this is "now." joining me today, msnbc political analyst, our favorite import from the united kingdom, richard wolffe. salon.com editor at large, joan walsh. author of the book "what's the matter with white people: why we long for a golden age that never was." dimos vice president heather mcgee, cnbc chief washington correspondent john harwood of "the new york times." there's a lot of monkey business going on in tampa. no, literally. for three years police have been looking for this monkey that is believed to have wandered off a reserve 100 miles from tampa. the mystery monkey has been showing up regularly since then in backyards, outside restaurants, in a church parking lot and, in fact, it has its own facebook page with 83,000 followers. the mystery monkey of tampa bay. local police, state wildlife agencies and freelance trappers

are tried to after it, but to no avail. the monkey has rebuffed these efforts, even removing tranquillizer darts shot at him in a display of defiance. >> made a monkey out of everybody who tried to catch him. >> republicans are about to head to tampa for this convention next week and will find themselves in a strikingly similar position as the authorities trying to catch the rogue sim yan. a gop congressman is on the loose. missouri senate candidate todd akin. the more powerless they've become. here's the difference. the monkey on the lam in tampa is only picking through garbage and stealing fruit. the republican fugitive happens to be much more destructive. akin has put the gop's policy on abortion and women's reproductive rights on center stage, days before their national convention. for vp candidate paul ryan, the results are in. according to a tally by "bloomberg news" the vice presidential candidate has co-sponsored 38 antiabortion bills. the national abortion acts

league counts 59 times that ryan voted against reproductive rights as a member of congress. last year, he co-sponsored hr-3 that used the language, forcible rape. nbc news finds that wasn't the first time ryan signed on to that language. in 2010, he penned his name on hr5939 which allowed abortion if the pregnancy was from forcible rape. that same year he told "the weekly standard," i'm as pro life as a person gets. this week it seems ryan's views on the issues are evolving. this is what he said aboard a campaign plane yesterday. >> i'm proud of my record. mitt romney's going to be the president. the president sets policy. his policy, his exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother, i'm comfortable with it because it's a good step in the right right direction. >> suddenly it's a step in right direction. to be clear, there will be no discussion of his prior position or just how that evolution took place. >> sponsored legislation that has the language, forcible rape.

what is forcible rape? >> rape is rape, period, end of story. >> so that forcible rape language meant nothing to you at the time. >> rape is rape, no splitting hairs over rape. >> no splitting hairs as in no bills like the two he signed in 2010 and 2011. right now congressman ryan is doing his campaign duty in north carolina talking about defense at a round table event. 12 days after being chosen for the ticket, ryan has been romneyized, schooled in the art of rapidly shifting one's opinion to whatever is politically expedient. in the meantime, animal catchers are working feverishly to make sure untamed l ed elements don'n the party in florida. we look at this week for paul ryan, we're not talking about the economy but we're talking about rape, not a position the gop want to find themselves in. what do you make of paul ryan's statements in all of this and the statement he made yesterday about not splitting hairs? could he have not just said,

look, i have views about this, governor romney has views about this. governor romney, it would be his administration and we have come to the table, talked about this awe agreed abortion should be allowed in cases of rape and incest. >> well, you say this is not a problem, this is not something they wanted to happen. actually, this is exactly what they wanted to happen. maybe not at this point of the republican cycle. this has been the republican agenda. these votes were not forced upon them. they manufactured this because this was at the very top of their agenda right up there with shutting down the government and debts, deficit, jobs and joblessness. all of that. and the position that paul ryan is taking may be expedient right now, but it certainly doesn't track with his legislative votes or agenda, and it isn't just about rape, actually, it's not really about rape at all. their obsession with abortion, and especially, especially with the idea that there are some

people gaming the system, they already really restrictive system that stops taxpayer funds going to pay for abortions. their idea is that there are people, especially teenagers or the pro-choice people, who are saying, teenagers who get pregnant, who claim statutory rape, that means sex with minors, they're gaming the system. so it's worth, worth driving these people down the path of pregnancy, whether or not they're rape victims, just to stop some people from gaming the system. think about that. that means we want more teenage mothers, we want more rape victims to become mothers because at this time, again, at this time of incredible joblessness, all the challenges facing debt and deficits. paul ryan thought this should be a priority. >> yep. >> that's a policy choice republicans make. >> this is what they've been doing in congress. while the approval rating has been sinking. it's also the language here about loopholes in abortion. >> right. >> i mean, this, in you were

talking about the republican party and how it thinks of and treats women and the idea of abortion, it is sneaky. yes. sneaky women trying to get through loopholes to have abortions. >> i just keep asking, how would it work if they got their way, how would it work? would we have rape panels, a panel of people would decide whether your rape was forcible or not? you know, what your body did or didn't do to stop a pregnancy? i mean, it's so insane. but this language, it kind of doesn't matter what they say because this is what is in their platform. there are no exceptions in their platforms. >> statutory rape is called statutory rape as a reason. we think this is serious as a nation, as a civilization. we want to protect minors. he may say rape is rape, but the language of his legislation -- >> doesn't acknowledge that. >> family values would say protect children. >> only some children. >> heather, as joan and richard point out, though, the gop is doubling down on this. i mean, this is now -- announced

this is part of the party platform. is this something republicans care about? puts mitt romney in an awkward position. and mitt romney in 2007 was aligned with physician, although i'm not sure he actually has any sort of medical background, jack wilky who's an architect of the theory that women can't get pregnant by rape. it's written today, maybe akin's real sin is that he exposed the phoniness of the rape and incest exception, which is just an attempt to make radical extremism -- >> we remember he did say a lot of -- he has already committed to a lot of policy changes that would increase the number of teen pregnancies, that would eliminate funding for all family planning clinics. so this is talking about pap smears, breast cancer screenings, all of this. this is not just about this one exception. it's about an entire agenda which is saying that, frankly, that women can't be trusted. >> john, when we have a lot of numbers from the nbc news/"wall

street journal" poll yesterday, among women, the president is doing very well. the margins are very high. among hispanics, it's the same thing. among black voters, it's a joke that there's polling because the president is so strong. i want to play sound last night talking about todd akin. sorry, i'll read what the president said. he said, the interesting thing here is this, this is an individual who sits on a house committee on science and technology but somehow missed science class. speaking of akin. and it's representative of the desire to go backwards instead of forwards and fight fights we thought were settled 20 or 30 years ago. the democrats are unsurprisingly making hay out of this. how can mitt romney and his party get, close some of those margins, specifically with women at a time like this when the clock continues to -- >> this is a gift from god for the democratic ticket, because what you have is a president who needs to drive up his margins among women, especially college

educated women. he has been doing that. and this is precisely the kind of issue that has allowed democrats in this cycle, distinct from others we've seen in the recent past, to regard social issues as an offensive weapon for them. this is something where they can move closer to winning the white house as opposed to being on the defensive. what romney wants to do is get this off the stage the best that he can. akin says he's not going to come to the republican convention at the request of ryan's previs, the republican chairman. that's not going to eliminate the story. he's on the ballot. frankly, even if he was off the ballot, it wouldn't eliminate the story. that's why it's such a bad news story for republicans. >> well, then what does mitt romney do? i mean, how can they pivot from this? how can they get this -- how can they stop talking about rape? the fact paul ryan keeps saying rape is rape is rape is rape is not what you want your vice presidential nominee to talk about four days before the convention. >> they're not in control of the story. they're not. it's going to stay with them for

a long time until something bumps it out of the news. there is a fascination now with, really, this is really their policy, really in their platform going back to 1992, have banned exceptions for rape and incest and life of the mother? really, that's the extremism? another thing richard alludes to, it used to, okay, it's just in the party platform, a lot of people don't believe it. this is what the house republican majority came in to do. they are tired of being taken advantage of and basically lied to. sweet nothings during campaign season and then no policy changes during the legislative season. they have said, we're not okay with that. that's also part of why todd akin is staying in the race, unless they come at him with tranquillizer darts. >> like that rogue -- >> like the rogue monkey. hello. >> defiant. >> it wasn't democrats and it wasn't the media who put at the height, or the depth of the debt ceiling and credit defaults, who put planned parenthood right

there and said this is a critical thing that we will do to move away from our hardline position, we want planned parenthood. that was what republicans wanted to do. >> that was their choice. >> the party platform is to the right of todd akin. the party platform is to the right of the nominee. you say, how can they get control of the story? the real challenge is, how can mitt romney get control of this party? >> party, yeah. >> that's, you know, obviously their stronger position, romney's strongest position by a long ways is the economy and jobs so he needs to shift back to that. the only way he's going to have to do that is to stand up to the party. even more than he's done to akin, and say, not only is this not my position, but it's the wrong position for republicans. >> interesting, richard wolffe. so the rogue elements here is not todd akin but the entire republican party? that's a big net. the big tranquillizer dart. after the break, governor romney has been chairman of the board and chairman of whiteboard, but is he ready to be ceo of the gop? >> nice spot. i know there's an effort by some people to try and bring as much

confusion to the topic of medicare as possible, but i want to bring as much clarity as possible. so i prepared a small chart here which will describe differences in our respective plans for medicare. >> the whiteboard. we will discuss whether the governor's boardroom experience translates to the oval office. when "time's" michael crowley joins the conversation next on "now." ganiaresnilette,docalo

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mitt romney has been running for public office since 1993,

but insists he's an outsider and a business guy. the rnc announced today that thursday's convention program includes a spotlight on man who built businesses like staples and sports authority. so what does romney's business record tell us about the kind of leader he would be in the white house? the new issue of "time" magazine examines the mind of mitt and details his tenure at bain capital. barton gellman writes, "for most of romney's career he could afford to be fastidious in the extremes about his quarries, far more than a government leader or traditional corporate executive of similar rank. choose one specimen at a time, dissect it, mount it on a slide and spend days at a time without looking up from the microsoap. rarely do political leaders have that kind of time." romney was meticulous in selecting projects, poring over the potential pitfalls and investing in average, quote, 1 of 500 businesses that come by. how closely the management style of the ceo mirrors the

presidential campaign. for instance, after rush limbaugh called sandra fluke a, quote, slut, following her testimony on a selective committee on contraception, it took romney two days to respond and timely said, that's not the kind of language he would have used. his campaign was asked whether his campaign agreed with the lilly ledbetter act, and paused for six long seconds before saying, we'll get back to you on that. supporting equal pay for women warranted testing and prediction models. michael crowley, senior correspondent and deputy bureau chief for with the ti" time" ma. michael, great to see you. >> great to see you, alex, thanks. >> we were playing a little bit of video of mitt romney at the whiteboard talking about differences between his medicare plan and the president's. it's the most ultra ceo moment, ultra bain moment we've seen in the campaign cycle.

tell us about how his time at bain, time as ceo and executive, gives us insight into what kind of leader he might be. >> that was for americans maybe the closist thing we would get to a glimpse into the bain boardroom. sounds like romney, you know, would sometimes sit there at the end of the table with his own calculator and adding machine and draw up his own charts by hand. he loves that. the point here, he's a data freak. he's intensely analytical. and he is very methodical. as you say, i think that the risk is that that can mean a slow response. the presidency, as viewers will know, really, you know, huge part of it, i mean, you set an agenda but you're also just managing crises. day-to-day, you're drinking from the fire house. there's a new crisis every day. particularly when it comes to international affairs. i think a big question is whether that slow methodical, i need to know all the facts and i have to turn this gem around and look at every single facet of it before i make a decision, whether not suits its to the high-speed, intense nature of

the presidency. i think it's somewhat of an open question although some of the episodes in the campaign you point to i think could validly raise doubts in some people's minds. >> john harwood, there's a big difference between business and politics and that's why they have different names someone pointed out to me not very long ago. mitt romney made his business bodies fides. we finished talked about the last two, three weeks he's had, the last month he's had, not been a cycle in which he's managed the message at all, not been able to focus on the economy and really sort of strategic pivots have seemed to be -- >> yes, i think you have to say analytical ability and care is a good thing. >> sure. >> there is no job that resembles presidency, to, yes, there are mismatches between the way he worked at bain and the way he would have to work as president, just as there were for barack obama who was in senate then moved to the presidency. i think the biggest challenge

that i've seen in people from business moving in to politics, especially high-level politics is something also pointed out by bart gellman in that story which is people do what you say when you're an executive of a big business, when you control the business. that doesn't happen in politics all the time. >> you know, i want to, richard, you know the current white house occupant quite well in terms of the white house, decision-making process, you have written about it extensively. there are parallels between obama's decision-making process and mitt romney's. the beginning of his administration, very considered, listened to his advisers. ultimately the decision rests with him, but it's very organized. do you see shades of that in mitt romney and see those common threads as well? >> well, president obama has not been known to be the fastest decision-maker. he can noodle these things forever and unpick his decisions and remake them before he comes to in what many cases has been fairly big decisions like going for health care reform, you know, his decisions to increase

numbers of troops in afghanistan. they are very different people. they may have a sort of moderated aspect to their politics and some similar aspects to their delivery sometimes, but their backgrounds are very different. i am kind of skeptical about the idea that business decision-making leads to presidential decision-making, not least because that was precisely the story line that the bush folks had coming into office in 1999/2000. business school guys, not ideological. would be much less partisan. that fit the moment and their story, but, of course, the record was somewhat more controversial than that. i guess my question for michael would be, you know, when we look at how mitt romney has campaigned, for all the cautiousness about his decision-making, if you listen to him about the one thing where presidents get some time, decisions of war, he's actually been very hawkish on this. he's been very hawkish on iran, especially.

and that kind of runs against the bain model of his decision-making, where he's, you know, instead of picking o inin 500 or 5,000 targets, no, i'm going to go after this one target right now. >> you point out in the piece, the moral question isn't as much bandied about as in the political realm. >> that's right, well, there are kind of two sides to that. i think it appears he was quite aggressive in challenging kind of gray areas in the law having to do with taxes, you know, maybe certain s.e.c. regulations about how you would execute your takeovers. and that, you know, like a lot of people in business, he would kind of push into the gray area and then say, you know, if they want to blow the whistle on us, we'll settle it later. he never, you know, would violate the law. i don't think was ever accused of violating the law.

was aggressive in the gray area. the flip side, he did demonstrate a moral rectitude when it came to the nature of the investments. bart may have been the first to report that romney was quite wary, in fact, did not want to invest in tobacco or guns. there were a lot of opportunities during his bain h heyday, spinoffs, colt, winchester, tobacco companies bain could have done deals with and romney said, no, i don't want to do it, there are a lot of ways to make money, we have to consider our reputation. there may have been an issue about his own personal feelings, possibly his faith there. he was aggressive ways. when it came to cultural, moral issues, he was quite conservative. >> i will say, alex, on richard's point about how romney is hawkish, and maybe that doesn't go consistent with the caution he showed at bain. i think if you look at that in a political dimension as opposed to a policy dimension which i

think is the right way to look at it, it is consistent because he's very cautious about doing things that would move him crossways with the republican base, so he's, you know, foreign policy is not a comfort zone. he doesn't have experience there. i think the instincts that he's showing aren't really about policy. they're more about -- >> certainly the policy analysis of mitt romney's foreign policy is questionable, the widea of getting involved. >> the same could be said of president obama before he took office as well. >> thank you to "tyime" magazine's michael crowley. thanks again, michael. coming up, try as they might, team obama can't seem to convince governor romney to release additional years of tax returns, but senate majority leader harry reid could be the president's secret weapon. we'll discuss the hunt for more than just romney's october. ahead on "now."

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it's yes food. coming up, it's the $800 billion question. has president obama's landmark stimulus package worked? the president had high hopes when he signed it back in 2009. >> the american recovery and reinvestment act that i will sign today, a plan that meets the principles i laid out in january, is the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history. we are remaking the american landscape with the largest new investment in our nation's infrastructure since eisenhower built an interstate highway system in the 1950s. >> so how do you define success? we will ask "time's" michael greenwald about the president's new, new deal ahead on "now." (cat purring)

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we have been very transparent to what's legally required of us. but the more we release, the more we get attacked. there's going to be no more tax releases given. >> the fascination with taxes i paid i find to be very small minded compared to the broad issues that we face. but i did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years, i never paidless than 13%. >> put out his 2011 returns, once it's complete. look, taxes are not an issue. it's not what the american people are talking about. >> october 15th is the deadline for the irs on an extension. we have said as soon as they're ready, we're going to release them and i believe they'll be ready before that. >> that was team romney defending its decision to release only two years of tax returns. pressure has been building on governor romney to come clean with his finances since, well, the beginning of this campaign cycle and most recently when senate majority leader harry reid alleged romney didn't pay

taxes for ten years. according to "the huffington post" reid could get his hands on any of romney's tax returns as long as senate republicans support his request. that, of course, is unlikely to happen. it doesn't mean republicans aren't worried about the secretive rich guy narrative. santorum said, quote, if the campaign is about issues, we win, if it's about mitt romney's record as a businessman, we don't win. if it's about mitt romney's tax returns, we don't win. if it's about whether people like mitt romney more than barack obama, we do not win. translation. if the race is about anything but mitt romney, republicans win, but if it's about anything related to mitt romney, they lose. with republicans like these, who needs democrats? friends, this issue is not going away. this issue is not going away. i'm posing that as a question. i don't think this issue is going away. richard, we know that october 15th is the deadline by which mitt romney needs to release his 2011 tax returns, or at least

need to be complete. is that going to be enough? how much longer can they stall on this? >> let's just say that his taxes are really complicated, his accounts need lots of time. >> there are hundreds of thousands of pages, yes. >> the client happens to be running for president, and the election will be just a few weeks after october 15th. i just don't understand why even mitt romney, ann romney, or their heavily paid advisers could not have said, guys, do we think we could release this a little bit before voters are paying all the attention in the world? get it out of the way early. never mind about the previous years and all the rest of it, just release that year's tax returns before we get down the homestretch. i'm just per flexed by this idea that october 15th is the right day for them. >> the other question is, you know, when we first started talking about this, it was, is this actually going to hurt him, is this going to show in the polls? again, i refer to the nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, which asked americans, does the amount mitt romney pay in federal income taxes make you

feel more positive or more negative? 6% say more positive, 36% say more negative, 41% says not much of a difference. 36% is nothing to sneeze on. >> this is hurting him. there's no question, it's going to keep hurting him. it's why harry reid used the blunt instrument of an anonymous quote, the kind of thing that no journalist would do. nobody would come out with a story saying that, but harry reid was doing that as a sort of political club that is clearly effective and the republicans are stuck. if you talk to republican consulta consultants, they're saying, why has he committed not to releasing this stuff? because he has dug in. ann romney dug in even further. you know, october 15th is a long way away, but even the release of that return is not going to solve the issue. he already said what his tax rate was. he just haven't gotten the fine print. that is not going to satisfy democrats. democrats are going to keep hitting him on this,s and they're getting traction. >> speaking of democrats hitting

him on it, the president was hitting mitt romney at a press briefing on monday. let's hear what he had to say. >> he used swiss bank accounts, for example. well, that may be perfectly legal, but i suspect if you ask the average american, do you have one? and is that part of how you manage your tax obligations? they would say no. >> now, we know richard wolffe has several swiss bank accounts and one in the cayman islands. i won't even ask you this. >> you're anchor. i know you have -- >> no, i don't disclose any financial conditions under any circumstances, john harwood. that's why i'm not running for president. john heilman not long ago about this show, said, you have to say, swiss, islands, cayman accounts. swiss islands -- cayman islands, swiss bank accounts, over and over and over again to the american public and it reinforces this narrative, not only is mitt romney a secretive rich guy but a james bond. >> it's both what he's done in

the past and what he would do in the future actually with everyone's taxes including his own that i think is what makes this issue so resonant. you have on the one hand the fact he picked a nominee for the vp slot that would essentially eliminate his taxes. i mean, paul ryan has recommended no capital gains. >> szeroing it out. >> that's where he gets the vast majority of his money. actually, his rate would be 0.82% if he went with the paul ryan budget. that's pretty shocking. then you also just have what romney's own plan is, which is to cut the tax rates from millionaires and billionaires like himself. the income tax rates by about 20%. and he says that that would somehow be revenue neutral, but all of these wonks and economists have gotten together and have not been able to find a way to make the math add up. i know maybe he had a calculator at the end of the boardroom at bain, but they haven't been able to make that up without raising taxes on the middle class. >> the tax policy center

concluded to complete romney's tax plan, taxes for high income houses would increase and taxes on the middle class and working would go up. not only is there the narrative, but the substance, the policy, which is to say, yes, he's going to turn everybody into a bond villain in some way, shape or form. or the victim of a abandbond vi. >> that's a ridiculous decision to be making when the middle class is losing its status. people know the details of their tax policy. but, wroyou know, the other thi maybe they think rape is a better thing to be talking about than tax policy. when you have ann romney saying we are not going to release these anymore, it's like she's lady romney. she's telling us what we need to know and what we don't get to know. and he took the same tone, too. and that, too, i think is grating on the american people, that they're just drawing these lines and not doing what's been customary and siding a little bit -- >> the your people comment

doesn't endure him to the american public. it's worth noting, richard, expert and all things on the other side, the swiss embassy raised objections to the obama campaign that the obama campaign -- >> the swiss, their image, they'd like to be the mountain, chocolate, skiing, watch country, whereas in fact they to have a rather more complicated history dating back through the second world war which they prefer not to talk about. >> the obama campaign will take that as seriously as the romney campaign takes the -- >> which is seriously, john harwood. the fiscal cliff and obama recovery. governor romney gave his take on the president's economy just minutes ago. >> the president's policies have not worked. almost everything he's done has made it harder for this economy to recover, and as a result of that, middle income families across america are having a hard time. >> we will look at the hits and

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this election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment. this is a clear choice. the republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper income people and go back to deregulation. that's what got us in trouble in the first place. president obama has a plan to rebuild america from the ground up, investing in innovation, education, and job training. it only works if there is a strong middle class. that's what happened when i was president. we need to keep going with his plan. >> that was former president bill clinton in a new ad for the obama campaign. it comes as the strength of the middle class in america continues to deteriorate. a new pew study shows the number of people considered middle class has fallen to 51% down

from 61% in 197 is 1. median income for the middle class dropped nearly were 3,000 to below $70,000. median net worth took a bigger dive, dropping 28%. meanwhile, it is starting to look like a reductix of last yes debacle. the u.s. could sink into a significant recession and shed 2 million jobs if the country goes off the fiscal cliff at the end of the year with the expiration of the bush tax cuts and the triggering of massive budget cuts. at present, lawmakers are showing no signs of preventing disaster, with but this is nothing new. in his new book, michael greenwald writes about the battle over the stimulus package. grunwald writes, quote, we're not here to get deals and get crumbs and stay in the minority

for another 40 years. cantor, get along republicans who happily supported democratic bills as long as they extracted a bit of pork for themselves. we're not rolling over, he said. we're going to fight these guys. we're down, but things are going to change. when the stimulus bill came up for a vote, every single republican in the house voted no. the measure passed with three republican votes in the senate. michael grunwald, "time" magazine correspondent and author of "the new new deal." great to see you and have you on set. >> thank you for having me. >> let's talk, first, about the stimulus package which has been roundly criticized by republicans in the course of the last, the intervening years. tell us why you think it works? because you lay out a strong case for it as a massive sort of new deal program. >> sure. well, there are sort of two elements of it. the first part was preventing a depression. the second part was what obama

meant by change. this is where he started to keep all his promises on energy and health care and education reform as well as restructuring the economy with the largest infrastructure investments since eisenhower, the largest middle class tax cuts since reagan. the largest research investments ever. >> i think that the tax -- i mean, well, what was in t stimulus, green infrastructure, high speed rail, broadband, homeless prevention, race to the top in education. middle class tax cuts. most americans when you ask them about the stimulus and the president's administration don't understand he has actually cut taxes. and i guess, you know, is this part of the fault of the administration for not selling the stimulus, worried about the sort of optics of that and being sort of tarred as big government democrats? >> well, look, it's partly the white house's fault and partly the fault of this relentless republican campaign of distortion that, as you mentioned in that anecdote, started before they even took office. but it was also -- the american economy, it was like we had had

this financial earthquake, but the economic tsunami hadn't really reached shore, so we were kind of like wiley coyote stepping off the cliff but hadn't plummeted down to earth. the fourth quarter of 2008, gdp crashed 9%. that's a depression. at that rate, you lose the entire canadian economy in a year. after the stimulus passed, we had the best improvement quarter in 30 years. but it still wasn't very good. so just because, you know, now we're gaining 150,000 jobs a month, that's better than lose g ing 800,000 jobs a month but it doesn't feel good. >> alex, we have to acknowledge, there is some conflict between the particular policy goals the president was pursuing in the stimulus and pure economic recovery. the question isn't necessarily did it work? yes, it worked to some degree of improving the economy. when you talk to democratic economists, they say, we might have had a stronger recovery had more of that money, for example, gone straight to states and

local governments to prevent public sector layoffs. that's not very popular. they didn't get that through. they pursued some of these policy goals that may pay off in the long term, not in the short term as much as the president would like. >> you also have folks on the left who said it wasn't big enough, right? and that 800 billion was a magic number they could sell to the public but in reality, christina romer, one of his chief financial advisers, said, no, it should be in the criminals but that expedie expedient. >> you find in the reporting of my book is he could not have gotten one dime more than he got. three republican senators and half a dozen democratic senators who said $800 billion was their line in the sand. and it sort of turned out after all that kind of hopey changey talk about changing the way washington works, you can't make change if you don't get your bill through congress. thfs there was aid to states that was not popular. that did get into the economy

right away. the tax cuts went into the economy pretty quickly. aid to victims of the great recession, that lifted 7 million people out of poverty, made 32 million people who were poor less poor. all that money went out pretty quickly. it was only later you get into things like the world's largest wind farm and solar farm -- >> the dreaded green energy that will end us all. the question, i guess is, have lessons been learned? the cbo report is i think sort of terrifying. the fact we could plunge into a recession next year and shed jobs is not good news. are congressional republicans going to play ball? >> absolutely not. the problem is we shifted to deficit fiscal restraint at a time when we still are not the kind of economy we need to be for the middle class to thrive. those two things are inherently in tension at a time of such soft demand. we could either be pushing for fiscal austerity right now or get us out of this lingering jobless recovery. >> does eric cantor change his tune if mitt romney is president, michael?

>> oh, absolutely. wro you know, one thing that's very clear, republicans have always been in favor of stimulus. mitt romney in 2008 of all the presidential candidates had the largest stimulus plan and republicans including paul ryan voted for a $715 billion stimulus plan similar to obama's. at the same time they were calling obama's slightly larger plan tyrannical socialism. it makes clear it was a purely political decision they made, a very smart political decision that this was their ticket back to power and if they get the keys back, they're going to drive. >> speaking out of both sides of his mouth. the book is the "new new deal." "time" magazine's michael grunwald. longing for a golden age, the so-called days, working class, and the roots of the republican party. we'll dig into joan walsh's new book next in "what now."

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welcome back. time for "what now." the joan walsh new book edition. a new book out called "what is the matter with white people: why we long for a golden age that never was." fascinating thesis here. i wonder if you could tell us what shifts, what cultural shifts account for the fact that the republican party base or the white working class has become the republican party base? >> right. well, i think a couple things happened. first of all, i don't think that there's an understanding, a sufficient understanding among white people that i know in my family and my circles that we've been talking about this all hour, in a way, but government played an enormous role in creating the white middle class, after the great depression, after world war ii. we flattened income equality, created an apparatus that let people climb with unions, plaed

it ea made it easier to unionize, had the gi bill, people went to college. this is all thing government did. tax rates soared. top marginal tax rate in 1994 was 84%. it stayed close to that for a while. government made a decision to create this middle class, and one thing was wrong with that. that it left a lot of african-americans and latinos out. all of these programs that i've described left out either affirmative -- people of color. there are two problems. white people don't necessarily believe they got help. they think we did it all on their own. they did do a lot of it on their own. people of color say, you guys got help we didn't get and we're like, wait, we didn't get any help, what are you talking about? that's a kind of fractured narrative i wish we could talk about difference tly. the other thing that happened in the '60s, movements we thought were very successful that we love scared a lot of people.

they fused their reaction to rapid social change, even some not good social change, with the liberation of the '60s and republican party played on those fears around race, around welfare, around government. >> thus we end up with the modern republican party. i'm sorry we can't actually delve deeper into this. "what is the matter with white people"? we'll refrain from comment answering that question. heather, joe, and john. that's all for now. see you back here at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. p.m., joined by michael eric dyson, kim barker and buzzy ben smith. follow us on twitter @nowwithalex. "andrea mitchell reports" is next. coming up next, the presidential race is tightening in the swing states. the new battleground map. what it will hinge on. todd akin fighting to keep

his race against mccaskill going. tony perkins is going to join me on the role of the conservative base. senator richard lugar is just back from a diplomatic mission to russia. he'll join me next right here exclusively on "andrea mitchell reports." whole and stays whole. see the seam? more processed flakes look nothing like natural grains. i'm eating what i know is better nutrition. mmmm. great grains. search great grains and see for yourself.