>> schieffer: today on "face the nation," the white house scrambles to explain a bad economy and republicans look for a candidate that at least they can like. >> there are always going to be bumps the road to recovery. >> schieffer: he got that right. unemployment ticked up again. food and gas prices are high. the housing market sunk even lower and the stock market tumbled. democrats are trying to explain. >> well, i think we have to take a careful look at those figures. >> reporter: republicans said it was all the fault of the president. >> when he took office, the economy was in recession. and he made it worse. >> reporter: in a busy week on the campaign trail, romney made it official-- he's in. as sarah palin took a vacation, went on the ultimate ego trip, or launched her own campaign-- no one seemed quite sure which. what did seem clear, at least according to the polls, is that

republicans aren't all that enamoured with any of their candidates, which prompted mississippi governor haley barbour to say this. >> we are not going to have purity. we're not going to have a perfect candidate. >> reporter: we'll hear from both sides today-- from the left, house democratic leader nancy pelosi, and from the right, republican governor haley barbour. it's all ahead on "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs "face the nation" with cbs news chief washington correspondent bob schieffer. and now from washington, bob schieffer. >> schieffer: good morning and welcome to "face the nation." georgia's governor haley barbour joins us this morning in the city. wevernor, welcome. we're always glad to see you here. got some very bad economic numbers this week. do you think this country is headed for another recession? some people are saying a double- dip recession.

>> certainly, there's a possibility because the policies of this administration are bad for the economy. frankly, while this administration has been great for wall street, main street has never really gotten out of the last recession. very hard to tell the difference for small business, even though the new york banks have done great. >> schieffer: somebody told me that you said this week that you think that the president is trying to drive up energy policy... energy prices on purpose. did you say that? >> no question about that. i mean, this administration's policies clearly has been to drive up the cost of energy so americans would use less of it. that's environmental policy, that's not energy policy. but that's their policy. they think it will give you less pollution. make these alternative energy sources-- excuse me, bob-- more competitive. when barack obama became president, gasoline was $1.80 a gallon. now, it's up to $4 a gallon. why should we be surprised when his secretary of energy said in

2008 what we really need in the united states is to get the price of gas up to where it is in europe. they may need that in berkeley, but not in biloxi. >> schieffer: i've heard a lot of people give a lot of different reasons that energy prices have gone up, but i believe must be the first to say that he did it on purpose. >> he said "under my cap-and- trade plan barack obama said that rates will skyrocket. not my words, but barack obama's words. "necessarily skyrocket." why would you try to push a cap- and-trade tax through to drive up the cost of electricity? because they believe it will mean we'll use less electricity. there will be less emissions. i don't back off from that one iota. it is hurting the economy. energy is 100% of the economy. energy is the life blood of the economy. they've tried to raise the price of oil. they've tried to raise taxes. they've tried to raise the price

of coal, make it harder to get permits. i don't think there's any question that this is the policy of this administration. >> schieffer: all right. it's been a very busy week in politics. mitt romney made it official, he is running. sarah palin got a lot of attention. i'm not sure anybody about sarah palin knows exactly what it is that she's up to. but, governor, a pew research "washington post" poll had some fairly stunning findings. i want to run these by you. when republicans-- not just voters in general, but when republicans-- were asked what word they would use to describe the republican field so far, the word they used most often was "unimpressed." followed by "disappointed" and "weak." the word "good" did come in fourth, but it was followed by "incompetent, pathetic, unqualified, not interested, and idiots."

four republicans in ten, 37%, used negative words to describe the republican field. only 22% used positive words. that tells me, governor, that no matter how bad this economy is, you've got some work to do here. >> it reminds me of the last two times the country has elected democrats as president. in the first half of 1991, if you asked people about bill clinton, those would probably have been some of the nicer things they said about him after his speech at the 1988 democratic national convention, yet he became president. if you'd have asked about barack obama, they would have said "who?" i mean, the fact of the matter is this field includes people who have been very successful as governors, a former speaker of the house. people who have been successful in business. but a lot of them are not very well known. and that's what presidential nominating contests are about. as i say, barack obama came from nowhere at this time to being president. bill clinton came from not

anybody saying anything nicer than that. i think the same thing can happen for us if the election is about obama's policies and the results of those policies. that's the key for the 2012 campaign for republicans. >> schieffer: but you're not concerned that the people in your own party don't seem satisfied with this field? i mean, do you think somebody else ought to get into this? >> i think probably other people will get into this. >> reporter: who do you think that would be? >> people like rick perry, the governor of texas. you mentioned sarah palin. i don't know if she's going to run. john huntsman, former governor from utah. i don't know if he's going to run, but there are other people who might get in. but this field will be more fully formed come fall, and then we'll really start seeing what happens in the spring. >> reporter: what about sarah palin? you say you don't know what she's going to do. if she did get in, could you ever envision yourself

supporting a ticket that had sarah palin at the top? >> if barack obama was the head of the other ticket, i could. no question about that. we look at the obama policies-- he wants to raise taxes. raising taxes would hurt the economy. in fact, what we need in our country is economic growth and job creation. he pays lip service to that but his policies hurt that. "obama care" makes it harder to hire people. how do you hire people, bob, if you don't know what your obligations and costs will be for health care. all this government spending, bigger government means a smaller economy. when government is sucking trillions of dollars out of the economy, there is no money on main street. i can tell you that. wall street may be doing all right but there's no money on main street. that's where the jobs come from. policy after policy after policy makes it harder to create jobs and grow the economy in the obama administration. >> schieffer: you made what you called a "dutch uncle speech" to a religious group here in washington last week.

you told them, you said, "look, we're not going to find a perfect candidate." i want to play just a little bit of what you said here. >> you need to start teaching this. that is, conservatives, religious people, small government people-- we are not going to have purity. we're not going to have a perfect candidate. there's only been one perfect person that ever walked on this earth. ( laughter ) there ain't going to be another one in this election. >> schieffer: why did you feel it necessary to say that? >> it's always necessary to say that in primaries because oftentimes in primaries, you will see people will go to the person who is the most like them, that they think they agree with them on everything. that's the nature of primaries, but at the end of the day, you've got to unite. purity in politics is a loser; unity in politics is a winner. there are a lot of people that

don't like some things about haley barbour. my old boss ronald reagan used to say, "remember, a fellow that agrees you with 80% of the time is your friend and ally, not 20% traitor." it was always amazing to people how many people who didn't agree with reagan on this issue or that issue voted for him every time. we've got to be like that. i can remember george wallace. i can remember ross perot when people split off and they gave the left victory because they split the vote on the right. clearly happened in 1992. happened in new york just last week. a phony tea party candidate, but somebody who got on the ticket on the ballot as a tea party candidate, got 9% of the vote and contributed to winning. >> schieffer: you said after that speech... you were talking to a little group of reporters. you said we may have to accept a candidate that feels and says it's necessary to raise taxes. >> well, what i actually said was, if a candidate becomes

president and feels like a good compromise is to take a tax increase and gets plenty in return, what i said was, "remember, i worked for ronald reagan. ronald reagan had to compromise on everything. ronald reagan put forward good policy. but at the end of the day, he took the best that we could get. i think raising taxes is bad for the economy. i think it's the worst thing that we could do. but if you've got enough spending cuts, enough good policy, enough growth, would you take that as a compromise? well, i wouldn't say i won't support somebody for president who would do that because, like ronald reagan, that may be the best we can get for the country. >> schieffer: let me ask you about medicare and what paul ryan said. i mean, i think everyone concedes we're going to have to do something about medicare. it's going to have to have serious reforms. it will go broke in its present state. he says let's do away with medicare and replace it with government subsidized private

insurance. now, when he said that, democrats began licking their chops. they said, "boy, i hope that that's what the republicans are going to run on because we can beat 'em on that." can republicans run on that and win or do you have to make some modifications to that, governor? >> let's start at the beginning of what you said. unfortunately, while barack obama said in 2009 that the government will not be able to afford medicare in the future, health care costs were unsustainable, today, he wants to do nothing about medicare. he told the republicans when they met with him at the white house, i will not have a plan. what kind of leadership is that from the president of the united states? this is an unsustainable program. the government can't afford it. his own actuaries at medicare say it will be out of money in about ten or 12 years. he says i'm not going to do anything about it. paul ryan has put forward an idea, a pretty good idea, if you ask me. i was a government employee once. what ryan is proposing is very similar to federal government

employees' health insurance plan. >> schieffer: why didn't you run? why you decide not to in the end? >> i've been around a long time. 42 years-- my first political... presidential campaign was 42 years ago. to run, you've got to be 100% committed to the most consuming job on the face of the earth, to make a ten-year commitment to almost the exclusion of all else. i didn't have the fire in my belly to look at friends, supporters, donors, and say "i know i've got that fire in the belly." if you don't know it 100% for sure, you've got no business running. it's not fair to the people that help you. >> schieffer: haley barbour, always fun to have you here and fun to talk politics with you. i hope you'll come back. i hope we'll see you again during the campaign. >> thank you, bob. >> schieffer: we'll be back in one minute with the house democratic leader nancy pelosi to talk to her about some of this bad economic news we got last week.

>> schieffer: we welcome to the studio this morning the democratic leader in the house of representatives, the speaker of the house when the democrats had the majority there. nancy pelosi. mrs. pelosi, thank you so much for coming. >> good morning. >> schieffer: you know, the unemployment figures came out. they were worse than expected, as you know. unemployment actually ticked up to 9.1%, but this was just part of the story. a series of numbers that have been really, really bad lately. the number of new jobs created. 54,000-- far fewer than expected. home prices hit a new low in the first quarter of the year. home sales are down again. consumer confidence is down. and gas and food prices are up. i have to say, congresswoman, many of the experts thought the recovery would be well underway by now. but it looks like we're going backwards now. that we may be on the verge of a double-dip recession here. do you fear that's what's happened? >> i think we have to take a

careful look at those figures to see. the unemployment numbers are obviously very disturbing. are they an anomaly as some people suggest, because of the disasters in the south and the midwest and the rest, or is this something systemic that we have to accommodate in a different way? but all of it translates into hardship for america's middle class, and they're feeling it very, very severely. >> mitt romney launched his presidential campaign in new hampshire. he said basically that the president has made the economy worse. let's just listen to what he said. >> this is now his economy. what he has done has failed the american people. the borrowing and the spending and the $1.6 trillion deficit-- these numbers are his, on his back. it's why he's going to lose. >> schieffer: are you and the democrats going to have to come up to an answer to that? >> first of all, the set of

facts that governor romney just said because the fact is that this deficit came to us largely from president bush. but it's no use going there. we have to go forward. it's a question of what is the president and what are those who aspire to be president going to do about the future to create jobs, good paying jobs. what are they going to do about the education of our children, the strengthening of the middle class, reducing the deficit, reducing the deficit. >> schieffer: but the president has been there two-and-a-half years. why hasn't he done that yet? >> he's done a great deal of it. i think if he hadn't taken the actions he did that the situation would be worse. he pulled us from the brink of a financial crisis, from an economic crisis. now, we have to dig out of a deep debt. we have to also make it clear that we're not getting into this situation again. >> schieffer: you were talking in kind of a different way when unemployment went to 5% under george bush. what you said then is "americans are struggling with skyrocketing

energy prices"-- gas was only $3 a gallon then. you said this morning-- this is january 4, 2008-- this morning's jobs report confirms what most americans already knew. president bush's economic policies have failed our country's middle class. i mean, aren't republicans entitled to say, you know, if the gas was $3 and unemployment was 5% and the president has failed the american people, don't they have a right to say that this president has failed the american people? >> if you want to go into the past, we can talk about the past all you want. the public wants to know about the future. what are you going to do to create jobs? good-paying jobs. >> schieffer: well, what are you going to do? >> as i said, what the president has done has improved the situation from where it may have been. >> schieffer: the fact is the congress has been in session since january and it's done basically nothing. >> you can talk to mr. boehner about that. >> schieffer: it's all their fault, not your fault. >> they set the agenda. we had said every day that they're there another day goes by and there isn't a jobs agenda or a jobs bill that has come to the floor.

again, it's about how we can work together to go forward. these issues are bigger than politics. they're bigger than elections. >> schieffer: yes. >> it's about the country we will live in. what you'll see in the election as we go forward is one vision of america that's in the republican budget plan that abolishes medicare, that makes college almost unaffordable for nearly 10 million people, young people in our country. that takes us deeper into debt and does not create jobs. or you can talk about an agenda that is about making it in america, investing in education, innovation and the rest. that's what campaigns are about. but i completely agree with you. five months of this new congress we haven't seen a jobs agenda come forth from the republicans. >> schieffer: do you think you're any closer to coming to some kind of agreement with the republicans on anything right now than, say, you were in january? >> well, i would certainly hope so. >> schieffer: where would that be?

>> well, it has to be. then we can work back from there. what it has to be and what the american people want from us, you know, you keep going back to '05 and this and that. you want me to respond to that. >> schieffer: i'm asking you about now. >> you go back to '05. >> schieffer: yes. >> people don't want to hear about '05. they want to hear about the future. >> schieffer: i think they want to hear about the now. i think they want to know why aren't you doing anything now? we keep talking about "well, we don't want to talk about the past. we have to talk about the future." but in the meantime in between time, nothing is getting done. nobody is agreeing with anybody on anything. >> i understand that. we're not in the majority in the house. and so you're saying to me why haven't we brought something to the floor to create jobs? i think that's a better question asked to the republicans. because they control the agenda. but what we do have to do and we can engineer back from there, we must not default on our loans. so we're going to have to raise the debt limit.

>> schieffer: moody's bond rating service warned this week that america's credit rating can be downgraded if a deal on the debt ceiling is not reached in a matter of weeks. could you come to an agreement with the republicans on debt reduction if they took medicare off the table some? >> there is a bipartisan discussion going on that is civil and constructive. and that they've come to some areas where they can possibly reach agreement. but nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. but i welcome this line of questioning because this is a place where we are looking to how we go forward with a sound fiscal policy to reduce the deficit, and i could never support any arrangement that reduces benefits for medicare. absolutely not. >> schieffer: let me ask you a little bit about medicare. obviously, as we all know, the house republicans want to replace it with government- subsidized private insurance. can democrats win in 2012 by

just saying no to that? >> i think the party is going to say to the american people, to middle class, we want to create jobs, good-paying jobs so that you can provide for your families. it's about them, the middle class. it's about medicare. no reduction in benefits in medicare. it's about make it an america again about jobs for the middle class, good-paying jobs for the middle class. i think that is an agenda that can win. >> schieffer: let me just interrupt you. don't you have to though give some plan or some idea of how you're going to reform medicare, because we all know it can't sustain as it is. >> well, we in our health care bill as you probably know saved half a trillion dollars in medicare. we had a half a trillion dollars in savings there, which we plowed back into improved benefits for seniors in terms of prescription drugs. but even more important than that, we made it stable for about ten years into the... added ten years of solvency into the future. that was a big story.

the republicans want to overturn that. that's one of the fights that we are having. because we want to have those savings to keep medicare solvent. >> schieffer: is what you're telling me you've already done what needs to be done...? >> i think we can... the secretary of hhs the power to renegotiate for lower prices. that would save billions and billions and billions of dollars. i think that fraud has to be addressed. that's already a given. we didn't prevail in the bill on negotiating for lower prices. but that's a very important place to go to do that. so if you're talking about lowering the cost, what ideas do people have? we have some. if you're talking about reducing the benefits, that's a non- starter. >> schieffer: you've got some interesting days and weeks and months ahead of you. we always enjoy having you here. and we'll be back in a moment with some final thoughts. a lot of times, things are right underneath our feet,

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>> schieffer: finally, a little family news here. monday, we turn a new page at cbs news. scott pelley becomes the anchor of the "cbs evening news." not many people have had the job. and scott is a good man for it. i sort of watched him grow up here. actually, i watched most of the people here grow up. no one who was in the washington bureau when i came here in 1969 is still here. so they're all newcomers to me. but here's the part i like. scott was telling somebody the other day that since coming here in 1989, he has never had an anchor job. so he was a little nervous about taking this one.

well, i think that makes him more qualified. too many people in tv these days get their suntans from the studio lights. not scott. he hasn't spent much time in the studio. he stayed out there where the news was and still is. whether it was asking tough questions at the white house or in the trenches with the troops in iraq, or traveling to god knows where, if there was a news story, you would usually find scott there. which is probably why, since he joined "60 minutes" in 2004, half of all the awards won by that prestigious broadcast were stories that he reported. so i won't be worrying about scott handling an anchor job. i won't be worrying at all. it's just nice to see someone get the job who deserves it. he'll do just fine. back in a minute. minute. is using natural rubber, researching ways to enhance its quality and performance, and making their factories more environmentally friendly.

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>> schieffer: and thanks for watching "face the nation." we'll see you right here next week. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org .wgbh.org ,,,,,,,,