gwen: campaigns, money and scandal. three of the four ingredients needed for a remarkable round table. tonight on "washington week." the 2012 campaign gets off to a stuttering, stumbling start. >> i don't think right wing social engineering is anymore desirable than left wing social engineering. >> but -- gwen: leading presidential hopefuls on the defensive. the leading g.o.p. candidates spent more time apologizing than campaigning. while another chose to defend rather than apologize in this case because of his work for a president he now seeks to defeat. >> i worked for the president of the united states and during a time of war, during a time of economic difficulty for our country. if i'm asked by my president to serve, i'll stand up and do it. gwen: meanwhile democrats aim their outside big money at the early frontrunner.

>> with m.i.t. romney, you have to wonder, which page is he on today? gwen: but romney has raised $10 million in sing ale day. on the foreign policy front, the president's middle east speech revives the israeli-palestinian dispute. >> only piece -- peace that en will -- that will endure is one based on reality, on unshakable facts. gwen: and a sex assault charges shines an unflattering spotlight on the now ex-chief of the international monetary fund. covering the week, michael duffy of "time" magazine, jean cummings of "politico," doyle mcmahons i of the "los angeles times". >> award winning reporting and analysis, covering history as it happens. 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 troops see danger before it sees them. >> to answer the call of the brave and bring them safely home. >> around the globe, the people of boeing are working together to support and protect all who serve. >> that's why we're here. >> corporate funding is also provided by prudential financial , additional funding for "washington week" is provided by the annenberg foundation. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator gwen

ifill. gwen: good evening. if you're one of those folks who have been just waiting for the 2012 presidential cane to begin in earnest, have we got news for you. just this week millions of dollars were raised, candidates invaded living rooms in new hampshire and iowa, and we got a classic campaign gap, courtesy of former house speaker newt gingrich. on sunday he compared paul ryan's medicare plan to right wing social engineering. >> i don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. i think we need a national conversation to get to a better medicare system with more choices for seniors. gwen: i can't tell you how badly this went over with gingrich's fellow conservatives and he spent a fair portion of the week first casting blame, then apologizing, but that was just the beginning what have turned into an eventful political week. what did gingrich mean when he said this right wing social engineering thing? and does it matter what he

meant? >> what it smeens very complicated. it means that the fights that have been going on inside the republican party all spring about entitlements and debt and deficits and how to fix them have now spilled into the presidential campaign. it also means that the obama white house is not going to let an opportunity like this go unseized. when gingrich said what he said about ryan's plan, he called it too big a jump, really, too radical. he really poured fuel on a fight that's been simmering for weeks about whether the whole ryan budget cutting plan, not just the medicare part, but the whole thing, in the view of more and more republicans, each week it seems like, must justin an invitation to an electoral disaster. this goes against what most of the tea party and the activists have begun to view the ryan plan as a text that is sacred almost. so there's this split that's been developing and nute jumped

right into the middle of it and he walked it back but the funny thing about nuth was that he said twice before, even in the last week, that he actually supported the ryan plan. which -- so, this -- gwen: he was trying to have it both ways. why did he run into such a buzz saw if indeed there are so many republicans secretly believe that he's not far offbase? >> right. because among the most activeist republicans in the presidential primary process and particularly among the tea party group that has sent so many to congress to shrink the size of government in the last year, this is an untouchable idea. it's something that has to be pushed through and the more distance you put between that when you're a presidential candidate, the more dange tier poses. gwen: let me ask jean a question first. i'm also curious, it wasn't just gingrich who was making news this week, who was changing the fabric of this whole campaign. what was happening with the republicans and the democrats in raising money, including on this issue, hand over fist?

>> absolutely. at least the money part has finally been launched. mitt romney did it with an event down in vegas where he brought in all of his very wealthy donors and brought them in with their rolodexes so they could call their friends and bring money in. he did this two years ago at the beginning of the presidential campaign. this is how he opened his campaign in the last cycle. and in that case he was in boston, he raised about $5 million. well he doubled it this year. in vegas in one day they got commitments and pledges for $10 million. this is probably more than most of these other republican candidates are going to raise in the quarter. and so it sent a very strong signal, not just to his opponents about his strength, but any sunsetters, this is a shot across the bow to mitch daniels, it's basically, bring it on. so that was a really important event for the romney campaign and then tying together with the

gingrich problems, one of the first things we started to hear was that he had an event that was scheduled down south that started to collapse. because there were people who were signed up to sponsor a fundraiser for him but in light of what he'd said about the republican plan, some of them were going to walk with away. his campaign says he made the call, he brought them all back. gwen: they still had big crowds in iowa. >> big crowds aren't money. big crowds are a good thing and there are a lot of people in those crowds who want to confront him and there are people in those crowds that just want to be there to look at the guy who's in so much trouble and who everyone, many elite republicans now say is dead man walking. >> in fact, there was an unforgettable tape this week at one of gingrich's first events on monday where one of the people who wanted to confront him came up and said, why don't you get out before you make an even bigger fool of yourself which is an issue for gingrich, this is almost his third time running and each time it's a short-lived effort, usually because he opens his mouth and says something that he can't actually take back and he's done

it again in regard time this time. >> that brings me to the question i've had about this campaign since the get-go. i coveraged newt gingrich when he was speaker of the house and he had such an op receiptic tenure as speaker. what was it that he saw here as his opportunity? why did he think he would be the guy who could win the g.o.p. nomination this year? >> against his field, almost anyone could see an opportunity. it's a very weak field. there's not a lot of money in the system yet. romney being ahead in that race has other handicaps. and gingrich has always wanted to do this. and you can see that even in the way he talks, the greatest siren for me is here we had this week newt gingrich who 15 years ago was the rebel, was the paul ryan, was the one who was too radical for bob dole when he was running in 1996 and he had to put some distance between it. now he goes out, runs again after a fair amount of time out of politics and finds himself not really understanding how much the landscape has changed. >> it looks as if the tea party

and the republican faithful are still looking for their champion. newt gingrich kind of proved that he's not it. mitt romney isn't quite it yet. did any candidate jump in, denounce newt gingrich and take up that banner or are tea partyiers still waiting for sarah palin and michelle backman? >> michelle backman is the one candidate who saw that opening as perhaps her best opportunity. and she had planned to make an announcement in june and she this week told her supporters she may move up her announcement. gwen: and made a whole lot of robo calls into iowa yesterday after the president's speech. >> and she can raise a lot of money and that's the other thing. the candidates who are sitting on the outside, who have not made up their minds about whether they're getting in or not, the only one withs who are going to have a shot to get in here are those that can raise money fast. and that window is closing even for them. but bachmann is definitely one of them because she definitely is a grassroots online kind of

candidate who can turn over donations quickly. >> i was going to say, a lot of people think mitch daniels might get in here in the next couple of weeks. because of the reason you said, because they think he can raise some money. can he raise enough fast enough to get to keep up with romney? >> you hear that, there's no evidence of it. he's run for governor, he did very well in indiana. but this is a presidential campaign. and the scale is dramatically better. i think if mitch daniels gets in, though, then in all likelihood if not openly privately mississippi governor haley barbour, his dear friend, with the giant roll desk, jumps in and tries to establish him. gwen: the bush is calling him to urge and get in. there's some establishment support. but what about the antiestablishment support? since last week when we were sitting here, mike huckabee dropped out of the race, if he was ever really in it. so that means that people who were sitting back on the sidelines and trying to decide what to do next have to scatter

and go somewhere. where do they go? >> one of the things doyle was hinting at is there's a number of key constituency that still have yet to find a good horse. social conservatives don't have one although michelle bachmann could come up. the tea the tea partyies, other than ron paul who may or may not be a viable long-term candidate -- >> tim to plenty? >> he gets in. he's trying. he's been meeting with them and if you look at the field, as michael has said, all of them have really strong problems with their canned day d.a. sis. -- canned da sis but pawlenty is a little bit different because he has growth room. romney can't become something he wasn't in 2008 or risk becoming more of a flip flopper and we discussed gingrich's problems and it goes on and on but pawlenty was a pretty good governor, midwestern governor, he doesn't have a whole lot of negative stuff attached to him. he did advocate for a cap and trade system, something he immediately came out and said,

sorry, mistake, didn't mean to do it. trying to get that off the plate. he's got growing room. and he has been meeting with the tea partyiers, he announced his team in iowa this week, it's a very good team and heading it up is mike huckabee's chairman who he had in iowa and huckabee won iowa and that's tea party central up there. gwen: it should be said that the president's not -- or his people are not just sitting on their hands and watching this all play out. he's been out raising money as well. what's happening on the democratic side? >> the democrats did very well in april in large part because the president got off the couch. he went out at the end of march, you know, to start raising money and they report in april that they raised $12.5 million, double what the r.n.c. did. these were all joint events, so if you see that kind of leap in money for the d.n.c., it is a hint of the kind of money he's starting to bank in his presidential campaign account. >> and he's presumably not going

to have a primary opponent so he's not going to have to spend that cash. gwen: he's certainly worried about, they must be watching one of these republicans. >> they're watching them all very closely and i think just from the number of leaks they're making about him, i think huntsman is the one they worried about the most. my favorite detail though of the whole gingrich-paul ryan thing was not even two days had gone by before white house aides set up and said, this just proves that destroying medicare is the new test for the republican party primary. so they see an opportunity here to just drive that whole debate further and further to the right. toward the tea party, away from the center, and that's why they were happy about what happened. >> and we saw the first ad come up this week from one of the super packs an it was the democrats who moved first, not karl rove and his group. gwen: these independent expenditure groups who do not have the limitations of the campaign finance laws which the republicans have dominated, karl

rove and those folks in past times. now the democrats are getting in on the game. >> and they unveiled their first ad and it was an attack on romney. they're not working with the white house, they can't coordinate with the white house, but it's an indication at least of where -- that he too is a candidate that the democrats -- >> in 2012, independent expenditure group means are you completely tied to the group you're not supposed to be tied to. >> guy who is running that group had an office in the white house a week ago. >> a spokesman for the white house. gwen: exactly. >> that's what independent means. >> if republicans have a long, bloody and expensive nomination fight, is that good news or bad news for barack obama? >> good news. gwen: really quick answer. thank you. the white house thought to focus its fire power on another target this week, sending a message to the middle east and to the arab world. >> for decades the united states has pursued a sed insurgent of core interests in the region -- has pursued a set of core

interests in the region. stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, securing the free flow of commerce and safeguarding the security of the region, standing up for israel's security and pursuing arab-israeli peace. gwen: yeah, yeah, yeah, the president talked about syria and bahrain and egypt and tunishia but all the reaction was about whether arab-israeli peace talks should start with the 1967 borders. >> i think for there to be peace the palestinians will have to accept some basic reality. the first is that while israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines. because these lines are indefensible, because they don't take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground. gwen: so much of the agreement and the disagreement seems to be

about language, body language and others and also just about signal sending. >> oh, yeah. signal sending, absolutely. and signal sending in the arcane language of arab-israeli diplomacy. these are really smoke signals and you have to know the language to know what's going on here. first, the 1967 borders. the 1967 borders, the borders between israel and the west bank and israel and gazza have been -- gwen: or the armistice lines as some call it. >> or the armistice lines if you want a different date to work off of have been the basis of negotiations since at least the clinton administration. everybody involved in this knows that. president obama wasn't saying israel has to go back to those borders, he said, you start with those borders and make adjustments to them. ok. that's been de facto u.s. policy. but no president had explicitly said it before as u.s. policy, as the starting point that was sort of written in gold and

netanyahu didn't like that because he wanted to hang onto that as kind of a bargaining chip. even though it's a bargaining chip that he's given away with, that his predecessors have given away, he wants the right to take it back. he wasn't happy about that phrase. on the other side, obama had to sit there and listen to not one but several lectures about basic realities on the ground. you heard prime minister netanyahu say that. well with, realities on the ground is code language for the israeli settlements in the west bank and the israeli view that they cannot realistically be asked to give all of them up, that giving up any of them, that moving any of those people into israel proper would be an enormous sacrifice. what is going on here? remember, no negotiations are going on. right? ok -- gwen: our envoy just quit. >> that's right. what's going on here is that israel and the palestinians are trying to raise the price of every concession that they already know they are going to be asked to make. in fact, some of them have made in principle in the past.

and president obama is actually trying to lower the price of these concessions by saying, come on, folks, we already know where the starting point is. so what this is like, to use a bad baseball metaphor, it's like two pitchers throwing brushback pitches to each other to set the ground rules before we ever get into the negotiations that we'd like to have. >> this seems to be all we ever do in the middle east. we never have the negotiations. we just have an endless series of brushback pitches and taboo words being broken. does anyone think there's going to be, as a result of what happened this week, a change, any progress, or is just an indication of no progress? >> it is an indication that the obama administration would like to get the process started again and one of the interesting arguments they made this week, the president made it implicitly, his aides made it more explicitly and i think they made it explicitly in the meetings with netanyahu is where there is a connection to the rest of the arab spring. here is israel surrounded by countries that are in tumult.

and the natural israeli inclination is to sit tight and try and let the dust settle and not give anything up. president obama is saying, wait a minute. you're getting a whole lot of different governments out there, they're going to be democratically elected more of them, they're going to be populous, they're going to worry more about opinion in the street. and if you don't manage this, they could be more hostile and not more benign. you have been able to manage your relationship with egypt because you just had to make a deal with mubarak and his military. a democratic egypt may be harder. let's get something going before the ground starts shifting in the wrong direction. >> so the question i had about this all week is why now? why did barack obama, who is having a perfectly good week, he spoke to the coast guard academy, he went to the c.i.a. today to do another sort of victory lap on osama bin laden, that's a good week for a president. why go into this mine field which has been the bain of so many previous presidents' existence? gwen: when he could have take an

victory lap about the arab spring and the u.s. support for -- >> he would have liked to do that and here we are in the year before an election year, it's the last time you really want to be starting arab-israeli negotiations which is why i don't think this is about negotiations this year or next year. this is about negotiations in the first year of the second obama administration if there is one. why did it have to happen? well, first the administration hadn't put its arab democracy policy in any framework. there was pressure to do that. if you were going to do that you had to talk about israel and the palestinians. and if you were going to talk about israel and the palestinians you had to do it before netian hue came and spoke to congress. so -- before netanyahu came and spoke to congress. so it was kind of an accident of the schedule. gwen: and that's going to happen monday when he goes and speaks to congress. finally, the sexual assault scandal that shook global politics and sent tremors through troubled european economies. on the surface it was about

alleged criminality by i.m.f. chief dominique strauss-khan. but scratch the surface and it was about so much more, wasn't it? >> yeah. you've got to start with who dominique strauss-khan is as a figure in europe and the globe. he's not just an economic leader, he's a political leader who was leading in the polls to be the next president of france. and that's what gave him so much clout in the negotiations over whether or not to continue the bailouts of greiss, what to do about portugal, what to do about ireland. the concern in the global finance markets right now is that greece and portugal are the bear stearns and leemen brothers of this year and if they go down they could bring the rest of the global financial system with them. the markets are watching this very, very carefully. dominique strauss-khan was viewed as a guy who could go into these conversations and really bang heads and get a deal done in a very difficult situation. now this thing explodes out of nowhere and removes one of the central figures at the table, they had to have these negotiations in brullses this week without him and the i.m.f.

spent most of the week this week insisting that it was fully capable of operating without dominique strauss-khan. but i've got to tell you, this is a very shocking story and as a reporter who has been in washington for a long time, as you guys all have as well, week of covered sex scandals before but this is a sex and violence scandal. the alleges here are of a difficult magnitude than we've seen before. >> what if anything account u.s. do in terms of where the i.m.f. goes from here? it's been headed by a european for, you know, many, many years, and the europeans say, you know, look, we -- the biggest problem on the i.m.f.'s plate is us. so we want one of our own in there. but where is our government? >> which is why the emerging markets say -- >> gwen: if i could piggyback on that. it's interesting that time geithner weighed in when the official administration line was, we have nothing to say about this. i think he's got to quit. >> yeah, geithner gave him a push. and you talk about smoke signals here.

this is a situation where the u.s. is puffing all this smoke out this week. the u.s. is being very careful. they're keeping the powder dry. they don't want to say what they want explicitly. they're not playing the name game because there are a lot of names floating around of who the next person should be there. but tim geithner came out today and said in very coded language, we're open to a european or we've also been talking to the emerging market countries as well. that plays into this giant geoeconomic political battle royale over whether this is going toad to go to a european country or these emerging markets. >> what does it matter? >> it matters desperately to the emerging markets, the so-called brick nations, brazil, india, russia, china. these are countries that feel like they've been excluded from the mainstream of the global economy ever since world war ii when the u.s. basically sat at a table with a bunch of defeated and crippled european nations and set the rules of the game for the global economy. they went -- they want in on that deal and this they see is their opportunity to be there. >> but not an american? >> american is absolutely off the table. the number two guy there is a

guy who is a former jpmorgan economist. he's there now and he's a care taker. we saw him speak this week. he's got a reputation as more of a tech contract than a leader of men type. so an american is definitely off the table because of the long time deal which says that the world bank belongs to the americans and the i.m.f. belongs to the europeans. >> who fixes europe now? >> well, that's a really good question. that's why there's so much angst over what has happened here. presumably the europeans have to do it themselves. america until germany is going to be one of the -- marcle in germany is going to be one of the key figures and sarkozy of france is much more a deal maker. this gives sarkozy a little wiggle room now that his big political rival is off the stage. sarkozy can step in and be a deal maker in a way that he couldn't be before because it would give a win to his opposition. gwen: we don't talk about crime stories here much but this was a story which wasn't just about infidelity, it was far more shocking than that. will that affect the outcome? >> absolutely. we all know that the french have

a more liberal attitude toward politicians who filander than americans do, but this as you say is much beyond that. that's why the french public was so shocked and we saw this initial sort of revulsion in the french public who said this can't be true, this must be a setup. this could never happen. well with, you know, it looks like -- well, you know, it looks like it did happen, at least that's what the new york police department is saying and dominique strauss can said he's innocent and we'll see where the case goes from there. gwen: thank you. thank you, everyone. there's more to talk about, of course, but for that you'll have to find us online at the washington week web cast at pbs.org. keep up with me on the pbs news hour and we'll see you back here next week on "washington week." good night. >> funning for "washington week" is provided -- -- funding for

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