competed, mr. thompson was easing his way into making his decision. figuring out finally late into the fall that maybe he guessed he would jump in. but right off the bat, with all the beltway press behind him, all this excitement built up, all those polling numbers excited about him getting in, right off the bat when he got in, things went badly right way. >> all eyes will be on fred thompson when he walks on the stage tonight. his first debate since he joined the presidential race. and abc news spent months digging out videos shedding light on thompson's role as a young lawyer investigating the watergate scandal. >> fred thompson made his move years ago leading watergate and president nixon. a different less valiant picture emerges from listening to the white house audiotapes made at the time as president nixon plotted in the oval office.

thompson's job was to lead the republican side of the investigation. nixon worried that thompson's democratic counterpart sam dash would outsmart thompson. as the investigation picked up speed, nixon grew increasingly concerned about thompson standing up to the democrats. speaking here with with haig. >> weeks later, thompson was still being described in the oval office as not very smart but at least beginning to play ball. >> not smart, but he's friendly. see, that's a bad way to start a presidential campaign. your first debate?

maybe been insulted by richard nixon should be seen as a badge of honor in america, but being insulted from anyone being dumb as hell, not a good way to head into your first debate on the campaign trail. once he did get in, the campaign suffered from a lack of get up and go. >> i appreciate very much your being here today and listening to me. and give my thoughts. first of all, can i have a round of applause? >> when you have to ask for the round of applause, even if you do it in an endearing i'm a large person with a deep voice kind of way, there is something wrong with you as a moving candidate. with everything from his stumped speech speaking style to getting in the race really late to his very light campaign schedule, mr. thompson fell quickly from the guy who was going to win, the guy winning in the polls when it started to the guy who's being openly derided as lazy

once he got into the race. the new york times reporting on the thompson campaign -- on the thompson campaign stop in iowa where fred thompson supporter admitted thompson had been outshone by the legislators who introduced him. but for the low key performance, that fred thompson supporter said quote, i'm sure this is his fourth event of the day. the new york times added quote, it was, but one of those four was a walking tour of downtown iowa falls that took him to two stores and lasted less than 15 minutes. fred thompson was the guy they said was going to win on his presence, he way he talks. but in iowa, he came in third place. in new hampshire he got 1% of the vote. one of the first five con -- out of the first five contests the

only place he broke into the double digits was south carolina. by the time he was coming in fifth place in michigan, it was clear fred thompson was on his way out. before florida had even voted at the end of january, fred thompson for president dream was over. here's the thing, though, about fred thompson's failed presidential candidacy. the beltway was totally wrong that his folksy presence and deep voiced actorliness would be enough to win him the nomination. but the beltway was right. that he possesses those qualities. and during this shot for the presidency, the times he turned those qualities on, they worked very well. and the guy who was most often on the losing end of fred thompson's manifest folksy play to the crowd charm was a fellow candidate who also lost named mitt romney. >> a good number of the people who are uninsured can afford to

choose not to do so. a good number of the people who are eligible for government assistance. >> you backed away from mandates. >> no i like mandates. >> beg your pardon? >> let me -- >> i didn't know you were going to admit that. >> let me tell you which mandates i like, fred. >> the ones you come up with. >> here's my view. if somebody can afford insurance and decides not to buy it and then they get sick, they ought to pay their own way opposed to expecting government to pay their way. that's an american principle. that's a personal responsibility. so i said this, if you can afford to buy insurance, then buy it. you don't have to. if you don't want to. but put enough money aside to pay your own way. what we're not going to do is say, as we -- >> tax penalties. >> which they look like. if people can afford to buy it, buy it or pay your own way.

don't be free riders and pass on the cost of your health care to everybody else. >> the government is going to make you buy insurance -- >> fred thompson failed as a presidential candidate but he was 100% successful in pinning mitt romney down like he was a not quite dead butterfly on the issue that totally plummets his presidential campaign. this year. just like in 2008 when he was running against the likes of fred thompson. you heard mitt romney there saying that what he did for his state in massachusetts was impose a mandate. he said i like mandates. mandates work. and he described the way you enforce that mandate as a tax. >> i like mandates. the mandates work. >> beg your pardon? >> if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way. >> that is mitt romney taking credit for doing as a governor exactly what barack obama as president.

which mitt romney now says is the main reason to vote against barack obama as president. because he did what i did. if you believe that argument, if you believe that the reason president obama shouldn't get a second term is because he implemented health reform, then why would you want top replace barack obama with a politician who did the same thing. he just did it first. romney campaign is a totally incoherent mess over this right now. since the health reform ruling from the supreme court, they have been flailing so ostentatiously on this issue that the right is freaking out about the prospects of the romney campaign. the wall street journal editorial campaign on -- section on the campaign's confusion. they have turned the supreme court ruling in favor of health reform into quote, a second political defeat. after romney said in 2008 that his health plan was a tax and then in 2009 that his health reform plan was a tax then not a

tax. then yesterday it was not a tax. today the wall street journal saying it's enough. calling out the campaign for looking confused in addition to being politically dumb. this is not symptom liberal editorial here. this is romney's own side. this is an editorial page rooting for him to win. the even more pointed manifestation on the right with mitt romney is a bunch of people telling him to fire his staff. indicating that mr. romney will not fire anybody or accept their resignations. but he may add new senior staff to take over and try to give them something to say about what he has put forth as his central argument about obama.

which he still hasn't figured what to say about. it's the worst possible thing for him to run on. he has decided to run on it. i don't think the problem is his staff. it's the candidate trying to run on one thing he did as a public official. the piece of legislation so closely associated with him that he put in his oil portrait to commemorate his governorship. he's trying to be that guy seated there against the thing that is sitting next to him next to his picture of his wife. it is the inescapable, irreversible flaw in his candidacy. and that's even something b-team, c-team republicans knew all along. and were trying to tell us and were trying to tell republican primary voters when they were telling them not to pick mitt romney. whether or not the rest of us could actually hear them say it. >> the idea that republicans are going to try to beat obama care

with somebody who had romney care strikes me as a dead loser. how will you distinguish a debate between those two? >> he said i'll repeal obama care. in the same breath he defends obama care at the state level. it just doesn't wash and it won't wash in the general election. >> when you take a look at what mitt did from the standpoint of romney care in massachusetts, you're going to have a hard time finding a difference between obama care and romney care. that's just the facts. and there's no way around it. >> now, think about what that means going up against barack obama who you're going to claim top-down government run medicine doesn't work and we should repeal it. he says wait a minute, governor. you said in massachusetts it works well. >> romney care given what's happening in massachusetts isn't a lot different from obama care. and so he's going to have to deal with that constantly, i believe, throughout the race. >> joining us now is ej dionne

msnbc contributor, senior fellow and the author of "our divided political heart" which is great. good to see you. >> good to be with you. you started the draft fred thompson movement tonight. it's going to sweep the republican convention. >> still have a fred thompson related website url leftover from an earlier campaign. i'm going to be the one who benefits. let me ask you. looking at all those republican romney rivals talking about his achilles heel, obviously they were making the case for themselves instead of him at the time they were making those arguments but were they right in those arguments? >> i think they were right. i thought they were right at the time. you know, it was fun to pick up the wall street journal this morning and read that editorial. it reminded me of one of the greatest lines in politics. in 1960 they criticized nixon and kennedy said that was like

having the vatican newspaper criticize the pope. that is not supposed to happen in republican politics. and i think the journal was reflecting a widespread view. you can't say it's a tax when he does it but not a tax when i do it. and also you can put yourself in a position where you put an etch e stech on steroids. then back away. and last thing is, i think it shows that he will always respond to pressure from the right end of his party or from the congressional leadership. and i think underlying this, that's going to be the issue that the obama folks are going to play down the road. >> ej, one of the things you have written about in your book but also about eloquently in your column is the idea of how policy connects to politics.

how we talk about law making and the use of government which after all is what elected officials are working on when we send them to washington to work on our behalf. do you think the romney campaign is handling this so poorly, actually opens an opportunity for the democrats to reconsider whether maybe they want to run on health reform. everyone keeps telling us they don't want to talk about healthy form a lot. we saw today him being approached by a woman in tears thanking him for passing the bill. having no way to announce this to romney's previous public service connections on this issue. should they be running on health reform? >> i think they should be proud of what they did. and finally they have a chance to explain it. and when you hear politicians on the stump defend particular things this bill does whether it's letting people's kids stay on the parents' health plan or you can't be distributed against

because of pre-existing conditions. or repeal obama care would restore the doughnut hole to prescription benefits. seniors would be angry about that. so, yeah, i think there's always been an opportunity to run on this health care law. and i think with romney being in such a difficult position to defend its repeal given that he endorsed something a whole lot like it, they should take advantage. >> ej dionne, author of "our divided political heart" great to have you here. >> thanks. i will s on the issue of the democrats campaigning on health reform or not, i think we're seeing when white house and campaign sources are talking about what they are doing, they are down playing the idea that they will run on health reform. but when you actually watch the president's remarks and even the vice president's remarks out on the stump campaigning, they're talking about it more than they say they are.

they're sort of spinning the beltway away from what they're doing. when they talk about health reform on the stump, boy, do they get a positive reaction. it'll be interesting if the spin follows the actions of the politicians in this case. tonight, a special rock star edition of the interview. seriously. and we've got some good news from austin, texas, and portmouth new hampshire. and we're done playing this sound effect. we are done with that. if you do not believe me, go to fred thompson is inherently funny.com. i should said we weren't going to play it again.

unsolved case of older sister who goes for the white house. that's still ahead.

other than me and susan and catholosim, my girlfriend's family and my family have almost nothing in common. they're in new jersey and new englanwe're from canada and california. they make short ribs, we make pot roast. but there is this one unexpected thing. at at least one time or another we've been devoted jeep families. our families if you added us together, we're probably responsible for something like 15 jeeps over time. particularly jeep cherokees of different sorts. both of our families bought them even back when they were terrible cars. close the door and the frame would rattle and the ventilation would sound like something stuck in there. i used to light susan's jeep on

fire all the time just trying to start it. romance. for a while jeeps used to suck. but they do not suck anymore. have you seen the new grand cherokee srt-8? look. not only a good vehicle, these are good cars now, but a good looking vehicle. want to know how much it costs? it costs $190,000. it costs $190,000 to buy this jeep if you buy it in china. i'm not saying that a great new jeep is not worth a lot of money, buteally $190,000? for that kind of money, you can buy a brand new bentley. not that would want to, but you could. the jeep cherokee that costs as much as a bentley does not make sense on its own. it's the result of one country slapping a penalty on buying jeeps. so that people in that country, frankly, will not buy that car. today the obama administration launched an official complaint over that giant penalty put on american cars by that other

country. the white house today filed a formal compliant with the world trade organization for that one country's decision to shut off sales of american jeeps. and today on the stump in ohio where they make jeeps, president obama sold that action like he meant it. >> as long as i'm president, that's what i'm going to be doing. waking up every single day thinking about how we can create more jobs for your families. for your security, for your community. than the previous administration. just this morning my administration took a new action to hold china accountable for unfair trade practices to american auto makers. >> the obama administration has piled up a number of actions like thus one they took on suvs today.

the first largest economy in the world taking on the second largest economy in the world for them cheating. in april, the obama administration held the line on unfair trade in garlic. in march they filed a complaint over rare earth metals which, you know, rare earth metals and all. in december 2011, they did the same thing for american solar panels. in 2010 they filed a complaint over wind turbine towers. in 2010 they filed two complaints to protect makers of steel. in september 2009 for american makers of tires. when it comes to one country's desire to economically screw over other economies, there are things they should do to protect its interest. here what the obama administration is doing, we have the number one largest economy in the world getting juked over and over and over by the number

two economy which is china. the number two economy in the world is now forcing a jeep to be the same price as a bentley. so the obama administration is hitting back. the obama administration has been taking official action on this type of thing at twice the rate of the george w. bush administration. has declared he is china's door mat. in a way no modern administration has been, mitt romney is calling him a door mat. he likes to make a big deal out of saying he as president would be more confrontational. mr. romney wrote on op ed saying he would take aggressive action against the second largest economy in the world. so aggressive he would start a war against the two greatest economies on earth. his plans were stated as a

blunder. it was described as mr. romney's hulk policy. romney smash china. but for all mr. romney is turning green and shredding his shirts with biceps, when it comes to making real decisions about countries in the market place, mr. romney has not been all that big in confrontation in the real world. in his book no apology, president bush's design to stand up against china had done more harm than good. he called president obama's defense of american tire companies bad for the nation. so this is a test. this is an administration that even if you like what they have done has been not that great at chest bumping. rightly or wrongly, it's just stylistically true that they have a hard time getting political credit for things that could and should give them political capital. things from killing bin laden to

health reform. the obama administration has a string of policy accomplishments which for whatever the reason, they don't get bragging rights for. and now that president obama's po opponent is going for all the bragging rights he can get. he's barking as loud as he can whether or not he has any bite here. he barks about how confrontational he's going to be although he's not in favor of it when people do confront. he barks about growing arican jobs though he invested in companies that specialized in sending american jobs to the land where a jeep costs as much as a bentley. he talks about our day of shame for helping a blind dissident crawling away from constant house arrest. when as of september mr. romney himself became an investor in the largest supply of surveillance equipment to china.

to the country the dissident was fleeing. our relationship as the world's top economy with the number two economy does not get attention in the beltway for the partisanship points. but out in the rough belt in ohio and michigan and places where this presidential election could be decided, this is an issue that really matters. and so this is a test about whether a president who is sometimes not all that great about barking can get somewhere with his bite. whether he can somehow turn his relatively quiet but aggressive policy into something for which he reaps political reward.

the interview tonight is the rock star interview tonight. about which i am both excited and nervous. and there's a bunch of good news ahead from a do gooder civic project that has reaped big rewards. i never thought they would win. they appeared to have won. that's good news out of texas tonight. and more good news out of nlgd. it's all ahead stay with us.

if you go to white house.gov you will find a section there designed to give you as an individual citizen the opportunity to quite literally petition your government. it's petition.whitehouse.gov the idea is anyone can petition anything. and if you return the signatures, the white house will respond to your petition. in september of last year, this petition popped up on this white house website. it says quote, we petition the

obama administration to protect coal ash recycling by promptly enacting disposal -- this was the devastating result of a coal ash spill that took place in eastern tennessee in 2008. more than a billion gallons of sludge buried neighborhoods after a retaining pond gave way. it was the largest environmental disaster of its kind in u.s. history. to classify it as hazardous waste. now this petition has popped up saying don't classify coal ash as hazardous waste. 5,000 signatures in 30 days. by meeting that, it earned a response from the white house.

gotten a response from somebody in the epa office of solid waste and emergency response. if you're sitting in the white house or at the epa maybe you're thinking look at all that grassroots regular folks man on the street support for coal ash out there. maybe we ought to rethink this policy. in the unlikely event you are in the white house thinking that, you have massively underestimated the coal industry. because as it turns out, page after page of that petition looks something like this. notice anything weird? hundreds of signatures written in china characters. many which list aurora, colorado, as their hometown. are there hundreds of chinese living in colorado supporters of the coal ash industry? perhaps. but they apparently have name like steamed bun and most handsome guy. and china donkey.

a group called the environmental integrity project spotted all of these suspicious signatures. they hired a mandarin translator and found a lot of these had names like steamed bun older sister, steamed bun little sister, small steamed bun, big steamed bun. come to china big, come to china cat, come to china china, and come to china donkey. and maybe there is somebody named come to china donkey from aurora, colorado, who happens to be a vigorous supporter of the coal ash industry. but maybe not? it should be noted here until recently the american coal ash association, the lobbying group for coal ash, was headquartered in aurora, colorado. it is an executive at the coal ash group that runs this supposedly grassroots group that put up the petition on the wbt.

5 reporting on this petition last week and mother jones reported on it today, we reached out to the official to ask what's going on here with his group and this pgs. making it look like there was widespread support for their cause when there does not seem to be. you may remember in may en the coal industry was paying people to pretend they were coal activists. they paid people to wear pro-coal t-shirts. in 2009 the whole industry launched a new project. remember that? purported to be real americans supporting the coal industry. the supposedly real people were actually just stock photo people

such as this nice woman working at flower shop. the energy industry is now the most profitable industry in the history of industries. one of the things they do is they have a long history of making more support for their policies. they have gone to great lengths no and just a month after harold named top energy adviser. have access.

it is not easy to find out how much people are spending on tv ads. it is the way that gives us to

have access to supposedly public but accessible information. republicans had blocked an effort to have to be stationed post the information on mine. last month we brought you the story of a project to get people to go to their local tv stations, collecting information and send it all in to try to build an on-line database of the painstakingly information. since then t republicans had blocked the effort have caved. now it's going to change. they have until the end of the month until the sec will post information abt who is buying political ads on-line. finally, it's happening. ta-da. our guest tonight for the interview is most famous for being a rock star. the bassist and costar of nirvana.

but particularly around transparency and understanding how the system works. which is why i saved the ad stuff going online just for him. these days krist novoselic is here. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> good news about transparency? >> i think so. i'm from washington state and the legeslature passed a law last year for the 2012 elections for independent expenditures and for state initiatives, it has to show the name, address, or the name, the city, and the occupation of the top five donors. no more smoke screens. we get things in the mailbox like nasty campaigning paid for byashington for a better future. washington for a bright tomorrow. can't do that for expenditures anymore in washington state. it needs to have the name, the

city, and the occupation of who the donors are. we need that in federal elections in the united states. >> so much of what has happened around campaign finance stuff and transparency and stuff has been pioneered at the state level. and that's why having citizens united and these other rulings that have wiped out that state stuff has been so. >> we're advocating for congress. right now there's a single member district. there's nowhere in the constitution that says one representative representing so many people. so we believe we should have a three or four member district. and that way republicans and democrats in the same district, merit representation and there's also room for independents and third parties.

why is that important? okay. so we just redistricted our states here. basically insiders, operators, business as usual. and even with independent commission, they only can do so much wk. okay? and so fair vote believes that we should take the power out of the hands of those insiders and put it -- that power in the hands of voters the way you designed the ballot and voting systems. >> do you feel like the two party system is intrinsically is dead end in terms of having transparency and people being engaged. >> well, things are broken right now. political pundit scholars, it's worse than it looks, okay? and they walk the reader through how things got so bad with the partisanship and why government, federal government isn't working. and one of the things that they prescribe as a solution is

proportional representation. so when people call it fair voting or proportional representation, they think of euroless party systems or systems where it takes 2% to get elected to the legislature or to the parliament or whatever. there's american versions of that kind of voting that are constitutionally protected. american versions of fair voting are -- have a higher threshold to get elected. you need, like, 20%, 25% of the vote to be elected. where euro system is a partiless system. american versions of this voting are candidate-based. so it really fits with the values and traditions of americans. >> fr vote has done a lot to promote outside of the box i thinking about the systems that give us problems that we have. and you as chairman of fair vote have done a lot to get people thinking about it. thanks for coming in.

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here's a fourth of july what we got is the means by which we'll physically get all our stuff out of the giant war we'll still waging when we finally wind that war down. our war is in a place that's landlocked. while we can fly that stuff into the country, turns out a lot of the stuff you use to fight a war is unite and is therefore really expensive or inconvenient to

ship by plane. in a landlocked country, though, you can't just put things into big shipping containers and sale that stuff directly to the war. instead you have to sail to the nearest available port and then drive to your war. we have been driving to our war in afghanistan for 11 years now through the neighboring country of pakistan. which does have a port that we can ship stuff to and does have a road or two into afghanistan over which we can drive our stuff into our war zone. since last year, though, those roads from pakistan to afghanistan have been closed to us because of a diplomatic dispute. which means while 90,000 americans have been fighting the 11th year of a very hot war in a very inhospitable country, we have been supplying those kmerns through alternative routes in other countries that involve flying everything in. as of the fourth of july, however, the roads are open again. the trucks reportedly started rolling today. logistics are a big part of fighting any really big war. so this is a really big deal.

it may even be a bigger deal once the supplies move in the opposite direction. once we start moving out more than a decade of military supplies and structures and equipment as our troops come home. as our troops come home. as our troops come home. there are not any u.s. troops in iraq anymore already. there are tens of thousands of americans still in afghanistan. in year 11. unless you're in the military or in a military family or people close to you who have been there. given how untouched our civilians lives have been touched by the war, it's hard to overstate the divergence and the types of lives weave had as americans in the last 10 years depending on if you're a military family or if you are not. i want you to watch one little piece of tape from the man who was the top military officer in this country for a lot of the past years of war. this is admiral mike mullen, the former joint chiefs speaking a few days ago. >> if i'm a 5-year-old boy or girl in one of the family of these major deploying units of

the army whose average length of time of deployment is a year i'm now 15 or 16 years old and my dad has been gone three, four or five times. and my whole conscious life from the time i was 5 and i started to figure out there was something out there, my whole conscious life has been at war. the united states has never, never experienced that before. it's my belief that we have to have a military that is representative of our country, that does what the president of the united states, the duly elected president of the united states says we do, and we go through that debate about whether we're going to intervene and send someone someplace to give his or her life specifically. that's who we are. i do worry that it's just please go off and fight our war, we don't want to be bothered and the whole country isn't in. >> the whole country isn't in. it turns out it's not just

former chairman of the joint chiefs. a whole lot of the rest of the country is worried about that, too. and worried in a way that makes us want to do something tangible about it. in st. louis, missouri, they started it in january, to mark the end of the iraq war to say welcome home and thank you to those who served in the iraq war. it followed by parades in houston, tucson, fa i yetville, north carolina, richmond, virginia, kansas city. this weekend, the first weekend after the independence holiday, this upcoming weekend, we can add two more cities to the list, austin, and portsmouth, new hampshire. in austin, texas, it starts at 9:00 a.m. from the congress avenue bridge near lady bird lake. the parade goes to the state capitol in austin. anybody can go. you are invited. it includes a job fair for returning vets. you can still sign up. then on sunday, the following date, portsmouth, new hampshire. the parade begins at 2:00 at

city hall. and in portsmouth like in austin, texas, st. louis, basically all of the places, this is organized by civilians to say thank you and welcome home. the iraq war is over, and those of us who did not fight it want to express our thanks and our welcome to those of us who did. so if you're in driving distance of austin, texas, on saturday or portsmouth, new hampshire, on sunday, we have details posted if you would like to go. again, they've been your wars. it's your country, you're invited. mercury rising. a large swath of the u.s. enduring another day of relentless heat, but is there light at the end of the tunnel? exit wound. shocking new video shows the moments leading up to a huge pileup on a dallas off ramp. and -- with a bang. out with a bang. a technical glitch causes all of san diego's july 4th fireworks

to go off at once. good morning, everyone. i'm lynn berry. those stories and more straight ahead. 234is is "first look" on msnbc. and we begin this morning with going to extremes. relief could be in sight for millions of americans who ve endured nearly a week of record-breaking heat, but the dangerous heat wave forecast to break this weekend in many parts of country is still not over yet. nbc's dan shen minh has that story. >> reporter: 92 degrees before 9:00 a.m. another hot day just beginning in chicago. the temperature eventually soared to 103, a new record for the day. just two drips shy of the city's all-time record. it's blamed for this buckling pavement. >> happening from wisconsin to texas you're seeing streets