now to page two of "face the nation." joining us today peggy noon an of the wall street. dan balz on the eve of the release of his new book "collision 2012." also with us, barton gellman, who writeses for the "washington post," "time" magazine, the senior fellow at the carnegie sentry foundation, was on the n.s.a. snooping story very early on. david sanger chief washington correspondent for the "new york times." and rounding out the group our old pal john dickerson, our cbs news political director. so we have this threat. does this-- mark, you're the one who first broke this story about edward snowden-- does this change this debate on what the national security agency is doing?

because, obviously, the reason we know about this threat is the capabilities at the national security agency. >> well, it's a reminder of the other side of the story, which is that we depend on intelligence. we depend on surveillance, and particularly, we depend on signals to keep the country safe. it doesn't change much about whether they've gone too far or whether we understand enough about the basic outlines of what they're doing that affects american privacy. >> schieffer: do you think-- i mean, because people always say this when something like this happens. people will say, "you don't suppose they're making more of this threat than it really is because they want to make the point that this is what they do." >> i don't have any reason to think that. the-- one reason to doubt it is that the french and the british are also closing embassies, particularly in yemen, which is a much narrower slice of their

diplomatic world than the whole north african front from the u.s. but they, also, are taking the threat seriously, and the french are not particularly enamored of what has been said recently about the n.s.a. >> schieffer: peggy, chuck schumer took it step beyond where it was this morning when he said because russia gave political asylum to edward snowden, that the president should not only cancel the summit he had with putin but should also talk to our allies and try to move this big economic conference, international conference, that was going to be held there. >> that-- that was kind of strong. also, paul ryan seemed to immediately agree with him. so i think maybe there will be a little bipartisan push on that. i think those in the american government looking at vladimir putin and what he said done are feeling resentful and they're feeling dissed. they're wonder yg he's treating

america so roughly. my own sense of it we were discussing before is that i think putin is doing this because he can. because he judges us now to be a country in some difficulties, in some trouble. it's not all his relationship with obama. it's his sense of who america is, and it's his 50-year-old resentment for what america has been. so i think we're in a rough time, and my own sense is if you make america stronger, you will make it stronger in the world and people will be less eager to snub you in colorful ways. >> schieffer: but, you know, david this is almost like-- it's kind of following a kind of high school scenario here. here you have putin sort of-- sort of taking on the role of hugo chavez. i mean, nobody thought venezuela posed any kind of threat to the united states, but shavedz apparently thought he could really make his place in the world by poking his finger in the eye of the giant. and it seems like russia which

doesn't have much going now except oil revenues, and of course they do have nuclear weapons -- i don't think anybody thinkers that going to use those. but just sort of picking-- like a picador at a bulled fight or something. >> i think that's exactly right, bob. this is half high school, half cold war playbook and this is exactly the kind of things that used to take place in the cold war when countries-- particularly the old soviet union-- needed to find ways to get at the united states short of something that would escalate into real conflict. and, you know, we have to remember that putin grew up in the k.g.b., in a world in which this kind of thing was fairly standard. i think that the idea of moving the entire summit as opposed to cancelling just the bilateral meeting between the president and putin. is a little more difficult and a little more fraught than we've sort of led on in these conversations. why is this meeting happening in

russia? why have there been other such summits including ones president bush went to? there was a decision in the clinton administration that over the long term russia needed to be integrated with the rest of the world and didn't feel excluded from the big economic decision making that was going on. so they were brought in-- what was called the group of seven was turned into the group of eight. and that's yet meetings happen. if you move it away, you're basically saying to russia that at this point the united states regards them as another kind of power outside of that group, and you're stopping that integration. it's a big decision. i would bet president obama's not ready to do that. >> it's not a gamble he wants to take. when you talk to administration officials, jay carney in responding to russia's decision here said they were disappointed. pretty weak. that's because basically administration officials say we're not going to get into a big further public armwrestling match with putin because we have

other tooshz deal with russia on-- north carolina korea, syria, and iran. if you try to move the g20, suddenly you have a huge global wrestling match where the president is trying to convince all those other countries to postpone and move this? that's a huge prestige gamble for this president that probably wouldn't pay off and they're trying to move in the other direction in the white house-- deescalate, move on to the other important issues. >> schieffer: dan i want to get to you in your book in a moment when we shift to domestic politics but i want to go back to bart, and ?oand himself-- we know his lawyer went to see him last week and we're told brought him a change of clothes. does that mean he's been wearing the same clothes all this time-- which you don't have to answer that question. ( laughter ) what i'm wondering, have you had any more dealings with snowden since the initial reports came out? what's going on him, do you think? >> he's in a very interesting position.

he's finally out of this-- this strange little twilight zone in the airport. his hair was looking a little long. and he's able to live is and work anywhere. hehe's had his first job offer from the russian equivalent of facebook. he said he would like to work in human rights campaigning instead. putin has some choices to make here. he's made his point. he's showed strength against the united states. he could, theoretically, extend snowden's stay there all the way to citizenship one day. or with his old k.g.b. wiles, he could find a way to ship him out on an airplane when nobody is looking and we see him in latin america. >> schieffer: hasn't snowden lost any hope that he will be seen as a hero with the american people? >> there are not a whole lot of people who would say that russia

is a more sort of rights friendly environment than the united states. but on the other hand, a majority of the american people still fairly consistently since this story broke regard him as more whistled blower than enemy of the country. people do approve of the idea there should be big debates on the issue. >> but he has become a less sympathetic figure the longer he has been there, based on what we've seen. >> schieffer: dan, let's talk a little bit about your book. this book is kind of-- i think a lot of people will say-- will be the definitive book on last year's presidential campaign. it's a wonderful book, what-- as you wrote this book-- i guess i always ask this question of authors-- what was the surprise for you? what did you find out that you didn't know or that you had-- you know, didn't even have an indication of that it might be that way? >> a number of things, bob. one surprise, obviously, was when i sat down with governor

romney in january of this year to get him to look back on the campaign. the surprises were "a"how open he was about some of the things they did wrong, but also the difficulty he was having digesting some other aspects of what had happened in the campaign, two in particular, the infamous 47% comment, which he still doesn't quite believe he said what he said and tried to explain to me that as he read through notes on his ipad. it was a very interesting moment. and also the line about self-deportation that he used in one of the republican debates, which, clearly, caused him a great deal of problem and which even in that interview in january, he still believed was a relatively benign comment as opposed to a harsh comment about his view on immigration. >> schieffer: he really thought he was going to win, didn't he, at the end? >> he did. he said to me in that interview, on "on election day i was confident we were going to win."

"not 90% confident but i felt we were in a position to win this election am." he made another interesting comment. after the first presidential debate in denver where he, obviously, does dvery well and the president did poorly, he said the campaign for him-- and he felt the party-- changed from being clinical to being emotional, and what he meant by that was the republican base was mostly enthusiastic up to that point about defeating president obama and after that debate, he felt they became enthusiastic about electing him as president. he said it gratified him but is it also gave off false indicator where's he stood in the campaign. >> schieffer: was he a good candidate, peg gee no, not really. he had a lot of problems going in. there were many vulnerabilities he presented to the democrats. he was probably-- i would say-- certainly the best of what was in 2012 a weak republican field.

so he became in a way the inevitable nominee. i can say something about dan's book? one of the things that's very special about it is that it is not only about what happened. it's about how people think. there's a part where dan talks about the obama campaign-- not just as a political operation but in a way a sociological operation-- that was so fascinating to me, how deeply they drilled into-- or attempted to drill into the american psyche. that's the kind of stuff that is going to change national political-- national presidential politics, i think. >> i think, also, we have-- we look at dan's book and we also can look to the next election. the question with mitt romney was, was he a uniquely bad candidate or these two moments dan seized on the-- the self-deportation comment and the comment about 47%. what romney was trying to do in both of those instances was hit the target in his own party on immigration, trying tri-and speak to those voices that want a really strong candidate who is against illegal immigrants

superpower and on the 47 pspeaking to-- at a fund raise tore people in the audience who kind of had that view about the other half of the country. so the question is, is any candidate in 2016 trying to hit those same targets going to have the same difficulty once they get into a general election, or is it not a problem endemic to the party and it's just that mitt romney was a bad candidate. >> i can say one of the problems is the establishment, if you will, of the republican party-- including, say, its consulting class nationally and its presidential candidates-- what they're trying to do is hit the target of what they imagine in their imaginations is imaginatie feelings and impulses of the base. they're not good at that anymore. they're not in touch with-- with the ground in america anymore in a way that they used to be. and that's part of the problem. they're not aiming at a specific target purpose they're aiming at a target they can't fully see. >> schieffer: i'm-- i'll tell

you, this i think mitt romney-- and this was opinion labeled as such-- was a much better candidate than the candidate the republicans ran. and i say that in this way-- mitt romney was a pretty good governor. the people up there liked him. he wrote a good health care law. mitt romney was a pretty good businessman. he was an excellent businessman. mitt romney was truly, in the best sense of the word, a man of faith, but he didn't run as any of those things. he didn't want to talk about being governor because then he'd have to talk about the health care law. he didn't want to talk about being a man of faith because he'd hadv to bring up mormonnism which he thought was not a good thing. he basically was a moderate. that used to be a good thing, and he knew he had to run as a conservative, which the republican party and most republicans never thought he was. and he didn't do a very good job of convincing people of that. >> bob, he also underestimated the opposition. i think that's what sort of jumps out from dan's reporting out here. for a guy who runs the numbers to wildly underestimate how many

african americans were going to come out a second time enthusiastically for barack obama. as the father of a young voter, i was surprised at the degree to which the obama administration or the obama campaign managed to communicate to 18- to 22-year-olds who had never voted before, and the romney campaign was almost absent from that group. those were pretty fundamental errors. >> there were-- there were two elementes of that. one, as david suggests, the ability to find voters who were likely to support the president and get them registered, get them mobile ides, make sure they voted. the obama campaign was much more effective at that. how decisive that was, people can debate about it, but there's no question there was a mismatch in the two campaigns in how they did it. but the other-- and iening in se ways-- mistake on the part of the romney campaign, was

misjudging what the electorate was going to be on election day. they just thought there would be a higher percentage of white voters and a smaller percentage of minority voters and a higher percentage of republicans than it turned out to be a smaller percentage of democrats. so on fundamental questions about how they shaped the campaign, they were off. >> schieffer: let's just take a break here and we'll come back in just a second.

we've figured out the presidential campaign-- it's always easier isn't it to figure out what's happened than to try toonlize what's about to happen. but i can't see anything good coming this fall when congress comes back. they've left the whole deficit financing, getting a budget. that's all in a total mess. now we have some republicans who want to shut down the government if they can't get the

administration to agree not to fund obamacare. my sense of it is that's not going to happen. >> no, it's not going to happen in part because you have other republicans saying this is craziness. we don't want to shut down the government. we don't want to-- i think one thing-- one thing we didn't have this time before they left for vacation was the last-minute brinchsmanship moment. the problem is they pushed the brinchesmanship to the fall. two weeks ago when you talked to john boehner he said don't judge us by what we pass but what we keep from passing which is defensible. if you think government is too big, you don't want to pass more bills to keep it it going. this week the republicans failed the minimum standard. there was an appropriations bill that came up. they couldn't pass it. they had to pull the vote because they didn't have the votes voet for it. what they could pass was the 40th teevment knock down the affordable care act oop. it's not going anywhere. it's a symbolic vote. but they think the base likes

it-- this goes to peggy's point. but when you spend more time maintaining your base and not doing the basic maintenance of passing these appropriations bill, that's where you get into a problem. >> schieffer: i think, peggy, that they will wiped up not pass anything kind of immigration reform. again, that's opinion. but i don't see how they do that when you've got the house where most republican districts are heavily white. they have very few hispanic voters in those districts. it's a very easy vote to vote against reform for them, and they almost guarantee themselves a proar opponent if they vote for it. i think it's not going anywhere. but what about-- >> yeah, i think it's unpopular. it's unpopular with the republican base. it's unpopular with the republican-- i don't know what to call it-- leadership class, i guess, big mouths in washington who-- i guess, well, how do you do? it's just unpopular. so i think they're not going to pass it.

the thing a number of us have been urging for a while that paul rhine said today, break this thing into little separate discreet pieces that can be popular, and put them forward and pass them. that's a possibility. but he's right. the senate thing is going nowhere. nobody trusts the congress to do anything comprehensive. >> schieffer: but what about, dan, what about on the finances and just keeping the government running? i mean, are they going to be able to come to some kind of an agreement here? >> it's not at all clear based on what, as john said, what happened before they left town. the situation we now have is democrats and republicans at loggerheads and increasingly, it seems, republicans and republicans at loggerheads. when you have those kinds of decision divisions and fissures and fractirs and all, it makes it hard, particularly in the amount of time available-- i mean, they have nine legislative days when they come back to do all of this. >> schieffer: this is not without an impact beyond our

borders, is it, bart? because you see other countries that look at us and they're saying, "what are these people doing? dism you don't see many people that think, "well, it would be a good idea to follow that." we used to be the city on the hill, as ronald reagan said. >> this used to be the reason why we said it's better to have two major parties than 200 they have inilitily, that you can get something done. i think the seeds of the explanation are exactly what you said before, bob. you don't have to-- you shouldn't analyze it solely on a national basis. the republicans are doing things that they all understand on government shutdown, on immigration, are hurting them nationally and making it harder for them to take back national control. but if you go back to your own district and you're going to slit your own throat if you vote for an immigration bill or if you vote for shutting down the government, people say, "go to it, that's great." >> schieffer: but if we don't get this financial thing selgtd, you've got chuck hagel, the

secretary of defense, david, talking about having to mothball three aircraft carriers. >> yeah, he was out this week with some statements that basically worked from the pentagon's internal assumption tharkts sequester-- something we haven't discussed, you know, in weeks and months but which seem impossible or inconceivable a year ago-- is probably almost certainly going to extend into next year. the first time the pentagon was able to sort of get by with furloughing people and so forth. it was uncomfortable, but they managed to do it. what you were hearing from secretary hagel was that next year, he basically is going to have to change the fundamental assumptions on which the united states would be ready to handle a conflict with iran and with north korea, two, obviously, geographically separated places at the same time. and, you know, already the american presence in the persian gulf has sort of pulled down. what it also does, bob, is it really eliminates any ability to

do real long-term planning. so the idea of doing a pivot to asia and sort of reorienting the navy to be able to go do that, none of that can happen while you're spending a few years trying to just figure out how to stay afloat. >> schieffer: all right, we're going to have to end it there. i want to thank you all very much. i'm sorry to end on such a pessimistic note but that's where we. wiel be back in a minute with final personal thoughts.

>> schieffer: michael ansera, the actor to played american indians and aliens died at 81. he will be remembered by many in his ""star trek"" role but i'll remember his for his earlier rollas at patchy indian chief. he and his then-wife barbara eden, were the first celebrities i ever interviewed. it was 1957. and they came to fort worth because he was guest starring at the rodeo. i was a 20-year-old college student working nights at a little radio station and was sent out to interview them. it was not easy.

tape recorders were suitcased sized in those days. i had never interviewed a movie star, and their hotel near the rodeo arena had no elevator. once i wrestled the tape recorder up to their room, i was out of breath, had somehow lost the questions i planned to ask, and managed to say to her at one point, "in your show, you basically play a dumb blond, right?" to which she responded, "basically." even though, they treated me with patience and good humor. a lot has changed in journalism since then. recorders are much smaller. i hope i've learned to ask better questions. i'm sure they soon forgot the episode, and i never saw them again, but i never forgot how kind they were to a kid who had no idea what he was doing. when you're the kid, you never forget those things. back in a minute.

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for us today. be sure to tune into "cbs this morning" tomorrow for the latest news on the terror threat, and an interview with oprah winfrey. we'll be back here next week. see you then.

the signs there could be so movement at the bargaining table. es were scattering negotiations to prevent a b.a.r.t strike are now in the 11th hour. the signs there could be movement at the bargaining table. bodies were scattering and flying in the air, people were screaming. an arrest today after the police say a driver plowed his car into people enjoying a day at the beach. this is the first real threat i have seen in years. >> it go beyond anything they have heard. new details about an al-qaida attack. it is d-day. deadline day for b.a.r.t and the unions to come to an agreement to avoid a strike. time runs