PG: I bet it's had a big effect on how you both raised your daughters.
BO: There was a powerful sense that I wanted to get this right. Not that I was going to be perfect, but that I was going to be there, and engage, and try to figure this out. Now I had the benefit of a great relationship with my mom, and she taught me the essential elements of parenting: unconditional love and explaining your values to your kids, having high expectations. And Michelle comes from a very close family.
BC: As did my wife.
BO: I always think part of the attraction for me, other than her great legs and being smart as a whi p, was the stability she had with her tight-knit family. Being grounded and in one place for her entire childhood. And I think part of the attraction for her was that I was this exotic guy, who had done a whole bunch of stuff.
BC: My wife, Robin, was from a stable family, too. There was something so attractive about that. I thought, "This is what I want." It's still choppy waters raising kids, but I could never conceive of not being there.
PG: There's a beautiful moment in your L.B.J. movie, where you come out of the Oval Office and bump into your daughter. You have this wistful look in your eyes, like, "Have I sacrificed my relationship with this girl to this office?"
BC: I pitched that scene. It wasn't in the play. I wanted you to feel the father's love and his sense of regret that even though he's so busy with the world's problems ——
Photo The president and the actor talked about the tonic of solid family lives after turbulent youths, among other issues. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
BO: He's still longing to connect.
PG: Both of you must feel that, with your grinding schedules.
BO: How old is your daughter?
BC: She's 23.
BO: So, you're a little ahead of me. Malia, my oldest, is about to leave for college. [The White House announced this week that Malia Obama was accepted at Harvard and that she intends to start in the fall of 2017, after taking a gap year.] So this stirs up all kinds of strong feel ings. But ironically, being in the White House gave me more time with the girls because ——
BC: The commute was so short.
BO: I live above the store. We've been able to schedule, pretty religiously, dinner at 6:30 every night for the last eight years. If I had a trip, I might be gone for a few days. But as busy as I was, I was able to go upstairs, have dinner. They don't want you for more than an hour once they hit teenage. Then I can always come back down here and work. It was a great and unexpected prize of this office. But you do think about it as your daughter is about to leave: What did I miss? The one thing I never lost, in a way that somebody like L.B.J. might have — who was hungry for the office in a way that I wasn't — is my confidence that, with my last breath, what I will remember w ill be some moment with my girls, not signing the health care law or giving a speech at the U.N.
PG: I've probably watched too many YouTube videos of you lately, but as amazing as you've been in your pop culture moments — that tear for Aretha, singing "Let's Stay Together" — I think you're the first president in my life who is fully a man of his times. You've been the parents at Newtown, the boy who might have been Trayvon. You've been the Dreamers and their anxious parents. Has it been hard for you personally to represent such grief and hope?
BO: One thing you have to keep in mind is that I'm probably the most recorded, filmed and photographed person in history up to now. Because I'm the first president who came along in the digital age. Every leader is a funnel f or the culture he lives in. And despite the exotic name and weird background, I grew up as an ordinary middle-class kid. The cultural touch points that shaped you are the same ones that shaped me. And the fact that that was true until I was 45 probably differentiates me from most presidents. For somebody like L.B.J., who fastened onto a political career early, it probably changed the way he experienced culture and presented himself. It never felt like a burden to me. What's felt like a burden is seeing how politics has changed in ways that make it harder for Washington to work. There are a set of traditions, a constitutional design that allows someone like L.B.J. or F.D.R. to govern. And when those norms break down, the machinery grinds to a halt. That's when you feel burdened. When you say, "Here's what we need to do." I've made my argument; the majority of the population agrees with me. Yet we're confronted with endless filibusters and polarization that forbids us from getting stuff done.
PG: I don't want to idealize the L.B.J. moment. There was a lot less equality for people of color and women. As a gay man, I don't want to rocket back to 1964. But there was a common conversation on national issues back then. And it feels like we can't have that anymore. We have Republican facts and Democratic facts, the relentless messaging of false facts. Any optimism here?
BC: I do. There's no denying the polemic nature of politics has pushed everyone to the fringes. And the reaction to your administration has been an arms folded, "We're not budging." Instead of the horse-trading of L.B.J.'s time, giving this senator or that congressman what they needed to get where we need to go, we've turned to an athletic kind of partisanship. If you're on the other side of the fence, I can't support you even if you have a good idea. And the vitriol on the talking-head shows ——
PG: This doesn't sound very optimistic.
BC: But it can be. Start right away. Do it with your friend. Disagree without being disagreeable. Don't diminish him or her. Just work to find a common ground that we can build on.
BO: I just spoke to a group of young interns who rotate out every six months. They're incredibly idealistic and motivated.
Photo From left, Philip Galanes, Mr. Obama and Mr. Cranston look at a seascape painted by Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
BC: And you crushed their spirit?
BO: I told them, if you had to choose a moment in human history to live — even if you didn't know what gender or race, what nationality or sexual orientation you'd be — you'd choose now. There's power in nostalgia, but the fact is the world is wealthier, healthier, better educated, less violent, more tolerant, more socially conscious and more attentive to the vulnerable than it has ever been. Now, there's also enormous cruelty and tragedy and stupidity and pain. But we tend to forget what the world was like. I'm old enough to remember the '70s, when we were still getting out of Vietnam, and we had lost tens of thousands of young soldiers. And when they came back home, they were completely abandoned. We left an entire swath of Southeast Asia in ch aos. In Cambodia, two million people were slaughtered — about four times the number of people who have been killed in Syria during this conflict. But we don't remember that.
BC: Were the kids surprised by your talk?
BO: I say this because I'm trying to inoculate them against cynicism, which is a powerful force in our culture. It's what passes for wisdom, being ironic and cynical. Now, it's true that the political landscape has changed in ways that are really unhealthy. But there are fewer lubricants to get things done. L.B.J. did great things, but he also relied on bagmen and giving them favors for which I would be in jail or impeached. People are surprised when I say that Congress is less corrupt now than it's ever been.
But my optimism springs from the fact that ordinary people are less narrow-minded, more open to difference, more thoughtful than they were during L.B.J.'s time. The question for me is how do I grab hold of that goodness that's out there and drag it into the political process? I think it requires some new institutional structure for more citizen participation than we've had in the past.
PG: Maybe tapping into the incredible power of pop culture?
BO: It's a mixed bag. Michelle understood this earlier, because she had fewer resources. You have to leverage different platforms because a fireside chat just gets lost in the noise today. People aren't part of one conversation; they're part of a million.
PG: So, you go on Jimmy Kimmel?
BO: You're drawing on where the culture is to get the message out. When I want to sign young people up for health care, I've got to do "Between Two Ferns," which ended up being our biggest draw. Now, the flip side of this is the Trump phenomenon, where celebrity itself becomes a credential. If you are famous, then you have merit.
BC: And your opinion matters.
BO: I'm sure you've experienced this: The fact that you've now played a president almost qualifies you to be president.
BC: Wait a minute!
BO: It's too late for this cycle.
BC: It could be a brokered convention. You never know.
PG: Last subject: Bryan's movie made me rethink legacy. It's not just the achievement; it's the flavor of it, too. L.B.J.'s legacy is not just civil rights and Vietnam, but also his hunger to be loved and win. President Bush's legacy is not only 9/11 and the Iraq War, but also his susceptibility to advisers. What's the flavor of your legacy?
BO: Oh, it's very hard for me to engage that.
BC: I can.
PG: You think it would be braggy?
BO: No, it's that there's me, and then there's this character named "Barack Obama" who is slightly different on Fox News than he is on MSNBC. I wouldn't vote for the Barack Obama on Fox News probably.
BC: He's terrible.
BO: What a loser! No, it's hard to see yourself in that way. The one area that I do feel confident about is the notion of an inclusive nation, that everybody is part of this story. That's a running theme I've been faithful to throughout my presidency. I've given a lot of speeches. One of my favorites is one I gave in S elma, and there's a riff when I talk about what America is. I'm talking about Jackie Robinson and a ranch hand, about an immigrant on the Lower East Side and a bunch of G.I.s landing on the shores of Normandy. I love it because it captures the essential miracle of this country: all these pieces from every corner of the globe. It works in fits and starts. It's messy, and it's ugly. There's sadness and tragedy. Yet something distinctive and full of energy emerges from it. And it captures the imaginations of people all around the world.
PG: And that ties in with your work, Bryan.
BC: I don't know about that.
PG: Of course it does. It's the very inclusiveness that the president talked about, the range of hu manity you show in your work.
BC: I'm just interested in telling good stories. And in essence, this is a good story. It's why we talk about legacy. In sports, when someone retires, they don't automatically elect them to the Hall of Fame. There's a buffer period, a five-year period when everything has to settle down. After five years of being out of the limelight, do we still think of that person?
BO: Let me pick up on that. I was having a conversation with a couple of actors who were insisting that what they do is different from what I do. No doubt, it's different. But never underrate the power of stories. Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act done because of the stories he told and the ones [Martin Luther] King told. When L.B.J. says, "We shall overcome" in the chamber of the House of Re presentatives, he is telling the nation who we are. Culture is vital in shaping our politics. Part of what I've always been interested in as president, and what I will continue to be interested in as an ex-president, is telling better stories about how we can work together.
BC: Well, I think your story is going to have a very happy ending.
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