. >> ben bradlee is either 90 years old or there abouts.e's lot of in that era. herman cain is at 30%, romney and gingrich are tied. hasn't hurt herman cain bait and he doesn't care what ben bradlee thinks. >> they're statistically tied. >> newt has come into a solid third place. he it seems every debate goes up 2 or 3 points. >> likability is going up. >> sean: if he's going up to 14 or 15%, he's a player, he's in this. >> sean, i think this is going to be a three-person race. in the end it will be herman cain, mitt romney, and newt gingrich. watch him carefully. newt is winning people over. >> everybody says, and i think they're right. i think he's the smartest guy. what has helped people back up to this point? >> the think for romney for me is romney doesn't have a wound. every hero has a wound. herman cain, you look at him, there's a wound in there. you see newt gingrich, there's a wound. that's their re relatability. joseph campbell talks about that. >> sean: i've seen more passion in this cycle than the last cycle of romney. >> but no

washington post," quite frankly, is quite easy, and my heroes--to answer your question--are the editors--ben bradlee, len downie. they're the ones who set the standards. the publisher katharine graham, her son don graham, and now her granddaughter katharine weymouth. they say, you know, "let's get the story," and whenever there's trouble--it's very interesting--they surround you, and they support you, and they say, "keep doing it." they never say--never heard anyone say, "oh, don't do that. it's too sensitive," or, "you're gonna get us in trouble." in fact, we have a saying at the "washington post," which is, "all good work is done in defiance of management." >> [laughter] >> and that doesn't mean break the law or the rules. it means be down there scrambling, looking for trouble, and looking for what really goes on, and though sometimes management is not happy to hear that things are being done in defiance of them, in fact, they love it in the end. >> my last question, which is on a totally different plane, which i cannot let you leave without asking, with all these accomplishments in your career, t

he also wrote a "washington post" editor ben bradlee the following know. other than to not the the to not headline of this and on hill call him the posted not mention the trade that. is different in 1962. strauss and the congress deserve recognition signed a reader jimmy carter. in 1986 bradley, a friend of strauss' with whom he joked easily forwarded stress the note from carter writing, i was over to my tank this morning putting in another million dollars of "washington post" stock and i found these things cluttering up. what did you pay him to write it this? all kidding aside, strauss was disappointed too and he said, when i got up the next morning i could not wait to read the marvelous story about what a wonderful fdr we had in robert l. strauss. he said i could've cared less about the stats in the presence of his staff. he said there was not a line in there. i almost had a stroke. but for his work on the tokyo rounds on january 16, 1981 and this was after he had run carter's failed re-election bid, so he always, carter always joked that he had two ambi

of weeks where it's, you know, people are learning as our old editor at "the washington post," ben bradlee going to make their judgment. >> all right. let's go to new york. willie geist has rick stengel there and he's got the new cover of "time" magazine which i think is incredibly appropriate for the times and the conversation today. willie? >> a great topic and a great cover, rick, why don't you go ahead and reveal it. we'll show the cover. >> thank you. it's about social mobility in america and the decline of social mobility in america. it's pegged to a conference that we're co-convening on thursday and friday called opportunity nation about trying to increase social mobility in america. and the sad truth is, i mean, we've been talking a lot lately for the last few months about income inequality. but one of the core virtues of america, the thing that we've always prided ourselves on, is this idea that we can move up the ladder. and nowadays we have less social mobility than european countries. we have less social mobility than france, and this is a -- this is a depressing thing for amer