this sunday, the outrage over the shooting death of 17-year-old trayvon martin. it's reached the white house. >> if i had a son, he'd look like trayvon. i think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this can happen. the protests, the justice department investigation and the troubling questions about racism in our society that feeds suspicion of young black men. will the president lead a national conversation? we'll ask his top political adviser this morning, david plouffe. and our special roundtable discussion, president of the naacp, ben jealous, npr's michele morris, former republican governor of mississippi, haley barbour, "new york times" columnist david brooks and historian doris kearns goodwin. also, who do you blame for high gas prices? even as republicans begin to close ranks around mitt romney, this energy debate may overtake jobs as the economic fight of the fall campaign. finally this morning, a

conversation with msnbc's rachel maddow, author of the provocative new book "drift" which asks when did this country make peace with the perpetual state of war? vi . l state of war? captions paid for by nbc-universal television good morning. a big win last night in louisiana for rick santorum. >> we have won our 11th state in this primary fight. and i want to thank you for that. >> 49-27, that is how it looked in louisiana over mitt romney. and it shows santorum's continued strength among conservative voters but romney still has the upper hand in the overall delegate race, as we say, week in and week out. this is where it stands. romney at 490 delegates and everybody else well behind. meanwhile, the president is in south korea for a nuclear security summit. he made his first visit to

korea's demilitarized zone. he met with u.s. and south korean troops. hours ago he held a join the press conference with south korea's president during which he addressed north korea's plans to launch a long-range rocket next month. >> they need to understand that bad behavior will not be rewarded. >> here with me now, the president's top senior adviser, top political adviser, david plouffe. mr. plouffe, welcome back. >> thanks for having me, david. >> i do want to start on foreign policy, in light of the president's comments. you faced the prospect of a nuclear program in iran and ongoing problem with north korea. as we listened to the president this morning, what is the "or else" for north korea at this point? >> the president said we can't reward bad behavior. you have a unified global community in terms of the approach to north korea here. obviously it's a country that has trouble feeding its people. that's one issue obviously in terms of food aid. i think what's important here, you see this in iran. it wasn't too long ago that iran was unified and the world was divided in terms of our approach to iran.

you now see a unified global community in terms of the crippling sanctions in iran that have a devastating impact on our economy. obviously in north korea you have the same situation where you have the world united. so that's really our approach here, to make sure we have the global community united and, as we said in north korea, if they continue down this path, it's a familiar path. it's been going on for decades. >> there's a lot to talk about, gas prices and politics. trayvon martin is such a difficult story for the country. the national outrage and the president talked about it, he talked about it carefully but also very personally as we just showed in the open. as protests go on around the country, i wonder, does the president believe at its core this case was about racial profiling? >> well, listen, i think the president spoke friday very powerfully about this. i think he spoke as a father. he said, if he had a son, he said he'd look like trayvon. no matter the gender or race, any time you lose a particularly promising young person, it's a

tragedy. our sympathy should be with the family in this instance. there are investigations going on at the local level and federal level. that's where the focus need to be. >> does he think race was a factor here? >> we have to have the investigation. i don't think we want to get ahead of that. everybody would be well served to let the investigation continue on the local level and the federal level, let that transpire in the right way, the appropriate way and you'll see where the facts lead us. >> the country is having this conversation. obviously there's violence that goes on in this country every day. the president of the united states would not have spoken out about this this personally with an african-american victim if he did not believe race was at the core of this. >> i think the issue here is there has been a great deal of attention on this case, as there should be. i think that it has galvanized a lot of people to get interested in this. again, as the president said, we need to examine the causes that led to this. our focus now ought to be on the tragedy that befell this family, the tragedy of losing this promising young life and make sure the investigation goes on. >> has the president called the parents? >> he has not to my knowledge.

>> would he like to speak to them? >> i think he spoke pretty powerfully on friday. i think the message was unmistakable. >> he called sandra fluke in the other issue of contraception. >> he did. >> i wonder if that would happen here. >> that young woman was under attack for policy issues in very reprehensible ways. >> reverend al sharpton on msnbc and the national action network is calling this week coming up for a national summit on race, which it seems he would like the president to lead as past presidents have done around big national moments. is president obama inclined to do that? does he think that should happen? >> i think working obviously perfecting our union is a long-standing needed goal in this country. we've made a lot of progress and we have a lot more to make obviously. what the president is focused on right now, he's in south korea making sure we continue to make progress on securing nuclear weapons. continuing to work on the economy, create jobs. continuing to make progress on

issues of race relations is important. whether we'll get involved in a particular summit, i don't have any news on that today. >> there are people who made the observation, back when professor gates at harvard was arrested, the president at that point thought the cambridge police acted stupidly. he said so publicly. there was controversy. he's been cautious about talking about race. as the country's first african-american president it was an issue of sensitivity during the campaign. but some people question why he doesn't lead more forcefully and say, this is a conversation we should have and i should more directly lead it. why not? >> well, listen. first of all, he's president of every american. i think when you look at a the comments he made when the mlk memorial was established, if you look at some of the comments he made throughout his presidency, he feels powerful about the journey the country has been on. he's an important part of that journey obviously. his election made history in that respect. i think his leadership is profound. i think he's definitely had a huge impact on african-american girls and boys thinking that

they can do anything with their life. obviously we have to continue to make progress here and you know, in these areas of race in gender we have too much inequality in terms of women's wages, how our health care system treats women. we have a lot we have to make progress on. >> i want to turn to other affairs in politics, particularly the fight over who do you blame for high gas prices? i raised the question in our open whether this will become even bigger than the jobs debate. here are some of the facts. if you look at gas prices in the course of the obama presidency, they have gone up from 2009, now an average of $3.89. obviously higher in some places. it takes a political toll. all you have to do is look at the polls, how people approve or disapprove of the president on gas prices. disapproval at 65% on gas prices in a recent poll in terms of his handling on gas prices. is he responsible? >> well, first of all, the chart you just showed, those gas prices were low because we were teetering on a great depression

so there are reasons they were so low. in the summer of '08 they had been up over $4. what the president said then, he was running for president in the middle of a period of high gas prices. as others were saying we ought to cut the gas tax and other gimmicks. he said, no, we need a long term energy policy. the american people know there's no immediate silver bullet. they know we need to do as much as we can in terms of oil and gas exploration and drilling, which we're doing. an eight-year high here. we are more energy dependent than we've been in over a decade. we also have to look at the alternative fuels. we used less which is why the fuel efficiency standards arranged with the automakers are so important. 56 miles per gallon next decade. it will save the average family $8,000. we have to utilize our resources here, oil, natural gas but we also, this is sad for the country, biofuel, wind, solar, next generation autos, used to be generally a bipartisan issue, david. now those things are mocked by

those in washington's republican party. we know that's where we need to go. that's where the country needs to go. i think we'll be honest with the american people here. the solution here, we need to do everything we can in the short term. the real answer so we are not visited by this every summer for the next 25 years is to continue on the path -- >> we talk about honesty with the american people. one of the things the president has always said, this is used as a political club, these republicans are trying to blame the president. it's politics, so they go down to the gas station and complain about the price of gas. well, back in 2008, then candidate obama had a similar complaint and look where he is in this piece of tape. >> candidates with the washington experience, my opponents are good people. they mean well. they've been in washington an awful long time. and even with all the experience they talk about, nothing has happened. what have we got for all that experience? gas that's approaching $4 a gallon. >> is this a guy with a long-term plan or was he just playing politics?

>> he was responding to the political gimmick of the moment. at that point in time in our campaign, our opponents in both the democrat and republican party were saying suspend the gas tax as if somehow that would do anything in the short term. he was standing up then and saying, no, we need a long-term energy strategy. gas has been high the last few years because of the demand in china and india. that's going to continue. we need to have a long-term energy strategy where we're producing as much as we can here, diversifying, using alternative sources of energy and we use less, which is why the innovations that will happen in the american auto industry -- by the way, an industry that would have been gone had others had their way -- is going to be so important for our economy. >> the president even gave an interview back in 2008 with "rolling stone" i'll put it up on the screen, this is something he said, goals for the first term. if i hadn't gotten combat troops out of iraq, passed universal health care and created a new energy policy that speaks to our dependence on foreign oil and deals seriously with global

warming warming then we have missed the boat. he has accomplished those first two things, but the energy policy, he hasn't been able to do that, even after the bp oil spill. he still hasn't been able to accomplish that. then you see him playing politics, it appears, not only with a trip this week where he's going to swing states to talk about more domestic production but on the keystone pipeline, he first tries to please environmentalists by pushing this off until after the election, now comes out and says well, now i'm for the southern portion of it. does that ring true with the american people? >> i take issue with the whole premise of this. we're on track to meet an aggressive increase in terms of dependence on energy goals. >> to be fair -- hold on. to be fair, a lot of that goes back to the bush administration. there's a lead time. i've spoken to experts on this. a lot of increases in production went back to the bush era decision and most of them, of course, are on private land. you're taking credit for the boost in exploration, which is not really fair. >> we had a lot to do with it, as did our predecessor.

but i was talking about diversifying our sources in terms of wind and solar and biofuels. we're making great strides. the alternative battery industry, which will be so important to the future of this country -- we were 2% when this president came in office. we're on track to be 40% by 2015. we're laying the foundation for new energy. that's a promise that's been delivered with real tough opposition. on keystone we approved dozens of pipelines. oklahoma is not a particularly a swing state. we don't think new mexico will be either. it's not about politics, it's about telling the country what a long-term energy strategy looks like. there is a glut because we are doing so much production. we need to get that oil to market. that's what the southern pipeline will do. there are real issues around the water supply in nebraska. what the company said is we're going to send in a new application and that will be reviewed. on energy, here's the question for country, who do you trust to have the kind of energy policy and energy strategy that's required? the president saying we need to do everything we can here to

produce but also boldly, double down on things like solar and biofuels or the folks that are running against us, they think it's oil only. that's a terrible strategy for the country. it will be a big question for the american people this november. >> let me ask you other political questions. health care, big debate coming up in the supreme court this week. it will become dominant again in the political debate. bottom line, is health care reform that was signed by this president ever really going to be rolled back? >> we certainly don't think so. and shouldn't be. obviously, the court arguments are happening this week. we're confident in the constitutionality of the health care law. you had republican and democratic jurists speak to the. the law was upheld. we have 2.5 million kids between 18 and 26 who are now on health care on their parents' plan only because of this law. you have seniors saving on prescription drugs, children can

no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. huge progress. >> you're not really winning the argument. do you feel like you are winning the argument in terms of public approval? >> here's what i think. i guarantee this, i don't make many guarantees, by the end of the decade, we'll be glad that republicans called this obama care. when the reality of health care is in place, we are all health care consume rs. what people like you and i say about it is not going to matter in a few years. it will be what people's experience is. what people don't want to do, they don't want to refight this political battle. what they want to do is implement the law smartly, make smart adjustments where we can like giving states more flexibility. mitt romney is the godfather of our health care plan. okay? if he's president, he's running away from that path and we'll have a big fight about health care again. we know we have to do this for our economy, our deficit, and the health and safety of the american people. >> romney is the godfather of the obama health care plan. will he get the credit if it all

goes well down the line as well? >> maybe in 2016 when he's a professor or whatever he's doing, he'll remark on that. his experts were involved in the health care plan. it's a model that was utilized. listen, the president said if the goals of cost saving, if individual states have a better way to get there, they should do that. we need this for the country. it is making profound impact already. most of the country is not experiencing it yet. for those who are it's having a profound impact. >> as you look at the republican race right now, no doubt you're looking at jobs as somebody who's running the president's re-election campaign. what is your assessment of where mitt romney is at this point as he grinds his way toward what a lot of people think will be his nomination? is he hurt by the length of this? >> i'm not running the campaign. my friends and colleagues in chicago are. this will be a very close race. i thought that last year. i thought that now. i'll think that in four months. presidential elections are close. we won by what's considered a

landslide in 2008, but we still only got 53% of the vote. it's going to be a close race. that being said, the other day his top adviser said the general election would be like an etch-a-sketch where you can erase your record. here's what's etched in stone. mitt romney will cut taxes for people like him. huge tax cuts, he thinks that's the way to help the economy. he'll add a to the deficit. he'll try to outlaw abortion in this country. doesn't believe in a clean energy future. criticize the president for war in iraq. criticize us for having a timetable to end the war in afghanistan. those things are etched in stone. they can't be erased. they'll be seared in the public's conscience this year. i think the bigger problem is he's offering the wrong solutions to the american people. t the. >> i want to make sure i heard you right. did you say he's done great damage to the president? >> to himself. >> to himself. >> the point is, i think the fundamental question is, we came through a great recession. do people want to go back to the same policies? that's what's being offered,

let wall street write its own rules. starve things like education. that is not the recipe for an economy built to last. >> let me ask you a safe political question before i let you go. new york senator kirsten gillibrand said she's calling for hillary clinton to run in 2016. >> a as a strategist here do you think she would be the inevitable and a strong nominee in 2016? >> first we have to get through the next seven months. let's elect a president. obviously there are a lot of people who would be strong candidates. she'd be a strong candidate. >> do you think she'll do it? >> what she's focused on is doing one of best jobs we've even seen in our as secretary of state. >> here i thought i might catch you in a moment of weakness. apparently not. david plouffe, thank you. coming up here, more on the shooting death of trayvon martin and troubling questions about racial attitudes in this country. plus, politics and the latest on the 2012 campaign. we have a special roundtable here this morning, the naacp's ben jealous, npr's michele morris and former mississippi governor haley barbour, also from the "new york times," david brooks and historian doris kearns goodwin.

later on, msnbc's rachel maddow is here to talk about her provocative new book that's called "drift: the unmooring of america's military power." she's coming up later on. >> announcer: "meet the press" is brought to you by the boeing company. your finances can't manage themselves. but that doesn't mean they won't try. bring all your finances together with the help of the one person who can. a certified financial planner professional. cfp. let's make a plan. [ crowd chatters and groans ] ♪

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coming up, a special round table discussion on racial attitudes in this country after trayvon martin. joining me, michele morris, haley barbour, president of the naacp, ben jealous and david brooks from the new york times as well as doris kearns goodwin. we're up next after this brief commercial. man: okay, no problem. it's easy to get started; i can help you with the paperwork. um...this green line just appeared on my floor. yeah, that's fidelity helping you reach your financial goals. could you hold on a second? it's your money. roll over your old 401(k) into a fidelity ira and take control of your personal economy. this is going to be helpful. call or come in today.

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we are back with our roundtable. we are back with our roundtable. joining me "new york times" columnist david brooks, presidential historian doris kearns goodwin, npr's michele morris, former governor of mississippi, haley barbour and the president of the naacp, ben jealous. welcome to all of you. this has been a very difficult week. this trayvon martin story is so painful for so many people and the president talked about it, as we say, in such personal terms. this is a portion of what he said on friday. >> i think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen? that means we examine the laws and the context for what happened. as well as the specifics of the incident. >> ben jealous, what does it

mean that the president lent his voice to this in the way that he did? >> look, he spoke to the specific pain by the family when you look at the whole remarks. universal pain felt by the human family, but he also, i think, put out a call for us to really look at how this happens in our country. the reality is that for too many years and too many places and too many cases, it's been the case that we have given permission to target and even kill black men. i held hearings this week. you heard two things, people talking about profiling and talking about dead black men in their lives whose murders that had been properly -- had not been properly followed up on, whether at the hands of bad cops or thugs. in reality, there's a sense that black men's lives aren't worth as much. and that we are almost born suspect in this country. that we are suspect just by being black. one of the things he said is if trayvon was his son he would have looked like trayvon.

the reality, if you're the son of the president of the united states, if you are a black man walking down the street, you're a black man walking down the street, in too many instances you're suspect because you're black. >> let me pick up on that point, doris. as personally as the president spoke about this, you heard david plouffe this morning, he seems cautious or uncomfortable with leading this next conversation. about racial attitude, about what we have unearthed here. what we need to be focused on. why do you think? >> i think as he said, he knows he has to be responsible for the country as a whole, for northerners, southerners, for blacks and whites. and wants to make sure that he's not looking out after a special interest, even though it is him. by speaking as emotionally as he did, he gave humanity to tray that is what we need to go over the bridge of seeing him simply as a black kid, to see him as somebody we might know. my own hope is that somehow this

event is going to be one of those events in history that really, like marchers were, as lbj said, moves the secret heart of americans, makes us look at the situation, look at those stand your ground laws, look at racial profiling. i hope it's not one of those events that once justice is done there, which it might be, the energy dissipates and we go on to something else because our attention span is so little. there's something about the fundamental unfairness of this that i think has stunned the nation. i think he gave leadership to it by giving humanity to that child. >> important point about elevating trayvon and yet, michele, the caution. the leadership caution about dealing with race. he did it very powerfully in the course of the campaign after the shirley sherrod incident where she was fired, some people thought she made racist remarks and then she clarified those remarks. he seems reluctant to lead it himself. >> i don't know that i hear reluctance necessary lichlt -- necessarily.

i think as a president we have heard him talk frontally about race more than any other person in the office. there's this notion that everyone will sit down on tuesday afternoon and everyone will talk about this all at the same time. i think one of the more interesting things he said about race was when he spoke to the urban league. he said the most productive conversations about race are usually the ones you don't hear unless you're party to them. they don't take place on grand national stages. they take place in church basements, in locker rooms, in private spaces and barbershops. is the president the person who should lead that conversation? i think what we heard is him calling on people to engage in the conversation and not expect him to lead that conversation but to participate actively in it. >> david? >> i'm concerned it will get to the laws. we can talk about the stand your ground laws, but from what we know now it seems to be the primarily thing is we have to be careful at how we look at each other. one of the things we know about how we study, how we think, one, if you have a gun you're more likely to perceive the other person having a gun. that may have been a factor here.

the crucial thing is, when we look at people from other groups we tend to stereotype. i'd invite viewers to go on the website called project implicit. it's an online test. it will take five minutes of how you process people from your own group and people from other groups. what you will find if you are like the vast majority of human beings is you process people from other groups differently. you associate them with violence and other things. and that -- >> you take the test and you find even people of color are more likely to ascribe negative attributes to darker skin people. >> right. racism isn't a disease. it's a natural sin that we are born into. therefore, we have to fight it through civilization and artifice. bay by the way, it's why when you have someone with a gun, it has to be someone trained. >> let me get governor barbour in this.

i asked david plouffe if the president believes it's racial profiling. do you believe it's anything other than racial profiling? >> i think david plouffe's answers were rational. we shouldn't decide what we're going to do until we know what happened. this needs to be fully investigated. this is a terrible thing. no matter what happened, whether there was race involved, when a teenage kid gets killed it's a terrible thing, even if the person that killed him didn't do anything evil or didn't do anything wrong. let's find out what happened first. that's what -- if you're the governor or the president, your job is to make sure the laws are executed the right way, get to the bottom of this. if there needs to be a prosecution, have a vigorous prosecution. let's don't jump to the conclusion that we don't know. >> newt gingrich spoke out powerfully about this in the political realm. this is how he reacted in part to president obama's comments. >> what the president said in a sense is disgraceful. it's not a question of who that

young man looked like. any young american of any ethnic background should be safe, period. trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. i really find it appalling. >> was that responsible, governor, what he said? >> i wouldn't have characterized it that way but he's right, any child, white, black, brown, red or yellow that gets killed it's a tragedy and we need to get to the bottom of it. he's absolutely dead right, there's no difference of what race somebody is when something like this happens. >> the heart of the matter is, ben jealous is what initially happened in this case. we are learning more about zimmerman's side. there was apparently a fight of some kind. it seems to me the most charitable interpretation if there was a fight between george zimmerman and trayvon martin, in the end, zimmerman stepped back and shot this kid dead. >> and he also, we have an audio tape that strongly suggests he tracked him down on the street, pursued him with a gun in his

hand. >> and used a racial epithet. >> yes. when you read the stand your ground law, when somebody runs you down on the street, somebody pulls out a gun on you, if somebody tries to kill you, you have the right to use equal and opposite force to defend yourself. in this case, that would be trayvon. what it does not say, to chase somebody else down, pull out a gun and try to kill them, and they swing on you trying to defend themselves that you have a right to kill them. that's the part we can't get distracted from here. george zimmerman needs to be locked up. no matter how we feel about the laws, this law didn't give him permission to do this. what gave permission is a chief and a force in that town who was willing to misconstrue this law to the benefit of somebody who they talked to 46 times in 56 days, they should have known something was off when he called the cops 46 times just this year. >> we are going to learn more about the facts, michele.

one of the things that really caught my attention this week was getting to the bottom of attitudes and suspicion. charles blow wrote about that a in "the new york times." we'll put a portion of it up on the screen. as the father of two black teenage boys, this case hits close to home. this is the fear that seizes me when my boys are out in the world. that a man a with a gun and an itchy finger will find them suspicious. it's the point david raised about how do we feel when we encounter a young black man in a neighborhood anywhere? >> to the extent this is about race, it's not -- there are all kinds of law enforcement officials who will investigate this based on the facts of what happened. racism is part of the action to this. what you see is a case that touched many people in a deep way. a lot of people look at this picture of the kid and see the humanity. looks like one of their kids or someone who sits at that time

table with one of their kids, even if it doesn't look like a member of their family. it touched african-americans deeply because it went to the talk people still have, even with a black man sitting at the oval office, 1600 pennsylvania avenue, when they send their sons out into the world, they sometimes have to tell them, the world will look at you and will see suspicion. see someone who is young, black and suspicious simply because of the color of your skin. it went to this thing that a lot of people know about but people don't talk about, it's called the talk that people have with their sons and sometimes their daughters. what you see on the streets in the marches that you participated in this week is not just anger but anguish, a sense of vertigo, how can we still be in this moment that we send our sons and daughters out and we assume people will look at them and see someone who has the potential to be harmful. as opposed to someone who just has potential. >> think one of the reasons why the picture and the innocent

look of those pictures may make tray martin this generation's emmett till. he was a young child, 14 years old, lynched by a group of white men in mississippi for having whistled at a white girl. the mother kept his casket open so that you could see the contrast between the innocent child that he was and what had happened to him after he was beaten, his eye gouged. it sparked the civil rights movement. new york reporters came down, "the new york times" was the only guy covering the south at that time. then 70 reporters came down. three months later after the trial where the four guys were acquitted after an hour, it produced outrage. mississippi acted defensively against the north. now you have at least the people in florida, you have the governor saying maybe i'll look at a revision of these laws. we have come somewhere. we've come a long way. >> the white southern republican

saying, doj, please come in, please look at my department. there's a -- i think one of the most important things that i read this week was from ms. rose disea ann barr who talks about the tell fear she feels for her son's black friends. the difference between now and 50 years ago, george w. bush has a nephew who is latino. roseanne barr has friends that are black. that anxiety about young black men, young brown men being misperceived is more universal than it ever has been. it's been ten years since we had an honest conversation about racial profiling in this country. george clooney w george bush was campaigning against it in 2000. >> this is the point. governor, i was talking about this at the dinner table with my children, the oldest of whom is 9, has come of age understanding something about politics with the first african-american president. he has no frame of reference why he as opposed to his black friends at school would be viewed differently on the

street. the juxtaposition of the first black president and how we can still look differently at young black men, how does that compute? >> it computes a huge change for two generations ago, we were talking about emmett till and what ben said about the mayor of sanford. this is a guy that's saying, we want to make sure this is an actual full-blown investigation, so we're going to bring in the best to help us do this. or to do it for us rather than somebody saying sanford is wiping this under the rug or sanford is trying to keep from getting a bad reputation. that's what leaders are supposed to do. even if it's not popular at home to say, guys, it's in our interest. it's the right thing for the city, the state. let's bring the fbi in here. let's bring the florida state police in here. let's do whatever it takes to get all the cards on the table

face up and then we'll figure out what to do. >> i'm a little concerned it will become an easy and comfortable conversation that we all condemn some racist out there. there are people shot every day. and the causes for most of the shootings are incredibly complicated, having to do with economic problems, drug and gang culture. some of the people mentioned, the shootings that happen every day. that's much more difficult conversation because it involves a lot more complicated issues. >> we may not be able to do much with family breakdown issues. maybe we can do something about vigilantism or these laws. >> but how the cops respond to any murder of a black man. i sat there in the church for hours listening to the pain of people in the community. the sharpest pain was black men being killed by whoever, some by thugs, some by bad cops. it's not being taken seriously and the killer is not being caught, presumably out there to kill somebody else. the other piece of this, the

loudest applause lines of the night were people talking about the way black cops in their own community discriminate against black children. it would be a mistake to say racist. this is about a culture in which black men are seen as more suspicious, sometimes by other black men carrying guns and badges. >> the final point on this before i move on then, are you concerned about violence, the black panther party issuing a bounty for george zimmerman. are you concerned about how volatile the situation is? >> the town there is very tense. the ku klux klan is very active in that town. there have been incidents this week that we generally don't talk about the specifics because we don't want to encourage other copycats. the reality is, i've seen that town -- i got there at the beginning of the week and it was terrifying how tense it was. it was teetering between a riot and a race war. by the end of the week, doj opened an investigation. the states attorney set a date

certain for the grand jury investigation. longer than anyone would have liked but it is a date certain. a new attorney was appointed. the police chief was forced aside and there was a sense that the wheels of justice were starting to move. you look out into the crowd of 30,000 people in a town of 50,000, there were white people, latino people, asian people, black -- there were a lot of black folks. the reality was, it felt like the town was coming close together. you saw again, a tense situation with a white republican mayor standing up and pushing out the chief, casting one of the votes and saying, come in, doj. there's a sense that this town can be stabilized, move closer together. >> i want to get to a couple of other matters here. i want to get to our trend tracker, the hot political stories we're watching. santorum which i talked about earlier, winning louisiana. the president in north korea. and former vice president cheney has had a heart transplant.

we have a live picture in the fairfax hospital where he's recovering, still in intensive care. a history of heart trouble, of course, for mr. cheney. we wish him well. let's talk about some of the big issues driving this campaign. you heard me talk about it with david plouffe, the energy crisis in america. this fight over who do you blame for high gas prices? nothing hits a president's approval harder. who is going to win the blame game this year? >> there's no question that presidents lose popularity with gas prices, housing issues, they appear vague. you know every time you're at the gas pump it's going up. you think, oh, my god, he's responsible, even if he isn't. the difference may be, carter definitely got blamed. it was partly the way he handled by telling people heating oil was going up, just put on a sweater in your house. it made him seem like he wasn't on your side. i think what the president's trying to do now is to fight on beof half of people, talking

about energy independence, talking about price gouging, talking about the need for more exploration. there's no question, gas prices hit home more than anything. it was a funny thing in world war ii. ordinary people only had five gallons. more important workers had ten gallons and the most important people in the country had unlimited. congress voted themselves unlimited. the most important people. they got slammed. >> congress is always the same. >> in 2006, democrats were asked is bush responsible for gas prices. back then 73% said yes. when they were asked is obama responsible now? only 33% said yes. everyone is a hypocrite on this. republicans are a little less hypocritical. i don't think the president is responsible for short-term gas prices. the president does have a bit of an energy problem in that we're in the middle of this tremendous opportunity because of new technology to expand oil and gas exploration. he's not been bad but he's not been great. he's been cagey. he's been helping the fracking while getting the regulations

right. the keystone pipeline was a horrible decision. he's trying to straddle the issue. we should realize the incredible opportunity we have in front of us. >> one fact on this. a.p. had a story this week. more drilling does not actually reduce the price of gasoline. does more u.s. drilling ease gas pump pain? math, history show that hasn't happened. that was a blow to that argument. >> the big problem that the president has here is his rhetoric and policies are very different. first of all, he has a secretary of energy who said in 2008, what we need to do in the united states is get the price of gasoline up to where it is in europe. why would somebody say that? we heard david plouffe talk about it, so people would use less of it. that's been their policy today. today you're getting about half as many permits for drilling in the gulf of mexico as you did in the three years before the bp deal. i can remember president clinton

when we passed the drilling -- he vetoed it saying we wouldn't have got the gas for years. wouldn't we have liked to have 2 million, 3 million barrels out of anwar in 2006, 2007 and oil coming down from canada in the keystone pipeline. three years of bad policy cannot be made up by a silver bullet. he's right about that. coming down from the pipeline. he needs to be held accountable for the three years of bad policy. >> look, we have george bush who thought cheap gas was a bad idea. then we had gas at 4 bucks in the summer of 2008. i mean, it just seems like we need to be honest here, that gas prices go up and down and that quite frankly we've had politicians in the republican party and the democratic party say that cheap gas was a bad idea when they were in power. >> for those who want higher gasoline prices they've got to be happy. it's about the only obama policy that's worked so far, double the price. >> running out of time. beyond gas prices this is how things look in the republican race. mitt romney according to gallup

is at 40% in the polls, first time he's hit that, rick santorum 26%. governor barbour, is it time for this race to end for the party to fall in behind romney? >> that's for the primary voters to decide primarily. they voted for santorum in louisiana yesterday. romney had a big victory in illinois on tuesday. i don't think you should say to people, you've got to get out. these guys have made huge sacrifices, they've run hard. they have a lot of people supporting them. this will wind down. it has a natural pace that it's going to wind down. and unless something unusual happens, unless romney steps on a land mine it looks like he's going to be the nominee. >> i'll leave it there. thank you all very much. we covered a lot of ground. appreciate it very much. msnbc's rachel maddow is going to be here with me to talk about her provocative new book "drift," which raises tough questions about how and when this country became comfortable with a permanent state of war. she's coming up after this.

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joining me now, host of msnbc's "the rachel maddow show" and author of "drift: the unmooring of american military power," rachel maddow. welcome. good to have you here. >> great to be here. thanks. >> i am so interested in this book. i read it. as i sum it up, it is about the idea that somehow america got comfortable with the idea of being in a perpetual state of war. and have we really debated that and can you dismantle what you call this military super structure? i have to ask you, of all the topics that i thought that rachel maddow would take on,

this was not the one i put on top of my list for your first book. >> when i got the contract to write this book i had a radio show and i since have a tv show. i get to talk about whatever i want. i wanted to write a book because i felt like i couldn't talk about this in the other things that i did for a living. i feel this is a longer idea. this is not a sound bite thing. this is not a between the commercials idea. i felt i needed to lay it out long form. it's been bothering me for a very long time, this idea that we've made a series of changes over time, over the course of my lifetime, i think, that in all cases have made it easier, less -- given us less friction towards using war, less political friction, less public discomfort with it in a way that we have gone to war so frequently and felt it so much less. it bothers me emotionally. so i wanted to treat it in a long form way to lay out the case. >> there's a lot to this. as i was reading it i got out the black pen and underlined

this particular section of the book that i'll put on the screen. while america has been fighting two of its longest ever boots on the ground wars in decade following 9/11, the fighting them simultaneously, less than 1% of the adult u.s. population has been called upon to strap on those boots. not since the peace time years between world war i and ii has a smaller share of americans served in the armed forces. you write, half of the american public says it has not been marginally affected by ten years of constant war. we have never in our long history been further from the ideal of that america would find it impossible to go to war without disrupting domestic civilian life. that carries a high cost. >> that has a moral consequence to the country. you can talk about the strategic costs, too. i think there's an argument to be had. if the public doesn't feel it, we use war more. i think that's sort of the implicit case we found ourselves in.

what we decided to do is give ourselves a giant multi trillion dollar tax cut just before 9/11 and the afghanistan war. that was not rescinded once we started the afghanistan war. and right after we started a second simultaneous giant land war in iraq, we gave ourselves another round of tax cuts. that is a symptom of something wrong. that is a symptom of a country that doesn't feel it, that we're at war. we feel like the military goes to war. the country doesn't go to war. when the iraq war ended after eight and a half years, more than 4,000 lives lost, st. louis threw a parade, new york decided not to. civilization didn't much notice. the over all feeling among the american population was, oh, was that still going on? we ought to be a country that goes to war. when we go to war, if only so we don't become so separated from the military that they are not fighting in our name anymore. they are fighting on their own. >> we talked about this off the air, what strikes me about this as a progressive and somebody who knows program, obviously knows your views, your analysis and criticism is distinctly bipartisan.

>> yes. this is not a problem that emerged because one party did something wrong and one party had the right idea but they lost. this is something that emerged over multiple administrations with people not acting in a conspiratorial way. there isn't a lot of george w. bush in this book. there isn't a lot of barack obama in this book. i think a lot of the changes happened post-vietnam and leading up to 9/11. the clinton administration bears responsibility, the reagan administration bears a lot of responsibility. the george h.w. bush administration as well. we went through the changes over time. presidents trying to get around the political problems they had made rational decisions about how to get around them. we didn't want to upset the public. we figured out ways to go to war in way that is don't upset the public. we had a political constraint from the congress who figured out ways to go to war around the congress. all of those decisions have been decisions to make war easier, less upsetting. >> there are threats that still face the united states. >> sure.

>> from terrorists and others in the age of 9/11 that we still live through. you concede that point in the book, but you make the point as well, to use your words, the military super structure is going to be really hard to take apart. that's what you think is critical. >> we need a great military and we occasionally need to fight wars. i don't think we need 1,800 deployed nuclear weapons right now with thousands more ready to be deployed and thousands more in reserve beyond that. because the military has become isolated from our political processes, because we find it awkward to fight about them, we've made it easier for it to go on on its own, we've ended up with a military super structure that isn't anything anybody argued for. one senior defense official told me the only problems that we have are over programs that the congress wants us to keep. right now it's over tanks the pentagon doesn't want. what other part of our

government works that way? >> i want to mention something that in addition, you talk a lot about our returning troops and the issues that they are going to face. >> yes. >> because of long deployments. one of the things nbc news is doing, in conjunction with the u.s. chamber of commerce is hiring our here rose, launching it today. it will be on the "today" program, across all of our platforms in a big job fair on wednesday. the notion that these returning soldiers, these men and women should be hired. they should have the emotional investment to say they've had an incredible experience and sacrificed so much, what do we do for them when they come home? >> focusing on veterans and in some ways in calling them our heros is a thank you. i also think of my generation of veterans, i know of nobody else in my age cohort who is more impressive, who has worked

harder, accomplished more in my age group than the people i know who have been to these wars. they are an impressive group of people. they are leaders for our civilian life going forward. >> what they learn, i often talk about my wife, a captain in the army, a daughter of a nuclear submarine captain. she learned as a professional to be decisive because of her military training. that decisiveness and some of those skills that are battle tested literally are of tremendous value in the private sector here. >> we've had nearly 2 million americans who have deployed to iraq and afghanistan since 9/11. their lives and family's lives have been so different than civilian american family's lives have been so different from civilian families' lives. and bridging that divide, which is a cultural divide, is something we have a moral responsibility to pursue with the country. >> the book is "drift," rachel, thank you very much. >> thank you, david. i appreciate it. a quick programming note. watch our press pass conversation on our blog this week. i sat down with former secretary of state condoleezza rice. that's at presspass.msnbc.com. that is all for today. we'll be back next week. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." i hit a wall.

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