gwen: disasters abroad and confrontation at home. plus, we remember david broder. tonight on "washington week." everywhere you look, new challenges. in japan where hundreds are dead and thousands are missing. in libya, where muammar qaddafi clings to power. in wisconsin where a collective bargaining confrontation finally comes to a head. everything lands on the president's plate. >> we can't keep on running the government based on two-week extensions. that's irresponsible.

gwen: plus, we remember the wisdom of david broder. >> if you're willing to try to lead that government or achieve the leadership position in that government, you have to try to build some trust for yourself. gwen: covering the week, san balls and karen tumulty of "the washington post," and doyle mcmahon us in of "the l.a. times." >> live from our nation's capital, this is "washington week" with gwen ifill. produced in association with "national journal." corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we know why we're here. to connect our forces to what they need when they need it. >> to help treat sea danger before it sees them.

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contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. is it just me or was it a really, really, really long week? just look at the range of topics at today's presidential news conference, toppling a tyrant in libya, provided emergency aid to an earthquake and tsunami-stricken ally and battling continued budget standoffs at home. >> both sides are going to have to sit down and compromise on prudent cuts somewhere between what the republicans were seeking that's now been rejected and what the democrats had agreed to that has also been rejected. it shouldn't be that complicated. gwen: well, maybe it shouldn't that be complicated but it is. house budget chairman paul ryan offered the republican view earlier this week. >> i do believe you have to

compromise and you do have to meet somewhere on the good thing for us is we're moving in the right direction. we're moving off the 2010 really high elevated levels. we're trying to stop spending money we don't have and we have a lot of democrats coming our way. gwen: in washington, in madison n. columbus, in tokyo and tripoli, so much is turning on u.s. government action or inaction. starting with the budget, are we detecting any kind of give on this, karen? >> i will tell you the president's tone sounded almost like te adult telling the kids they can come out of the time-out corner now and start getting to work. all we really have seen this week is, you know, the as we knew it would happen, the republican's plan failed in the senate and then the democrat's plan failed in the senate. so it's very clear now that while both sides really want to avoid a government shutdown, they are not going to be able to come up with a spending bill

that funds the government for the next of the year before the next deadline. so there's probably going to be another two or three-week bill and then at this point as the president said, we've got to quit running the government on these kinds of short-term fixes. but the important thing to remember is we're talking about a fiscal year that's already halfway over. this is not the main event this year. gwen: it sounds like both sides are counting on different ways in voter exasperation that.s0 they'll say just do your job. >> i think they are and i think both sides feel that they may have a little bit more of the upper hand, democrats clearly want to believe that the republicans are going to try to go too far and the public will reject that. but the republicans know that the message -- one of the messages coming out of last fall's elections was alarm about government spending. so you have seen the administration at least retore uckly move in that direction. but we don't see a lot of progress on getting to where they need to get. the president made it sound, like you said, it should be easy

but it certainly isn't. they are in quiet conversations between the white house and republicans on the hill but we'll have to see next week whether that begins to develop into anything that is close to a real come prasmice. gwen: how much is this about positioning and really about policy initiatives like rolings back health care? >> it's about both. what struck me one of the thing the president wants to do and one of the things he tried to do in the news conference is move this from the general, let's cut spending which most americans want to do, to the specifics. this republican plan he said will cut pell grants to needy students in college, it's going to cut head start. if the democrats can move the discussion to specifics they're on good ground because even though most voters want to cut spending, most the voters hate the idea of cutting any of those things, especially education. the other thing we saw to date is the president is having a really hard time getting his message through withal of the other events going on.

what that news conference called to talk about two things -- first he wanted to rebut the republican charge that he's the cause of higher gasoline prices and he spent some time on that and on energy policy. the other was to talk about the budget and as i say move to specifics and ended up spending most of the time talking about japan and libya because they're in the news. gwen: and because there's an overlap whfment talk about oil prices and you talk about energy prices, you're talking about what's happening in kwlabe to some extent, aren't you? >> you are. libya is one of the causes of the spike in oil prices but it sure doesn't make it any easier for barack obama to get all of us to start thinking every day about pell grants. >> and i think the president and his people recognize that whatever may happen in libya, rising gas prices are a real political problem for them. whatever the cause may be. the recent/"the wall street journal"/nbc news poll showed a decline in confidence of the people's view of where the

economy was heading, and this was a couple weeks ago and oil prices and gas prices have gone up. the fact that they telegraphed in advance what the main message of this press conference was going to be, i.e. gas prices, tells you everything you need to know about the sensitivity level there. >> so it's causing economic anxiety but the president also pointed out the paradox, which is that one of the reasons beyond the uncertainty in the middle east is that oil prices are going up is that the economy worldwide is improving. as it improves, demand for oil will be greater. i think the president was doing a couple of things on his energy message. one, he was trying to explain oil prices go up and down. we're in an up phase and we will be in a down phase eventually too. but he also wanted to set it against the broader context of the need to be doing some long-term things towards energy dependence and he wanted to rebut this idea that somehow these oil prices are going up because he's preventing drilling

from happening. gwen: you talk about paradoxes. what -- one of the paradoxes you saw today, when you talk about intervention, you talk about intervention when it comes to something like a tsunami and an earthquake, japan sour ally, the pictures are horrific, people say what can you do to get over there to help. when you talk about intervention in libya, it's a little more complicated and that's been a source of a lot of the debate this week as well. >> it's a lot more complicated. the problem the president faces and his aides face on libya is there are a lot of different kinds of interveng that sound bloodless and sound easy, no-fly zone, humanitarian aid to the rebels, recognizing the rebels, arming the rebels, but all of those get you in on the ground more deeply and at every step, not just the pentagon but in the state department, everywhere else you have to ask yourself the question, what if that doesn't work? what if that goes wrong?

what if to take the easiest one, humanitarian aid, let's send a ship of medical and food aid to the liberal -- pardon me, the rebel headquarters and what if qaddafi's air force fires on those ships? then we're engaged in combat. gwen: not only that but we are very fond in general of having some sort of coalition of the willing as it were and not be out on a limb by ourselves. do we get any movement on that this week? >> the president again pointed to a contradiction here because what he's been trying to do is make this part of the international effort. he's also trying to assure the american people we are not going to find ourselves in another situation as we did in the '90's in the balkans and in rwanda. as of yesterday, his own director of national intelligence, james crocker, said in testimony in front of congress he said, look, the way things are going now carks daffy's going to prevail and i think that --

gwen: which was not exactly on message. >> it was not on message but it, you would assume, would be the best reflection of what our own intelligence is telling us, which does shugget there is some urgency toward getting together some kind of international effort and if not the question becomes what is the united states willing to do? >> the president was quick to deal with that when he was asked about it at the press conference and said, well, that may be a reflection of the fact qaddafi has greater forces, armaments, et cetera, all of which is correct but that's not policy and policy is set by the president. but we're still waiting to see exactly what that policy is going to look like in a week or two. gwen: how difficult is it for a president who has such a crowded agenda, living in a time when anything can happen to crowd it even further as we saw today with what happened in japan and the prospect we had for much of the day that it might actually strike u.s. shores? >> on the tsunami you mean? well, we left out 16 things

there also on the president's agenda that we haven't even talked about. just on the foreign policy side, we're still at war in afghanistan and iraq. there's a semi-revolution going on in yemen and one in bahrain. and any quiet period you would expect the president to be able to focus on any of those. so this is a very, very crowded agenda. gwen: and there is a public demand for action, or is there? you have been reading the polls, dan. is there public demand for action on any of these things, deficit reduction, on spending reduction on international intervention? >> i think there is a public desire for action on getting the government spending issue under control or dealing with the deficit. but the biggest thing people want is jobs. i mean, in terms of what the public wants, it goes back to the bread and butter issue of make the economy better. gwen: every day he's not talking about that. >> right. i don't think there is a great healing cry for intervention in libya. people may want the u.s. to lead more strongly but i'm not sure

that people are saying, yeah, let's go in there and put troops on the ground or start firing from the air. that hasn't shown up yet. gwen: is there any connection at all between what we saw happening in madison, wisconsin this week? state capitals where there's a lot of angry shouting and in this case the governor basically forced action on this bill rolling back bargaining rights for public unions. is there any connection what we see there, that sensibility and what's happening in washington? >> i think it gos to what dan was saying, which is the president's embrace and everyone's embrace of tchash we have to do snog get the budget under control, to get the deficit under control and these governors actually do have to balance their budgets every year and in almost every state. the question in wisconsin was whether this governor, scott walker, was using a crisis to further some sort of ideological agenda which was to get rid of collective bargaining for labor.

now, he insists he can't do what he needs to do fiscally unless he does that. but that becomes the question. gwen: ok. you know, i wanted to end this segment by talking about state politics because, of course, the person we want to talk about next loved state politics and loved talking to governors. one thing we all know for sure is david broder would have loved covering a week like this. you may know by now david, one of our longest-serving and most popular "washington week" panelists passed away this week at the age of 81. we admired dave for his smarts, his wit, his grace and being the kind of journalist we all wanted to be. in 1994 he saw president clinton's health care bill was about to collapse for lack of congressional support. >> he went up to capitol hill as you know this week and told the democrats, you got to stand and fight. you got to be with me on this. we're all in this together. they're sending these members home very worried, frankly, that many of them will hear things at

home that will make it harder for them, not easier, to vote for the president's program. gwen: we turn to david again on the evening of september 11, 2001, this time to gage george w. bush's performance on the darkest night of his presidency. >> i wrote down three things i thought the president had to do before this speech began, had to displace strength, compassion and give reassurance. i think on the first two he did well. i don't think given the way these events have unfolded he provided a great deal of reassurance that we know how to prevent it from happening again. gwen: the dean, as we like to call him -- not to his face. as usual he was spot on. we and you benefited from his wisdom in countless inches of newspaper copy and hundreds of television appearances. and we all got to work with him. dan literally side by side -- there you are -- for the last couple of decades. what a gift that was, dan. >> it's a great gift, gwen.

and our newsroom and many, many others we've all heard from this week feel the loss, as do a lot of people who watch this program. he was the most remarkable colleague. he was the best political reporter of any generation. he defined what political reporting was. he showed us all how to do it. he was our mentor and our teacher and he did it in the most gentlemanly imaginable. he wrote a column for four years at "the post." he thalls thought of the column as what he did in his off hours, which he literally did, as you know. he was a reporter. he was a reporter's reporter. and he believed first and foremost that the way you did political journalism was to go out and report and particularly talk to voters. gwen: people ask me all the time, who's the most famous, most important person you ever interviewed, thanks i'm sure to the inspiration of david, it's

always someone he never heard of, some guy in the supermarket aisle who told me what he really thought about george bush or john kerry in 2004. or some woman on the national mall on the day that barry bonds -- barack obama was inaugurated and stopped me crying, telling me the story of her son. i realized i got more from talking to people like that in a lot of ways than talking to presidents. >> david spent an immense amount of time talking to voters. there was a wonderful little video on "the washington post" website, if i can give a plug to someone else's website that everyone ought to take a look at once you're through watching this show because it shows david talking to voters, interviewing voters and the fact he spent so much time talking ordinary people, getting beyond the polls to look at but it's too easy for all of us to use polls as a crutch -- >> start there and end there. >> exactly. he talked to county chairman and local politicos all over the country. and that kind of old-fashioned

shoe leather was, as someone wrote this week, the secret of his reporting, which wasn't really a secret. it was one of the reasons, for example, that in 1980 the weekend before ronald reagan's election against jimmy carter, when everybody thought that was going to be -- everybody here in washington thought that was going to be a close election, and when his own newspaper polled, "the washington post's" poll showed carter slightly ahead in the national vote, broder wrote a front-page piece saying, it looks to me as if ronald reagan is going to win this thing. and it was an act of brilliance -- gwen: defiance? >> courage. courage on the part of the editors. but the important thing for david was, he was right. >> the thing about david too was that in politics, he was a political reporter but he was never -- politics to him was never a game. it was never about keeping score. and if he had a true bias, it was that he wanted to see things

work. i keep on my desk at the office a copy of a book that he wrote with his colleague johnson called "the system." it was the most remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the failed clinton health care effort in 1994. but it was really extraordinary in that as you read it, every page, you understood all of this machinery of government and this machinery of politics is really about whether you can get things to work for people. and in this carkse it failed because the got too much caught up in the game. gwen: one of the things i thought about david is -- it's a cliche for us to say oh, he was a member of a dyeing breed. journalism is so different, so much changed. but in fact he was his own breed. even in his heyday, he was always unto himself. >> he was unique. he was unique in this important way -- he did a column, had an opinion column on the op-ed

pages of "the washington post," and did straight news reporting. no one questioned his integrity, fairness and balance when he came to report a story about them. they questioned david's judgment and they knew he would treat them fairly in his reporting. he would call it as he saw it but he would listen to them get their view and put it together. in that way, he was unique. i think he had another thing unique and you touched on it, he loved the game of politics but he did not think of it as a game. he always wanted to bring something more serious to it, something more elevated to it. political reporting today is so much more about inside stuff and minutia and david loved all of that but he didn't get trapped in it and he didn't think that was the highest form of political journalism. gwen: i think we can all tell our stories, in fact i'm going to ask you to when you first met david. because when i did, i was this kid.

i was this kid who was being allowed, given the great ability to work on a national campaign for "the washington post" and he was so kind. inthought oh, this is unique what has happened between me and this man only to discover that everyone has a story in which david was unnecessarily kind to us when we didn't know better. do you have one like that? >> that's true. you hear these stories and realize what you think of your own personal stories with him are actually cliches. gwen: who knew? >> but my first time i ever laid eyes on him in person and having, you know, come to this business worshiping and starting by reading about him with the boys on the bus was in the senate press gallery. i was brand new to washington. i was in my 20's. he was standing over one of the most junior reporters at the paper, margaret shapiro at the time, she was on deadline and he's standing there with his own notebook sort of giving her all of this stuff as she's writing. i'm going oh, my gosh, he's

being a leg man for a 20-something reporter. >> i have a different story of how i met david broder. i was literally a kid. i was in my senior year in college and i had come out to washington and i was working on an independent study project for my senior year in college. and i went toipt view david. i set it up in advance because he was a great man and i wanted to get his view. i went to interview him. i asked him two questions and he said to me, what does this have to do with the topic of your paper? talk about crushed -- gwen: talk about focused. >> and it was a reminder, thing about david that you always remember, he was gentle and helpful and focud and he would keep you focused as a journalist. gwen: thank you all so much for helping us remember our friend. he will be missed at this table. he was always game for coming here and telling us what you thought and you will be sending our condolences to anne's,

dave's wife of 59 years and his son george joshua, michael and their families, seven grandchildren. see you next week on "washington week." when their needs change, we were there to meet them. through the years from insurance to investment management from real estate to retirement solutions, swrepped new ideas for the financial challenges ahead. this rock had never stood still and that's one thing that will never change. prudential.

>> corporate funding is also provided by -- boeing, norfolk southern, additional funding is provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you.

>> lucille clifton grew up in western new york, near buffalo, worked as a government clerk and office assistant. her first book, good times, was rated one of the best books of 1969 by the new york times. lucille clifton, who said, "one should wish to celebrate more than wish to be celebrated." >> won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. ( cheers and applause )

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