For example, do you think either of them will end the program of assassinations by drone? Do you think either of them will pardon Snowden or end the NSA's surveillance of US citizens? How about destroy the records they already have? Do you think either of them will draw down troops in the ME (honestly, Trump might, but who knows)? Do you think either of them will kill the TPP (again, maybe Trump will, but who knows)? Do you think either of them will try do anything about wealth inequality (if you're tempted to say "Hillary will try" remind yourself what her husband did to accelerate the polarization of wealth in the first place)?

Perhaps the toughest question came last, from a third-year law student who accused the administration of conducting drone strikes that kill some innocent people without proper legal oversight.

Mr. Obama took 10 minutes to answer what he called a “fair” question. He said drone strikes in the first two years of his administration had been carried out with an insufficient “overarching structure.” But he said his administration had since put in place more oversight and a more rigorous decision-making process.

“Part of my job as president is to figure out how I can keep America safe doing the least damage possible in really tough, bad situations,” he said. “And I don’t have the luxury of just not doing anything and then being able to stand back and feel as if my conscience is clear.”

He said he wished he “could just send in Ironman,” and then quickly added that he did not mean that as a joke. He said that he hoped “that the tragedy of war, conflict, terrorism, etc., did not end up” leading the United States to use force in ways that hurt innocent people.

But he said that Hollywood and the popular media had unfairly described drone operators as people who were “irresponsible or bloodless and are going around blowing up children — that’s just not the case.”

[...]

And so slowly we are pushing it in that direction. My hope is, is that by the time I leave office there is not only an internal structure in place that governs these standards that we’ve set, but there is also an institutionalized process whereby the actions that the U.S. government takes through drone technology are consistently reported on, on an annualized basis so that people can look.

And the reason this is really important to me -- and this was implied in your question -- is there is a lot of misinformation about this. There is no doubt -- and I said this in an interview I think recently -- there is no doubt that some innocent people have been killed by drone strikes. It is not true that it has been this sort of willy-nilly, let’s bomb a village. That is not how folks have operated. And what I can say with great certainty is that the rate of civilian casualties in any drone operation are far lower than the rate of civilian casualties that occur in conventional war.

So the irony -- let’s take an example like the bin Laden raid. This was as precise, as effective an operation that I don't think anybody would dispute was in the national security interests of the United States. And we put our best people in there who operate as precisely and as effectively as any group of individuals probably ever have in the history of the planet. And they executed their mission flawlessly. But there were a number of people who were killed in that who you might describe as not the targets of the mission -- members of bin Laden’s family, for example. Now, that would be counted as a civilian casualty under the standards from which you drew your information. And if you calculated it as a percent, there was actually a pretty high civilian casualty rate for this extraordinarily precise mission.

Now, imagine during the height of the Iraq war, or when we were still actively fighting in Afghanistan, the number of civilians who were killed in normal military operations. We talk about the number of U.S. troops that were killed in Iraq. The number of Iraqis that were killed -- primarily by AQI and those we were fighting, but also by U.S. military that was trying to be as careful as possible in chaotic situations, like Fallujah or Ramadi -- were in the tens of thousands.

So part of my job as President is to figure out how I can keep America safe doing the least damage possible in really tough, bad situations. And I don't have the luxury of just not doing anything and then being able to stand back and feel as if my conscience is completely clear. I have to make decisions because there are folks out there who are genuinely trying to kill us and would be happy to blow up this entire room without any compunction, and are actively trying to find ways to do it.

And I wish I could just send in Iron Man -- (laughter) -- no, no, I don't mean that as a joke. I just mean I wish that the tragedy of war, conflict, terrorism, et cetera, did not end up creating circumstances where we, wielding kinetic power, don't end up hurting anybody who shouldn’t have been hurt.

But what I try to do is to set up the system as best as I can. And I think it is very important for those who are critics of the U.S. government -- and this includes folks on the outside -- to examine the incredible progress that we've made over the course of a couple of decades. Because this conversation didn't even exist, it did not even cross the minds of people in the White House as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. I mean, it wasn’t even a factor. And we anguish over this in a very serious way.

But what I do think is a legitimate concern is, is that the transparency issues. I think that the way that this got built up through our intelligence and what’s called our Title 50 programs meant that it did not -- it wasn’t subject to the same amount of democratic debate as when we are conducting what are called Title 10 Department of Defense conventional operations. And that's done a disservice not only to the public being able to examine where we made mistakes and create corrective action, it’s actually also done a disservice to the incredibly dedicated men and women in intelligence and in operations who perform these operations who are subject to accusations that somehow they're irresponsible and bloodless and going around blowing up children, which is not the case.

And our popular media I think has been able to just project a whole bunch of scenarios that are generally not accurate.

I guess I should stop there. (Laughter.) But thank you for the question. It was a legitimate one.