[captioning made possible by nbc universal] >> this is "the chris matthews show." >> ask not what your country can you.r >> i can hear you! >> a time for change has come! chris: the president's election itself a landmark, declares for same-sex marriage. is barack obama at the front of the parade or too far ahead? has he fortified himself as a champion of change? the front page story that mitt romney led the hazing of a presumed gay student in high school. could romney have forgotten holding a fellow student down and cutting off his hair? is this a story with staying power? and nixon on gays, greeks and romans. the former president's infamous

oval office show, unplugged on the matter of gays and civilization. with us today, andrew sullivan from "the daily beast," gloria borger from cnn, howard fineman with "the huffington post" and nia-malika henderson with "the washington post" and president obama explaining why he came out against gay marriage. >> for a lot of people, the word "marriage" was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth but it's also the golden rule, treat others the way you'd want to be treated. you havedrew, advocated for this for many years, you married your partner, aaron, there he is with you. you've written a cover story on this for "newsweek." how important is this? >> it's hugely important and i didn't realize how important it would be until it happened. beforehand, i was steeled, like,

i don't care, he's going to disappoint us again and then i sat down and watched our president tell me that i am his equal. that i'm no longer outside, i'm fully part of this family and to hear the president who is in some ways a father figure speak to that, the tears came down like with many people in our family, to be included. i never understood the power of a president's words until that day, really. i thought, all that matters is the states and the congress and the defense of marriage act and i had all this in my head and suddenly this man saying i'm with you, i get it, you're like me, i'm like you, there is nothing between us, we are the same people and we are equal human beings and i want to treat you the way you treat me, that -- that was overwhelming. that's all i can say. i was at a loss for words. chris: powerful stuff. let's look at the political history of all of this.

back in 2004, george w. bush used the marriage issue to rally the key stronghold of columbus, ohio, the weekend before the presidential election. >> if election is on the values crucial to keeping our families strong. i believe marriage is a sacred institution. caller: wow. but things have changed markedly in the eight years since. take a look at how opposition by two of the group's most against gay marriage has plummeted in that short time. opposition among voters over 65, for example, has dropped from 75% against to 46% against. opposition among other group opposed, blue collar workers, for example, has dropped from 65% against it to 31% against. this is moving near toward at least in the main across the country to a majority position. >> that's right. and you saw that biden singled out "will and grace," the television show and i think in some ways that had an impact.

have you hollywood stars coming out, whether it's ellen degeneres, wanda sykes, and i think these people coming into our living rooms every day, it normalized gay people, gay marriage, and you had gay people get married over the last many years and nothing happened. there wasn't a cataclysmic change in the culture. chris: the opposition to this be among older people yet we're seeing even older people, is there going to be an attempt to exploit that? >> i think there will be an attempt to exploit it, it not dramatically, mitt romney himself. republicans are divided on this. i was at romney headquarters earlier this week when the news broke of what the president was going to say. the studied calm and caution of the romney people i thought was very instructive. outside the romney campaign itself, family research council, conservatives, karl rove with

his independent group, they will be all over it but what the president has done here actually is create a wedge in the republican realm. chris: there are states where this could be a problem. without getting into all the details. we know the close states coming up, conservative states -- north carolina, virginia, iowa, ohio -- large numbers of evangelicals and conservative people. could this be a deal breaker in the electoral college for the president? >>iting turns out to be a wash here. i think president obama will lose blue collar voters in those states and lose some of those evangelicals but i would argue they wouldn't have been with him anyway. chris: who does he pick up? >> i think he galvanizes young people. were talking about older voters changing their minds. one of the reasons older voters have changed their minds is because they're listening to their children. chris: it will help the tunch out with young people. >> this might do it for him. >> this is also a serve --

conservative issue. it's a liberal championing of a conservative value -- marriage, commitment, responsibility, fidelity. chris: have people made that jump on the right? >> i think families around the country who have members of their family, they protect them and they understand in the process bringing them into their family -- chris: let me go to the electoral stuff. >> and libertarians, too. the idea of the government being in your yard. chris: but 31 states have passed bans on gay marriage. 31 out of 31. >> that's right and you saw that in north carolina, very important state for this president, won in 2008 by 14,000 votes but i think there's a separation. if you look at california, for instance, black people obviously voted for that ban on gay marriage there. but they also supported the president. chris: let's take a look at the matthews meter. you've touched on your position, including howard, gloria and andrew.

is president obama's gay marriage position, firmly set, a net plus or minus politically? seven of you say it's a net plus, which is positive from this group. one says a net minus but four say it's a wash. as you said before, gloria, you think it's a wash. i want you to start with why you think it evens out? >> i think you get the young voters. you're going to lose, i think, the african-american church is a place you have to look. you may lose some of those voters but african-americans are overwhelmly for barack obama anyway so you lose blue collar voters. i don't think you'll lose as many catholics as you think you'll lose. latino, evangelicals, maybe. chris: give me the plus. >> i want to look at it in the macro sense. i think this is an historic moment. barack obama as a public figure is about making history. he said in 2008, we are the change we've been waiting for. the fact of his very election as an african-american made history and i think he's making history again with what he said.

chris: i agree. >> and that is his biggest appeal. he ran on the idea of change. it hasn't worked so well on the economy. if i were mitt romney, i would say, fine, go get married and try to get a job. but he's changed it in a way barack obama is best capable of changing something. the irony is, the democrats this year are running a cultural campaign. for the previous generation, the republicans ran cultural wedge campaigns. barack obama is now running a cultural campaign. >> what he's done with romney is make this a choice, stark choice. >> future-past. chris: let me go back to romney for a second. in the week we're talking about this, your newspaper runs a front page at the top of the fold, that mitt romney, when he in prep school, boarding school, led a posse of kids who went after some kid they thought was gay who had long hair, pinned him down while he was crying and screaming, cut his hair.

romney says he can't remember. five people were part of that witnessing in your story. >> five friends came out and talked about this and talked about how well they remembered it, how much it stayed with them through all these years. mitt romney has come out to say doesn't remember it but also that he can't argue with it. so i think the problem for him point. chris: how can you not remember it? >> right. >> and then not argue with it. chris: how many times did he do this? >> kids are committing suicide across the country because they're bullied in high school and we now know a future president was a bully in high school. that seems to me, to matter. he did not say -- he called them dumb things or pranks. a prank is not pinning a vulnerable person and cutting his hair off or yelling ata girl at a student in class. this is bullying, it's the powerful punishing the weak. you react to it viscerally but i think that's a character question. i think it really is.

chris: does anybody forget high school? on a lighter note, we're used to saying, hit shows starring gay people and gay characters like ellen degeneres and "modern family" which is number one now but the breakthrough show was "all in the family" and here's a scene, archie bunker can't believe what he's hearing about a football player who his son-in-law says is gay. >> i can't even say. >> he's right, arch. >> huh? >> he's right. how long you known me? 10, 12 years? >> yeah. >> in all that time did i ever mention a woman? >> what difference does that make? you're a bachelor. >> so. >> bachelors are always acting kinda private. >> exactly.

>> ah, come on. chris: what a scene. president nixon watched that scene and listen to his secret the oval office. >> it's true, archie, it's true. i don't want to see this country go that way. you know what happened with the greeks. was axuality -- aristotle homo, we know. that you know what happened to the romans. the last six roman emperors -- the russians. we have got to stand up to these people. chris: what more can you say? when we return, george w. bush attacked john kerry as elite and out of touch. the obama team is using the bush

playbook. can they turn mitt romney's wealth into a liability? bet they can. scoops and predictions.

chris: welcome back. what do mitt romney and john kerry have in common? the obama campaign is using the bush playbook from 2004 to run against romney the way bush destroyed kerry. the playbook says, first, bolster the president's national security credentials. check. then paint the opponent as a member of the 1%, just like bush played kerry as an out-of-touch snowboarding, wind surfing elitist and combine the elitism with flip-flopping like the bushes did in 2004. >> kerry voted for the iraq away, opposed it, supported it,

opposes it again. he voted for the $87 billion to support our troops before he voted against it. john kerry, whichever way the wind blows. chris: howard, it's the elitism. we're all against the elites and they have going after the cultural, social elites in nantucket and then you have this case of the 1 percenters with all their money. will it work again? >> i'm sure the obama headquarters in chicago has a lot of footage of various homes that mitt romney owns and various recreational activities. the basement.e of >> what impresses me about what the obama campaign is doing is that they're using the collective republican strategy playbook of the last generation. we talked earlier about the culture war. they're doing that. yes, they're doing national security. my own editor got very upset about barack obama going over to baghran air base and doing his thing about ending the war in iraq. that is classic republican

strategy. for the first time in a generation, the democrats do have the upper hand on defense policy and it's not happened in a generation and they're doing on every other issue. chris: i got a great question. than your thought. let's try this. could it be that romney is doing just like john kerry went out and did the wind surfing, right in front of the press core, apparently. he didn't care. now romney lets out the word that he's building a house with an elevator for the cars. do you want to show your wealth off any more dramatically than that? is he playing into it? >> i think inadvertently, when he makes a $10,000 bet with rick perry during a debate or says his wife owns a couple of cadillacs, that's not good form and he's now calling president obama out of touch saying you fly around on air force one, you lose touch. i think the obama campaign has a problem, though, because they

run as if they're not an incumbent. in the end, president obama has run on his record on the economy. chris: does he get away with it, though? he was an incumbent but made kerry that issue. >> in the end, it wasn't the swift boat ads that defeated kerry. people decided things were looking better, they wanted to give george w. bush four more years. >> cultural populism in the country which always works and economic populism often doesn't work. it may be that the times have changed, the rich are so rich, that tell work. gallup came out with a poll showing people's views of the rich are the same as they were 20 years ago. they want to be rich, they admire the wealthy. you can over-play your hand on that. we're not like britain and sarkozy said to his opponent -- he lost, but he said, you want to make fewer rich people. i want to make fewer poor

people. that's a wonderful -- chris: will it work? >> i'm surprised by the -- they're relying a lot on biography again. if you saw the announcement speech, michelle obama comes out and talks about barack obama's history, you know, as the son of a single parent, you know, student loans. in that way they're implicitly making this argument that barack obama is just a few years removed from the average american. chris: didn't have a silver spoon. >> they want to talk any everything but the current state of the economy. so far they're succeeding but they'll not doing it all the way to the election day. chris: and it's the heart of the campaign. talk about the economy, it hurts. when we return, scoops and predictions

chris: welcome back, andrew, tell me something i don't know. >> greece will leave the euro by the end of the year. the consequences for the european economy and this country's economy and this election are far bigger than many of the other things we're talking about today. chris: gloria? >> democrats will continue consolidating women. women, by the way, support gay marriage, but in the senate, you're going to see something come up in june called the paycheck fairness act which makes it -- says that you're perfectly allowed to go and try and find out what your colleagues earn and if your employer tries to stop you, they can be criminally punished. chris: a great question. why are women more supportive of gay issues than men in all the

polls? >> our humanity. chris: ok. thank you and nia? >> watch for al sharpton. he's been out for gay marriage since 2004. watch how he goes out, i think, and talks to black churches. he obviously has a lot of credibility. a show on msnbc. he's going to use that platform, i imagine, to really close the gap in terms of where black people are on the issue of gay marriage. chris: howard? >> people are wondering why -- whether there was any deeper motive on joe biden's getting out ahead on this issue. 2016, thus, is already being discussed. i was at the kentucky derby last week where there were a lot of big democratic donors. martin o'malley, the governor of all over that event. he's running and running hard. chris: who's winning that fight right now? >> right now, i'd say hillary clinton. i would say andrew cuomo of new york, i would say martin o'malley is a 15-to-1 shot.

chris: is it a four-way race? >> i think senator mark warner was in kentucky, also, around the same honey pot of donors. i think a lot of people are interested but i would say right now hillary clinton would be the first. chris: would biden challenge her? >> i think in the run joe can't resist. chris: joe can't resist is a general statement. it's all id. the big question of the week, which media figure has the power to lead american public opinion?

chris: welcome back, there's a new retrospective airing this monday night on pbs called "johnny carson, king of late night." here's a clip. >> it is commonly assumed in washington that once somebody reaches the point where you use them in your monologue, they are through. >> tonight's monologue is dedicated to president nixon. i've got a monologue that just won't quit.

chris: we love that guy. which brings us to this week's big question. you heard david brinkley telling carson he moved america. who in today's media, across the board, movies, music, everything, has that power? >> it's not a nighttime figure, i don't think, and it's not a lot of our culture. if there is a unifying figure that could go across the country, it's the daytime women talk show hosts. it's oprah, ellen and "the view." >> i think that's exactly right. i was going to say oprah, even though her network isn't doing so l.she has tremendous influence. you saw her in 2008, change minds. >> i'm glad to hear you say it's a woman. i'm not so sure there is anyone. if there were, sure, it might be oprah but i think we're so diffuse right now and we look at our pieces of the media. chris: the people we agree with already. >> i'm relieved no one has that power anymore. i think cronkite had too much power. let me say, brian lamb of cnn.

>>. chris: he created an opportunity to see our government in action. >> and he's always neutral. chris: i'm howard on ellen degeneres. i think she opened the door to mainstreaming, fully acceptance and celebration of a woman and her orientation and she's done it beautifully every day of the week. thanks for the great roundtable. andrew sullivan, gloria borger, nia-malika henderson and howard fineman. happy mother's day. get going on that one. ♪ [ male announcer ] for our families... our neighbors... and our communities... america's beverage companies have created a wide range of new choices. developing smaller portion sizes and more low- & no-calorie beverages... adding clear calorie labels so you know exactly what you're choosing... and in schools, replacing full-calorie soft drinks with lower-calorie options.

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