From the Introduction

The Motorcade pulled up to the side of the gleaming new FBI building on Chicago's west side at midmorning on the first Tuesday in September, just as the 2008 presidential campaign was shifting into its final, most brutal phase. There was a brief pause as Secret Service agents made one last check of the surroundings and radioed back to their headquarters that the man they had codenamed "Renegade" had arrived. Barack Obama emerged silently, a few foreign policy advisers in tow, and quickly took a waiting elevator to the tenth floor. The candidate strode past the long corridor lined with identically framed portraits of the special agents-in-charge who have run the FBI's operations there since the era when bank robbers such as John Dillinger were still considered Public Enemy Number 1. Obama and his team were headed for the FBI's secure conference room—a "bubble" that deflects any electronic intercepts—for one of the quietest rituals of the quadrennial presidential campaign season: a ninety-minute, classified briefing about the world that the winner of the 2008 presidential election would confront.

Waiting for him in the windowless room was a man who, unlike Obama, had been able to walk into the FBI building almost completely unnoticed. At sixty-five, J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, was pale, a bit stooped because of a bad back, and wearing wire-rim glasses that made him look like a well-heeled consultant—the job he had held until President Bush convinced him to return to government at the lowest point of Bush's presidency, as Iraq was dissolving into chaos in the fall of 2006.

The two men who shook hands in the bubble could not have come from more different worlds. When Obama was a six-year-old living in Jakarta, McConnell was patrolling the Mekong Delta on a small Navy boat, seeking out the Vietcong. In 1991, the same year Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, McConnell w ... continue reading >

During his seven years covering the White House for the New York Times, Chief Washington Correspondent David E. Sanger has had extraordinary access to U.S. presidents and world leaders. On Thursday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter gathered with friends and family at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington D.C. to introduce his new book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.

Highlights from the spirited discussion follow. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, Huffington Post writer Diane Tucker, and several others asked the questions. The evening was sponsored by the Center for a New American Security.

In retrospect, did President Bush do the right thing in reacting to 9/11 by declaring a universal war on terrorism?

David E. Sanger: He did the right thing by going back to Afghanistan. However, when George W. Bush declared a universal war on terrorism, his administration began to blunder. They wanted the country to feel at war, but they had a very difficult time identifying the enemy. And then by defining the enemy too broadly, they created the problem of setting people against us who might not have been against us ordinarily. In fact, there were opportunities throughout the Bush administration to divide America's enemies. Those opportunities were missed. ... (Read the full interview)

Tavis: David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. During his years at the Times he's been part of two teams that have won the Pulitzer Prize. His critically acclaimed new book is called The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. He joins us tonight from New York. David Sanger, nice to have you on the program.

David Sanger: Thanks for having me, Tavis.

Tavis: Let me start with the obvious question: For Mr. Obama, what is the inheritance, exactly?

Sanger: Well, the question, Tavis, is where do you start? Obviously he is walking into the biggest financial crisis of any president since Franklin Roosevelt did in 1993. You heard echoes of the Roosevelt '33 inaugural in the inaugural address that we heard this week from President Obama.

But then beyond that, beyond having to right the economy and rebuild American power in part by rebuilding our economic power. He has this huge set of challenges and then also a set of programs, including some covert programs that President Bush has left. And just about any place you look around the globe you discover the price of distraction as the top leadership of the United States was focused so intently on Iraq, a war, you remember, they thought would only last six months, maybe a year. ... (Read the full interview)