going to get a gatorade bath. it's monday, september 3rd and this is "now." joining me today, kelefa sanneh and jonathan alter of bloomberg view. the rnc is over and the dnc is one day away. we are at halftime, america, and here's how it looks. governor romney left the convention and stopped in louisiana to tour the storm damage before holding rallies in the swing states of ohio and florida. today, he's taking time off at his vacation home in new hampshire and tomorrow, he will hold three days of debate prep at a secluded undisclosed location in vermont. his running mate spent saturday, the official start of college football season, at a tailgate and for the man atop the ticket, football speak was the order of the day. >> i don't like the way this game is going under this president.

if you have a coach that's 0-23 million you say it's time to get a new coach. it's time for america to see a winning season again and we're going to bring it to them. >> meanwhile, president obama is gearing up for his convention with a four-day swing state route, one that included iowa and colorado this weekend. today, he holds a rally in ohio, then will tour hurricane damage in louisiana before heading to virginia tomorrow. the president is portraying governor romney as a monday morning quarterback, able to lob criticism but with no experience, skills or a playbook of his own. >> there was a lot of talk about hard truths and bold choices but the interesting thing was, nobody ever bothered to tell us what they were. and when governor romney finally had a chance to reveal the secret sauce, he did not offer a single new idea. >> the "wall street journal" editorial board summed up how

short on detail romney's speech actually was, writing quote, energy got one sentence, education scored big with two, neil armstrong received almost as much speech time as what mr. romney would do specifically to spur faster growth and raise middle class incomes. so overall, how did it play? did romney pick up the vaunted big mo heading into the locker room? according to a new gallup poll out today, 40% of voters are more likely to support romney following the convention while 38% say they are less likely. that 2% net bump is the lowest since gallup began asking the question in 1984. back in 2008, john mccain received a 5% net bump while obama scored a 14% increase. so much for the real and visible bump rnc chairman reince priebus predicted. what did get a real and visible bump during the convention? president obama's twitter feed. this was the most retweeted message during the entire republican convention.

it was from barack obama's account and it read "this seat's taken." it was retweeted over 52,000 times. the significance was not lost on chicago mayor rahm emanuel. >> there is nothing memorable. the reason we're debating, even discussing clint eastwood is because there is nothing memorable about mitt romney's speech. >> in other words, clint eastwood's empty chair stole the show and the most memorable line, more than anything mitt romney had to say, came from a democrat who wasn't even there. joining us now from charlotte, north carolina, is msnbc contributor sam stein of the huffington post. sam, how is it down there and are people still talking about the empty chair? >> it's hot down here but not as hot as tampa, thank god. as for the empty chair, yes, clint eastwood was like the star of the rnc. people loved it. they're all doing their eastwooding, trying to find empty chairs to make fun of so yes, it's still resonating. >> i want to ask you, as rahm

says this points to a serious problem, not just strategically in terms of the take-away from the campaign but mitt romney's ability to get a message out there and his lack of specifics as the "wall street journal" editorial board points out. i think it's very telling that this is what we walked away from -- this is what we walked away with from the rnc. >> romney has two problems right now. first, he was playing catch-up at his convention in that he had to catch people up on his biography. obama had done so much damage to his personal brand that they needed to reintroduce him as a human being and that was job one at the convention. but job two at any convention or often job one is to tell people where you take the country, and mitt romney didn't do that. the question is why and i think the answer is that his policy prescriptions are one after another extremely unpopular when they're actually tested with the american people. so he's essentially running with a secret plan to save the economy and we'll see whether it works. >> we talk about the secrecy of

mitt romney since this thing began, and now i do think it's telling that you have the "wall street journal" editorial board, usually a friend to the romney campaign, saying you've got to go there, you've got to get specific. >> for so long the criticism was that he was kind of robotic and he was someone who had no personality, that he was only speaking in details. so i'm not sure it wasn't smart at the convention to go the other route. i thought the most effective part of the whole convention was the video biography about him where he showed the family, there's that awesome scene of the tin foil and duct tape lamp shade he had constructed because he was too cheap to buy a new light bulb. i thought those moments were actually really effective, and i think it's funny that we're here now sitting talking about mitt romney saying oh, it's all soft stuff, all personality. >> i don't even know the soft stuff was all that convincing, though, in the end, because so much of it was upstaged by an empty chair. i agree with you, i thought the video was great but the thing people remember in the windup to mitt romney's speech is clint eastwood. >> this is really important, the

video was not seen by most voters. it was seen by people watching cable television but not network television, and the only undecided voters are the ones who are what are sometimes called low information voters, they might tune in for some of the conventions and debates but they don't watch cable tv with all due respect to msnbc and fox, and -- >> but they should watch cable tv. >> because of the scheduling, because they wanted clint eastwood there, in prime time, they didn't show the movie in prime time. i think we'll look back on that convention and say that was a very big mistake they made in terms of scheduling. >> sam, you're down there and there's a new poll for north carolina showing romney ahead of the president, 47% to 43%. i guess sort of what do the democrats need to do in charlotte? i want to read what tom friedman writes in the "new york times." he says it's still halftime in america. unlike ryan, obama is not giving speeches built on lies, but the truths that he's telling are very small.

he is neither running on his own record, nor the promise of a new journey. as i've said, this is the first election ever where both men are running as i'm not mitt romney. >> well, first off, people should be watching msnbc specifically in the 12:00 to 1:00 hour. let's get that out of the way. >> thank you, sam. we'll make you a double contributor for that. >> appreciate it. secondly, obama's audiences are not the people right behind me, not the people in the convention hall. these people here are devotees, they want to be with him and vote for him. what he's got to do is two-fold. one is explain exactly what his accomplishments are. he has to reexplain the health care law again. people still don't get it. when i was in tampa reporting on that convention, we called up 12 stimulus recipients in the tampa area. 11 of them had no idea that they got stimulus money. that says a lot about the inability of this white house to communicate the actual effects the stimulus had on the country. so this is the last great chance for him to actually explain the

accomplishments but if that was the totality of his speech it would be probably considered a failure. because they want to make this a choice about the future. they need to actually contrast what their vision is for going forward with what mitt romney's limited vision is, specifically for going forward. i think that's predominantly what you are going to hear is okay, we're in this sort of malaise, do we want to go back, do we want to try things again or do we want to do x, y and z. that's a real opportunity for obama to get specific, talk about what he wants to do and then contrast it with what is re realistically a blank slate from mitt romney for moving the country forward. >> to your point, in terms of not relitigating but better explaining what exactly the administration has done, that's a huge point, certainly one that should not be lost. the issue of medicare is i think something that everybody needs to work harder on. joe biden i felt launched one of the most pointed attacks and had sort of the best line on that this weekend. let's hear what he had to say on sunday in wisconsin. >> my mom was a smart woman. but my mom, i can't picture

handing her a voucher at age 80 and saying you go out in the insurance market and you figure out what's best for you. ladies and gentlemen, it's just that simple. we are for medicare. they are for voucher care. it's basic. >> there you go. medicare versus voucher care. these are the simple digestible vitamins they can pass out to everybody in the leadup to november. >> when i was in tampa i talked to gary johnson, who is running for the libertarian nomination. he was really upset that we have moved from this idea, from his perspective, of maybe reforming medicare to a fairly standard campaign where both parties are claiming that they're going to be the ones that will save medicare and protect medicare. that was one of romney's big five points against obama during his convention speech, was that obama was taking $700 billion out of medicare. so it's interesting, we're right back to where we were before the tea parties and before all this stuff, with two parties both claiming they are better guardians of medicare.

>> both of them cutting it by exactly the same amount. one party saying they're not. >> actually not cutting a dime of basic medicare benefits, which is one of the big lies of the romney campaign that somehow obama is taking this money from seniors and giving it to poor uninsured people, which in the code of campaigns means taking it from wealthy white people and giving it to poor black people. that's the subtext, the dog whistle, if you will, that is being used. and the problem with that, it's not true so obama care is actually increased help for seniors in terms of closing the so-called doughnut hole, giving them more help with prescription drugs, more preventive care. the savings have been in fewer reimbursements for providers and it was tremendous waste and overreimbursement which was essentially a huge give-away to the insurance industry under the medicare advantage program which

is a private program for wealthier seniors so by getting rid of those overpayments, without actually hurting medicare advantage which is now stronger than ever, the obama people did the right thing. paul ryan thought it was the right thing and he put the same $716 billion in medicare savings in his budget and then at the highest of hypocrisy, attacks them for doing what he does in his own budget. >> we will be talking more about the height of hypocrisy as it pertains to the new line of attack on welfare. sam stein, thank you for your time. we hope that you have a portable facial fan to beat the heat down there. >> it's on me right now. thank you very much. >> thanks, my friend, for your time. after the break, race and the race. is the gop's criticism of president obama's welfare policy a dog whistle on racial stereotyping? newt gingrich doesn't think so. >> food stamp president's a guy whose policies are so destructive he creates the longest unemployment since the great depression and he puts more people on food stamps, most

of them white, than anybody else. why do you assume food stamp refers to black? what kind of racist thinking do you have? >> we will translate some of the coded language and explain the actual policy behind the rhetoric, next. ♪ constipated? yeah. mm. some laxatives like dulcolax can cause cramps. but phillips' caplets don't.

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i hope you understand that president obama in just the last few days has tried to reverse that accomplishment by taking the work requirement out of welfare. that is wrong. if i'm president, i'll put work back in welfare. >> i don't think we have ever seen a presidential campaign ever that's built on a foundation of absolute lies. a welfare attack that is just

absolutely untrue. the suggestion we're raiding medicare, absolutely untrue. >> that was david plouffe on sunday rebutting a patently false attack that governor romney launched in early august and kept up ever since, claiming the president gutted welfare by taking the work requirement out of it. it is time, america, for some clarity. the obama administration is trying to increase work as part of welfare assistance. on july 12th, the health and human services department offered states a chance to temporarily waive the work requirement with the goal of helping states craft a more effective plan to find work for welfare recipients. the goal of the waivers as stated in the memo is to allow states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families. the waiver requires that the new programs increase the number of working welfare recipients by 20% and states would have a deadline of the end of the year

to make that happen. secretary sebelius stressed that very requirement in a letter six days later. quote, if a governor proposes a plan that undercuts the work requirements established in welfare reform, that plan will be rejected. what's surprising is that governor romney isn't celebrating this move by the president. in 2005, he penned a letter along with 28 other republican governors supporting the very same idea. the letter read, increased waiver authority allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work. especially ironic is that this program puts the power in the hands of the states. the original hhs memo even praised the ability of states to find new solutions, writing states led the way on welfare reform in the '90s, testing new approaches and learning what worked and what did not. the secretary is interested in using her authority to approve

waiver demonstrations to challenge states to engage in a new round of innovation that seeks to find more effective mechanisms for helping families succeed in unemployment. trying to find ways to criticize this administration, the gop has contorted itself into such a pretzel that it now finds itself attacking one of its principal priorities, namely states rights. joining us now is nbc news political analyst, former pennsylvania governor ed rendell. the unofficial governor of "now." always great to see you. i just did a long laundry list of exactly how this attack by the romney campaign is patently false. how much longer can they keep this up, and how can the democrats and specifically team obama better push back on this notion? >> well, i think what you just did was terrific and i think we need to do that in prime time on one of the nights in the three nights of the convention we're going to have, because this ad is starting to resonate a little bit and it is total lie. as you said, the key operative

part of the ad, of the requirement is it requires an increase in work requirement by 20%, not stay the same, not a decrease, but an increase. this has been attacked by romney and ryan and notice they didn't actually attack it in their convention speeches. even ryan, who lied several times in his own speech, and i don't know if you saw it, congressman ryan was just caught in a lie about his time in the marathon. he said he did it under three hours, when truth be told, he barely did it under four hours. i mean, lying about your time on a marathon? stunning. stunning. >> yes. i will say one is probably worse for the country than the other, but as someone -- >> it shows a mindset. >> i definitely shaved my times and felt terrible about it, never would i go on the national stage and said i ran a sub-three hour marathon. we're talking about sort of the desperation in republican circles to get to november, to cross the finish line and be a

winner. jonathan, everything from the "we built this" theme which was a night dedicated to taking one of the president's comments out of context to paul ryan's address which was full of factual inaccuracies to this welfare line of attack which is patently false, to me, that shows a real, i said it before, desperation within republican circles. they got nothing else to run on so they're just going to go with distortion. >> what they're doing, they know they're really behind with women and latinos and have little prospect of catching up, so their way to win this election is to maximize the number of white working class voters who turn out at the polls. for 50 years, republicans going back to richard nixon, with his coded language about law and order which meant cracking down on crime by blacks through ronald reagan talking about welfare queens, all through this period, the republicans have gone to the well over and over again trying to get white working class voters mad at

minorities, and that's what this is. remember, in this ad which half of all of romney's ad budget is going into, this bureaucratic shuffle, half of their money is placed on this. the ad actually says and they just send them a check. who is the "them"? they're talking about -- trying to conjure the image of some african-american sitting on a couch, mouching off the federal government. that's what this is all about. is it racist? no. is it racial, undoubtedly. >> the national journal at the end of last week had a great analysis of just how much this is sort of a racial dog whistle. ron fournier writing the welfare issue generally speaking triggers anger in white blue collar voters that is easily directed towards democrats. this information comes from senior gop strategists who have worked both for president bush and governor romney. a senior pollster said he shared

with the romney camp surveys showing that white working class voters who backed obama in 2008 have moved to romney in recent weeks, quote, almost certainly because of the welfare ad. i mean, and the journal goes on to sort of break down these sort of coded words, generational apathy is a synonym for laziness. they slept all day means minorities are sleeping all day sitting on the couch as jonathan said. your reaction to that and also, i mean, is the country not bigger and better than that? do they not know -- can they not clearly see the strategy behind this? >> i think as long as politics are segregated and as long as different issues resonate differently with different ethnic groups, racial groups, class groups, it's going to be hard to ever have any issue, especially on something like welfare, to have any ad that's not going to resonate particularly with one group or another, and i think it's asking an awful lot for campaigns to say no, you should refrain from

running this ad because it might resonate among people who have some sort of enemies. >> can i say, reasonable people can disagree about the welfare waiver thing. you can say well, they are weakening work requirements and so you could kind of get that through customs as a legitimate ad because secretary sebelius did issue this waiver memo. fine. but the ad says and they just send them a check. that's a flat lie. that lie is intended to raise these racial issues. so you have to draw the line at the lie and anybody looks closely at this ad knows that that line in particular is flatly untrue. >> governor rendell, i want to bring you in here. e.j. dionne has an interesting point in the "washington post" today, saying that what's maddening for democrats is whenever they point out the racially charged nature of romney's assault, republicans

piously cast themselves as victims, accusing democrats of playing the race card. defanging the welfare issue is obama's highest immediate priority. this task is complicated because voters tend to view obama as more liberal than he actually is which means many of them are prepared to believe there may be some truth in romney's false claims. what do you make of that? >> first of all, jonathan just went soft there. jonathan, there is nothing tenable about saying that president obama or secretary sebelius weakened the work requirement. in fact, they strengthened it by demanding a 20% increase. let's be absolutely crystal clear about that. there should be no misunderstanding. that's a bald-faced lie, number one. number two, the best person to debunk all this is bill clinton, the father of welfare reform. bill clinton should look in the camera wednesday night and i bet that he will, and say folks, that's an outright lie. that's an outright lie. this strengthens the work requirement that i put in the bill. it doesn't weaken it. bill clinton's the one who can cut through all of it without

any worry about it being a racial attack. we attack this for what it is. it's a lie. let me tell you one thing, alex. they do this at a little bit of peril. they may pick up a few white working class voters who are deceived, who don't realize that far more whites are on welfare, far more whites are on food stamps than african-americans, but they run the risk by this constant lying of losing those 10% undecided independent voters. >> it's true. they lose in the long game which is to say completely alienating minorities of every color and creed. >> pretty amazing what i just called the romney campaign liars like five or six times that i'm going soft. it gives some idea of just how much they're lying in this campaign. >> the degrees of deception. governor ed rendell, thank you as always. take care down there in charlotte. >> it's warm. >> coming up, team obama hopes the president can rekindle memories of 2008 with another speech at a packed football

stadium this week. but the dynamics of the election, this one, are very different from four years ago, as robert gibbs explained yesterday. >> nobody is sitting up here saying this is 2008. i mean, what's happened since an election in 2008 and right now, again, is this huge economic calamity caused by a series of bad decisions that were made before the president ever got there. >> will charlotte inspire or will it, like so many sequels, disappoint? two years ago, the people of bp made a commitment to the gulf. and every day since, we've worked hard to keep it. bp has paid over twenty-three billion dollars to help people and businesses who were affected, and to cover cleanup costs. today, the beaches and gulf are open for everyone to enjoy -- and many areas are reporting their best tourism seasons in years. we've shared what we've learned with governments and across

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now -- thank you. now, for those of you who have a seat, feel free to take a seat. i've got some things to say. i've got some things to say here. for those of you who don't have a seat, make sure to bend your knees a little bit. we don't want you fainting. sometimes folks standing too long, they drop off. now, we're on our way to our convention in charlotte this week. but i wanted to stop here in toledo to spend this day with you. a day that belongs to the working men and women of america.

teachers and factory workers and construction workers and students and families and small business owners, and i know we've got some proud auto workers in the house helping to bring toledo back. after all, it's working folks like you who fought for jobs and opportunity for generations of american workers. it's working people like you who helped to lay the cornerstones of middle class security, things that people now sometimes take for granted but weren't always there. the 40-hour work week. weekends. paid leave. pensions. the minimum wage. health care. social security. medicare. those things happened because

working people organized and mobilized. it is unions like yours that helped to forge the basic bargain of this country, the bargain that built the greatest middle class and the most prosperous country and the most prosperous economy the world has ever known. and you know what that bargain is because it's a simple one. it's a bargain that says if you work hard, if you're responsible, then your work should be rewarded. that if you put in enough effort, you should be able to find a job that pays the bills. you should afford a home to call your own. you'll have health care you can count on if you get sick. that you can put away enough to retire, maybe take a vacation once in awhile.

nothing fancy. but you can enjoy your friends and your family, and most importantly, that you can provide your children with an education to make sure that they do even better than you did. >> that was president obama speaking to united auto workers in toledo, ohio. my friends here on set, we may be here at work but it is of course labor day. what better day to highlight the importance of unions. the auto workers union and of course, the auto bailout that the president orchestrated that saved countless numbers of jobs and of course, gm and chrysler. in listening to that, we were talking during the break, jonathan was highlighting the notion of the basic bargain and the fairness doctrine which seems to be an organizing principle around which president obama is rallying the troops as it were. is it effective? >> i think you're seeing two different models of fairness. the model from the republicans is people have a fear that some people are getting something

from the government that they don't deserve, that they didn't earn, and the obama model is that some people aren't getting things from the market that they do deserve and that they did earn. so part of the question that we will see is which one of those things resonates more. >> i don't know. as far as i've long thought the fairness argument is a fair one if you look at the broad trend lines of american society, the stagnating of the middle class wages from 1979 to the present, the weakening power of labor unions. to me, that romney strategy is carving out a very specific portion of the electorate, we talked about it before, white blue collar workers versus the notion of the middle class. jonathan, what do you make of the basic bargain? >> fairness is a powerful argument but it can also be taken too far, because ultimately, people like an opportunity argument. an opportunity argument is more about the future and then doing better and everybody wants to do better, not just to bring others down to their level. so that's why the taxing the rich argument, even though it's very merited by what the

republicans' position is, is not by itself a winning argument and this is why the president must in his acceptance speech outline at least a couple of new ideas for a second term, to give people something to aspire to that is more than reslicing the pie, that's expanding the economic pie and so he has to play on their turf a little bit, on the republicans' turf on this. >> he needs a sputnik moment part three, possibly. after the break, president obama's foreign policy promises. we look at his resume four years later with p.j. crowley and susan glasser. but that doesn't mean we should be penalized for it. that's why liberty mutual insurance policies come standard with accident forgiveness, if you qualify. learn more at libertymutual.com.

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33,000 troops who will have come home from the war by the end of this month. >> that was president obama on saturday criticizing governor romney for not even mentioning the war in afghanistan during his acceptance speech last week. even some prominent republicans thought romney made a big mistake. bill kristol writes quote, this was an error by romney. opening up political opportunities this week for president obama and the democrats, but it was also a failure of civic responsibility. has it ever happened that we've been at war and a presidential nominee has ignored in this kind of major and formal speech, the war and our warriors? i doubt it. in fact, the a.p. reports that the last time a republican presidential candidate didn't mention war in his acceptance speech was 60 years ago, in 1952. four years ago in denver, then candidate obama talked in specifics about his foreign policy goals. >> i will end this war in iraq responsibly and finish the fight against al qaeda and the taliban in afghanistan.

>> four years later, u.s. troops are indeed out of iraq. >> i am announcing that the american combat mission in iraq has ended. operation "iraqi freedom" is over and the iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. >> in afghanistan, he stepped up troop levels, unleashed drone strikes in pakistan and yemen and rounded up top terrorists including the one whose attack started a decade of war. >> tonight i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children. >> yet with all of these successes, republicans are still trotting out the same line of criticism that the president has not been a strong leader on the international stage. >> unfortunately, for four years, for four years, we've

drifted away from our proudest traditions of global leadership. traditions that are truly bipartisan. we've let the challenges we face both at home and abroad become much harder to solve. >> joining us now from washington is former assistant secretary of state, p.j. crowley and foreign policy editor in chief, susan glasser. great to have you both on the program. p.j., i want to start with you. what did it signal to you that romney was completely silent on afghanistan in one of the most sort of significant speeches he's given to date? >> i mean, it certainly was a surprise but one of the reasons he didn't mention it is because ultimately, he's going to follow the same exit ramp that obama has constructed if he's elected president. he's been very critical of the president, saying on the one hand i wouldn't announce in advance when i'm leaving, but then again, he's not going to overturn the president's afghan policy. i think to your point about the differences of leadership, i

think both candidates have talked about american exceptionalism. the difference i think is that obama has brought the united states foreign policy within the available means given the global economic crisis. a lot of people will point to the bin laden raid as being the example of an obama doctrine. i would point to libya and the contrast between overthrowing a dictator in iraq at the cost of a trillion dollars, overthrowing a dictator in libya at the cost of just over a billion dollars, and so what obama has done is preserved american leadership while the republicans have suggested there's been a decline in american leadership. >> yet susan, even on the libya stuff, this leading from behind seems to haunt the president. i want to call to your attention condoleezza rice's comments when she said where does america stand. let's hear what she had to say. >> where does america stand. indeed, indeed, that is the question of the hour.

where does america stand. you see, when friends or foes alike don't know the answer to that question, unambiguously and clearly, the world is likely to be a more dangerous and chaotic place. >> susan, do you think that's fair? do you think that friends or foes of this country don't know where america stands? >> well, i think what you're hearing is a lot of campaign season rhetoric on both sides. i do agree with p.j. and with your report that it's quite astonishing that you are hearing so little not only about afghanistan but more generally about what romney and the republican actual positions on foreign policy would be. you're hearing a lot of rhetoric as you heard from condi rice about american greatness and leading from the front as opposed to what they consider to be obama's policy of leading from behind. but let's remember this week in charlotte, what we are going to be hearing is an awful lot of a form of triumphalism as well.

how often will we hear the name osama bin laden mentioned this week from the stage of the democratic congre iic conventio? >> the times you would not hear republicans mentioning wars, it is a reversal of roles ever if there was. a poll says 54% of the country approves of the president's job on foreign policy, disapproval is 40%, not sure is 6%. >> think back eight years ago to the 2004 republican convention. it was entirely about foreign policy, entirely about the war on terror. so just an indication of how quickly things can change in american politics. it gives president obama some advantage but not much, because this is an election about the economy. so all of foreign policy, unfortunately, is kind of at the margins of this campaign. >> k, when we talk about the president and where he stands and whether he's been a weak leader, i always find that rather absurd line of debate,

given the fact he has followed in the steps of the bush administration on many significant -- on counterterrorism and national security issues. he's been as hawkish and as sort of aggressive, if not more so, than even the bushes were. >> there's a moment early on in his presidency where it seemed possible the parties could re-align slightly and it seemed possible you might see republican leaders calling for maybe troops out of afghanistan sooner than obama, calling it obama's war, and obviously we haven't seen that and obviously, you know, at the convention, romney decided despite the speeches by condoleezza rice, by john mccain, romney himself decided not to address this which makes me think that the campaign has done the polling, done the surveys and concluded there's not much upside in it for them, and maybe they've concluded that's not what's on voters minds. >> it's about the economy, as jonathan says. p.j., the other thing is, the sands of foreign policy have been shifting so dramatically and quickly throughout the world, it would be almost -- it would be very difficult to enunciate a clear foreign policy

sort of argument from the right that's markedly different from that of the democrats. >> i think the problem for the republicans is going to be squaring their rhetoric about super power with their vision of a small government. and the fact is that even in one area where there is a sharp difference over the projected military cuts that the president has announced with the prospect of sequestration, romney promises to reverse some or all those cuts but then he's going to experience what ronald reagan went through in the 1980s where reagan promised i will raise defense spending, lower taxes and balance the budget, and then reversed course in his second term. so how romney is able to square the math in the foreign policy projections that he makes is going to be very difficult for republicans. >> susan, i want to give you the last word. as we look back, we played a lot of vintage videotape about the president and his foreign policy priorities and promises. where do you score him on sort of making good?

>> well, i think it's really important to note that obama has proven to be a stronger than expected president on national security and foreign policy but in many ways, not at all by pursuing the policies that he outlined during the campaign of 2008, where he had a somewhat different agenda of talking with our enemies, for example, you remember that, and global warming. he didn't fulfill some of those promises but at the same time, he's emerged as a fairly strong leader and has had notable successes which you will be hearing a lot about in charlotte this week. so i think the bottom line is that you have to say it's a surprising turn-around and you have democrats for the first time in recent memory really running on a national security platform. it's a big surprise, actually, of this campaign year. >> a big surprise is putting it mildly indeed. thank you to former assistant secretary of state, p.j. crowley, and foreign policy's susan glasser. thanks for your time, guys. we will have more "now" after the break. on my driver's seat. this is my car. who are you? i'm the second owner. the what? i will own this car after you. look, i'm not telling you how to drive our car. our car?

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we are back to discuss the

most important and underdiscussed domestic policy concern this week which is of course that paul ryan is lying about his marathon times. >> i think it's a huge error for him to upstage clint eastwood. >> how do you lie about your marathon times and shave an hour off of them? >> here's the problem for him, is that he said these things that weren't true in his acceptance speech but they were about policy matters that nobody remembers. this is sticky. in the same way when al gore supposedly said i invented the internet, it stuck at least for democrats. he will from now on, all the years he's in politics, he'll be lyin' ryan. >> if a vp candidate was going to make this mistake you wonts thi wouldn't think it would be ryan. >> as an armchair runner, i know you don't shave your times by that much without thinking you will catch he double hockey sticks for it. that's all for now. see you back here tomorrow at noon eastern, when i'm joined by hugo lindgren, maggie haberman and jonathan capehart.

until then, find us on facebook. "andrea mitchell reports" is next. good afternoon to you, andrea, live from charlotte. good afternoon. thanks so much. coming up live here from our wonderful charlotte house, democratic leader nancy pelosi will be joining us live at this great location along with convention host governor bev purdue and chris matthews, charlie cook, mark halperin, jonathan capehart and michael steele. all that next right here, "andrea mitchell reports." this country was built by working people. the economy needs manufacturing. machines, tools, people making stuff. companies have to invest in making things. infrastructure, construction, production. we need it now more than ever. chevron's putting more than $8 billion dollars back in the u.s. economy this year. in pipes, cement, steel, jobs, energy. we need to get the wheels turning. i'm proud of that. making real things... for real. ...that make a real difference. ♪

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right now on "andrea mitchell reports" now it's their turn. democrats get ready to party in charlotte. but a new poll today shows them slipping in north carolina. on the road to the convention, the president today in the most important swing state of all, ohio. >> i wanted to stop here in toledo to spend this day with you.