this country that involves arnd black men in this country. we'll be joined on monday by russell simmons and ben chavis to discuss the mathematics of racism. stick around here for some "hardball." bain, bain, go away. come again some other day. let's play "hardball." tonight's forecast. heavy bain. newt says he he won't stop. he's going after mitt romney for his work at bain capital. conservatives decided to cease and desist. this is his best shotç to do t mitt what mitt did to him in iowa.

it's now or never for evangelicals. but who? they may find out this weekend. also pacman. steven colbert might run for president. he's handing the control of his super pac to jon stewart. he's saying that super pacs aren't independent at all. and oops, he did it again. once again rick perry can't remember the three government departments he wants to eliminate. funny. most people can think of one candidacy they'd like to eliminate. let me finish with my ten-week tour of america. we begin with the attacks on mitt romney for his work at bain capital. rick tyler is now with the super pac, the group that's putting out the ads against romney. how do you get a job running a super pac?

i know i'm going for information in news, but did newt call you up? how does it happen you become a pacman? >> i was interested in helping newt. when i decided to help newt, i knew who was running the pac. i made a phone call to e see if i could help. that's how it happened. but these pacs are an abomination. we should let candidates raise the money and make it transparent so people can see where the money comes from. that would make the pacs obsolete. >> does norç pac intend to hel newt gingrich defeat mitt romney in south carolina? is that the goal of your pac? >> yes, it is. apparently, it's having some effect. three polls have newt within second place now in south carolina. so we have a straight up race between a southern georgia

conservative and a massachusetts moderate. >> should be interesting. newt gingrich continues his attacks on romney. let's watch. >> the only ways he worked with bain -- he created 100,000 jobs. the "washington post" reported that he gets three pi noek owes. that's when you get when your not telling the truth. but we're not going to do that. but i just challenged governor romney. relee the records. show us the facts. you can't run for president, have half your campaign be about your great achievements and then hide them. >> here's your south carolina ad running now that's attacking romney's career at bain from a movie.

let's watch. >> a group of corporate raiders led by mitt romney. the company was bain capital, more ruthless than wall street. >> pulled the rug out from under our plant. >> everybody was fired. >> they fire people. they cut benefits. they sell assets.ç >> mitt romney, they don't care who i am. >> i feel that is a man that destroyed us. >> winning our future is responsible for the content of this message. >> your response for the content. are you happy with its accuracy? there are reports that there are people who have been shown on camera in that documentary who have later said they were taken out of context and don't like it being shown the way it is being shown. >> we're checking into that because we want to get it right. we checked and double checked and we'll have a response. we want to honor newt gingrich's call that if it's inaccurate,

we'll make the adjustments. >> let me ask you about newt gingrich as a person. i got to interview him last week. i find him impossible to figure out. he will say the most terrible things about anybody who gets in his way. he says this horrible stuff, and then when you sit down with him, he's got a very smart brain. a great sense of history. how do you put together -- well i'll say it -- the good, the bad, and the ugly of newt gingrich? >> you called him the devil incarnate himself. >> you didn't catch my int interview. it didn't seem to bother him for a second. what an odd thing to say to a politician. >> i've never met anybody like newt gingrich. he doesn't hold grudges. it can be very confrontational when he needs to be. but i found him to be aç carin individual. he and their family and

daughters like my family. they never separated me aside and said you're staff. i attended their wedding and gone to their grandchildren's birthday parties. so i love and admire the gingrichs. i feel isolated because i'm in this pac and i'm not supposed to communicate with him. >> this started attacking gingrich. let's watch. this is the ad going after gingrich. >> newt gingrich's attacks are called foolish, out of bounds, and disgusting. newt attacks because he has more baggage than the airlines. he was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. took $1.6 million from freddie mac and cosponsored a bill with nancy pelosi that would have given $60 million a year to a u.n. prom supporting the one-child policy. don't be fooled by newt's desperate attacks.

>> so your candidate has given money to help the chinese limit their families to one child. is that true or not? it doesn't sound true. >> not to my knowledge. it doesn't sound like newt gingrich. people in south carolina know newt gingrich. it shouldn't be surprising. mitt romney's campaign is based on misleading utterances that are at odds with his record. it shouldn't be surprising. yesterday i read that the number of 100,000 only included the positive jobs and didn't include the negative jobs. so while he has authority that sell çimported products from cho china, he doesn't count the jobs he took apart the companies and sent the jobs overseas. i suppose that's fitting. >> you got your shot in there. most of that ad we saw was accurate except the chinese part. >> i don't think anything was accurate. >> he was fined.

he was reprimanded. >> chris, he was reprimanded because he put a name to a legal document prepared by council that described a pac as a foundation. most of the rest of the country, that would require a phone call. and instead, washington it's a $300,000 investigation. e he paid for the investigation and paid for it out of his own pocket. i would call that a standard of ethics. >> you're a good defender. please come back on the program. even though you don't coordinate with newt gingrich. thank you. susan page is washington bureau chief who has no candidate in this race. this thing is -- he laughs about it. it's like steve colbert making a joke. this it super pac thing it adds

to the citizens and the american voter. people that watch this program know what's going on. they see the ads. they are trashing the other guy. they don't even say at the end i'm newt gingrich and i paid for this. there's no honesty here. >> there's no transparenctransp. more than that from restoreç o future. >> 1.9 for the pro-perry. a third of a million for the paul ad. >> it's not that big of state. you turn on the tv, all you're going to do is get a bier raj of ads. >> what it might have to do is the flattening out the number that nobody is going to get a fact number. those voters may say i don't like either one of these guys. >> look what happened in iowa and new hampshire. turn out not up the way republicans had hoped it would

be. >> you know why? negative advertising depresses voting. >> it helps people who have a strong core vote. this is good for ron paul. his voters are going to turn out regardless. and romney has a national organization. but it does discourage everybody else. >> here's the romney campaign itse itself. it's going in the defensive. here's romney with enough bucks to do this. defending himself on an ad in south carolina. let's watch. >> this is a business mitt romney helped start. and this one. and this steel mill. mitt romney helped create and ran a company that invested in struggling businesses, grew new ones, and rebuilt old ones. creating jobs of those. those are the facts. we expected the obama administration to put free markets on trial. but as the wall street journal said, mr. romney's opponents are embarrassing themselves. >> i'm mitt romney, and i approve thisúçmessage.

>> i notice they quoted the examiner in washington. let me go to this thing. here's what i think is interesting. everybody says this race is over because romney is going to win it. but look at this. back in 2000, mccain got blown away -- i'm sorry. he won new hampshire. he won new hampshire and came down to south carolina and got blown away. >> he won in south carolina because fred thompson said the opposition was divided. that set mccain for a comeback. >> i'm talking about the time before. he won big in new hampshire. so south carolina can still do a 180 on what happened in new hampshire. >> think about the economy of south carolina, which is in pretty bad shape. the voices we saw in the earlier ad of people saying mitt romney's bain capital destroyed our community. >> why would somebody in south carolina say that?

he's a massachusetts moderate by record. he was pro-choice. you have the health care bill that obama used. he's a mormon. which is not a plus with the evangelicals. why would he win? >> he would win because the opposition to him is divided and also because he's run a pretty good campaign. and republicans may not love mitt romney, but they love the idea of beating barack obama. if they think mitt romney has a way to do that, he could do pretty well.ç >> 91% of evangelicals support him against obama. thank you, susan page. coming up, it's now or never for evangelicals. they it agree on which candidate? no. they don't have an agreement on a candidate to get behind. they don't know which of the guys to go against him.

that also includes ron paul, who is pro-life you're watching "hardball" on msnbc. [ male announcer ] feeling like a shadow of your former self? c'mon, michael! get in the game! [ male announcer ] don't have the hops for hoops with your buddies? lost your appetite for romance? and your mood is on its way down. you might not just be getting older. you might have a treatable condition called low testosterone or low t. millions of men, forty-five or older, may have low t. so talk to your doctor about low t. hey, michael! [ male announcer ] and step out of the shadows. hi! how are you? [ male announcer ] learn more at isitlowt.com. [ laughs ] hey! ♪ tell me what you really mean ♪ do you know what you want? ♪ while beating up on yesterday ♪ ♪ rolling on, moving on

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back to "hardball." this weekend on a private ranch

outside houston, 150 leaders in the evangelical christian community will meet with one objective, to stop mitt romney. but pillars can see it's a launch shot. they used a dating analogy to describe the problem. >> before we marry the guy next door, don't you think we ought to have a fling with the tall, dark stranger and see if he can support us in the manner that we would like to be accustomed? >> someone had to explain it. john reese had to explain this to me. the steady bow next door is mitt romney. canç the group effect the gop race? robert jones heads the research institute. melinda is a political reporter for "the washington post." here we go. what's going to happen down at

this? i like the new term, mitt romney call it is a quiet room to do tax policy. now we'll have a quiet ranch for religion policy. >> the main thing this says is the decline of an older model of a power brokering. gone are the days that a group of men are going to sit in a room and decide who the candidate is going to be. let's look at where this is happening. this is the last stand in many ways. >> does this bother the protestants. they have two catholics to choose from. the convert of newt gingrich or the long-time catholic rick santorum. and these are a protestant organization. >> is that going to be a problem for them? >> it obviously is. >> how much of it is mor mom? >> that's a good question here.

we have seen that mitt romney has failed to sew it up time and time again. candidates up and down and up and down. certainly on the issues -- >> when does he come down? >> romney? he's been pretty steady, but he hasn't been able to lock down the other candidates surging to the top. the other reasons he had so many ad other reasons he had so many reservations. the other thing is that half of evangelicals say they don't consider the christian religion. half of them say they could be uncomfortable with a mormon president. >> two-thirds believe the church of jesus christ is christian. it's only the evangelicals single out the lds church as not being part of the christian faith. >> if you look at how they say they'll vote, they'll say they will vote in equal numbers with other republicans. i think -- >> even when it comes to a

choice between obama? >> yes. the turnout rates are going to be the same from what i see. i think they want to be taken seriously. they want to seem like they are players. >> i hate to be blunt about it, but if they don't have ads to put on tv, they don't count. >> especially compared to the super pacs. >> drop a couple million in florida. tony perkins is a guy we respect. he's organizing a texas meet in. he says "some have portrayed this as an anti-romney rally. it's not. it's discomfort among evangelicals." that's an easy way of saying i don't like the guy, but it sounds nicer. >> i think for evangelicals, you're right to single them out. but in the south, it's about theology. it's a discomfort. there's issues where they see a flip-flop. but it comes down a serious issue.

>> but he's doing better with evangelicals than you would have thought. >> proof of that? romney leads in a poll of rpéblican primary voters in south carolina who identify themselves as born-again christians. this is among evangelicals. r romney at 35%. dominant. santorum at 22%. paul at 15%. perry at 3%. the exit poll show there, romney got 31%. iowa evangelicals went for rick santorum because he played particularly to them. paul got 18% up there. michele bachmann got only 6%. here's a wild idea. even though people have religious faith, there is no way of predicting someone's vote by their religion. i look at those numbers and i

say romney is doing better than anybody else. >> they want to win. i heard from voters over and over again, yeah, would he be my first choice? no. but my first choice is somebody who can beat obama, and i think it's too late for them to come up with a first choice in this race. even if they did, they really want to win in the fall. i heard people say, i realize i don't have the luxury anymore of being a single-issue voter on abortion. >> if rick perry wasn't just a balloon, he looked great. he's a governor. he looks great. he looks like a texan. great hair. he had a record of unemployment going down in texas and creaéiog jobs. he talked right. the minute he got on the stage, he stumbled. >> let's think about mike huckabee. we had mike huckabee, if there

were an evangelical candidate? >> he had no money. >> he had no money. >> and he did an awesome job with the two cents he had. >> i want to ask a question. i don't like this conversation, but i have to do it. did jack kennedy being catholic once he was president have anything to do with it? does religion at all in a general term guide you in any way to your policies? >> when we look at the research, we find partisanship matters more than religious affiliation. >> but it's a different day than kennedy's day. he ran on putting his falsism aside in a way -- but rick santorum -- >> the religion of quakerism

never came up. >> rick santorum says he hears kennedy's speech on religion and makes me want to vomit. s that different crew. he has a different view of religion in public life. >> kennedy's speech was a masterpiece. because it basically said -- i believe in. the only question we should ask of a question is what kind of america doç you believe in? if the guy is a religious fanatic, and that's all he talks about, then talk about that. but if he talks about the issues we care about, i think we should judge him on that. thank you dr. jones, and melinda hanenburg. up next, oops. rick perry has done it again. it's only three. he can't get it straight.

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and i sea food differently. back to "hardball." now for the side show. first up, opening up old wounds. john mccain may have opted to stay out of the 2012 presidential race, but that doesn't mean there's lingering tension between the two former opponents. the charge that during the last primary season mccain encouraged former senator fred thompson to stay in the race and thereby split the social conservative vote in south carolina and give mccain the upper hand. here's huckabee leveling the charge yesterday morning. >> here's what happened. john certainly encourage fred to stay in. fred knew he was not going to get the nomination.

fred thompson's vote totals took into ours. john won handlely in the south part and that's what did it. but that's politics. >> do you think john mccain knowing that one let one go? think again. here's him hitting back. >> it's false for him to say something like that. maybe it makes him feel better, but it's not the truth. if fred thompson was viewed as ç viable candidate. it's not necessarily he took all of huckabee's votes. i had a lot of votes there. all i can say is good luck in your programming on fox, but you're not telling the truth. >> any way. this morning fred thompson denied making any arrangement with john mccain. this time around, it's mitt who could sneak away with a win if conservatives don't pick just one of their own. instead dividing the vote. mccain took a break to sit down with david letterman discussing

how his party is fairing in the leadup to this 2012 presidential election. let's watch. >> how do you think things are going for your party? how's it going, senator? >> we have had better days. >> it seems everybody has gone whacky in the republican party. i just wondered, was it the influence of the tea party? or am i overexamining this? >> you're overexamining this. how many people have watched one of these debates? it's good for the process. it's good to see whether somebody is a whacko or not. >> no shortage there. >> in fairnd', we were down a few cast members since it got underway, but speaking of that oops, he did it again. it will be a long time before any of us forget this tragic moment for rick perry. >> the third agency of government i would do away with

education, commerce, and let's see. i can't. the third one i can't.ç sorry. oops. >> and as we all know now, the missing link was the department of energy. during a radio appearance in south carolina today, early today, perry took another shot at it and missed. let's listen. >> commerce, interior and energy are three you think of right off the bat. >> interior, that's the first time interior made the kill list. what happened to education? that's what makes me think he's not even giving this thing much thought at all. up next steven colbert says he may run for president. jon stewart is running his super pac. but he has a serious point to make. that's ahead.

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this is your cnbc market wrap. the dow loses 49 points. the nasdaq falls 14 points. s&p is downgrading the credit ratings of nine countries including france, spain, and italy. the fear is about the downgrades sent the euro to a 17-month low against the dollar with european indices ending lower. revenue fell short at jp morgan chase. bank of america is considering a retreat from some markets if their financial troubles persist. according to the wall street

journal, emergency measures taken into account. and apple shares fell after released an audit of its major splirs. the company found a nuiq) of violations in china related to labor, pay, and environmental practices. that's it from cnbc. now back to "hardball." i'm proud to announce that i am forming an exploratory committee to lay the groundwork for my possible candidacy for the president of the united states of south carolina. i'm doing it! and with your help and possibly the help of some outside group that i'm not coordinating with,

we can explore taking this country back. thank you. god bless you all. and god bless citizens united. >> that's the great steven colbert. his satire about money in politics. it continued last night. he announced had his plan to consider running for president thanks to a new poll that showed he's actually ahead of jon huntsman in south carolina. the fake commentator formed a real super pac this summer called americans for a better tomorrow tomorrow. he said it twice. and last night he continued. e he stepped down from his super pac since technically candidates c cannot coordinate the groups, which can raise unlimited amounts of money from anybody to support candidates. what constitutes coordination is often a very murky question.ç who took over his pac? none other than his partner jon stewart. e we'll get into it now.

and chief white house correspondent for politico, all the writing we do and the commentator, it doesn't match the fire power of this kind of steve colbert thing. you were on that show. how did you manage to get on that show? >> it gave me an opportunity to see up close that they take their satire seriously. and he clearly is ridiculing the process here, but he also aims to illuminate the process. and steven colbert viewers know the difference between a pac and a super pac. "hardball" viewers do, but there aren't a lot more. but he's not just making a one-shot sketch. next week, his super pac is going to buy attack ads on south carolina tv. next week on his show, he's going to pursue his exploratory e committee and show how it

works. >> the average person, most people turn on the tv. they watch regular shows. they don't watch politico shows. but you can't get away from politics in iowa and new hampshire. any tv show, and right in the middle of it, there's a blasting ad trashing somebody. then at the end, it says paid for by vocation for the future or something stupid. you don't even know who paid for it. >> new hampshire is a civics lesson. and steven colbert is giving us another lesson.ç he's doing it with humor, but he's making fun of this fiction that candidates go out there. their best buddies or fathers -- >> poke fun at the loose rules govaning how super pac's are formed. here they are discussing the rules. the truth is funnier than fiction. let's watch. >> can i run ads supporting

steven colbert, who i believe in very deeply and perhaps attacking his potential opponents who i don't believe in at all? >> yes, you can. as long as you do not coordinate. >> well, that's interesting. you'd better leave for fear we would coordinate with each other. i cannot let you know my plan. from now on, jon, i will have to talk about my plans on my television show and just take the risk that you might watch it. >> i don't even know when it's on 11:30 monday through thursday. >> here's rick tyler recent aid to newt gingrich. knowing exactly what newt wants to say. he joins the pac promoting newt gingrich. they are not coordinating on the telephone, but he knows the message that will help newt. >> this is the problem with citizens united. at the end of steve's rally last

night with the balloons falling, he said god bless citizens united because this was a court decision that allowed super pacs to grow. they were not in the realç wor. this idea you can have a separation without coordination and that's what makes this okay is completely false and ludicrous, which is why steven colbert and jon stewart have such an easy time making fun of this. >> you guys weren't around in watergate. it showed dirty money in politics with the big names by the millions. they created all these limits like you can only give $2,300 to each candidate. the limits are a joke now. president obama, who i think good things about, but he went out and trashed the system and said i'm not going to go by the limits. i'm going to raise as much money because i can.

>> you talked for a long time about the importance of super pacs, but we have seen an effect nobody thought of. it's propping up candidates and keeping candidates in the race that voters have rejected. santorum, perry, gingrich, are only being listened to because of the big super pac money. it's part of the reason for the surge. >> colbert super pac has released five ads now. take a look at this one from november from long-shot presidential candidate buddy roamer. it's not an endorsement since he appears in it. it's an issue ad. he's appearing in the ad, and it's not called an ad for him. let's watch. >> i didn't pay for it. colbert super pac did. and super pacs are not supposed to coordinate with candidates like me. but because this is an issueç about super pacs not coordinating with candidates, i can be in it as long as i don't

say [ bleep ] for me. i say that as a fig leaf so super pacs can justify doing anything they want. they have a lot of money, folks. they built this fake set with fake books. filled with real money. they even bought colbert a unicorn. >> all perfectly legal, rainbow. >> you know, apart from the unicorn, it's all true. this is what goes on. he could appear in an ad online. it's putting money behind it. i liked they pull theed books out. there's no books in those books. >> you can never listen to these candidates talk about not coordinating after watching these clips. even in the debate, we have mitt romney saying -- >> i'll tell you what's important. before they started spending money in iowa, newt gingrich was leading for president across the country. after the super pac money was

dumped out on the tv, and i was out there when you saw it all, he was gone. and mitt romney won the iowa caucuses which led him to win main new hampshire. this super pac stuff is running the campaign. >> we have to put a gloss on this. i hope he's not accused of vulture comedy, but the thing is laughing at this doesn't change it. these guys don't care. rick tyler doesn't care. you give him hard questions. because negative ads work. it only takes one guy with a couple million dollarsç to go there and use super pacs. they are ready to put all of us in a bind on in. >> but growling at it hasn't worked either. >> people have to do something. >> people have to care who is talking to them. who is talking to me? thank you, david corn. and thank you mike. great coordination. up next, what is at the root of

the class division? this is the most profound thing we have done tonight. most americans regardless of education or how many college years or how much money they make believe we are divided between rich and poor. it's amazing. this is "hardball" on msnbc. ♪ made sure his credit score did not go bad ♪ ♪ with a free-credit-score-dot-com ♪ ♪ app that he had ♪ downloaded it in the himalayas ♪ ♪ while meditating like a true playa ♪ ♪ now when he's surfing down in chile'a ♪ ♪ he can see when his score is in danger ♪ ♪ if you're a mobile type on the go ♪ ♪ i suggest you take a tip from my bro ♪ ♪ and download the app that lets you know ♪ ♪ at free-credit-score-dot-com now let's go. ♪ vo: offer applies with enrollment in freecreditscore.com™. car insurance companies say they'll save you by switching, you'd have, like, a ton of dollars. but how are they saving you those dollars? a lot of companies might answer "um" or "no comment." then there's esurance. born online, raised by technology,

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we're back. the phrase e plur bus yun um has shown americans increasingly see the country divided rich versus poor. 66% of americans now say they see a strong con#ict between the rich and the poor. that's a 19-point jump since 2009. joining me to talk about this is assistant democratic leader james claiborne and political analyst mr. cline. thank you for joining us. the new poll shows people across demographic lines increasingly see this class conflict if you will. the numbers are up for whites,

blacks, and hispanics. the percentage of whites who say this the there is a strong class conflict that is jumped 22 points since 2009. what do you make of the causeth? >> well, i think that the tax policies that we have operated under over the past few years, ever since we had the so-called bush tax cuts, people began to see that there was something untorrid about the way those tax impacted certain groups in our society. we had a geo study that i brought up and tried to discuss every chance i got during the so-called super committee where it said that the lower 20 percentile in our society or the last 28 years have seen an increase of only 16% in their household incomes. when the upper 20% saw a 65%

increase in their household income and that upper 1%, 275% increase in household income. and people see that. they feel it. they knowç that it's a tough te for them now to try to educate their children. they understand when they look at their budgets at the end of the month. something is untorrid. and so this gap, this wealth gap is getting wider in our society. people used to be called middle income. now see they are now in the lower income. and the people in the lower income are finding themselves out of work, on food stamps, looking for other kinds of safety nets. so it's very clear what's going on here. and you look at the budget that the house passed, the so-called ryan budget, a budget that got rid of medicare guarantee and

increase of about $6400 a year for people on medicare. that would only plunge them further into debt and deficits and no income. >> well, more and more people are seeing this conflict you are talking about, mr. clyburn, regardless of party. the poll found 55% of republicans, 73% of democrats and 68% democrats say there's tension these days between rich and poor. the increase has been just about the same. they've all gone up in the past two years, which i found interesting, ezra. the jump is abouty to same between the two parties. 17% and 18%. republican and democrats. so the jump in this perception is across party lines, ezra. >> you have to ask yourself what we're seeing in the poll. there 24 possibilities. one is that people are hearing the question and saying, i -- i feel like there's a bigger conflict between the rich and the poor than i did two years ago. the other answerç is that they are saying they believe that america feels that way.

and it's a little unclear which it is. if they believe america feels that way, they could be listening to the two parties. could be listening to occupy wall street or to a lot of media coming at them that suggests we're having a fair amount more talk about class war, class conflict, tax cuts for the rich than we were a few years ago. if it's "i" then you are probably seeing people who say that business profits, corporate profits, financial profits have rebounded and median incomes haven't come back and they see the economy working very well for people at the top fd they see tension there. they see a causal relationship there. but those two are very different. it's hard to say which we're looking at or maybe we're seeing both. >> mr. clyburn, you only have a few seconds left, but it's part of this that people are reading about billionaires and there's so many -- you are reading a lot about people with superior, unbelievable incomes compared to when other people were scratching along day-to-day. >> yes, i would agree with ezra that some of that is the case. look. when you have a billionaire out of the first or second richest man in this country saying to

the public that i think it's unfair that i, a billionaire am paying 14%, 15%, 16% on my income and my secretary is paying 26%, 27% on her income. and i think that's unfair. that gets the attention of the american people, and i think the people are now saying, look. even the ones who are benefiting -- look. we were doing the so-called super committee, i heard from many millionaires who said it's unfair. >> okay. thank you congressman, great having you on. jim clyburn. big weekend. martin luther king weekend.ç thanks for coming on. ezra linklein, thank you. when we come back, i'll finish with my ten-week tour of america. what an education. y. our science teacher helped us build it. ♪ now i'm a geologist at chevron, and i get to help science teachers. it has four servo motors and a wireless microcontroller.

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let me finish with this. i've had a unique experience as an american. ever since november 1st, some ten weeks now, i've been traveling the country, all across the country from rhode island to san francisco through heartland cities like minneapolis. boy, was it cold out there. meeting thousands and thousands of people about an american hero. president john f. kennedy. and what i've discovered should be no surprise to those who love this country. it's the romance of that love, the combination of admiration, affection and downright dream we have for our country and, yes, the best of its leaders. so many people are not down on this country right now or its leaders. they carry in their hearts and show it in their eyes a deep

abiding, loving kicks to this country's best goals and those who believe -- they believe aspire to them. the end of racial prejudice and the real enlargement of opportunity. the desire for peace in the world. especially the freedom from munuclear war. the belief in science and what it can achieve. i'm proud to have written a book about a leader who espoused those things. civil rides the avoidance of nuclear war, true respect among nations and the wild journey to the moon and the great advantages that scientific pursuit can bring to us. kennedy is revered today because he personified all of that. i can't think of many things in my professional life that have matched going across the country and simply talking about him and what he did and what he promised. there's nothing like standing in a room before a big live crowd talking about the america i love and aç leader who meant so muc to us. i'll continue to meet with people as long as there's anybody out there who wants to join me, by the way. we have a campaign to cover now. and it's an important one. it could well be as close as that one back in 1960 between kennedy and nixon