>> this is the chris matthews show. [captioning made possible by nbc universal] chris: shaping the battlefield. we saw it all unfold this week. the president took credit for getting bin laden, used it to take afghanistan off the table, then came the good news/bad news jobs report. this campaign's not about who's toughest on foreign policy. the economy could decide it. six month, that's how long both candidates have to tell us what they're going to do. will romney show us his vision? or will obama inspire the country with teases of what's to come? and finally, newsman, he's seen

a half century of presidencies. if someone like truman, ike and ford were deeply rooted, what about the stranger sorts like lyndon johnson and nixon? how did they get there. we'll ask the man himself. dan rather. hi, i'm chris matthews. with us today hd nets dan rather. katty kay, nbc's kelly o do nell and anne cline. barack obama's trip to afghanistan signing that agreement to partner until 2024 was enormous. republicans applauded, taking the issue off the table. friday's job report with a slight drop in the unemployment rate but disappointing figures in news job. dan, the president can't win on foreign policy, people say. so this election is going to be about the economy. >> absolutely.

within the job, what people say is true. unless we're in a new war, if mitt romney can make it all about jobs, jobs, jobs, and stay on message, obama could lose it. chris: let me go to katty on this one. everybody reads this guy. he's the statistician. he says you have to produce 150,000 jobs a month to really get the economy going again. we only got a report this friday of 115. it's below par. political impact? >> the unemployment headline number came down a little bit but ns looking increasingly like a very fragile recovery. anything can happen to derail that completely. what matters, chris, is not this month's job number but the number that will come out just before the general election about four days beforehand which will give us october's unemployment numbers. that's what they're going to have to be concerned about. chris: but that's going to be

the last headline we watch before we vote. but kelly, looks to me romney now, i watched it -- i listened it to when i got up. he was loaded for bear. disappointing. disappointing. it's going to hurt the average family. he loves this. he's going rally in the next couple of months. this is romney. >> exactly. for voters who has a job, it's about home values. when you are on the road and some of these battleground states are looking in the real estate section, price reduce or foreclosure signs out there. it's the value of their home. can they send their kids to college. so this window of time when times are typically slow, romney's got to hit it over and over again that the recover's not good enough. chris: i have a sense it's romney's time. you know how these patterns work. everybody wants to hear what he has to say. they want to hear from romney. >> i don't know. i think it's a kind of slow time because it's the summer. we are interested in the next

thing that romney's going to say. but the public doesn't tune in until the fall. there's one thing i would disagree with dan on. i think that foreign policy in general isn't going to drive this election but there is one foreign policy issue that's going to be important because it's and economic issue and that is china. romney has been hitting china hard since the beginning of the campaign. the president hasn't said anything. and when i travel through battleground states, you hear people talking about china more than you hear them talking about afghanistan. chris: what's the cutting edge of china to the average person? >> they're eating our lunch is what -- that may or may not be true. and manufacturing jobs are coming back but people think we're falling behind china. they want to hear what the president has to say about this economic situation. and he hasn't talked about it. >> the other area i think foreign policy does count is how it reflects on the president's character. you inoculated the president

against the charge that he might be weak or a bit of a wimp in some way. i think the actions he took against bin laden and the reminder of his actions this week would have given him the character of advantage on that particular subject. chris: let me go back to how i think romney's going to do it. the romney camp revere ronald reagan especially because he brought back the country economically. when reagan was running for re-election, he was producing 350,000 jobs a month. that was a particularly weird recession created by paul walker and tight money. but it was managed and it cage -- came back quickly. we're coming back very slowly. doesn't that give romney and age. he said this guy ain't reagan. >> if you talk optimismically about the future, this is one for reagan. he was helped by the jobs picture but it was i have a vision of a new america. and he laid out a vision for the

future. now between romney and obama, the one that can convince people that he has a plan and -- chris: isn't that right? it's about a plan for the future? >> yes. the strongest -- but the elements of the past -- the strongest thing about romney's argument on jobs is that it's a two-sided coin. he could say obama didn't produce the jobs. he didn't focus on jobs. what he did focus on was obama care and you don't want to have that, do you? so it's a double-edge sword. he can go positive, negative. it's the best thing that romney can have. chris: obama's known as the health care guy. he didn't grab on that that brand he could have grabbed on which is i'm the job creator. >> he spent the first year of his presidency or much of the first year of his presidency caught up over health care reform that most people think it's a waste of political capital for him and a waste of and opportunity to focus in on

the issues that americans are focused on which is jobs. the other difference with reagan, this is a recovery that is not in america's hands as much as the recovery that -- chris: everything'ses growing around -- >> right. chris: we put it through the matthews meter including katty, kelly and joe. will mitt romney take control and drive this political debate as we've been talking about? ironically is 1 said no. and three of you guys are involved in this. katty, you first. if romney has the issues, why can't he grab the wheel and say i'm going to talk about my exer per tease and obama's going have to listen? >> that person has so much control over the news cycle and all the trappings of the presidency he can use effectively to be the bigger voice in the rupe. chris: who runs the show? >> both do. i mean, that's the problem with this question is that we're going to have -- chris: i love tough questions.

>> it's not a tough question. you just didn't give us the third option. chris: what is this third option? >> sometimes obama will. and sometimes romney. did i almost say reagan -- romney will. >> >> chris: my sense for a while he's going to be talking about his jobs plan. at some point romney's going to have to come out with a jobs plan. >> of course. there are a lot of gaps that need to be filled with his policy but i agree with kelly overall. this is why it's hard to run against and incumbent president, particularly one while he is policies may not be popular is more of a likable guy than romney is seen. >> character counts. what we don't know is the public's perception of romney's character is. chris: that's a great question. something besides jobs, jobs,

jobs. going along with the neocon serve actives. does he have the charact tore stand up to those forces? >> i think with independence, the issue is going to be how far he moves to the right during the primary campaign and whether he can get back to the center while being lambasted and being a flip flopper. >> people really need to get to know him. we're talking about the small number of voters -- chris: 7%. it's always about -- >> it really is. it comes to narrow line. they have to get a sense of who he is. he's got a challenge to tell the country who he is. chris: besides the economy -- >> i've done o 10 of these now. chris: 10 elections. >> it comes down to two guys standing behind podiums and people deciding who do i want to have in my living room for the next four years. we always want to quantify this thing but it's not quantity

final. it's people's gut reaction. chris: so that 47% or 46%, seems to have decided on both sides. you say they are mutable? >> i think that if 10% move in a tv debate, you have and earthquake. i mean that's what we're talking about. chris: dan has a new book out "rather outspoken" is the name of it. one of the nuggets is sneaking into russian-controlled afghanistan, actually sneaking across the border of afghanistan and trekking on foot through the ciber pass has hordes of afghans fled in the opposite direction. he was nicknamed gunga dan. >> i'm standing in the bored between pakistan and afghanistan, a border that is closed to most everyone. these afghan clothes i'm wearing were part of and option to sneak me and the cbs film crew into

afghanistan. the option succeeded. chris: frightingly authentic. the book says you existed on vienna sausage and turkey. dan rather's rule for survival. don't drirching the water, don't eat the meat and especially don't even think of looking even in the general direction of the women. >> as for the third in a place like afghanistan, you even look at a woman in a certain places you might get a shortcut. chris: the president's sh, scoops and predictions. chris: the president's sh, scoops and predictions. we'll be

chris: welcome back. dan rather's new book "rather outspokeen" tells about the presidencies. richard nixon and truman were rather crazy in ways. i want you to listen to bobby kennedy describing what he called or what we might be called johnson's dodgeyness. >> he's mean, bit ir, vicious -- bitter, vicious. i think he's got this other side that makes it very difficult. he's able to eat people up. chris: i have a problem with the coverage. i never knew this about johnson. i thought it was grandfatherly type of guy. and this courseness, the drinking, the crudeness never got out. >> it's true. lyndon johnson could be quite a bully. it's true that he drank. he didn't have a big drinking

problem. remember he came to the presidency after the assassination of president kennedy. the country wanted to like a president. it seems like a long time ago. it was right after the assassination. for whatever his flaws and failures were per seaved or otherwise weren't, lyndon johnson got things done. as far as the press corps was concerned, it was a different era in the same way that the president never reported things in president john kennedy's private life that now seem so appalling. yes, people knew johnson drank. yes, he could be a bully. yes, they knew that side. but like it or not, prison it or damn it, that was the ethos of the press corps. you don't talk about that stuff. you talk about what he gets accomplished and what he doesn't get accomplished. chris: the hard stuff. what do you think about that?

people start to write about him years later. >> i think it's a better way of going about it for us. we've got to give these people some humanity. they're all weird in any case. they're ego maniacal, crazy people, all presidents. >> all presidents. chris: so too much information. >> obama's like crazy calm. but what you want is, you know, presidents who actually get things done. and i think that we really, really have gone overboard. >> we're never going to be that jeannie back in the bottle. in this age of youtube and twitter and tabloid newspaper, everything is fair game and every time you detail of their private life and their failings and their weaknesses, it's straight out there. >> i agree. however -- >> there's no way you wouldn't know what kennedy was doing or what johnson was doing. >> i do think the public understands you have to allow

for light and shade when you're discussing anybody's life. >> they give it importance. >> romney won't let you know he speaks french. i said could you say let them eat cake in french. and he said, i can but i won't. >> actually, i think the public is very sane about that stuff. during the year of monica lewinsky, the republicans' ratings went down, the president's ratings went down. bill clinton's ratings stay ud just like this because everybody knew that chris: let's talk about one guy you covered well who may have been haunted by demons. you wrote about nixon. >> this is -- this was in the worst period of water-gate. someone broke into our georgetown home. but ours was not the only one.

break-ins, telephone, tap-ins were very common in that critical period when richard nixon was committed not just to defeating him. he wanted to destroy them. chris: he authorized the brookings break-ins and you had your papers and your files and nothing else thrown or anything. >> that was the suspicious part. nothing was taken from the house but my files and any notebooks in the basement. fortunate lirks we heard the man in the basement. i had a shotgun in the house. -- chris: i thought that was and interesting fact we know about you. second amendment guy. great book, rather -- >> "rather outspoken." chris: when we come back, tell me something i don't know. we'll be right back.

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>> tell me something i don't is brought to you be charles sh waub. talk to chuck. chris: welcome back. dan, tell me something i don't know. >> on the travon martin case in florida, it's clear that the "stand your ground" law was written by the gun lobby in florida. and now a new law is in the process of being written. we'll see if it will pass. once again, they may not

actually write this one but their influence will be very heavy. chris: katty? >> i had a chance to spend some time in the obama headquarters. i was struck by how confident they are in their ground operation. they feel that while the republicans spend all this time tearing each other apart, they've been building relationships with persuadeable voters. they don't think romney, even if he has more money and more ad time will be able to match that. chris: the turnout? >> that's what they think. chris: kelly? >> they're trying to find time to find a card that will appeal to women. which is the pay women act which the republicans are not sponsors. it's another one of those ways women could see if and employer does the same job gets paid more. they're trying to find the right timing. chris: it's where they get

caught with general election votes, women voters? >> exactly. >> vocational education has been on high inner 30, 40 years. but they turned things on their head. and the most ambitious kids are trying to get to those classes because they lead directly to jobs. chris: what are the examples of what they're teaching? >> medical aides, nurses aides, auto shops have jobs for auto dealers. these kids are more likely to pass the diagnostic test, get jobs and they're more likely -- scroist and they see the connection between school -- chris:, and they see the connection between school and money. as soon as this election is over, another will begin. will joe biden the vice president run for president next time. even if it appears hillary clinton is going to.

be right back.

>> i'm in the best shape i've been in my life. i'm doing pretty well. i'm enjoying what i'm doing. let's get the president re-elected. >> you're not closing that door? chris: welcome back. this week's huge question, will joe biden run for president? and will he run even if hillary clinton also runs? >> i think he will run. if hillary clinton runs, it would be tough for him to run. chris: katty kay? >> i expect that he will give it a shot but his age will be a factor. chris: how about hillary's age? >> that's also a factor. >> the desire's there. i think he won't. >> i kind of think he will. i would like to skip ahead to

that election. chris: one of the great ones. biden vs. hillary clinton. perhaps. dan rather, good luck with the book. "rather outspoken." katty kay, kelly o'donnell. see you back here next week. w'?

i'll have blueberry pancakes. uh huh. actually, make that glazed pecans... ok. with chocolate... no... caramel sauce. whipped cream?