>> production assistance for "inside washington" was provided by allbritton communications and politico, reporting on the legislative, executive, and political arena. >> he is a nice guy. i just think he is misguided and in over his head. >> this week on "inside washington," who is a nicer guy and who would do a better job with the economy? scandals with it the gsa in las vegas. >> crimes have been committed, people go to jail. >> secret service in colombia. >> the deadly behavior depicted in those photographs absolutely violates both our regulations

and, more importantly, our core values. >> discovery's final flight and the future of american space exploration. the changing media landscape -- a salute to politico's pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist matt wuerker. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- let's talk about nice guys. a cnn poll earlier this week revealed that president obama has a double-digit lead on mitt romney unlike ability, honesty, confidence, and with -- on likability, honesty, confidence, and women. but on the economy, they are tied. on a couple of independent voters, obama's approval gap is

5%. >> what would you say to president and mrs. obama? >> start packing. [laughter] >> not so fast, governor bridge you have to get voters to warm up to you. >> i need to show them the other side of him. >> the e-book for a transcript of this broadcast, log on to insidewashington.tv. -- the e-book "inside the circus." evan, may be nice guys to finish last. >> what matters more is the economy. the cloud on the horizon is europe. spain's problems -- you can

feel the fear of the ripple effect. spain and europe have an economic crisis, that is a threat to obama. >> nina? >> we up here may not care about who is nicer. we should care about who has better judgment. but the history of elections does not show that. al gore did not get to be president because the voters did not think he was in the sky and george bush was. >> colby? >> we are early. they have not had it debates, they have not gone face-to-face with each other. romney's patronizing statement that he has been nice guy but in over his head, that kind of thing will be tested during the campaign. >> charles? >> well, it is early, and at the

nice guy thing -- romney's problem is not that people think he is often simpl -- not that people think he is offensively not nice, ideas that he is stiff. evan is right on this, europe is a cloud on the horizon. if that becomes an issue, i don't think it is going to matter. stiffness, being sober, stable, even solemn will work to the advantage of the challenger if there are economic issues at stake, which obviously there will be. he is our guy with economic experience. >> john painter and mitch mcconnell are on board this week. what about the conservative base? >> obama and romney. when at the base had other choices, they tried six others

and that did not work. the last man standing, the alternative to eight romney presidency, as barack obama's. -- is barack obama. >> i agree with that, sort of. there is no place to go. but the numbers, republican turnout in the primaries, has been a lower this year come to my amazement. i am not sure -- when you are talking to very small percentages, it makes a difference. that is what karl rove determined, that the 2011 election was so close that he needed to drive the base. george bush won reelection in 2004 because a small number turned out and were enthusiastic. >> and those that you

mentioned, mitch daniels, a sort of damned with faint praise. "romney is campaigning to win, not as he would govern." to say to young people or poor people, i can bring you into the system -- he is talking to people with fund-raising. able to goove was down an interstate of ohio and find voters are certain type. the fine-tuning, both campaigns and do this now. finding the specific places, that can make the difference. >> in a cnn poll, condoleezza rice came in first. chris christie, marco rubio, paul ryan.

rubio said no thanks. >> you never believe that. >> but the dream act, giving undocumented children some legal status -- >> if rubio passes the vetting test and he says no thanks, he will find a horse's head in his bed. [laughter] >> many years ago, in reviewing the great te -- interviewing the great teddy white, i asked him a question, and he said, "the cardinal rule of politics is that you cannot look around corners." what are the other announced, evan -- other unknowns, evan?

>> months ago we thought it would be iran. david ignatius had an interesting column this week -- pretty well informed bguy -- that maybe there is a deal in the works with iran, so iran would not be a threat to the obama administration. if it were comes out of europe that spain is in a full-blown depression, once again the specter of a european collapse -- i am sure that at the white house they are worried about that. >> how does that affect our economy? >> we are tied in with the banking system did tony blair made interesting comments about this the other day. as far as europe is concerned, the crisis that we're

talking about could come along any time. europe has a problem with overspending, have not adjusted the way they should have, and out they after go through a painful adjustment process -- and now they have to go through a painful adjustment process. >> it is western democracy. the welfare state is something we cannot pay for any more. it is demographics. we used to have five workers for every retired person. we now have three. we will soon have the two. we cannot afford the benefits we all got accustomed to. the political system has not figured out how to adjust. >> and they had an even worse real estate bubble than we did. in huge numbers -- you know, this is something to worry

about. the germans are the only secure ones. they are the ones funding the bailout, as it were. they want austerity and only austerity, and there is tension between them and the rest of europe with not decimating the economy. you look at "new york times" told this week, ec how precarious -- you see how precarious most americans feel their perch. we on this panel are pretty comfortable. we complain, but it does not threaten our security. for a substantial portion of americans, that is not true. >> the reason is not overbuild t housing. the reason is what evan is talking about, the inevitable result of an aging population

and high technology. the average life span was 62 years in the united states. i guess now about 80 years. with high technology, -- it is now about 80 years. with high technology, people live longer, and there is the cost. the tragedy is that it is happening in europe before it is going to happen here. it gives us a few years of leeway where we can do something and we are not doing anything. that is what i think we have one chance, probably in the next three or if you are years, to change this. -- 3 or four years, to change this great idea is not hard to do. we are utterly stock -- >> it must be done, regardless of who is president. >> a week of the scandals.

>> from what i understand, there were 20 to 21 women involved. they could be employees of the local drug cartels, they could be spies planting eavesdropping devices. >> that is senator susan collins talking about one of the three scandals that hit washington this week. this one was secret service agents in colombia, and there is a scandal also involving the military. nothing counts when you are out of town, but that does not apply to the secret service. >> they are in a tough spot. this has been a bad week for federal employees. take the overall record -- i spent 19 years as one. they do great work every day. what happened with the military at and two years ago.

-- happened at two years ago. gsa, last week, and was caught by a gsa employee. he was going after waste, fraud, and abuse, and he found some. >> we have the photographs of american military personnel with body parts and so forth. "the l.a. times" had these pictures. a soldier said it is indicative of a breakdown. the military asked them not to run them, and they did any way. is that a good idea? >> yes. if the military is going to do this stuff, they should expose it. there is always a tension between the discipline, which by historical measurement is very high -- the american military, as measured against other

militaries, is extraordinarily disciplined. but in bonding rituals these guys have come at they sometimes go out and misbehave, and they have been doing that forever. sometimes that gets the better of them and shows up in the age of minicams in embarrassing ways. >> i would not have run at them. maybe i am a wuss, but if tomorrow a bomb went off and people were killed, i don't think you learn from those pictures -- i grant you there is shock value, but the article talks about it and for me that is enough. >> well, look, the decision of the newspaper was probably one that we would make. that ought to be made. if there is information -- if you are always going to worry about the possible effect, i think you end up not learning

anything. they chose a sample of a large number of photographs. but i don't understand why people are so shocked. this happens in every war. there were a lot of trophies brought home after the second world war, korean war, vietnam war. you are not supposed to do it, you shouldn't do it, and any desecration of a body, sold for or civilian, in an of itself is an offense could remember what was going on here. these were the bodies of suicide bombers, not people who respected their own bodies. here are people who deliberately and maliciously destroyed themselves as a way to destroy others. that, on the scale of what is immoral, it is lower than it would be and the case of a soldier who was shot or a civilian who was injured. it is a sign of lack of discipline, and that is the issue and that is why they have

to be reprimanded at least. >> colby? >> the action is in the reaction. the secret service -- so is the gsa < as far as getting rid of the bad apples. to meet, that is the key here. in the full scheme of things, and the way it the federal service works, it has been good. >> there is mileage in political scandals. >> there is plenty of mileage. i want to say one thing about the secret service thing. that's not get carried away. whatever danger there was of planting a but, there was a similar danger from somebody from room service or a maid. prostitution is legal in colombia.

i am not happy this happened, i think the secret service is racking up properly, -- appropriately. >> i hear that there was a language problem negotiant a great -- negotiating a group rate. [laughter] >> you are bad. >> our culture, crude and seeming to get cruder, creeks into our institutions. >> don't you think happened 50 years ago? >> do, so i hesitate to say this, but i wonder. >> i wonder if it is would you pointed out early, that everybody has a video and a camera so we see it more. >> we have a video of the space shuttle discovery. where does the space program go from here?

>> tsa said -- it is a sad glad day. i think the decision to ground the shuttle fleet was made prematurely. >> astronaut john glenn was. that day this week, everything came to a halt as the space shuttle discovery landed it tells national airport -- at dulles national airport it he says that discovery is a national symbol of optimism and leadership and that the decision to terminate the program is a mistake. i know this is a favorite topic of years, charles, so run with it. >> it is retirement, embalming and museum, a sign of decline in retreat. we lead the world, then we got a uninterested. the shuttle is a flawed vehicle

because, it is too risky and expensive. the real tragedy is not that it was retired -- it had to be ultimately retired -- but to follow what was canceled. we have no way to go into orbit for the next decade. the russians have doubled the price, the chinese will be on the moon in the next decade. to have abandoned a high- technology area is a huge mistake. thousand > the job in -- >> thousands of jobs in cape canaveral, colby, but we have a huge deficit. >> exploration of space is still going on. we do move on. >> but, you know, not to the extent -- people say we have

lost our images of frontier society. >> i think we are continuing with the exploration started, except we are using other kinds of technologies. what is wrong with that? >> i am not prepared to compete for the romance of the manned spac projecte , but every other program we have, we talk about how we have to cut, such dire straits, cannot find a new federal money for new sources of energy, that would be wrong, we have to rely on private industries. suddenly there is romance with the space history. i understand it, but there is sort of a dichotomy here. >> evan? >> what is going to generate new

technology? if you can convince me that the space program is a driver for new technology, i would say. there is evidence that was true in the past. maybe we should be spending on energy and other stuff. >> space is the frontier. all kinds of things to be learned out there. >> our dying planet is a pretty immediate thing. >> we are already on our way to mars, on our way to other planets. not manned flights, but other technology. we are exploring. >> what is the greatest legacy of the european powers of the last half of the millennium? the age of exploration. they sent expeditions to the south seas, north america. that expansion is one of the rare things ever done in human history. we were the ones doing it in

space and we are no longer interested did you want to spend it on solyndra or gsa, mind readers? >> oh, come on. >> the payoff has been absolutely enormous. all of our technology, a global positioning satellites, our weather prediction -- there is so much -- >> we are not abandoning -- >> we are not producing more john glenns. >> i am kind of with evan, because i live here. politico cartoonist matt wuerker. >> we were political junkies. >> he won the pulitzer prize this week. politico, along with the huffington post, two primarily

online news services that one. times are changing, evan. >> i think i.t. is wonderful that huffington post won, too. i hate to see the end of print news outlets, but that is not inevitable. made the best man win. >> is that newspaper in the morning a thing of the past, colby? >> i start my day with the internet. i do read the newspaper, but i really get my news otherwise. >> i hate reading newspapers on line. i have no sense of placement of what the editors think is important, no ability to see stories and rows and read the first paragraph of something and suddenly go, "that is really

interesting," and i keep reading. i think something is actually lost -- not to mention your eyesight -- by reading online. >> it is like limiting the death of the dewey decimal system. [laughter] when we were in college, you go through all the cards and discover it but you did not know existed. now you go on line and that is it. my son is a voracious reader of all the new spirit he has no experience holding a newspaper. that entire generation never developed the habit. dead trees are dead. it lwill be considered as obsolete as slavery. >> let's hear from matt wuerker. >> i have a great job.

it is a unique little perch in the world of journalism. i am old school. a really good joke will cut through and get people, no matter which side of the aisle they are on. i think people are disarmed by him a -- by humor. this is the great economic super bowl, and we of china line up in a row, and the u.s.a., and we are pummeling each other. sports metaphors is a tradition in cartooning. obama is fun to draw. he has a great face. he has that megawatt smile, and a great range of other expressions, not to mention a fabulous ears. i moved to washington in 2000. it is different watching politics in d.c.

you have a front row seat to all this stuff, and watching the political game played up close is a real education. >> matt wuerker, congratulations on the pulitzer prize. his inspiration was a next-door neighbor growing up, paul conrad, a great political cartoonist for "the los angeles times." he was kind of an angry guy. >> talking about pulitzer prizes -- we have charles krauthammer -- >> and another one, will became. -- colby king. best job in the business. last word. see you next week.