i'm rejoined by david gergen and kevin hassett. vin is an economic adviser to mitt romney and an author of this claim that 12 million jobs can be created in four years. kevin, you and your co-authors wrote, quote, that americans took a wrong turn in economic policy, end quote. does this mean we can see stronger job creation simply from a political policy change in washington? because as you know from being on this show before, i think there's something else at play here including this massive storm coming in from europe that washington can do very little about. >> what we have to do is focus on the things that we can have an impact on and other things could happen. europe could blow up and then there could be some months that are bad. the fact is think about the problem this way. suppose that the economy was really struggling like it is now. every policy was perfect. we had a brilliant tax code. the government had a balanced budget, everything was perfect and we weren't growing. then we'd be scratching our heads. it's like, oh, my g

and that doesn't include kevin hassett who's a future nobel prize winner. [laughter] so i want -- and by the way, i just want to thank kevin and jason for coming down from washington just for this event. so, kevin, big question. is it possible to get to 4% growth? >> yeah, it's absolutely possible, and i think that it wasn't going to be possible, then we wouldn't let you name the book that after all. [laughter] you know, but before i go to that, i'd just like to thank harlan and jim and acknowledge the president for his vision. you know, you might not be able to tell, but i'm not from texas. i'm from washington, d.c. and that's a big difference between me and president bush because if you want to mess with washington, d.c., go ahead. that's absolutely fine. but aye been living in -- i've been living in washington, d.c. for a long time and watching policy debates go on, and i've never seen a president that was as down in the weeds secretly as president bush is. and i just wanted to start with a little anecdote that, actually, i think the 4% solution was visib

kevin hassett, aei senior fellow says no. he will tell us why in a minute.op nominee mitt romney makes his case to america. the question is, did he convince voters he is the best choice to take on our struggling economy? i guess the voters will ultimately decide, but two top political mind will weigh in, just ahead. tracy: that will be good stuff. first, top of the hour. time for stocks as we do every 15 minutes. lauren simonetti on the floor of the new york stock exchange. we bounced back. we came shooting back down. we lost 100 points. now we're back up again. what is the market saying? >> very choppy session, we've been waiting for ben bernanke's speech all week when we finally got it. went into negative territory. just missed doing that after ben bernanke started speaking. but we're now up, half of the session high. but, still firmly higher. as you said earlier if you look three months charts we've been up for all three major averages for the past three months. really nice gains, stronger gains for the nasdaq and s&p 500, if you're looking at the monthly

one of the things that kevin hassett who is her chief economist here at aei writes about is the fact that when you're in an economic crisis today, one that happens is they think about ways to dodge but a really they can strike on the road. we are getting in their way. we talked to small business people to strike at on the road print the first thing they talk about is the regulatory system is out of control. they don't know what environmental policies will be, what they were policies are going to be. we were in the way of people who should start businesses and act entrepreneurially. but about rural area so people could take more entrepreneurially to pay most of you do. the answers were doing almost nothing. and the third is without talk openly about culture and institutions of meaning. we don't talk about the fact that states, family, community and vocation are not evenly distributed and until we talk openly about cultural issues. we don't have to be religious about it. but until we take openly, we are systematically as a society to marcia lies the bottom 20% will attenuate their mobi

kevin hassette and glen hubbard, obama's faulty math.t, budget roulette, the gop has explaining to do in this election, robert samuelson the hole in ryan's medicare plan. trouble on the ticket. i mean this is a terrible thicket for voters to get through, sort out who's right, who's wrong, how will it affect me. a lot doesn't go into play until 2023 or 2014. it's going to be like algebra was for me. it's hard to sort out. >> when he picked paul ryan he decided to make a choice, one, to address the base to energize the base, and number two to make the budget a campaign issue front and center and those are probably good things. when you're saying, tom, that you know, it's contradictory all over the place, at least we're talking about something that's very important. we're talking about the budget and the nation's fiscal health. i think that's a real positive. rather than picking someone like condoleezza rice, which is foreign policy, that's not going to happen, but it does sort of what's paul ryan versus joe biden going to be like. and we'r