astronauts on board the space station let 'em rip. 150 schools in the running, but a group called alliance rocket, avery's group, won. so for avery and for his dad and for those of us who work with his dad, this is obviously very, very cool. but for all of us in this country, the fact that our space agency is getting high school kids to program robots that operate on microgravity in the space station, that they're inspiring the next generation of computational thinkers and engineers for all of us, that is the best new thing in the world today. congratulations alliance rocket, the geeks shall inherit the earth. nowit is time fr the last word wit >> the day after the state of the union, president obama went to iowa and then arizona, where he got into a weird argument with a weird governor, perhaps our weirdest governor. mitt romney went to miami and pretended to be normal. and newt gingrich admitted he's not normal, and then talked about going to the moon. all that actually happened today.

>> you know, i know there's been a lot of excitement. >> president obama taking his re-election message to iowa. >> the president began his tour in iowa today. >> our businesses have created more than 3 million jobs over the last 22 months. >> and it is game on 2012. >> he's going to run as a left-wing populist. >> asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary, that's just common sense. >> mitt romney, mitt romney. >> the president was speaking as if mitt romney was going to be the nominee. >> this is not class warfare. >> he's really trying to divide america. >> america's not about handouts. >> no bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. >> and to try to say that republicans are all about the rich people. >> governor romney blasted the president. >> i'm fighting for all middle class americans. >> that's a bit rich for someone who pays a 14% tax. >> the banks aren't bad people, they're just overwhelmed. >> corporations are people, my

friend. >> swiss bank accounts and automatic $24 million a year income with no work. >> is there anything that newt doesn't know? >> no one has any idea why mitt romney's in public life. >> newt gingrich taking the lead in the sunshine state. >> by the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be american. >> newt gingrich spinning his tryst with callista. >> it may make me more normal than somebody who wanders around seeming perfect. >> is he the superior species? >> if you don't run chris christi christie, romney will be the nominee and will lose. >> i have confessed my weaknesses. >> no, i don't like obama, and this is going to be an historic landslide if gingrich is the candidate. >> i get the last word! i get the last word! today, the president took his message that the state of our union is getting stronger on the road. the first stop was iowa and then the second stop was arizona,

where he was given a very peculiar welcome by republican governor jan brewer. this photograph only adds to the collection of very strange jan brewer moments caught on film. >> i have, uh, done so much, and i just cannot believe that we have changed everything since i have become your governor in the last days. arizona has been brought back from its abyss. we have cut the budget, we have balanced the budget, and we are moving forward. we have done everything that we could possibly do. we have, um, did what was right for arizona. i will tell you that i have really did the very best that anyone could do. >> joining me now with more on

the presidents day after the state of the union and exactly what happened at the airport in arizona is richard wolffe, msnbc political analyst, and author of "revival: the struggle for survival inside the obama white house," and howard fineman, msnbc political analyst and editorial director for aol/"huffington post." thank you both very much for joining me tonight. howard, everything i know about what happened in that airport in arizona, i have learned from the "huffington post." i've just been reading every dispatch. what explains this weird confrontation with the governor, shaking her hand, fist, almost, at the president? >> well, having talked to some white house people and some democrats familiar with it and having seen what jan brewer had to say, here's how i reconstruct the events. >> all right. >> the president comes off the plane, the governor hands him a letter and says, i -- this letter says i would like to have another meeting with you to

discuss immigration and other important issues of the day. and the president says, well, governor, i happen to have read excerpts from the book that you wrote and the last time we had a meeting in the white house in 2010, i thought it was a pretty cordial meeting. we all said it was a cordial meeting. i read your book and you said you were condescended to and we didn't let you in the room and we took away your cell phones. what's going on here? at which point she starts, you know, waving her finger. and the way the democrats say it is they were, they were basically set up. this was a stunt by her. but i would also say, one of the cardinal rules of politics, especially when you're president is, don't punch down. jan brewer's jan brewer. barack obama's the president of the united states. i don't know that it was great for him to end up having his finger being waved at by her. but that's the way it worked out. >> any reporting on what she was saying during the finger-waving

moment? >> well, the answer is, i don't know specifically, except she was saying, i think she was saying, according to the white house officials, she then got upset when he said, your account in the book is inaccurate, and she said, well, it is what it is. the book is what it is, whatever that means. >> richard wolffe, the president looks perfectly calm in that situation, as he always does, looks perfectly gentlemanly. and it looks to me to be one of those images of republicans being unreasonable in the face of the reasonable man. >> yes. well, look, for a start, to pick up on howard's rule about never punching down, the president about being president is the only way to punch is down. there is no punching up from being president. so if you are going to punch, you've got to actually try and do it in a reasonable way. at least he's not the one doing the finger wagging. but the important thing here is that here's a president who -- look, he's in a bubble, that's for sure. he's not used to people

misinterpreting what he says or being rude about him in books. in fact, when he wrote about president bush in "the audacity of hope," he wondered out loud whether the president was really in touch with things and it all seemed very strange. clearly, for governor brewer, she thought leaving their phones outside the oval office was some kind of confiscating. in fact, everyone leaves their phones outside the oval office. that's just a rule of the place. and there's a big problem for the president, which is that he has this record of being tough on immigration. ask the latino community what his record is on deportation. me thought there would be res resyrup indicatiresir reciprocati reciprocation. they discounted everything he did and accused him of being weak and pathetic on the border and that's how you get into a finger wagging. >> lawrence, that's what this was really all about. what you saw today is a picture that's a proxy for a very deep

argument about immigration. don't forget, the president was a constitutional -- >> so, richard, she wants the picture to say, look, i'm fighting that guy about our border issue. >> exactly. that's what she wants and that's what she got out of it. the president's not going to win arizona anyway, but he may win other states in part based on hispanic vote, because this is a very deep argument that's now in front of the supreme court. the supreme court's going to decide the arizona case probably some time this summer. jan brewer's the main actor in it against the president. very crucial picture of what is really one of the main issues in the campaign. >> but this is someone with no national credibility, jan brewer, in a moment like this. it's not like there's going to be anyone who's outside of arizona who's voted for her and isn't fanatical about her, who kind of leans into it and says, oh, yeah, we're with her. >> that's my point. the picture, which shows her waving the finger at the president, sells on the president's behalf in other places, in other states, where the hispanic vote is really going to matter.

that was my point. >> now, the president has taken his, it's not class warfare, it's common sense argument on the road. richard wolffe, all the polling indicates that the public is with the president on fair income tax sharing by the upper ends of the brackets, especially the super rich like mitt romney. here he is doing it with mitt romney's tax returns now out there. it seems like this is the moment where that argument is really getting traction. >> right. and it had traction with not just democrats, but crucially independents, a vast majority of independents, and the majority of republicans, siding with the issue on taxing the super wea h wealthy here. you know, the romney campaign has been struggling with humanizing the candidate. and in fact, they have managed to put a human face on what would otherwise be a fairly abstract issue. and so romney has become the personification of this problem, and even mitch daniels thinks that these super wealthy people should not have the kind of deductions that middle class folks have, that have reduced

mitt romney's tax rate to below 15%. so, you know, there is -- there's a real-life effect that mitt romney has brought into the open here, which was otherwise a very nice loophole for vc private equity guys just like him. i'm sure that lobby is now regretting the fact that one of their own is in this prominent position, running for president. >> howard, cbs news poll coming out, showing that 91% of americans approved of the proposals, approved of what they heard, basically, from the president last night in that speech. i mean, that's as big a score as you can get. >> i thought it was a good speech. >> 91%. that's most republicans in this country, agreed with what he said. >> to get over 90% of the american people to agree on anything is practically impossible. i thought, actually, it was one of his better speeches. he was criticized, to some extent, on the left, because it wasn't grand enough, it wasn't aggressive enough. i think he was proposing things that are unarguably sensible. it was a very sensible speech by him, and yet delivered in a very sharp way.

so he's basically saying to the republicans, you won't accept this sensible stuff, then you go off in the corner and hide, because we're going to take the mainstream, and i thought that was one of his best attempts to do it so far in his presidency. too bad he didn't give that kind of speech at the beginning instead of now. >> richard, some people thought it sounded combative. i think it may have sounded combative if you were some kind of house committee chairman. but to me it sounded as if he presented every one of his positions that we know to be partisan, we know what the divides are between the parties, but he presented them in the most reasonable sounding way possible, and that's how you get that 91% score. >> well, let's take his most combative, most confrontational position, which was that if you don't believe america is back, then you don't know what you're talking about. so he turned to the most insulting position on the most patriotic position possible. you know, there were moments when he got in their face, but these were pretty outrageous idea. the idea of even someone reasonable on the republican

side like mitch daniels, who say the economy has gotten worse since this president took office, just not borne out by the facts. >> richard wolffe and howard fineman, thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. the president talked taxes last night and the republicans sat on their hands when they did. you could just feel them wanting to boo when the president talked about the rich paying their fair share of taxes. you'd never know president obama used the same language, the same concept that president reagan used about the rich paying their fair share. so when did the republicans become such an unreasonable, anti-tax party and what makes them incapable of compromising on taxes the way president reagan did? we'll answer that, next. and more than once last night, president obama steered his state of the union address straight at mitt romney. former presidential candidate and now romney supporter tim pawlenty is here. we'll find out just how panicked

the romney campaign is after the big gingrich win in south carolina. and later, once again, the president secretly ordered navy s.e.a.l.s into a dangerous mission, he got the word of their success just before the state of the union address last night. we'll give you that dramatic story later. [ coughs ] what is this shorty? uh, tissues sir, i'm sick. you don't cough, you don't show defeat. give me your war face! raaah! [ male announcer ] halls. a pep talk in every drop.

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yesterday, mitt romney, who's hoping to run against president obama, released his tax returns from the last two years. and what we've suspected all along has finally been confirmed. he's rich. he's -- romney's wife earned more than $42 millionover the last two years and only paid about 15% in taxes, but in

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>> you know, if you've only been following politics for the last 20 years or so, you might think that republicans have always been adamantly anti-tax, always dug in against any increase in taxes in any way. not true. if you're wondering why the republicans are now so dug in against president obama's proposals, his proposals last night for higher tax rates for the rich, it actually goes back to a lesson republicans believe they learned when barack obama was in law school. you just heard vice president george h.w. bush in 1988 accepting the republican party's nomination for president at their convention in new orleans and branding the republican party as the anti-tax party more clearly and more emphatically than ever before. read my lips, no new taxes became the most memorable line

from that presidential campaign. two years later, just two years later, as president, george h.w. bush signed the omnibus budget reconciliation act of 1990, which increased the top tax rate from 28% to 31%. it also increased the alternative minimum tax from 21% to 24%. it increased the gas tax by a nickel. the cigarette tax went up 8 c t cents a pack. and in an affront to that mythical blue-collar voter all politicians want to appeal to, joe six pack, a six-pack of beer was taxed an additional 16 cents. and finally, the budget act of 1990, signed by president bush after saying, read my lips, no new taxes, invented a whole new set of taxes, luxury sales taxes on automobiles, boats, personal aircraft, and fur coats. president bush had simply done what president reagan had done

before him. he reached a compromise agreement with democrats to race taxes as part of a deficit reduction package. a package that included 70% spending cuts that the democrats didn't like and 30% tax increases that president bush and the republicans didn't like, but the president compromised on it. that's what bipartisan compromise used to look like in washington. and then, the worst thing in the world happened. well, the worst thing for the future possibility of tax compromises between democrats and republicans. president bush lost his re-election bid to the democrat, bill clinton, who campaigned on a middle class tax cut. that's right, the democrat got to campaign against a tax-raising republican president, claiming that he, the democrat, would cut taxes when he was elected president. bill clinton won and then instead of cutting taxes, he

actually proposed and the democrats in congress passed the biggest tax increase in history. clinton's campaign promise of a middle class tax cut disappeared, just like president bush's campaign promise, "read my lips, no new taxes," and from president bush's defeat, modern republicans took the lesson that we republicans must never, ever, ever again compromise with democrats on raising taxes. never again, not one penny, not ever, read my lips, no new taxes. every republican who has made that promise since george h.w. bush broke that promise, has really meant that promise. they have kept that promise. not one republican vote has been cast for an increase in federal taxation of any kind since 1990.

joining me now is bruce bartlett, who served as executive director of the joint economic committee, as a senior policy analyst in the reagan white house and as deputy assistant secretary of the treasury during george h.w. bush's administration. he is now a columnist for the fiscal times and a contributor for "the new york times," and he's the author of the new book "the benefit and the burden: tax reform, why we need it and what it will take." bruce, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> happy to be here. >> bruce, what do you make of think theory that the worst thing that happened to reasonable tax policy in this country is that president bush was defeated in his re-election after agreeing to a tax increase compromise with democrats, and let me just stipulate, on a personal level, bill clinton beating president bush was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my own career. i was instantly elevated to

running the finance committee in the senate under a democratic president and was very much a part of working hard to do that big tax increase that we did. so this is leaving my personal benefit aside, from president clinton's win, and there's all sorts of other benefits to president clinton's win from a democratic perspective. but for the future of tax policy and the tax dialogue between the parties, it seems to me that president bush getting defeated after reaching a compromise with democrats on taxation has eliminated, for as long as we can now see, any possibility of another republican democrat tax compromise. >> well, it certainly looks that way, as of right now. and as you recall, bush got virtually no republican votes in the house or senate on that 1990 legislation. i think there were a couple. you probably remember better than i do. but i think there's a story to this. which is 1990 was the last time you had a leading republican

figure or president who cared about the deficit. i mean, that's the other part to this. is that republicans simply -- you know, they talk a good line, but in their mythology, deficits are never caused by lower revenues, only by higher spending. and that's just complete nonsense. a huge part of the deficit right now is the fact that we have among the lowest taxes as a share of the gdp in our history. and i don't think very many people know that. >> bruce, in your book, you have a passage that is dead on to where our politics are today on this. you say, people used to be incensed when the rich paid tax rates lower than those barely in the middle class. today, they don't seem to care. why, i don't know. i think it may have to do with the decline of the balanced budget budget policy. it seems to me that the budget rule -- the buffett rule as

being pushed by the president, and mitt romney's release of tax returns at the same time, seems to have possibly raised this issue to the point where people will care. >> i hope so. but the point i was trying to make is that if you assume that deficits will lead to higher taxes then mitt makes sense that if somebody else is cheating on their taxes, it comes at your expense. you may have to pay higher taxes in the future because this guy's cheating. but if you take the republican idea that deficits don't matter, as vice president cheney once said, then it doesn't really matter if somebody else is cheating on their taxes. it doesn't come at your expense. so i think that's what -- that's the point i was trying to get at. and also, if you believe that higher spending leads to higher taxes, then wyou're going to wat to restrain spending. but if deficits don't matter, then higher spending never has any cost. so i think the republican policy of never raising taxes has, ironically, led to higher spending.

>> bruce, you point out something that i didn't notice in the book. you mention that we all know that president george w. bush was a big tax cutter. but it's also true, you say here, that he was the only president since we've invented the tax code who never raised a single tax in any way. >> well, at least since hoover. i don't think coolidge raised any taxes, but every president since herbert hoover has raised taxes to some degree or another. but george w. bush never did. and there's a footnote in my, to a treasury document that explains that. >> it hasn't always been this way. bruce bartlett, your new book is "the benefit and the burden." thank you very much for union g i joining us tonight. >> thank you. coming up, today mitt romney said he would consider putting newt gingrich in the vice presidential slot on his ticket, which is very bad news for chris christie and my next guest, governor tim pawlenty. but up next, a rare moment

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today, gabby giffords performed a bit of a miracle in washington. she brought the house of representatives together in a rare moment of bipartisanship. kelly o'donnell has the report. >> reporter: a truly extraordinary day. party and politics simply did

not matter. >> gabby, we love you. we have missed you. >> the brightest star among us, the brightest star congress has ever seen. >> reporter: gone were the usual fiery passions. >> no matter what we argue about here on this floor or in this country, there is nothing more important than family and friendship. >> reporter: so many wanted to honor gabrielle giffords' grace and resilience. >> gabby's courage, her strength, and her downright fortitude are an inspiration to all of us and all americans. >> reporter: giffords' year-long, hard-fought recovery brought her back here, and continuing that work is the reason that she will not stay. >> my district deserves to elect a u.s. representative who can give 100% to the job now. >> reporter: with her arizona colleagues of both parties gathered round, best friend,

congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz, read the letter of resignation for giffords. >> i will recover and will return, and we will work together again. >> reporter: giffords was determined to deliver the letter herself, each step a challenge. speaker boehner caught her briefly. then let his own tears flow. giffords' last vote was on a bill that she co-wrote. it passed and like all the tributes, it was unanimous. >> she has brought the word dignity to new heights. >> reporter: the good-byes from that joyful bear hug from president obama last night to hospital workers who hate to see her go. >> i'm so proud of you! i'll miss you. >> i miss you. >> that was kelly o'donnell reporting. we'll be right back with governor tim pawlenty.

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how in the world do you, mitt romney, justify making more in one day than the median american family makes in a year while paying the effective tax rate of the guy who has to scan your shoes at the airport. >> i pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. i don't think you want someone as the candidate as president that pays more taxes than he owes. >> no, but you might one who thinks that's wrong. >> while mitt romney continues to defend his right to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary, president obama continued to push for the buffett rule again today. >> let's follow the buffett rule, named after warren. if you make more than $1 million a year, you should pay a tax rate of at least 30%. on the other hand, if you make less than $250,000 a year, which is 98% of you, your taxes

shouldn't go up. and i just want to make clear, the reason i've proposed this is not because we begrudge financial success in this country. >> joining me now, national co-chair of the romney campaign and former minnesota governor, tim pawlenty. governor, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> good evening, lawrence. thanks for having me on the show. >> now, i know you're here to speak for candidate romney, but i want candidate romney to speak for himself, just for a second, on video, with larry kudlow today talking about the buffett rule. let's just listen to what he had to say. >> is this buffett tax designed to come at you? >> well, it's designed to come at me if i'm not the nominee. if i happen not to be nominee, he'll still take the 99 versus 1 attack. he's really trying to divide america and to say that republicans are all about the rich people. look, republicans are about middle class americans. i'm fighting to help middle class americans get better jobs

and better incomes. >> so governor pawlenty, what was the panic level today inside the romney campaign when that cbs poll came out showing that 91% of the public agreed with the president's proposals in the state of the union address last night? >> well, i don't think there was any panic at all, because i think as this debate unfolds, we take great solace in the wisdom of the american people in history, lawrence. and you know this, class warfare arguments never works in american politics. barack obama should be focusing on growing the pie, not inciting people to fight with each other over every-shrinking pieces of the pie. and if i just might offer one moment of tutorial on taxes. mitt romney's taxes, when he earned the money before he actually invested it, was taxed at income initially, at today's highest rate, 35% -- >> governor, we don't know that. i don't want to interrupt you, but we don't know that. he'll have to show us 20 years' of tax returns to prove that.

>> but we presume -- >> that he was taxed at that much lower rate that investment bankers manage to benefit from. >> hang with me for a second. let's say he earned the income, he got taxed at the highest margin of rate, currently 35%. then he invests it, it's capital gains, not income, he pays another 15% on that gain. and by the way, the companies, in most instances, if they're formed as is subchapter-c companies, they're paying taxes. it's a lot more complicated than just saying, he only paid 14% or 15%. and beyond all of that, the main point is this. barack obama should be focused on growing the economy, not pitting american versus american to fight with each other over shrinking pieces of the pie. >> well, the president says what he's advocating is common sense, not class warfare. but i want to go to one other piece of the state of the union address right now where president obama went directly at mitt romney on the auto bailout. let's listen to that.

>> on the day i took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. some even said we should let it die. with a million jobs at stake, i refused to let that happen. in exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. we got workers and auto makers to sell their differences. we got the industry to retool and restructure. today, general motors is back on top as the world's number one auto maker. >> the general motors is number one after president obama bailed them out, mitt romney said that general motors should be allowed to die, that we shouldn't do that auto bailout. pretty bad call for mitt romney on that one. >> well, not at all, lawrence.

let's look at the facts. mitt romney said, we live in a nation that has a rule of law. so you don't get special treatment just because you're general motors or you're, you know, fans of the president. so mitt romney called for a structured pre-planned bankruptcy of general motors under existing law and the result would have been a successful result. you know what barack obama did? he also oversaw a structured bankruptcy of general motors, but guess what he did? he then took special goodies and parting gifts and gave them to his buddies, the uaw. so the main difference between those two approaches, mitt romney, on the rule of law, equal playing field, go use the same system as everybody else, barack obama did that to a point, but then he gave away the political parting gifts, the crony capitalism gifts to the uaw and others involved in the transaction. >> so your argument on the auto bailout is that president obama somehow made general motors much less efficient by giveaways to labor, but then, miraculous, general motors becomes, again,

the number one and most successful auto maker in the world? not just the united states, the world. >> they went through a structured bankruptcy and became more efficient, became more streamlined. they did that themselves. to suggest that barack obama's gifts to the unions that, you know, supported him during the campaigns and his parting gifts to them, as part of the heavy hand of government and the crony capitalism he used is what turned around general motors is ludicrous. i mean, that is outrageous. barack obama, by the way, has no history, no connection, no executive leader, no experience in the entrepreneurial economy, the private economy, his entire life has been in, government or government-related activities. that's in direct contrast to mitt romney who spent the bulk of his life as an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, starting, investing, growing businesses, and developing jobs. >> can you point to me in our presidential history, to the great businessman who turned out

to be the great president of the united states? >> well, i think there has been a number of people who have been in business in one way, ronald reagan was a businessman, also an actor, obviously, primary. >> oh, that's a stretch. >> well, in the private sector. >> private sector, okay. he was the president of a union. he was president of the screen actors guild. he's one of those labor thugs. >> all right. well, how about abraham lincoln. he was a lawyer -- >> businessman?! i don't think -- >> george washington. george washington was -- >> that's what makes me laugh about the businessman model. >> how about george washington? >> he was a general! we've never had one. a businessman has never made a good president of the united states yet. if we have one, we can maybe some day point to that. >> here's what it does take. and i think many people who have been around this president, look, he has his strengths and weaknesses, as we all do. but it is fair to say that he did not have a very deep

understanding, appreciation, or experience in private enterprise, the private economy, the entrepreneurial economy, or for that matter, even basic function, executive leadership, executive seasoning. and people who have been around him have said the presidency and his leadership has suffered as a result. he gives a great speech, but when you put somebody who hasn't really run anything, hasn't really done anything in terms of executive function and put him in the most powerful position in the world, that's a bad combination. >> governor tim pawlenty with the romney campaign and still at the top of my short list for mitt romney's candidates for vice president, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> not going to happen, but thank you. >> okay, thanks. coming up, first, newt gingrich says something no one can disagree with -- he's not normal -- and then in the same interview he says he is more normal than the other candidates for president because -- he said this -- his life has included normal things, like marriages, divorces, affairs, you know, all that normal stuff.

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take control by opening a new account or rolling over an old 401(k) today, and we'll throw in up to $600. how's that for common sense? i'm different than a normal politician. i'm different than a normal politician. i'm different than a normal politician. >> he's right. he's not a normal politician. nothing normal about newt. the first thing a normal politician does is maintain a

very strict limit on the number of wives on his resume. one was the maximum number of wives thought possible for a successful presidential candidate, until 1980, when ronald reagan went all the way to the white house with his second wife, while his first wife, presumably, watched the reagan inauguration on tv. since reagan, running for president with your second wife at your side has become so routine, it passed without comment when bob dole did it, followed by john mccain, and john kerry. now, i, for one, could vote for someone who -- for president who had three wives at the same time or a new husband every year, if i agree with that candidate on policy. but at the beginning of this presidential campaign, i wrongly adjudged the conservative christian republican primary voter to be so intolerant of newt's marital resume that his campaign for president was laughable. i cannot believe that i overlooked the all-important christian doctrine of

forgiveness, forgiveness of sins, and how that would actually play to newt's advantage, which we have all knew seen. >> she says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage. would you like to take some time to respond to that? >> no, but i will. [ cheers and applause ] i think -- i think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and i am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that. >> amazing. and here is newt today, telling

christian broadcasting network why he now thinks that his flamboyantly adulteress lifestyle punk waited by three marriages is actually a selling point to conservative christian voters -- at least against a super rich robot like mitt romney. >> it may make me more normal than somebody who wanders around seeming perfect and maybe not understanding the human condition and the challenges of life for normal people. >> so there's newt, in the same interview that he began by saying he's not a normal politician, rewriting himself into being more normal than that stiff, rich, out of tough one-wife guy, who seems perfect and doesn't understand the human condition. >> rick, i'll tell you what, 10,000 bucks? $10,000 bet? >> i'm not in the betting business, but, i'll --

>> okay -- i wrote the book. >> what's the effective rate you've been paying? >> what's the effective rate i've been paying? it's probably closer to the 15% rate than anything, because the last ten years, i've -- my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past rather than ordinary income. >> in another interview today, newt tried out some new campaign slogans that have a little more punch, more punch than, you know, more normal. and, yeah, they sure are different than what a normal politician would say. >> i have never lied under oath. i have never committed perjury. i have never been involved in a felony. i have never lied under oath. i have never committed perjury. i have never been involved in a felony. i have never lied under oath. i have never committed perjury. i have never been involved in a felony. everyone loves surprise parties.

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leon, good job tonight. good job tonight. >> president obama congratulated secretary of defense leon panetta just two hours and seven minutes after being told that the navy's famous s.e.a.l. team 6 had completed yet another daring mission. tonight we've learned that as the president prepared to speak to the nation, he was also authorizing the rescue of jessica buchanan, an american aid worker, and her danish colleague, paul thisted. they were held hostage for three months by somali kidnappers. late monday night, the president was told that jessica's health was deteriorating. that's when he authorized the same unit that killed osama bin laden to act. just after 5:00 last night, almost 20 navy s.e.a.l.s parachuted in two miles from the camp in northern somalia, shot and killed the nine heavily

armed kidnappers, then flew the hostages via helicopter to a u.s. base in the african nation of geebutdy. the entire operation took about an hour. after the state of the union speech, the president called jessica bu kchanabuchanan's fat tell him his daughter was safe. joining me, senior fellow at the new american foundation. steve, when ft. was congratulating leon pa netta last night, we had no idea what that was about. he was very specifically talking about, good job tonight, the job that the navy s.e.a.l.s pulled off. >> well, i just think, you know, anytime president obama is giving a big speech, bad guys better watch out, because this reminds us all about, you know, the white house correspondents dinner, where a lot of the planning before the president's white house correspondents dinner on getting osama bin laden was under way, and that next morning, they launched the operation to get him. it was another remarkable night. i remember seeing leon panetta and tom donilon, the president that night.

and i saw tom donilon leaving a party early and him telling me he had an early morning the next day. so they've really demonstrated an ability, not just to play rambo, but to play it cool. i saw one of the president's senior legal advisers tonight, who said the media is going to jump on the fact that this is like a tom clancy act, but he says, it's really so much more than that. there are layers upon layers of diplomatic negotiations, multi-lateral support, and what the president is doing is demonstrating that you can work with a lot of moving pieces and do something that's quite legitimate and still take decisive action. this isn't john wayne or rambo or a unilateral action. there's a lot of other stuff here. and they're demonstrating how to be very effective and still hold all these moving pieces together. >> from a political perspective, which maybe the president just excludes this from his mind when he's making these decisions, this was more risky than anything else in the sense that if this had gone wrong, as with we have had rescue missions in somalia go wrong under president

clinton, for example, if this had gone wrong, it would have exploded on him while, basically, while he's going into the state of the union address. the world would know that we lost navy s.e.a.l.s in somalia on this kind of mission. >> i mean, it could have ended the election for him. i think many people, depending on the biases they bring to next year's election, find defining moments, framing moments through which they think about what they want to see their leaders do. so this was a huge gamble. if it had lost like mogadishu and black hawk down or the efforts that jimmy carter undertook to try to get american hostages held in iran out. you know, we've had bad stories. they don't always turn out good. but i think that we're seeing very complex movement and great leadership decisions. there are risks, but we're also seeing a military that's been at war for more than a decade, that's learned how to do stuff and apply intelligence in capacities, in such a way that we're not, that we haven't really seen up-front. its