BLITZER: President Obama speaking candidly about his last two years, nearly two years in the White House. He is acknowledging there have been lessons learned and mistakes made. An interview with the "New York Times" magazine comes as the White House is struggling right now to assure Wall Street executives that the president is not against big business. Let's talk about all of this and more with our senior political analyst David Gergen. He joining us from his office at Harvard University in Cambridge.
David, thanks very much. Let me read to you from the article Peter Baker writes in this coming Sunday's "New York Times" magazine. "Obama told me he had no regrets about the broad direction of his presidency but he did identify what he called tactical lessons. He let himself look too much like the same old tax and spend liberal Democrat. He realized too late that there's no such thing as shovel- ready projects when it comes to public works." He is trying to deal with big business at the same time but I take it he is having some serious problems reassuring them that he is on their side.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: He is having very big problems with that, Wolf. I have had the opportunity the last few weeks to meet with a number of CEOs, a number of business groups, many fields, Wall Street yesterday and others and I can tell you that the kind of disappointment that people felt early on has turned to alienation and it has hardened, the attitudes of business have hardened. I think I have had four or five major CEOs in a row speaking almost in identical language about how alienate they had feel. They think he hates them. They think he doesn't understand their world. That he and some of the other people around him think the world works one way and they, in Wall Street and elsewhere, think it works another way and they can't persuade them. It is not a question of disagreeing over tactics, they disagree over broad directions.
BLITZER: They say the White House, accord to this article by Peter Baker, they're trying to do Obama 2.0 now. How does he restore that relationship with big business?
GERGEN: Well, one hopeful sign is, Wolf, several sources have told me that the president has had at least two and maybe more individual high-level from the business community come in and meet with him one-on-one, nobody else around, for searching conversations. They have been very quiet, secretive meetings and I'm told in there, he is asking, where do you think I have gone right? Where do you think I have gone wrong? Help me think this through. What should we do? That is a hopeful sign that is a president who is trying to you know, sort of figure out how do I get this better in the next two years? But I must tell you there is a feeling among some major CEOs that he is a little lost, that he came in and was -- he was inexperienced, he wasn't quite sure how the world worked, he tried some things that he thought as many young people do you can do everything, you know, you can do anything you want and he tried, had had this hugely ambitious agenda. He got himself off course, now he has got an economy in a mess and he's not quite sure what to do next.
BLITZER: We'll see what happens together with you David. Thanks very much, David joining us from Harvard.
GERGEN: Thank you.
BLITZER: Foreclosures are rising to record levels right now, and there's growing fear that a second mortgage debacle may be in the works.
Transcript from CNN's The Situation Room Aired October 14, 2010