i'm matt lauer. for all of us at nbc news, have a good night. this sunday -- the politics of anger and the anti-washington ways. what do the results of super tuesday mean for the president and his party come november? joining me, the two men charged with getting members of their party elected to the senate, campaign chairs, republican john cornyn and democrat robert menendez. also, the view from one candidate who took on an incumbent and the white house and won. pennsylvania congressman and democratic senate candidate joe sestak. then our political roundtable weighs in. what's happened to the political center? without it, can anything in washington get done? with us, tom friedman of "the new york times," bob woodward

with "the washington post," paul gigot of the washington journal and nbc's andrea mitchell. captions paid for by nbc-universal television good morning. super tuesday 2010 unleashed a new power player within the republican party. but by week's end, rand paul, son of former presidential candidate ron paul, found the spotlight a little too hot, canceling his appearance on this program and raising doubts about his prospects for the fall. >> the next u.s. senator from kentucky, dr. rand paul. >> a political novice. kentucky ophthalmologist rand paul took on the republican establishment and won big. he won nearly 60% of the vote and put the tea party on the political map. >> i have a message, a message from the tea party, a message that is loud and clear and does

not mince words -- we've come to take our government back. >> paul didn't mince words either. his belief in limited government prompted questions about his views on civil rights after he told the "louisville courier journal" he opposed the portion of the 1964 civil rights act prohibiting discrimination by private businesses. he was pressed further on the "the rachel maddow show." >> do you think a private business -- >> i'm not in -- i'm not in -- yeah. i'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form, but i think what's important about this debate is not getting into any specific gotcha on this but asking the question, what about freedom of speech? when i was asked by "the courier journal," and i stick by it, is that i do defend and believe that the government should not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination or segregation in schools, busing, all of those things, but had i been there, there would have

been some discussion over one of the titles of the civil rights. >> paul ignited a controversy with his extreme views. and under pressure from both sides of the political spectrum, he backtracked the next day, issuing a statement saying he would not support repeal of the civil rights act. but he added, quote, the federal government is out of control, and those who love liberty and value individual and state's rights must stand up to it. but by week's end, paul again drew criticism for his views, this time by accusing the president of too harshly criticizing bp for its role in the gulf oil spill. >> what i don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, you know, i'll put my boot heel on the throat of bp. i think that sounds really un-american in his criticism of business. >> dr. paul wondered publicly friday where his honeymoon was and later, citing exhaustion and an unwillingness to answer any further questions about his stand on civil rights and the

role of government, canceled his appearance here. but there are questions about his principles left unanswered, like whether his belief in limited government means he opposes, say, the minimum wage, the ban on child labor laws, or workplace safety rules. perhaps the bigger question is whether this fresh new face in politics is now a weaker candidate than he was tuesday night. i want to turn to our guests, the chair of the national republican senatorial committee, senator john cornyn and his counterpart, chair of the democratic senatorial campaign committee, senator robert menendez. welcome both of you this morning to "meet the press." >> thank you. >> senator cornyn, rand paul's spokesman sent a statement to "meet the press" this morning indicating that he didn't want to be on the program because he wanted to avoidhe liberal bias of the media. and i wonder what your view is, whether you think this is liberal bias that's ensnared him this week or whether it's the articulation of his own views about the limited scope of government that had senior republicans in the party telling him to avoid the national spotlight. >> well, dr. paul's new to

running for public office, and i think it's bob's experience, i'm sure my experience, that you see novice candidates occasionally stumble on questions. i think he's clarified his position. but i think he's done the right thing. as much fun as this is, david, to be here with you, i think he needs to be talking to the voters back in kentucky, the people who actually will be able to cast a ballot on whether he's elected as a next united states senator or not. >> obviously being here is not as important as the larger point, which is don't you think this is fair game, questions about his views about the limit and the scope of government? >> well, i do think that's a fair topic, and i'm sure you'll be hearing extensively from him and all the candidates over the next six months. but the fact of the matter is rand paul's leading his opponent in the general election by 25 points. >> you don't think he's a weaker candidate today than he was tuesday? >> he's leading by 25 points. let the numbers speafor themselves. but i think we will have a discussion about the role of

government in our lives. there are too many americans or many americans, i should say, who believe that government has simply gotten too aggressive, it spends too much, it borrows too much and we've had too many government takeovers. i think he will speak directly to that, and i think people will respond favorably. >> do his views concern you? >> i don't know what all his views are. i've watched this exchange, but the fact of the matter is i think he's doing the right thing by talking to -- >> senator, you have heard his views and it's not as if he hadn't thought this out. he's got very specific views about even the civil rights act. he took issue with only one of the titles in the civil rights act so it's not as if there was an ambush. he's thought a good deal about it, articulate about what he believes. you've heard that. do you agree or disagree? >> he's clarified his views he's opposed to any kind of discrimination, period, and i applaud him for clarifying that view. i just think that every time you have a citizen who decides to run for public office who's not a professional politician that occasionally they're going to stumble.

sometimes their philosophy, when you start to articulate it and carry it to its logical end, they have to come back and say, well you know what -- >> but his view is should not be subject to a government mandate even about discrimination. is that something you agree with or is that beyond the pale of mainstream conservative views? >> david, what i heard him say is he supports the civil rights act, he clarified his views and that should be is end of it. >> senator me mendez, your take on what you've seen in the last few days. >> this is an example of what's happening to the republican party across the country, being the republican establishment, but it's the mainstream losing to the extreme. clearly, with rand paul, here's someone who, you know, as you already cited, questions, elements of the civil rights act as it relates to the private sector, says that president obama's comments about making bp responsible in the oil spill is un-american, wants to end farm subsidies across the country, including in kentucky.

i'll take our matchup with attorney general jack conway, a crusading attorney general, rooted out medicaid fraud, against someone who clearly is in the extreme, even questions the americans with disabilities act. so i think this is an example of what's happening to the republican establishment across the country. the establishment being beaten by extreme candidates, whether it be here or in florida or as you see surging in colorado and nevada. >> his views, dr. paul's views, about the limits of government also have to do with the deficit, and that's really the thrust of what he's run on. his concerns and other tea partyers concerns about the debt. this is what he said at a unity event in kentucky yesterday. >> we have an annual deficit of nearly $2 trillion. interest alone on the debt is $383 billion. i think there is a day of reckoning coming. i don't want that day of reckoning to involve chaos as we're seeing in greece.

>> that is a potent message. there's a reason why he won so big. and your party is in charge of the white house and congress. isn't this a liability? government spending and the debt for democrats this fall. >> well, we'll have to remind, david, the public that republicans left this president and this democratic majority with two wars raging abroad unpaid for, a couple of trillion dollars in tax cuts unpaid for, and new entitlement programs unpaid for, and what we've had to do is inherit the economic mess they gave us and try to stop us from going into very well a possibility of a depression and move forward from losing three-quarters of a million jobs when barack obama took office for the first quarter of each month for the first quarter of 2009 to gaining nearly 300,000 jobs last month, from negative gdp growth to positive gdp growth. so it seems to me, including,

you know, having republicans run away from their own proposition of a bipartisan commission to deal with the national debt, something i voted for, something the republican sponsors actually ran away from. >> senator? >> there they go again blaming it on george bush. i don't know when this administration, when the democratic leadership that got the majority in november 2008 are going to take responsibility for the 23% increase in the national debt since president obama was sworn into office. under the president's own budget, our debt to gdp ratio will be up to 90% by 2020. 90%, according to the congressional budget office. greece is at 115%. so it's easy to see that unless we take our foot off the accelerator when it comes to spending and debt, if we don't do the sort of fundamental reform of entitlements, cut back on spending and do the same sort of budget scrub that every family, every small business has had to do during this recession, that we're going to be heading off a financial cliff. and i don't see the administration taking their foot off the gas at all.

i see them stomping the gas and going even further to grow the size of government and spend and debt. >> the debate about the debt will continue. i want to ask you, senator cornyn, one other question about the tea party and its impact. this is ow an economist reported it in the context of dr. paul. >> you have the fundamental conflict for the tea party, which is how is a movement predicated on limiting the size of government actually going to govern within the government? tea party and the republicans. is it an asset or a liability? >> well, the tea party -- tea party movement and libertarians like dr. paul don't believe in no government. they believe in limited government, smaller government,

government that lives within its means. the fact is, as a "new york times" poll said recently, that 57% of independents, the people who actually win elections or tip the balance in elections, sympathize with the tea party movement. our friends on the democratic -- in the democratic party have tried to marginalize these people and claim like they are somehow less than patriotic americans when these are folks who perhaps have not gotten involved in politics before, gotten off the couch, gone to town halls, who have gone to these rallies to express their views that -- >> but dr. paul, i mean, you would admit, wouldn't you, it's a question -- and i don't know the answer -- where they think the line is in terms of the role of government, in terms of regulation, in terms of what laws the government should pass. i mean, you would admit that dr. paul is still opaque on this point. there's a lot of questions that he has invited. >> and that's what the next six months of the campaign is for. i think what we've seen in the time that president obama has been in office and the time that democrats have basically run

washington is an antipathy toward the private sector and the job creation capacity that only they can provide. >> we're going to come back to this with our guests in just a moment. i want to take a moment to turn to pennsylvania's democratic nominee for the u.s. senate, congressman joe sestak. congressman, welcome to "meet the press." >> good to be here. >> you had a very important victory in pennsylvania, taking on senator arlen specter, the incumbent, and you won. and when you spoke on election night, this is what you said. >> this is what democracy looks like. a win for the people. over the establishment, over the status quo, even over washington, d.c.! >> congressman, you sound like the ultimate outsider. the only problem is you are a congressman. okay, you're running against the establishment, you voted for t.a.r.p., for the bailout, you voted for the president's stimulus plan, you voted for the

president's health care plan. exactly which establishment are you not part of that you're running against? >> you know, in 31 years in the navy, when i came to washington, i was kind of taken aback that that type of accountability that i'd learned from my actions in the u.s. navy seemed to be absent down here in washington, d.c. look, somebody had torpedoed our economy. we were sinking. we were hemorrhaging jobs. it's not about big government or small government. it's about effective government. somebody took the referee off the football field up there in wall street. they let them play roulette with the savings of the seniors in my district. i sit there and a correction to wall street means young couples can't send their children to education. i ran about accountability for one's actions, and i think that's pretty -- >> congressman, the question i asked you, is you have supported all the major elements of the obama agenda. >> yes. >> and yet in that sound bite you were running as an outsider. are you not part of the establishment that you are railing against? >> i did vote for those because

they were needed. but as john f. kennedy once said, sometimes the party asks too much. and when they did something that i didn't agree with, because it didn't help pennsylvania working families, i'll stand up to the party. that's what i did. it doesn't mean whether you're part of an establishment or not. >> -- the obama agenda that was his priority did you stand up to? >> i hoppestly think that this president has done great, good things, but i don't think we've gone far enough in terms of helping small business. my party has to recognize business is a good word when you have small in front-it. you get a 15% tax credit for a small business. for every new payroll job created, we soak up 5 million of the 8.5 million unemployed in 2 1/2 years. in short, we need to do better than what we've done. as we mentioned earlier, the market is good. there are really good private markets out there. we just need fair rules, and before the rules kind of favored

wall street. >> favoring tax cuts? >> for small businesses. for far too long, like the senate did, they literally voted that large corporations get a tax credit. on wall street they said forget about any rules out there, go ahead and gamble. so what i'm for is for effective government. and if you are going to get tax credits, and i do believe in them, they should be where a majority of pennsylvanians work, in small business. that's the real engine of the economy. >> congressman, you're a democrat and i fully expect you will campaign for the obama agenda in the fall. is that your plan? >> i'm campaigning for whatever is needed to take care of the working families of pennsylvania. president obama said in a phone call to me, yes, but at the end of the day, i ran because i didn't agree with a deal that was made that i didn't think would help pennsylvania over the next six years. i respect the establishment. but when they're wrong, i think you have to stand up to them. >> what you stood up to is your opponent, which is not terribly courageous, given that's what you do in politics. what i'm asking is whether you

are an obama democrat who supported stimulus, who supported health care, who's with him on all of the major elements of his agenda. are you or are you not an obama democrat? >> i've always described myself as an independent thinking person who believes in democratic principles. those are the same principles this president believes in, but if i think they're doing something that isn't right in accordance with the principles to help families of pennsylvania, i'll stand up just like i did then. i'm a pretty pragmatic guy. you know, i come from the military. everybody has health care. the dividends in our nation are immense. we don't even promote you above a certain rating or rank unless you have an education or college degree. those are the kinds of principles that give dividends to our nation. imagine a workforce that's healthy and educated that competes with china and india. that's the kind of focused democrat i am. >> what job were you offered to stay out of a primary race by the administration? >> it was interesting. i was asked a question about something that happened a month earlier, and i felt i should

answer it honestly, and that's all i had to say about it, because anything beyond that gets away from what we just spoke about, the policies that are -- >> part of the policy you talk about, standing up to the white house when they feel that a candidate made a deal with arlen specter. so isn't it, in the spirit of transparency, were you offered a job by the administration and what was it? >> i learned, as i mentioned, about that personal accountability in the navy. i felt i needed to answer that question honestly because i was personally accountable for my role -- >> but the answer, what is the job you were offered? >> anybody else has to decide for themselves what to say, and that's their responsibility. >> yes or no. straightforward question. were you offered a job and what was the job? >> i was offered a job. i answered that. >> you said you wouldn't take the job. was it the secretary of the navy job? >> anything that goes beyond that we won't talk about. >> let me ask about elements of how you'll campaign. what specifically would you advise the president to do with

regard to tackling the debt? what painful choice would you advocate as a united states senator either on the spending side or the tax side? >> there's three major areas. first, pay as you go, which we know president clinton used to get his three budget deficits were thrown out, and you need to look at if you want a new program, you have to cut another program. we have that, but there's too many caveats to do that. we need to do that on the mandatory discretionary side. right now it's just the mandatory side. second, health care. the largest increase over the next 50 years in our budget is medicare and medicaid. can we do it? sure. and as we have two programs that are in this new health care bill, it begins to reward and incentivize for quality of care not quantity of care. that is that if somebody is, after a heart operation like my father, left after three days and they missed that he had a staph infection, just another fee, they weren't penalized.

>> what specific painful choice would you advocate as a united states senator to deal with the debt? >> close those tax loopholes, all right. carried interest for wall street upwards of $80 billion to $100 billion a year. they get taxed at 15%. $80 billion for tax loopholes, so oil companies that literally have record profits, $352 billion a year that's not collected in taxes from small businesses and individuals of corporations. but also secretary gates, i stood up and said he was right when he said, wait a minute, we don't need the f-22. i have two plants in my district that provided parts for that plane. but what he's trying to do to transform the military is also absolutely needed. >> we'll leave it there. congressman sestak, thank you very much. let's turn back to the senators, the campaign chairs. senator menendez, talk about pennsylvania. the white house backed senator specter. that didn't work. assess this race now going into

the fall. >> well, you've seen that you have a navy admiral who really has an independent view, one that fights for pennsylvanians in terms of their jobs and economic opportunity, versus someone who spends a decade on wall street as a derivatives trader and ultimately spent another six years in congress, you know, defending the interests of wall street. i'll take that matchup on any day. and i think pennsylvania 12, the congressional election that took place, the only election which there was a republican against a democrat. and that election showed very clearly in a district that john mccain won, in a district that is far more conservative, where republicans went after barack obama and nancy pelosi and our candidate talked about jobs and. and i think you're going to see that same race, type of race, played across the country. >> is president obama, who declined to come in for senator specter at the very end because the view was he was going to

lose, is he an asset or a liability for democratic candidates this fall? >> i think the single biggest thing that president obama can do to help democrats, and particularly the country as we move into midterm elections, is what he has been doing -- righting this country from huge job losses to job gains, going from negative domestic growth to positive domestic growth, tackling some of the fundamental things that my colleagues on the republican side, you know, let fester for eight years. i mean, the reason we had double-digit increases in health care, republicans did nothing. the reason that we had excesses on wall street is because they didn't permit -- >> let's stay with pennsylvania. senator cornyn, your view. >> well, i think pennsylvania, colorado, arkansas, kentucky are -- demonstrate on the democrat side basically a fight between the party of big government, the democratic party, and the people who are running against those establishment democrat candidates who are in favor of really, really big government,

people like mr. conway, people like mr. romanoff out in colorado, people like mr. sestak who basically, as you pointed out, david, voted 98% with nancy pelosi and the president's agenda, which is extraordinarily unpopular. 60% of the people -- i think it's 56% nationwide -- believe health care bill that my friend mr. menendez and my friend mr. sestak support, they want to repeal it because they realize we can't afford it because it raises premiums, raises taxes and -- >> let me talk to you about another interesting race here of a candidate who's gotten in trouble and that is connecticut. the attorney general, richard blumenthal, and his vietnam-era service. this is the headline in "the new york times." the candidate's words differ from his history. this was an article that pointed out several examples where he claimed he served in vietnam where he had not. this was one example back in march of 2008. >> we have learned something very important today that i

served in vietnam. >> and, in fact, he dealt with that a few days later, this week, rather, at a press conference, where he dealt with the story and what he meant by all that, was it a misstatement or something more. this is what he said. >> now, on a few occasions i have misspoken about my service, and i regret that, and i take full responsibility. but i will not allow -- [ applause ] i will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country. >> senator menendez, is it a stretch to believe this is just a misstatement? do you know anybody in the military who's not extremely careful about speaking about their service and whether it occurred during wartime or not? >> look, i think the attorney general surrounded by veterans who had his back, as he's had

their back over 20 years, clearly said i misspoke. as a matter of fact, the article that originally came out about him and the same video, if you looked at that video later on, he says, i did not serve in vietnam. so the bottom line is here's someone, however, who did ultimately enlist in the marines, in the reserves. >> my question -- senator, my question is very clear. do you think people really believe it was a misstatement? don't you know anybody who's in the military who's very careful about speaking of serving in wartime or not? i know what he said. >> if you listen to the veterans in connecticut, they said we knew he did not serve in vietnam. these are the veterans of connecticut. i'll take a crusading attorney general who did serve in the marines versus john's candidate, who -- linda mcmahon -- who actually operated the world wrestling entertainment, which became a dirty business. she tried to intervene in an investigation on a narcotics

issue in that industry. she peddled violence to kids, let wrestlers have their bodies ultimately be damaged, all for the purposes of making money. i think that that contrast in this election is one that we'll take. >> senator. >> we still have a primary in connecticut so i don't know who the nominee will be, but what we're looking for are candidates and office holders that they can trust and have integrity. unfortunately, i think mr. blumenthal has damaged his reputation as somebody you can trust by misrepresenting his record. and the only worse thing, david, i think, is then coming on and saying, oh, i misspoke, after you've been caught red handed. it's as if he hot himself in one foot, then reloaded and shot himself in the other. >> before you both go -- >> that could apply to ranld paul, too. >> i want to talk about the politics of immigration. the mexican president met with president obama, had a state dinner, spoke to a joint session of congress in which he was critical of the law in arizona, a tough anti-immigration law,

saying it was an invitation to racial profiling. sarah palin posted something on her facebook page that seems to speak for a lot of conservatives who are defending the arizona law. >> senator menendez, you have pushed this administration to pass comprehensive immigration this year. is that possible in this political climate? >> well, i hope if john and some of our colleagues on the republican side join us in an issue that is critically important to both the national security and the national economy and about stopping the exploitation of millions of people, yes. but if republicans, who have basically taken an absolute opposition to seeking comprehensive immigration reform, continue to do so, you can't have states like arizona say washington hasn't acted.

and i've mentioned various times that the governor of arizona should speak to u.s. senators and to her republican colleagues in the senate to make sure that they join us in an effort to make sure we control the borders and at the same time deal with the 12 million people in this country. >> senator cornyn, senator mccain, now talking about -- has an ad about completing the fence on the border. he and senator kennedy championed comprehensive immigration reform, as did president bush, and it was the republican party, his own party, who turned away from him on it. >> david, i wish that the president of the united states, the president of mexico, the attorney general and the secretary of the department of homeland security would have done what anybody can do with internet access, which is to down load a copy of the arizona bill and read it for themselves. it expressly bans racial profiling. and frankly, the people of arizona have had to step up in the absence of a sensible immigration reform plan starting with border security. the president's budget is essentially a flat line in terms of additional boots on the ground and additional resources

to secure the border with drug wars raging in mexico. 23,000 people have died in mexico since 2006. this is having a spillover effect in the united states, and we've got to secure the border as a predicate to dealing with the larger issue. >> would you support comprehensive immigration this year if it included protections for the border as it did in the bush administration as well as a path for legal status for the workers who are here? >> the bush administration made leaps and bounds working with a bipartisan congress to improve border security, but it still is not secure. there's a lot we need to do. >> you don't think it will happen this year. >> i think rahm emanuel, as i understand, has advised the president that this is not something they should do because he's called it the third rail of politics. the president has to take the lead. >> senator, will the president do it? >> certainly if the president said he wants to do this. we just need some republican support here. they've talked about -- jon kyl

and john mccain have talked about rounding up all 41 senators for comprehensive immigration reform. they can filibuster then. this is too important an issue for the national economy and the national security. i'd rather have people know who is here to pursue the american dream and pay their taxes than to keep them -- >> all right. i'm going to make that the last word, stalemate for this morning on that. we'll continue to follow that. thank you both very much for being here. up next, a packed agenda in washington as you can hear, but can anything get done if there's no middle ground? tom friedman of "the new york times," bob woodward of "the washington post," paul gigot and andrea mitchell. only here on "meet the press." at northern trust, we understand... that while you may come from the same family... you know, son, you should take up something more strenuous. you have different needs and desires. - i'm reading a book. - what's a book? so we tailor plans for individuals, featuring a range of integrated solutions. - you at your usual restaurant? - son: maybe. see you tomorrow. - stairs? - elevator.

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joining us now, associate editor of "the washington post," bob woodward, chief foreign affairs correspondent for nbc news and host of msnbc's "andrea mitchell reports," none other than andrea mitchell, editorial page editor for "the wall street journal," paul gigot and "new york times" columnist tom friedman. welcome back to the program, all of you. welcome, i should say, to our new surroundings if you haven't been here before. tom friedman, the curious case of dr. rand paul. a political force this week, a force for the tea party, and someone who is outspoken in his views who, by the ends of the week, had republicans quite nervous, as you heard senator cornyn say, the issue with these novice candidates, they go out

there and make mistakes. is he a weakened candidate? >> sure feels like it to me. i think, you know, when you come out against the 1964 civil rights act, that's not a growth position. now maybe in his state or maybe in the tea party, but i don't think that's something you're going to build a national campaign around. so, yeah, it really gets to the fact of i think he tried to press all the senators on this, really, david. you want to cut back government. just tell me which service do you want to take away? is it police, fire, army? you know, i think that's a serious discussion to have, smaller government. but to say we want smaller government, less government intrusion, tell me what you want to take away. i think what's really difficult about this moment and why it requires much smarter leadership is we need to cut some taxes right now and raise some taxes, okay. we need to cut some services now and invest in new services now. that's what's so difficult and

challenging about this moment. and if you're just for one or the other, i don't think you have the answer. >> what interests me about rand paul, kind of the larger issue is the question of the role of government. what role should government be playing? and i think this administration is arguing that this government has a big role to play, an important role to play, and it can't just be about the freedom of the market, that sort of thing. >> he's wrong about the civil rights and he shouldn't get into a debate about an old law that has a consensus in this country. to tom's point, rand paul is willing to be more specific about what he'll cut. he's willing to take on medicare. he's willing to say i'm willing to raise the retirement age or i'm willing to reform social security. he'd be willing to take on some of those questions in a more forthright way. and the mistake he made was to take the focus, political focus, away from all that and say, oh, let's have a libertarian seminar about a 46-year-old law. >> to the point it was curious to me that his folks are now talking about liberal media bias

and all the rest when this was somebody who did what journalists like, he said what was on his mind, and he has well-developed views, spoke about them, you can agree or disagree. he's willing to talk about hem in some depth. yet now it's somehow about liberal bias. >> look, he announced his candidacy on the rachel maddow show so he wasn't venturing into a hostile area. he was articulate in his views. he's a libertarian. he was being philosophical about that. and true to his belies. if he is true to his belief, why is he running for the united states senate? if he does not believe the purest sense that the government should intrude on businesses' rights to discriminate against gay people, against people who have disabilities, who need wheelchair access, if he doesn't believe in that, why does he think he can go to the senate and pass laws? that's what senators do. they legislate. >> yes. but forget -- i mean don't forget that the anti-government message is really, really strong. there was a man named ronald reagan who ran on it in a very,

very powerful way. and if you look at some of the things reagan said in his various campaigns, they echoed this. it turns out reagan didn't cut government, he did cut taxes, and, you know, now people look at that very fondly. so -- >> let me push back on that, because i did an interview with jim baker this week who, without knowing exactly what rand had paul had said, made that same point, the reagan analogy. ronald reagan was a pragmatist. he ran on some things in 1980, but as we all covered him in the years he raised taxes when he had to, the cement broke around his feet. what rand paul is saying if he is going to be true to his beliefs is very different. >> he declined to come on the show because he would be asked about that. he's a pragmatist, too. >> i want you to break them down a little bit. there were two kind of -- trying to find the meaning of tuesday. this is a cartoon we like.

mike smith from the las vegas sun, in "usa today." a couple guys sitting at bar. one says, everyone's mad at me, my wife, my kids, my boss. the other says, hey, it could be worse. you could be an incumbent. and an old jim hightower quote said, there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. we see the breakdown of the political center and a real problem for incumbents tuesday? >> of course we saw both of them. president obama has governed so far to the left that i think he's driven republicans to the right. republicans said he saw in utah where they didn't re-elect, didn't get put on the ballot, we don't want somebody who's going to cooperate with this agenda. we want somebody who's going to stop it. >> the irony, paul, you say he govred from the left. what has the tea party animated is t.a.r.p., which is a republican creation. >> no, no. there's no question about it. yet it has evolved to now bail out the insurance companies and the auto companies, and it's gone well beyond its original

purpose to stay in the financial system. but i think the way -- you cannot look at the polarization of this election without looking at the way this country has been governed the last two years. there's a reaction to that. there's a reaction on the right as you described and a reaction on the left, where you see a lot of the labor individuals, labor unions and other kand daptds saying, you know what, we don't want moderate democrats who aren't goi to support the president's agenda 100%. they're taking that on in arkansas. democrats just lost a seat in hawaii because their party was split on those grounds. >> but i don't think these elections have any theme, quite frankly, and i think the politics are very unsettled. it was secretary of defense gates who recently gave a speech saying -- about the military budget saying it's a gusher. there are all kinds of problems out there that i think are going to define the six months that we -- before the election. the big one, obviously, is the oil spill. >> right. >> down in the gulf. >> where is that going?

>> and i want to get to that right after our break. i want to follow up on one point with tom friedman, which is when you have such activism on the left and the right, what does that do to the political center, and how do you govern in that respect? bob bennett, the senator whofsz defeated in a convention in utah, wrote this in "the washington post" this morning. >> where is the center that actually does something, that actually achieves things in washington if this is what we're creating? >> well, david, it's been december malted. it's been decimated from

everything from the gerrymandering of political districts to cable television to an internet where i can create a digital lynch mob against you to the fact that money in politics is so out of control, really our congress is a form for legalized bribery. that's really what it's come down to. so i'm worried about this. it's why i have fantasized, don't get me wrong, but that what if we could just be china for a day, i mean, just one day? you know what i mean? where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and i do think there is a sense of that on everything from the economy to environment. i don't want to be china for a second. i want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus, and stick-to-itiveness. but right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions. >> and in fact, tom, you're absolutely right. one case in point, the financial regulations, which we'll get to, but chris dodd realized bob bennett, with whom he wanted to

work, the ranking member of the banking committee, was so swept away by his fight back home in utah that he could not work across party lines and that there is so much punishment for anyone who works across party lines to try to come up with the best solutions so they end up with things that are not optimal. >> we'd all be in jail if we were china for a second. >> i want our system to work, though. >> it is not going to enact your fantasies or anybody else's fantasies. i mean, they will -- remember, now, we were talking act health care being dead 11 or 12 times. they passed it. so things do happen. there are compromises. >> final thought. >> you don't like it, but they did it. >> that's right. and there are people who want to come in and stop it. but i want to argue, you get a republican congress, you'll see republicans and obama have to do business on something. and these things go in cycles, and that's what happened after 1996 when you had a republican congress and president.

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and we're back to continue our discussion with our political roundtable. let's talk about this oil spill. it goes on a month now unabated. still we have the oil gushing. james carville, the ragin' cajun, lives in new orleans now, former adviser to president clinton, and well-known democrat, critical of the obama administration. this is how politico reported it on friday, quoting carville. they are risking everything by this go along with bp strategy, carville told cnn on friday. they seem like they are inconvenienced by this. this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another if you let bp handle it, it'll all go away. it's not going away. it's growing out there. it's a disaster of the first magnitude and they've got to go to plan b. tom friedman, what is that? what should the government be doing now that it's not doing? >> well, obviously, there's a

short-term solution and long-term solution. short term, you have to stay on bp and stay on the situation. we have an oil spill that's about a mile below the surface. it's about 60, 70 miles offshore so it's hard to see, okay. and we don't exactly know precisely what environmental damage it's going to cause, but this is enormous and has the potential to be the worst environmental disaster this country's ever faced. my criticism of the obama administration is their approach has been think small and carry a big stick. okay? hammer bp. put it all on them. but in terms of thinking about a long-term solution to this, it's been rather imaginative -- unimaginative. david, we're caught right now i would argue between petro determinus and ecopessimist. ecopesz misses say you're dead, you're finished. i'll talk to you, but you're dead. the petro determinus says, look, we'll always have to be dependent on oil, little boy. nowhere in the middle is someone who actually believes in america

and america's inknow ranovative prowess, but our addiction to oil drives down the value of the dollar, promotes climate change, okay, despoils our environment and having a policy that ends our addiction to oil, it's not win-win. it's win, win, win, win, win. the fact that there isn't a single person, okay, in congress really taking this seriously and the president is playing kind of rope-a-dope with this right now i find extremely frustrating. >> it is a potentially giant disaster of the -- i mean, most disasters come and go. 9/11 came and went, okay. this continues. and i picked up your newspaper on saturday and had half a smile because it said, "bp steps up its effort," and then i read on, "to criticize others and point the finger at others and blame

everyone." you know, why don't they call in goog snl why don't they call in some of the people who have these great minds -- >> because this is a very, very hard engineering problem, a specific engineering problem. 5,000 feet under water. what does carville want the government to do? they don't have the expertise to cap it. >> bp is not part of the government. >> bp has more expertise than the government does. right? i mean, isn't that the problem? >> the fact is they said they had a plan when they got the permit. we have people in government, in this administration as well as the previous administration, in that same division of the interior department, you have a cabinet secretary very well regarded. he came in. he didn't say to himself, to his team, you've had people who go to jail in this division of the interior department who are permitting oil drills offshore. we're about to recommend to the president more offshore drilling, which everyone had agreed is a necessary part of a medium-range solution. why didn't they first say let's take this division and shake it

out and find out what is going on in there? what is the relationship between these oil companies and the people giving them the permits? they said they had a plan. what is so shocking, i think, to people is that the best scientist, the best minds, you've got a nobel laureate who is the secretary of energy -- >> chew. >> how can there not be a scientific solution? that's what's so shocking about this. >> again, in the short run, as paul said, this is a really difficult engineering problem. and i don't blame -- i blame them for not having better regulated oil companies in the future. that's something both administrations have done. that they haven't found the immediate solution i think -- >> for these very risks when they answered the questions -- >> to me it's -- yeah. >> they have answers but -- >> do we have a long-term solution? right now you mentioned steve chew. obama's got an amazing all-star energy team. they're in a witness protection program. have you seen any of these people? i haven't. you have a sense that obama's approaching this problem like

every day taking a poll hour by hour. i did not support this guy to read polls. i supported him to change polls, and that's not what's happening. >> you can start to do it very quickly. put a $3 or $4 tax on gasoline. i know you're for that. the president is not. >> i know. >> no politician i know is. but that's the answer. >> a question. tom, you laid out this criticism, but what would you have the administration do? i'm not asking that rhetorically. >> think and engage, because it is something that's got to be dealt with. but i think the one thing we've learned about oil is it's kind of answered the question why the oil companies have been making so much money. you don't have to go down there and pump it. it just comes to you once you pierce the shell of the bottom. and all of this is coming, you know, no pumps. it's spewing out in a way -- >> with if we stop offshore drilling, we're not going to stop oil spills. the "exxon valdez" was a tanker

spill. we'd still have to import the oil. >> this was not an inevident accident. this was an accident caused by systems that were not there, systems they promised would be there, vows that were disregarded. there are real mistakes here that need to be fixed. >> a commission to do -- the question is what do you do now. and this whole thing may be not just going around florida but up the east coast. it's going to come right here and destroy your set. >> well, you have an issue where you have an oil spill that continues, you have a debt that continues to talk up. you talk about problems that washington has to deal with. thank you all. we're going to leave it there. thanks all very much. and we'll be right back. for our viewers in the twin cities of minnesota, i should point out, we would love the see you on thursday for a special "meet the press" across america forum we are doing at the university of minnesota with governor tim pawlenty. check out our website for all the details on how to reserve

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