he has to play in iowa. whher he dumps a bunch of money in there or not, if he's going to be sitting in the polls he's going to be either leading or in close second. it doesn't matter in people's minds he's playing in iowa. if he cannot sit there and hold ck... so once they judgeim on the fact that he's in first or second now he might as well dump his money in there. they're goindo go through that sttegy and think we have to do this, wll be judged on this, we're a national candidate, we

have to do this. and it's a roll of the ice and if he wins both it's over. >> rose: don't we now know hillary clinton had some doubts about doing it? going into iowa. >> and iowa was her worst state. romney has another bad ste, south carolina. so the good thing about him playing in iowaas al and dan and mattw have said, if he moves to iowa, wins new hampshire, he ends the thing. you know, it's true that... as karen said, that's the way the establishment front-runner has won. romney's benefit is there is no other establishment candidate in thrace because they all took a pass. so in iowa if he gets the bulk of the establishment vote he will win iowa because the establishment vote even with the tea party sentiment is a huge part of the eleorate en in theowa caucus. there's no doubt that as long as all these people are in the race... paul's got a base that's not going away, bachmann has a base that's declining but not going away. perry will get his share of the vote. it's very easy to see him winning iowa.

i don't think the pressure is on him because there's a precedent of mccain skipping iowa. me eel try to manage the expectations of that. >> rose: let's not forget this wonderful contrarian state up here, there's nothing they like better than to take someone who has won iowa and looks like an absolute foregone conclusion and say guess what, folks? >> rose: who's the best example of that? >> hillary clinton. >> barack obama. >> rose: barack obama. >> i mean barack obama had new hampshire won before iowa. >> 18 know that. (laughter) >>ose: before we leave new hampshire, before we leave the idea of the republicans in this race was it is it about new hampshire that makes the voters want to rn upside down the apple cart? >> i think there's a couple things about it. first, there's a unique... there seems to be a unique disfavorable liking of people from texas in new hampshire.

(laughter) i'm going come up with here with my cowboy boots. >> rose: they seem to love you on the street, though. >> and there's a great coffee place. (laughter) >> rose: he wins iowa and then the maverick candidate john mccain wins a state by 18 or 19 points. rick perry even while... even when he was at his high point a month or so ago he was floundering in new hampshire. so that seems to be baked in. the other thing is iowa is about 100,000 caucus goers, many of them are driven by social issues. in new hampshire there's not... there is a social conservative element but it's a very small element. then you have thisriving of independent voters that can come in the primary which i think will come in very strong because there's no democratic primary. they can totally upset the apple cart. >> rose: and democrats can register. so you can get democrats voting. >> rose: and that's really when we've seen the big surprises in new hampshire is when there have been primaries going in eac party because until election day

you don't know which primary they're going to land in. d if you talk to david plouffe barack obama's campaign manager, he believes it was obama's strong performance in iowa that made the independents in new hampshire say hey, that's over with, let's play in the republican primary where it's interesting. >> rose: i want to ask julianna, what did you most want to ask that you didn't have an opportunity either because of format or because of time, because of everything else. >> i really actually wanted to ask governor romney about the loopholes that he closed in massachusetts that were criticized. >> rose: that were revenue enhancements. >> yes. and getting them to square that away where what he would do as president. whether he realistically could get away with not using that as a model. >> rose: karen? >> well, i just wish... it was unfortunately for julianna when

she was going round and round with him on hypotheticals. (laughter) >> i had a few other hypotheticals. >> rose: you didn't get to all your hypotheticals. >> i would like to have a better sense of what he would do if europe melts down. >> rose: i thought he was... he did not want to play on there. >> wasn't he strongly implying, although he di't want to say it, that he'd bail them out again >> yes. >> rose: because when i asked him the easy question about too big to fail he refused to say yes even though it suggested earlier that he wouldn't want to go to that point. >> but tt gs to this question we've be wrestling with that mark raised. everybody who's a front-runner does have a moment that's unexpected and that often goes to the core of the basic problem they have with the electorate. romney's is authenticity. if through some slipup in a debate a bad answer on onef these that suggests he's totally

flexible that he doesn't really know what he believes, that could open it up in a way that it hasn't yet. >> rose: so e authenticity is defined as... he doesn't say what he believes? is that it? >> because it's not politically savvy? because they think he's not of them? >> no, i think what they believe... i think he infected hielf with this virus in 2007. they don't kw what his core really is. what is your core? you were pro-choice and now you're pro-life. you were for your own health care bill, now you're against it. so there's all these series of things and they want somebody they think i know their core, i know who they are, i may disagree with them on certain things but i know who this person is and i know the fundamental values. there's a bunch of republicans that have no idea of that with mitt romney. >> rose: let me turn to barack

obama, wres he as he looks at his political fortune today and 9% unemployment, a little change in the economy but no good news early. >> well, charlie, he's in trouble. i n't think there's any way that you can sugar coat that and i don't think that anybody arou him thinks anythingther than that. >> rose: and he has to do what and appeal to whom in order to make his chance better? >> the simple answer is he needs to figure out a way to get jobs created in this country but, of course, as mitt romney said, things aren't that simple. >> rose: and the isn't that much time. >> so he's got to figure out a way to manage this problem in a way that recreates some confidence in him as a leader. i think at this point that's where he's suffering most. through republican strategy and tactics his own problems he's left the impression with people that he doesn't hav a clear answer and the leadership streth. he has to geback on top of

that. >> rose: someone once said to me that if in fact this election is a referendum on president obama he's in a bad place. someone said to me, though though, it's naefr referdum on the president, it's always a referendum on the future. what is it? >> i think he'll want to make it a choice. he'll want to go on the 2004 bush model where you're below 50 or right at 50 and you make the other guy unacceptable. i think problem he has on the economy, yes, he needs improvement on the economy but there's very few things he can really to affect that in e short term and it reminds me the position bush was inith the iraq war for so long going poorly and tse of us who supported the war were constantly saying give another speech about the iraq war. explain it a little more clearly. get a map so that you can explain it. and nothing was ever going to make a difference until conditions changed on the ground. i think that's where obama is with the economy. and it's not just that he has a little control over it, he's a hostage to fortune. he's depending on the soundness of the greek financial system

and the wisdom of the euro... european financial elite. that's not a great place. >> and they're relying on taking this argument of the do nothing congress and that's one of the giftthat the president... >> i was going to say these presidential reeles are only very few in these lets make a choice election. presidential reelects follow their job approval pattern. president bush's job approval in the runup from november back a year, his job approval never dropped below 46% a never got above 51% and going into election day his job approval was 51, he got 51% of the vote. bill clinton's job approval rating in 1996 wa 49 and he got 49% of the vote. no president has ever gotten reelected with a job approval under 47 going into election day. barack oba's job approval has not been above 42% in two months i don't see anythi changes over the next year to improve that. the only thing i think he can do

thigh ear going to try to obliterate whoever the republican is. the only way he gets reelected is if a third party candidate can peel off enough votes he's able to win this election with 42% of the vote. >> rose: third party candidate? >> well, the conditions exist as much as 92 when we had a third party candidate. but there has to be a human being and it's still unyear that could be and what their issue set would be. the president's jobs bill went down in the senate during the debate and he doesn't have much le to do. ing thei argument about the do nothing republican congress is in part for next year because the president's advisors look at their polling data and focus groups and say what the bt wants to do is popular yet he didn't do anything to put pressure on the republicans in congress to change their ways. >> rose: he can't translate his popularity into legislative victories. >> the popularity of his

program. the supercommittee is the big wild card what they do will affect the way congress anthe president do on a range of things, including spending and unemployment. the prospects of another candidate... matthew's right, that's the president's chance. depending if there was such a person they might drawotes away from obama as much as from the publican. rose: are there divisis within the obama strategy advisors. one group fighting another group in terms of trying to determine what is the... what do we go to the country with? >> there's a very small... >> rose: harry truman versus... >> there's a small number of people making the decision as as best i can tell they are like minded the one play they have left is to take public opinion to pressure congress to do something different. but it's not worked on this jobs package and that was his big windup, joint speech to a joint session congress. a lot of thought going in it.

no president in my career that i can recall has ever demanded congress do something that they actually did. it makes him look weaker and now they have to regroup and come up with something new to suggest they're working on jobs. >> i agree with mark. many times we think there's a division or confusion. i think problem is they all know this is not amarketing and communications problem. they can't fix this. >> rose: what kind of problem is it? >> it's a performance problem. >>ose: performance? >> he's going to be judged... even if he passed the jobs bill it wouldn't affect him politically until jobs start getting added to the economy. until the economy improves. he can give 100 great speeches, he can criticize congress, he is going to be judged fundamentally on the performance of the economy in this point. and he can't market his way out of this, that's the problem. >>ose: he's got a 9.1% unemployment rate problem and if you look at thetrategy now they think that they'll be able to lift public opinion that's similar to the strategy they tried to employuring the debt ceiling debate where they were

the voices of compromise and pushing this grand bargain that that was going to help drive public opinion. and they were able to do that but it was pretty limited and when you compare it to the public opinion of congress the president advisor's see that he ended up rolling in the mud with pigs so he wasn't able to elevate himself to that debate and that's dragging him down. >> ros someone wrote a piece about it... obama has become a loaner. is that a fair picture of him today even though he's on the campaign trail all the time? >> it was interesting. i went on the last bus tour ov the summer and... in august and there was a very interting interaction which spoke to matt about at the time where a woman raised her hand and she said "mr. president, i slept for two nights in my truck, i just had ng cancer surgery so that i could come and see you because

my social security benefits... my disability benefits have been denied." and the president listened to her and he went into a discussion about social security and making sure that social securi is there for future generations and never once acknowledged this woman's hardship. this is a problem for him now to show he is connecting to people and he's out of practice from not being on the campaign trail and that's one of the things that the white house says he was so hurt by, by being in washington in august stuck with this debt ceiling debate but he couldn't get back into the campgn mode as a candidate. >> rose: that piece was written by scott wilson, one of our white house reporters and i thought it was a perceptive piece because i thought it captured theessence of president obama.

i think he is a singular person. if you think of his biography and the way he's written his biography in the book he wrote and the wa he's done his political career he has done in the a way he's tried to rely on very few people. he has made himself what he is and i think that in the white house he operates that way and i think in some ways it's been effective for him. he's obviously president of the united states when nobody thought four years ago at this time that he could be. on the other hand, as julianna points out, throughout his career as a national politician, he's had great difficulty connecting directly and'm pathetically with the public. at a time when the country is in as much agony and distress as people are feeling, that's a really difficult thing. >> charlie... >> i also think there's a problem in an incumnt president trying to sort of go

out in the country and act like a candidate. i was struck... when i was reading bill clinton's autobiography when he talked about how they were trying to push him out on the campaign trail a lot in 1994 and he went finally because he was needed throughout to raise money but he said ultimately people look at a president and once you're out there at these rallies and things, you don't look like a president anymore you look like just another politician. >> i agree with everything that's been said about obama. there's going to be a big but, though. i think we are ignoring the republicans and republican brand name. the republican brand name day is much lower tn it' been in years. 1980, 2000, 1992 when a party took over, that party, the opposition party, had a net favorable rating. that was important. toda the republican brand is terrible. it's around 31% or 32%. that's a problem for a party

because ultimely it's a referendum on the president but it's aut choices, too. ronald reagan won that election in 1980 in the last two or three weeks when he finally persuaded the american people he was an acceptable alternative. republicans have a big problem. our poll the other day, the "washington post," bloomberg poll, as we call it the bloomberg "washington post" poll... (laughter) >> ...it was interesting. because it ranks it on a whole host of issues that people are against the republican position. so i don't disagree with any of the bleak assessment about barack obama. i think he's higher than 42% but i think we can't ignore the fact that republicans still have work to do. >> the republican party brand really hasn't recovered from the late bush years. it had a smashing victory in 2010 but it was a viory on the back of a massive rejection of the other side rather than an embrace of the republicans. and on the issue of the stimulus i think house republicans at least realize that obama really... he is the guy who

really, really wants to have a fight. and it's better for them to back off a little bit. you'll see them pulling off some discrete pieces of this package that they can live with and say, look, we're compromising and being reasonable. >> and just to follow quickly on that point. the president still enjoys high favorability ratings. people sti like him. >> rose: the presint has to hope on the economy he's ending up. that's what he has to believe, even though unemployment might be just below 9%. >> i watched a focus group last week that was conducted up here and we were... a number of us were in washingto watching it on video and it was with mothers with younger children. and they went around the table and talked about the difficulties they are all going through and, very very poignant stories about how they're coping with life these days. when they got to the queson of president obama, one thing that

was striking was how in a sense forgiving they were. they talked about he's trying. he's working at it. this wasn't all his fault. i me, when you loo at a 42% approval rating, you expect in a group like that that you're going to hear more harshness. now, the unemployment rate in this state is lower than it is nationally by a good margin. but when i listened to that, as julianna says, there is still somethinthere that he can tap into, if he can figure out a way to tap into it. >> rose: is there anything about the republicans and the tea party that the public at some point will say in the end on the debt ceiling debate we're prepared to take actio that were not necessarily in the best interest of the country. you held the country's economy hostage. >> i don't know. you know, if the nominee is mitt

romney, everyone's goi to sort of smell on him... what matthew was referring to earlier that conservatives refer to. mitt romney opposed the debt deal, or said he did. i don't think anyone believes he actually did. >> rose: he was a gang of x kind of guy? >> he said he supported cut, cap and balance but it was entirely pro forma. and he... the challenge for the republican candidate is just going to be to appear reasonable, to meet that reagan at the end of 1980 test. >> one of the things i think about elections is it... pple ll fire somebody they like in this country. they will fire somebody they like as long as you present it in thaway. and i think actually mitt romney has begun to develop a very effective general election message which is "nice guy, great family, good person, in way over his head, doesn't know what he's doing, it's time for a change." >> rose: so the country's

prepared to fire the president? 2010 they fired the democrs. they didn't want the rublicans they said i don't like what's going on. in 2006 they weren't in love wi the democrats, they fired the republicans. in 2012 if we're in t same place we're in the economy, they're going to say "i like barack obama, he seems like a nice g, you're fired." if you look at the history of incumbents and who won and who lost, the focus should be on this theory beten now and the determination of the republican nominee. obama must be stronger by the time the republican nominee is selected or history suggests he can't recover in the general election run. we know that much of the country has rejected obamanomics. not everyone, but much of them. they're counting on, if romney's the nominee, romney's economic vision. they will say skewed to the wealthy, reminiscent of george bush and the policies that got the country into trouble. it will be difficult, though, to make that argument because obama has his record and in the end, this notion of romney has someone who can compromis, who in massachusetts worked with the

democric legislature. obama could ironically lose to someone who outflanks him on the question of can you get washington to work. >> rose: i want to come back to that question. >> therefore... quickly. their answers to your first question tonight, can you get pele to work together, what would do? those were tea party answers. no one was there sounding like bill clinton or george w. bush the candidate or barack obama saying i'm goingto bring the country together. that's the rhetoric... >> rose: because you can't do hit in the republican party? >> that's not the zeitgeist for the party now. but romney has a gener ection message just waiting to be borthe minute he can do it to start saying loo what i did. >> rose: then authenticity doesn't matter? >> i say he is right now for everybody that would probably judge this thing is mitt romney's the strongest possible general election candidate primarily because of the problem he has in the republican party which is he can turn this over, he can basically say, yeah, you know, those are all those things but, you know, i'm the kind of guy that can get the deal done. i think he's got to hide that as best he can and i think he's

doing that but there is is... as rich said, there's a smell on him among republicans like i know you're hiding something here. (laughter) >> to push back a little bit on this washington compromise. the idea that it's just so terribly dysfunctional. if you look back the last two or three years, huge things have been done in washington. tarp was done, this enormous, historic baiut on a bipolar basis. ... bipartisan basis. >> rose: that was all before 2010. >> well, when democrats had unified control huge things happened. historic things happened. the health care law, the huge stimulus bill, dodd-frank. even with the takeover by republicans prior to the republicans actually taking office you have a deal, a dooipt deal that not a lot of people like about the bush tax cuts and they have been debt limit thing which i know rubs people the wrong way but it was resolved. so our constutional system

is... >> rose: it resolved into a supercommit e in >> it's going to be a bit of a fizzle, but that, charlie, is ultimately bause there's a huge philosophical disagreeme about the size and scope of government and the role of entitlement programs in our country. and that should not be a problem that's easily solved. it's just not. you have to have a big national debate about it. and have an election or maybe a couple. >> but here's the question: is the lesson that republicans take away from having watched president obama and the democrats with unified control enact some very big things that that was a mistake because the country is still fighting over it or that when you've got power you do what you want to do? >> the latter. i think they are counting on if they hold the house, win the senate, and elect a republican president they'll have about 14 months where they can push historic legislation on a scale of what the democrats did the fit two years of the obama administration.

>> rose: and the country will continue to be ripped apart. >> right. >> well... i mean, they're elected on the basis of doing these sort of things... >> well, the democrats were elected on the basis of doing these sort of things and they rammed through things using reconciliation on health skir that the most personal... one of the most personal issues where obama himself said as a candidate you can only do these things in a bipartisan way, we're still fighting about it and we'll be fighting about it no matter who wins the election. >> democrats were elected to do those... >> i think what your question... the first question you asked herman cain-- which he did not answer and then nobody else was willing to answer-- which isthe fundamental problem going on. there's incredible dysfunction and polarization in washington and nobody... george bush got elected in 2000-- i'm fully aware of this-- to fix that problem. barack obama was not really elected to fix health care. he was elected to fix washington, the broken system in washington and he didn't do it, he made it more polarized. so n we're having another election with a huge segment of

the voters out there saying i'm disgusted at washington. they play like a bunch of babies why don't they get these this done? none of the eight candidates is willing to address how they fix the dysfunctional problem in washington. >> rose: one last question about obama before we close here. is it bond... in the end, is it simply whether something happens good to the economy and nothing he can do? >> oh, i think they can spend $800 million on negative ads to try to really damage the republican nominee. and tha can... remember, it's about the electoral college. he's probabl pretty safe in l but a handful of the states he won last time and with a little bit of improvement most of those states will come home for him. the challenge is, there aren't many mccain states he can play in. so he's playing defense in some places. >> he can take $800 million and hi a bunch o pple. he would be better off than putting it in t.v. ads.

>> rose: 30 seconds. >> onether thing we learned tonight with which identify is how good an aging middle age man n look when he has two young smart... (laughter) >> rose: who are you talking about? (laughter) >> this is pandering! (laughter) >> rose: all right, all right. thank you all for staying up late, getting up early, thank you very much, karen. thank you, julianna. thank you all for coming here this evening. thank the student from dartmouth who stopped by, thank the people of hanover and good night from new hampshire.