that i never confronted and never resolved. that's where we've got to go if we're going to make progress in this country. deal with our own contradictions, and then help straighten out the contradictions in society. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton, have a great weekend. "hardball" starts right now. a new low from dick cheney. let's play "hardball." good evening i'm chris matthews out in los angeles. let me start tonight with this. the political right in this country has reached a new low, as i said. it has shown from the beginning that president obama doesn't deserve the decency accorded other american presidents. his enemies have called him an illegal immigrant, a street corner con artist, a fraud, a march yourian candidate brought to this country to undermine all

we stand for. well, now dick cheney comes right out and calls him a liar when a right wing back bencher did that's four years ago he was called out for rebuke even by his own party. now what was condemned as historic bad behavior comes snarling out of dick cheney's mouth and nobody says to shut up. we can argue as we do here about the problems implementing the affordable care act. but is this, calling the president a liar, the new language of american politics? or is it a language specially treated for the country's first african-american president? is this president of a lower caste than those elected to the office before. or those on the right even believe he is the legitimate president of the united states. or someone like him could be. at least we know the top republican in the country refuses to condemn the birtherism of his allies. the fact that a recent vice president can talk openly like this tells us that a new ugliness has come to right wing discourse. howard fineman is editorial director for the huffington post

media group. david corn is the washington bureau chief for mother jones. both are values msnbc political analysts. let's listen to dick cheney, here it is at his current worst. >> we look at the mess that has been created out of obama care by the president having said, you can keep your policy if you like it, you know, guaranteed, period. that turns out that was a lie. and he repeated it over and over and over again. >> cheney's not alone. another former gop heavyweight, if you will, mitt romney called the president a liar during an interview on "cbs this morning." >> the real problem that the president has is a broken promise. it's dishonesty. and that's of course, what's really striking at the heart of this. >> let me go to howard on this one. it seems to me that one thing we know and the discourse we have here on this program and everywhere else in the country is if you call someone a liar, using that word, saying they lie, it's sort of the end of the conversation, because what would be the point in continuing to listen to someone you call a

liar. here's the vice president, dick cheney, now he used to be the president's club by mike w. makes it pretty clear recently there's a sort of a code of respect among presidents, recent presidents. they don't call each other names like this. cheney, is he exempt there the rule? >> no, he's not exempt there the rule. but he made himself exempt. i don't think you'll hear george w. bush making a statement like that. but dick cheney has a different agenda. first of all, his daughter is run fog are the senate in wyoming as a tea party candidate, rather absurdly, since she's basically from the beltway. and dick cheney is trying to help her out by appealing to the tea party worst. i think that's what's going on, number one. number two i think republicans more generally, chris, have always been infuriated by the high personal standarding of president barack obama. by him sz a candidate. by him as a president. by the fact that he has seen to many of his supporters and to most americans, to be an honest, straightforward, decent guy. and this somehow is especially infuriating to republicans.

it drives them crazy, and they're doing everything they can now given the opportunity to try to drag him down to their level. and that's what dick cheney is up to. >> let me go to -- let me go to david on the same question, because i do think we can argue and we're going to do it here as we've done about the screw-ups regarding affordable care. they are there. they are talked about. but getting into motive. did he lie. and using the word lie. not that he was, what the president's been saying, look, i tried to do something, i thought it was going to work one way. the market didn't react the way i thought it would. i thought i was telling the truth, it didn't work out that way. but to call the guy a liar is to say he's a liar and it seems to me, the -- politicians generally avoid the word. i'm focused on the word. the decency of -- who was that guy, joe wilson >> joe wilson. >> when he said, you lied. everybody blanched and said oh, my god you don't talk like that. your thoughts? >> well, can we just say of all the people to call anyone else a liar dick cheney should not be at the top of that list. i mean if you go back to iraq, we've talked about this over the

years, he was the one who said that saddam hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction. no doubt, to use against the united states. he kept talking about the lie that mohammed atta had met with iraqi intelligence officials in prague. he talked about the aluminum tubes. he said there was no doubt there was strong evidence of strong connections, between al qaeda and saddam hussein. he lied repeatedly. and he really, for all that, should sort of be drummed out of polite society and out of the media. but unfortunately he's not. those lies actually were done, i think, maliciously to get the american public to back a war which they might otherwise not support. and then, so the fact that he can come out there now, and act like a statesman, pronouncing judgment on somebody else, when, you know, obama, you know, misspoke, made a mistake, lied or was inaccurate, he was doing it in pursuit of bringing health care to tens of millions of americans who aren't otherwise

covered. that's a lot different than trying to bamboozle a public into supporting a hoax of a war. >> apparently you never heard franklin roosevelt's warning to never use the word rope in a family where there's been a hanging. at every turn republicans had tried to smear the president as a liar and a cheat. the breadth and scope of the gop attack on the president's character, as howard pointed out, is remarkable. and it started pretty much the day he took office. it began, as i said, rather infamously when congressman joe wilson called the president a liar in 2009, when it came to the part of his health care plan. this part. let's watch joe wilson in action. >> the reforms i'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. >> you lie! >> that's not true. >> well that opened the floodgates. in 2011 republicans refused to acknowledge the reality of a refault. a debt default accusing the president of lying about basic math.

>> president obama, quit lying. you know darn well that if august 2nd comes and goes there's plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all of our social security obligations. >> that was actually another u.s. congressman. anyway there's the gop obsession with benghazi, which the tea party zealot ted cruz jumped on earlier this summer as proof of what he said was a pattern of lies. >> as all of these scandals have unfolded, a pattern we've seen is a consistent willingness to mislead, to be less than honest, indeed in recent weeks we have seen at least two flat-out falsehoods from senior members of the administration with regard to benghazi. >> i still think the real decision -- the real being said here is for a former vice president, in fact the most recent vice president, using the word lie regarding a current president. but then there's some hot shots out there, the original lie there, when the president was born. that was the original one. this is from conservative radio

talk show host rick wise conducting an interview with jeff duncan from south carolina. >> if we know that they're lying about all these other things, why not go back and say, well maybe the first scandal was a lie, too? >> there you go. i'm all with you, so let's go back and revisit some of these things because americans have question about not only the irs scandal, but also about the president's validity. >> howard, you know, there you go again. you can't keep him away from this. it's like chocolate candy or something. the minute we get anywhere near, there's one put in front of him, mention anything, they go right back to birtherism. there is a crowd, the guy that was on the other day, that wouldn't admit the president was elected legitimately. obviously they think he's basically a fraud. and donald trump called him a street corner con artist. this lingo. it's hard to read people's souls, but would they say it about a white guy? it always seems to hit me they

think of him like an indian in the old days, a lower caste, an untouchable. oh, i was ten feet the other day and i felt sick. i couldn't stand looking at him. this caste they treat him as, something lower than -- not like some guy you work with you don't get along with. it's not like somebody your brother-in-law or some stupid argument. it's like he's from a lower species the way these people talk about him. >> well, chris, i'm reluctant, i -- >> i don't know about motive. >> i would normally be reluctant to make the accusation of racism. but here's how i look at it. as i see president obama's policies, and i've been covering things around here for a long time, the last thing he is, is a communist, socialist, whatever rush lame bowe calls him every day of the week. he tried in the health care law, and largely succeeded, to steer a middle course between single payer, you know, government-run program, even the public option, and the republicans' idea of vouchers only in the market. he sought a traditional,

american compromise that has been validated over 200 years, between marketplace, and federal regulation. there was nothing radical about that. minimal regulation of the insurance industry. and yet, these people on the right, go crazy. they go crazy about it from an ideological point of view. so as a kind of mathematical equation, what's the missing element here? what's the "x" factor here that makes them go so crazy? well, there are two things. first of all, we live in divided worlds of politics and reality. they deny his validity because they deny the rest of the world outside of the world they live in, number one. and number two, i think race has to be part of it, because they see everything that he does in apocalyptic terms. why? what other explanation is there? >> let me go to the other theory, david corn. are they trying to trash talk him in to trash talking back? i sometimes wonder whether they just lower the level of discourse using words like liar

if they can keep doing this. maybe he'll some night burp out with what he thinks of them and they'll say we showed you, he's an angry black guy or something like that? your thoughts? i don't understand, cheney, you think he cared about his own dignity. he obviously doesn't care of his own dignity. it may be about his daughter. some game he's playing, some hatred he has of obama. i don't know what it is. who knows. >> i'm not sure they're that strategic in trying to get a, you know, an improper response out of the president. but i do think there is another part to this. and that is, they realize that if they can discredit just a whole nature of political discourse, and make what's happening in washington, when it comes to policy and politics, look like a complete mess, that's bad for the president. that's bad for the democrats, who say listen, we can use government to nudge the markets in the right direction, to give you -- to give you health care. they actually benefit from chaos. the libertarian wing, the tea party wing, they want -- you know, they don't want to just, you know, decrease the size of

government, they want to destroy it in a lot of ways. and they want to discredit. they want to discredit the president. they want to discredit congress. they want to disrupt. and if they can get the president to swing back and play at their level, well they win a big win that way. i'm not sure that's the way they look at it but they do want to disrupt. they're not here to have an honest debate. and we knew that about dick cheney from the get-go. he is not here for an honest debate. >> chris, i think the other question, the question, though, is whether, and i agree with what david said there, but the question is whether they think that way in part because they feel that they have an advantage in making the case, given who barack obama is. they can talk in this apocalyptic fashion about washington and gloft and so on because of who the president is. but in his person and his in race. and i think the answer to that is for some of these people, they think that makes their case somehow. >> well, he certainly represents -- >> i'm going to stop -- >> -- a new america -- i was going to say, these are people who really want to go back to the '50s for a lot of reasons, some of it motivated by race.

some of it motivated by other concerns. and his race, and his youth, and his positions, it all ties together to make him the other in terms of political cultures, and geographic differences, and so it's all part of a larger piece. >> i think it's a guy in a jalopy trying to get into a bumping car fight with somebody driving a cadillac. they can't lose. thank you howard fineman. thank you david corn. coming up, what's all this nonsense about being president obama's katrina? george w. bush was indifferent to people who were suffering, of course he was looking out the window at them. now republicans are doing everything they can to keep president obama from helping people who are suffering, like 40 million people in the emergency rooms. this is no katrina. republicans are really trying to hard to make it. also some good news for democrats, as we look towards 2014. they have a real shot at knocking off some big name republican governors in big states, who floated into office in the 2010 tea party wave. and the lasting legacy of jack kennedy, our elusive hero and his short presidency influenced so many others after he was

gone. and texas congressman has topped himself with his latest conspiracy theory. this one about, well the president's health care. and this is "hardball," the place for politics. [ male announcer ] 1.21 gigawatts. today, that's easy. ge is revolutionizing power. supercharging turbines with advanced hardware and innovative software. using data predictively to help power entire cities. so the turbines of today... will power us all... into the future. ♪ [ male announcer ] the rhythm of life. [ whistle blowing ] where do you hear that beat? campbell's healthy request soup lets you hear it in your heart. [ basketball bouncing ] heart healthy. [ m'm... ] great taste. [ tapping ] sounds good. campbell's healthy request. m'm! m'm! good.®

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welcome back to "hardball." republicans have a new way to attack the president for trying to bring health care to people who don't have it. or have been denied it. they're referring to it as president obama's katrina. well today's "new york times" headlines it, health law rollout

stumpages draw parallels to push's hurricane response. and quotes a former bush administration official saying, quote, the echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie. katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website. well, nicole wallace, who was president george w. bush's communications director, joined in on "morning joe." >> there are moments in a presidency where everything is different afterward. and i believe this is that moment. for us it was hurricane katrina. because, while public support had been dropping for the war in iraq, after katrina, after the many members of the public, and every member of the democratic party, viewed us as incompetent. and it transcended to everything else we did. i'm not -- you know, you can't look in a crystal ball. but i believe this is a moment after which everything will be different for the president. >> well that may be the wish

hoping to be fulfilled. anyway republicans hope so anyway. yes the rollout of the website has been disastrous. but the comparisons to katrina. think about it, don't really hold up. during hurricane katrina, the real knock on the president, his crime if you will, was his alleged indifference to the suffering. there he was looking out the window of the plane, not interested in getting down there, worried about the people dehydrated and starving and left out in the cold, left out in the heat there. at least president obama stumbled while trying to help people all the while republicans tried to stop any way they could. joining me, you know the comparison i would draw to what's going on right now, would not be to katrina, which was really about indifference. i mean all the president george w. bush had to do, and i kept saying he should do it, was bring marine one, the helicopter, down there in front of the convention center and the superdome and start handing out water bottles to everybody. just show you care. lead the way. lead the charge. don't be standing back and not doing anything.

and today, what's going on today, a die or woman is out there drowning, a quarter mile out, and a guy jumps in the water and tries to save him. another guy stands on the beach laughing. laughing at the effort to try to save the person. that's what the right wing is doing now. they're not saying we can do a better job of saving that person. they're not diving in the water trying to get out there faster than the guy who's trying to save the person. they're standing on the beach laughing. and i got a little chuckle there when i just heard that comment from nicole. and the chuckle that's out there at the president's inability to get the job done that he's trying to do. that he's trying to do. and the other side has never tried to do. >> yeah. >> there's no comparison here to katrina. nothing. it doesn't work. it's cute. but it doesn't work. your thoughts? >> what i would add to your analogy is that the guy standing on the side is also fishing out the life preserver, making sure that it's not even possible to help the person because they simply don't believe that it's the role of anybody on the side to jump in and save someone. look, the analogy, i think one day, anyone capable of embarrassment is going to look

back, including some people in the news biz, and be embarrassed at the idea of comparing this witchy website and the inability of some people to buy single market, high deductible insurance to the death of 1800 people. i mean, if you think about just the scale problem, it's really quite embarrassing to make that comparison. in the case of hurricane katrina, you're talking about the benign or active neglect of both state and federal government that led directly or indirectly to the deaths of 1833 human beings. the idea that that is comparable to a glitchy website is really sort of embarrassing, even as a comparison and it shows you the kind of callusness that you hear from the right. the kind of indifference to human suffering that's quite ironic when they're trying to compare the president to george w. bush. >> and another piece of this, there's the little chuckle worthy there after taking hell over katrina, which they deserve because they did show indifference, to, hey, he's as bad as we were. hey, we got him, he's as bad as

we were, chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. that carries such an indictment i can't even get to it. when your biggest knock against the president is, you know, he's as bad as we were. >> the thing with obama's katrina, i think there have been maybe 18 times during obama's administration where the new big thing was obama's katrina. it was syria. it was the 2011. it was the oil spill down in the gulf. it was the bush alums really, you know, really are still feeling the embarrassment over katrina. and they keep bringing it out. you know, look, this is -- this is a big thing for the president. it is a very -- it is a very public stumble. it has real consequences. so, i think democrats realize that they need to -- they need to show they can get this fix and they need to show they can deliver on helping, you know, helping ordinary people. i think what's going to -- what's going to backfire for republicans is that, you know,

it's great for them, they can kind of, you know, they were so bummed out after the shutdown. they can kind of chuckle, i told you so, all this kind of stuff, but the law is still moving forward and people are signing up. the website is demonstrably getting better and the problem for the white house right now is that you're focused on what is really a tiny sliver of the population, that is going to have to pay higher rates. when you have many, many more people who are going to be able to be covered for the first time, be able to get coverage for less. the problem is, is the problem with the website you haven't seen those people yet. but they're coming. so i think this is going to look very different in a month or two, and the republican crocodile tears won't look so good in retrospect. >> well said. republicans' relentless effort to sabotage the president's health care reform plan is another element that joyce said to this story that debunks the obama's katrina in comparison. republicans are actively working to destroy the president and his plan. mike demass ki writes in the

daily beast they're like the kid who puts antifreeze in the gas tank and then says see, i told you that car wouldn't run. they're total bad faith actors. unfortunately this battle isn't over from the right wing side. they made the point of not giving the administration or hhs enough funds to put this thing together adequately as an administrative issue. i have a feelingthese exchanges don't work out and they need more funding you ain't going to get a nickel from the congress. not the house. >> absolutely not. what the house republicans are doing, as they did today, are putting forward bills that would essentially allow insurance companies to go right back to the policies that the affordable care made illegal. saying go ahead and sell people policies that are subject to rescission. meaning the minute you try to cash in your insurance because you got sick, they can say oh, no, sorry, you had some minor illness a few years ago we're going to call that a pre-existing condition, we're not going to cover you, you go ahead and pay for that yourself. they want to put those policies back in place. the biggest irony to all of

this -- >> by the way, all the time saying they're trying to help. >> the biggest irony is that republicans are claiming that the bedrock principle of liberty here is that people should be able to keep the plan they like, even if those plans have been made illegal because they are sub standard under law. they should be able to keep them. but they want to take away the insurance that people are now, millions of people potentially are going to get through medicaid, expanded medicaid and people who do wind up buying on the exchange through the affordable care act. they don't think you should be able to keep that insurance, even if you like it. >> you know, there's also people who are going to be protected on the pre-existing condition, the lifetime limits front, the kids that can stay on their parents' care until they're 26. there are, you know, there are a lot of promises out there. and the promise which, look, i think the republicans have a good, you know, a point on the president just overstated that absolutely no one would have to change plans, that's the only promise they care about. the promise to the people on

medicaid. the promise to people who get better coverage. those don't matter. >> let's not forget the pro-quell to this whole thing. generations and generations of politicians promising national health care of various form, the public option, or this kind of more moderate plan, or a republican plan. there has been a reason why people gravitate toward that because they know we needed it. of course it's going to be difficult but the call for it is loud and persistent for generations for a reason. a real lack of caring for the people, the 40 million that added up who didn't get anything from help from anybody. thank you, great having you on. up next a birther and he is a birther louie gohmert never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like. he thinks he's uncovered a sinister plot lurking deep within the affordable care act itself. stick around for the side show. there's always something like that. and this is "hardball." the place for politics. people don't have to think about

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we're talking about ralph ford, toronto mayor. crack smoking mayor of toronto, ladies and gentlemen, ralph ford. this has everything you want and city council was grilling the guy, turned out at one point he had hookers in the mayor's office. boy, i did not see that coming. >> welcome to the side show. mayor rob ford was the story of the day for late night comedians. here's steve colbert. >> ford apologized last week and i think that should have been the end of it. but apparently the mayor's critics cannot take, i smoked crack, for an answer. instead they've made even more alarming allegations. >> mayor ford was said to be snorting cocaine, drinking vodka and using oxycontin all while entertaining a prostitute in his office. >> drinking and driving, also a

problem police say. they say that one staff member said that he was in the car with the mayor when the mayor chugged vodka mixed in with some gatorade. >> mayor ford steps out of the car and proceeds to urinate publicly next to a basically an elementary school. >> oh, canada. he was trying to tell kids to stay in school. seriously, kids, stay inside, the mayor's out there. >> by the way the toronto city council today voted overwhelmingly to strip mayor ford of some of his powers. but ford says he isn't going anywhere. meanwhile south of the border there was pretty brazen political chutzpah on yesterday's epa oversight hearing in the house of representatives. u.s. congressman paul brown heard this question about the affordable care act to epa administrator geena mccarthy. listen carefully to her response. >> let me ask you one more question because my time is running out. are you signed up for obama care? >> no, i am not.

>> why not? >> well, because i'm lucky enough as a federal government that i have a health care available to me, which i've signed up for, and in a few years when that's not the case, i'll be happy to have other available -- >> the president said that obama care is -- >> did you get that, mccarthy is referring to the fact that she's lucky enough to already have health insurance. congressman steve stockman chose to hear it differently. listen to what he says a few minutes later in the hearing. >> i think, though, you earlier gave me my favorite tweet of the day for someone to send out which is i'm lucky enough to -- oh, really the quote is from you. it says i'm lucky enough not to have to sign up for obama care. that's wonderful. i wish my constituents could say the same. >> i actually think i was referring to i'm lucky to have access to good health care, which the -- >> i still will take your quote from the record. i wrote it down. it's really good.

>> she didn't say anything what he just said. anyway, in other words he's saying i don't care what you actually said as long as i can quote you out of context and tweet out, it was worse than that. that's all that matter to me. nice trick, congressman. everybody saw it. it fits a pattern when it comes to critics of the affordable care act. the truth is often seen beside the point. remember death panels? this congressman from louie gohmert might be the most incredible yet. >> it provides in obama care that this commission and noncommissioned officer corps will be trained, but i want to know, are they using weapons to train, or are they being taught to use syringes and health care items? >> that's congressman, a u.s. congressman louie gohmert asking the question nobody on planet earth thought necessary. is the u.s. government creating an obama care army perhaps armed with weapons, perhaps armed with syringes? well hopefully you can get to the bottom of that. the reality is the new law provides funding for a reserve

corps of a few thousand doctors and health care workers to help at times of national emergencies. nothing about people going around putting needles in people's arms to kill them in late age. sorry louie you're out to lunch again. up next, democrats have a good chance of beating some high profile republican governors next year. right back here in the place for politics in just a minute. i am today by luck.

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i'm melissa rehberger. prosecutors outside detroit have charged theodore wafer in the shooting death of renisha mcbride on his porch. she was shot after wrecking her car. family members believe she was looking for help when she approached his home. wafer says he thought someone was trying to break in. authorities in miami are searching for the body of a man who fell out of a plane yesterday. the pilot sent a desperate mayday moments afterwards.

back to "hardball." welcome to "hardball." coming up terry mcauliffe's big victory last week in virginia, democrats are hoping momentum is on their side looking ahead to next year's governor's races. they have their sights particularly set on three more governor's seats in 2014 but republican incumbents appear to be the most vulnerable. pennsylvania's tom corbett. florida's rick scott. maine's paul la page are all top targets of democrats going into next year. just today "the washington post" ranked these guys as the top three most engagered governors in the country. all three of them trail 2014 rivals in hypothetical match-ups and all three continue to see weak job performance numbers.

only 43% of floridians approve of scott's job performance. only 39% approve of lepage up in maine. and catch this just 19% of approve of corbett, tom corbett in pennsylvania, according to the latest polling. governor corbett of pennsylvania has provided some interests explanations for his policies. here are some of his more outrageous answers beginning with one about his mandatory ultrasound bill. >> did that go too far? >> i'm not making anybody watch, okay? because you have to close your eyes. >> since you've taken office pennsylvania's dropped from seventh in job growth to 49th in the nation. >> there are many employers that say, you know, we're looking for people. but we can't find anybody that, that has passed a drug test in a lot of them. and that's a concern for me. >> -- staff members that -- >> we do not have any staff members, if you can find us one,

please let me know. >> i'm sure that there are -- >> you want to come to harrisburg? >> there was a controversial remark made by a member of your legal team comparing gay marriage to the union of 12-year-olds saying both are illegal. which you called inappropriate. >> it was an inappropriate analogy, you know. i think a much better analogy would have been brother and sister, don't you? >> i don't know. >> well that's a good reporters response, i don't know. joe, let's talk about the i'm not super sensitive, but it seems to me when you're talking about unborn children, or fetuses, however the term, of course, could matter to a lot of people morally. but when you start chatting about ultrasound and making a comment like, well, just don't watch. i mean, it seems to me that shows the kind of a horse's ass attitude about what you're talking about. if you are a pro-life person, and many people are, you don't joke about that. you're talking about human life. if you are -- if you don't think it's human life then maybe you

can chuckle about it. but here's a pro-life guy saying don't watch. this is all a big joke. is it a big joke? >> well, it's a joke to him. it's a sock to his supporters. but it really is such a cavalier and callus thing to say. he is in there acknowledging, chris, that it actually could be a traumatic thing for a woman, that she wouldn't want to see. it's not like he's saying this is best for you, and you ought to see it. he's just acknowledging that women would -- would either be squeamish or just be completely horrified by having to be violated by the state that way. so, to sort of make a joke, and you know, in that really great montage we insult latinos, we insult gays. >> how about everybody? we've got -- >> we insult the unemployed, they're on drugs. i mean he's really, he's really kind of one of the big losers, i think. >> let's go to the issue of maybe manhood is a good word for it. guy's out of work, a woman too, a guy especially a father with kids at home, he can't find a job. the plant's closed. the town's deteriorating.

there's no industry left. what he prepared himself for by the time he was an 18-year-old doesn't work as a chance to make a living. and the guy says the reason these guys are unemployed in pennsylvania, which has an older population, i have a sense of the place, you make fun of the guy and say he can't pass a drug test. now, first of all, i don't know what he's talking about. because that's not the problem. the reason for unemployment is not that guys can't pass drug tests. it's that they go out and look for a job and they can't find one without moving to some other part of the planet to find a job. and it's not a joke, either. what's the comedy that we're hearing from this guy about the humiliation of being out of work for a guy? i don't get it. >> i don't understand it, either. and you know, politicians are usually empathetic to the voters that they need to align to get elected. this guy seems to go out of his way to kick them off. the montage that you played on top was impressive. and it's not a surprise his ratings are 19%. there are, also, of course, institutional reasons that these three governors are in trouble. it's not just the foot in mouth disease. they all are either moderate or

traditionally democratic states and they rode the wave of the tea party in 2010 and that's receded largely and they're seeing it in the poll numbers. >> i don't know, my kids they -- when you say what you really believe. i got to tell you i don't think it's a gaffe, a mistaken work like joe biden does once in awhile. to make him -- no when you say things like the guy can't get a job because he's a drug addict, he's a stoner, i mean, give me a break. let me ask you about -- go ahead. >> comparing homosexually to incest, or you know, that is not a gaffe. these are deeply held or somewhat held beliefs that he's exhibiting there and i think voters are really turned off by it. he's way behind the times with respect to social issues, that's for sure. >> let's move on to florida and maine where the governors are also deeply unpopular. in florida, rick scott made significant cuts in education, he vetoed drivers license for children of illegal immigrants, and signed mandatory ultrasound and voter i.d. bills. there's another one. in maine, culminated one of the

worst environments according for business according to forbes while he was named second from the worst among 45 governors ranked for job creation. according to figures from the bureau of labor statistics, lepage is known for his pugnacious attitude. he once said quote about 47% of able bodied people of the state of maine don't work. it gets worse than that. here it is. >> as your governor, you're going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page say iing governor lepage tells obama to go to hell. >> what's your response saying more than a pattern? >> tell them to kiss my butt. i don't think that i've heard is if you take a glass bottle and put it in the microwave and heat it up it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen, and so, you know, worst case some women might have a little beard but we don't want to do that.

>> chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. >> he's a moron. i'm sorry. you know. he got -- he was lucky he got elected in a wave year, but the president won that state, and you know, i also love the dig at the president and the naacp. this is a very white state so that's just kind of gratuitous throwing of red meat to his tea party base. i don't see him surviving this next election cycle. >> well, they all came in with the tide, they'll go out with the tide. thank you. up next how the presidency of john f. kennedy cut short actually 50 years ago next friday continues to reverberate through the presidency. this is "hardball," we've got a great guy coming up, just a minute. he belongs here the place for politics. -calorie monk fruit in the raw. it's made with the natural, vine-ripened sweetness of fruit, so you can serve up deliciously sweet treats without all the sugar. raw natural sweetness, raw natural success. without all the sugar.

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we're back. there's been a lot of attention paid to jack kennedy as we approach the 50th anniversary of his tragic death next friday. that day in dallas made an indelible mark on our country, i can tell you. we all know it. but all know it. but unlike the abrut end of his presidency, his impact was felt for years. it could be felt by his nine predecessors in office from lbj to president obama. larry sab atoe explores his lasting experience in his new book "the kennedy half century." he joins us now. just to make the point, make the point of how kennedy, i know i agree with you, has had an influence that has gone well beyond his short time in office. >> chris, it was really remarkable. most of this book is about his legacy and we looked at it in two different ways. we scoured the presidential record for kennedy's nine successors in the white house from lbj to obama, and we found that kennedy was the most cited

former president. now, why do they cite a former president so often? they want to use kennedy's words and deeds to get their own ag d agendas accomplished. and why do they do that? they do it because he was very popular and is very popular. we did a massive study. the largest public opinion study ever done on a historical figure. we found kennedy is by far the most popular post-world war ii president, and i think you'll be interested in this, chris. he is the only president with a tripartisan profile. that is, he is very popular with democrats, republicans, and independents. all of the other presidents mainly drew support from their own partisans, not the other party or independents. >> i like the poll i found a couple years ago where people say he most deserves to be on mt. rushmore. that says they think of him as a hero. when vice president johnson

became president, he made it clear he wanted to turn kennedy's lofty objectives into reality. he expressed that determination in his first major speech to a session of joint congress. here's lbj. >> today in this moment of new resolve, i would say to all my fellow americans, let us continue. >> president johnson would go to publicly invoke kennedy's name over 500 times in his public speeches. he shepherds kennedy's civil rights ambitions into law. he had an ambitious agenda of his own and he admitted he couldn't escape the shadow of the kennedy administration. >> nixon was a good example. nixon really was haunted by the glamour, the eloquence, the beauty of the kennedy administration. he used to go to his speechwriters and say why can't you write like those guys did? >> that's right. of course, in your book on

kennedy and nixon, i think you showed people just how good friends they were when they came into congress and early in the 1950s. they had no idea they were going to be adversaries in 1960s. but what i found that complements what you found, chris, is that during the nixon administration, nixon was publicly and privately obsessed with ted kennedy. he worried about him running against him in '62, even after chappaquiddick, but he was also obsessed with john f kennedy. he kept comparing his record to john f. kennedy and complaining to staffers how kennedy didn't have a quarter of the record he had, and if he had had john f. kennedy's record, he would be excoriated. >> its all true. let me ask you about the current president. what do you see in president obama besides the oratory loftiness, what do you see him trying to do? going for the record, obviously, gotten more time than kennedy to get something done. and health care is his big one. >> absolutely. of course, kennedy had plans for

medicare. he hopes after a substantial re-election against barry goldwater, he would be able to get the civil rights bill and medicare and other things. he never had the chance. so president obama has had the chance that president kennedy didn't, but there are so many parallels there. kennedy and obama both broke a big barrier. one on catholicism, the other on race. they were both short-termers in the senate who really didn't care that much about senate service. they were both distinguished authors who had sold a lot of books and gotten a lot of praise for their writing ahead of being elected. we all remember that president obama might not be president today had he not been endorsed by 10 kedany and caroline kennedy right before super tuesday. that helped him gain that little edge in delegates that enabled him to beat hillary clinton in 2008. >> the name of your book is called "the kennedy half

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let me finish tonight with this. next week, i'm going to be devoid devoting my final thought here to the ligacy ofgeny f. kennedy, not the assassination itself, but the life and good work that was ended 50 years ago this friday. tonight, a story of the first kennedy-nixon debate. it occurs not as many would think in 1960 but back in the

spring of 1947. a west virginia congressman was asked by a local group to recruit the two most promising freshman. he recruited kennedy and nixon, one a republic, one a democrat. and that night, they went out before a wild crowd of business people and fought it over. when the debate was over, they went to a local diner for hamburgers. everyone remembers how friendly they were. the catholic and of course the quaker. they thent caught the midnight train to d.c. sharing the same compart, flipping for the bottom bunk. kennedy lausz, got the top bunk, and they spent the next couple hours talking about the matter that would engage their lives. one that had not been given a nail yet, the cold war. i would love to have a tape of that conversation. kennedy in the top bunk, nixon on the bottom. politics has change saided a lot

over the years and not for the better. get a copy of my book over the weekend "tip and the gipper. kwael "and that's "hardball" for now. "all in with chris hayes" stats right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes and a very happy friday. you might have done a double take if you saw the "new york times" front page news analysis today. the paper of record headlining its lead story online, quote, health law rollout stumbles. draw parallels to bush's hurricane response. of course, obama's katrina is such a lame, played out right wing mean that it was already a daily show punch line all the back back in 2009. daft, semantically bankrupt, you hear any time anything goes badly in america since 2009 in america. >> it's been called