r? i, i like soda a lot but for a change of pace... captions paid for by nbc-universal television this morning, the campaign debate over who's got the skills to turn the economy around. that's what the battle over bain capital and private equity is really all about. the fight is not going away. cory booker made a big headline here last week by calling foul on anti bain ads against romney. >> this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. it's nauseating to the american public. enough is enough. >> the president is not shying away arguing private equity firps like bain are about making money, not creating jobs. >> there may be value for that kind of experience, but it's not in the white house. >> and so this morning the debate over bain, the economy and where things stand in the race. with us, former presidential candidate newt gingrich who will appear together with governor

romney next week and maryland's democratic governor, chair of the democratic governors association martin o'malley. gingrich and o'malley square off. then as we kick off a hot summer of campaigning, the state of the race and the key question, will either candidate be able to pull away. with us, democratic mayor of it los angeles, antonio villaraigosa. former head of hewlett-packard, carly fiorina. "new york times" columnist david brooks and from "the washington post," and author of "our divided political heart," e.j. dionne. and finally this morning, a special conversation with ma yea shriver and author michael louis about the advice they have for college graduates during this commencement season. >> class of 2012, you are dismissed! >> class of 2012, you are dismissed! from nbc news in washington

"meet the press" with david gregory." good morning. so much campaigning ahead this summer. let's get right to it. joining me the democratic governor of maryland, the chairman of the democratic governors association, martin e mali and former speaker of the house newt gingrich. great to have you both here and good morning. speaker gingrich, now that you are here and no longer as a candidate, you were here about a year ago declaring your candidacy. where are you in this race? are you unequivocally behind governor romney and do you think he can win? >> oh, sure, i'm totally committed to romney's election. i think given this level of unemployment and this level of deficits it's very likely he will win and you'll see it pull away in september and october. >> what did you learn from campaigning against mitt romney about him? >> he's tough. he's much tougher than i would have thought. he's prepared to do what it takes to win. he's a very good organizer, in

the end he can organize and raise money on a scale that can match obama. i couldn't. i think he's a good study. i think he really worked hard at understanding when i beat him in south carolina, what he had to do to come back in florida, and so i have substantial respect for his ability as a leader to do the things he has to do to get the job done. >> you heard how i framed this at the very top of the program. that is who's got the skills. i feel this is a bain test over who can turn this economy around. the president defended himself and the attack on bain even though cory booker cried foul about it. this is what he said and then i'll have you respond. >> if your main argument for how to grow the economy is i knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you're missing what this job is about. it doesn't -- it doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity, but that's not what my job is as president.

my job is to take into account, everybody, not just some. >> will he come across as anti-business with this line of attack? >> no, i don't believe that. in fact, i agree with speaker gingrich during his campaign when he had to address that claim that romney initially made that oh, he created hundreds of thousands of jobs, a claim he eventually backed off of under the speaker's question and pressing. but there are two things that really romney has to recommend himself for the high office of president. one is his experience with bain capital where his job was to return profits as quickly as possible to a very narrow few rather than to create long-term jobs for the many. the second one though, which you don't hear him talking about at all is his experience in the public sector when he was governor of massachusetts. >> i want to get to that in just a moment, but speaker, respond to this, you called his time at bain exploitation. >> sure. i went straight at him on the bain issue. i think obama has a different

problem. first of all, he has the worst record of any president since the great depression. second, bureaucratic investment has been a disaster. they had one solar company that went belly up for $2.1 billion and we have solyndra which has become a national scandal at $185 million. obama has no model of effective job creation as compared to private capital and this is why this is going to fall flat on its face. plus i was very careful, i didn't go after private equity. if you just heard the president just now, he's going after all private equity in a way which explains why you had senator warner and the governor of massachusetts, why he had the closest allies and senator feinstein and cory booker on the show. there were 15 or 20 democrats who say this is an inaccurate and wrong approach for the president to be taking. >> if the chief qualification is i'm mitt romney, i worked in bain capital. i understand private enterprise. therefore, that experience is

what makes me a job creator when that is really not at the core of private equity. that is not their chief function. >> let me go a step further, because we'll get to his private record. there was 4.47% unemployment. if we were at 4.47 employment, there would be more americans at work. whether obama wants to fight on governor romney's record or he wants us to fight on private sector romney's record, obama is deciding to pick a fight. this a little bit like the reverse of james carville in '92. obama picking a fight on the economy is probably the worst possible strategy for his campaign. >> i would like to disagree with that. >> we've driven sunday president obama's leadership unemployment down to three-year lows. home foreclosures are lower than they were when president obama took office. we have put together the american people with effective leadership 26 months in a row of private sector job growth. that record will be contrasted sharply to what mitt romney did as governor which was in a relatively strong state, in a better time of our economy to

have that state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation. >> the unemployment rate in massachusetts came down under his stewardship. >> the unemployment rate came down in a lot of states. they were different times. right now, our unemployment rate nationally has been driven down to the lowest level in three years and could be driven down furthermore quickly with more job creation if we would get beyond the sort of tea party destruction that anyone would try to prevent modern investments. >> what is the warning, though, from the president's campaign and surrogates about what romney policy would mean for job creation on national level? >> what is the warning? i think what you see and i think part of what some of the arm chair critics are missing is that what romney did, mr. romney, not governor romney, but what he did at bain capital was to drive up debt greatly by these companies that bain took over in order to return huge

dividends to a small little group of investors and then walk away from the business. >> you have the president's job counsel with private equity folks on there. >> as well they should be. >> and you yourself, you have the department of business and economic development headed up by someone in private equity. you seem to recognize the experience the private equity. >> what the leader of the whole economy must be concerned about is not the short-term return of profits to the few, but a long-term economy that creates jobs for the many. >> let's start down that road. why has unemployment come down? unemployment's come down because participation in the workforce is at the lowest point it's been in three decades. people are retiring early because they can't find a job. people have given up looking. if you look at the gallup sfras, the real number of those who is are unemployed, under employed and quit looking is 19%. this is a disastrous administration, and candidly if you want to get into a fight

over debt, from 47% in the economy to 74% in three and a half years. this is why obama will have a hard time this fall. he can't fight over jobs because he isn't creating them. he can't fight over debt because he's increasing it. he has policies at least half of the american people find very unacceptable. and i think romney has a very straightforward case. can you afford four more years of barack obama? can you afford four more years of this economy? and can you afford four more years of this kind of debt? or do you want somebody who as governor as david pointed out, the unemployment rate under romney came down. the fact is he was able to balance the budget as he had to under the law of massachusetts, and the fact is he does know a great deal more about job creation than barack obama. an. >> david, two things on the romney record. with regard to debt, governor romney drove up for the people of massachusetts, the largest per capita debt of any state in the union. that's a fact. when it comes to what with little bit of job creation was happening in massachusetts and

what was happening in the public sector at six times the rate that it was happening in the private sector. his record whether it was at bain capital, and whether it was as governor of massachusetts, it was not a record of reducing debt. it's of increasing debt. not a record of increasing private job creation, but actually having the 47th out of 50 states in terms of job creation. >> except if you look over time, most of the companies did well and most of them paid off the debt. if you look at staples, for example, the return on investment was enormous. they paid off all the debt. i think the problem the president's got you're a normal america, look at the price of gasoline and the foreclosure rate which is coming down in part because so many houses have been foreclosed and look at the unemployment numbers and you say to yourself, why would i believe barack obama would be any better in the second term and that's why i think romney has a very strong case to say it's time to try a different approach. >> one more on the bain question. during the campaign, you said, you know what?

governor romney ought to have a press conference and lay out what his experience was at bain? take all the relevant questions. do you still think he ought to do that? >> i think he did that. i think people looked at it and i can just tell you this is why i don't understand the obama campaign strategy here. bain as an issue doesn't work because people look at it in balance and you can pick a couple of companies that lost. you can pick a couple of companies that succeeded and as the governor of massachusetts said last week, it is a good company. it has a good track record. it's a good citizen of massachusetts. >> you said this is a character issue for romney, ultimately. his time in business and what he did. >> if you look at what happened, he clearly came out. he had the press conferences. >> is this a character issue to you and to the president? >> i think it's more of a qualification issue. there's nothing that governor romney did either in the private sector that created jobs or in the public sector that distinguished himself as a job creator. there's a tremendous amount of balance that's required to be president of the united states especially to bring our country back from the disastrous

aftereffects from the bush recession and the bush job losses and the huge amount of our deficit, 55% of which was caused by policies, tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest of americans rather than investing in a better future and the better economy with greater opportunities that our kids deserved. >> at this stage in 1984, no one on the reagan team was talking about the carter recession because they were talking about the reagan recovery. they were talking about the rate of job creation under reagan. they were talking about the success of reagan. this is an administration that went from yes, we can to why we couldn't. george w bush is the why we couldn't apparently. the fact that this president's been president for three and a half years, he had a chance to fix it. it ain't fixed and the country knows it's not fixed. it's not fixed on gasoline. it's not fixed on the economy, it's not fixed on the deficit and romney at least has a better shot at doing a better job than barack obama.

>> i have two questions, one for you, speaker and governor romney. if you cannot close the gap, what's the opportunity for him to actually prevail in the fall? you ran to the left of him on the immigration question. he gave a speech this week and didn't even talk about immigration. how big of a problem is this for him? >> i think he's got to address it. barack obama failed on immigration reform even when he had a democratic house and a democratic senate. he failed to fix it when he controlled the house and senate. second, he was speaking to the hispanic chamber of commerce. they'll tell you, the number one issue is jobs. the number two issue is the price of gasoline, the number three issue is housing and the number four issue is education where romney spent the whole week on education and offered a very bold alternative to help poor children, particularly black and latino and white poor children have choices other than being trapped in a failing school. the question is if you campaign on those issues, if latinos conclude that mitt romney is

more likely to have my family have i job and bring down the price of gasoline and my child have an effective education, does that is overcome whatever the democratic attack is, and i think he'll get the same percent that george w. bush did which was in the 40s. >> that's a bold prediction given where they've been. >> it will take a lot of effort and a lot of campaigning. >> ron brownstein talks about what's the message? what's the job creation goal and the big idea for the second term? he writes in his national journal column this week. today, frets one senior democrat close to the white house, voters don't have a sense of what obama would do to make the economy stronger. the edge issues and the doubts obama is raising about romney are helping the president retain some voter who's might be temperatured to abandon him. without providing them a more compelling and specific plan to improve their lives than he's offered so far. what is that plan? >> well, the plan is that in

order to create jobs, a modern economy does require modern investments. speaker gingrich describes himself as a pro-growth republican. i describe myself as a pro-growth democrat. we know what we need to do is to create jobs and how you do that is to innovate, to invest in education and invest in infrastructure. >> the government's got to spend more money particularly on in a infrastructure in the country. >> you can't do less. how much less do you want for our country? how much less education would be good for our economy? how many fewer bridges can we keep in good repair? is that good for our economy? certainly not. >> obama's second term, government spends more because it has to? >> no, the bottom line is job creation. last year, president obama because of his leadership in america, we created more jobs as a country last year than we -- were created in all eight years of george w. bush. what mitt romney is offering is an alternative to take us back. back to the days of debt, back to the days of record job losses, record home

foreclosures, and when people are given a choice, particularly new americans, about an expanding view of an america with more jobs and more opportunity or a return to the days of george w. bush, they're going to choose to move forward. >> speaking of bush they want to run the 2004 campaign to make it a choice, not a referendum. >> they have to do that because they can't run on the record. but let's talk about spending more. the president said he was shocked to discover shovel-ready jobs weren't shovel-ready. the president represents bureaucratic investment. romney represents private investment. romney made an education proposal this week that would actually improve the education of poor americans and improve the education of children with disabilities while lowering the cost. in new york city, if your child goes to a catholic school and costs two-thirds as much as the public school and they're dramatically more likely to go to college and the same thing is true of a number of private charter schools across the country. this is in part a fight not over more or less.

it's a fight over better or worse and the president has to defend public bureaucracies that are in many cases worse. >> before you go, you two were chosen for a reason. as much as you love your job and i know you love being governor about the great state of maryland. a lot of buzz will you running for president next go around. mr. speaker, what advice might you give governor o'malley on running for president? >> raise a lot of money. >> that's what it takes. >> it's the entry level problem. you've got to be prepared and second understand, you'll spend two or three years on the road. mike warner being came back and ran for the senate. >> are you disappointed about our process today and how we pick presidents? >> look, this has been a brutal, tough process at least since 1800, and it hasn't gotten any less brutal and probably shouldn't. if you're not tough enough to get to the presidency, you're not tough enough to be president. so i have no regrets. it's a wonderful, amazing experience. calista says she learned two big things.

people are overwhelmingly nice even if they don't agree with you and money matters. those are her two lessons. >> would you like to be selected to be on the ticket with romney? >> i think that's highly implausible. i've learned the hard way not to ever say no. but i find that as implausible as you find it. >> governor, are you likely to run in 2016? would you wait to see wa biden and or secretary clinton do if >> i'm not thinking that far. i'm doing everything in my power to them elect democratic governors like tom barrett in wisconsin where the polls have greatly narrowed in wisconsin. it's an interesting choice. tom barrett has been a mayor and done practical things and brought people together to solve problems, scott walker, 50th out of 50 states notice job creation and the only sitting governor with an active criminal defense fund. this is going to be an exciting race. >> another side to that story which we'll talk about at our roundtable, as well.

i'll leave it there. thank you both very much. we'll hear from the roundtable on the rules of engagement and the race to the white house. also some of the new polls show a very tight race. we'll go inside the battlegrounds with the focus on ohio. the political roundtable is here. mayor of los angeles, antonio villaraigosa, former chairman and ceo of hewlett-packard, carly fiorina and david brooks of "the new york times." also a little later, advice for the class of 20812 from maria shriver and michael lewis. stay tuned for that. 2012 fr what happens when classroom teachers get the training... ...and support they need? schools flourish and students blossom. that's why programs like... ...the mickelson exxonmobil teachers academy... ...and astronaut sally ride's science academy are helping our educators improve student success in math and science. let's shoot for the stars. let's invest in our teachers and inspire our students. let's solve this.

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one of the things we want to do between now and election day is go inside the battlegrounds and really focus on the states that will decide the election in the fall. today ohio, and i want to take you inside ohio as we look at some of the particulars of a state that was so crucial in 2008 will be again. you have the unemployment rate at 7.4%, below the national average. that's important. look at the '08 results it was obama 52 to mccain's 57. most visited state by the candidates back in 2008. that's likely to also be the case this go around as well. i was in cleveland this past week. there's something of a renaissance going on there economically and that bears importance for this part of the state, typically democratic and it's really where the obama team will focus. what will be the big message? it will be auto bailout with which the manufacturing base there is likely to play pretty well there. the romney team knows that and understand they'll be up against a who the of headwinds there. and their focus will be down in the south.

cincinnati and this area, a lot of social conservatives there and they'll have to turn out that vote in order to offset what's going on here. a lot to talk about moving forward including how things stand in the battleground states. look at our latest polling we released this week. the mayor ris poll, it's the president at 48 to romney's 42% but they're both below 50, a lot of volatility left and a lot of time the candidates will be spending. more on the battlegrounds as we continue. let's bring in our roundtable now. here with us "washington post" columnist" and author of "our divided heart" e.j. dionne and from the "new york times" our friend david prooks, the former chair and ceo of hewlett-packard carly fiorina is also with us, and democratic mayor of los angeles antonio villaraigosa. the mayor spearheading the return of the great los angeles dodgers as they're off to a great season under terrific new ownership and mr. mayor, my divided sports heart. welcome to all of you here. i want to start, david brooks, where i ended with the governor and speaker. look what we've had so far.

we've had the war on women debate, we've had hilary rosen's comments. we've had now this battle over bain. what is fair game in terms of what people ought to be focused on? >> i think it's fair especially if you have no agenda. we've got deep structural problems. i haven't seen either candidate talk about this. if you ask the american people, does either candidate have a big plan for the future? 36% obama, 31% romney and that's pretty bad. i question the obama decision to go after to start negative. they have decided to focus on a negative way and this seems to me self-destructive. people like obama, they admire him and he's at risk of throwing that away by starting negative and going extremely tough and extremely hard and looking for ads. they had inaccuracies that were the basis of the ad. they said the company was successful till bain took it over. that's false.

they said romney threw people out in the street. romney was gone by then. they said they were loading up debt and dumping them. these companies have no higher default rates and starting negative not only distracts you, the big agenda for structural problems but also damages his personal reputation. >> several j.? >> first of all, when george bush began his 2004 campaign against john kerry he began the attacks in february and march, so i don't see -- i didn't see any republicans saying the president should never attack his opponents and secondly the argument over bain is part of a substantive argument over the future of american capitalism. first if romney from the beginning was saying his role as a job creator at bain was the key reason why he should be president. thanks to this exchange even rush limbaugh has said no, private equity companies are not about creating jobs, but if you go back in the history it's one of the things i talk about in my book. we argue about the nature of capitalism from the very beginning whether it's hamilton and clay talking about the importance of manufacturing,

andrew jackson, the debate on the bank of the united states or woodrow wilson who warned when the power of commerce or finance could be greater than that of government. we're trying to decide not whether to have capitalism or some other system. we're trying to decide what kind of capitalism do we want in america. i think the debate about bain raises real legitimate issues over how you should do capitalism in a way that benefits everybody. >> i just don't know that voters, carly, are going to the polls thinking about the great debate over the role of capitalism. if you're the obama team, you're saying this guy running against me is a financier. remember what brought on the recession? it was those financiers. on wall street, they're the ones who did it. he doesn't get you. he doesn't get you middle class voter. that seems to be what they're after here. >> i find the attack surprising from many perspectives. first of all, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the history of the world. secondly, let us stipulate that

the goal is to lift as many people out of poverty. the way you do that is with a job. third, successful companies create jobs. failing companies destroy jobs. i think president obama is indicating what many of us have suspected for some time. he actually doesn't understand how the economy works. bain capital, like many businesses, invested in small start-ups with the goal to make them successful. jobs were created. finally, i find this attack so strange. this was a man, barack obama, who went to the american people and said i am a community organizer. i am an untenured law professor. i am a junior senator who has not completed a single term. i am qualified to be president, but mitt romney, the governor of a major state with 25 years of experience in the private sector is not qualified to be president? i find it a very surprising argument, and i don't think it's going to work. >> mayor? >> well, look, romney's made bain and his experience at bain. he's claimed as the central plank of his campaign.

he said he was a job creator and all the fact checkers have said he didn't create the 100,000 jobs that he said he did. he did add debt to a lot of companies, laid off people and made a lot of money. he's very good at making money and the question is he good as creating jobs? he put that front and center and the campaign has responded to it. it's not an issue of private equity. nobody is questioning the role of private equity. i actually worked in private equity for a couple of years about ten years ago, what we're questioning is is he a job creator? no. he wasn't as governor of massachusetts. is he someone who addresses the debt? you heard martin o'malley say that he was -- had the highest per capita debt when he left massachusetts of any governor in the state. he -- he gave his successor a billion dollars in debt. so the fact is that he put his

record front and center, and we responded to it. >> let's look at -- a lot of this is going to circle back to the state of the campaign. as we head off into the summer of campaigning, let me show a head to head first, which as it did in ohio, you're still under 50% and the president has a slight edge at 47 to 43, but if you look at some of the advantages, david brooks, that the president now has, to me it kind of goes to the point of how he's trying to identify and cast governor romney among hispanics, younger voters, women, werners, independents all advantage to the president and also on that list, seniors, suburban women and overall in the battleground states. >> democrats have a huge demographic advantage that will get bigger over the years. the president has big personal advantages. a couple disadvantages. europe will end up the big story if greece falls out of the euro and disaster for any incumbents. so that's one of them, and then i think the tenor of the campaign will change. what's going to happen, it's going to become the new orleans

saints. and by that, i mean that normal competition is going to turn into bounty hunting. and people in both campaigns are going to get their juices flowing and take meaner and meaner shots and that will suppress turnout and that will, i think hurt the president more because his favorability ratings are so much higher. >> it does beg a broader question. >> carly, you ran for senate. here's the cover of "the week" magazine when it talks about political ads and the hard lines on it is targets of bigotry, will billionaires fund sturp pac attacks on race and religion. is this what david is referring to? are we now -- i guess the question is what does it take to get elected at this stage of the game? >> well, i do think that all of us look at the state of the campaign today, the end of may and believe that it will be both very close and particularly nasty, sadly. i think it is a sad comment when the political argument gets

reduced to questioning other people's motives, and frankly, i think president obama has been more guilty of this than anyone else. president obama and vice president biden are continually questioning people's motives, their heart and character. they don't get you. they don't care. it would be so much better, i think, for the american people if political debate was argued on the facts and the merits, not questioning someone's character and motivation. >> you do have romney attacking the president for going on an apology tour and not championing american exceptionalism. there's a motive question there, too. >> there are a whole series of things that governor romney said about fwhooem simply aren't true, the apology tour being one of them. i think one of the great dangers in this campaign is how the citizens united decision not only changed the law but also gave a kind of social green light to all of these super pacs and the super pac ads are

particularly dangerous because if i attack you with my campaign money, i am accountable for that attack, and you can say that's outrageous, it's untrue. when these nameless groups, committees for got government put on an ad, say outrageous things, the candidate can sit back and say that's not me, that's someone else. and yet, those super pacs will put out hundreds of millions of dollars of ads. i think you're right. i think the president goes in with structural advantages. the difference this time than last time is the president vastly outspent john mccain in the last election and this time with the super pac money coming in from the right, i think it will be a real challenge to the president. >> i want to put up romney's advantages as we look at our own polling. among men, suburbanites, midwesterners, married women, also on that list, high interest voters a slight edge there. but latinos are a huge problem for the republican party now in our oversampling of latino

voters with telemundo. obama has a 61% to 27% advantage. is there anything that changes that advantage. for instance if marco rubio were to be on the ticket, do you think there's any potential for changing that dynamic? >> some potential, not much. vice presidential candidates don't usually give you a big bump, maybe in that state. i think david said something about the chasm with respect top president obama's support among ethics and other demographic groups. and i think it has everything to do with the fact that the republican party has gone so far to the right. we saw that in the election on women taking this to the 1950s and talking about contraception and on the issue of immigration, talking about the south deportation of 11 million people. i don't know a country in the world that has ever south deported 11 million people. when he said the dream act was a handout. that's out of the mainstream of what most people think. when he failed to stand up and say anything when cain talked

about electrifying the border fence. so i think that's a big reason why. it's the policies of the extreme part of their party, but i didn't see, and i don't think any of us saw governor romney really challenge some of those extreme policies. >> i agree with him here with the republicans and the republicans are completely aware of this, karl rove is aware and marco rubio is trying very successfully. i think that will hurt the republicans long-term. i'm not sure it will hurt them this time for historical reasons. when you reelect an incumbent there are two things we know. first, it's a referendum, there are rarely choices and the referendum on the record of the last four years and not the personality of the candidates and so that, when you take that basic structure of reelect races that does hurt obama and then the final thing is when you ask people are you better off than you were four years ago, 35% say

yes, that's pretty bad. >> let me go around the table on a few other items that i wanted to get to quickly. first up, something in the news, as well. that is the which is recall election, the milwaukee mayor, tom barrett taking on scott walker to took on the unions and created a huge drama. now you have a recall election. david, i heard you talk about this race as something that will be important for the fall. >> right, because i think one of the fundamental issues in europe and here is we have welfare states that need reform. i don't like particularly the way the governor of wisconsin did it, but he did it, and if he supported it that would be green light for a lot of other reformers and it's a test case nationally. i'm also not sure why if he wins in wisconsin why mitt romney doesn't also win. >> the next item up here has do with something going on this week and that's trump. he's going to be campaigning with governor romney and newt gingrich will be there as well. again this week, donald trump was sticking by some of these questions about whether president obama is really an american citizen.

how much damage is there, e.j., getting so close to the flame if you're governor romney seeking an endorsement and an ally that i think a lot of people have never quite understood. >> i think if governor romney doesn't put out some very, very, very clear statement that he distances himself from this birther stuff. i don't know why he is hanging around with donald trump, but governor romney has not distanced himself from the right wing on anything. he hasn't taken a step back from from this new extremism in the republican party. one thing i talk about in my book how conservatism used to be a baens between sort of individual concerns and community concerns. conservativatives believed there was a role for government. right now as you're seeing in the scott walker recall, i agree it's very significant but i think it's significant in a different way from david. >> i think a lot of people in wisconsin are saying wait a minute, we liked consensual politics in wisconsin where a

conservative like tommy thompson never did the things that this governor is doing. i think mitt romney has to step back on this sat some point and he hasn't done it yet. >> final item is the question of colin powell. will he endorse in this race? it came up in the context of russia and romney. one of his folks saying russia was the biggest strategic threat to the united states. colin powell was on "morning joe" this week on msnbc and had this reaction. >> when governor romney not too long ago said the russian federation is our number one geostrategic they're the. that isn't the case. i don't know if mitt really thinks that, or if someone told him. i don't know, you ask him. it's been catching a lot of heck from the more regular gop foreign affairs community. we're kind of taken a back by it. >> carly, quickly, is foreign fairs going to be a target of opportunity for republicans

against this president? >> certainly foreign affairs are on the minds of average americans especially on memorial day when we think about the sacrifices of so many men and women in uniform and their families. i think colin powell, a good friend of mine, is an independent man. he'll make up his mind when he decides to. however, i think what governor romney probably intended was, it is true that we have the most unsettled relationship with russia right now, and we have a leader of russia whose motivations are, to put it kindly, unclear who has a very clear history. >> all right. we're going to leave it there. thank you all very much. we'll take another break here. when we come back, a special conversation about this commencement season and some advice for the class of 2012. joining me, two of the season's most celebrated commencement speakers, maria shriver and bell selling author michael louis right after this short break. tee

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>> and >> and finally, wherever you go in life, however fast you're going, remember this, whenever you are in doubt, pause. take a moment. look at all of your options, check your intention. have a conversation with your heart and then always take the high road. >> sage advice from maria shriver as the class of 2012 graduates and prepares to enter such an uncertain world, i wanted to reach out to two

celebrated voices in our culture and two highly sought-after commencement speakers. you just heard from maria shriver who addressed the graduates of the university of southern california's annenberg school of journalism and author of "money ball," "boomerang," and one of my personal favorites michael louis. he's going to be addressing princeton graduates june 3rd. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having us. >> maria, let's pick up on that piece of the commencement address that i just played. the power of pause. what was the advice that you thought was so important for graduates to hear including someone in the audience who was extra special? >> my daughter was in that graduating class. i think we're in a rush, all of us to go out, and to be first in every business we're in a rush and i wanted to tell these young people, they're going out to uncertain times and they know that far better than most of us

and it's okay to pause, and it's okay not to know the answer, to that question everybody is asking them, what are you going to do, where are you living, how much are you making, what's your job. and the concept of pausing not just when you graduate but throughout life is a very powerful concept i think and there's so much outward communication. i wanted to talk about the benefit of communicating inwardly with yourself throughout your life and you have to pause to do that. >> it's interesting, michael, because there is so much emphasis on the individual graduate as he or she goes off into the world and not enough emphasis on the idea of becoming part of a team and a sense of shared purpose, which i think resonates with a lot of young people. >> i think that's true. i think maria's point is very well taken. i've actually only done a few of these commencement speeches and each time i do them i do feel -- i wonder whether anybody's listening, and i do kind of -- i'm a little

skeptical about the power of words on these ears. i think back, and i'm actually giving this year a talk i supposedly heard 30 years ago when i graduated from princeton. and not only i do not remember the talk or the speaker, i don't remember the event even happening. so i'm sitting here, thinking would do i tell these people and it's quite possible that i will be the only one taal remember what i said to matter what i say. but it's -- you know, when you sit and you think what do you tell people to make a difference in their lives as they go out into this world, the business of backing away from the pressures, from not accepting that you have to do anything, when you walk out the doors of university and giving -- and sort of, leaving yourself open to some real risks that the stage of your life is a pretty good message because it

is sort of the point in your life when you're 21, 22 years old when you're most likely to take useful risks and as you get older you take fewer and fewer of them. i'll take that as my theme, but i doubt anybody will pay much attention. >> well, i don't know. maria, the thing that occurred to me and i've only done a few of them and i did a couple a few webs ago and what strikes me time and time again that i'm never prepared forren is i get up there and i think i'm not that much older than these graduates and then i realize, a, yes, i am, b, i have more in common with their parents than i do them and then i get very emotional because i think about my own kids and that's what seems to overtake me. >> well, they play the pomp and circumstance, you get very emotional and i almost burst into tears in the speech because i talked about being in awe at my first child graduating from college, but i think there are a lot of people our age who are speaking to these young people who have something very much in common and there are millions of people having to start over in their lives and who are having

to re-imagine their lives and are having to take incredible risks, who are having to do things they never imagined. so i think we're all in this kind of together in many ways, depending on our age. there's so many women who are finding themselves in the position of being bread winners, care takers, nurturers and having to reinvent themselves and start businesses and i think as a nation, we're having to redefine who we are and what we're doing and we're strong step back and say i might have to take a risk i never imagined. i look for common ground with these young graduates. they may be younger, but i think we're all kind of starting out on a path in many ways that has no kind of clear direction to it. and that's scary and exciting. >> it is scary and exciting. michael, the other thing that feeds into this, the point you made about risk and it's something you talked about at a commencement speaker as the drew university in 2010. everybody says do what you love. this was your advice.

>> the challenge for you, i think, today is to find what you love and do it before you figure out how much that love is going to cost you. >> what did you mean by that? >> yes. you know, it is -- it's -- it's something, you know, you get dragged into these things because you're supposed to provide some sort of role model for them, i think. in a funny way, i think these speeches are misconceived. i think they'd probably benefit more from nothing examples if they had, say, they would bring back some white collar criminals or goldman sachs ceo traders or disgraced politicians to explain why you don't do what you do to get to where i am, that might have more effect. so i get to sort of explain how i got to where i am in this

happy position of doing what i like to do, and i tell them that, look, was there a moment in my life when i was not much older than you where the price of doing what i wanted to do seemed very, very high, the financial price and if i was not 25 years old, i would not have gone and done it because i didn't really figure out how high that price was at the time. look, ten years later i never would have made the decision i made to do what i wanted to do because it would have seemed like it cost too much. so i sort of insistently said to them, look, this is the moment when you can pay that price because you don't really know what it is. so go for it. this is your -- maybe your one shot when you come out of here. so don't blow it by jumping at money, by doing the things that everybody thinks you should do because it seems successful. figure out where your heart is and try to go with that. >> maria, i want to come back and perhaps end on this point of the inner journey that you

talked about off the top and there was one commencement speaker in 1994 who was pretty near and dear to your heart and that was your late father, sergeant shriver and this is what he said in part. he said i am a man of consequence, the sergeant shriver known everywhere as maria shriver's father. he went on, the first thing i've learned is this, it's not what you get out of life that counts. it's what you give and what is given to you from the heart. in another point i have one small word of advice, because it's going to be tough. break your mirrors. yes indeed, shatter the glass. in our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other and learn more about the face of your neighbor and less about your own. >> i think that's very valuable advice. and it could be given by somebody like my father who was a very deeply religious, deeply spiritual man, but i find more

and more people that i talk to are redefining what success means in their lives and they are going within to ask those questions and michael talked about changing course in his career. you can only do that if you step back and really have a conversation with yourself about what makes you happy, how you define success and for -- and be courageous enough to say maybe i don't define it in the way that will get me on the cover of "people" magazine or "time" magazine, but it works for me and that might be in serving people, taking care of your family, having time to coach a little league game and so i think people are in the process of redefining what success means, and i think that's a really great thing, and i think you can only do that if you break the mirror, pause, step back, take a beat and talk to your heart. >> michael lewis, whether you think the kids are listening or not, i'm sure as a dad you get up there and you're thinking of these big thoughts and thinking

about about your own kids at the same time. >> i'm mainly thinking if i give the princeton commencement speech, princeton will feel obliged to admit them. >> not. won't happen. >> thank you both. great to have you both and i appreciate it. >> thank you. thank you. and before we go here, a programming note, we will re-air on msnbc today at 2:00 p.m. eastern and again tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon again that's on msnbc tomorrow. check out our interview with ashley judd on meetthepress.com. that is all for today. we'll be back next week. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." as we leave you this memorial day weekend, we honor and remember all of the men and women who have given their lives to this nation. god bless our troops and their families.

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