>> this is a major blow to al qaeda's most active affiliate. gwen: u.s. forces take out a u.s.-born terrorist in yemen. but at what cost? on the campaign trail, republicans have a crush on new jersey governor chris christie. >> anybody who has an ego large enough to say oh, please, please, please, stop asking me to be leader of the free world -- >> i mean, what kind of crazy egomaniac would you have to be to say oh, geez, please stop! gwen: why they're not taking no for an answer. >> who knows, maybe he will get in. it would be fun if he got in. gwen: and the president tries to calm nervous democrats. >> with patient and firm determination, we will press on. so i don't know about you, c.b.c., but the future rewards those who press on. gwen: and lawmakers kick the can

down the road yet again on the budget. why it matters. covering the week pierre thomas of abc news. john dickerson of "slate" magazine and cbs news. sam youngman of the hill. and major garrett of "national journal." >> 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 -- >> this rock has never stood still. since 1875, we have been there for our clients through good times and in 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 developed new ideas for the financial challenges ahead.

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washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. we awoke this morning to stunning news that anwr al wacky, the charismatic u.s. born preacher and terror plotter had been killed at a drone strike in yemen. the targeted killing aimed at further undermining al qaeda was the most high-profile u.s. terror operation since osama bin laden was killed in pakistan last spring. >> he directed the failed attempt to blow up an airplane on christmas day in 2009. he directed the failed attempt to blow up u.s. cargo planes in 2010. and he repeatedly called on individuals in the united states and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda. gwen: the successful operation immediately raised a number of questions, especially because of the u.s. government's killing of one of its own citizens. pierre's been on the story for months.

tell us, how important was the killing of al lackey? >> gwen, even before osama bin laden had been killed, sources have been telling me this was the most dangerous man on the planet. they said that because he was operational in terms of getting involved with al qaeda's operation to kill americans through plots developed overseas but also a pretty massive and sophisticated online presence. english speaking magazines online, which he would preach to americans kill other americans. they said he was both operational and also a propaganda genius. gwen: it wasn't long ago he was here in falls church, virginia, sitting not far from where we are tonight and he was considered a friend, moderate, somebody who cooperated with the u.s. government. how did he become radicalized and how did he become so important? >> this is an interesting story of his evolution. a lot of officials thought he was mod moderate as you said. beginning with the underwear bomb plot, we began to ee change in the thinking about this guy. i remember in december of last year i sat down with the attorney general.

even before it became in vogue to talk about al lackky and he said to me, this is one of the top three guys we should take out. i was sort of taken aback by that. as i continued to talk to law enforcement sources and intelligence sources, they kept coming back and saying a.m. lackey, beyond zawahri number two and al qaeda at the time, even beyond bin laden, they kept saying this guy, we've got to kill him. >> he has connections. he's an american. were there any legal problems? any questions of due process that got in the way of this operation or did those just go out the window? >> you know, we heard some discussion of that today but quite frankly, people have been talking to me on background about killing this guy for some time. they said he was an enemy of the state essentially, known terrorist leader, self-described enemy of america and he wanted to kill americans. the key thing they pointed out is he believed al qaeda should

do small to mid-scale attacks, that they shouldn't wait for the massive 9/11 scale attacks. he was the person who said get something done, get on the scoreboard. so you saw december 2009, underwear bombing plot christmas day designed to scare americans on the holiest of days in america. gwen: the difference between him and all of the other people this administration successfully targeted is he's an american citizen. that's the first time this happened. >> and to continue the due process question, why not try to arrest him? the administration talks about guantanamo says these cases can be successfully prosecuted. you develop the evidence. federal courts can handle the evidence. they have in the past. was there a reen -- a reason not to go that way? >> we saw towards the end of the bush administration and ramped up end of the administration to use drones. they found it was a very

effective way, precise way of doing it and very clean way of doing it. so they said forget the due process way in terms of bring people here, having national security issues, having trials. if people are in clear and present danger, we're going to kill them. that's what they have been doing. >> i was struck today at the white house daily briefing, jay carney was reluctant to say anything about this killing, which is a stark contrast from when bin laden was killed and john brennan came out and told us basically everything we wanted to know about it. do you think that speaks to the legalty of the investigation or lessons learned? >> i think it's a combination of both, lessons learned. they got into hot water for saying things that turned out not quite to be true. also the fact he is an american is a sensitive issue. there was a legal battle over that earlier this year with al lackey's father had gone to a federal court saying please stop this. this is illegal. the court threw it out, by the way. gwen: it wasn't long ago the administration saying al qaeda is weakened, leon panetta said

that. now he's saying they're really, really weakened. is this that significant they can stop worrying about al qaeda? >> this is huge. al qaeda central, based in afghanistan and pakistan, was severely damaged. bin laden led that group. they had been killing their leaders for quite some time. again, al qaeda in yemen, al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was a group that tried again not only christmas day plot but also ten months later tried to bomb cargo planes using a printer bomb plot. they're thought to be the most active group. the notion you can take out their spiritual leader and also someone who was radicalizing americans online. i think the most fascinating thing i found out today talking to sources is one reminded me of 50 cases brought against americans charged with terrorism, 19 of those cases awlaki, his name came up in the files in terms of people online looking at his materials, looking at his sermons. he was the guy who said we needed to get. gwen: it was that central. thank you, pierre. now we move on to presidential politics, is this the man who

can save the republican party? >> we watch a president who once talked about the courage of his convictions and still has yet found the courage to lead and still we continue to wait and hope that our president will finally stop being a bystander in the oval office. gwen: thousands of steps from other candidates from colin powell to mitch daniels who did not run, to wesley clark and claire thompson, who did, much to their regret. but did this is not new, what's different? what's driving the latest draft movement, john? >> they're always looking for a dream candidate. and there are greenroom conservatives, columnists and pundits who want somebody else to run in the race. they look at the field. they were most recently sorely disappointed by governor perry of texas's performance in the debates. they thought he might be a candidate with governing experience plus tea party cache

and meld those two and be the candidate. he had a tough time out of the gate. and mitt romney is very polished and good but doesn't excite the blood. and so this is the new hope they're looking for. but that's beyond that. chris christie has a good record for republicans on balancing the budget in new jersey, fighting and taking on unions and that clip of him speaking was fine. but where he really comes alive is in the q & a. he that's authenticity is the word you keep hearing over and over again. they want somebody with this moment where they can take on barack obama, who is so weakened, they want somebody out there who can take it to the president but also speak to a kind of gut level feeling republicans are having. gwen: do they really? i mean, to what degree is this people longing for something that just seems just out of reach, whether it was mitch daniels or haley barbour or no chris christie, or the fact he's just encouraging this? >> some of it is just uncomfortableness with the normal course of campaigns, which is that these things happen and there are candidates who take time to get going and they want say savior because it seems like such a ripe moment.

but also part of it is chris christie has said no many, many times but he hasn't absolutely said no. we saw this in his speech at the reagan library. gwen: but he has absolutely said no. >> here's the thing. watch that speech at the reagan library, he said, i refer you to my previous 900 comments where i said no. everybody thought ok, closed the door. then a woman stood up and gave a very impassioned plea saying please run, run for my daughter, run for my country. he said, i take in what you're saying. i hear you. you talk to his aides now and they say all of those previous ones, honest wasn't going to run. he's considering it now. what do we know? i talked to somebody who talked to him recently and they thought he's really going to run. talked to another who had a similar conversation and they said he's not going to run. he has to decide in about a week. >> how much of this is about blue state politics for republicans? there was a sense perry could light everything on fire but thence there was a sense maybe he lived and governed in the one-party state for so long, he doesn't really know how to carry a message nationally. how much of this curiosity and

fascination with christy is about the idea you have a rough and tumble politician who's a republican who succeeded in a blue state and can run nationally. ? >> i think that's part of it. he's also in a blue state and you don't have to travel far to know his story. i think that's part of it, the idea he can cross over. but that's also one of his weaknesses. he has views on immigration, he said with immigration when he was previously, he said immigration was not a crime. there's no such thing as illegal immigrants. you can't say that kind of thing in the modern republican party. on guns, he doesn't have proper pro gun -- he has a bit of gun control in him. civil unions. he believes human behavior does contribute to global warming. all of these are position that's will get him in big trouble. but also his ability to work in a blue state as you say that gives him potentially a general election appeal. that's, again, what makes him appealing. >> given the state of the republican party, is he conservative enough? >> no, he's not.

and the problem also is he's not conservative enough for the places he's going to run. look at the state he's got to work in, in iowa. well, in iowa, he is a new jersey rough and tumble governor running in a state with midwestern evangelicals. how did he make that connection? and you talk to folks in iowa. they know all of these things about civil unions and the selectability argument, he can win because he's from a blue state. he also has authenticity. that doesn't matter. if he's wrong on the issues, he's wrong on the issues. one of the problems in iowa is he said no so many times. they want somebody who sticks to their words, south carolina. south carolina seemed to be perry territory. he doesn't really mesh with conservatives in south carolina. so with so little time left, how does he talk to all of those constituents and still have enough time to actually breathe and sleep? >> speaking of time, i listen to the reagan library speech. i heard him say no, no, no, no -- maybe. the old joke orange you glad i didn't say banana? but i wonder with florida moving

up in the calendar primary, new hampshire moving up their filing deadline i believe to october 28, does this have an impact on the decision he makes? >> it does, it has an impact on him or sarah palin if she gets in. florida moved up to the 31st. now the four previous states will leapfrog in the beginning of january. when they do that, they will lose some of the their delegates which means it starts earlier. you need money to get going. then the process because those early states lost their delegates, it means process lengthens which means you need money to live to the end. for a candidate like him to put more pressure on raising money in an organization, and that's hard to do with so little time left. gwen: we're expecting a decision maybe next week at this time? >> at the latest. gwen: unless there's not. >> we will see. gwen: over in the democratic party, the enthusiasm is directed squarely at the incumbent. the white house, which has noted growing discontent, has taken two approaches, to warn of a tough fight ahead. >> we don't have the winds at our back in this election. we have the wind in our face because the american people have the wind in their faces.

and so this is going to be a "titanic" struggle. gwen: to tell the tractors to get over it. -- tell detracters to get over it. >> i don't have time to feel sorry for myself. i don't have time to complain. i'm going to press on. i expect all of you to be with me and press on! take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes, shake it off. stop explaining, stop grumbling, stop crying, we are going to press on. we've got work to do. c.b.c. gwen: you know, i have never owned a pair of bedroom slippers. that was maxine waters, we assume the president was talking about there, is this a real feud going on? >> can't you feel the love with the c.b.c. remarks? gwen: i was in the room. there was a lot of love in those rooms. >> i heard that. it's sort of been filtered out and responded to differently. it is a real family feud but it's sort of old hat to the

democratic party. this is what they do. the in-fighting is sort of their signature trait. what's remarkable is to see the republican party going through this now, if you think about moveon.org as sort of the precursor to a conservative version of the tea party, it will be interesting to see how republicans deal with this kind of identity crisis. but right now the president is trying to mend fences with his base with black voters, with what they called professional left, with environmental voters. they're not doing so well with the environmental voters, i don't believe. but i think right now the president's main challenge is the way he goes about courting the base. we saw this -- gwen: is that what they're really upset about, they don't feel like they've been courted or are there actually policy issues they're upset about? >> it's absolutely both. if you go back to the health care debate, you have the jettison of the public option, which was clearly a policy issue the left felt dearly about. that being said there's also the matter of the lines of

communication. a lot of key constituencies don't feel like they've been reached out enough or consulted enough as the president's moved forward. >> well, in terms of the black community, i want to go back to that for a second, i have talked to some friends of mine who said, look, i was offended by the slippers remark. other people said look, that speech had a lot of love, as gwen mentioned. can he expect the community, black community, to come out in the force that they did in 2008? >> well, a lot of the problem for the president is the novelty has worn off. he's a man. hee a president, not a candidate catching lightning in a bottle. but there again, i think the white house's defense this week is the president talks to everybody like this, not just black community but everybody. all of his friends like this. i think there's some evidence of this if you look at the run up to 2010, midterms. president was doing sort of the same thing, bullying, chiding his friends into going to the polls. i don't know if that will work this time t certainly didn't in 2010. >> exactly it didn't work in

2010. is the target the same, which is to say is there one complaint he can go after. i wrote a piece this week about leadership and blast of anger came from the left who said on issue after issue, he showed no leadership. it was a long list of issues. or is there a central complaint he can go out in terms of mending fences? >> i think it starts with leadership. a lot of people have i spoken with would fit this category of sort of traditional democratic face, the time straw was the dead ceiling debate. they felt the president caved and that was it. they have seen him compromise and capitulate before and they felt like with that one, it was time to give up because they didn't recognize barack obama anymore. i think what he's doing right now is trying to turn that around. you have seen him go on the offense with this american jobs act. you have seen him on the road and speaker boehner and leader mcconnell's backyard. he is certainly trying to take the fight to republicans and correct that leadership issue. >> republicans thought that's what the president was trying to do with the speech and various road shows. they looked at the numbers and said the president still hasn't moved the needle. so does the white house agree,

a, hasn't moved the needle and how concerned are they about that? >> white house does not agree they haven't moved the needle. you heard them say a broad sector of the american public supports the american jobs act which the president wants to pass right now, which it's not going to pass right now. i dote know if it's a huge concern for them. it's enough concern they're putting energy, time and money into it. but at the same time i think there's a belief that whoever emerges with the republican nomination battle will go a long way in solving the concerns. gwen: that's the question. the president said there's always someone who will be critical of the president of the united states. by the way, look at the other guys, i'm not the almighty but i'm also not the alternative. is that what they're counting on? >> i think so. i think biden went far off balance when he said joe biden was a referendum. if it is, they're going home early. david axelrod is speaking openly about making this an election of contrast. we know contrast is a coword for mud and lots of it. gwen: oh, mud, geez.

thank you. welcome to "washington week." >> thank you. gwen: finally to congress where yet another last-minute compromise headed off another threat of government shutdown and unfunded priorities. but whose priorities? is the threat permanently averted? will we all have to get on the merry-go-round the next time this happens only six weeks from now? major? >> yes, we get to ride the merry-go-round again. aren't we so happy about that? gwen: not really. >> the threat averted, yes, for a couple weeks. washington has now become a place, particularly on capitol hill, where extending government operations for six weeks is actually viewed as a significant accomplishment. that's really something to high five good. we kept the government open for six weeks. aren't we proud of ourselves? that's the minimal level of task accomplishment on capitol hill now. because everything is fought over. i wrote a piece for "national journal" this week saying even disaster aid for immediate assistance to those americans devastated, left homeless by natural disasters, events completely out of their control

for the last five or six weeks have received no reconstruction assistance from the federal government. why? because funds were all gone. why? because congress didn't replenish them fast enough. so basically if you're a disaster victim and you weren't bleeding from your eyes, the federal government had nothing to give you. the only money available was for life and limb, emergency intervention. we have never been in this position before. why? because you can't even agree on this, this elemental form of government service and response to citizen needs. that's where we have gotten in washington. and that's really one of the things that was part and parcel of this debate. not that it was new that we're fighting over money but that we're fighting over the most basic kind of money we have ever given out before. >> has it gotten worse? in other words, what were republicans and democrats taking about the next stage in this fight a week or two from now? gwen: if any at all. >> briefly, last week when the house vote, first one collapsed. house democrats said you know what, we're not going to give you votes on these big issues.

we're not going to help you out. house republicans said, we have to find the votes ourselves. they couldn't. a day later house republicans found the vote. two lessons, democrats said we will be unified from now on. the president is in trouble. we as a party are in trouble. we're not going to capitulate, deal with republicans anymore. what did republicans learn? well, if we have to find the votes ourselves, we have to go farther to the right to get them. so for a country that may look at this congress and say is, gosh, they strike me as awfully conservative, just wait. >> it's pretty -- excuse me, it's pretty easy politics to say voting against federal disaster aid is bad politics. how much of this was actually about national disaster aid and how much of it was about ideology and spending and all of that good stuff? >> i talked to someone who i think is conversant on both of these questions. jeff landry, freshman, tea party inspired republican from louisiana. two of his parishes were devastated by katrina. he said, i'm proud that i voted against the disaster aid the way i did because we are in a $14 trillion debt situation. my constituents want us to

economize. we offset some of that with taking money out of programs i think are wasteful, fuel technology, green job, things the president is doing. we can do that. and i can stand and look at my constituents and say i'm willing to make that because we have to take hard positions. that's a defensible, ideological approach. and part of what drove this, democrats look and say wait a minute, we never held disaster aid hostage over budget issues before. it's a new argument and even those who you might think wouldn't be part of that republican argument are. >> party leaders, do they even care that their numbers in terms of congress approval are approaching single digits? do they even care? >> congress has the lowest net approval rating it's ever had in history. the difference between approval and disapproval now 70 points or more in almost every poll that's taken. within that republicans can find some reassuring signs that there's a general sense, maybe in the 40's, that keeping the republican congress would be a good idea or my member of congress is still ok. but it does weigh on the minds of congressional leaders.

but you can only lead if your followers will follow. gwen: that was my next point. the president can't guarantee the democrats will stick with him and speaker boehner can't guarantee republicans will stick with him. they haven't got earmarks to grease the skid. what are they going to do? >> i talked to several people in the republican leadership today and he said look, the speaker has been very good explaining things but explaining things late. he needs to explain things earlier. it needs to be a bottom-up process. easier said than done. gwen: i think we will be back on the merry-go-round again. thank you all very much. that was depressing. we have to go on -- now but we will pick up where we left off online. you can find us at 11:00 p.m. eastern at pbs.org. keep up with daily developments including the return of the supreme court first monday in october on air and online all week long at the pbs newshour. then join us around the table next week on "washington week." good night.

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every single bite needed to be tasted.