gwen: when ideas collide, the president and congress face off over jobs and republican candidates face off over who be president. plus, our reporters remember 9/11, tonight on "washington week." >> you should pass this jobs plan right away. pass this bill. pass this bill right away. gwen: the president challenges congress to help dig the nation out of an economic hole. >> i know that some of you have

sworn oaths to never raise taxes on anyone for as long as you live. now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle class taxes. gwen: but will it work? >> the thing that we don't like are the things that we should aside and work out here but there's plenty of room for agreement. gwen: and the reconfigured republican presidential field begins a series of debates. >> michael dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, mitt. fact, georger of bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, governor. we were the number one job creator in the country during my years as governor. gwen: covering the week, jackie calmes of the "new york times" and john harris of "politco" and "washington week" panelists share reporter stories about 9/11. >> it was a day for me where you put your own fear in a box. >> everyone else was running

away from it. i was running toward it. >> when i think about my life, it's pre-9/11 and post-9/11. gwen: 10 years later. >> 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. why we're here. >> this is the network, a living, breathing intelligence

that's helping business rethink how to do business. in here, inventory can be taught to learn. in here, machines have a voice. in here, medical history follows you even when you're away from home. the at&t network, a network of possibilities creating and integrating solutions, helping business and the world work. rethink possible. >> 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 to your pbss station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator, gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. there were a lot of gauntlets thrown down this week. one thrower was president obama

who pitched a jobs bill to congress last night and went on the road to richmond, virginia, to sell it today. >> i was glad to hear some republicans, including your congressman, say they see room for us to work together. they said that they're open to some of the proposals to create american jobs. look, i -- i know that folks sometimes think, you know, maybe i used up the benefit of the doubt, but i'm an eternal optimist. i'm an optimistic person. gwen: it's no accident that he was in richmond. that's house majority leader eric cantor's home district. this was his response to the president's pleadings. >> i've already said there are plenty of areas that i think have room for agreement but i object to the all-or-nothing message that the president is delivering. that's not how anybody operates.

no two people usually agree on anything 100%. gwen: and on the campaign trail, another challenge. this one to social security. >> i think the republican candidates are talking about to transition this program, and it is a monstrous lie. it is a ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you paying into a program that's going to be there. >> our nominee has to be someone who isn't committed to abolishing social security but who's committed to saving social security. gwen: so much for the third rail. the gauntlets were thrown. who picked them up, jackie? >> i'm not sure the republicans picked them up but they said they'd think about it which, in this washington, counts as progress, i think. time will tell whether there's been a rhetorrical change or a real one but the republicans changed their tone as the clips

from eric cantor showed and as president obama alluded to in richmond today. there are a few reasons for that. one is, if the republicans are seen as standing in the way of anything, they could be in real trouble if the economy doesn't improve or gets worse. they already got a great deal of the blame for the august debt limit fight. they could lose the house, as bad as president obama's doing in the polls, there's five dozen republicans who are from districts that president obama won in 2008. he won't win all of those probably next year, but that shows that those are competitive districts and they can't afford to lose more than 24. gwen: on the left coast of the country, john harris, you were moderating the debate, and there were gauntlets thrown there, too. >> all over the place. gwen: all over the place, entitlements, social security. who was throwing them and who was picking them up? >> the story of this debate was clearly governor rick perry who

has just entered the race. this was his first debate and we see it consistently across several polls, is atop this race. this was really the chance to show us, is this for real. does he have the goods. the gauntlets were thrown down on social security. just last year when he didn't plan to run for president, governor perry wrote his book, "fed up" that is filled on almost every page with the kind of thing that a cautious , calculating, playit safe would never say, and above all, on social security. gwen: he said he would never run for president. >> that's a credible thing. now he is running for president, the question is, how does he make an asset of this and else on stage, the other seven, in particular, governor mitt romney, how do they make that book a liability. the most interesting exchange was over social security. governor perry did not back away from his rhetorrical statement

that social security is a ponzi scheme. in a way, that's flamboyant say something that a lot of republicans agree with, that social security is financially unsustainable. more interesting and more radical is what perry argued in that book, which is that social security was a bad idea in the first place, that it violated constitutional principles. that is a genuinely provocative idea and the gauntlet thrown there was by mitt romney saying, look, we cannot go into a general election with a nominee who thinks social security, one of the most popular federal government programs for 70 years, was a bad idea. gwen: or won the primary in florida. let's talk about strategy here. the white house clearly had a strategy. the president was full of vim, vigor, a new aggressive tone. was that part of the plan? they were going to go to capitol hill and push back? >> absolutely. they wanted congress as the audience because, you know, to convey the gravity of it, and so that he could sort of be seen as

confronting the opposition, to show his own party and that he hasvoters fight in him and they think they have the substance on their side, too. this package of his was carefully crafted to be about 60% tax cuts. mostly, an extension of the payroll tax relief that's law this year. and he's dared them, you know, you say you're for tax cuts, then you got to be for this one because if it expires at the end of this year as scheduled, it would be, on average, $1,000 tax increase for every -- the average american family. put up or shutng up. >> exactly. gwen: on the debate stage, mitt romney, who was considered the front runner until rick perry got into the race and michele bachmann who was doing extraordinarily well, it felt like everything got scrambled. >> totally got scrambled it.

seemed to me that everybody but romney and perry had a challenge, which is, can i fight my way into the top tier of candidates. the consensus afterwards and i don't dispute it was that michele bachmann did not succeed, did not command the moment to make a convincing case she belongs in the top tier. some thought that governor came with the idea that he would be more aggressive, did that. seemed to me that many of the things he said would resonate with independent voters or even democrats more than republican primary voters. mitt romney, to me, showed that he is a much more fluent, capable, nimble campaigner than he was in 2007. i think governor perry clearly passed the test which is no small thing. he didn't look implausible up there. he didn't embarrass himself. he did come across -- he showed the attributes that his supporters find appealing. very commanding, even blustery.

he didn't answer the questions, to my mind, about his substantive depth. he had opportunities to do so on global warming and other topics, but skated over the surface of those. but he came in and held his place, certainly. so in some ways, an impressive performance by him. but it does to me seem we have a two person race at the moment. gwen: we had seen the president try to do this before, give the big speech, speak over the heads of washington and the pundits and republicans in congress, and try to make a big case. is that what we're seeing? in richmond and on his way to ohio? >> it's interesting. he's been dogged since nearly the beginning of his term with the complaint from within his own party that he hasn't really campaigned for his ideas, he hasn't mounted a sustained pro-jobs agenda and he hasn't been tough about it, hasn't shown fight. well, you know, the white house, of course, rejects that line of

thinking, and in fairness to the white house, the president has been interrupted by outside events throughout his administration, like the b.p. oil spill last year. this fall, you're going to see, at least they're going to try a sustained campaign. next week -- he was in virginia today. next week, ohio and north carolina, three battleground states. he's going to do another bus tour this fall. gwen: he says he's going coast to coast to campaign, battleground state to battleground state. what are the candidates doing? are they going to new hampshire first or scattering? >> they're scattering, certainly, but they're trying to continue framing the issues from this debate. romney's people made it clear immediately afterwards they're going to try to hold perry's feet to the fire on the social security issue. perry has placed a big bet that the politics of 2010, the midterm elections, can be taken to the presidential campaign trail of 2012. he played to the base, riled people up and don't worry about the usual rules to moderate your

stance for swing voters. gwen: thank you, john, thank you, jackie. what's interesting about both of these debates is nobody talked about national security and here we are, 10 years ago, this america rocked by a domestic attack that changed the way many of us go about our jobs and our lives. to mark the observance of this anniversary, we asked several of our "washington week" regulars to tell us how they experienced the day and how it's changed their lives and their jobs. >> i was sitting at my desk when the first tower was hit, and i was very quickly on the phone to new york, where the magazine is headquartered, and while i was talking about it, the second plane hit the second tower. >> i was on my way to work on september 11, just a regular work day, and like everyone else, walked past the television set where i saw the most horrific thing happening. >> i was covering the white house that day. i heard about the first plane

going into the towers and i wasn't thinking the connection to terrorism. i thought of a small plane. >> we saw the first plane hit and we thought it was a horrible accident. then the second plane hit, we realized it was terrorism. >> this is al qaeda. we know this is going to be al qaeda, there's no one else it can be. >> i ran for the subway and headed toward my office. there were hordes of people, cars were jammed coming out of washington and they were almost going into washington. >> i was in sarasota, florida, with president bush, covering what we thought would be an ordinary education event at booker elementary school. i was in a small anteroom to watch the president and watch television. we see the first after-effect of the plane in the tower and then we watched the second jet fly in and you have a feeling that what you're seeing can't be believed. >> it was so unfathomable, what had just happened, you couldn't imagine what came next.

>> and you had this gathering sense of forboding because you had two planes crashing, there was an awareness that there may be other planes in the air. there were rumors on the radio that there was another plane coming towards the state department, so i drove down towards the state department and was driving and opened the sun roof and was looking up to see if i could see the plane as i was headed down to the state department. that plane didn't exist. it was one of the millions of rumors that day. >>atives the first time that i remember and it's never happened since, that people around me in washington, not just in the news room that i was in, but all around the city, were scared, because they didn't know what was going to happen. >> we saw, of course, what was happening in new york city, but then we heard something happened at the pentagon. saw the smoke coming from the pentagon and i knew it was hit before i'd seen it on television. >> i raced to get a taxicab and we went out there.

we could only make it halfway over the bridge so i ran the rest of the distance to the pentagon. everyone else was running away from it. >> in that chaos, literally, everything horrible seemed possible. >> i've been at the pentagon when the plane hit, i was evacuated with everyone else at the pentagon. >> i think what i recall more than anything that day, looking across and seeing the smoke rising from the pentagon all day, and then seeing fighter jets go down to potomac river. >> i could see all these military boats patrolling the river, i got into downtown washington. there were tanks and armored personnel carriers and uniformed troops on the corners. i never thought of washington, d.c., my home town, as being a war zone. >> we saw this incredible system of triage being set up along the highway outside the pentagon. but as the hours ticket by, it was clear that it wasn't needed

because everyone was either able to walk away or they were dead. >> for the first time in my life, i never felt it before, never since, the highest levels of the united states government were caught completely flat footed, doesn't know what was happening, had no idea what was coming next, and in ways that i found very disturbing then and still now, had the same look of dread i had on my face. what's next? >> we were waiting for the president to return that evening and he was going to address the nation. he looked so stricken and grim, resolute, but stricken. >> today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. >> my most vivid memory of that day, when the work was finally done, this very long drive from

washington took us right past the pentagon, which still, eight, nine, 10 hours later, was still burning. >> i stood on the knoll overlooking the road to see that part of the pentagon, and it was still in flames. there was still smoke. finally i could come to grips with, in my own mind, exactly what had happened in new york, in shanksville, and then in washington. >> it was ghostly, because washington, by then, by the evening, was almost deserted, except for national guard checkpoints with sand bags at major intersections and you had to stop at a checkpoint to go ahead. i had been through that before but only in places like beirut. >> we all covered it as reporters but we all felt it as americans at the same time. later that day, i went home and we went to a house of some

friends and their 11-year-old son, we were watching tv and it was all very confusing and and i remember him pulling me aside and saying, you know what's going on, explain to me what's happened, explain to me what's happened, and the sense that our kids were terrified. >> i think there's part of every american who remembers that day, that they will have, somewhere inside them, that's afraid. >> this thought that immediately came into my head was, i felt sorry for my children. i knew that my children would live under a different type of shadow, a different type of threat that would never go away and would never know when it might hit or not hit. >> it was a day that required you to both toughen up and realize you were in for several years of tough work, and also watch people and their lives come apart. >> for weeks afterward, the most amazing experience, just the

personal experience after september 11, was my commute to work every day which took me right past the pentagon where, at the side of the building, where the plane crashed, there was a scar. it was a big burn scar, and they had hung a huge american flag over it. >> they said that day, this is going to change everything. and it did. >> and the next morning, i remember getting up and thinking, i just have to go do my job. i can't think about what happened, i can't think about anything other than my job. >> there was also a sense of collective psychic remorse that those people in the counter terrorism or the terrorism part of our government who had been warning about this had simply been shunted aside. oh, that's what you do all the

time, you lay awake at night worrying about terrorists squirreled away in holes in the side of mountains in afghanistan. that's what you do, but we're bigger, serious people. and we thought, they were right. >> we have to remember that in august, just a month before 9/11, the intelligence community was warning that bin laden is determined to strike in the u.s. >> we knew about al qaeda. we knew that they were growing, and we didn't really chase it. >> there was collective remorse about the government failing to theeciate and understand threat. >> the main question was how soon were we going to war and how the new president was going to manage this catastrophic moment. >> i spent the month earlier in crawford, texas, covering president bush. there were questions about is he a consequential president. it changed his presidency forever.

>> a country at war and soon two wars and you're thinking, everyone you used to know about wars, one state against another, in this case, we were fighting an amorphous group. we didn't know who the enemy was. >> this is the epitome of asymmetrical warfare or struggle where literally a handful of men could do a devastating act on a large country, the greatest country in the world. >> on my orders, the united states military has begun strikes against al qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the taliban regime in afghanistan. >> afghanistan was supposed to be over so quickly and when you look back at it, we had so few people involved. i mean, just tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. >> it was a short war on the front end, rapid victory over the taliban, consolidation of that country, elections. all those things looked very positive and then the president

and his administration became extremely focused on iraq. >> our attention and resources were diverted from afghanistan to iraq. special operations forces that were key to the fight in afghanistan were redirected to iraq. as a result, there was not an end game in afghanistan and 10 years later, we are still there. >> the conflict morphed over time. it was all consuming at the beginning. it was everything that the bush administration could focus on. >> for the next eight or nine years, we became focused on wars and death in america but in this different way and we had two wars that became a part of our politics. >> we were in a war that became very polarizing within the country. so in some ways, the aftermath of that experience took all the things that we didn't like about our politics and made them worse. >> president bush felt so strongly that he wanted to rebuild confidence, and in fact,

his two-term presidency was undermined to such a large extent with a lack of confidence in some of the steps that were taken afterwards, obviously, going into iraq, et cetera, mass destruction. >> before 9/11, it's hard to remember now, but we actually went through a period after the end of the cold war when american foreign policy didn't matter anymore, and 9/11 changed that. in an odd way, it changed it not only in the obvious sense that it made american foreign policy terribly relevant, we were back in wars, to begin with, but even on the domestic front, because 9/11 touched off a big reorganization of the federal government and a massive expansion of the federal government. >> i've visited, between iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, the middle east, probably more than three dozen times over the last 10 years. i became a regular commuter to war zones. >> i think about my life, it's pre-9/11 and post-9/11 because i had just graduated college and

had done a couple of journalism jobs and then all of a sudden my whole life was transformed and i was suddenly in conflict and doing interviews over dead bodies and in firefights and all this kind of stuff. it was just something i never imagined. >> it's interesting. we have been in war in afghanistan now for 10 years but someone told me it's not one war but several different wars and for a number of years it was a low-grade conflict without big-scale challenges and that's changed. i am still stunned when i go there about how much is going on, how real the danger is, how real the commitment on their part is, how many are deployed. time after time after time after time. gwen: reflections of the reporters who come here every week to empty their notebooks. you can find more of their interviews, plus my own reflections, online on our web site. follow the link at pbs.org to

our special page, "remembering 9/11" and for coverage of the weekend observances, join me for our special report sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern. see you next week on "washington week." good night. >> since 1875, we've been there for our clients through good times and bad. when their needs changed, we were there to meet them. through the years, from insurance to investment management, from real estate to retirement solutions, we've developed new ideas for the financial challenges ahead. this rock has never study still and that's one thing that will never change. prudential. >> corporate funding is also provided by boeing, at&t, rethink possible. additional funding for "washington week" is provided by

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