[cheers and applause] thank you so much for joininging me.ircumstance you've written extensively on ancient rome. you wrote the book cicero, augustous, and your new book is called "the rise of rome, the making of the world's greatest empire." why is the rome the world's greatest empire? aren't we the greatest empire right now? >> you are on the way. you are the new one. >> stephen: thank you. that's a compliment. is that a compliment? >> well, it might be a compliment. the romans were tiresome people? >> stephen: tiresome? >> they were brutal. they weren't very cultured. they knew they didn't have a culture so they went to greece. >> stephen: we took your culture when we stole harry potter from you guys. >> yes. [ laughter ] >> stephen: you guys are greece to our rome. >> i haven'ting for given you for that. >> stephen: empires don't care. you used to have an empire. >> we had it for 10 minutes. you've hit for five minutes. the roamentans had it for 1,000 years. >> stephen: what did they do right? >> when they went and beat somebody up and de

. >>> and joininging me now for more front page politics, reporter for real clear politics erin mikeacon junior. hello to the both of you. ladies first here. erin, it has been an election year of catch phrases. we've had the recent binder's bill of women. 47%. now we have "romnesia." what do you make of the president's any line of attack. do you think "romnesia" is going to stick around, that label? >> i don't. because as you heard, mitt romney has been very quick to jump on the president for making the election about small things. and that is a pretty good attack when mitt romney is also saying that president doesn't have a second term agenda, that he's talking about on the campaign trail. democrats have made the same complaint about president obama to the point that he might need to do a little bit more to lay out a second term agenda in the next couple of weeks as he closes in the campaign. >> how about you, perry? mitt romney was countering the president's comments by calling it a petty attack. and you heard him call the president's campaign a quote incredible shrinking campaign.