eem my points. travel, gift cardseven cashk and my rards points won't expire. so you can make owning a business even more rewarding. so you can make owning a business ink from chase. so you can. this morning on "meet the press," our summit on ebola. >> for the first time in the history of the united states somebody with ebola walked in the front door. >> two nurses come down with the disease. is the wider american public really in danger? is the government doing enough to make us safe? >> we can't give in to hysteria or fear. >> we have gathered experts, an official on the ground and members of congress sto ask and answer key questions about how serious this danger really is. plus, addicted to office. >> i feel like running for congress. >> three men aiming to make the

unlikeliest of comebacks. two of them trying to come back from prison. >> you get found guilty. you pay the price. and the midterms, are we beginning to see the signs of a small wave? i'm chuck todd. joining me to provide insight are mike murphy, andrea mitchell. former adviser to president obama, stephanie cutter, and politico's manu raju. welcome to sunday, it's "meet the press." good morning. for better or worse, one story is dominating the country, ebola. here is the front page of the washington post. we have convened our own ebola summit to separate myth from fact.

including dr. anthony fouchi, anthony banberry, he will come to us from africa, dr. gabe kellen, chair of emergency medicine at johns hopkins, sign journalist lori garrett and two senators. by the time, we're done, we hope to answer these questions. how big a threat is ebola to americans? can our healthcare system handle an outbreak? what will it take to eradicate ebola in africa? should there be a travel ban from affected countries? and are americans worried unnecessarily? let's start by looking at america's growing fears in a week that began with an unnerving announcement. sunday a nurse who cared for thomas eric duncan is diagnosed with ebola herself. nina pham is the first american to get ebola on american soil. >> the cdc is investigating. that's likely what happened. an inadvertent breech. >> monday her dog is moved to a naval base to be monitored. tuesday, the cdc says they're

looking at every aspect of the procedures at texas presbyterian hospital. >> we know a single breach can cause an infection. >> wednesday, amber vincent, another nurse in dallas, becomes the second american to contract ebola in the united states. then we learn she visited her family in cleveland and schools there are ordered closed and parts of the cleveland airport sanitized. thursday, nina pham is moved to an nih isolation unit in maryland. congress questions federal and texas health officials. >> it's not a drill. people's lives are at stake and the response so far has been unacceptable. >> friday, the white house appoints ron klain as the ebola czar to manage the government's response to the disease. still more fear. in ohio, the mayor closes city hall because an employee's husband works with someone who shared a flight with amber vincent. at the pentagon, a bus is

quarantined when a woman falls ill and vim its in the parking lot. this more than, the cruise ship carrying a texas presbyterian lab worker who had to self-quarantine on the ship docks. the worker walks off the ship and is driven away by law enforcement. we're joined by dr. anthony fouchi. welcome back to "meet the press." >> good to be with you. >> you are treating one of the nurses that contracted ebola down in dallas, nina pham. tell us about her condition. >> she's fair. she's comfortable. had a long conversation with her late last night. as you might expect, she has a serious disease. i think she's doing well. my full intention is to at some time in the reasonably future to walk out of the hospital with her. we can't predict but she's doing well. >> we are getting very close to

that magic 21-day figure for anybody that was working and treating the late mr. duncan. when we get there, does that mean everybody connected in dallas is out of the woods? >> you have to look at it in different phases. for example, when mr. duncan first came to the emergency room when it was not -- we didn't know he had ebola, there was a group in that cadre that saw him. we are today later today at the 21-day period for that group. then he goes in the hospital. there's another group that's further out that we have to follow. there are different groups that as you go out, then you can say they are free. the ones now today that are going to be quote off the hook

are the ones that saw him initially in the emergency room. >> let's talk about the government response, the president named ron klain unofficially the ebola czar. how necessary was it that the president name somebody to basically make the bureaucracy speak to each other? >> the president made a good move. i will tell you why. you have multiple agencies involved. hhs, dod, state, and we have had good coordination at the white house level. they have other very important day jobs. so what we need now is someone who is going to be there to help coordinate who is only job is doing that. we welcome that and i look forward to working with ron. >> you have spoken with him yet? >> we have exchanged e-mails. we're going to get set to get together. >> the role of a surgeon general, wore it be more helpful to have the surgeon general be the public medical spokesperson right now for the government? >> it's always nice to have a surgeon general. you need to get information out to the public. i believe information is getting out well.

i'm spending a lot of time trying to get good information out. tom frieden is doing that. i believe we will have others doing that. as long as you have someone to get good, honest, clear information out, that's good. if that's the surgeon general, that's good. >> would you say this has been a dress rehearsal to see how the government would respond to an actual outbreak? >> i'm not sure i would call it a dress rehearsal. this is serious stuff right now. but when you talk about getting the initial experience, that certainly is always important to how you fine tune. although there have been missteps in the beginning, those are experiences that put on your radar screen and make you improve. we think about it every single day. how can we do better? what's the best way to do it? what's the best way do this and that? right now, actually things are running quite smoothly. the big issue right now is the contact tracing and make sure we get those people in those brackets and make sure we follow them. >> where he going to stick to the four hospitals. they are any diagnosed ebola patient is going to get transferred to one of these four locations, yours here or in

emery or where else? >> we also need to shore up, we needed to have more than just the four in which you have people who are pretrained so that you don't come in and then that's the first time you start thinking about it. it can't just be four. we may not need anymore. we hope we don't. but in case there are more cases, we want to make sure we have people who are pre-trained, pre-drilled over and over and have the right protocol going. >> i guess i go back to the protocol. how did we not have the right protocol in the first place is this >> that's a very good question. the original protocol on the cdc website was a protocol that was adopted from w.h.o. in which they handled the epidemic under much different conditions. they did it in the bush. it wasn't where you were giving people intensive care. it became very clear right away

that we needed to modify that protocol to be much, much more strict in which no part of a body is exposed. that's where we are now. that initial protocol -- >> quickly vaccine, one of your colleagues seemed to hint that if you guys had been funded, had more money, you would have a vaccine today. was that hyperbole? >> i don't agree with that. i think that the nih has had constraints. all research has been less than its robust activity. >> you don't believe we would have a vaccine today. >> you can't say that. you can't say we would or would not. everything has slowed down, but i wouldn't make that statement. >> good luck with you. >> thank you.

i'm joined via skype by anthony banberry. welcome to "meet the press." was the w.h.o. unprepared? you know you are doing -- the w.h.o. is doing looking back to see what happens, what did they miss, what part of this could they have dealt with earlier. i know there will be reports. what part of this were you unprepared for? >> the world was not prepared for an outbreak of ebola like this nature. we had never seen it before spreading in wide geographical areas, spreading in urban settings, densely populated urban settings. in addition, the social patterns and travel movements in west africa are very different than in east and central africa. the previous outbreaks had been small and localized. here, it spread real fast. the world wasn't prepared. u.n., government, the populations.

now we're catching up. >> you have a goal of 70% of burials must be safe, 70% isolated locally within a clinic opinion 30 days. >> we have to meet the target biz december 1st. it's 42 days left. those targets, the reason they're important is because that's how we start to bend the curve, how we have decreased transmission rather than continually -- continuously increasing ones. we just spent four days with about 100 top experts from around the world, including top officials from u.n. agencies here figuring out how we're going to hit it. now it's about consulting with the government and getting it done. >> is your issue more money from government's infrastructure or actual doctors? >> the most important priority we need right now are healthcare workers, people to manage these complex health ebola treatment

units as well as the doctors, nurses, hygienists to staff them. we're fighting a war against ebola. we need soldiers on the ground. instead of solders in camouflage, we need soldiers in lab coats taking care of the victims. >> anthony joining us from the u.n. mission in ghana. good luck. a lot of people are counting on you guys. >> thank you. now to our outside experts. hello to both of you. lori, let me start with you. five ebola myths. ebola won't spread in rich countries, post 9/11 emergency. it could go airborne. travel bans would keep ebola from spreading in the u.s., a vaccine is around the corner. let me start with number two, post 9/11 emergency preparedness has the u.s. ready to fight ebola. that was not the case. do you think that's true? >> we spent billions of dollars on project bio-shield to come up with miraculous vaccines, drugs, treatments for special pathogens

which always included ebola. we spent billions getting every single health department in the entire united states to go through drill after drill after drill. get the cops, get the firefighters, public health people, put on your hazmat suits. the problem is that it was always envisioned in the context of wmd, weapons of mass destruction. >> bioterrorist attack. >> something has a box of something dangerous here and you swoop in, you stop it. we weren't drilling and what hospitals like johns hopkins may have been the exception. the majority of hospitals in america never imagined, we have a contagion, it's ongoing, it's in the community. my physicians are 24/7 reexposed, reexposed. that we did not drill. >> you are in charge of emergency preparedness for johns

hopkins. when you look at what happened at texas presbyterian, what lessons have you taken it from it? do you think you would have been better prepared? >> we have been preparing for this going all the way back to the late '90s when bioterrorism was a big deal. because of the type of organization institution we have, we did to some extent foresee that the biggest danger was actually from natural hazards. so we have been preparing all along. we have dealt with anthrax and sars. so the kind of programs that you put in up front to screen for patients, we have been drilling and had experience already over the last decade.

so all we did was modify to have it specific for ebola, the kind of screening that goes in. we put it right into our electronic medical record. and you come through that front door, everybody is asked some key questions. >> you think every hospital in the country needs to start putting protocols like this in? is that too much? >> it's not too much, as we found out. the issue in dallas was that the rest of us are saying, thank god it wasn't us. this was a needle in a haystack. it could have been any hospital anywhere. so all of our hospitals -- i think there's 4,000 acute care hospitals in the nation, need to do this up front screening. >> what a reality check. i want to put up a graphic of u.s. deaths in 2011 when it comes to diseases and other things. ebola this year, one. that's a little bit of a reality check, fair? >> i have been in well over 30 epidemics. i have seen the same pattern. when something is new, it creates a new kind of fearfulness. the only thing of flu, it's around all the time, everybody should be afraid but they're not because it's routine. it's always there.

ebola is new. i also will say having been in the ebola epidemic in '95 in sigh ear, it's a frightening disease. when the virus in particular begins to wreak havoc with the central nervous system, they can become violent. it's dangerous for the health worker. the sorrow of it is very extreme. when it hits a community as i saw, it is terrifying. but americans need to relax. we need to be realistic. the real problem is not one, two cases here in the united states. the real problem is that this epidemic is completely out of control in africa. it is only -- >> you think it's -- that

december 1 deadline, they're not going to make it? >> never going to happen. if you do the math right now, we know we're off by a factor of 2.5, meaning that most of the people are never getting reported in the system because they never come to a health facility and the health facilities are all full. cdc estimates that for every one we know about there's 2.5 we don't know about. if you take the raw numbers of what's been officially reported, close to 9,000 cases cumulatively, you do that by 2.5, you are way over the 20,000 point that was projected for november. it's doubling every two weeks. we will look at 100,000 cases by time we sit down for thanksgiving. we will be looking at 300,000 cases by christmas. we're looking at a exploding epidemic. it's out of control because it's in the general population. >> it's inevitable? if it's the case, it's inevitable we're going to have more in the united states? maybe more people will be looking for treatment. >> i want to put one thing you said in context. the american people do not need to worry that there's going to be somebody with ebola deranged in their shopping mall going nuts. you are so sick at that point,

you are not going to be out in public. i want to make sure that people understand they're not going to come into contact with somebody who is that sick out in public. >> very quickly, i wanted to ask you this. we will ask you more questions after. the issue of getting rid of waste, what do you do? what should -- how are you goes to get rid of waste if you have an ebola patient? >> a really high level topic but a really dull answer. there are protocols follow how you clean it, put it in drums. there are regulations on where you can transport it, how it gets transported. those are nicely delineated. the cdc has that on their website for guidance. i think just about any hospital today if they weren't worked that out, they are working it out in a very exact way. >> stick with us for our ebola summit. it will continue. when we come back, we will be joined by two senators one of whom says we need a travel ban to the united states. tors when

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welcome back. as i welcome back. as i told you, dr. gabe kelen and lori garrett are with us. i'm joined by senator roy blunt and democrat bob casey of pennsylvania. senator blunt, i want to begin with you.

you are calling for a travel ban. there's a lot of -- it sounds like the white house would be supportive but they don't know how to implement it in a way that would prevent healthcare workers from getting to the hot zone. what do you say? >> we don't have flights directly in and out of any of these countries. all of our people go through some other country to get there anyway. the question is, do you let people come here from this area that is clearly stressed? one way to prevent that is not issue them a visa. they have to have a visa that allows them to stay here. i would suspend that until we have this under better control and have a sense that the carriers they are using are monitoring this in a better way

than they have been up until now. >> senator casey, where are you on this? >> i don't think there's a medical consensus. we have to do everything we can to ask the medical experts and develop that expertise. >> sometimes a fine line is that if it makes did sh do you think you have do things fwaus makes the public feel better? >> no question that there's a great fervor for this. it makes sense logically about how you think to stop something. we have to focus on the source of this. you naerd your last segment severe this is at the source. we have to stop it at the source. i think with our local hospitals, not just big medical centers but every hospital has to try to achieve a measure of absolute preparedness. that's why -- i was at a hospital in pittsburgh the other day. changing and moving quickly to implement better protective protocols. >> you both have toured hospitals in your hom states

last week. cdc protocols are voluntary. they are not mandatory. should we make them mandatory for a temporary basis? >> i'm not sure if you made them mandatory would you have a way to enforce that. hospitals need to be concerned about this, obviously the containment hospitals that we talked about make -- are the place you would want to have people if you can get them there. that doesn't stop somebody from walking into a hospital somewhere else. we're just frankly not as safe as we were a month ago before you had multiple cases developing in the country. by the way, people didn't get upset about this as long as hospitals were dealing with it in the right way. you had two missionaries come to emory. they were there. they were cured. i didn't see a single comment by

any american saying we're concerned this isn't being handled correctly. it's only when it's not handled correctly that people get concerned. >> senator casey, why don't we have a surgeon general? >> it's washington dysfunction. we should have one in place. i think that's part of the problem. absent that, i believe that we have to focus on two places. stopping this at the source and making sure that hospitals are doing a lot more drilling. this basic task of taking equipment or protective equipment on -- taking it off and putting it on has to be the subject of constant drilling. in our state, the state health department requires two of those a year, two drills a year. that's not enough. >> senator, i'm going back to the surgeon general issue here. it seems to be politics. the nra said they were going to score the vote and everybody froze. that seems petty in hindsight, does it not? >> the president really ought to nominate people that can be confirmed to these jobs. then we should confirm them. there's no question -- >> should the nra have a say? they can have an opinion.

he's not going to make gun policy. >> i'm not sure -- you would have to ask senator reed why he hasn't moved that to the top of his list to be confirmed. this going on -- >> would you confirm him? >> a number of people have been confirmed, until this came up, i heard very little discussion about the surgeon general. i'm hearing now that the attorney general nomination won't happen until after the election. we put everything off until after the election. that's one of the reasons that things don't work. >> i want to talk politics of

fear. let's me play this. >> ebola epidemic along with isis shows you how we should really secure the border and not grant amnesty. >> don't worry about this. really? the government needs to stop acting if if it's absurd for people to fear a virus that liquefies their internal organs. >> every zombie begins with somebody saying we don't need to worry. >> what we need from congress is constructive proposals based upon science and medical expertise not based upon politics. i think in the senate, roy would agree, i think there's a lot of consensus that our public health system hasn't been invested and that we have to deal with this in a bipartisan way. >> any advice to people on overdoing it here? >> i would be careful about overdoing it. i understand that if this was one incident where people thought the government wasn't doing what the government was supposed to do, it would be much

less of of a reaction than we see now where there's this long list of the government being one step behind whether it's the board he the irs, the secret service, now this health concern is more real than it would be if there wasn't a sense that the government is just not being managed in a way that people would want it to be managed. >> senators casey and blunt, thank you for coming in. i appreciate it. i want to bring in the panel, mike murphy, andrea mitchell. andrea what we heard today so far, do you think we're in a position where it looks like government, particularly the obama administration is reacting with the urgency that a lot of people thought were missing? >> not clear. it's not clear to me yet that hospitals all around the country are getting the message, that they have to do drills. have they done the drills?

do they have the gear? is it stocked? will another emergency in a local hospital make the same mistakes that texas made when mr. duncan first came in? that's where a lot of the exposure came. then most alarmingly, the fact that the nurses went by their own account of the records from the hospital, that nurse pham apparently, unless the records are incorrect, went in and out without the proper gear given to her. >> we were talking about budget cuts and the ability to find a vaccine. the bottom line is that the nih still has billions of dollars a year that it spends on finding a vaccine. to what extent do you think the government is to blame for not prioritizing efforts to find a vaccine for ebola? >> lori, take that. >> i think that's grossly unfair, at least it's targeting the wrong piece of it. yes, project bio-shield was created. the idea was to get incentives for industry to come up with vaccines for ebola and other key pathogens. the problem was that no one could convince industry that it was in their interest to build

up a huge stockpile of something that might never get used. might never get purchased. when did you imagine we would need an ebola vaccine? there was a vaccine center. they did develop a prototype possible ebola vaccine as have other sites in other companies in locations around the world. there was no incentive to take it through the pipeline for commercialization. >> it strikes me -- math is a big element of this. the math is in africa. we tend to focus on here. but that's where it's out of control. we're the only superpower. it is going to land on us. what are the specific resources to stand bending the curve before it's out of control? >> i'm glad you asked that. the harder we make it for volunteers to be assured that they can come home to america after they have been in the epidemic, the harder it is to recruit people to go and be in the epidemic. we are under staffed in terms of

both our military staffing and healthcare worker staffing, grossly. in order of magnitude, we're behind the virus. it's up in a marathon, it's on the 20 mile line and the response is around five miles. >> how do you incentivize doctors and healthcare workers to go? there's been hesitance. >> some of these issues that have come up, people are scared go into that environment because they have seen all of news that they may actually get infected. we have heard earlier from our colleagues who have been there that ppe supply was not assured, that one week they have one type of supply, the next week nothing, the week after that something else. they are not assured they can come back. now that the u.s. government is in there through the military and there are better supply lines, the ngos have figured out to have a more assured supply and we have a better idea that if you follow this type of protocol, you are not going to get infected, i think we will have an easier time. >> very quickly. >> the doctor did say even though we can't guarantee we would have had an ebola vaccine, everything has slowed down. money toward the ebola vaccine is cut in half to what it was. more cuts are coming under the

congressional sequester. does that concern you? should corn restore the funds given the leave elf anxiety across the country? >> i for one obviously always support keeping us with a strong scientific solid well-supported research enterprise. >> i would echo that. here is how it works. you have a fixed budget, a crisis comes. you move all your resources into that. now the real question is not this. we're concentrating on this. we got a wake-up call. we have done it. what is it that the resources have been moved away from that two years -- why didn't you look at this? you are not prepared. >> there you go. i guarantee you are right. the money will be there short-term. the question is long-term. thank you everybody who participated in this.

we will move to more politics. one of the more bizarre starts to a political debate in history this week. >> ladies and gentlemen, we have an extremely peculiar situation right now. >> peculiar is one way to describe florida. ebola has managed to infect the campaign.

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wth just with just over two weeks until the mid terms, i'm going to meet the voters. i have a new rv. i will travel through some key

battleground states in the midwest. you can follow my travels on the "today" show and "nbc nightly news" and nbcnews.com. i will be back in the studio for "meet the press" before heading out for the final week of campaigning down south. we'll be right back. synchrony financial partners with over two hundred thousand businesses, from fashion retailers to healthcare providers, from jewelers to sporting good stores, to help their customers get what they want and need.

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our sionary cloud infrastructure, and dedicated support, free you to focus on what matters. centurylink. your link to what's next. welcome back. with the mid term elections just over two weeks away, debate welcome back.. with the mid term elections just over two weeks away, debate season has been in full swing. this past week was the political version of march madness. we had confrontations over ebola, president obama, even owe whether a candidate could bring a fan on stage. of course, there was the occasional verbal fist fight. >> 20-count criminal indictment, face the fact. you're incompetent. >> gentlemen. >> it's ridiculous. >> in a campaign where ad

spending is expected to be over $3 billion, one of the last places to catch candidates unscripted is, oddly, on stage. >> i would give president obama a six to seven. >> with the president's job rating sit at or below 40% in the senate battleground states, it's easy to for get he's not on the ballot. >> under the obama policies. >> senator hagan voted with president obama -- >> the task, running from the president without alienating his voters. >> i disagree with the president. we need to build the keystone pipeline. >> when he gives the green light to the national security agency despite americans -- >> why are you reluctant to give an answer on whether or not you voted for president obama? >> bill, there is no reluctancy. this is a matter of principle. >> not all republicans are eager to embrace their party label either. >> when it came to the violence against women act, i stood against my party. >> even the republican party's leader in the senate, mitch mcconnell said this week he wants to repeal healthcare

reform but not kentucky's popular state-based healthcare exchange. it's obamacare by another name. >> you would support the continuation of kinect? >> it's a state decision. it's fine. i think it's fine to have a website, yeah. >> as voters tune out, campaigns are now trying to get their attention by turning to the politics of fear. >> ladies and gentlemen, we have an ebola outbreak. we have bad actors that can come across the border. >> this all goes back to isis, ebola and the other problems that we see on the border. >> candidates are sharpening their attacks. >> he would be the only senator that from his own words has built a can a year around outsourcing american jobs. that is not -- >> they fine tune the art of the back handed compliment. >> he did go to harvard and certainly we're proud of that. i know he probably couldn't get into the university of arkansas. we get that. >> i would like each candidate

to say something nice about your opponent. >> you are very well dressed opponent. i admire your accumulation of wealth. >> as campaigns haggle over every detate from the number and format of debates, to that electric fan down in florida, the unforgettable moment can happen when a candidate just doesn't show up. >> we have been told that governor scott will not be participating in this debate. >> or sometimes when a few too many candidates do show. >> you are uncivilized. >> oh, vermont. stephanie, you have been a debate prepper for years. what have you seen in the debates that makes you either feel bert for the democrats that you think maybe you will survive this? >> i think that democrats are holding their own in these debates. that's because basically republicans are like one trick

ponies. insert the name and then obama. >> 2006 it was insert the name. insert bush. >> what is proving to be true is that this election hasn't been nationalized. time and time again in many of these debates, many that you showed, it's more about local issues. look at the back and forth that mcconnell got in over the kentucky healthcare plan. he stumbled on it. didn't know what to say. that's about healthcare in kentucky. >> murphy? >> you can't get allison to admit who she voted for with the jaws of life machine. that's a disaster. when the president's numbers are down to 40%, broccoli is at 45. you will have a rejection. what they are trying to do -- i

don't think it's working well, they are trying to make the election about some negative wedge issue. i believe that the thing is moving in a good republican direction because the national reject the president numbers. we have had a conga line of screwups. now we have ebola, which i think you have to be careful about politicizing it. it does become a narrative of incompetence. >> there does seem to be a line on ebola. of the debates, it seems as if the most telling moments -- the most telling may be the florida moment. if any debate has an impact on numbers right now it appears that's the one. >> that's right. crist was leading before the fan fiasco. >> not by much. >> republicans now kind of throwing in the towel knowing that this is something that voters will remember when a peculiar incident like that, a

fan -- voters were just tuning in to the race. that's one of the things that they will end up remembering when they go to vote. >> my fear is that because of this -- of debate moments like that becoming potentially game changers that you will have more candidates refuse debates. >> in fact, that's the republican strategy for 2016 in the primaries. they have said that they aren't going -- >> afraid of moments. >> afraid of debates. the fan moment -- there's going to be another florida debate tuesday night. he has been bringing that fan for ten years. the fan has a twitter account. >> the fan won the debate. this next debate, nothing will happen. >> that's why he has a fan. i have a reform proposal. ban staff from baits. governor scott was not served. >> do you think it might cost him the race? >> he has a chance in the next debate to reset it. it was a fumble. let's get the staff oust this and let them debate. fewer open mike night debates. >> you will get more time, i promise. coming up, addicted to running. getting some candidates out of prison and back on the campaign trail. >> the only way i can lose this is if i got caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. there was no chance of that happening. time for cnbc's executive

edge week ahead brought to you by comcast business. >> i'm andrew ross sorkin with the week ahead. >> if you have an iphone 6 and live in the u.s., you can start using it to pay for goods and services tomorrow when apple launches its mobile payment system. earnings in focus as a dozen dow components are scheduled to release. and wall street will be looking at economic data out of china and the uk. fears of slowing global growth and the ebola situation. that's your cnbc executive edge. get the latest business news on cnbc and cnbc.com. exe (receptionist) gunderman group. gunderman group is growing. getting in a groove. growth is gratifying. goal is to grow. gotta get greater growth. i just talked to ups. they got expert advise, special discounts, new technologies. like smart pick ups. they'll only show up when you print a label and it's automatic. we save time and money. time? money? time and money. awesome. awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! (all) awesome! i love logistics. introducing

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politics is a profession very few walk away from wiingly, and sure some senators the and congressmen who move on to lucrative lobbying careers, but boy, being out of office stings for these guys and the ache never i asked willy geist to spend some time with colorful figures. they have a real chance of making it back into office. two spent time in the big house. this 87-year-old man is working the phones for votes. >> i'm one politician who knows how to deliver on his promises. i'm governor edwards. >> edwin edwards spent 16 years as governor of louisiana before spending eight and a half years in prison for racketeering. he is seeking political redemption this fall.

>> get aerobic exercise. >> there is 76-year-old larry presler out for a morning jog and stunning the political world as he runs in a race to bin back the south dakota senate seat he lost in 1996. >> i have my seniority. i can be a powerful senator. >> one person isn't so thrilled about the prospects of a comeback, his wife. >> she's not excited about coming back to washington. >> hi, everybody. >> there's the legendary former six-term mayor budly cianci looking to return after a prison stint of five years. >> i did my time in the system that we have in america. you get found guilty, you pay the price. i have proclaimed my innocence. i still do. the fact is i did it like a man. >> released in 2007 from what he calls the federal gated

community, the 73-year-old man wants his old job back. holding court on this night at a drag bingo game. why dive back in? >> we have had over a decade of decline in the city. number one. i looked around to see who was running. none of them had the vision. i decided i would run for mayor. >> he has his share of critics. but the polls show providence might give buddy another try. >> i got you out of a bad p time in 1980? i'm glad you remember it. >> even over the phone everyone knows exactly who edwin edwards is. >> did that gentleman say you got him out of a bad time in 1980? >> that's what he said. >> do you recall? >> i don't. he was very grateful. >> edwards spent the evening this way, cold calling and then catching up with voters who feel like old friends. >> hi. >> edwards, who many people in louisiana still call the governor and who now has a 1-year-old son was first elected in congress 50 years ago. >> a lady asked me the other day, you are 87, retired, why don't you do what you feel like? i said, that's what i'm doing.

i feel like running for congress. >> he's not worried about the 8 1/2 years behind bars. >> i did nothing wrong. i want to point something out. it had nothing to do with my politics. nothing to do with my role as governor. >> the justice system disagreed. as we walked around, people were overwhelmingly happy to see him. >> i think you are -- would you be an excellent congressman. >> edwards provided american politics with some of its most famous quotes like this from his 1983 race. >> that campaign provided perhaps your most famous quote which is the only way i can lose this race is -- >> if i got caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. and you know what? there was no chance of that happening. >> by the way, i note he said he did nothing wrong. nobody that serves time says they were guilty. >> no. everybody is innocent. there's debate over edwin's greatest quote. the one he said or the one in

his 1991 race against david duke, the grand wizard of the klan. he was asked, do you have anything in common with dade duke? he said the only thing we have in common is that we are both wizards underneath the sheets. >> buddy, of the three he is the one that's most likely going to get back in office. >> let's tick through these. if you ask mike murphy, he would tell you pressler is probably still an underdog. that's in south dakota. buddy is in the lead. when you go back to providence, people like him. they feel like he delivered services. there's a constituency who says we don't need a 70-something guy who has been in jail running our city. but there's still some affection for him. >> he sells his pasta sauce. >> this is the updated mayor's own marinara sauce without the squirrel, the toupee he wore. that's for you, chuck. >> you had too much fun. >> when we come back, two weeks to go. are we seeing signs of a small but steadily building republican way? you probably know xerox

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the panel is still here. we have our new nbc news wall street journal weekly tracking survey. andrea mitchell, ballot among likely voters, the biggest lead we reported for the republicans among -- this is the nbc wall street journal early in the week. it had 45-43, but among likely it went up to five. it was -- here is what i can tell you. it was a bad week for democrats. is it holding? >> it's a bad week to democrats. the white house has been under fire. our republican former partner in polling has said that it's the get out of vote effort and that democrats do a lot better at

getting out the vote. it's going to come down to a ground game. i think that texas supreme court decision on saturday morning is going to be really telling, if there are more voter restrictions placed in some of those states, it's going to be really hard for democrats. >> your buddy is a republican strategist had this great quote this morning. government is failing. people are trapped in a room with obama and the democratic party. they want to get out of the room. the only door out leads them to a room full of lepers, the republican party. is he right? >> i'll be with him at the republican dinner this year. >> we will do well for free. people will reject the president. we will win republican states. the question is what do we do with it? 2016 is what counts. it's a tougher electorate, bigger turnout. we will have the power to talk about middle class economics and policy. if we don't, we will blow the republican opportunity. >> the obama get out of vote machine, is it going to show up? >> we're at the point where in

this race where campaigns really matter. >> i feel like this whole year the campaigns have mattered more than we thought. >> the democratic campaigns at least. i can't speak to what's going on incite the republican campaigns. the democratic campaigns have been really working and doing what they need to do. look at iowa. the mail-in ballots, a hugh percentage have voted. two to one of sporadic are voting for the democrat. independents by a 25% margin are voting for the democrat. that's happening in races all over the country. i do think this is going to be a good year for republicans. you are going to gain seats. i think if there is going to be a tidal wave, we would see more of a movement by now. >> we would have seen it. i will get to what washington knows but isn't saying. in this case, it's about healthcare and the idea.

we have seen the biggest false promise of the 24 midterm campaign has been about the affordable care act. listen to mitch mcconnell here. >> i want to -- if we had the ability to do it, we would. >> he is never going to have the ability. >> even if he gets the majority, it's 51/49. >> are republicans over promising? their base is going to expect to see that. >> it isn't going to happen. it's a sign of the challenges mcconnell is going to have if he becomes majority leader. he will have conservatives pushing very hard to do something on obamacare. then he will have a bunch of blue state republicans who are up for re-election in 2016 who will want no part of it. then, of course, you have a democrat in the white house and a very conservative house republican conference. how he threads that needle is going to be very, very difficult. i'm not sure he should want the majority. >> i have heard, house republican leader say to me, for the first five things we pass and one is healthcare, we have failed.

>> they don't want to go near it. why reopen that? they just want to figure out -- they haven't figured out yet what they want to throw up there. as veto bait to try to put the president on the defensive as quickly as possible. >> 15 seconds, murphy. should they have come out with five things they were going to do with the majority? are they going to regret they didn't do that in. >> no. they will do it a week after the election. if they don't -- >> if they have since. >> if he they don't, they're in trouble. on wednesday, i will roll into kansas, iowa and wisconsin to meet the voters in the rv you saw earlier. if i come into your town, come say hi and share rv sightings. # where is chuck. we will be back next week with stories from the road. a shout out to my friends at the articlingen ton free clinic. 20 years of serving the underinsured healthcare people in arlington, virginia, well done. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

dallas under pressure as america's ebola fears center around one of its hospitals. i will talk to the city's mayor about what he's doing to calm fears. also this hour the former health and human services secretary who led the u.s. response to the bird pandemic. does he think a travel ban will help fight ebola? we have heard there is little risk of contracting ebola on an airplane. that doesn't mean you don't have to worry about germs there. we talk to a scientist who studied the germiest places on the plane. we are digging deeper into new york times article that revealed new information in the michael brown shooting. the reporter shares more about the first public details from the police ofr