we talked to jonathan karl of abc news, gerald seib of the "wall street journal" and john heilemann of "new york" magazine. >> the budget though is really setting the republican agenda not just for the rest of the year but potentially for a generation. i mean he has put forward a plan that gets into not simply questions of government spending but of policy. i mean his efforts to basically remake the medicare program into a system that is government subsidized but private insurance. >> what paul ryan did this week starts a national conversation slash debate that runs all the way through the 2012 election. it is a conversation and debate that's not really about the budget, it is about what is the role of government in the 21st century america and how much are you willing to pay to have that role fulfilled. >> if you think about gingrich, he had those revolutionaries behind him, his base, the further i was pea he pull on the

with us today, bob woodard, helene cooper, john heilemann. first up, the audacity of hope. barack obama ran on it. what it is replaced with now? wisdom? >> you ran as somebody who was going to change it and as with your predecessors it ended up changing you. >> it hasn't changed my ideals. when you are campaigning you are liberated to say things without thinking about how am i really going to practly implement this in >> do you think you were vieve? >> -- naive? >> no, i just think these things are hard to do. chris: bob, what's the before and after on this guy? >> we're going to spend the next two years decoding obama and there are going to be all kinds of views on this. mine is from looking at it up close you've got to consider the time he's president. it's this time where we live in a very dangerous world, the economy and the politics of the country are fragile and so what are people looking for? it's the stewardship role of the president. somebody who is going to be calm and do the sensible thing,n't radical departure, not invied countries or start wars or do something