that day arrived. jeff pearlman, author of the book "sweetness rsh and i standing the song. >> i learned not to be allowed within 25 miles of the white house, never mind running for president. >> mika? >> i learned sweetness was friends with the refrigerator but was concerned with the attention he was getting. >> very good, mika's mom, a huge fridge fan. >> we had our picture on the fridge. >> we loved the fridge. >> we'll see you tomorrow. next is "the daily rundown" with chuck todd. hit mitt, mitt romney takes fire in the latest republican debate while his opponents try to shake things up. romney avoids looking shaky. is the clock running out for rick perry or anybody to make this a close fight? one guy who's trying and coming the closest, herman cain. he joins us live in a few

minutes. especially meanwhile the right's favorite tough talker lines up behind romney, chris christie makes his pick. does that mean he'll be romney's pick for a running mate. wait until you hear what he told nbc news exclusively. a story that seems ripped from a spy novel. a u.s. citizen confesses to taking part in a plan to assassinate the saudi arabia ambassador to washington using hit men from a mexican drug cartel. we'll have the latest details on the justice department's shocking announcement. it's wednesday, october 12. let's get to my first reads of the morning. we want to get to the herman cain interview. mitt romney is looking more and more like the man to beat. he's picking up the endorsement from chris christie, established republican, couple more this morning. the only problem is somebody forgot to tell the electrorate.

thanks to a unique feature to this debate, the candidate to candidate questioning, romney found himself on the defensive, attacks he by and large seemed to deflect effectively. watch. >> your chief economic adviser, glen hubbard who you know well, he said that romney care was obama care. how would you respond to his criticism of your signature legislative achievement? >> we have less than 1% of our kids that are uninsured. you have 1 million kids uninsured in texas. 1 million kids. chris christie said the problem with obama care, he spends an extra trillion dollars and raises taxes. raising taxes is one of the big problems something we didn't do in massachusetts. >> note the christie name dropping there. he cited his venture capitalism

experience. >> some might say because of your past employment with bain capital of more of a financial engineer, breaks down businesses. >> my background is quite different than you described. we started staple's. we started the sports authority. we started bright horizon children centers. we started a steel mill in a farm field in indiana. >> meanwhile herman cain found out with surging poll numbers comes scrutiny and attacks. specifically on his 999 plan. which would eliminate the current tax code and replace it with a 9% flat tax, 9% corporate tax and 9% sales tax. a plan which got 24 mentions at last night's debate. >> my top priority is 999. jobs, jobs, jobs! >> i thought it was a price of a pizza when i first heard about it.

>> when you take the 999 plan and you turn it upside down, i think the devil is in the details. >> we're not going to give the federal government, nancy pelosi, a new pipeline for consumers to get hammered by the federal government. how many people are here for a sales tax in new hampshire? there you go, herman. that's how many votes you'll get. >> cain embraced the attacks and went after romney's economic plan. >> can you name all 59 points in your 160 page plan? >> herman, i've had the experience of my life taking on tough problems. i must admit that simple answers are always very helpful, but oftentimes inadequate. >> last night, both cain and romney struggled to defend their past support for t.a.r.p. the bank bailout that remains poisonous among conservatives. hear how they handled it. >> my experience tells me we

were on the precipice and we could have had a complete meltdown of our entire financial system. action had to be taken. was it perfect, no. >> the way it was administered is where it got off track. they were discretionary in which institutions they were going to save rather than apply it equitably which is what most of us thought was going to be done. >> in 2010, we saw a lot of republican lawmakers get hit hard in primaries on supporting t.a.r.p. some speculate that one of the reasons john thune didn't run is because he didn't think he could get by in a republican primary for supporting t.a.r.p. the thing benefiting cain and romney is the chief competitors here, namely rick perry, also was a t.a.r.p. supporter. jon huntsman a t.a.r.p. supporter. rick santorum may be pure on this and he's yet to catch fire. while romney may not be a sure thing, rick perry isn't making it easy for conservatives to

rally behind him. last night was an important moment for perry. he didn't seize it. he struggled to stand out on stage vertually disappeared for much of the debate. when asked to explain his jobs plan or lack thereof, here's what perry said? >> i'm not going to lay it out for you tonight. mitt's had six years to be working on a plan. i've been in this for about eight weeks. >> this was a debate only about the economy and perry didn't seem to be ready for that. he didn't have to deal with immigration questions. he didn't have to deal with hpv questions and he still struggled. let's get to the man who was center stage last night. joining me now is herman cain, businessman, former godfather's pizza ceo. thanks for coming on. let's dig into 999. as you know, you were pushing back on this last night, bruce bartlett, a former reagan and bush official had this to say about your plan at the new york

kiems. at a minimum, the cain plan is a distributional monstrosity. the poor would pay more while the rich would have their taxes cut. i want to focus in the state of florida, mr. cain, you could have people paying a 15% tax on consumer items. this is tough for people making under $50,000 a year. >> well, chuck, this is why -- first of all, the fact that i got attacked so much, and my plan got attacked so much last night, that's a good thing, because it gives me an opportunity to correct some of those misperceptions. here's what a lot of people missed, including bruce bartl t bartlett. we'll be happy to share our analysis. we're working on that now, because there's so much misinformation. start with the 999, every worker pays 15% payroll tax. now they're going to pay 9%. that's a 6 percentage point

difference. the 999 plan replaces payroll tax, capital gains tax, corporate income tax, personal income tax and the death tax. five taxes we replace with those three. we start with throwing out the current tax code. >> mr. cain, everything you've described only benefits those with very high incomes. what do you do for the family of four that makes $50,000 a year? they're not thinking about a death tax. they're not benefits from capital gains taxes. >> let's take your $50,000 a year family of four scenario. okay. >> okay. >> today under the current system, they will pay over $10,000 in taxes, assuming standard deductions and standard exemptions. eight gone through the math. $10,000. with 999, they're going to pay

the 9% tax on their income, so that's only 4,500 dlrs$4,500 d.z if you go and look at what they -- how much of it they would probably spend on sales taxes for new goods, not used, used goods, they don't pay sales tax, they are still going to have money left over, chuck. so what i asked people to do. go through the math for your situation, because not all situations are the same, and for most people, they're going to have a net-net tax decrease because we've expanded the base. >> now, how do you handle this issue with demand? by essentially raising the price of new goods and having so, instead of going back to the state of florida, instead of a 6% sales tax, you're looking at a 15% sales tax.

that could cause sticker shock and actually pull back consumers from buying goods which then of course hurts the economy. >> okay. you raised two questions here. let me take them one at a time. the first one is the sales tax in the state of florida or any other state, i'm not addressing that. that's going to be there whether we have the old system or the new system. so let's not muddy the water with that. that's a totally situation. now, when you look at the sales tax and the fact that we are taking out imbedded tacks that are built into the goods and services in this country, prices will not go up. they will not go up. >> but will they go down? >> people who are stretching that -- they will probably go down. we simply can't predict how much they would go down. remember, in everything that we buy today, there areembedded

taxes. one of the great features on the first nine, a business can deduct its purchases and capital investment. only purchases made from companies here in the united states, it levels the playing field. this way, our products don't have those imbedded taxes in it. because of competition, the prices will actually go down. >> all right. you predicted that if -- now that you're in the top tier, you were going to get more questions. i promise you this is not a pop quiz about foreign leaders. i want to go into some things you've written. this is something you wrote in 2005. saying, arguing there was no housing bubble. you wrote this in 2005 in business and media institute. coverage of the bush economy reads like a collection of democratic party press releases calling a strong economy everything from strong or volatile or dicey. that kind of ignorance makes homeowners feel their most

expensive possession can turn worthless. that won't happen. housing situation, that did happen. it only happened within three years. what did you miss in 2005 about the housing bubble? >> what i missed in 2005 was just how bad fannie mae and freddie mac had distorted the housing market. that's why i said what i said in '05 that i further learned later in terms of fannie mae and freddie mac. i honestly did not realize just how bad it was, just how bad the whole bonding and derivatives thing was and we were on the brink of a total financial meltdown. i learned later on by looking into it deeper that the situation was a lot worse than i thought in 2005. >> well, in 2008, this is september 1st, 2008, another column you wrote about the economy, and it reads as

follows. you wrote the supposed failure of bush's economic policies has been a constant theme of the zks since the 2006 elections when the democrats regained control by convincing enough of the voters that the economic sky was falling and the war in iraq could not be won. they plan to continue those themes right through election day on november 4. economic sky was falling september 1, 2008. 15 days later, the lehman brothers collapse. we know what happened after that, a total near sky is falling moment. so how -- i guess i would say this, how do you reassure voters that despite all the experience you're running on in the business community, your time on the fed, you missed the housing bubble and you missed the economic collapse? >> well, it's real simple, chuck. i have economic advisers working with me now who spend time studying these various analyses.

when i wrote those papers, i was only responding to reports that i like everybody else, was getting through the media. those kind of public reports. >> which turned out to be right, by the way. you were criticizing those reports, but they turned out to be right. >> well, yeah. but what i'm saying, is i'm going to have -- i will have people around me who are going to help me do deeper analyses on some of these things, okay. yeah, i missed some of these things. i'm not perfect. i'm very quick to say i made a mistake or i missed it. but i didn't have sophisticated analyses helping me to draw the conclusions that i was drawing at that time. remember, i have admitted the housing bubble and the economic meltdown of 2008, it was much worse than i ever realized until the lehman brothers situation started and until more and more was revealed about the depth of the problems at fannie mae and freddie mac. i admit i didn't know all the

details about those situations. >> you served on the kansas city fed back in the mid '90s. any regrets on your support of the lowering of interest rates in hindsight? >> not from what we did in the 1990s, because in the 1990s, our mission was price stability. we did a good job under the circumstances in my opinion of being able to keep it in check and keep it under control. that's very different than the situation today. i don't agree with a lot of the policies today. but this fed has been forced into it because of a $14 trillion national debt, foreigners are now getting leery about buying our debt. that's why they've continued to do all these crazy things they're doing. our credit has been down graded. we didn't have those dynamics back in the 90s. we were able to keep prices

pretty well under control. >> how would a president cain respond to these allegations about iran? >> president cain would respond to these allegations about iran by first asking all of my intelligence sources to come this, asking the joint chiefs of staffs, getting everybody that knows something about this situation to come in, let's take a look at the complete picture, let's take a look at all of the data and then make a decision. i can't say what i would do sitting here based upon just the news reports. what they did is inexcusable. what we do about it would require some very careful consideration. >> all right, mr. cain, i have to leave it there. thank you for coming on. >> chuck, i enjoyed it. thank you. "the daily rundown" will be right back. woman: ...and we're not real proud of this. man: no...we're not. woman: we...um... teen: have you guys seen captain stewie and lil' miss neptune?

dad: did you look all over the place? under your desk? all around? teen: uh, they're fish, they live in a bowl. dad: what're gonna do? anncr: there's an easier way to save. anncr: there's an easier way to save. teen: whatever. ncr: 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. and a family mobile plan. uh... um... [ bling! ] four score... [ bling! ] ...and seven years ago... [ bling! ] i kissed emily costa... eww! [ male announcer ] unlimited talk and text, only $45 a month, add more lines only $25 each. plus other low prices every day on everything. save money. live better. walmart.

>> the idea that you would assassinate a diplomat, that is something for the whole world, every nation in the world will be outraged that they would violate such international norm, in addition to obviously being a crime to assassinate anybody. and in the process, probably have killed scores of americans. >> vice president joe biden, that was this morning on the "today" show on what the u.s. calls an iranian backed plot to assassinate the saudi arabia ambassador. an iranian born has confessed to his involvement in trying to hire a mexican drug cartel to carry out the killing. iran was ready to spend $1.5 million. iran calls the allegations baseless. evan coleman is an analyst. evan, on the face of it, we're

reading the details of this. it's a page turner in the way it's a page turner before i go to bed and read a novel. how confident are you in the justice department's case. >> the doj doesn't bring charges like this overnight. they don't bring it unless they have a tremendous degree of confidence in what they're saying. that being said, we have to see where is the beef. we have to see what the actual evidence is, particularly the evidence linking senior members of the iranian revolutionary guard corps and the quds force to this, i have no doubt that manssor arbabsiar was involved in something. they have recorded conversations. the question was who was sending him out to do this. was this something he was doing on behalf of a rogue commander or was this part of a plan? there's a couple of factors here. you have the money factor. it's difficult to imagine that someone is running around with $1 million for a plot like this

and isn't well financed and isn't well connected. at the same time, you wonder, the revolutionary guard corps is much more capable than a lot of other adversaries the u.s. has faced, particularly like al qaeda. why couldn't they do this themselves? why did they have to outsource this to a drug cartel. these questions have to be answered. >> how likely are there rogue elements inside iran at this point that would maybe not tell the upper elite about this and go off on their own? >> well, look, there's a lot of competing power factions in

wall street stocks are trying to recover. russ sorkin joins me with the run down. >> slovakia, how bad? >> they are looking up because there's a sense slovakia is going to come around. they voted the bailout package down. they may actually vote in favor of it later this week. >> just a revote? >> it is a revote. it's like t.a.r.p. maybe second time will be the charm. other things people are looking at, rim, the parent company of blackberry, their stock down because there's an outage on blackberry. mine not working since 1:41 last night. pepsico coming out with better than expect the earnings. alcoa disappointing on the other end. mixed bag, but the futures are looking up. >> you just explained to me why i did the battery trick wondering why i couldn't get my blackberry to do anything? >> that's what happened. outage, north america and south

america. we don't know when it's going to come back online. >> iphone sales go up again. "the daily rundown" will be back in 30 seconds. a few other stories making headlines. wall street protesters on the move. they're taking their demonstrations to the homes of jpmorgan chase, they're calling out well known millionaires as the san francisco movement spills into that city's financial district. an israeli soldier held

captive could be free in a matter of days as a result of a prisoner swap. glaud sha leet was seized in 2006. 1,000 palestinian prisoners will be released. benjamin netanyahu negotiated. the supreme court will take up the latest case involving privacy rights. county jails violated his constitutional rights by strip searching him after being arr t arrested after a traffic mine. there was no reasonable suspicion he was hiding drugs or weapons. mitt jump start the economy. should you? >> i actually think we do have a jobs bill. it's been introduced. we would love to vote on it. it's a bill that senator portman worked to put together. i've been involved in that. we would love to vote on that. we're not going to wind up voting on our bill in any meaningful way in the senate because this is a senate that's

chosen not to do meaningful things. i think if the president was really serious about passing a jobs bill, he would be here talking to members of the house and senate in big and small groups about what does it take to get this done instead of out giving speeches in politically competitive states. it's clear what he's trying to do. i have harry truman's old office in the russell building and his desk on the floor of the senate. what the president wants to do is say this is a do nothing congress. what he's forgotten is his party controls half the congress. he's not giving us anything that even democrats really want to do. >> let's talk about simply the payroll tax. is that not going to get exte extended? >> it very well might be ex tended. it's not the thing i'm the most excited about. there are pieces that you might be excited about. things that encourage returning veterans to have an advantage at the hiring desk or things that look at the georgia plan where

people who go -- still on the unemployment rolls get assistance. we might extend the payroll tax, but at the end of the day, that weakens social security and what this proves is once you start having people not pay into the social security fund, at what point do you say we're going to stop that holiday on paying into this fund that's going to be in big trouble. it gets a lot of support because everybody pays into it that eventually draws out of it. >> let me ask you a political question. i know you've endorsed governor romney in the republican race. you know, on one hand, it