Look out for 'liberated' Obama 2.0, GOP?

'Liberated' Obama 2.0 not interested in bipartisanship?

Pat Buchanan breaks down president's inaugural address, anlyzes whether Washington will be more divided than ever in his 2nd term

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," January 21, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: On this inaugural day, while Americans at home hope that maybe this day, Washington can learn to work together, a prominent member of the news media trying to do the exact opposite, trying to create as big a wedge between the parties as he possibly can, CBS News political director John Dickerson calling for President Obama to pulverize, destroy and go for the throat of the GOP.

Now, as of this hour, we have seen no response from CBS News management. Former senior adviser to President Reagan Pat Buchanan joins us. Pat, an interesting observation from a member of the news media.

PAT BUCHANAN, FORMER REAGAN ADVISER: Spiro Agnew, thou shouldst be living at this hour, huh?

(LAUGHTER)

VAN SUSTEREN: He was not a big fan of the media.

BUCHANAN: No! No, but what he said was there's an inherent bias deep in some of these networks. And it's quite obviously true of Mr. Dickerson, who I think really went off the deep end here. My guess is the big heads at CBS are now talking about what to do about Mr. Dickerson.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, actually, you know, I sort of appreciate when sometimes, when things like this happen, because it sort of peels back this -- you know, the scab, so to speak, so that people are at least honest about this stuff.

BUCHANAN: They see things as they are and not as they are shown to be. That's exactly right. You've got an honest, candid view of this fellow, what he thinks of the Republican Party, what the president ought to do to it.

VAN SUSTEREN: Moving on -- the president's inauguration speech today -- your thought.

BUCHANAN: The president's a fine speaker, and I was really looking for something uplifting. I've read speeches. I've worked on inaugural speeches. I remember both of Lincoln's and Kennedy's and FDR's...

VAN SUSTEREN: I take it you don't remember Lincoln's from personal experience.

BUCHANAN: No, I -- the first -- second inaugural's one of the greatest -- it's far better than the Gettysburg address, in my view.

But let me say this. The president -- it was not uplifting. It was not really poetry. It was prose, and part of it was pedestrian and I think part of it was deeply partisan. And I think he missed a golden opportunity. The whole country's watching him. He should have uplifted the whole country.

But I mean, this was a cross between a State of the Union speech with an agenda, you know, and a partisan rally given to the DNC. And so I think the president lost a real opportunity.

Look, they usually talk about what? When I was a kid, Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. What was he talking about? Stonewall! That's a barroom brawl in Greenwich Village in 1969, when the cops are hassling gays in their bar and the gays fought back and threw them all out! Does that belong in a presidential inaugural?

VAN SUSTEREN: You know, I actually thought that -- I mean, one thing is he -- I mean, he has been -- I mean, he speaks beautifully, inspiring people.

BUCHANAN: Right.

VAN SUSTEREN: I thought he wasn't interested in his own speech. I didn't think he sold it. I thought he just read it to us. I was actually quite surprised because the one -- whether you agree with him politically or not, he can -- he can just sort of -- he can -- he can dazzle everybody when he speaks. But I thought he was disinterested in his own speech.

BUCHANAN: I think sometimes, the president -- sometimes, the president tries and does take you sort of up the mountaintop. But I think, again -- we were talking about Dickerson, you know, speaking his mind.

What came out of this speech by the president is a deeply partisan man who has decided, Look, I've tried to work with these characters. I can't do it. Now we're going to the mattresses on one issue after another -- global warming, gun control, you name it, and I'm going to do battle with them. And if I lose, at least history will say I fought these battles. And history is on my side and the issues we've got are going to win one day. So that's exactly what I'm going to do.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you think he thought it was partisan, or do you think he thought that he was, like, being sort of the big -- the -- representing everybody?

BUCHANAN: Look, he had to know it was partisan, the issues he was picking out. And the one thing that was really interesting, and very few people have noted it, he said, you know, the era of wars is over, not only that, that people who stop wars are, you know, as important as people who fight and win them, and we want a deep engagement and we -- this is -- I think that was a signal to the Iranians that, Listen, if you come halfway with me, we can cut a deal.

I mean, that's the foreign policy stuff. I found that -- I mean, there's a lot of people -- Benjamin Netanyahu's going to win that election tomorrow. I'll bet they're looking very hard at that tonight.

VAN SUSTEREN: You know, the thing that I picked on is and always the thing I pick out is -- and (INAUDIBLE) sort of sampled, Detroit, is that he said -- he talked about -- about helping the streets of Detroit, and economically.

And I thought to myself, Well, you know, poverty in this country has grown over the last, you know, decade, including -- including in his -- his administration -- is that the people of this country, the poor people, still are left behind, and we sort of always pay sort of political lip service to them and say how much we want to help them. But how much have we -- as the impoverished class grows, how can we -- you know, we haven't helped them. We haven't -- we haven't given them opportunity to help themselves.

BUCHANAN: You know, I was talking to Dennis Kucinich in the Green Room here. What happened to Detroit? It was the forge and furnace of World War II, two million people there. It was freedom's forge in Arthur Herman's new book. My wife grew up there. Now it's down to about 750,000, 800,000 people. They're thinking of tearing down buildings, turning it into parks.

Take a look at what Hiroshima was in 1945 and Detroit was in '45. Now what they are today -- Hiroshima is a gleaming city and Detroit is a disaster area. We have exported our industrial base in this country, for which both parties are responsible.

And there's no talking about why this happened, how it happened. How did the middle class suddenly go down in America? Everybody says we've got to get the middle class back. What happened to the middle class? We exported all their jobs. We exported the places they work.

VAN SUSTEREN: Pat, as always, thank you, sir.

BUCHANAN: Thank you.