And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN audio,

The Axxwiles.

With your host, David Axelrod. CNN Audio, The Axe Wiles.

With your host, David Axelrod.

I had a really fun chat last weekend

with George Stephanopoulos at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

We spoke about life in the White House and his excellent new book

The Situation Room which is chalk filled with great new stories about presidents

in times of challenge and crisis. I enjoy the conversation I hope you will too and here it is.

You got a lot of fans. It's a big room. Yeah, it's Chicago. Thank you. Those are my two.

Welcome to Chicago. Great to be back. The Convention City, God help us. George, we've known each other for a long time. I remember, I actually remember the first time I saw you you were a kid.

The Navy Pier.

With thick glasses and thick hair, which you still have, which I deeply resent.

But the thing that I remember is you were carrying a raft of papers and trailing behind Bill Clinton. and I know that in those papers were policy stuff and you have

always been like someone who understood the intersection between

policy and politics and thought politics had meaning.

And so this book kind of reflects who you are.

It's very kind, but before you go on with that, I should say that I actually owe it to David Axelrod that I'm here today because what he didn't just say there is that this was the very beginning of the Clinton campaign is that when I just started getting into the ground floor of the campaign. Probably a couple weeks later, you were offered a big job in the campaign.

And had you taken it, I would not have had the chance to grow

into the job I had.

So thank you very much. It was all my plan George. No one could do the things that you've done as well as you've done them. I really believe that, but I want, this is really, if you love history, this is a great book. And if you've ever worked in the White House, it's an even

better book, the situation room, it's not about Wolf Blitzer, it's actually about the

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