hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. new polls suggest the democratic national convention gave president obama is still growing bump. yesterday's gallup tracking poll put him at 49% to 45% against mitt romney. romney's problems gaining altitude are not just metaphorical. after campaigning yesterday in virginia, romney and his campaign had to find a flight home when the campaign plane was grounded due to technical problems. right now my story of the week, what the president didn't say in charlotte. this was, i think, my favorite moment in the president's speech on thursday night.

>> my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet because climate change is not a hoax. more droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. they are a threat to our children's future, and in this election you can do something about it. >> a-fricking-men i say. climate change was only invoked at the rnc as a laugh line and hardly mentioned at the dnc save for three references. so it meant a lot to hear it from the president's own lips. but there's also something distressing in that line, something that haunted me and the entire democratic convention. it was this part. >> and in this election, you can do something about it. >> and in this election, you can do something about it. after the spectacle of dysfunction and obstruction over the last two years, it's hard to take that proposition at face value. remember in 2009 barack obama

had a house majority by a 70-vote margin and the senate majority by 60 votes. they worked tirelessly through a long, hard legislative slog to produce a bill that would cap carbon emissions. the waxman marquee bill passed by seven votes. in the senate, lindsey graham had once been the co-sponsored of a similar cap bill. he even argued for the need to reduce carbon emission. >> our country doesn't have a vision on carbon. we need one, and we need to lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution. >> ultimately, lindsay graham did what nearly every republican and his cohort has done, to conveniently forget his previous beliefs and commit himself to opposing any and all major initiative that is bore the president's mark. so cap in trade died. all of this was before the republicans took over the house in 2010. since then things have only gotten worse. the record of republican opposition and obstruction is legion at this point. the record number of

filibusters, the unprecedented foot dragging on judicial and executive nominees, and, of course, the explicit threat to provoke a possible new financial crisis by holding the nation's full faith and credit hostage in pursuit of a savage austerity agenda. in fact, since the emergence of the tea party and its success, the central party of our time is of republican. this is a reality that looms over this election. and yet the gop opposition was almost entirely absent from the president's speech. unless the democratic party manages to retake the house, a possible though not probable outcome, the president's second term will face precisely the same obstacles it now does, a republican congress bent on his destruction and humiliation. the president, however, told "time" magazine if he wins in november, the stark choice voters will have made would,

quote, pop the blister of polarization. if you're skeptical of that line, i don't blame you. whether the president believes that or not, he kind of has to say next time will be different. otherwise, all of his articulation of his vision for the country in his speech on thursday is more or less for naught. the cruel irony of the mitch mcconnell plan to sandbag barack obama is that it creates a devilishly cynical implied reason for voters to elect a republican president, because it's the only way to restore the country to normal governance. the republican party is so maximalist it cannot be trusted in opposition. you can only get compromise when the republicans have the power. republicans won't let it work the other way around. it would be a true low point for american democracy if this argument were persuasive. but the president and democrats need to acknowledge it head on in the remaining two months of this campaign. you can't simply ignore the

tanned, weepy elephant in the room. if the president and democrats are going to lay out their agenda for the next four years, they have to make an explicit case either that it is vital the president be given a democratic congress, my strong preference, or some new set of policies, tactics, approaches, innovations to overcome or run an end around past republican opposition. whatever the case is, whatever the solutions are, we need to hear them because the republican party and its agenda of political destruction cannot be ignored or willed away. nor can the politics of self-imulation be perpetuated by awarding them with electoral success. the president has subjected he will use executive pours as he did with the dream act to circumvent an obstructionist congress. that's only the second best way to deal with republican obstruction. what president obama did not say in charlotte was that the best way to stop republicans from holding them hostage is to strip them of the power to do so in november.

i'm joined now by peter beinart founder of the blog open zion, michelle goldberg, also at "newsweek" and the daily beast where she's a senior contributing writer, tulsi gabbard, he spoke at the democratic national convention. and jacob hacker, a professor of political science at yale. great to have you all here this morning. i want to start -- i want to play a clip because we wrote this, we were working on this this week and then "meet the press" is airing an interview with mitt romney today and this is a section of it i want to show you because to me it just perfectly hits home this point. this is mitt romney speaking to david gregory. check it out. >> well, i want to maintain defense spending at the current level of the gdp. i don't want to keep bringing it down as the president is doing. this sequestration idea of the white house, which is cutting our defense, i think is an extraordinary miscalculation. >> republican leaders agreed to that deal -- >> it was a big mistakes. i thought it was a mistake on the part of the white house to propose it. i think it was a mistake for the republicans to go along with it.

>> let's keep in mind the context. the republicans held the debt ceiling hostage, completely routine thing over the last 40 years. it's been the -- the debt ceiling has been raised 90 times, average of twice a year. there's routine posturing around it. the only way to get them to vote to maintain the full faith and credit of the united states was to agree to this deal in which both parties bound themselves to these cuts which is called sequestration. this was the deal. this is what everyone agreed to after this climactic battle. this was the democrats basically appeasing the republicans who had exempted themselves from the normal procedures of governance on the deal of sequestration. now mitt romney is saying this deal is terrible. the president, what a terrible person the president is for signing on to this deal, and my running mate who approved the deal, awful person. and john mccain is running around saying terrible deal. they want to cut defense spending. to me it's like, wait a second, they won't even live up to the

deal they themselves made months ago, how can we govern? what is the second term going to look like? >> isn't this part of the problem that obama was facing in this speech? i think a lot of people were disappointed in this speech because one of the things we all loved -- those of us who loved obama in 2008 loved the fact he seemed level with people, he seemed to speak to people like adults. he seemed to forthrightly face our problems. i'm not sure our political culture has gotten to the point where a presidential candidate can forthrightly speak to the truth -- >> the truth about the nature of the republican opposition. >> exactly. >> the person that did that was bill clinton. i think the reason that clinton speech was -- people liked it so much was he was just talking about the obvious elephant in the room. here he is just talking about this preposterous asymmetry in the two parties in the way they're approaching cooperation in government. >> one of the main reasons we ought to re-elect president obama is that he is still committed to constructive

cooperation. we all know that he also tried to work with congressional republicans on health care, debt reduction, and new jobs, and that didn't work out so well. but it could have been because, as the senate republican leaders said in a remarkable moment of candor, two full years before the election, their number one priority was not to put america back to work. it was to put the president out of work. well, wait a minute. senator, i hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep president obama on the job! >> i think the feeling of exaltation people felt was thank you for stating the obvious thing about the nature of our politics in the last two years.

>> for me the failure of obama's speech was he still didn't really explain to americans why we're in this mess. i never felt that president obama has spent enough time trying to explain the financial crisis to people. like what actually happened and how did it affect your life? i think this is what clinton was always really good at connecting what was happening in people's lives to what was happening in the world, and then the second part, first to explain the financial crisis but why the bottom fell out of so many people's lives and second to explain why obama wasn't able to do more about it. i feel like he didn't do those things. >> and he didn't really get into the fact of public sector job loss or nobody gets into that which is amazing to me. >> it's important to say the stimulus was part of what kept things from goings even further -- >> i disagree actually. i think if you look at the speech as he gave the speech at georgetown early on that was a pretty long evo case -- he talked about the pillars built in sand. >> but not on the convention speech. >> the problem with his republican opposition issue and i think the reason bill clinton

was able to talk about it is they have laid this trap for him. they have created this -- what i was talking about at the top of the show. if he talks about republican obstruction it just reminds everyone what a dysfunctional mess washington is and that cynically aids the opposition. that's what's so maddening. >> also, bill clinton can say it's all their fault. i'm not sure that obama can say it's all their fault. >> i don't think that talking about how -- what a political mess it is is necessarily against obama's long-term interests. i mean, he was pretty articulate in the 2008 campaign about how our politics was broken. if he was saying we have major economic challenges but our politics isn't living up to it, he reprised some of those themes. he talked about how we need to have continuing political reform. i think that would resonate with a lot of people. >> i think it would. that's what i have been hearing from people post-convention, people who don't live within this political world we live and breath, that they really appreciated president clinton's speech because it spoke the facts, laid it out in a way that everyone can understand. people who are working every day and don't have time to pay

attention to the day-to-day slog of the presidential campaigns. >> tulsi, you're about to -- barring some big upset. i don't want to count your chickens before they hatch. but you're likely to be entering congress next year, the least trusted institution in the american life, approval ratings less than pir ris hilton and the u.s. going communist. i'm curious when you think about what life is going to be like come january, what it looks like. let's talk about that after we take this break. at purina one,

we believe small things can make a big difference. like how a little oil from here can be such a big thing in an old friend's life. we discovered that by blending enhanced botanical oils into our food, we can help brighten an old dog's mind so he's up to his old tricks. it's just one way purina one is making the world a better place... one pet at a time. discover vibrant maturity and more

projecting into the future and talking about what the campaign argument looks like as we enter the stretch and

particularly what it says about the future of the governance will look like in washington. tulsi, you are a candidate in the district. how do you think about what you're going to be going into in january should you be elected? >> there's a couple things that i saw in my race in hawaii but i think are very reflective also across the country that i saw at the convention when i had the opportunity to meet some of the other democratic candidates from other states is people are really looking for that fresh leadership. people are looking for real people who will speak as we're speaking today, just having real conversations and actually listening. i think that's been the key thing there. and that's where i have hope and i'm optimistic because of this very real energy that i think will be coming in with the crop of new legislators who are looking towards bringing back the statesmanship that i think a lot of our longtime elected officials say have been lost, especially in the last few years. for us in hawaii we have senator akaka who is retiring and senator inouye.

they have talked to us about how the statesmanship they saw when they have been in office about working with both sides and maintaining your principles and your values and actually getting things done is what is causing such an exodus, and i think that many of us who are looking to come back if we have the privilege of serving is looking to bring back that ability to work together for the people. >> you're part of a class of democrats running for congress. one of the things we've noted here and it's something we've done ourselves and is trying to correct is the presidential race takes up so much oxygen that the down ballot races aren't getting much attention. i thought the todd aiken moment was really rev la tory. it's like why weren't they paying attention to him before he said this because his views were awful. do you feel there's the money and grassroots support and the infrastructure focused on getting a democratic house? it seems within reach though very difficult and also just crucially important when we're thinking about what that next term is going to look like.

>> that's a great point. it's critical. we're talking about if president obama is re-elected about having that cooperative relationship and actually being able to work together to get things done. i know that the democratic leadership in the house is very excited, but optimistic but realistic as well about the challenge of being able to hit that 218 magic number and are really focused on putting the resources into those races that are on those targeted lists. so i think that the opportunity is there. >> yeah. i think that what we know as political scientists is the down ballot races in a presidential election are determined by presidential coattails, whether there's significant turnout for the president. so it's important the presidential race is important, but i think the money matters a lot more on the down ballot than at the presidential level. presidents and presidential candidates get a lot of news, a lot of attention already. obama is a formidable fund-raiser. even if he's out spent, he's going to spend a lot. on the down ballot race that is where the real concern should be about this huge amount of

outside spending. we have seen a decline in competitive races over time and this is one of the reasons. >> i think turnout, you mentioned turnout, that is a critical factor in some of these races like in hawaii we have a challenger to the governor. >> linda lingual is the one wanting to fill the vacant seat. it is going to come down to turnout and getting out the vote. >> i think one of the interesting things i think is how much obama is going to run against this money. you know, it seems to me how populist will he go? he if wanted to say, look, wall street turned against me. they're the guys who got us into this. i made some efforts to change things and now they're basically trying to unseat me. i think it would be a powerful message. i wonder if he decides to go there. >> that's one thing i saw that i had hoped he would talk about in his speech is about the lack of true wall street reform and what you mentioned earlier about how that has really been one of the major causes of our high

unemployment rates and really the downed economy and how there really hasn't been action taken or people being held accountable for that. >> let me say, i thought that people panned the president's speech or some people panned the president's speech because it wasn't this high-flying bit of oratory. one of the things we're going to talk about later in the show is the cutting edge of science of campaigns. it seemed to me what people wanted from the speech and what they were trying to do is as a sort of strategic block in the wall they're building for the campaign are just very different things. there were certain marks they were trying to hit. i thought one of the things that was striking to me about the democratic convention was it felt very deftly as if it was hitting certain strategic marks, on choice, certain marks on marriage equality and veterans and women and women's choice. and it sort of went through those. sometimes it could feel like there's no real uplift uniting theme here, but that may just be

the most effective way of going about and marketing because the amount of voters that were -- when you're talking about designing a democratic convention, the amount of voters that's really for in terms of persuadable universe is a very tiny subset of the electorate at this point, right? >> i think it was skillfully set up so as the day went on, you would get the base mobilization speeches and then as you moved to the prime time speeches, they focus much more on that small segment of voters that really are persuadable. i think it was a very well-run convention and certainly contrasted sharply with the republican convention in terms of the discipline on display and the organization of the themes. my own view on the president's speech is that it was a good speech, wasn't a great speech. the reason it fell short of great in my view is it is really i think important for him to what's going to happen after the election, how am i going to address that concern about both the immediate jobs problem and the long-term economic challenges of the middle class, and he got close to that, but ultimately it felt to me like he was falling back on sort of the

familiar idea of invoking hope rather than setting out an agenda. >> we have this fiscal cliff that's coming up which is going -- which is going to force things in a certain way. i want to talk about how -- what the dynamics on that might look like in terms of this persistent obstruction problem right after we take this break. with the spark cash card from capital one, olaf's pizza palace gets the most rewards of any small business credit card! pizza!!!!! [ garth ] olaf's small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase, every day! put it on my spark card! [ high-pitched ] nice doin' business with you! [ garth ] why settle for less? great businesses deserve the most rewards! awesome!!! [ male announcer ] the spark business card from capital one. choose unlimited rewards with 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet? [ male announcer ] it started long ago. the joy of giving something everything you've got. it takes passion.

and it's not letting up anytime soon. at unitedhealthcare insurance company, we understand that commitment. and always have. so does aarp, an organization serving the needs of americans 50 and over for generations. so it's no surprise millions have chosen an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement plans, they help cover some of the expenses medicare doesn't pay. and save you up to thousands in out-of-pocket costs. to find out more, request your free decision guide. call or go online today. after all, when you're going the distance, it's nice to have the experience and commitment to go along with you. keep dreaming. keep doing. go long.

♪ lord, you got no reason ♪ you got no right ♪

♪ i find myself at the wrong place ♪ [ male announcer ] the ram 1500 express. ♪ it says a lot about you. ♪ in a deep, hemi-rumble sort of way. guts. glory. ram. we take this break. so we've had this situation now, we've had tremendous i think unprecedented republican obstruction. i think it's important to keep in mind that the debt ceiling deal was a real break with the norms that had ruled washington for a very long time. obviously, the opposition party is going to oppose. that's what they're there to do. it's not surprising. but we have this totally unprecedented form of obstruction. now we have the debt ceiling deal -- the debt ceiling microcosm with much higher stakes in the fiscal cliff that's going to happen, which is all the bush tax cuts expire, the sequestration goes into

effect, a huge, huge, horrible shock to the economy if everything just -- all the taxes went up, the spending went down. we'd have this big effect. there's an argument to be made that's going to give the president leverage to deal with republican obstruction. i'm curious what you guys make of that argument. i want to be persuaded by it. >> well, i think it will give the president leverage. how that will be used is another question. i mean, we learned during the last fight over expiration of the tax cuts that the republicans were actually willing to do a lot to get the upper income tax cuts. they agreed to extensions of unemployment insurance, they agreed to continuation of payroll tax cut. so strategically the president has an opportunity he wouldn't have otherwise. the problem right now is everything he wants to do, like the jobs act, requires congressional action with the senate filibuster. nothing will happen. but this has to happen, right? and most of the observers i think now believe that the president would be in the best position if he just stuck to his

guns and waited until december 31st, the expiration, and said, you know, republicans can give up on their desire to have $800 billion in tax cuts for the rich and when they're ready to talk i'm ready to deal. now, it's still the case that, you know, that this could be politically damaging to democrats as well as republicans and the fight that's going to take place and the fight will take place on terrain that's favorable to republicans. >> if the president is re-elected -- you know, he's at the peak of not -- first of all, he's in the second term. a lame duck session after he's just been re-elected. in terms of his own political capital, i don't think he has to worry in the same way about its erosion. >> it's hard to know what the psychological impact of the election will be the day after. you know, the republicans were remarkably disciplined after obama's victory. but i think that the mood -- you know, the republicans i know -- they really believe obama's victory was a fluke because

mccain had been a bad candidate. i think after losing an election that they should have won given how bad the economy is, i think you're going to start to see the process of some people saying -- >> this is the big question -- >> i wish -- >> -- of the country. maybe it will take a third loss >> i think it will take a third loss. >> nine losses in we're sitting here at the table in 2016. >> sooner or later we're going to have a republican version of the democratic leadership council and a struggle inside the republican party the kind the democratic party had. >> i think you will not have that until you have a candidate that respects the republican party losing. i was already hearing at the convention they have made the same mistakes they made in 2008. they nominated a squishy moderate. >> but they put paul ryan with him. that make it is harder -- >> they put sarah palin with mccain. >> yes, but they doubled down on the medicare stuff. >> they already made these arguments to themselves. >> all these arguments are basically in the cue and they're ready to fire them out.

>> i would not -- i don't think you can underestimate the degree to which the republicans are going to -- or overestimate the degree to which the republicans are going to find confirmatory evidence that their agenda should be pursued. i think it's very unlikely that you'll have a kind of reckoning in the party for one thing. this is a lot more conservative party than we had after the 2008 election. and for another thing, you know, there is going to be this sense, well, obama is the incumbent president. things were bad but they weren't bad enough. i think the best opportunity for action is the action forcing mechanism of the fiscal cliff. >> and -- please. >> it seems like there are the hard core republicans who have their minds made up, hard core democrats, minds made up, and really the results of this presidential election are going to be with that group of independents who i think are really looking for leadership, true leadership, and, you know, we've got the partisanship on both sides -- >> but it's not on both sides.

come on, we have -- certainly partisan democrats, but you don't have these kind of like, you know, kind of bitter end democrats who would rather destroy the country than see the republicans have any political victory. you certainly didn't see that with bush. and the idea, you know, genuine independence like persuadables as opposed to people who say they are independents but have strong ideological leaning, but it's a small and disengaged part of the population. it's not as if they're the kind of reasonable ones and everybody else is -- >> i just don't think -- i think the other thing to remember is the electoral fight is only part of it. after the election the same kind of organizational barriers to action are going to be there. there's going to be an enormous amount of lobbying money to push back financial regulations and health care reform. the challenge of trying to implement the existing achievements of the administration will be formidable.

the other problem with this idea that the independents are going to be pressuring the republicans is that to -- we political scientists have been looking at this and we're very surprised, right? because the parties are moving asymmetrically apart. the republicans are moving way to the right and the democrats are moving modestly to the left. how can this be if the independent voters are roughly in the center? they haven't moved dramatically right or left. what i would say is political science has reached a couple conclusions. one, this is clearly activist-driven. and the activists on the right are -- the tea party are really powerful. >> hold that thought. you compare the first thing the democrats did when george w. bush was elected was work with him on no child left behind versus how republicans responded. there was a honeymoon period back in 2000. i want to pursue this question more because it's going to affect what that congress looks like that you're going to be possibly going into in january right after we take this break. welcome aboard!

[ chuckles ] ♪ [ honk! ] ♪ [ honk! ] ♪ [ honk! ] ♪ [ male announcer ] now you'll know when to stop. [ honk! ] the all-new nissan altima with easy fill tire alert. [ honk! ] it's our most innovative altima ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪

♪ moving along ♪ new beginnings and new ends ♪ spending our time with our family and our friends ♪ ♪ celebrate with the cool autumn air ♪ ♪ ♪ and we're livin' out our lives ♪ ♪ as we dance without a care ♪ oh we were made ♪ don't worry, i can make more. ♪ oh to be free there's something i have

noticed lately, you probably have, too, and it's this. maybe it's just because i grew up in a different time, but though i often disagree with republicans, i actually never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our president and a lot of other democrats. >> i love that phrase from president clinton. never learned to hate them. that phrase learn to hate is a really powerful phrase about our politics in general. jacob, you have -- you've written a report about -- a document that's interesting about what a second term agenda might look like. and i'm curious what the kind of contours of it and is it any good if we have the same -- it's easy to write a document saying, this is what things should be like, but when you're facing the kind of political challenges of this republican opposition, how do you get from here to there? >> well, i should say first i wrote it with this yale law student nate lowenthal who is great, and that made it relatively easy, but it was

still a big challenge. we wanted to lay out what it would take to get the economy moving in the right direction. to restore the middle class in the long term. there really isn't a kind of vigorous agenda on the other side from this kind of austerity agenda of ryan and now romney, and so that was our goal. and we had a second goal, which was to get some of the major grassroots, progressive groups. on board. ult mayly it was endorsed by the afl-cio, national coalition of civil rights, center for community change which told how millions of members out at the grassroots talking about this. that would be the other thing i would say. after the election you have the leverage from this and the leverage from having outside groups pushing for something else. that's what gives me hope over the longer term. the president obviously has his own challenges. he's articulated some of these

ideas but he hasn't offered a bold set of prescriptions. somebody has to be out there opening up some space. if other groups are saying we have to have a set of solutions that are up to the scale of the challenges we face, i'm hopeful that will at least open up some broader discussion in the next few years. >> i want to turn this to you. this is a close race. it looks like the president is pulling ahead in the wake of the convention and nate silver has been tweeting about this. there's some promising signs from the standpoint of the president's election campaign. quickly, if the shoe is on the other foot, you go and serve in congress in january with president mitt romney, how are you going to see yourself interacting with the republican administration? >> the work is going to be tough, to say the least. there's a lot of things that would concern me in that scenario, one of which that's very personal to me, i have some friends who are on their way to afghanistan now from the hawaii army national guard. mitt romney's positions on foreign policy, his position on

afghanistan really that would be open-ended, who knows how long we would end up staying there worries me tremendously. >> that's one of his many positions. >> exactly. which is the point, right? it's hard to know exactly how things will be if his positions keep changing, and i think the burden on the democrats will really be to communicate, we have to really work hard, i think better than we have been, communicating to people, middle class families across the country, about what it is we're trying to do to be able it get that kind of broad-based grassroots support. >> i should end on this note, which is for whatever obstruction there is in the future, the things that have been done and particularly the affordable care act, right, it will die. it will be killed by president mitt romney very early on. he'll kill it using budget reconciliation. if mitt romney is elected and there's a republican senate, it doesn't survive. the most remarkable in some ways achievement of domestic policy for the center left of this country since medicare i would say is on the table.

forget any forward looking obstruction. i just want to leave on that note. thank you to jacob hacker political science at yale for joining us. great to have you here. democrats take it to republicans on foreign policy when we get back. we know a place where tossing and turning have given way to sleeping. where sleepless nights yield to restful sleep. and lunesta can help you get there, like it has for so many people before. when taking lunesta, don't drive or operate machinery until you feel fully awake. walking, eating, driving, or engaging in other activities while asleep, without remembering it the next day, have been reported. abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations or confusion. in depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. alcohol may increase these risks. allergic reactions, such as tongue or throat swelling, occur rarely and may be fatal. side effects may include unpleasant taste, headache,

dizziness and morning drowsiness. ask your doctor if lunesta is right for you. then find out how to get lunesta for as low as $15 at lunesta.com. there's a land of restful sleep. we can help you go there on the wings of lunesta.

much of president obama's domestic agenda has been stymied by obstructionist republican party in congress. the last two years he's been much more unfettered on foreign policy. democrats at the convention were eager to point out the president's victories in that area. notably the success of the operation ordered by president obama that killed osama bin laden. >> osama bin laden is dead, and general motor is alive. >> take out bin laden. >> bin laden. >> bin laden. >> bin laden. >> osama bin laden. >> osama bin laden. >> bin laden. >> ask osama bin laden if he is better off now than he was four years ago. >> in a video played to

introduce president obama on thursday night, former president bill clinton further emphasized president obama's singular role in ordering the operation. >> that's one thing george bush said that was right, the president is the decider in chief. >> president obama's foreign policy and national security credentials were served up as a stark contrast to the relative lack of foreign policy experience on the republican ticket, something the president himself pointed out. >> my opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy. but from all that we've seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost america so dearly. after all, you don't call russia our number one enemy, not al qaeda, russia, unless you're still stuck in a cold war mind warp.

>> joining us now is jeremy scahill my colleague at "the nation" where he is national security correspondent. great to have you here. it was really striking. yesterday we talked about the classic cultural war issues and how aggressive democrats seemed on things they had previously been on their heels about, things like marriage equality and choice for women and the immigration dream act. they seemed to be leading with that. and the same dynamic i think seemed to be true on foreign policy and national security, the invocation of osama bin laden, the ridicule -- there was almost this amazing reversal if you look at the 2004 republican convention to the 2012 democratic convention, here is -- i want to show, here is dick cheney in 2004 employing this ridicule against john kerry. >> even in this post 9/11 period, senator kerry doesn't appear to understand how the world has changed. he talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror.

as though al qaeda will be impressed with our softer side. >> and now here is john kerry who, of course, was the butt of all those jokes eight years ago being the one who is doing the mocking in what was by far the biggest dis track of the convention. >> folks, sarah palin said she could see russia from alaska. mitt romney talks like he's only seen russia by watching "rocky 4." >> tulsi, you're of a generation of democratic politicians that came of age during this era of long war. if people are not familiar, you were elected to the state house at 21. you then signed up for the national guard and not just signed up for the national guard after you had been doing some training, volunteered to deploy to iraq. went to iraq, came back, did another deployment, that one was in kuwait and have continued your political career. you're still a member of the national guard if i'm not mistaken. >> yes. >> my understanding is that

experience changed your politics quite a bit. you were a conservative i believe, conservative on social issues certainly, when you were 21, and your deployment changed your politics. i want you to talk about that and then talk a bit more broadly about what you saw from democrats in this convention. >> absolutely. you know, my deployments both to iraq and kuwait absolutely were life-changing in so many ways. specifically with regards to social issues and kind of my politics in general, seeing firsthand the extreme, really the extreme negative effects of what can happen in societies where the government tries to be a so-called moral arbiter for its people and drawing that link from extremeness in the middle east to some of the conversations that we're having here at home, places where our government should have no presence. you know, whether it's in a doctor's office where a woman is making difficult decisions about her future and her reproductive rights, or about who to love and who we want to spend our lives with. and i think that's an important perspective even when we talk about separation of church and state.

we hear a lot of conversations here about so-called morality within government, but there are these positions that really need to stay within the realm of your religious beliefs, your church, your culture, your personal lives, your family, and that's really what my experience in the middle east taught me and caused me to really reflect on the values and beliefs that i had grown up with and my own views now about government's role within our personal lives here in a place where we celebrate freedom. >> to fill in the context, your father is a state politician, and extremely prominent in advocating against marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. >> needless to say, we have some very colorful dinner conversations at home. >> in hawaii this is a big deal, he's known for that. he was probably the singular spokesperson when the issue came up in the late 1990s. you were one of a number of veterans that took the stage. we have a little "b" roll of that. i'm curious what you thought -- what was the foreign policy

message, the national security message, of this democratic convention to you? >> i think clearly the message was delivered by many different speakers throughout the convention. the appreciation and paying tribute and honor to veterans and those who serve and understanding their contributions to our communities and our country and also understanding how what our presence is overseas, basically the shrinking global community that we have and how important it is, and i was glad they brought this up. this is an issue that does rise above the partisan politics and it's an issue that affects families all across the country, and i think that we need to actually do more to express this sense of urgency where every single day that we are at war people are losing lives and families here at home are being affected. >> i think there's sort of three lanes this was happening on. there's the appreciation of veterans, celebration of veterans and talking about veterans' issues which is very prominent. there was the operation on osama bin laden which was obviously very prominent, and then there was kind of everything else, right? foreign policy, how long are we

going to stay in afghanistan? the drone issue. and i want to talk about that everything else and maybe what focus on the first two didn't highlight so much on the third right after we take this break. at purina one,

we believe small things can make a big difference. like how a little oil from here can be such a big thing in an old friend's life. we discovered that by blending enhanced botanical oils into our food, we can help brighten an old dog's mind so he's up to his old tricks. it's just one way purina one is making the world a better place... one pet at a time. discover vibrant maturity and more

what was your position watching this the democratic posturing on the national security issues which you cover? >> regarding the way that osama bin laden's name was used by the democrats at the convention. it really felt like we were watching a parade of jinglism that belonged in a sports bar. the fact that there has been no

serious analysis of the president's foreign policy, in all of the coverage i have seen of the democratic national convention, theres that been no serious hard hitting critique of the president's foreign policy. the fact is that the democratic foreign policy is distinguishable from the republicans only in so far as the president oak some of the worst policies and pucked them forward. >> that's not entirely fair. if you look at some of the truth of that, if you look at iran over the last few weeks, where the administration has pushed back on pressure mounting on them, i think that was a pretty significant -- >> we have a a president, who in a two week period, authorized the assassination of three u.s. citizens in yemen, including a 16-year-old boy, who was killed while he was having a bbq with

his friends. >> we don't know that he was the target. >> the president authorized operations that resulted in the death of three american citizens including a 16-year-old american boy, and if you will use osama bin laden's killing as a football to spike on the national stage -- if you're going to use it in a sing kal way -- >> it would be political malpractice to not mig k the osama bin laden thing. >> there are countries where the drone strikes happen, i'm talking about -- >> the convention, you're talking about the president's foreign policy, and then there is a dugs about how they're using that foreign also to win the election. >> but many of the discussions felt like we were watching an america for obama meet up not a serious critique.

there is all of this coming after romney, and i think it's legitimate. some of the core issues of this president's national security policy are not being debated. watching john kerry and joe biden criticizing -- they voted for the war, he shut down debate about the war in iraq. i'm not thinking about this from a cynical political perspective, it's life or death issues. >> a lot of things i think are getting bound up. there's ending the war in iraq, right? the status forces agreement negotia negotiated, and the president did end the war at the end of the day. we keep up a force of paid mercenaries behind, but troops have been brought them. i think that is in one column.

there is extension, the surge in afghanistan, right? 87,000 troops there and the deadline for that. there is the decision to order the strike against osama bin laden, and then there is the massive drone policy and end all of engagements in terms of bombing and drones. we're going to continue this conversation on our website msnbc.com. and our usual time slot at 8:00 eastern. for this special afternoon edition of up, we have to cut it short here. i want to thank peter, telsey, jeremy, and michelle. thank you for getting up. thank you for joining us for this special afternoon edition of up. we'll have sam deler here at our regular time next sunday, and i will be with bill maher tonight.

coming up next is melissa harris-perry. mhp follows the methods and motives coming up next. we'll see you next week here on up. yes i do. i want you to keep this. it'd be weird. take care. you too. [ sighs ] so how did it go? he's upset. [ male announcer ] spend less time at gas stations. with best in class fuel economy. it's our most innovative altima ever. ♪

it's our most innovative altima ever. capella university understands back from rough economic times. employees are being forced to do more with less. and the need for capable leaders is greater than ever.