start drinking my cappuccinos with whole milk. >> exactly. mika? >> read "time," learn what to eat. in lancaster county, there's a restaurant that will give you a special deal if you've had gastric bypass surgery. >> count me in. >> seriously. it's a buffet. >> yeah. >> and i guess -- >> what did you learn, joe? >> fat's good for you. so i won't trim all the fat off my steak. it holds the carbs. it's "morning joe." now stick around. "the daily rundown" is next. well, that was fast. president's skirmish with speaker boehner over the timing of his jobs speech seems to put at rest that washington learned their lessons from the debate debacle. can anything get done in this town? ooh. what about jobs?

competing plans unveiled. and next what does the president have to say on thursday and how big does he have to go? dan pfeiffer is our guest this morning, white house communications director. plus, are you ready for some football? been a rough off-season for college football. it kicks off tonight. a look at the politics of it all and the ncaa. speaking of football, what are we going to watch next thursday? it's september 1st, 2011. this is "the daily rundown." i'm chuck todd. unbelievable, i don't know about you, i've got whiplash. my "first read" of the morning. as washington prepares to get back to work next week, the president and speaker boehner are picking up right where they left off, proving that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to, even when it comes to sin bing their outlooks. the ticktock. yesterday morning the president called on congress to put politics aside and act on jobs. >> at a time when a lot of people in washington are talking about creating jobs, it's time to stop the political

gamesmanship that can actually cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. >> but at virtually the same time inside the west wing, top aides for the president were preparing to send a letter to the heads of the house and senate requesting a joint session of congress speech at 8:00 p.m. next wednesday. the scheduled start time of nbc's debate at the reagan library, by the way. the white house insisted that timing was coincidental and thought they had speaker boehner's agreement on the date and time. but boehner's office fired back a letter in response in effect saying no to the president's request for the wednesday slot, a first in history, by the way, calling on him to delay the speech instead until thursday when we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might distract from your remarks. now the white house is accommodating. press secretary jay carney appeared this morning on "morning joe." >> no objection was raised at that time. the letter went forward. the speaker came back later in

the day and said that there was a problem with that, logistical problem. and you know what, that's fine. we'll go thursday. our interest is not in having a political back and forth here at all. gridlock and par zan bickering is not new. what we saw over the summer is that instead of just being annoying it can be harmful and dangerous to the economy, the livelihoods of americans. >> this episode brought to light the two problems that both house republicans and this white house have been dealing with, frankly, for this whole year. with the white house, their inability to communicate with folks across pennsylvania avenue and sometimes whether it's their own labor folks, democratic aides, stuff like that, or with republicans, kind of blew the protocol on this, didn't even give the speaker's office a heads up until yesterday morning that they were interested in this even as they were planning this for the past week or so. meanwhile, on the republican side, speaker boehner chose to be petty and say no rather than

take the highroad even as though he was offended by the lack of deferentialness on the protocol. once again, somehow both sides are looking for a way to look bad on this than look good. the republican presidential candidates at first weren't sure what to make of the coincidental timing of the president's speech. they were silent much of the afternoon, trying to figure out if this was good or bad for them. then slowly they saw that a split-screen opportunity and the ability to respond to the president in real time might be a positive. mitt romney's campaign has a statement. >> in iowa, michele bachmann joined that hit parade. >> now, does this show me a little insecurity on the part of the president? either, a, he wants to distract the american people so they don't watch him, or, b, he doesn't want the american people

to hear what the next president of the united states is going to say about the president's job rating. >> politically, you could make the argument, and a lot of democrats quietly around town were grumbling at the timing in the first place, that boehner actually bailed the president out here. had this speech gone as planned, then you would have had the president having this speech being politicized, being set up as almost a debate with the republican candidates themselves. they would have been elevated on a larger platform. the speech itself gets covered as political speech rather than as a policy proposal. now thanks to boehner's objection, the president speaks on the next night. yes, there's a conflict with the nfl and that's still being worked out. they're trying to figure out the timing on that. but at least this time the president's speech gets treated like a policy speech. the bottom line yesterday could have been a substantive degait bathe between the president and

candidates on jobs but at the end, it sounded like just politics. we're learning more about what the president may call for on thursday, including more infrastructure investment, investments in clean energy, transportation, federal money to rebuild schools. white house says all of this is going to be paid for, tax credits for companies, by the way, to hire new workers. on-the-job training front for the long-term unemployed. we'll see, though, what's not clear, by the way, this speech will be job, jobs, job, meaning you're not going to hear a lot of detail about the president talking act tax reform or dealing with the long-term or medium-term deficit issue. he'll have a plan and give that to the super committee. but largely he wants to leave that out of the speech. another point unclear, what about housing? is housing part of this or not? from what i understand, i was told they still have a week to go before they finish this plan. all right. so how did the president's speech schedule become fuel for

the latest washington fight? nbc's mike viquiera is live at the white house. mike, look, you understand protocol. you understand what goes on. so explain sort of how this works a little bit, because, look, there are a lot of people supportive of the president say, well, the speaker is being disrespectful. he smacked him down. then a lot of republicans are saying, hey, wait a minute, the president has to understand that's not his venue. explain the protocol for us all, please. >> reporter: chuck, as you and i were discussing a few minutes ago over e-mail, it's quite possible and even probable that past administrations, both republicans and democrats, the opposition party said we want such and such a night, such and such a time and they said we can't do it that night but that's happened all behind the scenes. now it's added to people's disgust around the country about the lack of comity in washington, comity with a "t." you got into this a little bit.

yesterday at 10:30, the chief of staff called boehner and said he wanted that time but the boehner people said he never really agreed to that. at 11:45, your next guest, dan pfeiffer, puts out a tweet saying they had put out the request. jay carney appears in the briefing room. perhaps he made a mistake in the sense of leaving john boehner and the republicans an opening. not only did he call the time coincidental, which a lot of people took as a grain of salt in terms of the conflict with the debate, but he also cited the congressional schedule. if you look at that schedule, getting to your question, the house of representatives after their six-week recess, is coming in, the first vote is 6:30 wednesday night. what a lot of people don't realize is the house has to actually vote to invite the president to have this joint session of congress to shut everything down, to bring him in, bring the senate across, all the rituals involved with a state of the union-style address. then there's the security sweep, as well, that has to happen presumably after that vote. obviously, if you do the logistics it doesn't really work out.

now, you can argue it would have been a foregone conclusion that the house would have passed that but not necessarily, given what people like ron paul were saying. so that was the reed that john boehner could stand on telling the president he wanted to move it to thursday night. >> a lot of questions coming in about what is nbc going to do and the nfl, the white house. >> reporter: i'd love to hear that myself. >> we'll have dan pfeiffer in a minute. as of a few minutes ago they hadn't decided, leaning towards the idea of 7:30 eastern rather than 8:00 in order not to get in the way of is that. we shall see. that was one of the reasons, i was told, they only had a couple days to pick from in their minds and figured better on the republican debates than competing with the green bay packers. >> reporter: if you look at the schedule, either wednesday or thursday. they're not here tuesday or friday night, so out of the question. for those of us inside the beltway we realize it's out of the question. most of america might not understand that, but they're not here friday night. >> mike viquiera at the white house, my expert when it comes

to congressional protocol. >> reporter: at your service. handful of new data out today has investors testing the wind ahead of tomorrow's big jobs report. bertha coombs joins me. weekly numbers. help me out. >> weekly first-time jobless claim, 409,000, down 12,000 from the week before. above 400,000, we've been there for a while. and they kates obviously things aren't moving. we got other data that's also mixed in terms of the job front. productivity in the second quarter, plus 0.7%, a little more than expected. normally that would be good news because it means if we're less productive you have to hire more people to bring that productivity back up. but labor costs rose more than expected, up 3.3% versus the 2.2% estimates, which likely means employers now facinging higher costs are likely not to hire people. so that's the conundrum we're in right now. we're expecting to get manufacturing data. that's a big one. some folks are looking for that manufacturing index to fall

below the level that shows the expansion. that would be a negative for the mark. futures to the upside. we're getting some good numbers out of the retailers. looks like back-to-school spending is back despite consumers saying they're pessimist pessimistic. they did buy. hurricane irene posing headwinds for some retailers. saks fifth avenue, folks like you weren't in buying gucci loafers as they were generators. >> i each never owned a pair of gucci loafers. come on now. ouch. okay. bertha coombs with a little shot at me. all right. thanks very much. up next, a preview of the president's jobs plan from white house communications director dan pfeiffer. we'll have him what's going on inside the west wing during that hour's long stand wauf john boehner over an outlook calendar. plus, add condoleezza rice to the list of bush officials firing back at dick cheney for his new memoir.

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well, if timing is everything, the latest fallout in washington may not bode well for the debay over jobs. if the two sides can't even agree on when to talk about the unemployment crisis, how can they agree on a plan to solve it? dan pfeiffer is the white house communications director. he joins me now from the white house briefinging room. dan, let me start with this question. >> sure. >> why did -- why did you consul -- wait until yesterday morning to consult with the

speaker's office on a date and time? and then why did you send out the tweet you sent out about an hour and a half later before you got the official letter inviting you to address the joint session of congress? >> well, we had a conversation yesterday morning with the speaker's office at a high level here in the white house and proposed the date of wednesday and the time. and they didn't raise an objection. the they raised an objection, we wouldn't have gone forward with that date. if there had been some concerns they needed more time to work through the logistics and said that to us, we would have held off. this is all sort of a silly thing. if they said we can't do wednesday, we'll do thursday, we would have gone after thursday. so wednesday would have been preferable because it was the first day congress was back, but thursday is fine, as well. >> so did speaker boehner tell -- i believe we reported that it was chief of staff bill bailey -- did he specifically tell bill bailey yes, specifically, september 7th, i'll make it work? >> they raise nod objections to the date or time. >> what does that mean?

what does that mean, meaning it was boehner saying, all right, bill, and that's about it? or was there some specifics here? >> well, i'm certainly not going to get in the habit of reading out conversations between the white house chief of staff and the speak of the house, but there was no -- we had no reason to believe after that confers that there was any reason that wednesday could not work for logistical or other reasons for the speaker. >> all right. let's talk about just quickly, do you guys -- have you decided on what time you'll speak? i know you've said you're not sure yet and are trying to work through that. what time? >> we're working through that with the congressional leadership and with the networks including yours. everyone in america should be rest assured that we will be done before kickoff in the packers/saints game on thursday night. no worries there. >> all right. i want to talk about substance here, which is what's going to be in the plan and what's not going to be in the plan. i've been told that, look, this is going to be focused on job

creation. does that mean we will not have -- hear the president propose something, for instance, to try to deal with what's going on in the housing crisis? >> well, what you'll hear from the president is a speech about how we grow the economy and create jobs. he will talk specifically and unveil that night a specific package of measures to create jobs and grow the economy. there are other things we're going to need do beyond specific things and we'll have more detail for wednesday nigh, tax cuts for individuals and businesses, infrastructure ideas, help for the long-term unemployed. there are things beyond that we have to do to get out of the economic mess we're in, no question, and housing is at the top of that list. the president has been doing a lot on housing. we're going to have more to say about that. some in the speech obviously but also down the line as well. we'll be there on wednesday night -- thursday night, excuse me, freudian slip, to talk about will be a very specific set of initiatives focused on job creation as soon as possible.

>> now, you guys have said jay carney in the briefing, you have said this, others have, that this is going to be proposals that have traditionally gotten bipartisan support in the past. does that mean you are grabbing ideas, you're going to be putting republican names to it? can you give a little more -- show a little more leg, if you will, on exactly what you mean by that? >> what we mean is the things i mentioned here, and we'll have, as i said, more details in the speech, infrastructure proposals, tax cuts, are things ha in previous areas with different iterations by the republican party, have been supported by independent parties, economic experts, people of all stripes, those are the sorts of things the president will talk about in the speech. i suspect there will be things he'll have in the speech that will have been previously supported by members in the audience that night. whether they're named or not, you'll have to wait till the speech to see. but there's no reason i think

these proposals should not be done. the only thing that will keep them from being done is politics. and if congress and the house republican leadership in specific is going to let politics in the way of creating jobs and growing the economy, that's something they'll have to explain to the american people. >> i want to ask you about the fact that i've also been told that everything here will be paid for as far as everything you're going to be proposing. does that mean you're looking at taking sort of speeding up getting money out so maybe money that's been budgeted over ten years on infrastructure you want to spend in the next two? what do you mean by paid for if you're not going to be talking about tax increases? >> sure. we have been this engaged for too long in this town on-in a false debate. either you're deal with your deficits or creating jobs and the economy, not either/or. the president will talk about specific measures to create jobs and grow the economy and the fact that we can do significant deficit reduction beyond what the quote, unquote, super

committee has been tasked with to pay for these measures. we can do that in a very easy way and a balanced approach. >> is this one of these plans you'll but up on your website? i notice you guys are launching a new thing on your website, we, the people, and in here, a david plouffe e-mail, video message this morning. it said if enough ideas get enough petition signatures, it means you will take up the idea. can you explain this a little bit? somebody comes up and says, hey, i want to get rid of the epa, and that gets enough signatures and enough requests, you guys will seriously consider figuring out how to get rid of the epa? >> well, i think that what we, the people, is designed to do is have greater engagement with the american people, to have them -- if there are new ideas that come through that process that are helpful in terms of creating jobs or growing the economy or helping middle-class families, they'll get a fair hearing inside the white house. if there are ideas that are ones that we fundamentally disagree

with or are bad ideas and enough people come forward, we'll respond to why we disagree with that idea and look for a way to work together on other ideas. >> i want to close with politics, new quinnipiac poll out this morning, has to have you pulling your hair out a little bit. who can better handle the economy, your posz, president obama, or mitt romney. same question with your boss or rick perry. mitt romney outpolls your boss. why do you think that is? >> well, i think my guess is that a significant portion of the people polled, the american people, don't know what mitt romney's economic plan is yet. i'm confident they will know. he supports cut, cap, and balance which would essentially end medicare, end social security, devastate -- >> but you know the president's plan and they say -- what you're saying is they're taking none of the above over the president? >> no. what i think is always true before you get into a national contest of ideas in elections is the incumbent is judged not against his or her opponent but

against the ideal. we're obviously in a tough economic situation right now. we've been in it for a long time. we've made some progress. we have a lot more to do. eventually there will be a republican, whether it's mitt romney or governor perry or congresswoman bachmann or something else sitting across the stage from the president and we'll debate, who has a better vision on how to move the economy forward. what we know is every idea being advanced by every republican candidate has been tried before and failed. we'll have a debate. that debate is a long time from now. we have a speech next week that is about how we can create jobs and grow the economy now. >> do you believe that you guys could have handled this request to speaker boehner better? >> well, look, i mean, the whole thing is silly. it's fitting within the last day of august sort of washington, d.c., august, obsession. we'll always look at this and figure out how to do things better. but right now we're focused on the speech next week and the president's plan to grow the

economy and create jobs. >> dan pfeiffer, white house communications director, thanks very much for cominging on. >> thank you, chuck. well, rick perry says he's trying to not be george bush. but today he heads into the heart of bush country. actually perry would argue it's his country, too, for dash for cash. our rick perry campaign expert right here on set. and still to come, damage estimates from hurricane irene are as high as $20 billion. that's hurricane andrew level, folks. we're live in the disaster zone. first, today's trivia question. >> double entendre here. tweet me. fist correct follow gets a follow from us on thursday. the answer and more coming up on "the daily rundown." while i was away e-trade's techno-magic -- thanks martha -- triggered my stop loss orders... saved me a pantload.

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welsh another day, another dollar for governor rick perry. today back in his home state of texas for a fund-raiser after hosting half a dozen already this week. nbc news campaign embed joins me now in washington because they're not letting you into these fund-raisers, are they. >> great to see you. >> we should note when the president has fund-raisers there's always a print pooler at some point showing up there. i'll be curious to see if perry and romney start doing it the same way. let me ask you about rick perry and fund-raising. he's been on the trail a lot and trying to fund raise a lot. how much have you noticed the sort of wear and tear on candidate perry? >> after today he will have done eight fund-raisers since monday. he got in fairly late and they don't want to be in a situation where they're running out of money during a south carolina bus tour. this is really important to have all their ducks in a row. he's really good at raising money in texas. again, the rules in texas when he was running for governor,

there aren't campaign limbs, so here he has to delve into those folks and expand his national network. >> i've already seen they seem to be raising the bar a little bit about how well they're going to do at fund-raising and it's coming in at september 30th that, you know, some sort of -- way over $20 million to perhaps $30 million in this first quarter that they would be raising money, that they think they would be like bush '99. >> and they're going up against mitt romney, who as we know -- >> are they this confident in being able to raise dollar for dollar with perry? romney. >> he's working really hard and taps into his existing networks in texas, will do a little in new york later in the month. this is huge. they don't want to have sloppy fund-raising numbers. >> you have the advantage of doing this for a second cycle for us. it's a brand-new campaign in the perry campaign. when you see these events, do you feel as if they have a full-fledged campaign infrastructure on the ground, doing the things that you were

used to seeing four years ago when you were covering some of these campaigns when they were more mature? >> his team has a lot of folks who have been with perry for five or ten years, all his communications staff or people who have represented him in the past. a lot of these people have worked with bush in previous cycles, as well. you are getting not necessarily the cap ber of presidential events but you're getting a setup as far as advance and big crowds, too. i mean, they have overflow rooms when he was in south carolina where there were four times as many people in the overflow room that he addressed briefly as opposed to people in the room with him when he was doing a south carolina diner visit. >> you feel like you're no longer covering a new campaign still trying to figure out where the press is going to be. a little more operational. >> it's nuclear because it's folks who have been around the governor for a long time. they're still i think getting used to the national press attention. sometimes the questions that are getting asked at the press conferences, they're saying oh,

that wouldn't have come from texas or oklahoma press. but he's responding in a way that, you know, that first day when he was in iowa, he took e questions from everybody. everyone who threw a question at him rick perry wanted to engage. now if you're close to him and ask him a question and it's not a designated time, he'll smile at you and move right on. >> carrie dann. thank you. in washington it's starting to feel like fall. president obama and john boehner are picking up where they left off this summer. the political gamesmanship goes on. you know what else fall means? football. up next, the field of play. what happens when football enters the political playbook. been a tough time off-season for college football. talk about the politics of the ncaa in a few minutes. this is "the daily rundown." sam higgins...

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secretary of state hillary clinton arrived in paris for an international meeting on the situation in libya. 60 countries and ten international organizations will attend. most notably libya's interim government. state department officials tell nbc news that the meet willing focus on security and reconstruction issues and the key role of the libyan people will play in that effort. former secretary of state condoleezza rice is pushing back against charges in dick cheney's new memoir that rice was naive in nuclear talks with north korea and that she misled her superiors, including the president. in an interview with reuters, rice said the claims were, quote, an attack on her integrity and that cheney is taking cheap shots at her and other bush administration officials. by the way, don't miss the fact that dick cheney commended hillary clinton as a good secretary of state. be curious to see what he thinks of the comparison of clinton vergs rice. sunday, president obama will his first trip to see the damage left by hurricane arecent in paterson, new jersey, where many blocks remain under water.

michelle franzen is live for us in paterson. any better news today? still see lots of running water behind you. >> reporter: lots of running water, chuck, but there is good news. the passaic is receding. it's expected to stay above flood stage though for the next few days through the weekend. president obama will see plenty of damage, unfortunately, on his visit here, because this water is not going anywhere. you can see up against the bridge here just one of several bridges impacted throughout paterson, new jersey. the debris just pounding away at that bridge. and once that water is gone from there, they're going to have to inspect that bridge and make sure it's safe to drive over. that's one of several bridges throughout paterson. in other neighborhoods, more of a dire situation. there are full neighborhoods that are still submerged under water, houses and cars. it's going to be sometime before those folks get a chance to get back in, about more than 6,000 people have been impacted in paterson alone. throughout new jersey, the rivers have seemed to have

crested, but again, many of them will stay above flood stage. as you mentioned, president obama coming here, the mayor likely will be able to show him some of the extensive damage. >> michelle, do we know whether governor christie will be with him as well? one can assume that. >> reporter: i can assume that he might be, but we haven't heard for sure yet. i think it's safe to say governor christie has been zigzagging the state and will likely be with president obama that day. >> all right. michelle franzen in paterson, new jersey, for us this morning. thanks very much. all right. talk a little lighter news. the end of summer means presidential candidates will begin to increase their own blitzing attacks on each other, it means congress is running back to washington, but not too soon, apparently, for speeches to congress. but this time of year is when millions of americans rush to the couch or the local bar because college football officially kicks off tonight. nbc news correspondent and college football fanatic, the number two college football fanatic behind mike murray.

>> 1a, 1b, 1c. >> merry christmas, happy hanukkah. >> it's arrived today, chuck. >> but a tough off-season. the ncaa trying to figure out its relationship with these schools, with these superconferences. you cover congress. congress is going to get involved here. does the ncaa realize this? >> no. not yet. but congress absolutely has to get involved here. i say that from a sports d -- >> absolutely. but they're going to. >> they will. >> orrin hatch for a long time -- >> congressman burgess, as well. what you see in this off-season, ohio state, the u, treacherous scandals there, tons of issues about paying for players and all that. you're now seeing an organization that has tax-exempt status in a lot of capacity. >> but making a ton of money. >> astronomical amounts of money and now actually putting kids in difficult positions and not really caring about the kids, not really caring about the academics, caring more about the

almighty dollar and the bottom line. >> but they would argue they need that money in order to fund the other parts of the athletic department and -- >> correct. >> -- to put money -- >> a lot of good arguments but when you have the possibility of super conferences emerging, let's tell people what those will be. you could have a situation where the s.e.c. as we know it, the acc, the big ten, the big east, all these super -- all these conferences say, you know what, we're not going to play in the ncaa anymore. we're going to secede from the ncaa and create this big group of 64 teams in a football capacity and just negotiate directly outside of the umbrella of the ncaa. if that happens, where is the regulation? you don't know. it is such a wild west situation going on right now. and the ncaa says, well, we have to re-evaluate our -- >> this is going to trickle down to public high schools, high school football, all this stuff, i mean, and -- acu basketball.

never mind seven on seven football. let's have a little bit of first union here. first, my father when i was a kid taught me geography using football and basketball conferences. that of course is out the window now when a school like st. louis university is in the atlantic 10 in basketball and marquette is in the big east. >> or texas in the big east. >> now a math issue. why does the big 12 have ten teams and the big ten have 12 teams? >> amazing question. maybe marketing. you remember what the big ten was originally when it had ten teams, then 11, now 12 with the university of nebraska. now you also have the pac-10 now being called the pac 12, the big ten, we've heard texas a&m is going to -- sorry the big 12 -- >> see? >> leave the conference and they will become the big nine? let's talk about that texas a&m thing for a while because it

plays into rick perry. >> it does? >> it does. >> political connection. >> political connection. a proud aggie. you have texas a&m, who's going to leave the big 12 -- >> but only if the s.e.c. invites them. >> but you know why? all this has to do with the facr own television network on espn and they want to be separated from that and no longer want to lay in the same realm. >> we have ten seconds. we decided because no one cares what we think about college football, we'll make picks anyway. >> we do. >> oregon/lsu, which team has more players eligible? >> i'm going with lsu. james carville. >> i went oregon. it's being held in dallas, texas. >> the jerry bowl. >> boise state and georgia. >> boise state always comes to play. >> mark rick, his job is on the line. northwestern and boston college. >> the brains bowl. i'm going to go bc at home, a noon kickoff. you don't do well with those. >> you're right.

i'm taking northwestern. of course monday night where i'll be, bird stadium, college park, maryland, an undermanned miami squad will be favored against maryland. >> randy edsall taking over the maryland terrapins, trying to instill a new team, al golden with the miami hurricanes. i'm going with maryland. fear the turtle. >> i think miami has too much talent. up next our powerhouse political panel joins us on the obama/boehner face-off over timing. and michele bachmann starting to go after rick perry. we'll tell you why. and the nbc news politico republican debate at the reagan library, still on wednesday, september 7th, and will start at 8:00 eastern. it will be right here on msnbc. the white house soup of the day, white chicken chile. good day for chili. >> zac brown band, good choice, chuck.

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at chantix.com. well, any hope thasz we see a more bipartisan washington return after labor day were essentially dashed in yesterday's scheduling spat. can the white house and congress get something done on jobs? clarence page is a columnist for the "chicago tribune," jackie kucinich is a reporter for "today." larns, let me start with you. >> yes, sir. >> because you've been around washington a long time, not to say that you're, you know -- >> the general himself. >> like wine. >> could the white house have done this better, could speaker boehner have acted better? what was your impression of all this when you saw this sort of break out into the open like this? >> well, i can tell you, the base was not happy. >> we know that. the base is not happy with the president about anything.

>> well, the whole thing reminded me of the debate at the vietnam peace talks over the shape of the table. you know, day, week, the war is going on and they're arguing over the shape of the table. here they're arguing over what night shall the president make his speech to the joint session of congress? i mean, has everything broken down? has everybody gone nuts? this is the overall impression that you get. now the finger-pointing begins of who failed to get the mess e message. the white house says obama's people talked to boehner's people. boehner's people say no they didn't. now the fingers go back and forth over that breakdown in communications. but this should have been a good launch for a joint effort at a crisis that's going on in the country right now. we see washington once again breaking down. >> i think you made the argument in your briefing this morning. >> yeah. >> we made a similar argument about speaker boehner might have

actually bailed the white house out on this. why? >> first of all, the idea that it was a coincidence is ridiculous, that the white house just happened to pick september 7th. they pushed back hard on that. >> i know they did. >> i just find it hard to believe that they were unaware. >> if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck. >> exactly. the reason why is i don't know you want to create a situation, which is what they did, president obama speaks and you give republican candidates two hours to rebuff him, the story gets split up, the republican candidates and president obama, the message is muddled, now the republican candidates are respondinging to president obama. the optics reason great. it's like a quasigeneral election debate. so just politically it didn't seem to make sense to me. i think they're smarter to do it the next day. also to clarence's point, these process, when, where, how, are

things the american public does not care about, does not like and ultimately gets people away from the policy in the speech, which ultimately should be the most important thing for this white house. >> jackie, interesting, the white house could have played their protocol card better. and speaker boehner decided i'm not going to take the highroad here. >> no. the idea that, you know, kind of the same vein as in september 7th, the idea that a security sweep would take that long. it takes three hours. they've done this before. this is not new to them. so i think both there were some errors on both sides of at this point and there was a little bit of, really? on both sides. >> the pettiness of the whole thing, the american public hates congress. they don't -- the president is has had his worst job approval rating for the term. all an average person sees is they're fighting over something i don't care anything about while i don't have a job, i don't know how i'm going to pay my mortgage. >> be, if you're congress, it's

rhetorical limbo, how low can you go? >> i do fight about the shape of this table sometimes. the president wants -- he asked for a big venue. in many ways that raises the stakes that this better be a big jobs speech. >> right. >> that's right. >> not to be cliche about this, that reminds people of dave and -- where the big joint ses, it's my job speech, everybody goes back to work, here's how i'm going to do it. >> and that's the how i'm going to do it. >> and that's the classical hollywood political movie. you have to have the big speech that resolves everything. what's odd is that this president, so notable in his campaign for the optics, to the big speech, he's had a problem with stepping on his own message. you saw this happen during the whole health care debate, over gates and when gates called it

and now here, once again, the big speech is coming up and even before it is delivered, we have this kind of a problem. we ask, the president sometimes credited the word okay, the answer is the eighth president himself, martin van buren. while van buren undoubtedly pop ewe liezed the expression, okay was an early 19th century abbreviation for all correct. but you know what? you remember seinfeld. it may have been this, too. be n. v8 v-fusion juice gives them a full serving of vegetables plus a full serving of fruit. but it just tastes like fruit. [ male announcer ] get five dollars in money-saving coupons at v8juice.com.

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all right. let's bring back our panel. forget perry v. romney. jackie, let me start with you. chris and i have been obsessed with the super packed story. i think it's going to be the dominating force in the fall when it comes to attack ads. here michele bachmann's super pack comes out with an attack threat against perry. >> he's her biggest threat at this point. it's like bachmann is the tim pawlenty as rick perry is to michele bachmann. they're sharing the same space. they're going to go after him first because that's who is going to weaken their candidate potentially. >> do you believe you can outconservative rick perry? >> what's important here is pay back time now. rick perry stepped on her victory at that straw poll. she hardly had a 24-hour media ride after having won it and now he's taken the spotlight away from her. >> and mitt romney has to love

this. you think mitt romney people are suddenly funding the mitt romney super pack pac? >> i think mitt romney is not going to be in south carolina. romney wants bachmann in the race as long as possible to funnel votes away from rick perry. >> i will tell you why we have social security and why it's popular. >> fair enough. jackie. >> wrote a story yesterday. all the jobs records of the governors -- >> it was a great story. >> thank you very much. >> i wanted to do a whole piece on jobs and instead i ended up doing a piece on the "today" show. >> romney, read it, rick perry, it's good. >> i will be the most shameless of the three of you and say i am hosting "the daily rundown" tomorrow. don't go away for the long weekend. >> it's open house at my daughter's school, tomorrow morning, so i can't wait to meet her new teacher pup got that, new teacher? that's it for this edition of

the daily rundown. on tomorrow's show, the highly anticipated daily rundown. i'll be back here at 1:00.

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