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captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. se: welcome to our program, we're live this evening from new york, washington, d.c., and minnesota. today americans voted in midterm elections that will shift the balance of power in washington and in states across the country. fears about the economy, national debt, and government spending have propelled republicans into dozens of congressional seats. as we begin our broadcast, the republicans are set to take control of the house of representatives.

some projections show they could pick up as many as60 seats. there also have been republican gains in governors races, including tea party backed candidates in south carolina and florida. control of the senate is still playing itself out, but the democrats will most likely hold on to their majority thanks to victories in west virginia, connecticut, and delaware. the tea party scored its first big win with marco rubio and rand paul securing senate seats in florida and kentucky. the nevada senate race is still a tossup between harry reid and sharron angle. joining thus evening is an august group. from minnesota, i have vin webe, republican strategist and forr minnesota congressman. with me in new york are presidential historian doris kearns goodwin, john meacham, also a historian and pulitzer prize winning writer and jack welch, the former c.e.o. of general electric. from washington, erica williams of the center from american progress, al hunt executive editor of bloomberg fuse. joining us later will be frank rich columnist in for the "new york times," walter asackson of

the institute and the former deputy mayor of new york. from washington, john harris of politico. i'm pleased to have all of them here on ts consequential night and say to them welcome and thank you very much. let me first go to minnesota. vin weber, former congressman, knows a bit about politics and certainly republican politics. tell me what you think of this evening and what you think the possibilities are for the next two years. >> charlie, i think it's a hugely consequential evening. as a republican in order to put this in perspective you have to dial this back to two years ago and think about when the republican party looked at that time and the democrats had won a huge victory. president barack obama won by the largest margin of anybody since jimmy carter and the first

democrat to win a majority since jimmy carter. 60/40 in both houses of the congress. more importantly, people were predicting-- and i wasn't sure they were wrong-- that this was the beginning of a new progressive era and the republican party was in very, very difficult straits going forward. less than two years later it looks as if the republicans have won a great victory. looks as if they won the house of representatives, are going to make significant gains in the senate major gains in the governorship which long term are very important because of the redistricting issue. so what i say simply is we have seen at least in my view the biggest ideological shift, not partisan, ideological shift in the shortest period of time in my lifetime. people compare this election, charlie, to the 1994 election, probably comparable. but people forget that in the 1992 election when president

clinton was elected, a majority of votes for cast for either center right candidates, either president bush or ross perot. so two years later for them to vote for a republican majority was a partisan shift, not an ideological shift. this is a big ideological shift. the obama majority was a progressive democrat majority committed to a major transformation of american society and two years later we find out that's not what the country wants. >> albert, what did the country say it wantd? >> it wanted change, charlie. it didn't want i don't think the country said what i it wanted, hour. i don't think this was a mandate for conservative ideology if you will. it's to reduce that 9.6% unemployment rate. look, i agree with ben totally that the state races are fascinating, but this is only

the third time in more than a half century that the house has changed leadership. that's really interesting. it's the most interesting legislative body in the world probably and i'm not quite sure how they're going to work it out but it makes a great story in the weeks and months ahead with a very muscular republican majority in the house of representatives. >> rose: erica, what happened to the president in terms of a dynamic leader with a remarkae sense of ability to speak and with ideas and intelligence so that he looks at this kind of election night only two years later? >> you know, i think governing happened, charlie. governing is very, very different than campaigning and, again, the economy. the economy, we can not overstate the impact that the economy has on elections like these. and so not surprisingly, i actually do agree with al that i don't believe this was a mandate and i certainly don't believe that this was a referendum on a

progressive policy agenda. but instead two things, and in rticular i tend to look at young voters. i think this said young voters weren't convinced by candidates, not by obama. at the end of the day, obama wasn't on the ballot. candidates were. >>. >> rose: yeah, but young voters are smart enough, i would assume, to say what happens here will affect the person that they had so enthusiastically supported two years earlier. >> right. absolutely. but i do think people tend to look at young voters as if there's some kind of magic formula to turning them out and they, like any other demographic group, respond when spoken to directly. they respond when any candidate, presidential or otherwise, campaigns forcefully and boldly on an agenda that supports the policy aboutives that they do. and as i think we saw with a lot of democratic candidates, particularly those that were centrist, ran away from a lot of the policies that impacted young people most beneficially. >> rose: what do you think is going to happen now, jack? you look at financial regulation, you and other businessmen did not like the reform.

you didn't like health care reform. other things that did not happen having to do with unions did not take place. what do you expect? >> well, i think the republicans have got a real job now to govern. i don't think they got a great confetti throwing victory here tonight. it was a repudiation of left-of-center, very left-of-center business-type policies. look, i think the republicans... if i were doing this i would set up... they've got to get a leader first of all, a real, clear leadership, whether it's from the senate and from the house. there's no newt gingrich now there now. there's no... >> rose: well, they've got a new speaker, john boehner. >> but he's not well known, he hasn't beea big figure, etc. so they've got to coalesce around an idea. the idea i would live with is the republicans are there as the party of growth, economic growth and i would drive it home that every single question... if

reporters came up to me and said do you want to change this policy or that policy, does it pass the growth screen? will that enhance growth? grow the pie, create more jobs? drive that theme. you've got to have a big overarching theme or you'll get nitpicked to death. should we cut this age on social security? should we do this on medicare? should we do this over here? does... answer the question. does it help the economy grow? no economically developed country has had a growth pattern after a crisis like this. japan, europe, etc. we have to come up with policies that drive growth. >> rose: okay. then tell me one policy that you would like to see the republican congress enact that would drive grow. >>ell, firstf all, i'd get... i'd settle the tax issue right away. >> rose: extend the bush tax cuts across the board? >> for a couple years and deal with it in the context... >> rose: only for a cup 8

years? >> i'd want to see what happens. because that's going to help growth. that answers that question. i don't want to go through one by one do i cut that silly consumer protection agency's budget when they gave that harvard professor $450 million to run a consumer protection agency. right out of the barrel, $450 million for a budget. are you crazy? you can't do that! >> rose: you're not if favor of consumer protection? >> for $450 million is a budget. >> maybe for $200 million. >> maybe for $50 million. >> rose: we'll come back to this, i'm sure. so here you are, a presidential moment notwithstanding the president wasn't on the ballot. give me the sense of what this says about this man at this time as he looks at two more years. >> well, a couple things, i think. i'm not sure that '08 was a transformative election nor do i think this is a transformative election. people don't belong to parties the same way they used to. it used to be you were a democrat, you were a catholic,

you came from a community. it was your identity. that was part of who you were. now people float around from one to the other much more easily than they ever did before. they're influenced by short term. this is a short-term wave so i don't think we know where the future is going. just as we made too much of '08, we may be making too much of' (mark) 10, but nonetheless obama has a governing problem right now. >> rose: did we make too much of obama? of the president? >> i think what we thought about this man was that he was going to be a person who could communicate and connect to the country. >> rose: and explain what he wanted. >> we were talking about this, jon. he had to tell a story that he hasn't told. he never told the right story about health care. you might say it was the wrong policy but even if it was the right policy he never told it well. and unless a president connects to the people. you know, the interesting thing is when f.d.r. ran in 1934, everybody said about him what they said about obama, he's a socialist, they said, from the right. the left said we're disappointed with him. the economy had not recovered. people thought he was going to lose a ton of seats. he won seats in the

mid-election. why? because people trusted him. because they beeved he'd get them out of the hole even though we were still in the hole in '34. somehow people didn't trust that obama was taking us in the right direction. and that's a huge problem in a democracy. >> rose: that's a personal failure? >> yes, yes, it is. >> rose: jon? >> sure. i think there are two central biographical facts about obama. he thinks of himself as a writer and as a professor... law professor in the sense that he prides himself on the fact that he can make your case. if you oppose him, he loves being able to go into a meeting and say "well, here's what you think." boom, boom, boom, hugely warm creating feeling whe you're being told what you think. (laughter) not the most brilliant retail political moment. but i think interestingly what happened is the law professor trumped the writer. and while i... >> rose: the writer would have kept to the narrative? >> i think the writer would have kept to the narrative and fit these different pieces in. i think we are at the end of something. i think '08 was hugely important.

i think this is hugely important as a continuum as we redefine what right and left mean. and when you have a republican president who nationalizes the banks and off democratic president who, despite everything jack rightly says, was not for mandating universal health care, is not that interested in gay rights and... >> but jack didn't say that. (laughter). >> he's antibusiness. antibusiness, though. i think we here in a moment where ideological categories are being scrambled. >> i don't think he can be the writer now, either. you could be a writer in lincoln's time because mostly you gave a big speech, the entire speech would be in the newspaper and everybody would read it. in f.d.r.'s time you talked on the radio. j.f.k. was great in press conferences. reagan could give a speech. somehow he has not found the right means of communications. i think this is the communication he'd be great at. conference around the table. >> rose: he doesn't do this! >> he should. >> rose: i want everybody to come in on this. this is about this president because it was a referendum as al said to me earlier, why are you laughing, lynn?

>> i think if the alternative for what we have is to alternative to become the writer i feel pretty good about 2012. (laughter) i mean, we need... the president needs to somehow connect with the average person who is not a writer or an intellectual o historian or anything like that. >> rose: let me speak to... >> and we ain't getting closer to that tonight, i'll tell you that. >> rose: okay, but i'll allow mr. meacham to come back and speak to the issue of what he meant by writer. he was talking about the fact that the president has said to many people that what happened... >> i think... >> rose: whatted in '08 is that his narrative became the country's narrative. >> i think i understand what he means. >> become a storyteller. >> ronald reagan was a storyteller. ronald reagan kept a narrative going. franklin roosevelt kept a narrative going. obama through '08 kept a narrative going. >> and that's what the republicans have to do now on this growth agenda. bewe moved 400,000 people, not

300 million people. you move it with a vision. you move it with a clear-cut simple statement. we want to grow this pie because if we grow this pie we'll be great as a country again and everyone will get a piece of this pie. not just a narrow slice. and so if the pie grows, that's the criteria. and republicans shouldn't get trapped in all these little other things. they have a vision. they are the growth party. make the pie bigger. >> rose: now, you don't believe... erica, i'm coming right to you. but you don't believe that the president believe in growing the economy? >> oh, of course... >> rose: hold on, erica, i'm asking jack. >> okay, because you know what i think. >> i would say without question he probably believed in the his heart but he didn't know how the do it. >> rose: okay. we'll come back to that. but the idea of growth is clearly what we... >> i'd like to dispute that, by the way. >> >> rose: that what? that he believed it in his heart? >> absolutely. i think this is an incredibly important part. i think jack is entirely right.

do i think the president is against growth? no. i think the president has a higher priority and that is the equitable distribution of wealth and income in our society. i think that's become clear in his administration. and this is the core issue here. are we going to pursue policies that primarily maximize growth, as jack welch suggested, or is a higher priority of the equitable distribution of wealth and income a higher priority? that's the issue in my view. i'm not sure that this president believes in growth over equitable distribution of wealth. >> rose: erica? >> i think first of all there's a difference between equity and equitable distribution of wealth. however, do we know that equity is not good for growth? i think part of what obama has made clear beyond the equitable distribution of growth is that what he cares about is closing racial and ethnic disparities, is closing gaps between the rich and the poor by increasing opportunity. and so again i think there's this false dichotomy or this

false choice that doing so is inherently bad for economic growth. i don't think that's true. at all. >> al, is your friend vin weber right? >> oh, not really. (laughter) i love vin weber. >> oh, no! et tu, al? >> rose: et, tu. (laughs). >> i am still stunned not that jack welch opposes $450 million budgets but that he's opposed to a harvard professor. that was the real shock. (laughter) look, i don't want to go... i want to go back to... i agree with doris. wrong this nor '08 were transformative elections. it depends on how it's going to be played out. but obama had something with a narrative in '08 that he has lost in his governance and i'm not quite sure why. let me give you a small example. we had a boomberg poll last week. we asked three questions: have your taxes gone up or down over the last year? is the economy growing or

shrinking? will the government get back most of the tarp money to bail out wall street? in each case the answer was in the z t positive. the economy is growing, middle-class taxes have gone down and we'll get the tarp money back. by 2-1 people said negative to all those. that's a problem of leadership. that really is. somehow people have no idea the good things he's done but they're very aware of the bad things they think he's done. >> rose: whose failure is that? >> obama's. >> rose: exactly. >> i think that that's true. that's partly... at least partly because he immediately shifted the agenda to things the country didn't care about that much, like health care. and we spent a whole year arguing about health care while all these economic policy issues were percolating. >> but, i mean, the campaign was focused on health care so that it was very hard for you to say that they didn't care about health care at that time, they really did. the question was could he or should he have pivoted and i know you don't think so. but they did care about health care. but go back to what jack said. f.d.r.... i keep going back to my guys in the past because i

live with them. (laughter). >> rose: wait until she gets to franklin pierce. (laughter). >> f.d.r. was able... quiet! as world war ii came on, f.d.r. said "dr. new deal is now becoming dr. win the war." he undid his war with business. he had the best partnership with busine any democrat ever had. investment tax credits, antitrust regulations dropped. and yet he protected unions and he protected pensions. the key for obama if he's going to make your deal-- and i think he should and he would-- is he's got to deal with the equitable distribution as well. he's got to make sure the economic growth benefits the larger portion, not just those guys on wall street. >> rose: are you in favor of trying to do something about the income disparity in america? >> absolutely. and the way you do it is create more jobs! not by more handouts. you do it by creating more and more jobs! and by growing the pie... >> rose: and you think the president believes for creating handouts than creating jobs or he's simply been ineffective in creating jobs.

>> he's been ineffective in creating jobs. he's put in policies, whether it be the n.l.r.b., whether it be 1099 forms or other things, he's putting a series of policies that don't create jobs. >> do those handouts include things like the bailout of institutions? >> look, that's not an argument i'm going to... i will support taking care of the banks at that moment. we were going to lose the world and george bush was rig in doing it and so was paulson in writing a three page... >> rose: and so was barack obama to continue to continue and tim geithner to continue it? >> that was the right thing to do. >> rose: yeah, but you know, vin, that this campaign, the word "bailout" was a mantra for people who wanted to turn the rascals out. >> there's no question. and i... by the way i agreed with tarp and i think that was the right thing to do and that's cost a lot of republicans in their primaries their elections because of supporting tarp. and we do have a huge antigovernment sentiment coming out of this election that is

going to be complicated as we go forward. but i've got to come back to your basic point about does this president commit himself to economic growth or not. one of the key things that came out of the last election and everybody knows about it but it didn't get a lot of play. when the president was asked by charlie gibson what he thought about the capital gains tax and whether or not the capital gains tax reductions would result in increased revenues his response was not to argue the point. he said instead "yes, but there's an equity issue involved." in essence saying it doesn't matter to me if we can get more economic growth and more revenues. there's an equity issue involved. i think that says what this president's values are. he believes we need to redistribute income and wealth primarily. he would like to have greater economic growth but if he has to sacrifice that for a more equitable distribution of wealth and income, we'll do it. >> rose: another presidential historian, mr. john meacham. >> what you've just heard is an

effective narrative. at the congressman has just done is encapsulate what led to what's happened tonight. in the refeud united nations of barack obama. basically he was a crypto socialist if not an out right socialist. that's an effective bit of political communication. it has... >> i would like to make clear i never said anything like that. >> rose: he didn't say that. go ahead... >> he's talking about redescription and that's the narrative that has worked out incredibly well here. i just think that if the president's going to fight back, he needs to do what jack welch is saying which is find a way to coherently and pithily say "this is about growth, this is about the future." >> rose: but it's fair to say and you recognize it vin didn't say he was a crypto anything. >> no. >> rose:. but many people do. >> rose: so here's the

question. why... the president is supposed to be a very smart man. the president has command of language. the president has smart people around him. how could this have happened? >> charlie, i agree with all the above. i think they for a while got caught too much in the inside game. >> rose: right. >> i don't know if they made a mistake on health care or not. if they hadn't done health care in the first two years they never would have done it. so their only choice was do in the the beginning or not do it at all. >> rose: and they thought they could do both. >> yeah, they did. i disagree with vin and jack in the sense that i think this president advisors like larry summers and tim geithner really do believe in growth. they may have a slight difference in how to do it. i think the tax issue probably exaggerated a bit. bill clinton had a lot of growth in the '90s and increased taxes in '93. but i think somehow they got caught so in the inside game that they didn't know how to pivot and do what john and doris

have talked about and really have a narrative about what their story was and what their message was and what they want to accomplish. >> they didn't have a narrative. >> with this economy, with this economy as lousy as it is, it's hard to have a compelling narrative. >> no it isn't. >> again, then, it seems like what we're saying... what we're continuing to say and hear and, again, what we've heard when we polled voters prior to today, again, that it was a problem of messaging and a problem of narrative. but i'm not hearing it's an ideological shift as was posed earlier. i'm not seeing this as a complete referenda on the agenda but on the execution of the agenda and, again, on the messaging and the lack of a narrative. >> you know, i think he did origin family have a narrative. remember the speech he gave, the new foundation speech in that was a speech that laid out that in order to create a new foundation for the country you needed energy, you needed health, you needed education, you needed financial reform. the problem was it never got simplified. he gave that speech and that was it. you've got to go over and over

and over again to people to tell them what you're talking about and he's going to learn from experience. you know, the one thing he has shown is he is a man who understands when he makes mistakes. >> rose: what's the evidence of that? >> he said it several times. he said "i made a mistake." don't you remember the beginning he said about daschle. yes, he did. but anyway... anyway, i think the key thing is hemingway once said "everyone's broken by life but some people are stronger in the broken places." this is going to be his first real adversity. we'll see how he responds. >> rose: i have to good night some people here. two of the red sox most favorite fans, doris kearns and jack welch who are here on the night after the san francisco giants did it. i thank you for coming by and sharing this time. we will look and see whether they capture this kind of narrative about growth that you've suggested is important and thank you for the perspective on history and what roosevelt might have done. we haven't heard much about lincoln tonight.

you're supposed to be the one the president admire it is most. >> well, there's still time. (laughter). >> rose: thank you, doris, very much. thank you, jack. great to see you both. let me go to al hunt. al? i'll go to vin weber for a second. vin, is there much division within the republican party? i mean, i said to al at an earlier time this evening, what's the conversation between mitch mcconnell and jim demint vin? >> well, i... the republicans have had the advantage of being simply able to be in the opposition for the last two years. the democrats have been upset about that and tried to make a lot of gains by simply calling the republican it is party of no and what we find out tonight is that the country wanted to vote for the party of no. but it means the republicans have not really defined a clear forward-looking agenda. and i think that that's a fair criticism of the republicans. but i don't think that it matters a whole lot at this point. the forward-looking agenda of

the republican party is going to be devised and invented by our candidate for president or our candidates for president in the course of the nominating process going forward. i think that the republican leadership in the congress has a difficult task. i think that the congress and the president have a difficult task going forward. we now have a very polarized government. the republicans in the congress are quite conservative. i still think that the democratic president... the obama administration is quite liberal. and they have a difficult task figuring out how to go forward. but they both know that the untry, among other things, is really tired of the partisan division. that seems almost contradictory in view of the fact that they cast kind of a partisan vote tonight. but the country really is sick of partisanship and the party this is perceived as being obstructionist and polarizing over the course of the next three to six months-- and i

think that's the time period in which the country is going to make a decision-- is going to suffer as a result. republicans, i think, get that. how they overcome that problem as well as how the democrats overcome that problem is a very difficult question. >> rose: vin, thank you very much. let me go to john harris from politico. john, welcome. >> hello, charlie. >> rose: how are you? >> yes, sir, i can hear you well >> rose: so tell me... i want to say what's your reaction to tonight but that's the sort of subject we've already covered here. so what's the implications of this for the obama presidency which we have been talking about more here in the first half hour in terms of what you expect. go ahead. >> i think the big theme tonight is that democrats got blown out in rural america. and the map of 2010 looks very much like what we thought the traditional map was for a generation before barack obama. there were places that republicans had solid holds on,

places that democrats had solid holds on and a very narrow band where national elections were fought. obama changed all that in 2008. he won the state of virginia which no democrat had won since lyndon johnson in 1964. he won indiana, he won north carolina. so we are then saying and i think he acted on, governed upon this principle, wait a minute, it's a whole different country, the ideological center has shift ed and it's a different map and he's going to govern on those premises but hold on, that's the message of 2010, it's a very familiar map and a very narrow one. so for me the question is how does barack obama react to that? does he say over the next two years i'm going to bet back to that wide map? i'm going to show i can run for reelection and compete in virginia and indiana. or does he say, well, look, i'm not going to get that back so i'm going to fight on a traditional map. that means maximizing the traditional democratic coalition. so the message and the policies

from those two choices i laid out are quite different, i think. and i think we will see within the first couple of months what bet obama and his political advisors are placing. >> rose: erica, i only have time for one more question and answer a you. i know you have to go. tell me how you respond to what john just said. >> i think he is right in the sense that obama's going to have some-- as we've all said repeatedly tonight-- big decisions to make after this evening about how to govern and, frankly, how to campaign in 2012, figuring out whether or not the map has really changed as it appears to have this evening. but going back to our prior conversation, i really do believe that the lesson he's going to take from tonight... and, again, it's interesting the conversation has focused so much on him and i do understand that that is one of the major takeaways from tonight. but i'm very curious to know what does this actually mean for how democrats campaign? for what the democrats... what senators and other candidates actually talked about on the campaign trail and whether they

did an effective job. i think we'll have a lot of that discussed moving forward. >> rose: erica, thank you for joining us this evening. it's a pleasure to have you on this program and i hope we can do it again soon. see you later. frank rich, welcome. frank rich from the "new york times," walter asackson and kevin chicky, former deputy mayor of new york city. tell me, are you disappointed, do you understand what's happened so that you have this huge repudiation tonight? >> well, i'm not sure it's this apocalyptic repudiation. definitely it's a big loss for the democrats and not great news for obama. >> rose: but you're not sure it's a repudiation of him or... >> it's definitely a repudiation of his governing and particularly about the economy and to me what's the disappointment and what's gone

wrong are sort of the same thing. made a bi cause out of health care, which he did not make a major cause of during the campaign, it was not a major issue for him. at some point it turned him on, he spent a year on it, a year when he wasn't talking about jobs, he fielded an economic team that seemed to be above the fray and above the reality of most working americans and i think basically that's the biggest thing that's done him in. there are many other issues, but it is in the end about the economy and the unemployment rate and the feeling that he seems detached and hasn't effectively addressed it either in termsf content or in terms of deliving e message. >> rose: kevin, you know how to analyze voters. independents shifted away from the president. what didn't they want? what didn't they like? >> independents are what he lost and for all the talk of big waves and the country shifting, obviously the fight was at the margins. mostly independent men, some independent women. frank is on to something, i think frank is right. i would take it a step further.

when the president won the election in iowa they weren't fighting over health care. he was fighting over independents who wanted the fighting to stop. who wanted to see governance. the end of the bush era was oublesome to a lot of people. and they may have an unrealistic expectation, they may have thought there was a second coming of someone who could walk across water, what they wanted to see was governance. and instead what they saw were big fights in washington, legislative fights, really confrontational fights where they wanted to see a president. they didn't want to see a legislator. legislators can be rewarded for fighting. chief executives are almost always punished. because they are expected to succeed. >> i think you're right. and also i'd add another point. at various times he didn't even seem to be a legislator. he disappear. ever understood why the white house took the position we'll let you know what we want in the health care bill after everyone else has gotten annoyed, yelled about it. >> rose: it was a fill your of leadership.

>> a failure of leadership, absolutely. >> and you have 9.6% unemployment, people around this country are being brutalized. you really have a sense of that there hasn't been a great focus on the economy. >> rose: i don't want to use the word "feel their pain" but do you think the president did or did not understand that the was this imperative to deal with that because it was an unacceptable... >> well, he didn't seem to focus on it every single day and to feel the pain and to be there in the trenches. he didn't need to focus that much on health care and i think that he also lost control of the narrative. because he did take us away from the big financial crisis. it did sort of save the economy from going off of a cliff, but i think most people think it was... he who nationalize it had banks instead of bush. so i think they didn't tell the story very well. ey dn't connect on the economy. and it was not a feeling that they were really in charge. jobs?o was the messenger on the obama really wasn't. every once in a while he'd

appear in a factory or workplace or talk about green jobs. >> rose: and that was later rather than earlier. >> yes. he didn't really talk about it. joe biden was given that role, didn't really do it much. and then he'd have to send out people like summers and geithner who would appear on shows like this on sunday and say, you know, joblessness is a lagging indicator and we're seeing some green shoots. it's ridiculous. i mean, it wasn't even... >> he didn't have anybody speaking to the workers. he didn't have anybody speaking to business. i mean, you don't have a central person in the administration who talks a language of business so you get a jack welch as you did earlier in the show feeling like they don't talk my language and you didn't have peel who really felt like they were talking to the average guy losing a job. >> i would argue he accelerated the narrative. the president was brought in because people wanted change. in many ways the change they wanted was the governance and the fights to reduce. in many ways he's being punished for what he was rewarded for when he ran. which is people wanted change. in many ways he was there to

slow a snowball from moving downhill and in many ways from what's played out, rightly or wrongly, he accelerated that. this is not a repudiation of democrats. this is a repudiation, as someone said earlier tonight, of anyone that was an incumbent and since most of them tend to be democrats, those were the majority of people that got tossed out. >> rose: jon, how does a president regain his narrative? with president clinton, you had the... in a sense i think it was oklahoma city had something to do with the kind of turn. >> this is a very importan point and it's often made by joe klein which is president clinton stood up one night and said the presidency is still relevant. an enormous statement to have to be the leader of the free world to say "i'm still here at work." the very next day oklahoma city happened and bill clinton got to be president. and that's not a moment which has happened. i'd be interested to hear what john has to say. >> john harris, then al then vin. the whole notion of the moment for the president. >> well, charlie, you invoke president clinton and i think

we've read that even president obama's reading about president clinton's comeback after 1994. i've been cautioning people to not draw lessons too glibly from that. to some people... to hear some people say it, it's simply a matter of moving to the right, taking a few polls, finding the center and then it's a cakewalk on to reelection. that's not what happened with bill clinton in 1995 and' '96. he had a grueling, searing personal reappraisal of what he was trying to achieve as president. he had an ideological reappraisal that divided his party. you could walk... and i'm sure al remembers this. you could walk the... walk capitol hill in 1995 and easily fill up a notebook full of democrats who thought bill clinton was a sellout, who thought his presidency was a failure. this was tough, tough, hard work and he had a gift in that in that his opponent was newt gingrich and a group of republicans republicans who badly overplayed their hand. a bunch of things had to go

right for bill clinton and what's more, you'll recall, he didn't win even a majority back then. 49%. and people still argue whether it was all the sort of dick morris, mark penn move to the center that saved bill clinton or it was the fact that he stood firm against newt gingrich during the government shutdown. so the lessons of bill clinton, i think, are more tenuous than maybe a lot of people assume. >> rose: albert? >> well, i agree with most of what john said. i think it was clearly bill clinton and not dick morris. >> rose: (laughs). >> and at the risk of really scaring my dear friend vin weber, i agree with almost everything he said a few moments ago. charlie, i think both sides have a very delicate balancing act here. for obama, it's both he has to strike some kind of a... if you'll call it populist sense of people's pain and the like. the exit polls show that his economic policy is very unpopular. you know what's even more

unpopular? wall street. so to pick up on what frank said, if he doesn't identify with people, that's going to be a problem. at the same time, he's got to be somebody who reaches out and tries to... whether we call it the center or whatever, make some kind of common ground with the opposition. for the republicans, vin's right, the john boehner and paul ryan and kevin mccarthy of california who's really the great hero of this republican triumph tonight understand what they have to do. i'm not sure that jim demint and rand paul and others have the same view. i doubt they do. >> rose: so the battle within the republican party is as much... is as big as the battle between republicans and democrats, vin? >> i think there's a significant battle within the republican party. i think it's going to be more easily healed than you, charlie, or maybe al think it's going to be. mainly because it's easier to be in opposition than it is to be in government and even though we've got the majority now in the house of representatives, we're still the basic party in opposition. but there's some very serious

problems there. i mean, we basically have a lot of republicans that have gotten elected saying that they're going to vote against almost anything in terms of funding the federal government. that's not going to work. but i still think the bigger problem... the bigger question is how is the obama administration going to react to this going forward? as much as we're going to talk tonight about the republicans who have taken control of at least part of the congress, the biggest question still is how is this administration going to react to it. >> rose: okay. i'll raise this question then go to kevin. some argue that the president is better off because they're now... there's somebody else he can blame. that when he had a democratic senate and a democratic congress he didn't have anybody else to blame. so now there is an opposition and now there will be a question as okay, the republicans control the house, what have they done? and what have they done about the economy? what have ey done about issues that are of concern to the

american people? >> that's a possibility. i mean, people argue that are looking at 1995, 1996 after the republicans took control of the congress and president clinton was very skillful in dick morris' words try i can't think lating and winning that argument that is certainly a possibility. i would they that is one possibility but there's another possibility, too. i remember in 1991 rand 1992 when the first president george herbert walker bush had started out after the gulf war with i think a 0% approval rating... 90% approval rating and his presidency was decimated by the congressional opposition led very skillfully by senator george mitchell, the majority leader of the united states senate and they managed to paralyze the bush presidency at a time of economic distress. so i don't know how this is going to end out.

i'm just saying don't look at one model from the past, the clinton model and say that's what's gonna hpen. there are other models that are possible and we'll find out. we will see how skiffle this president is, how skillful this republican leadership is and how events affect the outcome. >> rose: >> well, charlie, you asked the question and i had lunch not too long ago with a friend at the white house who said wouldn't we be better off losing one or two houses of congress so at least we're not to blame for everything and i looked at her and said "well, have you ever received a subpoena?" (laughter) it's one thing or if john harris or frank rich call, not answering a subpoena is a very different ball game in government. and she said well, i worked for the clinton administration. i said have you paid down your legal bills yet? because not everyone has and maggie williams is still carrying i think a few hundred thousand dollars. but vin said it right and, listen, vin was in the house, vin knows. the republican play book, it's not that it's easy, just entirely predictable. it's opposition, right? and that's not going to change.

frank knows that. the real question, as john said and vin said, what's the president going to do? how's he going to react? it's not going to be enough tomorrow to say mere words of i respect the election relts, we're going to move forward. he's going to have to come out with policies and action which match that rhetoric. which answer the call. and you and i were talking about this earlier. unless that happens i really think-- and al hinted at this-- the onus is on him. >> i agree. also the other difference in the clinton years is just how much suffering there is now in this country in terms of economic issues and that, by the way, might cast a whole different light on half-assed investigations in congress because it may seem frivolous against the backdrop. >> yes, yes >> re: vin is sing yes. >> except vin is not in the congress and you're going to get that. you're going to get the subpoenas. the deficit reduction commission is going to come out on december 1 and december 2 it will be dead on arrival, right? you're going to have... >> but that will be one thing obama can do is push that real

hard. >> doesn't matter. >> i don't agree. >> rose: vin, let them... i'm going to come back to you. >> here's the craziest thing. if one thing everyone agreed on in n this election, obama and carly fiorina, we're going to listen to alan simpson the day... december 2 and we're going to have a solution, se kind of... that's like the iraq study commission was going to tend iraq war. it's nonsense. that's not going to do anything. but everyone has taken a pass and and put it on erskine bowles and it's ridiculous. >> but it's one of the messages of this election is that you should face up to the fiscal problem. >> but it won't happen. >> rose: it will not happen? >> i'd be interested to get al's take but it won't happen. >> rose: al, what's your take on this? in other words, on the deficit, come december 1 and there's a report by alan simpson and erskine bowles and they've got a vote, they've got to have 14 that will agree on some kind of recommendation, would it be wise and is this a point of departure for the president to say "i'm

serious about the debt and i'm going to endorse this program and i'll push it forward, make it part of what i hope to accomplish in terms of setting us on a path of reduce this overwhelming long-term debt we have and the entitlements and the medicare expenses that are part of it." al? >> charlie, first, i don't think they'll get 14 votes for anything significant. 14 votes to end waste, fraud, and abuse. everybody's for that but let john pick up on this. i don't think you're going to get a bipartisis report that says here's big-ticket items that we can cut the long-term deficit. so what i think they'll offer is a menu. i'm sure obama will try to pick and choose parts of that menu but i don't think that makes for a consensus. >> rose: frank? >> all the polls consistently show that the deficit, while a high priority to everyone in politics and in washington, is not one of the highest priorities ofthe publi or it falls lower than

employment issues and other issues. so it's... to me that's not even... it's something of a manufactured issue in the political arena that may not speak that much to people, no matter how much protestors talk about it. >> rose: speak to that, john harris. the issue of the debt per say. for a long time it was said... i think president reagan said something to the effect that, you know, about the debt... how important is it in this election and how important is it as an issue for the american people? the notion of a huge federal debt and a commitment to entitlements that will increase it. >> i think it's more serious than frank says and i understand his point that people don't have strong feelings about the arcane economic arguments of how important the debt is or isn't as a percentage of g.d.p. and all the rest. i do think-- and particularly for independent voters-- spending and deficits are not just an economic issue, they're

for many of them a mora issue. and they've become a proxy for their ews about why government doesn't work, why washington is broken. and they do matter. i think they do mat err lot politically. i think they matter a lot in these 2010 elections. >> why can no one in either party name a cut? >> you can easily name cuts. cut everything but medicare,s is, the military. but i think john harris is exactly right. and i think this is what people are upset about is that they feel this is out of control. and i can see why... >> here's the thing. it's now more out of control. had one-party rule until tonight. you now have divided government. people think we had gridlock in washington yesterday. they actually to have gridlock in washington tomorrow. right? >> guided government is... >> listen, vin weber was a great member but we didn't elect a slew of moderate republicans to congress tonight, we just didn't. and we don't have a slew of moderate democrats being swept in either. and, you know, i think that's the real problem.

it is a question, i think as vin says, what's the president going to do and is he going to reach across the aisle? is the policy going to match that? but congress has moved into a two-year period of gridlock and if 25% of americans support the congressional institution that is congress today, i can give you a rock-solid guerin thee in two years it will be something beneath that. i don't know what that number is but it won't be 25% and it won't be higher. >> in addition to people really feeling that the deficit's gotten out of control and government's gotten out of control, i think there's a virtue of being true in that. and i think it's not just a question of politics, it's a question of good policy now. and sometimes if the obama administration wants to pursue good policy that might actually be the best politics. >> rose: vin, you said "i agree with that" meaning the question about spending cuts that you were going to refer to? >> let me say... first of all. one of the surest paths to irrelevant in washington is to try to rise above cynicism so before i sign off tonight, i'm going to try to rise above

cynicism for just a second. i think that the deficit reduction commission that the president appointd is a bunch of very serious people and i'm not without hope that they might change the equation that we've been talking about here tonight. i've talked to democrats as well as republicans on the commission. i think they're taking their mandate very seriously. i think they understand the long-term implications of the united states debt to g.d.p. ratio and they want to do something serious about it. it's not easy. nothing that we're... that will solve this problem is today considered politically possible. nothing. so it means we're going to have to do something impossible. social security, medicare, taxes but i think the people that they've got on the commission are the right people and i think they're approaching it seriously. i don't know what the odds of success are on this, but i think that i would give it a better chance than i... than some of the people around the table have tonight and that many of the people i listened to talking about it think.

this is... i do think that this election is going to send a signal that people are deeply concerned about the united states indebtedness. and maybe they aren't talking in this election about social security and medicare and taxes and all that stuff because nobody wants to commit political suicide right before the election. but we have conditioned this electorate to talk about serious issues. you look in the states, they're actually dealing with some of these very tough political questions seriously. i am hopeful. i don't want to be unrealistic. i'm hopeful that the congress and the deficit reduction commission will help move the next congress to doing something we might think is unlikely and positive. >> rose: vin, thank you for joining me from minnesota. great to have you on. pleasure. john harris, what are the implications for the 2012 presidential campaign from this election? what do we... what impact do we draw from it?

what does it disman who does it el late? who does it take down? >> i think it sends a message unmistakably to barack obama that if you want to be a progressive in this country you have to constantly practice the politics of political reassurance, that is reassuring an anxious center that you're not a socialist as extreme conservatives call him. that you're not a european style progressive. you have to practice the politics of personal reassurance and that you can connect with mainstream america in some kind of fundamental organic way. he got blown out. he didn't, democrats did, his party did and he will without changes. blown out in rural america so i think it does send a message that the obama crowd was very disdainful of bill clinton and his brand of small bore politics. i think they've learned that bill clinton knew something.

knew a thing or two about how to navigate the politics of basicalla center right country if you're a progressive. >> rose: nobody's ever said bill clinton didn't know a thing or two about politics. >> john hit on it. i put it in government the difference between being a profit and being a leader. they can both try to do the right thing. if you're a prophet you tend to be dead after people realize what you were trying to do was right. health care may prove to be the right thing. there's no real reward in life to know you were right. in fact, you're generally fill phid in life and sometimes thrown up on a cross for it. leadership what john laid out there which is getting in front of the ectorate doing what bill clinton did and adapt. bill clinton aside went through difficulties bill clinton had in his presidency. you go through others which we would.

>> the message tonight involve it is republican party which has to face the fact that the real energy is on the far right of the party. rand paul is the story tonight. not tch mcconnell and his... >> rand paul and jim demint and others. >> it would be very difficult for them to get out from under that. no question about it. >> rose: the republican party? >> absolutely. and mitch mcconnell opposed rand paul in the primary so they have to reck within the fact that their energy is not john boehner and mitch mcconnell. >> rose: do you think the president has within him do-to-do the kind of clintonian change. what we know about him is that essentially part of his makeup? >> absolutely. but not a clintonian change. but i think he has to do what vin weber was saying which is okay, i hear this message, we agree the whole house is out of order and we're going to take seriously this deficit commission. >> john, finally, for

conclusion. is therere any legislative initiative coming out over the next two years or are we looking at simply kind of gridlock and maybe some efforts to reduce spending but nothing that amounts to an pro-anything? >> i think kevin might be right but i don't think it's necessarily true it's right. big stuff got passed in 1996 after big fights of 1995. so big... things can pass in a climate of divided goverer they won't be things like passed in the last couple years, health care. but there's a lot that can be done. an also just again maybe not a dissending point but certainly qualifying one about the point of the brand of republicans that just... that's arriving. yes, as frank rich says, there's rand paul, we'll see later about nevada and sharron angle. there's also rob portman, roy blunt. even marco rubio for all his conservatism is a former speaker of the house of florida. i think there's a number of people arriving in the senate who are both very conservative but also serious legislators.

>> rose: >> the most exciting american the republican party is sarah palin and she was the king maker in a lot of the people who are coming in. >> rose: al, sum it up for us this evening that as we have witnessed this dramatic change in the house of representatives and some it up in less than 30 seconds. >> (laughs) charlie, it's a huge... it's obviously a huge election for republicans. i don't... i'm skeptical it's transformative. i think critical will be in the next 150 days whether the white house or the republican congress if one is able to occupy the high ground if public opinion, i think that will really set the tone for the next year and a half. >> rose: thank you very much. >> i'm not sure he'll win it. >> rose: thank you, al, thank you, john, thank you, vin, thank you, frank, thank you, kevin. thank you, walter, great to see you. thank you all for joining us, previous guests as well. it's been an exciting night. look forward to see you tomorrow night. thank you for watching.

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