>> this is "the chris matthews show" >> ask not what your country can do for you. >> tear down this wall. >> i can hear you. >> a time for change has come! chris: oh, lucky man. obama is facing a republican frontrunner unable to clinch victory and republican parties with allies like rush limbaugh. the economy showing real signs of recovery. is barack obama one of those guys who the world keeps turning up good. despite all of the good trends this interconnected world has lots of loose entsdz. things look good for obama now, but events would elect romney. obama is singing happy days, but it's america, is he too far ahead of the parade to hear its

music. finally, offshore warnings, could this war with iran change everything and could the killing of americans in afghanistan drive us to quit? could either of these crisis player up and leave this white house burnt. hi, i'm chris matthews. welcome to the show. with us today, the "washington post" bob woodward, cnbc becky quick, the "washington post" kathleen parker and the national journal's major garrett. while republicans are having to explain rush limbaugh's hatefulness this week, barack obama is radiating optimism these days. the president is channeling that old ronald reagan morning in america. here he is on tuesday. >> i'm not going to settle for a country where a few do really well and everybody else is struggling to get by. i promise you this. as long as you got an ounce of fight left in you, i'll have a ton of fight left in me. >> a new poll has obama losing to mitt romney by four points believe it or not, even with all of the damage that romney

sustained lately. other polls have obama winning or tied. those are snapshots. obama knows history. he knows that the trend in a president's job approval is the key. this chart shows his approval and disapproval since inauguration. right now his approval is going up decidedly, this is going down. jimmy carter and george bush 41, that's the first george bush had trend lines going down during this period in the last year of their first term. there are eight months to go. three things have the white house worried, though. the jobs recovery could stall or even reverse. gas prices could spike higher and iran could spike it even higher still and europe's debt crisis could blow up and blow things up here. bob, a big question to you. george will has a column coming out this weekend, your colleague at the post and the op-ed page. he is talking about the republicans choking this year. a great year to win and they are going to lose by barry goldwater

dimensions, a wipeout. is this rush limbaugh the kind of thing giving them a since of forbidding in a year they should be winning? >> we just don't know if you go back to other presidential contests, events could occur, and this is the thinking in the white house, not just iran on the international front. iraq is not settled, afghanistan is not settled. there are still worries about north korea and worries about al qaeda. they're worried about the seismic event that will be there and be the hinge of history and you just can't predict. chris: this republican forbidding, this sense out there, the smart people like will and haley barber and jeb bush, they're holding back from this thing it seems. >> they don't like the way the contest has been framed. we were talking about this earlier. all of those votes for santorum in michigan are actually going to be romney votes if romney

gets the nomination. so it's not over and to say in the fall. chris: what could be a new jump ball. this unemployment rate. it's down to 8.3 now.

>> just a second. i mean, those numbers are out there and those are important, but there is this, the psycho dynamics of it for the average voter and that is has obama stabilized or fixed the economy. and if you go back to bush sr.'s race against clinton, actually the economy was getting better, but the perception was that bush hadn't done enough and was out of touch. and so i liked all of these numbers and you got to watch them, but how does the average voter feel when you look at all of the polls and it shows people are concerned about the economy. that means, translate, they're concerned about how obama is trying to manage or fix or stabilize the economy. >> you he hasn't answered that question yet. >> republicans gas prices work they're a larger constellation

of grievances against obama. green jobs are a dead end. they put a lot of taxpayer money. that's a waste. he didn't do the keystone excel pipeline, he doesn't want to make american jobs. against him for the environment over jobs and energy production. if they can construct it in a larger narrative against obama, i'm not saying they will, but they're certainly looking at gas prices as a look into that and the president is being preenter tiff as saying no quick fix, no silver bullet, don't let these guys convince you about something that isn't true on energy prices. chris: unemployment goes up, it goes up because gas prices are putting a damper on the recovery. it could go up because of the iranian crisis. what about the european thing with greece? >> i'm surprised that the market hasn't acted more strongly to the problems we have seen cropping up. we spoke with warren buffett

this week, i thought he would say things improved quite a bit, he said it's still out there. and another, this is the second inning of this crisis. too many nations who have to go and keep this together and too many places that could go wrong. it could pop up again chris: what will it do to our economy? >> the biggest problem is what happens to the export situation. it's pipe to this point. if you see a drop off in that, it could show up very quickly. chris: in the obama-romney sports face-off this week, it looks silly. obama looked too sporting at the nascar 500. obama used an espn interview to advantage for him and give him a chance of hosting nba all-stars like chris paul at the white house. >> for my 49th birthday, i had my own little all-star game here. >> i wasn't invited. >> you weren't, maybe next time. chris was one of the guys who played. i did a little crossover on him.

he claims that he could have stolen the ball. everybody who was there knows that's not true. chris: so obama won the sports face-off, but then there are the late night shows, those appearances are to make serious guys seem normal, even funny, but are tough do well. four years ago obama tried his hand at david letterman's top 10. >> number eight. >> appoint mitt romney as secretary of looking good. >> yes, sir. wow. chris: then a year ago it was mitt romney's turn and it was this funny coincidence. >> i'm the guy in the photo that comes in your picture frame. >> that's right. that's where i have seen you. chris: it was on his wall at the time. here are a few more side besides from those two appearances. >> number five. >> i'll rename the 10th month of the year barachtober, how about

that. >> number six. >> do i smell as good as i look? no. >> number four. >> i won't let apple release the newest iphone the day after you bought the previous one. >> number two. >> i have absolutely no idea where my birth certificate is. >> and the promise. >> three words, vice president oprah! >> the number one thing you don't know about mitt romney. >> oprah is my half-sister. >> yeah, there you go. chris: well, guys, those two guys back to back right next to each other in presidential debates, hour and a half, three times, we'll get a look at them will this change everything? >> those are the really important moments and we forget in all of the soup of this

discussion of the daily event or the daily number, romney had some things going for him. he was a governor. look at the last three presidents of the united states who had two terms, reagan, bush, george w bush and clinton, all governors. chris: i'm listening. when we come back, can president obama avoid a third middle east war in a dozen years and "scoops and predictions" from these top reporters.

chris: welcome back, a "washington post" abc poll gives president obama big marks over mitt romney on handling foreign policy. he gets 55% to romney's 3. what could upset that lead? well war with iran and afghanistan, will the killing of americans over there over the

koran burning ignite a faster pullout. two big questions, this whole question of iran. this whole week entered is president talking about it netanyahu coming you. a pack meeting and all that. he said to the atlantic magazine. i'm going to fell hill, netanyahu, he shouldn't bomb. we'll take care of this if we have to. >> that's a very important interview that jeffrey goldberg did with obama, 45 minutes, what are you doing? goldberg is up to speed on this as much as anyone and what struck me in that interview is where the president said i don't bluff. now, have you ever been in negotiation? the smartest lawyer, negotiator i know in washington says that the skill you need, in fact, 75% of the game is bluffing. you got to be able to bluff. so the president, of course, is bluffing to a certain extent because -- and underneath this,

they are skillfully handling the hottest of hot potatoes. this is a really, really tough case. chris: romney is out there very strongly saying if obama is president again for a second term, iran will have a nuclear weapon, just to get to the bottom line here. if i'm president, mitt romney, they won't. boy, is that an ultimatum statement. is the president joining them in that statement? >> when somebody says i don't bluff, probably he is bluffing. i'm sure that the romney -- >> only in this city do people understand this kind of bluffing. >> no means yes and yes means no. >> right, and romney, look, president romney is looking to be presidential and he is not going to say rash things in the course of the campaign with his contemporaries perhaps he will be more bold, with the real deal, he is not going to say anything particularly provocative i don't think on the campaign trail.

>> the president says i don't bluff. he says i got your back, israel, that's a direct quote from the interview. he said you can say he is being hawkish or not being hawkish. look, it's in everyone's best interest not to try to contain a nuclear iran. they have a bomb, everyone else is going to bomb. the problem with india and pakistan, multiply by a factor of four or five. for none proliferation, this is a huge item, this is a zrast. he is focused on that, doesn't want it to happen but also says the most durable way historically to change an access decision on nuclear weapons is to do it voluntarily. that's how it lasts and works. he is trying to push the europeans and everyone else for iran to come to a different set of conclusions. chris: if they decide not to go with it, that matters. if you bomb them, they'll go at it again.

all this talk of us going to war, the israelis, going or not going bluffing or not, oil prices spike again? >> yes, they spiked. chris: we have been talking about this, the president, his war. will he pull back on that war because of the anger most of us feel about the overreaction of the afghans to our burning of the koran? >> no, he already is pulling back. i think the headline is that within the military in certain political figures in washington, there is a strong movement, don't pull back too fast, let's not give up on this war. obama says he is not giving up and he certainly is not going to give up before the election. chris: when we come back, "scoops and predictions," right from the notebooks of this top

>> tell me something i don't know is brought to you by charles schwab. let's talk about the personal attention you and your money deserve. talk to chuck. chris: welcome back, bob, tell me something i don't know. >> one of the key foreign policy people in washington says that given all of the issues, not just iran, it is the most difficult time to manage foreign policy since the cuban missile crisis 50 years ago. >> wow. >> becky quick. >> we're watching the markets again very closely. we are pushing at the highest

levels we have seen in 4 1/2 years. the turn is going to come next week when we see if we can keep at these levels and sustain it. chris: 13,000. >> not that just that, 1350 on the s&p, too. >> everyone agrees that ohio is the big kahuna on supertuesday. there is a ens that sanity toreum ssh santorum can do well there. he may have a leg up already. >> the general election campaign, the r.n.c. moved state directors into ohio, florida, north carolina. they'll have four more by the end of next month. it may not sound like much, but it is three months ahead of where john mccain was in 2008 and there will be hispanic state directors for the first time in its history. chris: when we come back, the big question of the week will the republicans pay a price this year for rush limbaugh? be right back.

chris: welcome back, rush limbaugh outdid his usual this week talking about the georgetown university law student who testified about the need for insurance coverage for birth control. >> so miss fluke and the rest of you fem nazis. here is the deal if we're going to pay for your contrais septemberives and pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. i'll tell you what it is. we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch. >> wow. chris: the beg questions will republicans pay a price for rush limbaugh? we'll start with the women on this. >> first of all it was despicable and vial as i wrote it in my column this weekend. he has gone way over his usual as you say. republicans need to stand up and condemn what he said. they need to truly distance themselves. it's going to take courage. they have to apologize to rush. chris: not just the inappropriate language? >> you lose either way.

you lose if you condemn him. you lose with his fans. you lose either way. they better come out and condemn him. >> judgment on this should be way above politics. i mean that's just disgusting talk. >> and republicans can't win if there is any echo chamber of this kind of discussion or this kind of language around any of their domestic policies. and right now that's the place they find themselves. chris: my advice to take it all back, every single word of it. take it all back. thanks for a great roundtable. that's the show. thanks for watching. we'll see you back here next thanks for watching. we'll see you back here next week.