and warm milk which is very popular over there. before we go to "morning joe," i have to thank, for the last three weeks, a lot of help around here, mike barnicle, luke russert, jonathan capehart and all of last week, thomas roberts who did a hallways so he never has to do this again. it's early. "morning joe" starts right now. >> from what i've heard lately, that's what troubles me the most. there's something different in their voice, in their words. what i hear from them are diminished dreams, lowered expectations, uncertain futures. i hear some people say that this is just the new normal. higher unemployment, declining incomes and crushing debt is not a new normal. america is more than just a place, though. america is an idea.

it's the only country founded on an idea. our rights come from nature and god, not from government. we promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. and this idea was founded on the principles of liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self-determination, and government by consent of the governed. >> okay. here we go. good morning, everybody. >> you hear that song? >> welcome to "morning joe." ♪ reunited >> august 13th. big willie is back. >> willie is back. >> so good to see you. >> it's good to be back.

>> great to have you. >> you had a good time, didn't you? so handsome there. >> missed you all. i have to say, the hours over there, we need to take our show to europe perhaps. i would argue. >> why don't you transplant us. >> very big in denmark. >> sweden. >> sweden. >> with us on set we have msnbc and "time" magazine senior political analyst mark halperin and pulitzer-prize winning historian jon meacham. >> can i ask you something -- >> go ahead. >> let me just say that jon meacham is the author of the fourth coming book "thomas jefferson, the art of power." >> an american. >> you wow. that's going to be good. in washington, nbc chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of "andrea mitchell reports" andrea mitchell. >> good morning. >> good to have andrea on board this morningend. and executive editor of bloomberg news, al hunt. big story to cover. >> i want to catch up, i missed a few things. >> yeah.

>> please. >> chick-fil-a bad? >> except for the waffle fries. >> well actually, chick-fil-a bad and then backlash which gives them their best quarter ever. >> good. >> chick-fil-a good for a lot more people than chick-fil-a bad. >> check. >> for chick-fil-a, really good. >> oh, stop. >> cash. >> obamaloney is a thing. >> you could just -- could you never say that again. >> obamaloney has to be said in tandem with -- >> romneyhood. >> three cab rides three different cities all asked me about obamaloney. >> there you go. >> last thing that surprised me, romney killed some guy's wife? >> yeah. >> yeah, he did. >> that's going to come back to haunt him. >> the -- a wee bit tenuous but yes. >> changes the dynamic of things. >> according to the white house, yes. >> you're caught up. >> thank you. that's all i needed. >> good to have you back. let's get to the lead story this morning after weeks of intense

speculation, mitt romney over the weekend announced his choice for a running mate. congressman paul ryan. >> what do you think of that? do you believe he did it? he took a chance. >> you know what, he did. >> he took a chance. >> he did. it was bold. i will say that. >> it was bold. >> nbc news political director chuck todd was the first to break the story late friday night into saturday morning and a few hours later in norfolk, virginia, mitt romney introduced the man many conservatives have been publicly pushing for the chairman of the house budget committee, paul ryan. the two shared the stage sunday in front of a big, high-energy crowd in highport, north carolina. capped off the weekend at a rally in ryan's home state of wisconsin in front of a crowd of nearly 10,000 people. a visibly emotional paul ryan thanked the people for their support but quickly went on to attack against president obama's policies. >> we are at that proverbial fork in the road in america. the president came into office

with so much hope offering so much change. he got the power he wanted. he got his party in control. he passed almost every item on his agenda. it's law now and now we're seeing the results. a country with a health care system that's about to be taken over, a country with four years of trillion dollar deficits, a country in economic stagnation. >> president obama reacted yesterday from chicago. >> my opponent chose his running mate, the ideological leader of the republicans in congress, mr. paul ryan. i want to congratulate -- no, i want to congratulate congressman ryan, i know him, i welcome him to the race. congressman ryan is a decent

man, he is a family man. he is an articulate spokesman for governor romney's vision, but it's a vision that i fundamentally disagree with. >> seriously willie, doesn't that upset you? doesn't that upset you? seriously. >> stop it. that's stupid. >> so sick of it -- >> stupid. don't do it. >> why does he have to be an articulate white man, not just a white man. the president to say paul ryan is or tick clats -- actually going to say he's clean, exactly. >> first of all, joe, i would like your comments. >> okay. >> do you think mitt romney is sort of taking on and ownership of paul ryan's budget? let's go right there. which some consider a liability and extreme. in fact is a liability and is extreme. >> it's paul ryan's job as budget director to put it together and yes, they'll try to attach it. it's mitt romney's campaign. >> can mitt romney separate himself from paul ryan's budget? >> i want to say overall, though, overall, this is the

first time that i've been excited by something that the national republican party has done in well over a decade. looking at paul ryan, paul ryan comes from a small group of budget either jedis or dorks, geeks, whatever, but he comes -- there couldn't be a tighter fit ideologically through the years with what a small group of us started trying to do in 1994, whether you're talking about steve largent or john shadegg, or tom coburn or mark sanford or pat toomey who came a few years later. guys that yes, were conservative socially, but we talked about the budget, we came to washington because of the budget, we are driven by the fears of the budget deficit. so paul ryan, there could not be a better pick for me. i will asay, this is the first time the republican party has done something in over a decade

that i go, wow, you know what, that may be my party. that may be the party that i joined when ronald reagan inspired me in 1979/1980. >> it makes it a real conversation. >> it does. >> i find it exciting as well. having said that -- >> by the way, did you see some of the people on the sunday shows on left,salivating. >> it's a great campaign because people salivating. some of them are making fools of themselves. they're overreaching, trying to demonize this guy. but it's a great race because look at me, excited as a small government conservative, while progressives that believe in big government, are saying that this is the best pick for them. now let's start a real campaign. >> let me ask you one question then, because you have talked about how telling people the truth can ultimately win. >> right. >> do you think that his views and his budget on medicare and

medicaid, especially, will work in some of these really important states that have older populations like pennsylvania and florida. >>? >> i've said on this show and said it for six months you do one thing at a time. you talk about math, you don't turn something into a voucher program. you talk about math. we'll see what mitt romney adopts from paul ryan and how he takes it. but paul ryan wants to slow down the rate of growth for medicare, medicaid, social security. guess what? we have to do it. now, do you do that while turning into a voucher program, you don't. but as paul ryan said to bill clinton when they both got caught on the microphone, clinton was sort of saying good job, he said it was just a starting point, i wanted to start the conversation, so the conversation has been started. i'm really excited about it. and i can't believe -- i'm very surprised mitt romney did what he did. >> the budget road map that paul ryan created is becoming a lightning rod on both sides.

the plan cuts deficit spending by $5.3 trillion over ten years, but would not balance the budget until 2040, cuts medicaid, food stamps spending and transportation infrastructure, also reduces the tax rate on the wealthy from 35% to 25% and changes the number of tax brackets from six to two, but the place where the democrats are likely to hit ryan the hardest is on its medicare provisions. under the budget plan it would eventually become what the democrats call a voucher program. >> you guys have fun. >> do you think this is fun to talk about? >> i don't think at the end of the day it matters because it's mitt romney's policies not paul ryan. >> what are -- >> let's go around. i want to get everybody's reaction. jon meacham, start with you, paul ryan, vp pick, what do you think? >> i agree with you. i think it was the most interesting thing that's happened since romney emerged and beat off really the perry challenge which seems in retrospect to have been the most plausible.

i think that it's a conversation i agree has started but one that requires a lot of care in feeding because it's going to be really easy for democrats to demagog and for romney to waiver and wobble on what it really means. so, there's a responsibility at this point and i think it's one that the race itself will have to come up with some dynamic to keep it from falling into predictable and, therefore, counterproductive terms. >> right. >> you don't want the democrats saying he's going to throw your grandmother in the snow. >> and what does that require? that requires mitt romney to come up with his medicare plan with the help of paul ryan so he can say yes, that was paul's plan in congress, this mize plan when i become president of the united states. >> the president has a responsibility, the democrats have a responsibility not to make reform a dem going toic issue.

romney has to do something he doesn't like doing in his presidential -- in the presidential phase of his life which is be specific. >> al hunt, what's your reaction? >> well, joe, they say in politics that all politics is local. i think it's true in journalism. it makes it a better race, more fun to cover, other than chris christie i can't think of a more interesting choice he could have made. i think the issues will be -- i don't -- i disagree a bit with jon, it's just demagoguery to criticize the ryan budget. you can join -- lines are drawn clearly. having said that and thinking ryan is a good choice, an interesting choice, on october 20th we're not going to be debating the ryan budget, we're going to be debating mitt romney and president obama. >> andrea mitchell, your take? >> i think it is the most exciting choice he could have made. i didn't think he was ever going to go chris christie. it is first of all i remember a

very smart guy saying that back in 1995 when he was a member of congress this was our conversation less than a week ago, that there was one staff guy in the room and it was paul ryan. because he knew everything. they would turn to ryan, joe you said, and he would know where to go, how to move, at a time that was revolutionary on the house republican side. so he is that smart. he has a more compassionate face. he reminds a lot of us of jack kemp, be worked with jack kemp, bill bennett. has that intellectual left. an extraordinary family and i've been doing reporting over the weekend on his biography, more so than i had even known, even though i know him, on jana ryan, an oklahoma democrat, cousins of the borins, oklahoma blue dog democrats, like republicans, fiscal conservatives and this is the choice she made. a lawyer from gw, worked on the

hill, met paul ryan, they were completely smitten with each other. >> wait a second. onhold on a second. paul ryan married a women from wesley. >> what's wrong with wesley? my mom went to wesley. >> exactly. >> their choice was to go back to jamesville, wisconsin. >> brotherhood thing, right? it's -- i knew it, i knew it was too good to be true. andrea mitchell breaking through on the reporting. michele bachmann will be writing a letter about this soon. >> one quick point, when she was on the hill as a young staffer she and her fellow -- other women, who did not golf, they created the washington women's shooting club. >> okay. >> because they loved skeet shooting. >> willie, there you go. she's a wellsly. i never saw that coming. >> impressive woman. >> she is. >> but by the way, what andrea is talking about, i was saying that when we first got in, in '94, you had about 10, 15 of

us trying to figure out how to dismantle the entire federal government and we allowed one staff member in, called the new federalist, allowed one staff member in, paul ryan, like 23 years old at the time and he was allowed in because he knew how to do everything. >> he actually -- >> snapper. >> brilliant guy from the beginning. >> all the talk about his budget and they sat down last night, first joint interview, mitt romney and paul ryan with bob schieffer on "60 minutes" and talked about the budget. >> there's no question your campaign has been trying to make this election a referendum on barack obama. now some people are saying, you are making it a referendum on paul ryan's budget plan. >> well, i have my budget plan as you know that i've put out and that's the budget plan that we're going to run on. at the same time we have the record of president obama. if people think, by the way, that their utility bill has gone down, they should vote for him. jobs are more plentiful, vote for him. only one president i know of in history that robbed medicare

$716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call obama care. think of that. what paul ryan and i have talked about is saving medicare, is providing people greater choice in medicare, making sure it's there for current seniors, no changes by the way for current seniors or those nearing retirement but for young people down the road and saying we're going to give you a bigger choice. in america the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. that's how we make medicare work. >> you concede you have to do a little selling and explaining. >> our point is, we need to preserve their benefit because government made promises to them that they organized their retirements around. you must reform it for those of us that are younger, good reforms that have bipartisan origin. >> mark halperin, this is, obviously, mitt romney's campaign, but isn't the choice of paul ryan a tas sid endorsement of at least his governing philosophy?

>> an endorsement he already made and a governing philosophy he plans to run on and if wins govern on. if you took 18 metrics to say he's a vice presidential pick good, they hit at least 15 of them. it's great optics, just talking about that in both the announcement and in that interview. the three things i think the jury are out on for him are one is the budget, and whether ryan will be defined on himself and for mitt romney as too extreme on budgetary choices. two, largely been settled in the short period but still an open question, will people see him as ready to be president? and the last one is can he appeal to independent voters. right now people like george will and joe scarborough are wildly enthusiastic about this pick, but i don't think we know yet whether he's going to appeal to independent voters, which is a big part of what this election is about, obviously. >> i'll tell you what for me, again as a republican, that jon, who's seen his party not only go the wrong way, but also at the same time becomes less

conservative fiscally is seen as more conservative, more entrenched, more unyielding and more southern. >> yeah. >> think about it since 1988, the republican party and you can look at the electoral map, we have been closing ourselves off in the south, become a party of lee atwater, newt gingrich, then -- >> tom delay. >> dick army, g.w. bush, karl rove. now look at this ticket. a guy from massachusetts, and a guy from wisconsin. now americans aren't going to walk into the booth thinking about that, but i'm just telling you, it's a critical move. we have punched out of my home territory the deep south for the first time in a long time. >> yeah. >> it's beyond the sun belt. >> the town, tonally there's nothing -- fortunately sort of -- well, i'll tell you --

we're getting beyond that for this election. that's good for the republicans. >> it is good for the republicans. good for the country because you don't want regional parties. we had those in the mid 1800s and you see how well that turned out. >> didn't work out well. >> so having national parties, you know, one argument for the electoral college you would have national elections and candidates would have to go to each region, each state and make the case. so in that sense, having a massachusetts republican, now this is a massachusetts republican who acts as though he's from alabama. i mean let's be clear on that. >> let's just face it, the guy wouldn't really fit in at crimson tide football games. >> he would not. >> cultural wise. >> which is why this is still a pretty close race. >> they don't serve grey pew upon down there. >> that's one of the issues with romney, he needs to be at home in a party that has moved south and west for more than a generation. >> yeah. >> and -- but your point is exactly right.

by picking a catholic from the upper midwest, you show that there's something more there than the atwater-ism of the '80s. >> no protestant on the ticket. >> no. and also nobody with any military experience on either ticket. i think the obama administration has a record now on foreign policy but al hunt and then andrea mitchell, could there be a weak st if we have a major foreign policy crisis in the coming months because these two candidates don't have anything at nis point that really defines them on that level. >> if foreign policy goes front and center that's to advantage obama, no question about that. i doubt that will happen. if it does i think the president as the incumbent will have an advantage there. mark halperin and i have an assured pact, we're not going to reveal the e-mails we exchanged last week predicting who mitt romney would pick.

i would say mark, however, that the key may not be so much does he appeal to that small band of independents, persuadables but rather that the turnout, mobilization, energy, enthusiasm will be at a premium in this election and no question that paul ryan helps in that. >> this election, this election once again suggests that this is a 2004 election. that both sides have decided they're going to key in on their base, going to go after their base, because the thing that, you know, i heard from conservatives who like me have been harshly critical of my party's spending for the past decade where it's hard to get them to say anything nice about the party other than it's lost its way, i was flooded all weekend from e-mails from movement conservatives, base conservatives hard core conservatives like me said finally they did something right and that goes back to the 2004 model which karl rove had said we're not going to win the independents but we're going to

pick, you know, make sure that our base turns out. i'll tell you what, would i lift a finger for a romney whatever moderate no. i wouldn't. but paul ryan, yeah. i would. i would pick up the phone and call. i would plant yard signs. i would go to church, give people bumper stickers. that's how these things take off and win. >> andrea, i was struck to joe's point how excited conservatives were but progressives were. they felt this sort of helped them paint the caricature of mitt romney who doesn't care about working-class people and cares about the rich. two people excited about this pick. >> i do think that medicare is going to become an issue not just the demonizing of it, but if you look at the hard numbers, there's numbers that show that the defense cuts under the ryan budget would be profound as a share of gdp. there are arguments going to be made. i think it does become an issue if you look at the headlines in

florida, look at the population of pennsylvania, and in new hampshire. so where you have older populations, these issues are going to be very important to health care issues and, you know, paul ryan voted against simpson-bowles as a member of the commission because he thought the health reforms and changes in simpson-bowles didn't go far enough. so it's a question as to whether the mitt romney plan can be as you said at the outset, be made more specific. is he willing to be more specific or going to keep trying to fudge it up. and separate himself more from the ryan budget. >> and by the way, we're 23 minutes in and i have to say this, mark halperin, i love paul ryan, i've always loved him, wrote about him in my 2004 book, he was pushing for institutional reforms, that said, he voted for the medicare part d, $7 trillion unfunded mandate, there are -- there are votes that he made along the way that i wouldn't have made and that a lot of

conservatives wouldn't have made but he did make. i only bring that up because i've heard a lot of that this weekend. >> there's stuff on labor issues as well. >> he's not really fiscally conservative. i want to make sure i say that on the air, he did take what i considered, what small government conservatives consider fiscally reckless votes. the overall picture of paul ryan is that of a guy that came to washington for the same reason i went to washington, the debt. >> and there's no doubt that's this focus and certainly his recent record is along those lines. look, it's not just movement conservatives. i've heard from reagan conservatives not enthusiastic about mitt romney now wildly enthusiastic about the ticket. turning out the base is a huge deal. on 18 of the metrics i think that you care about for a running mate he's achieved them. one is he's united the party. last week there was a flap, romney spokesperson said something about health care in massachusetts. >> right. >> and the conservatives went crazy. i think those things are over.

i think mitt romney has a huge margin of error now for the party and he can try to focus on the center. but ryan inflames the center and the left rather so much, that it is going to be very difficult. >> actually right. i think for republicans -- for republicans i think it's great. look at the guy, just look at him. >> not just a base election. >> they're going to try to demonize him and look at the guy, good look demonize -- good luck demonizing a guy that comes from a district that voted for bill clinton, barack obama, if i'm not mistaken al gore. he is from a -- he is from the biggest swing district in wisconsin and the guy is beloved. yes, democrats, yes, progressives, please say this guy eats babies. you will only be hurting yourself and helping the republican party. >> very sympathetic -- >> he comes from the most swing district. >> another constituency has almost every national political reporter knows paul ryan and likes paul ryan more than they do mitt romney and that gives

romney a little bit of an edge that he was missing which is pro obama in the press corps. >> and connection there. >> there's no doubt, there is no doubt as al hunt as you brought up, medicare is going to become front and center in this campaign. i think we're going to see some nasty ads on both sides about that. >> yeah. i think there will be. let me tell you another issue that i do think will come up, and that's taxes. both romney and ryan have these huge tax cuts and neither has told us how they'll pay for any of them. i mean we're talking $4 trillion and at some point, they're going to have to address, you just can't cut taxes and say somehow we're going to make up for it and not tell voters anything. >> just for the wealthy, by the way. >> maybe a bloomberg tax where we tax heavily tax bloomberg and everybody that works for bloomberg. >> coming up in just a few minutes -- >> right, al? i mean god that will -- we'll have -- we'll have surpluses for

as long as i can see. >> we have a lot to talk about this morning. coming up a man who knows a thing or two about vice presidential picks, former senior adviser to the mccain/palin campaign, steve schmitt, chuck todd, host of "meet the press" david gres gregory and "washington post" dan balz. first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. >> good morning. the humidity left areas of new england as we went throughout a beautiful sunday and going to lead yourself out the door to a beautiful monday. we're watching mostly sunny skies already. temperatures are in the 60s and 70s in most areas. it will be a nice afternoon. leave the umbrella at home. now tomorrow is going to be stormy late in the day, but today is dry and very low humidity. as far as the worst weather in the country right now, arkansas. we welcome the rain in arkansas but we have been watching some pretty big thunderstorms around little rock. some of those will drift towards memphis. what an unusual monday morning in chicago and indianapolis.

cloudy, cool and a little bit of light rain out there. temperatures today will only be in the 70s. so your forecast around the country, look at that, chicago a high of only 72. one of the coolest days of the summer for you. still very hot in texas and many areas of the west are still very warm. look at phoenix at 114. happy to say the tropics remain quiet. i don't expect too much in the way of any tornadoes this week. another quiet weather week around the country. you're watching "morning joe," we're brewed by starbucks. [ male announcer ] when this hotel added aflac to provide a better benefits package... oahhh! [ male announcer ] it made a big splash with the employees. [ duck yelling ] [ male announcer ] find out more at... [ duck ] aflac! [ male announcer ] ...forbusiness.com. ♪ ha ha!

at 31 past the hour time to take a look at morning papers. we'll start with "the wall street journal," sarah palin will not speak at the republican national convention later this month in tampa. in a statement the 2008 vice presidential candidate said she supports mitt romney and his running mate and will focus on

grass roots efforts to help get the pair elected. it's not clear if palin was asked to speak or if she was turned -- turned down an offer. she did not say whether she would be attending the event. >> it's a shame. >> it's not. >> i think she should have -- >> a smart move. >> "the new york post" according to a source at the romney campaign, new jersey governor chris christie was in consideration to be mitt romney's running mate but refused to resign as governor in order to run. christie endorsed romney and ryan saying they understood the country's economic situation. speculation continues that christie could be the keynote speaker. >> the charlotte observer, second time in less than a year evan gellist billy bram has been hospitalized. they believe he has bronchitis but said to be alert and in good spirits. he was hospitalized last november for pneumonia.

>> the "washington post," the egyptian leader of military council and looks like the islamist leader in egypt is consolidating his power. >> when we come back we'll take a look at come of the closing ceremonies of last night and also the kid, the 23-year-old many people believe will take the mantle from tiger woods, rory mcilroy with a blowout win in his second major victory. highlights ahead in sports. gome abigail higgins had... ...a tree that bore the most rare and magical fruit. which provided for their every financial need. and then, in one blinding blink of an eye, their tree had given its last. but with their raymond james financial advisor, they had prepared for even the unthinkable. and they danced.

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oh, my goodness. >> well now. >> welcome back. >> "morning joe." >> so last night was a big closing ceremony over on the nbc network. official end to the 2012 games. we can't show you the video unfortunately but here's a little photo album of what you missed. it was a big, long concert spanning the history of british music. headline as you can see right there by the who. they turned up. then we go down the chart to the spice girls, they were reunited, posh, sporty, the whole gang and boy band of the moment, you're familiar with this. >> one direction. >> 1 d was in the building last night. >> ouch. >> hang with them at all? >> no, but i was instructed by my 5-year-old daughter when i left for three weeks, are you going to miss me? you better come back with a

picture of you and 1 direction or don't come home. couldn't find them. >> you can't get to them. they're too big. >> my daughter argues they are like the beatles. >> stop. >> there's a big argument in our hosehold. >> didn't want to see your trench coat -- >> listen, i know they don't know the hills of tennessee but -- >> one direction is not as big as the bay city rollers were. >> they're big. >> come on. >> were. >> [ inaudible ]. >> they're big in my house. >> huge in my house. it's an obsession. >> kate moss was there. >> really? >> why not. >> let's have her. >> hot. >> standing there doing her thing. >> big inflatable octopus. >> you need that. >> we're told 300 million people watched as they extinguished the flames. >> why an octopus? >> it's a british thing. >> i can't. it's a long story. >> you would have to live there. >> remember the churchill moment. >> reading the tempest of the

closing ceremony. we go on to russia in 18 months. see you there. >> i cannot wait. >> okay. >> i can't wait. >> and rio in four years. >> by the way, the final medal count in the united states, 46 golds topping everybody, china came in second. >> yeah, usa. >> 38. >> great britain had a huge, huge home games, 29 gold medals for them. >> pretty good for a crumbling empire. >> they did a great job. >> lost india, won some medals. >> that's true. >> how did london do? >> i got to say, they did a good job. >> logistically, so smooth, almost waiting for the other shoe to drop. no traffic, everything ran on time. they did really good. >> without the smog of beijing. >> no smog. it was interesting the city was empty because tourists felt like i don't want to come and be in the middle of the chaos. londoners left town. museums were down like 30% in attendance, restaurants you could get a table anywhere, hotels were slashing the prices. >> unbelievable.

>> willie told the churchill war room. >> best thing in london. >> do you agree with that? >> i love that place. i could spend two days down there. >> they had to kick us out of there. i took a picture for meacham the room where churchill would sit and call fdr on the safe line. they played the audio. >> great stuff. >> really good stuff. >> fantastic. >> yeah. they did a really good job. it was good games. other sports yesterday, rory mcilroy the kid, lot of people say he's the future of golf, the 23-year-old. >> right. >> the final round of the pga championship. >> i don't get it. >> turn this into a run away. watch the highlights from history. channeling tiger wearing the sunday red. takes the birdie putt. with a 9 under for the tournament. three strokes ahead of his closest competitor. tiger woods into the weekend with a share of the lead and a shot to end his drought but misses like this one hurt him so close, and yet so far. >> hate to do that. >> 2 under in 11th place. nobody close to mcilroy.

taps in for par at 17. 12 under for the tournament and then closing the tournament in style, watch this 25-footer on the last hole of the tournament, look at this. >> what? >> 13 under par. >> holy cow. >> look at that. >> wins the tournament by 8 stroke against the best in the world, breaks jack nicholson's pga record for margin of victory. becomes the fourth youngest golfer to win two majors in a career since 1920. >> what's wrong, mika. >> i thought when mika was tweeting about that putt yesterday. >> where to tweet every shot on a single hole. >> obsessive. >> do you -- >> what's wrong? >> mika, what's wrong? >> no. i just don't -- >> don't get golf. >> people clapping for a ball in a hole. >> it's a high art form. >> and then talk about it for hours. >> you don't get that? >> i really don't. >> silly as talking about shoes

for hours. >> i don't. i'm sorry. it's serious. it's just ridiculous. >> noble sport. >> if you played you would realize -- >> i've played it. like this. >> almost impossible. >> have you seen me play golf? >> no. >> so anyway, sport ball sport ball is -- i don't know, what mitt romney -- >> sport ball. >> don't make fun of sport. >> i'm sorry. >> so when we come back, more on mitt romney's choice of paul ryan running mate, somebody no stranger to a bold vp pick, former strategist to the mccain/palin campaign, steve schmidt joins us.

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senior strategist and msnbc political analyst steve schmidt. >> thanks so much for being with us. reports are that romney fought his own staff members on the suggestions for vp. you have very famously been a part of this process before. how do you think it ended up for romney? >> i think it ended up terrific for romney. if you believe that political parties and presidential campaigns should be more than about the attainment of power, they should stand for ideas, that we should address forthrightly the deep troubles that this country has, it's a great pick and it's excited the republican party. i think that paul ryan is an extremely effective campaigner. i think we got the first glimpses of that last night on "60 minutes" and i think it's going to be be a great pick for governor romney. >> al hunt with us in washington and has a question. >> steve, what do you think it's going to mean come late october? does it affect states, does it affect turnout, does it affect

independent voters? assess that. >> the campaign right now, al, it's been so small, we've had a dialog over the last week whether governor rney is complicit in the cancer death of a woman. a campaign that the obama administration is running is distract campaign. it's a small campaign. they can't run on the record. the economy is, obviously, very tough shape. the romney campaign over the course of the summer, it's been defensive, it's been gaffe prone. he's been pummeled over the course of the month. what this pick signals is that there's going to be a very different campaign in the fall. we're moving through a very crucial period which is the convention speech and this is when both mitt romney and paul ryan addressing audiences which are going to be approximately 40 million people are going to be able to go out and explain who mitt romney is, why he's running for president and what his mission as president will be. what does he want to do as president? if he does that effectively, and if he can carry that into the

debates, we're going to head into october to late october, in a structurally very, very close race, but if mitt romney goes out there and i think he runs a substantive campaign, addresses the problems of this country, he does, for example, what chris christie has done in new jersey which is talk to the american people like adults, then i think he's got an outstanding chance to be president of the united states. he's going to have to explain how to get the country turned around, how to grow the economy, how to make life better for middle-income people in the country. >> all right. andrea mitchell is in washington, she, too, has a question. andrea? >> steve, in that adult conversation, do you think that he gets specific band explains the tax cuts and how he would pay for them and talks honestly about medicare and health issues? does he take ownership of the ryan budget and go one step farther and explain how he would pay for everything or do we deal with, you know, both sides demonizing the other on these big issues?

>> i think that he's going to need to be specific, but not so specific that it's politically suicidal. he's going to have to talk conceptually about what he wants to do. he's going to have to talk about how to make the country competitive. he's going to have to talk honestly about the looming debt crisis that we face. he's going to have to talk directly about the consequences of the $5 trillion in debt that's been added. and i think that by the time we get to mitt romney's convention speech in the end of it, we're going to have a really good sense of how he's going to run for president in the fall and i think it's going to be fundamentally different than how he's been running for president over the course of the summer which is, obviously, been disspiriting for a lot of republicans across the country. >> okay. steve schmidt, if i could ask one quick question. >> sure. >> for especially given your experience what are the risks with paul ryan? >> well, paul ryan is 42 years old. he has a national profile

amongst the national media, among people in washington, d.c. he's not very well known in the rest of the country. that means there's an opportunity for the obama campaign to go out and to define him negatively. you know, i think it's very clear where the obama campaign is going to try to go. they're going to be called radical, the plan called reckless, it's going to be a foundation of let's try to scare senior citizens, let's try to tell people that, you know, the problems that the country faces, we don't really face and that paul ryan's plan is, you know, this radical, you know, plan that's going to go out there and ruin life for every senior citizen in the country. you're going to have to respond to that. if you look at the special elections that have taken place, where republicans have lost seats under medicare attacks, they've done it because they've gotten into the fetal position when they've been hit and attacked and there's no evidence that paul ryan is going to do that. he takes these attacks head on,

he deals with them very effectively and as joe was pointing out earlier, this is someone who's had a tremendous amount of political success representing a moderate district that both bill clinton and barack obama won. >> mark halperin, pretty amazing that a guy like this who democrats are lashing out at, wins in a district that bill clinton and barack obama and other democrats have won. it's a real swing district. i also, when you talk about how mitt romney's been flat on his feet and awkward, i thought the 60 minutes discussion last night was fascinating, bring up paul ryan's medicare plan and he goes wait a second, no president has, you know, done more to slash medicare than what barack obama did, cut it $740 billion. it was a good comeback. it's demagoguery, we're talking about medicare advantage, but he had to have a response and

democrats demagog medicare too. you get a feeling they were ready for this. he seemed more confident in responding sitting next to ryan last night. i don't think they're going to sit there and allow themselves to be dem going toed. >> very ed gillespie, one of the smartest people in the republican party, that line reflects the sensibility they are going to fight back, not going to lose another election at least from their point of view on medicare as they have in the past. again, i think there's a bit of alka my with this stuff you can't anticipate but the two of them together in the 60 minutes" interview, on the stump and the announcement over the weekend, very strong, made romney -- seems to make romney a better candidate than he was before. >> jon meacham, it does. >> they dodged the tax question. >> father/son dynamic, another republican tried for but came up short on. >> reminded me of 1988 when i think president -- vice president bush was hoping for that sort of image with dan quayle and it didn't work out.

but there was clearly -- i think it's congressman ryan is the same age as romney's oldest son. >> yes. >> it's literal in that sense. the generational thing we all sort of obsess on it, but -- and mark knows this better than anybody, the retail effect of the comfort level of the nominee, if that has calmed romney, if that has given him some level of confidence, then he's going to be a better candidate. >> the debates should be interesting. >> yeah. >> steve schmidt, great to get your insight. thank you very much. >> thank you, steve. >> al hunt, thank you as well. andrea mitchell, we'll be watching you at 1:00 here on msnbc. >> thanks. >> thanks very much. >> thank you. >> al, what do you think of the bloomberg tax? that will at least pay for the military for three years. >> joe, i'm going to let you tell the mayor, okay. >> okay. >> that's a good one. still ahead, nbc's chuck todd.

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up next on mnl, "washington post" chief correspondent dan

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or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet? here's your invoice. thank you, everybody. thank you, wisconsin. it is good to be home. oh. oh. i tell you, i love wisconsin. i see my family over here. that's this half of the stadium.

i got aot of family. mark halperin and jon meacham still with us, joining us from washington, david gregory, chief correspondent of the "washington post" dan balz. good to have you both on board this morning. >> good morning. >> he's back in wisconsin. first of all, does this do anything at all, mark halperin? does it do anything to put wisconsin on the table? >> bush got close there. they have a republican governor there. ento use yachl on the right. they'll see if they can put it in play. the electoral college map does not change in any other respect at least right now except for this and i think they'll put some resources in there. >> are you surprised they passed up on ohio and the pick that a lot of us were looking at? >> i'm -- i was surprised initially. i think that portman for all his strengths would not have been an excitement pick. would have been a fine pick. they've gotten ryan through so

far as seen as readied to be president. that was the biggest gap between him and portman. as long as ryan is perceived to be ready to be president electorally this is a stronger pick than portman. >> the selection of paul ryan helped generate the largest crowds yet for the romney campaign and sparked a splash of intensity who was interrupted by a heckler. romney used the moment to tear into president obama over the negative campaigning. >> we have 23 million people -- >> [ inaudible ]. >> out of work. 23 million people -- >> usa! usa! >> you see, young man, this group here is respectful of other people's rights to be heard. and you ought to find yourself a different place to be disruptive because here we believe in listening to people with dignity and respect. look, there's no question but if you follow the campaign of barack obama, he's going to do everything in his power to make

this the lowest, meanest, negative campaign in history. we're not going to let that happen. this is going to be a campaign about ideas, the future of america. a campaign about greatness, america's future for your children, for the world. mr. president, take your campaign out of the gutter. let's talk about the real issues that america faces. >> wow. wait, what's happened? i mean jon, he's turned into a candidate. can you believe that? >> no. >> what happened? >> well, be he must feel that the party is his to some extent. >> wow. >> he must feel in control. legitimized in some way. >> bigger, much bigger crowds. >> much bigger crowds. seems a lot more confident. that's about as good as we've seen him since new hampshire. remember his new hampshire speech. watching that and said -- >> that was good. >> david axelrod, senior adviser to president obama's campaign says mitt romney is in no position to reprimand democrats

when the negative campaigning goes both ways. >> how does mitt romney in the very week he's running an ad he approves, at the end and he says i'm mitt romney and approve this message, millions and millions of dollars accusing the president of removing the work requirement from welfare which every single person who's looked at it, every expert, news organization, every fact checker has said is patently false and is lecturing people on the quality of campaigns. he ought to be ashamed of himself. tell his own campaign and the commercials that he controls take that off it's not true, it's not fair. when he does that, maybe he'll have some standing to lecture other people on the quality of the campaign. >> okay. meanwhile, mitt romney and the republican national committee are out with a new ad this morning doubling down on their criticism of the president's position when it comes to work for welfare. >> do you support work for welfare? barack obama has a long history of opposing work for welfare. >> i was not a huge supporter of

the federal plan that we signed in 1996. >> on july 12th, obama quietly ended work requirements for welfare. you wouldn't have to work or train for a job. mitt romney strongly believes work must be part of welfare. the romney plan for a stronger middle class. it will put work back in welfare. >> i'm mitt romney and i approve this message. >> david gregory, you could have turned the sound down on "meet the press" yesterday and seen that this welfare reform ad is really getting to the obama campaign. >> did you want to do that? it was fiery. >> why were they worked up? >> they're take something tough shots. over the weekend mitt romney elevated his rhetoric on this saying that president obama disrespects the office of the presidency with some of these super pac ads, in particular the one we were talking about last week before the ryan pick about the man who lost his wife after she had been laid off from a company that bain had invested

in and ultimately shut down, after mitt romney had left. so, you know, this is the battle for who can get higher up on the ladder of self-righteousness. and i don't know for all the talk over the past couple days, that we're going to have this elevated debate on big issues in the campaign, i don't think all of that stuff is going to go away yet. >> probably not. we will be finding probably, if it is gutter politics, gutter politics over medicare, social security, and debt instead of bain capital, tax returns, and reverend wright or whatever. let's -- i want to read from dan balz column, romney shakes the race with a pick of ryan and then get dan's response. romney/ryan ticket will help clarify the choices for voters in november. rarely have the two parties presented such a stark contrast in visions as now appears to be the case. those competing visions could produce after a summer of often

small-minded tactics, the kind of big debate about the country's future that both obama and romney have said this campaign should be about. such a debate will generate as much heat as light however, which is the risk that comes with putting ryan on the ticket. romney is now assumed ownership of ryan's budget tarry plan and provisions for reigning in the costs of entitlement programs. democrats will attack it and its author as vigorously as they've tried to savage romney's business background and personal finances. dan, stark choices for voters this fall. >> i think that's absolutely right, joe. i mean when you look at where these two candidates are, on almost every issue, particularly having to do with the economy, they are very, very far apart. you know, it's taxes, it's entitlement reform, it's the emphasis on debt and deficit, it's the approach to fixing the economy and creating jobs. they are in very different places and they speak in very different ways about it.

and the choice of ryan does elevate this into the possibility that you would get that kind of debate. i mean in a sense we've had that debate since the 2010 election. once the republicans took over, that's the debate that we've been heading towards in this campaign. we had not gotten it up to this point. this creates the possibility, but i do have to say, i think that both of these campaigns are going to do very tough campaigning as well. this is not going to be a kind of a high-minded oxford style debate. this is going to be a very tough debate and they're going to be taking shots at one another. but in terms of what's at stake, i think that the ryan choice does symbolize that in a significant way that we didn't have up to this moment. >> david, it's willie, front page of the "wall street journal" says ryan pick jolts race. we're just the monday after the decision. we're obviously talking about it quite a bit. if you look out a bit long term, how long does the jolt last not just in terms of energy but electoral point of view? does he change the map at all,

help in the small districts that will decide the election in ohio and florida? does he really change the game long term? >> i think he could. i mean i think, you know, look what we've been talking about over the past ten minutes. paul ryan already seems like a totally natural pick. it makes perfect sense that he was the pick. as recently as last thursday and friday, there was still all of this caution among those of us who cover this and certainly within the republican establishment as well, and even people we know on the romney campaign who thought this would be way too dangerous. i think he could change the map. he's changing mitt romney as a candidate. let's remember some of the core functions that ryan is going to have once we get beyond this initial evaluation stage. can he go out there and energize the base? you bet. can he give a tough speech attacking president obama? absolutely. can he make romney a better candidate? yeah, he can help to really build momentum going into the convention. and you know, jon made a reference to what president bush

senior was trying to accomplish to dan quayle, you know, for any of us who have covered paul ryan and inside washington, people know how serious he is, how smart he is, he may be controversial on some of his issues, but there's no question about his hefts. those are questions that, of course, dog the bush/quayle ticket and as we know more recently the mccain/palin ticket. that is not an issue here. you have somebody that can sit mitt romney down and teach him things about how to approach the budget. >> i want to ask joe a question. you've talked about whether this is like '76 or -- hoping to be more like 1980 with a clear choice. do you think when you clear away the atmospherics, looking at what the president is likely to try to do if he were re-elected on the budget and romney and ryan would try to do is this now that stark choice? >> i think we've moved to 1978. >> going backwards. >> howard jarvis is -- we've

moved from '76, ford versus carter towards the reagan carter choice in '80. howard jarvis is starting to get petitions for prop 13. i think look, it ceases to be a campaign about nothing when you have paul ryan, a guy over the past 15 years, who's done more to symbolize fiscal restraint, even if he fell short on a vote here or a vote there, and dan, you've been, you know, you've been covering this for quite a long time, paul ryan has been at the epicenter of this battle. i remember bumping into you several times in '95, '96, '97 when this battle was raging on the hill. paul ryan has been there in these debt wars either as a staffer or right in the middle on the floor. >> joe, that's right. and i think that one of the things that's interesting about the choice of him as romney's running mate, is that he's not afraid to take these issues on and he's not afraid to take the president on. we saw that happen when the

president went to speak to house republicans. they engaged in a little back and forth that showed that ryan is prepared to push back at anything that the democrats throw at him on this. i think that it's helpful for romney in that sense to have somebody who is as robust as paul ryan can be in defending and articulating what they want to do. there is no question that the ryan budget is a controversial document. and you want the best defender of that out there. romney has embraced this approach whether he picked ryan or not. and for the democrats, they're enthusiastic about going after it now because they think that with romney -- with ryan on the ticket it's easier to make the case that he's bought completely into it. with ryan on the ticket, i think it does make romney a better candidate. i remember seeing the two of them together just outside of madison before the wisconsin primary, and you could instantly see the chemistry between the two and how much more comfortable romney was as a

candidate on the stage with ryan at his side and we've seen that this weekend. now if that continues through the campaign, it's going to be an important asset for romney. but the question is, how aggressively will they make this fight over medicare in particular, because i think that's where the vulnerability is going to be. >> mark halperin. >> go ahead, david. >> i want to add on to that. i think it's important, how they are going to argue this case. you know, i was initially struck that the chairman of the party who was on "meet the press" yesterday was not yet quite positioning himself to make the most robust case for ryan and the fact that there are various iterations of ryan's view on medicare, his original budget, you know, with a voucher program or premium supports, really to change medicare as you know, now he's working with ron wyden, the democrat from oregon and this is romney's position, keep medicare as you like it or go in and have some choice. we know where all the land mines

are because don't forget, 2004, president bush campaigns on a similar structure for social security with the private accounts and paul ryan was so robustly behind that, he was really an author of it, that even the bush team had to sort of push him back a little bit. this is still the question of how they're going to go out and argue ryan's case here on medicare. >> and mark halperin, big picture, i mean isn't there an argument that some of the policies paul ryan is behind haven't worked for decades, actually? and where are we in terms of tax policy? the 1% versus the middle class in this ticket now that we see the two of them standing together? they define the campaign perhaps in a negative light for the struggling middle class, do they not? >> there's a lot of things in the ryan plan that the -- mitt romney supports like -- >> was that a leading question or not? >> no. >> thank god we aren't in court. the judge would have had an aneurysm.

>> what? >> going to the gavel. >> leading question -- >> bold choice. >> tax increaseses for the wealthy popular, preserving medicare, popular. >> let me add on to it. >> please do not talk about locusts are going to descend from the heavens and eat flesh from middle class americans. >> doesn't he represent some of the problems? >> not nothing has happened because of paul ryan and like-minded people, nancy pelosi and harry reid and barack obama are committed to cutting the deficit more than they would be. the terms of the debate since 2009 into the mid terms has been how do we reduce the deficit and paul ryan has been a leader in putting that pressure on. >> and -- >> sorry. we still got a real question about whether the congress, either this one or something like it, will do any of this. remember we -- there was a failed grand bargain. ryan was, you know, speaker boehner was sort of kind about ryan but doesn't throw his arms around the budget. >> right. >> and ryan himself dissented

from simpson-bowles. there's a lot of daylight between these camps. the question is, can we get to a place where the camps are actually debating something important or is it going to become demagogic be immediately? >> paul ryan's budget balance the budget when. >> when willie's kids are graduating from -- >> clarifying that. >> 2040. >> and the reason why is, because deficits have gone up, we've had trillio dollar deficits for the past four years. barack obama is, you know, i attack george bush for eight years for spending too much, barack obama in four years is probably going to catch up with george w. bush. $5 trillion added to the national debt over the past four years. let's have a debate on the debt. >> and tax policy is a huge part of this. we've talked ability medicare but the question of, do you reform the tax code, do you eliminate deductions? the ryan plan does a lot with

mortgage interest, that sort of thing. these are fundamental questions and it's not something that's going to get, i think, a very intellectually rich debate. >> it seems to me, though, mark halperin, mitt romney's going to have to fill in the blanks on his tax plan. where is he going to pay for these tax cuts? >> i don't think he intends to and i don't know he'll have to. they will try to turn back to talking about the president. >> they're talking about getting rid of certain deductions. >> he thinks they're going to cost nothing. >> neither ryan or romney have specified what deductions they would limit or cut back and romney told me when i interviewed him a few months ago, he said i'm not going to say because if i say i'll be attacked and i learned that lesson from chris christie. i don't think they intend to be more specific and talk of ryan being added to the ticket means we're going to have a adult debate about a grand bargain and entitlements and taxes i don't know that will happen. the four debate moderators who will be named soon, we will see if there are four, they're going

to be hugely important in trying to make this a an adult discussion. those four 90-minute sessions will be our best hope to have these adjudicated to the american people. >> that's going to be fascinating. >> david gregory, thank you very much. dan balz, thank you as well. we'll look for your column in "the washington post." >> thanks, guys. >> an nbc news political director chuck todd who broke the vp story at midnight on saturday morning. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. ♪ [music plays] ♪ [music plays] ♪ [music plays] the blissful pause just before that rich sweetness touches your lips. the delightful discovery,

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no one disputes that president obama inherited a difficult situation. and in his first two years with his party in complete control of washington, he passed nearly every item on his agenda. but that didn't make things better. in fact, we find ourselves in a nation facing debt, doubt, and despair.

>> welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now from washington, nbc news chief white house correspondent, political director and host of "the daily run down" chuck todd, good morning. >> good morning to you. >> i want to get your take on the pick and what it means but also hear how this came to pass. you and your team and our political unit down there broke this story late saturday night. walk me through those hours on saturday leading up to the news? >> well, you know, i would say you have to go back three or four days before when there was just nothing but a drip drip drip of clues that seemed to be, wait a minute, at first it was is it the short list is more than portman and pawlenty, there's somebody else and then it was clear it was portman, pawlenty and ryan. then the interview i did with romney which most of it is for this biographical documentary we're doing right before the convention, but when he left that clue about what he wanted in his vice presidential pick it was like, okay, that sounds like ryan am i overreading and

talking to some other sources, they were surprised at how bold, you know, and even in hindsight, but even then they were surprised that romney said what he said at the time when he said he was looking for somebody that had a vision, add vision to his campaign, add to the political discourse. when you look at the short list that seemed to be a neon sign pointing to ryan. and then so, you know, in any of these situations, look, we had -- we don't want to give away too many of our trade secrets here but one thing we do really well here at nbc is we're pretty good at sharing information and that is -- that's the best way you do -- you work when you have one of these stories. >> a lot of the reporting on this says that the story goes that mitt romney kind of overruled some of his advisors, that this pick came from mitt romney. is that spin from his campaign after the fact or consistent with what you heard? >> it is consistent. it was romney that kept bringing

ryan back into the top half of the conversation. when it came to the vp pick. it wasn't that -- look, there was -- the campaign, you know, you pay strategists to give you their opinions. they were more split on this. not as if romney was alone in pushing ryan. there were folks inside the campaign that said you know what, ryan could add energy, could give definition. a lot of good things ryan can bring to the table. wasn't like you're out there on your own, buddy but it's clear and i think this is more than spin, this was romney that pushed this because there was a personal chemistry that -- and i think you see it right now. mitt romney already looks more comfortable as candidate in the 48 hours than he has arguably in six years. there was something about ryan and part it is ryan believes romney who he himself is when he looks in the mirror. he sees himself in ryan, more comfortable level. at the end of the day it was

coming down to ryan or pawlenty, that was really the final two. portman was the -- was the analytic pick if you will. there was a lot of upside to portman potentially with ohio but the upside was small, no downside, and -- but this for romney, this was about personal loyalty and friendship with pawlenty versus somebody he saw -- that he saw in himself and that turned out to be ryan. >> second time that tim pawlenty has been first runner up miss america. >> poor guy. >> so close. >> by the way, joe, one year to the day of the iowa straw poll. >> wow. >> which is when he dropped out. >> yeah. >> chuck, want to ask you about two things that haven't played out fully yet. what do you think ryan's going to do in talking about romney care and how he's going to finesse that and the other candidates like senate candidate in florida, other people, do you

thiyou republicans try to distant themselves from the ryan budget. >> that's what's interesting to watch. you do something that's very fun, which is you'll start in a week and say where are we at the end of the week on x. i have to say, i'm fascinated to see where are we on the issue of medicare on friday. i think you're going to see massive litigation on this over the next five days. and, you know, does ryan become synonymous with medicare? just -- just, you know, with a negative on medicare? does that -- if that is going to be the case we may see that as soon as this week. >> by the way -- >> or are they effective in at least blunting this. >> we were talking about it earlier, i thought romney last night for the first time i've seen in the campaign, hit back hard fast and effectively using the line that house republican candidates used in 2010, that

helped them have the biggest landslide legislative landslide. wait a second. you're talking about our plan cutting medicare? well you cut medicare by $750 billion. nobody's cut medicare more than -- i, of course, personally have huge problems with those sort of arguments, but democrats and republicans have been doing it for years. >> that's my point. >> it's a very effective push back. >> well, i don't know if it's an effective push back. i think it's a -- because -- what have we learned, you know, in history. bill clinton demagoged medicare in '96, we know the results of that. >> yeah. >> republicans demagoged medicare in 2010, we know the results of that. we're having a battle to see who's going to demagog the medicare issue in 2012. the problem that i think romney and ryan are going to have, is ryan keeps all those cuts or

let's remember, most of those cuts are what i remember republicans screaming about this. joe, you were one of them back in '96, they're not cuts, it's slowing the growth. when is slowing the growth a cut. what the president is doing is slowing the growth. well, guess what? ryan keeps that in his plan and then says, hey, let's change the way it works. and it's that second part. >> yeah. >> that i think is going to be -- i mean so the spin, it sounds good when you say it, until you say well, then are you going to restore all of it? no. >> here is mitt romney and paul ryan last night on "60 minutes" talking about medicare. >> there's only one president that i know of in history that robbed medicare $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call obama care. think of that. what paul ryan and i have talked about is saving medicare, is providing people greater choice

in medicare, making sure it's there for current seniors. no changes by the way for current seniors or those nearing retirement but young people down the road and saying we're going to give you a bigger choice. in america, the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. that's how we make medicare work down the road. >> you have to do a little selling on that and explaining. >> our point is, we need to preserve their benefits because government made promises to them that they organized their retirements around to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us that are younger. we think these reforms are good reforms. they started from the clinton commission. >> you said wow. what's wrong? >> under brian's plan, which is i guess a good blueprint to understand what they think or whatever romney has out there, what would saving medicare mean exactly? and what would they replace obama care with? i'm sure they have a plan for that. >> i would be careful -- they're using the word choice about we're trying to give people a

choice. you know, when you hit the age of where you want medicare, you're no longer interested in choices. you're interested in security. you know, your life -- in your life span you want choices up to a certain point in your life and then you want security at a certain point in your life. on different aspects of it. that is, again, i go back, we're already hearing the demagogic words on both sides, i mean rob, blood, the only person that has blood that's what ryan has previously used on "meet the press," we're hearing it from the obama campaign, gut medicare, get rid of all that. >> yes. >> the words are coming and whether we actually get the real debate on how to do this, i don't know. i have to say, i just -- you know, this is going to be, i think, a rough -- a rough period for romney in figuring out how are they going to get around this? >> answer the question without answering the questions.

>> right. >> i think i agree. >> like how andrea got behind chuck, just duck it. duck the question. >> i really hope this doesn't happen, but something mark said a second ago, there's a chance that this impoverishes the debate over entitlements because romney is not going to be specific and the president probably just can't help it on a purely political level to speak in the broadest of generalities about entitlement reform which makes it seem extreme when we know most people know, we have been talking about 15 minutes what we have to do. >> talk to peterson, look at the concord coalition, center left, center right, think tanks, they will all tell you medicare and medicaid together within the next 20 years consumed 100% of all taxable, all taxes that come into the federal government will be devoured by medicare and medicaid over the next 20 years. it's fact. this is math. this is math.

no money for roads, no money for police, no money for the military, no money for education, no money for college grants, no money for investment, no money for r and d, no money for nothing, no money whatsoever, medicare and medicaid together consume the entire budget. the entire budget. that doesn't even take care of the interest payments that we're paying on this $17 trillion that we owe. >> right. >> so there's no question, jon meacham, this is the fiscal of our time and neither side is talking about it and so let's have a debate about medicare. >> and one of the tests, i wonder what chuck is hearing, one of the tests seems to me is what's the distance, what's the gap between what people will say to you off the record and what they say publicly? and -- >> it's a huge gap. mika and i can go -- we can go into any democratic office or any republican office on the

senate or house side and we have over the past five years and they say the same thing, yeah, we got to do something on medicare. we understand. everybody. doesn't matter whether it's the most conservative republican or most liberal democrat, most powerful senator or the back bencher on the house, they all know, has anybody talked to anybody behind closed doors that says medicare is fine? because i sure haven't. >> or the whole -- >> but joe, the challenge is, the public doesn't think medicare is broken. right. >> the public is dead wrong. 70% of tea partiers -- >> so you have to figure out how to give them something -- this what is makes what ryan is doing politically harder. he's saying we know you like medicare, medicare frankly is popul popular, because it's secure and there and all this, you have to figure out how to still provide the security and, you know, in saying that you may have to go to private insurance market to a lot of people is not security in

this. what i'm surprised is, we're not having the small reform conversation, which is means testing and raise the age, right. that's like to me sort of -- nobody wants to talk about that. and yet that's -- that is sort of only step one and that could be the simplest step. >> that's step one. i just think you have to say, if you're 50 -- you're 50 or older, 52, 53 you're going to get your medicare. just -- the way that it -- the way that the system is right now, you're going to get it. if you're younger than that, we're going to have to reform it in a way that saves it for future generations and saves our budget. but it's just not as -- but chuck, you are right. i mean when we go out and talk, you know, somebody will stand up and say, oh medicare's not that bad. if we just cut foreign -- >> if they like it -- >> if we just cut foreign aid or just cut pbs or -- >> we would be out of -- we would be out of the hole. >> one of the things that's so

crazy about the welfare ad that david was going on about, on "meet the press," david axelrod, is what a small percentage of actual money that is. even if it were true, it's not true, it's an old debate. i fear that we're about to run smack into a mid 1980s debate. >> i always get people like setting their hair on fire when they say it, it's middle-class entitlements that pose the greatest risk in the long run. it's medicare and it's social security. and you know why? because there are hundreds of millions of people who depend on that, or will depend on that, over the next generation, to be able to stay in their apartments, to take care of their health care. i'm not saying this to say we should slash it and throw people into the street, but we've got to talk reality. >> let's be honest. >> medicare and medicaid are the two greatest risks to this country fiscally and we've got to reform and save them and

social security is not that far behind. liberals love to say social security is fine. it's not fine. it's not solvent. the trust fund is bleeding money. it's going to go belly up too. it's going to -- longer down the road than medicare and medicaid. but americans don't want to hear that. >> other problem is it takes a crisis. we've always found a way to find the money. we'll borrow more money. we always find a way somehow. we're going to get to a point where we can't find a way anymore and it might be too late. >> and the problem with this crisis is, as we've seen in greece, as we've seen in other european countries, you know when -- you know when you find out that you have a crisis it's like when you're halfway down the cliff and you're about to splat. >> it's a slow motion, nonrecessionary. it may not be a depression. that's what's so insidious about it. it's an insidious crisis that's going to affect our ability to grow and we're seeing that right now. >> the second we hit that -- that point, and the world

markets turn on us, because they realize that the dollar's worthless, because we have right now and dave walker's coming up, we've got over $70 trillion in liabilities facing us, $70 trillion, that suddenly the dollar is worthless, there's a run on it and we go straight down. that's why, willie, you're right, there is no pearl harbor we can bounce back from. this is a crisis you figure out you're in it when halfway down the cliff. >> it's insidious. >> chuck todd, thank you so much. >> insidious -- >> two hours, i got two hours after you today. >> wow. >> congratulations, great work. >> you know, they're making it up. got to make up time from the olympics. >> chuck, thank you. still ahead the science of sleep and why missing out on much needed rest impacts everything from our health to our relationships. keep it right here on "morning joe." [ obama ] i'm barack obama and i approve this message.

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up next, rebuilding america's crumbling classrooms. parade magazine looks at two communities who fixed their

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145 past the hour. look who's here, 40% of the u.s. public schools are in poor or bad condition. the cover story of sunday's "parade" magazine titled "rebuilding america's schools" looks at how that crumbling infrastructure is impairing learning for millions. here with us, editor in chief of "parade" magazine, maggie murphy. >> thank you. thank you for having me. >> you lookat two cases. >> we wanted to focus back to school at less curriculum but more buildings and found two schools, not urban schools where there's been a lot of focus, but a suburban and rural school that

tackled this problem head on interestingly. one santa ana, a building built in the '30s, very grand but not falling apart, not servicing its community. the other a rural building in richardsville outside of bowling green in kentucky who basically took a building and made it the most green building in america. they actually sell power back to the county because they produce enough energy. >> how are they doing it, shrinking budgets, no money for things like education? >> in santa ana they did two things. they did to a bond issue which is something a county has to be careful about but they also raised property taxes. in the community where, you know, you're talking about a big latina immigrant population but every house was assessed $100, the community, the schools saw people collecting cans to make the payment, but this immigrant population said, we need a better school for our kids. in richardsville what they did

was they purposely set out to create a school that would create more capital. so by creating a totally green school, what they can do is sell power back to the grid and they used geo thermal heating and you're going to love this, mika, they also used steam convention ovens so no deep fryers. >> i do love it. that's fantastic. >> how do they get the tater tots? >> maybe the tater tots are off the menu? >> what? >> look how beautiful the school is. >> these are great schools. the other thing that was really interesting, is that -- >> look at the classrooms. >> the learning, the reading, attendance, kids have -- are out less sick because they're not getting sinus infections and the issue is that we have huge problems across the country. 40% of the schools are over 40 years old. we have 100,000 schools. you know, this is about coming together in sort of saying okay, how do we fix this problem and it takes parents, communities,

national, local efforts to really sort of say, how do we make these schools better? and being smart about it. >> so jon, the cost of this, according to the article, to bring buildings up to date, up to standards, $270 billion. an awful lot of money. money we could find over time, but the united states right now spends more money -- this is one of the things that i'm so glad you guys are reporting on this, because the united states k through 12 education system spends more money per pupil than any country on the planet, than any country on the planet. there's not a close second. and yet, you drive through some neighborhoods and you look at these schools falling apart and you wonder, where are we investing the money? >> yeah. it's a moral and economic issue. it's competitiveness issue obviously.

>> it is such a competitiveness issue. >> the great civil rights issue of our time is public education and whether we honor the commitment to quote congressman ryan from this weekend equality. and guarantee equality of outcome. we've entered a social contract for 160 years or so in this country that every child has a right at a public education, to rise in the world according to their ability and if we don't honor that, we're breaking that compact. the question is, what are we spending the money on? clearly, there is a disconnect between the amount of money and the way it is spent. >> talking about hiring more teachers. you could go and -- >> we're spending so much money, but we're not spending it

wisely. >> in warren county in the kentucky example, because they took on old building, 1930s building, and basically built a new building, they saved over $7 million in energy costs and when budgets came down, they were able to not cut teachers because they spent just a lot less money own heating and maintaining the schools, so the question is, where are you going to spend the money and can you spend it now and for the long-term an the other thing, kids took us through. the reporter through these schools. little kid, carter ford, says he goes home at night and creates lego versions of his school with solar panels. from day one, these kids are understanding how you build things and isn't that one of the core ideas of america? >> these communities, they did it the right way, these two

communities. i remember the story, the l.a. school that -- no, no, the one that they, the most expensive high school in america. >> oh, yes. >> like $270 million or something like that. how -- who was in charge of keeping an eye on this and making sure that they spent their money wisely and invested in education in a way that would help the kids, parents and teachers? >> in warren county, it was a bipartis bipartisan effort. republican representative said if we spend well on buildings, we'll save money. so i think there was a concept going in, we are going to do this in a smart, economic way. i think in santa ana, they basically, the community decided they would pay more. they raised taxes and so, it was a combination.

they also took federal funds for rebuilding schools, so it's a combination of things. it's also just making sure that you're right, joe. there is a fiscal responsibility. you can't just build anything. it's got to work. for the teachers, for the financial health of the community. >> and if you go in there saying we can make the building more efficient and get it up to standards and you are. >> you're going to save money. >> looking at the bottom line. >> and you're going to get kids that are more motivated. graduation rates in santa ana have risen. you're going to put kids into the community who are going to help raise the profile of the community, be more successful. >> and teachers are going to be fighting to get in. >> teachers want to be in places where they can really use the environment they're in to education properly and these are very positive success stories. there are more out there.

the article online lists places that you can sort of take charge of your own community schools. >> maggie murphy, thank you so much. you're watching "morning joe," brewed by starbucks. it's something you're born with. and inspires the things you choose to do. you do what you do... because it matters. at hp we don't just believe in the power of technology. we believe in the power of people when technology works for you. to dream. to create. to work. if you're going to do something. make it matter. well hello, welcome to hotels.com. summer road trip, huh? uhuh yep uch let's find you a room. at hotels.com, you'll always find the perfect hotel. because we only do hotels. wow. i like that. nice

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coming up, david walker will

be here onset, ezra klein joins the conversation. mitt romney's choice of paul ryan has energized republicans and democrats alike. >> yes. >> for different reasons. we'll talk about it next on "morning joe." this is the plan for back to school. introducing share everything, only from verizon. a shareable pool of data to power up to 10 different devices. add multiple smartphones to your plan, so everyone in your family can enjoy unlimited talk and text. the first plan of its kind. share everything. get your student a samsung galaxy nexus for $99.99.

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you take a look at new york city. we have mark halperin, john meacham, author of thomas jefferson, the art of power. and in washington, andrea mitchell and al hunt. after weeks of intense speculation, mitt romney over the weekend announced his choice for running mate. congressman paul ryan. >> do you believe he did it? he took a chance. >> you know what, he did. it was bold. i will say that. s. >> bold? >> nbc news political director chuck todd was the first to break the story friday night into saturday morning and a few hours later in norfolk, virginia, mitt romney introduce ed paul ryan. the two shared the stage sunday in front of a big, high energy crowd in high port, north carolina. the pair then capped off the weekend at a rally in ryan's home state of wisconsin in front

of a crowd of nearly 10,000 people. a visibly emotional paul ryan thanked the people for their support, but quickly went on to attack against president obama's policies. >> we are at that proverbial fork in the road in america. the president came into office with so much hope, offering so much change, he got the power he wanted. he got his party in control. he passed almost every item on his agenda. it's law now. and now, we're seeing the results. a country with a health care system that's about to be taken over. a country with four years of trillion dollar deficits. a country in economic stagnation. >> president obama reacted yesterday from chicago. >> my opponent chose his running mate. the idealogical leader of the

republicans in congress, mr. paul ryan. i want to congratulate -- no, no, no. i want to congratulate congressman ryan. i know him. i welcome him to the race. congressman ryan is a decent man. he is a family man. he is an articulate spokesman for governor romney's vision, but it's a vision that i fundamentally disagree with. >> willie, doesn't that upset you? seriously. >> stop that. >> i'm sick of it. >> that's stupid. >> why does it have to be an articulate white man? why can't it just be a white man? i bet you're going to say he's clean. >> first of all, joe, i'd like your comments. do you think he's taking ownership of the budget. which some consider a liability

and is extreme. >> it's paul ryan's job as budget director and yes, they'll try to attach it, but it's mitt romney's campaign. >> can mitt romney separate himself from paul ryan's budget? >> i just want to say overall though, this is the first time i've been excited by something the national republican party has done in well over a decade. paul ryan comes from a small group of budget, either jedis or dorks, geeks, whatever. there couldn't be a tighter fit idealogically at least through what a small group of us started trying to do in 1994, tom coburn or mark sanford or pat toomey, who came a few years later. guys that yes, who are conservative socially, but we talk about the budget. we came to washington because of

the budget. we are driven by the fears of the budget deficit sork paul ryan, there could not be a better pick. this is the first time that the republican party has done something in over a decade that i go well, you know what? that may be my party. that may be the party that i joined when ronald reagan inspired me in 1979. 1980. >> it certainly makes it a real conversation. i find it exciting as well. >> by the way, did you see some of the people on the sunday shows on the left? >> salivating. >> it's a great campaign because people on the left are salivating. some of them are making fools of themselves. they're overreaching. trying to demonize this guy, but it's a great race because look at me excited as a small government conservative while progressives that believe in big government are saying that this

is the best pick for them. let's start a real campaign. >> so, let me ask you one question then because you have talked about how telling temperatupeople the truth can ultimately win. do you think that his views and his budget on medicare and medicaid especially will work in some of these really important states that have older populations like pennsylvania and florida? >> i've said on this show, you do one thing at a time. you talk about mass. you don't turn something into a voucher program. we'll see what mitt romney adopts from paul ryan and how he takes it, but paul ryan wants to slow down the rate of growth for medicare, medicaid, social security, guess what? we have to do it. now, do you do that while turning it into a voucher program? no. but as paul ryan said to bill clinton and when they get caught in the micro phone, when clinton was saying good job, it was just a starting point. i wanted to start the

conversation, so the conversation has been started. i'm very surprised at mitt romney for what he did. >> the budget road map paul ryan created is becoming a lightening rod on both sides. the plan cuts deficit spending by 5.3 trillion over ten years, but would not balance the budget into the 2040. it also reduces the tax rate. on the wealthy. from 35 to 25% and changes the number of tax brackets from 6 to 2, but the place where democrats are likely to hit ryan the hardest is is on its medicare provisions. >> you guys have fun all you want. >> what? >> keep talking. >> you think this is fun to talk about? >> i don't think at the end of the day it matters because it's mitt romney's policies, not paul ryan's. let's go around and i want to get everybody's reaction. john meacham. paul ryan, vp pick, what do you

think? >> i agree with you. interesting this happened since romney emerged and beat really perry challenge, to have been the most plausible. i think that it's a conversation i agree when it started, one that requires a lot of care and feeding. it's going to be really easy for r democrats to demagogue and for romney to waiver. and wobble on what it really means. so, there's a responsibility at this point. and i think it's one the race itself will have to come up with some kind of dynamic to keep it from falling into predictable and therefore counterproductive terms. you don't want the democrats saying he's going to throw your grandmother in the snow. >> and that requires mitt romney to come up with his medicare plan so he can say that was paul's plan in congress. this is my plan.

when i become president of the united states. >> and so the president has a responsibility not to make reform a dem gocic issue. romney has to do something he doesn't like doing in his presidential phase of his life, which is be specific. >> al hunt, what's your reaction? >> well, joe, as they say in politics, all politics is local. in journalism, too, oth than chris christie, i think think of a more anxious choice. i disagree with bit with john. i don't think it's just demagoguery. and you can join. it, i think lines are drown more clearly, having said that and thinking ryan is a good choice, an interesting choice, on october 20th, we're not going to be debating the ryan budget.

we're going to be debating mitt romney and barack obama. >> okay, andrea mitchell, your take. >> it is the most exciting choice because i didn't think he was ever going to go chr christie. it is first of all, i remember a very smart guy saying that back in 1995, when he was a member of congress, that there was one staff guy in the room and it was paul ryan. because he knew everything. they would turn to ryan and he would know where to go, how to move. at a time that was revolutionary on the house republican side, so he is that smart. he has a more compassionate face. he reminds a lot of us of jack kemp, so he has that hef. he has an extraordinary family. >> what andrea is talking about, i was saying that when we first

got in in '94, you had about 10, 15 of us trying to figure out how to dismantle the entire federal government and we allowed one staff member in. paul ryan. like 23 years old at the time and he was allowed in because he knew how to do everything. >> whipper snapper. >> brilliant guy. >> he sat down last night, their first joint interview, with bob schieffer and they talked about the budget. >> no question your campaign has been trying to make this election a referendum on barack obama. now, some people are saying you are making it a referendum on paul ryan's budget. >> well, i have my budget plan as you know that i've put out and that's the budget plan that we're going to run on. at the same time, we have the record of president obama. if people think by the way, their utility bill has gone down, they should vote for him. if they think jobs are more plentiful, they should vote for

him. >> there's only one president i know of in history that robbed medicare to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call obama care. think of that. what paul ryan and i have talked about is saving medicare, making sure it's there. no changes for current seniors, but looking for young people down the road and saying we're going to give you a bigger choice in america. the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. >> you're going to have to do a little selling. explain. >> our point is we need to preserve their benefits because government made promises that they've organized their retirements around. in order to make sure that we can do that -- there have bipart son orgin. they started from the clinton commission. >> mark halperin, this is obviously mitt romney's campaign, but isn't the choice of paul ryan a passive

endorsement of at least his governing philosophy? >> an endorsement he's already made, his governing philosophy to run on. if you took 18 metrics to say he's a vice presidential pick good, they had at least 15 of them. it's great optics. talking abouthat in the event and in that interview. the the three things are one is the budget. and whether ryan will be defined by himself with mitt romney as too extreme on budgetary choices. two is will people see him as ready to be president and the last one is can he build independent voters? right now, people like joe wgeo will and joe scarborough are enthusiastic about this pick, but we don't know if he's going to appeal to independent voters. >> for me, again, as a republican, john seeing his party not only go the wrong way,

but also at the same time, becomes less concerned fiscally is seen as more conservative, more entrenched, more unyielding and southern. think about it. since 1988, the republican party and you can look at the electoral map. we have been closing ourself off in the south. we have become the party of lee atwater. dick armey. look at this ticket. a guy from massachusetts and a guy from wisconsin. americans aren't going to walk into the booth thinking about that, but i'm just telling you, it's a critical move. we have hunched out of my home territory to deep south for the first time in a long time. it's beyond the sun belt. the tone.

tonally, there's nothing unfortunately, the sort of -- we're getting beyond that for this election. that's good for the republicans. >> it is good for the republicans, the country, because you don't want regional parties. we had those in the mid 1800s and you see how well that turned out. so having national parties, you know, one argument for getting rid of the lek troll college is you have national elections and candidates have to go to each state and make the case, so this that sense, having a massachusetts republican, now, this is a massachusetts republican who act as though he's from alabama. i mean, let's be clear. >> let's just face it. the guy wouldn't really fit in at crimson tide football games, which is why this is still a pretty close race. they don't serve grey poupon.

>> by picking a catholic from the upper midwest, you show there's something more there. >> coming up next, with paul ryan putting medicare reform back in the spotlight, which is the best way to fix the debt ridden entitlement program? we'll crunch the numbers with david walker, also, ezra klein will join us. also ahead, the the science of sleep. one author tells us how we can avoid getting too little rest and why heavy doses of ambien isn't a solution. what do you do? wow. >> that puts you down. >> let's go to bill karins. >> good morning, everyone. we are watching a nice, quiet weather pattern to start our monday. much of the eastern seaboard is

dry. the west is dry. we've kind of gotten rid on out of big heat wave, but we need a lot of rain. cool weather today. we love this in the ohio valley. only going to be in the 70s from indianapolis to chicago. thunderstorms this morning from hit l rock now just to the south of memphis and also crossing the mississippi and ohio rivers into areas of tennessee and kentucky. eventually, that will make its way to areas like louisville. 72. that's it for a high in chicago. you couldn't even buy a day in the 70s for the first two months of the sullivan mmer. still warm in areas in california. enjoy the low humidity on the east coast. tomorrow, that heat and humidity returns for you. washington, d.c., what a beautiful morning. you're watching "morning joe","

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the tough question of your campaign has been trying make this election a referendum on barack obama. now, some people are saying you are making it the referendum on paul ryan's budget. >> well, i have my budget plan as you know that i've put out and that's the budget plan that we're going to run on. at the same time, we have the record of president obama. if people think their utility

bill has gone down, they should vote for him. if they think jobs are more plentiful, they should vote for him. >> that was mitt romney talking about the impact of the ryan budget plan on his campaign and joining us now, mark zuckerman, chairman and publisher of the new york daily news. also, dave walker, ceo of the comeback america initiative. joining us from washington, msnbc policy analyst, ezra klein. >> let's start with you. the ryan pick. a good choice, bad choice? what do you think? >> he wasn't my choice to be honest with you because i was working with -- but having seen the way it's work edworked, i t it's a good choice. the issue that i think is the number one issue, the fiscal issues of this country and what it means for the country's future. >> why wasn't he your choice is this. >> i didnthink he was going to

broad enough reach. but he e seems to have energized mitt romney in a way i have not seen before, so i welcome that. >> ezra klein in washington. seems like both sides are engaged, excited. is there any hope of a debate on medicare or are we just looking at a lot of really nasty 30 second ads. >> i'm of the rare opinion we've been having a debate and we're going to continue now. what is stunned me watching the coverage is i don't think people really understand what the debate over medicare is. for instance, i don't think people have any idea that paul ryan and barack obama have proposed an exact same long-term spending path for medicare. it's not different. ryan's second budget is more modern on medicare than his first. >> ezra, can you explain that? the first budget, he had the voucher program. a lot more cut.

the second one again moved closer like you said, to the president's. gdp plus 25. talk about those two budgets. why do we have two different views? >> budget number one, he took away the traditional medicare budget is gone. two, you get to choose with this voucher from a bunch of private plans or traditional medicare. the way these plans save money, this is really important. this does not save money so far. we've never done this and saved money. it has never quite worked. in order to get the congressional budget office, saving money, he put a very strict cap in the first budget where he said well, if medicare costs more than this, then seniors will have to pay the difference between the voucher and the program would have been a huge cost shift. that cap is in the second budget, too, but it's higher. not as stringent and it's what

obama's is and it should be said because you often here this this conversation, well, the obama administration, they don't have a medicare plan. it's essentially a opposite of ryan's, which uses cuts to the provider to try to get medicare to cost less. it's not worked on the national scale like ryan's. but it is a valid and serious plan. they'll say on the other hand, he doesn't have a plan. >> what do you think generally of the ryan pick? >> i think it's a great pick because it will make sure we're talking about substance and solutions. it will make the role of government, fiscal responsibility, government transformation, a top issue. it's really key now for the moderators on the debates. got to be something that knows something about these issues.

that can ask tough questions. know when they're being bsed quite frankly. medicare's underfunded 37 trillion. we subsidize 95% of people who voluntarily sign up for medicare 75% of their premium. that makes no sense cht we need to be honest with people. the american people can handle the truth. they know we need to make tough choices. look, i've been in 49 states. about ready to go to over 20 more from september 7th through october 9th. about truth -- >> do they know the truth? again, i will side it. my favorite from last year, 70% of tea partiers against obama care, stay out of my, live free or die, 70% of its

self-described tea party members telling the gallup organization don't touch my medicare. >> they can handle the truth. they don't know the truth because they're not provided the truth. we have to recognize reality. the federal government has way overpromised for health care and the affordable care act complicates that. we have to rationalize our progra programs. we have to focus on universal coverage that's appropriate and affordable and sustainable. we can do it, but you have to be honest with people. >> john meacham runs a column for time magazine and talked about how he was afraid that the pick would actually turn it into a more demagogue affair regarding medicare.

and let me read. it says why the ryan pick won't bring clarity, the democrats are quite pleased to pick ryan and romney as wild eyed right wingers -- in other words, it's just possible that the naming of the -- the debate over the fiscal future. for romney, it's already distancing himself from his running mate's work and the white house is sounding traditional democratic themes that seem to fore close the possibilities of comp mice et cetera. >> that's always possible, but we're not going to solve the the problems we have today if we just apply the same thinking we've done the last 25 to 30 years. we're in terrible fiscal shape. i think enough people in this country understand that. i totally support -- that we'll be able to make enough of an impression to change this dynamic and society, otherwise,

we're in deep, deep trouble. >> mark? >> well, i think it's the two candidates should tell their operatives to cut it out because what's stopping us from having a serious discussion in the short-term, the press chases after every web video. the two candidates are the most serious people that have run in my kcareer. they see things differently. they should tell their aides stop having the contest be about nothing and have it be about these big issues at the center of the race. they've got to do it. if they don't, if they don't condemn ads that every fact checker says it's fall, then i don't think it's going to -- >> ezra, unfortunately, it does work. negative ads especially on entitlement programs work. in 1996, bill clinton ran the most outrageous 30 second attack ads against republicans who adopted his plan that he put in

place two years earlier, that he p proposed and then in 2010, republicans won you know, scores of seats by demagoguing barack obama's plan on medicare advantage. >> if you listen to even the clips you played of romney, what i love about that line so much is that paul ryan keeps those particular cuts in his budget, so he has the same set of cuts, then another set on top of that. it's just ridiculous. but i want to make one separate point. something i think people don't realize about it is he cuts two other health care program, primarily medicaid, are almost twice as large as the cuts to medicare. the medicaid cuts alone are estimated for about 14 to 19 people off medicaid, but save about 750 billion and the cuts to all nonentitlement programs

are bigger. so, a lot of the balance of this burden here is getting placed on essentially programs for low income. it's not all medicare even though thaer we're having primarily a discussion around medicare. >> one critical difference between where we are today and where we've been in the past. we have had three or four years of the worst economy in history and it's headed south. there has to be a father. the country's going to look at that and say look where we are. no program, no progress as we have made with 4 to $5 trillion of government money spent. something is wrong somewhere so i think there's going to be a different environment. >> we need to have a choice election. we need for these candidates to state the facts, speak the truth, help articulate.

it can be. if you get the right model. if the candidates do what mark suggested, which i totally agree. the american people -- >> is there a choice right now like for instance ezra brings up the point that both barack obama and paul ryan want medicare to dwroe at the same point. >> and ezra's right, but that needs to be in the debates. >> they want to do it -- >> the american people need to understand what they believe so they can make an informed choice, so whoever wins can claim they have a mandate because the only way we're going to solve these problems is extraordinary presidential leadership. up next -- >> and as ezra said, the president and paul ryan have two dramatically different views. >> the question is, do they. >> we'll see a new budget. >> yeah. at this point, they are, but as dave said -- >> i think you're going to see a new budget, a new medicare plan because mitt romney does not want to be carrying around paul ryan's first medicare plan.

>> the presidential leadership, doesn't respond to congressional leadership except rarely. you have the right kind of presidential leadership, you can make a huge amount of progress on any one of these issues. >> thank you very much. up next, the eye opening facts about sleep. and how a culture primed with energy drinks and prescription pills is undercutting our natural needs. david randall and dr. emily join us next on "morning joe." hey america, even though slisa rinna is wearing the new depend silhouette briefs for charity to prove how great the fit is even under a fantastic dress. the best protection now looks, fits and feels just like underwear. we invite you to get a free sample and try one on too. for their "destination wedding."

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joining us now, david randall, author of dream land, adventures in the strange science of sleep. also with us, dr. emmel we've b arguing something. i won't do it. >> we've got sleep problems. wake up early. mika has to wake up extraordinarily early. >> some of us take a lot of drugs. >> let's start with the questions. there are a lot of people, you

hear stories, margaret thatcher, only got four or five hours of sleep. thomas edison said he didn't get much sleep. >> if you go to his laboratory, he had a cot there. you need about seven to eight hours a sleep. some people can get by with less. >> what happens if you get five to six hours a sleep at night like i would guess most of us have been doing for five years. what's the long-term impact? >> you start to act like you're drunk. >> hey, friends at home, it's not my fault. not my fault. the lack of sleep plus the drugs, that's what this is all about. >> there's a study published in 2000 and they decided let's test people's ability, people who stayed up longer performed not as well on tests, suffering from

remembering things, spatial awareness, sense of time. all these things that kind of go into our every day. if you think you're doing well, maybe you just don't realize the ways you're messing up. >> impact on your life. dr. emily senay. look of sleep can really take its toll. >> absolutely, in fact, it has been a major issue in medical training for many, many years. they've looked at all these different ways to sort of protect doctors in training to make sure they get enough rest. what could be worse than making a medical error because you're sleepy. it's much more difficult to put back into the system good sleep habilitates than you might think. what i like about the book is that there's an overlying theme that we're all, we all know about but we don't know the name of it and that is light pollution. it's the concept that there's so much artificial light in our environment that it's completely

disrupted our rhythms. there is research that says disruption of rhythms can be a risk factor for things like cancer. and so, there is -- it's not just this. it's sort of the light that's in our urban environments, particularly, you start and i think in the first chapter of the book how it began with the lightbulb. >> exactly. if you look at the computer monitor at night, your brain thinks that's sun light. it makes you stay up longer and now that we have an iphone, we're subjecting ourself to daylight much too long. >> i read something about your book a couple of weeks ago. but i think this book, because i get no sleep. >> yeah. >> exactly. >> but do you go into this book about what happens naturally before the lightbulb that people

would actually have two nights of sleep. they would have the first night, where they go to bed at 7:00 or 8:00 and then get up and work or pray or have sex and get up and have their second night of sleep. >> that's completely natural, about 300 years ago. but that happens now naturally. people wake up and say i should be sleeping for eight hours. >> so, the eight hours can be a patchwork? in other words, if we sleep four hours a night, which happens all the time. if i go home and steal an hour when i get home and an hour somewhere else, that's okay to do it that way? >> basically. you want to get eight hours per 24 hours you're awake. >> so, we're obsessing, willie has to wake up at 2:30, 3:00 in

the morning. mika wakes up at 3:30. but we're obsessing about getting eight hours straight. you're saying it doesn't have to work that way. >> want to get a big clump at once as you can, but if you can't get that time, then naps help. >> and shift workers have a real problem. part of the problem is that we're so activated that when we need to fall asleep, we can't do it. and winding down is something that people don't take into account as part of the sleep cycle and that takes longer than just laying your head. >> a couple of hours. >> absolutely. most of us tend to do it artificially. we think a glass of wine is going to help us. >> what about you? you have of all of us, you have the worst. >> i was going to ask about the unwinding.

i have two little kids, so you're up with them, reading them books, put them to bed. then it's time for your bed. at which point, you get on the computer, read everything you can before you go to bed. what's the window between turning off that computer and going to bed. in other words, don't just put the blackberry down. >> try to wait about an hour at least. i'm sure with your kids, if you put somebody to bed at the same time every night, your body starts expecting that. with kids, you try to put them to bed at the same time every night. >> emily, let's talk about drugs. ambien, ativan, all the sleep drugs out there. i knew you when i was on cbs news up to the minute. the only way i could sleep during the day was to take a drug. i've missed years and years of sleep. >> it's a gigantic industry.

how we sort this out going forward is going to be difficult because a lot of people are dependent on these. you are sleeping. it depends on the mechanism of action. some pills will put you to sleep earlier, but not by much more than you would have fallen asleep naturally, so some is a sedative effect that works quickly. so it depends on which sleep aid and what you need to do, how do you know you're in trouble with the sleeping pills and that can be difficult to sort out. >> i'll tell you one indicator is your chest feels tight when you haven't taken it. you start to stress out. you're addicted. right? >> do you look at sleeping medication in terms of addiction in the book? >> what's more it's not straight addiction. it's dependsy. you start to think i need this to fall asleep. >> talking about ambien.

people who thought they had to take it to fall asleep, when they stopped, like a ten minutes, 15 minute difference. >> when you take it, generally, you fall asleep maybe ten minutes faster. time you spent sleeping whole nights, that's longer. can't tell if that's because of the drug or placebo effect. >> ambien is a very dangerous drug. i think it's going to be like novels are going to be written ten, 20 years from now, people do so many bizarre things on a measuri mbien. >> there are so many warnings. makes your brain have a hard time remembering, short-term am knee sha. you might wake up the next day and find a broken wrist.

just can't remember the last eight hours. >> there was a public figure who was in the paper for driving under the influence of ambien. do you know how many people do that? >> a lot of people. >> and sometimes don't remember in the morning. >> one of the problems, there's not a lot of information about using these medications as long as people are now using them. the information there is not great. so, that would be one area where there could be more research is looking at the long-term effects of taking these sleeping medications. there's plenty of others. over such long periods of time. years. >> people are are taking it now, it was supposed to be -- >> i've had to stop. >> there are so many people that have taken it five, six, seven ten years. >> that would be me. >> and what is the long-term impact. it's got to scramble your brain? >> i haven't taken it yet. >> don't bother.

it's not worth it. it is a terrible process. we'll get to that another time. >> vodka. >> stick to vodka. >> the book is "dreamland. david randall, thank you, and dr. emily senay, come back soon. "morning joe" is back in a moment. hmm, it says here that cheerios helps lower cholesterol as part of a heart healthy diet. that's true.

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. join me in welcoming the next president of the united states, paul ryan. every now and then, i'm known to make a mistake. i did not make a mistake with this guy. but i can tell you this, he's going to be the next vice president of the united states. >> let me introduce to you, the next president, the next vice president of the united states of america, joe biden.

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. mark halperin, what did you learn? >> that andrea mitchell, can scamper like a fourth grader. >> did you see that? awesome. she