joining me now, anne kornblut, deputy national editor for "the washington post," and beth thoout of thepress. thanks to both of you ladies for being with me on this saturday afternoon. anne, let me start with you. politico had a headline about 24 hours ago who had a lot of folks talking. here it is. "in the end, it's mitt." to quote part of the article, "it isn't the chair or the ho-hum convention or the leaked video or stuart stevens or the improving economy or media bias or distorted polls or the message or mormonism, it's mitt." what does mitt romney have to do in this first debate to change the narrative that he is, in fact, a flawed candidate? >> i think it's sort of stating the obvious. in every campaign where there are problems, be it staff problems, be it message problems, there's always a lot of criticism that goes around it. ultimately, the candidate is responsible and it all comes from the top. so i think to conclude that mitt romney is responsible for whatever problems he had is probably an easy conclusion to have to make. obviously, in the debates, he's going to have to per

. >> let me britain in anne kornblut for "the washington post" and a politics reporter for roll call. good to see both of you. let me play reaction across the board, across the networks that came in this morning. >> this is one of the worst weeks for any presidential candidate in a general election that any of us can remember around this table. >> somewhere between i think six and seven on the richter scale. so it does some damage, i think, but i don't know if the foundation is completely damaged by all of this. >> it's so contemptuous, so condescending. >> everybody has their youtube moment in politics. >> i think these videos are devastating and they're devastating because they're actually not shocking. >> anne, is this just one more thing that's throwing the campaign off message at a time when they want to establish their message or is it something bigger? >> it seems like it might be something bigger. they've gone to some lengths to describe it as just a bump in the road. they're saying they're going to recover from it and they're going to keep campaigning, obviously. but by the w

joining me now deputy national political editor for "the washington post" anne kornblut and for "newsweek" and the daily beast eleanor clift, two of my favorite ladies. >> thank you. >> anne, i'll begin with you, the republican convention tv audience was down about 30% compared to the last go-round in '08. do you think this is a statement about the electorate or the candidates and do we anticipate a similar dip for the democrats? >> well, i think it's probably a little bit of both. certainly four years ago it was a very dramatic election, both the primaries and the general election. you have to remember that john mccain had just picked sarah palin in the moments really before the republican convention, so there was a lot more excitement around that. i don't think there's anything mitt romney could have done to replicate that and i do think the electorate is probably a little warier. we continue to see that, not only polarized but feeling down about politicians in general whether it's going to be the same for the democrats or not is hard to say. it's an incumbent president. is not the same

at the same time, the president has opened up a three-point lead 48%-45% joining me now anne kornblut patricia murphy, also a kribltor to "newsweek" and "the daily beast." anne, i'll begin with you as these numbers include president clint clinton's dnc speech, not the president's. can we assess this as a certifiable bounce for president obama perhaps greater than mitt romney's? >> in a word, no. i think we have to wait and see what the week tolls us. i would give it a couple more days before assessing whether there was a bounce or not. but, you know, in have been convention bounces in the past. i would remind you of four years ago when the republicans got a significant bounce out of sarah palin and that announcement and her speech. it went away pretty rapidly. it's all interesting. we're certainly going to take stock of it and write about it. but i think we have to look ahead to see how meaningful it is. >> we have the president's approval at 52%, but more striking is the fact that it is up nine points from just a week ago. is that a sustainable swing? >> well, i'm going to go with an

deputy national political editor ort "washington post" ann kornblut.. and meghan mccain. i tell you, you should have made the trip up. we're all here together without you. wish you were here. >> next time. >> jonathan, i'll begin with you here. the question, are we better off? answer it in the way that the poll tugss are looking at it with these two polls. you have this new cbs news/"new york times" poll that shows 38% of americans think the country is headed in the right direction. 57% say, nope, it's the wrong one. a look at this other poll when it comes to who can handle the economy better, the president slightly ahead of mitt romney. certainly most people are not blaming the president. i'm looking at the numbers here for the direction the country is headed in. or is that too much of a leap? >> it's a little bit of a loop. that's what the presidential election will be determined by is the direction we're going. are we basically headed in the right direction? and the miscalculation by the republicans who are asking the question are you better off tha