mark: i'm mark halperin. john: and i am john heilemann. with all due respect, t.g.i.f. john: happy national pizza party day, sports fans. in our lineup tonight, a dinner and a show. first the dinner. tomorrow in des moines, 11 republican presidential candidates are -- or would-be candidates are attending the iowa lincoln day dinner. catch it all live and i promise it's going to be hilarious. mark, who you got?

mark: my main focus is on walker, bush, and rick perry. right now if you look at the early states, the only state not counting lindsey graham in south carolina, the favorite son, the only state with somebody right now who is a clear favorite and could change the contours of the fight by winning is walker in iowa. john: since you have taken all the people in the hard disagreement zone, those people are interesting the jeb bush had a horrible week. all eyes are going to be on him so that's important. scott walker is all the things you just said, and also someone who has been off the radar screen. obviously someone really interesting to look at. i continue to be fascinated by marco rubio, but he's not going to be there. those are the ones to watch. mark: i think rick perry though

because he now is going to announce his candidacy in just a little few days, iowa is vital to him. he's got to do well there and i think he's coming in with a 10-minute attempt to remind activists in the state just how much he believes he's a good fit for the state. john: and one other thing, we're going to talk about bush an there are obviously questions about jeb bush's strategy in iowa, and he has, this is one of the interesting questions will be not just -- i don't think he's going to talk about iraq but this is an opportunity for him to actually turn the page and we'll be able to now note answer to the question we asked yesterday, do they think they will put a button on and look behind them? mark: well, a great speech in south carolina that i covered last weekend, he is on something

of a roll and an underrated factor in this race. see if he can do a great 10-minute speech. john: i don't know that he's underrated. mark: the correct answer is no one. it's been generations since the republicans haven't had a clear leader in iowa. the vacuum is making some people very, very nervous. john, can you think of a clear consensus front runner before the caucuses begin? john: i can't. there's at least six debates maybe seven. somebody comes out, hits the ball out of the park in debate after debate, backed with real fundraising and with poll strength and again there's a handful of people for whom that is plausible. marco rubio comes up, lights the world on fire, continues to rise in the polls, he could be the front runner.

jeb bush could be. that string of debates gives a lot of opportunities for someone to get on a roll. mark: theoretically you are right, but you can't be the front runner unless you go up in the polls and i don't think any one yet has a chance to get above 20% except maybe walker. and anyone who rises up is going to get scrutiny and get beat back down. it's -- they don't have a front runner and it's just freaking them out. john: totally agree. i realize as we discuss this why jeb bush hates hypotheticals so much.

they're hard to get to, if this happened, if that happened. jeb bush could be in the lead in the polls in iowa and new hampshire, or scott walker could be. mark: bush i don't think could be the front runner. his poll numbers aren't going to go up very much -- john: that's a big concession on your part. mark: even if they go up people are going to say, voters aren't going to vote for a bush. the other thing is he's going to have $100 million in the bank and he's a bush. everyone else perceived as a front runner has to deal with the fact that bush, when the voting starts, his campaign is going to be spending a lot of money. i can't think of a scenario that is plausible where rubio or someone else is the front runner. john: i think we are likely to not have a front runner until iowa. even back in 20123 where people

look back and say mitt romney was the front runner all along. that's sort of true but it wasn't until romney won iowa, which he only did for about three weeks, then all of a sudden mitt romney is the front runner. if you didn't have a front runner in 2012, you're not going to have one in 2015. mark: the other dynamic is you can't be a great front runner if you don't have a dominant hold on an early state. and with the possible exception of walker -- john: he won't have a dominant hold. everybody else will be within the margin of error. mark: never happened before. it makes talking about things hard. john: fascinating. two are two truths. tom brady is a dirty rotten cheat and the business community has never liked president obama. president obama: the top hedge

fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country. if we can't ask from society's lottery winners to just make that modest investment, then really this conversation is for show. john: lottery winners? those are the naughty words according to some people and according to this guy the chaser. he's the all-knowing number one money man, ken langone and the raging id of the conservative business class. he was on bloomberg tv early this morning. take a listen. >> all he's doing now with that demagoguery is saying -- the big problem i have with the

president is he's engaging in something that cannot be good for america. engaging in the rich versus the poor and that is wrong. that's destructive. john: mark? class warfare, class warfare class warfarer, that's what they always say about obama. the question i have for you is spinning that forward, whether all that ire, is that a problem for hillary clinton or an opportunity? mark: it's an opportunity for her if she takes it. her husband was genius at winning over business people. she would serve herself well if she found a way to distance herself from president obama and find some issue on which she could work with business people. president obama is widely distrusted by people in the business community. john: that's putting it mildly. monarch they don't think he understands how markets work. and her problem is while catering to democrats on most

issues how to similarly sound good to business. john: and it's more of a problem because she seems determined to cut off rope to take care of her left flank. she said in "the new york times" a couple weeks ago this comment about toppling the 1%. not sure she said that. or just something like it. but that caught the ear of a lot of people and they think she's an ideological doppelganger for president obama, it's going to be hard for her. mark: he realized if he didn't do it, the fundraising would dry up. she is in danger of a fundraising problem. john: i agree. but one of many things that are differ between her and her husband, he wasn't trying to

protect his left flank. his political problem was how do i capture the center and leave the left flank behind. he wanted to bash the left flank in ways. showing he was a different type of democrat. mark: congratulations to mrs. bush. she just joined both twitter and instagram. johnson, the bush-rubio rivalry is pretty hot. wither their spouses? john: anybody that hasn't read the story from the “tampa bay times,” mrs. rubio was paid at least $50,000 for her part-time job working with the owner of

the philadelphia eagles. it says she worked with him and got paid a lot and charities only gave out $250 that year. it doesn't go into much detail but it's a small advance. this is the first thing we've seen and it's directed at her and raised some questions. mark: there is going to be scrutiny of the rubios and their finances. there is more to come. i think mrs. bush getting on social media is huge. jeb bush needs her now more than ever for the narrative of his personal life. for her to be on social media, to have a public personality is a big deal. john: rubio's fortunes are high and so now his finances and to some extent now his spouse are in the cross-hairs so they are

going to have to get ready to defend. bush is having a really hard go right now, so his wife being used in a tactical way, not saying manipulated but she's going on offense and you are right, she's a great mystery and a potentially huge asset if she turns out to be a great asset. too early to tell but interesting she's out there. mark: taking a look at an email i just got regarding mrs. rubio and the story. taking issue with some of the facts. both these candidates as well as scott walker and some other people in the race really have spouses who are much p lower profile than we have seen some from recent candidates going to be interesting to see how they step up in coming weeks. john: coming up, the worst week

ever for jeb bush. we'll be right back. ♪

john: it's been a bad week for jeb bush. how bad? too early to create consensus, but here is but a sampling of the dump on bush chorus. >> jeb bush's terrible, horrible week, can he rebound? >> his first answer was his gut answer. he can't continue to vacillate. >> he took, you know, five attempts to clarify what his position was on an issue very important to the american people. >> it took so long to clean it up and get it to where he is now. that's staff not reacting quickly enough. >> does not have the raw political instincts that his brother had. >> there's been concern

expressed. >> i thought jeb bush was inevitably the nominee and the only one who could beat hillary clinton. this last week has made me rethink that. >> this is the one question he knew he would be asked in relation to his brothers. why on earth hadn't he got that sorted out? john: although his view is not a view unique to geraldo -- mark: that is a lot of voices saying pretty much the same thing, that this is a pretty big problem. john: what is the biggest lesson about bush and his candidacy this week? mark: there are a lot of lessons. we've gone back and forth and we both agree about a variety of different things.

something al hunt said yesterday on our air, i still don't think he's in the right place. i think he's in a place that has him, in terms of the electorate, the broad electorate, his view snow, professed view is i would not have invaded iraq if we didn't have evidence of w.m.d.'s, but i still think it was worth it and we had a right to go in and the world is better off. nobody doubts that the world is better off without saddam hussein in it, but he still seems to be just counting the costs of the war in terms of the country and the republican party. not in terms of damage around the world, screwed up lives, all the rest. mark: jeb bush said if i'm going to run, i'm going to run joyfully and show people my heart and be authentic. to me the biggest problem this week was he was not the least

bit joyful, not authentic, he was picking his words carefully. and if he can't be those things he's going to have a very tough time becoming president of the united states. john: and, look, there is the question of temper. we have both seen him be extraordinarily charming and good in a room. but yesterday, of all four of those days, when he was up giving that answer trying to clean it up, he looked testy aggrieved, put out to be having to answer the question that any presidential candidate had has to answer, especially this presidential candidate. mark: and i've seen and you have seen george bush, bill clinton and barack obama, all two-termers, be that way on the campaign trail. so it's not the death knell for the campaign.

anyone who has worked for jeb bush or covered him, they recognize that version of jeb bush. that version got elected governor of florida and could in the end look like the most presidential. he spoke to the r.n.c. meeting pretty late last night after we were off the air. he's making the argument, pick someone who can win in the general election, who is not partisan, not caught up in the party drama. if he can be more like that, i think that could carry him to the nomination. john: it could but in the end, i think at some point he's going to sit down for interviews, do a long profile as is the custom of every presidential candidate. going to sit down with a writer, george packer, or one of our friends, and he's going to have an interview and someone is going to dig in to what he really thinks.

on the basis of what we now know, if he is in a position to posture, on the basis of what he said yesterday and the questions he answered in the reporters' scrum, i think he's in a bad position. it's untenable to be in the position of defending the iraq war as a good thing. mark: i go back to the competence of the candidate, his skill. people are not saying man, he had a bad week. they're raising fundamentalal questions, is he up to it? that is surprising to me that he's got very little reservoir of people saying well, bad week, tough issue. they're saying this tells you fundamental things about jeb

bush's ability to win. he's lucky he's banked hundreds of millions of dollars already. john: this has been building for a while. what the republicans have been seeing is lots of money, not much support in iowa. you go around to the places and you don't find people who are deeply enthusiastic for him. no part of the party is clamoring for jeb bush other than the donor class. this has been building until a subterranean way and find of -- kind of lit a fire around this. mark: this weekend he's speaking at the iowa lincoln dinner. it will be fascinating to see if he is asked about iraq. up next, a "mad men" exclusive.

♪

>> describe a man to you with very specific qualities. he lives in wisconsin, michigan, ohio. some call it the heartland. some call it the beer belt. he has some college. makes a good living, but it doesn't feel like it because he works long hours. he has a lawn mower. wants a hammock. bump of power tools in the garage that he never uses. he loves sports because he used to play them and he loves dogs because they don't talk. we all know this man because this are millions of him, and he drinks beer. not just any beer.

it has to be his brand. and what is his brand? the one he drank in college? the one his dad drank? the one that comes in the best bottle? can? cap? it doesn't matter because that's it and it's not open for discussion. john: that was a clip from this, the final season of "mad men". that speech sends don draper out the door, never to return. this is a series we love, mark. will you be watching it? mark: watching the finale. it's an incredibly well crafted series. probably one of the best five of this golden age of television, for sure. jon hamm has never won an emmy. i think he might get at least a nomination and can win off that because he's one of the great

characters in television history and it's an injustice he's never won. john: i agree with all that, but what do you want to see happen to the character? mark: i couldn't care less. john: really? i got to say the one character i care about is peggy. i think the show is a little overrated but peggy olsen is a character for the ages. sympathetic, complicated emblematic for women in that era. mark: "mad men", you speak madness. it's one of the best shows in television history. john: it's not bad. we'll be right back with the king of the blues. ♪

>> we will miss you, b.b. king, and so with president obama. here's the president singing "sweet home chicago" with b.b. king in a concert at the white

house. >> monday we'll be live from smitty's in des moines, iowa. see you then. ♪ just because i'm away from my desk doesn't mean i'm not working. comcast business understands that. their wifi isn't just fast near the router. it's fast in the break room. fast in the conference room. fast in tom's office. fast in other tom's office. fast in the foyer [pronounced foy-yer] or is it foyer [pronounced foy-yay]? fast in the hallway.

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