dr. strangelove par deed that era and it came eerily close to reality. consider the relationship of a president cooley trying to avoid a war, and the character was based on general curtis lemay as played by george c. scott. >> we are coming to a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and the lives of owe nation. now truth is not always a pleasant thing but it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable post-war environments, one where you have 20 million people killed and the other where you have 150 million people killed. >> you're talking about mass murder, general, not war. >> mr. president, i am not saying that, but i do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed tops. >> i will not go down in history as the greatest mass murderer since adolf hitler. >> perhaps it might be better, mr. president, if you were more concerned with the american people than with your image in the history books. >> general, i've heard quite sufficient of you. thank you very much. chris: when we c

dr. strangelove.s guy's saying bombs away. >> bombs away, absolutely. >> here's a guy you or i would say would be a smart guy to listen to and he was wrong. here he is checking in on the phone with president eisenhower about what he should do with khrushchev, the soviet leader in terms of what would happen if he did invade cuba, what would be the reaction by the soviet leader? here's ike's conversation. fascinating history here. let's listen. >> what about if the soviet union khrushchev announces tomorrow which i think he will that if we attack cuba it's going to be a nuclear war? and what's your judgment as to the chances they'll fire these things off if we invade cuba? >> oh, i don't think they will. >> you don't think they will. in other words, you would take that risk if the situation -- >> as a matter of fact, what can you do? if this thing is such a serious thing, here on our flank, that we're going to be uneasy, and we know what thing is happening now, all right, you have to do something. somet

dr. strangelove, and it was the debate that stuck a needle in that balloon. >> i remember it well. >> not even born yet. i mean, this is romney's chance. >> sure. >> to connect with the american people. >> to pick up on mike's point, fascinating number from the poll is this. 51% of people who said they had heard or read something about romney in the last couple weeks said what they had heard or read made them think more negatively about him. more positively, that number was 48%. they've heard him going into this debate. this provides them a chance to say, listen, that guy you saw in the video, that's not me. i'm a different type of person. he can reset in that sense. i'm sort of with al on this. i spent a lot of time over the past week watching all of romney's debates from 2002. i watched every single debate. there were five of them. i read hundreds of clips in 2002. he was against a democrat. >> you really should get a life. >> i know, it's pathetic. >> i was going to say, and what makes it worse is how young he is. dude, if i were your age, i might be looking at c-span repeats. >> if i'