future, we grab it.

SCHIEFFER: Thank you, Mister President.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much, Bob. I enjoyed it.