>> mr. zuckerman, these days how divisive of a figure is george w. bush? he hasn't appeared a lot with mitt romney hasn't been mentioned a lot by the republicans of late. >> i really don't think he is very decisive. i do feel i have to correct one thing. i work for s.e. krp. >> i am his boss. i like that better. >> i like that. we know she runs things. >> i really don't think that's going to be a winning argument for the president. the public and the american public elects a president to solve problems, not to blame it on his predecessor. he had four years to solve the problems. they are going to decide once again that it's the ronald reagan once said are you better off today than you were four years ago and will they rehire him. i don't think george bush is going to be the decisive -- you know, there will be some people who will sort of hang onto that old sort of a charge. i don't think it's decisive

today. >> david, when we talk about the legacy of george w. bush i think it's interesting insofar as dick cheney and karl rove have not been quiet with criticisms of this president. george w. bush, former presidents sit out a couple terms or a few years or whatever. george bush has really made every effort to stay out of the limelight. the last we heard -- >> he found dick cheney's undisclosed location. this is not a beer summit. we know that. my guess it's not that awkward because i think presidents do feel a bond and they can always talk about sports. if you watch the clips you showed, the president is not naming bush by name. what he's trying to do is say basically use what happened in the ots to tag mitt romney as a backward looking candidate. you look at policy, took us into this reckless war in iraq, the tax policies, we've done this before.

i think he's sensitive to a point that looking like he's blaming his problems on somebody else's but it is a convenient, you know, point for him to say that mitt romney really has no new ideas except what we did do already as he tries to convince people we'll be better off in the future with obama rather than with mitt romney. >> it's interesting because we have polling that echoes that point. overwhelmingly voters in iowa, colorado and nevada are blaming the inherited -- basically blaming the bush era policies for the reason the economy is the way it is. and people say again to that point, romney is better at handling by 5% in iowa, 3% in colorado. but s.e., it would seem that the president's attempt to say look, this isn't all my fault is carrying some water or carries weight among voters in key states. >> yeah. i think the obama's bush/romney narrative probably works a

little for voters in some respect. i think certainly we in the media like to imagine the weirdness of bush and obama being in the same room. >> i think it is weird. >> when you're in the pc, when you're in the president's club -- >> you clearly have more -- the pc. >> you're part of the pc, i think that goes away. these guys aren't adversaries. bush knows that what obama is doing is campaigning. and obama i think recognizes he's in the white house because of president bush. he's in the white house because he could run against a president bush two-term economic policy and foreign policy. so i think these guys are both statesmen, above this kind of stuff and they are going to kick back and have a nice time. >> patty, you are a campaign strategist extraordinare. i want to talk about the president in addition to the talking about the failed policies of president bush, a new peg shall we say in this

presidential re-election bid, mitt romney's record as governor of massachusetts. david axelrod or the team obama put up a five-page memo describing in detail how bad mitt romney's record was as he served as governor of massachusetts and a few moments ago david axelrod was standing on the steps of the state capitol in massachusetts. let's listen to what he was saying about that time. >> the message massachusetts seems to be sending as they listen to romney reprice his familiar pitch is fool me once, shame on me. fool me twice, shame on you. romney economics didn't work then, and it won't work now. >> fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me. what do you make of this latest bid which is to say moving away from bain and into the record of massachusetts. >> i think it's a pretty good segway from bain to his record

as governor. you know, romney's entire thesis for running for president is that he came from the private sector, he's a businessman and that pretty much, he says, will make me better for the u.s. economy than president obama. >> right. >> now, what he did at bain and so many of us have discussed this, it's not about -- i don't think the obama campaign was criticizing making money or private equity because don't we all want to make money. i aspire to making a lot of money and i hope my children will too. but it was basically you know, the bottom line was making money for him and his investors regardless what if that did to working class. so now he says when he ran for governor in 2001, he said that his experience as a business person was going to make the economy better in massachusetts. what david has just pointed out is that's not the case. 47th in the country for jobs. debt increased by 16%.

raise taxes on the middle class. >> a number of points. >> let's start with the first one, okay. yes, they were 47th but the reason is because massachusetts had already such a low unemployment rate that there was very little progress to be made in that area so it's really a distortion of what the facts are. which of course is going to be typical of both sides in this thing. secondly, since i lived in massachusetts to a large degree when he was governor, and i didn't vote for him, don't get me wrong because i've been a democratic, he did a good job. give at any fact that both the house and the senate were controlled by the democrats. and he was a republican and has to find a way to work with them and by and large did that. so i thought he was bipartisan in his approach. and made a good deal of progress. so i think he'll be able to stand well on his massachusetts record. >> that's the interesting thing. mort made a better case for his tenure in massachusetts than we've ever heard mitt romney say or we're likely to hear because

it leads to romneycare. but he won't talk about that record. that's been so -- >> today he said he left the state with 4.6% unemployment. >> wow. >> he addressed this today, and has been addressing this. i agree he's been focusing more on -- >> listen to his speeches and barely talks -- >> his executive experience. he has been addressing his record in massachusetts and i think has laid out the case substantially and said look, i think obama would like to have the kind of record in the country that i had in the state. >> but i do think david's right in so far as you talk about massachusetts and all roads lead to romneycare which he is terrified of talking about. but the obama strategy, though, i do wonder. we talked a little about this this week. is this a signal, david axelrod on the steps of the state capit capitol, the bain thing didn't work out as well as we wanted it to. it's too questionable. we don't want to alienate wall street.

we need to shift to massachusetts. >> this is an all of the above. i think you're going to see them cycled over and over. we'll come back to bain, we'll come back to massachusetts. health care. >> talking to people in the obama campaign, what they are concerned most about is that we're kind of in this -- the nothing much is happening in washington, the republican primary is over and you know, once the summit comes people don't pay attention. the last moments of spring before we all hit the beach is a time to start registering negative impressions but take up space so he can't redefine himself in a more positive way. that's why you do bain, massachutts, you just keep throwing things at him so he's forced to release a statement. >> it's time to end the segment when david corn and s.e. cupp are in agreement. we go to break. let joe be joe. we'll talk the emotion, "the artist"ry, the verbal dare davelery, i don't know if that's a word, of our vice president.

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is it hard to raise a kid around biden? i would assume that there's a lot of like joe, language. or, like he's like the uncle that comes over like oh, you brought them guns. like -- all right. >> no. he's a great vice president and a great friend. >> that's nice. >> my kids hang around him. >> that was the first lady talking about vice president biden earlier this week. a new article in "time" magazine makes the case that biden is not just a great veep and friend to the obama family but the president's secret campaign

weapon. neither romney nor obama has this pastoral gene. biden can make both men look like retail amateurs. the rich and the rest. tip o'neill had a saying all politics is local. biden prefers the municipal analog all politics is personal. michael shearer is a white house correspondent and our own ambassador to "time" magazine. always great to see you. >> good to see you again. >> a great story, and some incredible turns of phrases, my friend. you know how to put a sentence together. the thing about joe biden, i can talk about the man at length, is what i don't understand in terms of demographics and the campaign trail, is his unfavorables remain high in swing states where that's supposed to be his bread and butter. a "usa today" gallup poll shows his favorable rating is 40% and unfavorable at 54%.

what do you think accounts for that? >> couple things. one, his favorables from the beginning have fallen with the president. people identify him with the president. if you don't like president obama, you don't like joe biden. secondly, i think the fact that he's been out on the trail now for a month and a half, two months, attacking every day, pretty negative politician and that tends to hurt your favorability as well. there's not a lot of exposure to joe biden beyond the sort of late night comedy routines which are basically every night someone is making fun of joe biden because he is so fun to make fun of. that plays a role too. in chicago at the obama campaign they aren't worried. he is a message deliverer and they are looking for him to connect with a very small subset of voters who joe biden i think hilariously calls ethnic voters by which he means catholic whites, jewish whites in the industrial midwest states, and

in south florida. and to really talk in this populous old time religion tone which he does quite well and really he's the only thing out there going if you enjoy the theater of political campaigning. neither mitt romney campaign or the president are really offering much up right now. >> there is nothing i think that compares to joe biden in terms of connectivity. david corn, you spend a fair amount of time at the white house. and michael has done reporting at the rope line with joe biden talking to firefighters. i have been assigned six states biden tells alex trebek. pennsylvania, my home state, ohio, iowa, believe it or not, new hampshire, florida, now talking about assigning me virginia, nevada or north carolina. we started off with michigan but we look like we're in pretty good shape in michigan. i love this idea of joe biden getting his orders and going out dispatched to states. >> you know that i did this book recently called "showdown."

>> on sale now. >> what impressed me, well doing this, is the roll that he played in the white house not necessarily in the political sense. this is a guy who is also the white house's ambassador to the hill, to republicans, he's been instrumental in a lot of the key decisions on tax cut deals t deficit fights, he loves the substance and policy and yet he is also great on the stump. he is an all around player in baseball terms, he'd be an all-star pitching and hitting. and i think he is a tremendous asset regardless of the favorability numbers because he does speak to a certain sense. most importantly i think the president, even with the gaffes trusts him for good advice to do what he has to do. and he also enjoys it. that's the other thing. he enjoys it. >> the joy is not something you can go to acting school for. michael, you make a point about the whole package, the all or nothing thing. when we talk about the gaffes.

you say, you write, everyone knows that biten's greatest strength is his weakness. if you follow up the effusiveness or eliminate the lack of discipline you could lose it is. i'm not changing my brand biden said he told the president when he took the job and he certainly has not, has he, michael. >> no. it's interesting that stuff you just read there from the conversation with alex trebek. that's all off message. i talked to his own press people. they said you know, he doesn't -- that's not really right he has not been assigned states. they are trying to walk it back to me because they don't want him to say that but it's true. that's how he sees it. that's where they are using him. they want to cast him as an all-purpose player. but he works well in some of these states. i think what david said is right. he's a guy who to understand joe biden has always been a politician who has won whatever room he has been in. that's like bill clinton. not that many politicians like that. so that's how the white house dispatches him. they need to win a room in congress, they need to get a deal done, they send him up.

they need to figure out iraq where all of these different, you know, former enemies are fighting. they send joe biden. eight times to iraq to win the room. to convince these guys, look, we can get along, figure it out. they are sending him to pennsylvania, ohio, florida, to do the same. >> the question now is how many rooms can they get joe biden in before -- can they make a joe biden hologram and get him across the country, potentially overseas. michael, thank you, sir as always. i encourage everybody to read the article. a great read. >> thank you. >> after the break, chen guangcheng takes his country to task on human rights. based on special forces

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trampled on and more specifically, after i left my home the local authority there is have been having retaliating against my family in a frenzied way. >> that was chinese activist chen guangcheng through the voice of a translator speaking this morning in new york, two weeks after fleeing china. folks on the panel, there are two issues at hand. one of course is the human rights concern in china and of course around the rest of the world. the other is u.s./china relations which are much more complicated than an issue of human rights. david, i want to go to you first. as a symbol of the human rights struggle in china, he's certainly a very powerful one. it is coming at a time when human rights i think a lot of people would say has taken sort of a back seat to broader foreign policy goals and economic concerns. >> and becomes a football politically because every four years, there is a competitive election, we have the party that's on the out saying we're

going to be tougher on china. we're going to be tougher on china than whoever is there whether he's democratic or republican. they get in and say we owe these guys a couple of trillion dollars, it's a lot more difficult and balancing, i think the administration did a great job in this case, it seemed at the end, people started jumping on them quickly. but seems to have a good outcome. how you sort of deal with china as an economic power, a military power and human rights at once is one of the hardest jobs i think in the white house and in government today. >> david's right that nearly every administration has ended up capitulating on china after talking tough before they were elected. but i think this administration missed an opportunity with chen guangcheng to make a stronger stand against the human rights abuses and vis-a-vis syria where we're sort of allowing this absolutely horrific carnage to go on with syria and china and russia being sort of this triangle mess.

i think we look fairly impotent in this. >> i would love to get your thoughts on this, mort. as far as syria, there is a huge human rights concern with 10,000 people slaughtered. but also the practical reality of military intervention and what that costs in a time of deficit cutting. but let's talk about the tact that some have taken on china. love to get your thoughts. mitt romney has been aggressive and we are hearing reports that henry kissinger is holding off endorsement of mitt romney specifically because he doesn't agree with mitt romney on his china position. >> let me say this about the administration. they were successful in a very difficult and delicate negotiation to manage to arrange for his release and his escape if you want to call it, to the united states. this is no small issue. when in fact, what he was doing was still challenging the authority of the regime. they generally tend to be pretty tough about those things, so this is a follow on to that. and frankly, the most important piece of it was getting him out

and getting some of his family members out. so i think in that sense not only did the administration accomplish a great deal but in fact, the chinese government was fairly flexible in terms of making that possible when it was clear it was an important issue to the united states. we can't expect to have china change their whole attitude on any issue like this in a short period of time. but this really reflects considerable progress. both in terms of the administration's ability to deal with them and china's ability to be flex able. >> hillary clinton was going over there for unrelated issues. and patty, you know the delicate dance there in terms of being in the center of attention, the chinese are -- we are tied up with them in many respects. there is a sense especially dealing with china you cannot antagonize the chinese government, there is a certain amount of face saving. the fact this went as sort of seamlessly as did it is a testament to high level, high stakes diplomacy. >> i agree 100% with mort on

this one. i think this was excruciatingly delicate for our state department, our white house. i thought what they pulled off was incredible under huge odds. while hillary was there, secretary geithner was there, you know, it was pretty incredible he's here and out there speaking. >> we did not tackle mitt romney's position on china, mort. any thoughts on that in the erms of the long, the rhetoric. i do think that there's some amount of yeah, yeah, yeah, when he says i'm going to be aggressive with china. on day one i'm going to revisit our trade relationship with china and that comes across as maybe insincere. >> but there i disagree again, sorry. we have a real issue in terms of the way china trades because they clearly kept their currency undervalued in order to be more competitive in the world markets. we at this stage are suffering the kind of recession we're in

feel that's unfair competition. and so i think romney is right in saying i'm not going to accept that and they should know that this is going to be a major issue for me if i become president. it's another dimension of what he thinks he can do and should do to improve the american economy and i totally support that. >> i do think this administration has been pretty forward as far as criticism of chinese floating currency but not a lot to show. >> frankly, if they had been critical i think -- as they say in china. >> david says they don't say that in china. we have to go to break. coming up the house gets set to vote on a controversial abortion bill. the the republicans call it a sex discrimination issue, while democrats characterize it as another example of the war on women. we'll look at the latest remarks from the floor next on "now." [ male announcer ] this is sheldon, whose long dy setting up the news starts with arthritis pain and a choice. take tylenol or take aleve,

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how do you get into the mind-set and the psyche of a physician who is doing his job providing the care that the woman has asked, her choice, and begin to demonize and suggest that she is forcibly deciding to abort because she is forcibly deciding what gender she wants. the bill demonizes the relationship the patient physician relationship. we cannot have that. i ask for a no vote and i yield back. >> that was texas congress mam sheila jackson lee on the house floor criticizing legislation to ban gender based abortions. s.e., we talked about social issues being lightning rods but distractions, too, when the issue everyone cares about is the economic health of the country. and yet, republican congressman trent franks is introducing a bill presumably to end the practice, i don't know where this is practiced, of gender-based abortions. >> i could not believe this was legal to begin with, and even planned parenthood is coming out

to say we do not support this despite videos that suggest otherwise. when planned parenthood is saying we do not like this, i think it's weird that you have elements on the left, including the white house which also released a statement today saying they are against this bill, so they do support this, they want this to be completely legal. oh, no, there is no whoa. and for really weird reasons. they say this since enforceable and you can't tell doctors to go around asking people why they are having abortions. i suggest that the white house read the bill which states nothing in this act shall be construed to require that health care provider has an affirmative duty to inquire as to the motivation for the abortion. so the pushback against this bill is based completely on inaccuracy and having not read -- >> the health care provider doesn't ask, this only applies in situations when a woman says you know what, doctor, i had too many boys, i don't want a boy.

the doctor has to pick up the phone and call somebody or do something. >> say sorry, that's illegal. we decided on ugenics and we don't like it. >> this is all about trying to go at abortion because they don't have the guts to bring up a bill to say we want to make it illegal. bring that up and get rid of all abortions if -- >> i think it's more of a sort of insidious device. it's an effort to walk back women's reproductive rights and infringe or get involved in the relationship between women and doctors in any way possible. to your point s.e., this bill is like the bill that sam brownback signed into law saying sher rhea law cannot be plaed. this is fear mongering at its core, i think. >> i agree 100%. i don't understand how this is helpful to the republican party at all during this political season. we fought this fight 20 years ago and we won. i don't know why we're revisiting it.

>> i don't remember this fight. the fight over can you kill babies, yeah, but because you wanted a boy? i don't remember having this fight. >> the fight over a woman's right to choose was settled by the supreme court. >> to choose the gender of her kid? >> it's about a woman's right to choose. mort, we are again talking about abortion rights in a climate where, again, the right constantly vilifies the left and the media for bringing up social issues to gain political points. but at the end of the day this kind of legislation is brought up on the floor of the house and in republican-controlled legislatures across the country. >> i have to say as was pointed out this issue was settled over 20 years ago. i think it's preposterous we have to get back into it. i don't think it will succeed. even as a political matter and as a social matter. i think this is a nefarious piece of legislation. i don't know or -- i don't think just as a lawyer who never practiced that this is consistent with what the supreme court ruled many years ago.

but still, it is just the kind of thing that is just intended to rouse a lot of issues that we should not go back to. >> why has planned parenthood come out to say we have not supported gender based abortion. why have they said they don't support it. >> you can support it or not support it and have a view on it that doesn't mean you have to create a law either. there are thing you may say is wrong or right but that doesn't lend itself to passing a law to get between a woman and doctor. this is part of a series of events that began as soon as the tea party republicans came into the house, they wanted to redefine rape so it would be harder for women to get abortions. they wanted to go after planned parenthood for giving cervical exams. this is another way to tend to their base and rile people up in a manner that won't have a real world impact whatsoever. >> making the same argument about the left. reintroducing the violence against women act, adding this hhs mandate into the bill. >> provisions to protect people

-- >> violence against women is illegal in all 50 states. you can make the same argument that the left is politicizing women's issues and fairly successfully, i might add, in this election year. you can make the same argument against the left. i'm not making the case that this is a political winner for republicans. i have not said that. all i have said is this legislation seems to me to be a natural next step if we don't want to be like china. and i think we all agree -- >> we're not like china. >> i think the country has a lot of problems but gender-based abortions does not seem to be number one in terms of problems. >> so we should have no problem passing this. >> we can pass a lot of bills for bad things that don't exist. coming up, journalist, pioneer, author and historian douglas brinkley joins us to discuss the way it was. that's next. [ female announcer ] to get a professional cleansing system

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are you in good hands? the teacher that comes to mind for me is my high school math teacher, dr. gilmore. i mean he could teach. he was there for us, even if we needed him in college. you could call him, you had his phone number. he was just focused on making sure we were gonna be successful. he would never give up on any of us. avoid bad.fats. don't go over 2000... 1200 calories a day. carbs are bad. carbs are good. the story keeps changing. so i'm not listening... to anyone but myself. i know better nutrition when i see it: great grains. great grains cereal starts whole and stays whole. see the seam? more processed flakes look nothing like natural grains. you can't argue with nutrition you can see. great grains. search great grains and see for yourself. for multi grain flakes that are an excellent source of fiber try great grains banana nut crunch

and cranberry almond crunch. we'd like to sum up our findings in vietnam and analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. who won and who lost in the great tet offensive? i'm not sure. the vietcong did not win by a knock-out. neither did we. the referees of history may make it a draw. >> that was walter cronkite reporting on what he called a stalemate in vietnam. during 20 year as the anchor of the cbs evening news cronkite was in some of the pivotal moments. he reported on the assassination of president kennedy, he announced the slaying of martin luther king jr. and in 1969 sat speechless as "apollo 11" landed on the moon. joining the panel is douglas brinkley, author of the book "cronkite." what a read.

one of those days you wish you had the hour to play clips, and talk about the man. you know, i will say when i was little, very, very little. let me stress i was very little. i could not go to bed before walter cronkite said good night. i would say good night, walter cronkite. this is understated to say he was america's television anchor. >> i had the same experience. i grew up in perrysberg, oyxt. we wauld talk about the news. when i started doing this my mom found all of these crayon drawings i did of vietnam and things which were all coming from cronkite. when i realized on the book we -- older generation says i lived flew the kennedy assassination or vet nam. we lived through the filter of walter cronkite telling us. i thought it would be interesting as a historian to look at of the seminole cold war figure. there are many stories. i got to tap into his archive

that opened in austin. >> this generation has facebook time line but everybody else had walter cronkite. i want to read. cronkite trained himself to speak at a rate of 124 words per minute in broadcasts so tv viewers could absorb the newscast. americans average 165 words a minute and hard to understand speakers, such as myself, average 200. blessed with a voice croon kite slowed the verbiage and viewers approved en masse. >> i have to tell a story consistent with what you're talking about. i was at the memorial service for him as you may remember, he had obama was there and president clinton was there. and president clinton got up and gave the most wonderful eulogy. he said when hillary and chelsea and i went to martha's vineyard

for a holiday, it was as he said a very delicate time for his presidency. >> an understatement. >> and the whole room burst into, shall we say, acknowledgement. and he said, but as soon as we sat down in the house, we get a telephone call from walter cronkite. and he says, mr. president, he said, would you care, you and your family care to go for a sail with me. and of course the president said of course. we said yes, we would be delighted because walter cronkite knew how wonderful it would be for me and my family to be photographed with walter cronkite who was such a person of such prestige and credibility in the american public he would help us get past that. that was an amazing story he told. it was an amazing story about walter cronkite. >> i tell that story in the book. for bill clinton, he was on ground zero. thought might as well be seen with the most trusted man in america. he brought cronkite his grandson

chip who now works for cbs, and chip was a young kid and out of it cronkite was able to get chip to spend a night in the lincoln bedroom. >> it ends in the lincoln bedroom. but the way -- >> if i had been president i would have let him stay in the president's bedroom. >> with amazing is he understood the theater of television in a way that i think a lot of folks a it the time didn't. you talk in the book about that moment when he's announcing kennedy's assassination and takes his glasses off. you say walter was really in his element, remember, producer, he was like an actor in the middle of his performance of a lifetime. it's possible that the scene of him taking off his glalss was staged. any director would tell that you walter -- what walter did with the glasses, the fidgeting was a fine prop to convey human emotion and air of spontaneity. the proof is in the pudding. walter's glasses are constantly replayed everybody knows it.

i need a pair of glasses. >> i will take notes from that. work on my timing here. >> you know what's interesting, too, i think in some ways if you look at walter cronkite and his sort of royal position and the media landscape at that time, we don't have that any more. when he went to vietnam and came back and said listen. you know. this is my opinion, but it doesn't look like we're being told the truth and doesn't look like it's going well. he did it in a mild mannered way. but it was devastating to johnson, president johnson and people supporting the war. since then i don't know if there is anybody in the media world who would have the credibility or more importantly the standing to make any such statement that would have that type of impact on a public matter. that was kind of -- >> nobody since cronkite. on the kennedy -- both on vietnam and kennedy. on the kennedy assassination drama, in 1960 walter cronkite got big because he covered the first summer and winter

olympics. he went to squaw valley, brought it on tv, did take part in the kennedy/nixon debate. but he got in a fight with john f. kennedy because he interviewed nixon and nixon did well for an hour interview with cronkite. they went to the georgetown home of jfk and kennedy botched it. and walter was leaving and the kennedys said come back, we'll do a redo. cronkite said no. they had a terrible fight. so john f. kennedy worried because bill paily who owns cbs was republican. but when this moment came, cronkite built up, he became anchor during john f. kennedy's presidency. he did the first half hour of cbs news interview in september of '63, kennedy gave it to him and made big news about vietnam. when the assassination, than kite that day, he didn't know that was going to happen. he was eating pineapple and

cottage cheese and the wire service hummed. he pulled up the thing. shooting in dallas. boom, he was there. he always would eat lunch in the afternoon inside because he wanted to keep up with those wire service -- he was a up guy at heart. >> there is that famous footage when lbj dies, he is on the phone getting the news dispatch and reporting it live to the country. and literally keeping the country on hold before he announces. >> shows you a pro. and he always had two or three sources. he didn't screw up. that's why -- but, tom johnson, head of cnn, but he called and was johnson's close associate so he had the source of all sources and instead of waiting he said hold on everybody, you know, that was an abharnt behavior to cut back from commercial and somebody is on the phone. and he did it perfectly and broke the news of the death of

lbj. >> and someone that palled around, we have to unfortunately go to break, not able to get into the fact that walter cronkite palled around with andy warhol. jimmy buffet. that's why you got to read the book. it's "cronkite." douglas brinkley, congratulations on the book. coming up, former supreme court justice john paul stevens isn't done ringing the alarm bells. [ female announcer ] want to spend less and retire with more? then don't get nickle and dimed by high cost investments and annoying account fees. at e-trade, our free easy-to-use online tools and experienced retirement specialists can help you build a personalized plan. and with our no annual fee iras and a wide range of low cost investments, you can execute the plan you want at a low cost.

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welcome back. time for what time now. retired supreme court justice john paul stevens who just received the presidential medal of freedom is stepping up criticism of the court's citizens united decision.

urging the supreme court to explain why the president's contention that foreign entities can bank roll elections is not true. citizens united in the lines of history is it going to go down as a mistake? the supreme court, you think they back off. the general thinking this is a terrible law. >> it is a terrible, terrible law. >> or decision. >> it's a terrible decision. we found out that there's going to be a billion dollars in super pac money going up against barack obama. i don't know how much is going to be going up against romney but that's just outrageous. it's obscene amount of money. an obscene amount of money and shouldn't be happening in our electoral process. >> you have a fundamental problem in what is the definition of free speech. if you cut off the funding that makes free speech possible, and that is the core of the argument of the supreme court, then you're going to be able to say well, we can compromise free speech.

that's a built in right in our constitution. i do agree we have to do something about how we fund political campaigns but seems to me i may not agree but there is an inherent logic to the position of the court. >> the idea that this vast quantity of money are fairly, i mean, they are unregulated. a lack of transparency. we can hope for some form of that. >> really puts us on the verge of turning into a plutocracy. it's the small number it's coming from. 26 billionaires have put in a majority of the money going into this election. so it's really you know, perverting the notion of one man, one person, one vote. free speech is a hard issue to get around in a constitutional perspective here. but whether it's a constitutional amendment, there are other ways to go at it. people are thinking about it. but clearly, even republicans have opposed efforts legislatively to have better

disclosure which is a start. >> then get into another issue. and the other issue is, you take labor unions. labor unions can take the dues from members and vote them through the rule of the leadership of the union to a particular candidate. is that fair? i mean there are all of these distinctions. i hate the role of money in politics. >> there is also anonymous speech. you look back to the federalist papers, common sense, the crisis, examples of how anonymous speech has been incredibly important in our political -- in the fabric of our political history. >> we didn't get to talk about buddy romer dropping out but perhaps not having a third party candidate. >> sad face. >> dproped out? >> i will say, third party, collateral damage, lack of third party, from decisions like citizens united where it cements the two-party system. >> we dropped in? >> thanks again to david, set.

e., mort and patty. i'm joined by richard wolffe and jody canter and curt anderson. until then follow us on twitter. "andrea mitchell reports" is next. >> thanks so much. coming up next, how far to go with the nanny state, we'll talk about banning big gulfs. and the obamas welcome the bushes for the unveiling of their official portraits. we'll look at that and will president obama take back his criticism of the bush record? and the brawl in the bay state as the obama campaign shows up in massachusetts. looking at mitt romney's record as governor. we'll hear from both campaigns next on "andrea mitchell reports." it's water from the drinking fountain at the mall. [ male announcer ] great tasting tap water can come from any faucet anywhere. the brita bottle with the filter inside.

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right now on "andrea mitchell reports," the president's club. president obama to welcome former president george w. bush and former first lady laura bush back to the white house to

unveil their official portraits. along with bush 41 and barbara. how will they smooth over president obama's criticism of the bush record? remember this. >> i will oppose any effort to return to the same policies that brought on this economic crisis. you hear somebody say we should cut more taxes especially for the wealthiest americans, well, we did that, 2000, 2001, 2003. we tried a lot of these ideas for nearly a decade. it did not work. >> new york city mayor michael bloomberg comes to explain his proposed ban on super sized sugar drinks. we won't offer him a giant soda. beantown showdown, team obama heads to boston to target mitt romney's massachusetts record as a new poll shows the campaigns are deadlocked in three key states. where will romney show up today? i'm andrea mitchell live in