concerned and where mitt romney has to play to? >> that's what mitt romney. is he's a capitalist, a businessman. this country needs jobs back. we need our economy turned around into the right direction again and that's what mitt romney brings to it as well as an incredible family. the romney/ryan ticket is absolutely maizing. everybody will leave excited and wound up through november 6. >> brown: one of the big questions, of course, has been whether and how mitt romney connects with people. the polls suggest that he's still having some trouble. why do you think that is and what does he have to do? >> i think he's the new nominee. i think it's time for america to learn who mitt romney is. and we're starting tonight with ann romney coming out on stage telling the personal story about who she is, how they met, how...

what a really caring person he is. i've heard that story. i've heard her talk about when she was diagnosed with m.s. and how devastating that was and he said to her-- and i'm not going to tell it because i hope she tells it later, if not you come back to me and i will because it's such a touching story that he would be there for her regardless of what happened and how much he cares about her job. her job being the mother of those five incredible boys. >> brown: i can't help before i let you go notice this pin. it's a jeb pin. what does that mean? >> it is a jeb pin. i've been with the bush family since the 1970s, i'm very supportive of them. as chairman i served under governor bush and i'm always happy to wear my jeb pin and i saw him at lunch. >> brown: any regrets he's not the guy this time? >> governor bush needs to make his own decisions and when he does we're there for him. >> brown: carole jean jordan, thanks so much. >> thanks for having us. >> brown: back up to you. >> ifill: that was a fascinating

conversation, a little intriguing at the end when she talked about jeb bush. with us tonight with gwen and me all week are shields and brooks. of course that's syndicated columnist in mark shields and "new york times" columnist in david brooks. mark and david, we've been listening to the role call and vote by acclimation and david it's just wrapped up all of a sudden. we're barely into the evening and they're already selected by the party. >> we can all go home. it's over. and i'm disappointed. i love the role call. i remember as a kid watching the role call, each state, why they're a great state. nobody's ever an average state. they're all great states. >> woodruff: me, too! >> and there's a little personality. so kids won't see that, it's sad. >> ifill: energy finally, mark. the music, yes, but energy on the floor, excitement, really. >> excitement and special excitement at scott walker of wisconsin. the place just exploded in what

i think can only be called spontaneous enthusiasm to him. but you're right there is enthusiasm for mitt romney and paul ryan as well. david, where is new mexico, the land of enchantment. remember we used to all... (laughter) and "the silver state, nevada." >> pennsylvania, home of the pennsylvania turnpike. (laughter) >> woodruff: i miss, that, too. that is a part of the legendary american political system, the role call at these conventions. why did they do away with it? >> i think because television didn't cover it, quite honestly. >> it's not that they did away with it. but they did it quickly and early. they got it over with. >> i think one of their concerns judy, they did want it-to-get it out of the way and if it wasn't going to be covered why make it endless. but i agree with you. the think it shows above anything else was the diversity

of america. you see texans really were different from the people of the state of maine. >> ifill: well, diversity of a sort, anyway, right? >> well, regional diversity, yeah. >> here on the floor the republicans have done a nice job of maximizing their potential visual diversity by putting the delegations from puerto rico and guam up front. so they've selected good cutaway shots. >> ifill: the marianas islands. i want to ask you about this because this gaveled in at 2:00 this afternoon and earlier today we saw successional congressional candidates, members of congress and we didn't see any of them after things got serious at around 7:00. is that on purpose? >> you hope that the hometown folks cover you, that's what you hope for that the feed goes back and they seiji, did you see david brooks our candidate for the lieutenant governor was there. john boehner said he spoke... he

was so excited to speak at his first convention he spoke at 2:00 in the afternoon, there was nobody in the hall and nobody was listening so it was hubbling. >> i listen to these speeches because aim who i am. there were good once. >> much like popeye. (laughter) >> so the mayor of oklahoma city gave a good speech. that that feeds into what's happening. a lot of it is about reframing the party as the party of practical governance and there's a lot of ideology in this party but we have mayors and govern yourself, we have people on the ground doing it right now and we want to replicate what's happening in wisconsin, ohio. >> woodruff: it's something i raised with speaker boehner and that's the unpopularity of congress and you have to believe that's one of the reasons you don't see senators and members of the house of representatives speaking in prime time. they were in the afternoon. >> that was one of the good arguments against picking paul ryan.

house republicans are not exactly popular. >> and their governors have had terrible numbers. governor scott in florida has had bad numbers. john kasich has struck... >> so it's not just the house... >> well, the point is nobody knows they have bad numbers outside of their home state. as far as everybody in congress is a member of congress and you carry that with you and that's a problem. you do expect mayors and governors to pick up the trash and clear the highways and that's a practical thing. members of congress we don't have the same sense of pragmatism. >> ifill: if i had to guess i would say the only governor we'll see tonight who will have a bigger reception than scott walker will be governor christie, the keynote speaker. am i right, david? >> david: you're guaranteed. are there aren't a lot of rock stars. the conventions in years past, giuliani was a rock star, sweg was a rock star. the party has mitch daniels, doesn't have a lot of charismatic rock stars, chris christie fits the mold.

>> ifill: is mitch daniels that the convention? >> it's kind of weird how he's very low profile. >> there was excitement about the possibility of him being a running mate until he took himself out. >> and he's going to become president of perdue university so he's gone on the a very serious... the thing about chris christie is you expect from him there will be lines as memorable as ann richards, george bush, don't feel sorry for george, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. lines that you remember from past keynote speeches and chris christie is capable of that but most of the people in audience will be disappointed if there aren't memorable one liners. >> some of the republicans were talking about putting a heckler down front. just to get him going. >> woodruff: you expect to hear the red meat. he's going to give the hard contrast, i guess, the hard introduction. >> i think he's more of a... is that fair? >> there's a jersey edge to him

but i don't think the hard edge as much as he does have an ability to formulate issues and make a case about the vernacular as anybody in shoe letter in politics today and he hadn't head tated to be confrontational. if there is a heckler, which there is, he will not be... go easy on the obama/biden administration on their record >> the obama or the o'biden administration? >> the own/biden administration. >> woodruff: he'll follow mrs. romney who will give us a soft per picture. >> i think for her the key has to be frailty. she has to show there have been set backs in the romney family. that a family who looks so affluent and perfect that they've learned something from failure and understand failure. >> ifill: she is a breast cancer survivor and still struggles with multiple sclerosis so if she told her own story it would be... we also expect that of first ladies war would be first ladys that they soften their

husbands we look at thaw howe they look and how much he loves her. >> we expect... it's funny, we americans don't have a royal family so our first family becomes the royal family and we want them to be an act happy family. we cover them that way so we expect the ideal wife who gazes adoringly at her husband and the children are all well behaved and we know that's never the case in anybody's life and the ideal husband who's steadfast. >> >> he was a freshman at stanford he drove home from stanford to michigan and they claim they've never had a fight. >> well, maybe tonight. (laughter) >> maybe between the lines where eric fehrnstrom says that chris christie is going for only punches. sounds like he's been brought in to bring it

>> listen, he is not... he's not cob confused with a softball pitcher. he's a tough guy. i think the question is can he make america welcome and job responsibility is to welcome people to the party. he's the gatekeeper and that has to be the message. >> ifill: you are the gatekeepers as well. thank you both, we'll be talking to you later. as we have said earlier, tonight's speakers planned to take president obama to task for his handling of the nation's struggling economy so what do voters in key battleground states have to say about that? harvey sreenivasan has that. >> sreenivasan: we're looking at bish shoes through data in our vote 2012 map center. i'm joined by anna sale of wnyc to look at a handful of swing states she viz set for a

reporting trip. thanks for being here. regardless of where you went around the country you heard jobs, unemployment. that was the number one issue for everyone. >> first question was the most important thing, jobs. i'm worried about getng d , worried about my kids getting a job when i traveled across the country there's a wide diversity in battleground states. take, for example, colorado. >> on this map what you are looking at, the lighter the color the better the unemployment rate. tor more people employed and the darker color the higher unemployment rate. so let's look at colorado here. 8.4%. >> then look at iowa, just over 5%. and look at florida. >> okay, >> florida 9%, exceeding the national average. as you talk to these coveted swing voters jobs and the economy come up for all of them but they have different realities. if hari sreenivasan we try to take the voters into conversation in "listen to me."

here are people who think jobs and the economy are priority number one. >> i would like to get a job when i graduate so the state of the economy is important to me. as far as the market when i get out of college. >> jobs. jobs for kids coming out of school. jobs for the generation that's behind me. i think there's a struggle there for well-paying jobs. >> sreenan. >> sreenivasan: you can see the state has a very different pattern depending on where you are. there are much higher proportion of unemployment in the south/southeast. >> this part of ohio is appalachian, ohio, it's where there's been higher unemployment in the this state. it's also a part of the state that went for john mccain four years ago. it's not where president obama was strong. >> sreenivasan: so let's look at the political results from 2008. there's a patch of blue on the right-hand side where obama did well. there's a stronghold for john

mccain right here. >> then the southeast corner it was about half and half. up here is where it's interesting to look at in terms of the unemployment rate. this is where obama was strong. this is cleveland here, this is manufacturing counties. look back at this unemployment rate map. you see this is not a county that's doing so hot. so then the question is who are they blaming far? are they blaming larger forces?a deeper dive into iowa. why are jobs so important here when you look at this map look how light the coloring is. most of the state is employed or has a low unemployment rate. >> 5% unemployment in iowa. many states would trade for that. still, voters are concerned about the economy and jobs, the future of the country. political scientists think when voters are aware that the national economy is not doing great that becomes one of their major concerns. even if their countees to are

doing very well. >> sreenivasan: anna sale with thank you for joining us. you can do this at home at newshour dot pbs.org. >> woodruff: how would a romney administration change the jobs out look. we asked >> woodruff: so, how would a romney administration change the jobs outlook? we ask two of his advisers: glenn hubbard, who chaired the council of economic advisers under president george w. bush-- he is now the dean of columbia university's school of business; and john taylor, economics professor at stanford university and a senior fellow at the hoover institution-- he was a treasury official in the george w. bush administration. joining them is andy kohut of the pew research center. welcome to you all three. andy, i want to start with you because the new consumer confidence numbers out today show a low, a new low in consumer confidence. >> consumer confidence hit a ten-month low according to the conference board survey and this has not been the first up and down over the course of the great recession. we saw consumer confidence go up

in early 2009, slowly remain modest throughout '10 and really take a nosedive then come back in early 2012. the bottom line is economic attitudes and public perception of the economy is very unstable. and it is increasingly difficult with all these ups and downs with the american public to get any conviction about how things are going and where they're going. >> just very quickly you were telling me earlier today that despite that mitt romney's lead when it comes from people having confidence in his ability to turn the economy around is not much that much higher than it is for the president. is that right? >> he only leads the president by the few points on the economy even though obama gets a 35% to 42% approval rating which is not very good. part of the reason is the image of the republican party when we

ask people who does the republican party favor, 62% say the rich. the democrats are seeing he's favoring the middle-class and poor people. so you have... you have kind of a standoff where the public has... don't has great confident in obama's ability to perform. doesn't trust the republicans when it comes to economic issues >> so you have economic numbers, if you look at the data you would think mitt romney would be doing better than he is. how do you address that perception out there? >> i think the key to what andy was saying is that uncertainty about public policy and the economy is almost at an all-time high. it has consumers very worried. what we hear from governor romney at the convention, hear from him on the campaign trail is how he plans to translate his economic agenda into growth. we believe he can create 12 million new jobs in the first term. that's a very big number. >> woodruff: 12 million.

and john taylor, how can he be so confident? how can you be so confident that that number is real? >> well, history tells us that and the fact that we know why this economy is so sluggish. the policies have been erratic, is they've created uncertainty. we've tried stimulus package. and the romney plan is to put in a whole new strategy of long term focus to get this uncertainty out of the system to deal with that debt which is holding back investors worried about tax increases so it this addresses the problem that we've had and we've seen problems when we address these t problems we get much faster growth and more jobs. >> ifill: you don't have a lot of time left to prove between now and election day that the romney solutions are better than the obama solutions even if you don't think the obama solutions work. so what are they and how do you explain in the a cogent and smart way that voters are trying to make up their minds quickly? >> a lot of people understand that the debt is the economy holding the economy back. they that's what drove the

election in november, 2010, so his planned a dresses that by reducing that. there's a spending binge, you get that down, that creates the deal with the debt. and then people worried about tax increases, we have this fiscal cliff, who knows what's going to happen? he puts in place lower tax rates. then these regulations that people keep talking about all the time and it's out there. you can see hit in the data addressing that. so there's substantive thing over this plan and they will increase growth. we know that from history. >> the important thing on that is john the right on the pieces that governor romney is suggesting but there's a philosophical theme, too, we need to focus on the long-term problems facing our country. if we fix those the short-term economy will also move. that's exactly opposite of president obama's philosophy. >> woodruff: one of the comments i've seen from a number of analysts who've looked at what governor romney has put out there, he's talked about pretty significant tax cuts for the corporate sector, individuals and i guess there's some... it's

not clear yet what exactly would be the rate change but that if you add all that up it's not clear how we pay for that. if the debt is a real concern at some point before the election doesn't governor romney have to spell out how you're going to cover the cost of those tax increases? >> he's already said the rates will gown down to 20% for individuals and the corporate rate would go for by 25% to 35%. part of that is from faster growth from base broadening, tax expenditures >> the plan is revenue neutral. >> woodruff: which people... >> everything's on the table. he wants to make sure it's a progressive type of base broadening. also we've had a big spending binge and part of the program is to get that spending down to what it was before the crisis. it's something that's quite do doable and that's part of it and why you can do this and have

pro-growth tax cut. >> ifill: andy kohut, the fiscal cliff, are voters paying attention to that? is this something they'll make their decisions based on? that >> that hasn't registered yet. but the news has a way of spreading. it took a long time to the last time we had that deficit plan in... reduction plan in 2011 and in a matter of months that would become priority number one. and the public is concerned about the debt and record levels. but the same that comes through in survey after survey is jobs, jobs, jobs. we see no change in public confidence about the job situation improving. >> woodruff: to the extent there's any lack of clarity about governor romney's proposals for the economy and paul ryan's proposals which there's been a lot of

conversation about that, how do you clarify that about people looking that the? >> there's only governor romney's proposals. he's running for president. and he congressman ryan are about the same page about the need to reform the tax code. but it's a romney economic plan. >> ifill: does that mean the ryan plan goes away for the purposes of the election? >> there's a lot of situations. one thing we're trying to do is control the rapid growth of entitlements. and they've laid out a plan that will slow that growth in a very responsible way to make the programs more effective for people. when people look at that and they examine it they say that's what we should be doing, both sides of the aisle we have things like in this in the past. >> ifill: congressman ryan's proposals would slow that growth a lot faster. there's more aggressive steps that he would take. >> and governor romney said yes we need to slow the growth of entitlement spending but principally for upper income

families. so he wants a progressive entitlement reform. the country can afford a very successful social security and medicare system. it can't afford one on the kind of autopilot for everyone we presently have. >> woodruff: andy kohut, to get back to gwen's question are voters going to get this? >> they're very wary of entitlement cuts for the sake of deficit or anything very much. because they don't trust the politicians not to do more than they promise. it's about this trust in government which the republican one party is aware of. >> ifill: so it's just starting, thank you all very much. now we go back to the convention floor to jeff brown for a preview of what else is ahead tonight. >> brown: hi, gwen, we've got hours to come, of course, and as i was saying the theme of the

night is "we built it." that plays off against very much those words of president obama that he used in a speech. so we're going to be hearing from various business people and elected officials talking about that theme. some of these speakers will be airing tonight, rick santorum, south carolina governor nickie haily, ted cruz of texas. one of the most anticipating speakers is arthur davis, the former democratic congressman from alabama, a big supporter of president obama in 2008 and now opposes him and he'll be speaking in favor of mitt romney. and, of course, the most anticipated speeches of the night first ann romney, this is her chance to speak to the nation, speak to these people here and then we'll have governor chris christie with the keynote speech. so we'll be here all night. >> woodruff: i think there's

really a reason to stick around even though we know who the nominees are for president and vice president. so our convention coverage continues online where we reach beyond in this sky box. you can find this all access pass on our home page, that's six live-stream channels including all of the official proceedings. an inside look at the newshour team and conversations with delegates here in tampa. >> ifill: earlier today harry sreenivasan asked the papelbon about their role in the g.o.p. and the newshour team goes behind the scenes to the parties here in tampa where a political conversation continues after hours. >> woodruff: the republican national convention officially nominated mitt romney >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: the republican national convention officially nominated mitt romney for president and paul ryan as his running mate; hurricane isaac closed on the southern louisiana coast with winds of 80 miles an hour, heading toward new orleans; and oil prices rose again as the hurricane forced nearly all production in the gulf to shut down. and that's the newshour for tonight.

i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. stay with us. we'll be back in a few minutes on most pbs stations with full coverage of tonight's session of the 2012 republican national convention. thank you and good night. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org vo:geico, committed to providing service to

its auto insurance customers for over 70 years. more information on auto insurance at geico.com or 1-800-947-auto any time of the day or night.