john heilemann? >> you know, i put down my chisel. i finished working on mt.e last time. i'm not in that business but think about harry truman, humble haberdasher. there's greatness within all of us, chris. >> i'm with him! chris: this is -- >> i think there are enough people on mt. rushmore, right. >> i want to be on somebody's republican bus so i think you're pushing me over the cliff. >> chris: go for it. >> adopted a republican health care policy, passed health care plan, supported republican cap and trade answer on global warming. barack obama is the republican candidate who should be on mt. rushmore. chris: much more moderate than you think. i have no idea. thanks for a great round table. almost a complete wipeout put for joe, john heilemann, glory borger, kelly o'donnell and joe klein. what does greatness require? greatness. thank you for watching. see you next week.

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. >> national affairs editor, john heilemann and willie geist. the excitement of yesterday's anniversary. >> where were you? >> at a satellite in boston. >> a lot of talk about john mccain the last couple years. yesterday, john mccain, classic john mccain, he went after the president for leading from behind, which is new york times talks about today. >> right. >> nobody on the left can say that's a right wing attack by john mccain. he tore into the republican freshmen as well. i mean mccain went after both sides and yesterday, basically said let's get the grown ups in the room and save the economy from a collapse. >> welcome back, senator mccain. this is the senator mccain who we used to know several years ago when he attempted to speak the truth to both parties. an independent guy, a maverick. he reminded me of something that's been missing in this debate. there's no political parties. there's no discipline. it's shocking. i know it's especially shocking for the white house. what did john mccain call the tea party guys? >> two very good quotes ye

with us "new york "is magazine john heilemann, glory borier, nbc's kelly o'donnell and "time" magazine's joe klein. first up, president obama faced critical decisions on the debt and afghanistan the last few weeks and all the while the geniuses who ran his 2008 campaign have been huddled with their maps and polls, figuring out how to put together a repeat victory. what's the anatomy of a re-election win for obama. he has 4-5, 81% of the people who voted for him last night according to a june nbc poll. what happened to the other 20% of obama's 2008 voters and how does he win them back? let's look at three skenl elements in the anatomy of the obama electorate. in the 2008 exit polls, obama got 66% of voters under 30. now he has just 56% of the under 30's. good? maybe not good enough. another key in the anatomy, suburban voters. any 08 exit polls, 50% of suburbanites went for obama. now he's down to 141%. final will laveragee pin in the obama win n '08 he had 52% of independents. now he has just 43% of independents. john, you wrote game changer about how he did it last time. how do they put

is that possible john heilemann on the core issues of taxes and entitlement reform?estion. i can tell you, the american people are right if they think it is all theater. and this is -- the level of ka bookie going on here is very high. the answer is to the extent anyone gets serious, they only will get serious at the absolute last minute when the deadline comes. to me the way everything that has gone on is all kind of -- it's place holders and we'll see it in the last week of july before the deadline comes up in august then we'll get serious. to mika's point and i will say this not as a supporter of the president but as i think as a matter of fact to jeffrey's point about arithmetic. the fact the republicans are taking the position the white house is calling the max mallist position, they've gone from saying they wanted mostly spending cuts to now saying they will not accept any deal that has any revenue increases whatsoever. there is no arithmetic over the long haul that brings the country to fiscal sanity that does not have both entitlement reform and increased rev

john heilemann is with "new york" magazine, covering the romney campaign for what it is up in new hampshire start with john heileman. let's look at romney in action here. there ain't much to watch but here he is and then we'll judge him. does romney really know where he stands when it comes to fundamental questions, how the economy is and how the president is doing? here's romney hitting president obama over the recession. obama on the recession over the past month. see if you can find a consistent thought. let's listen. >> when he took office the economy was in recession, and he made it worse. >> what this president has done has slowed the economy. he didn't create the recession, but he made it worse. and longer. the president's failed. he did not cause this recession, but he made it worse. >> last week when an nbc producer asked him if the economy was really worse than it was in 2009, romney walked back those statements. >> i didn't say the things were worse. what i said was that the economy hasn't turned around. >> well he did, of course, say they were worse. we taped it three times. aft

. >> john heilemann, what's fascinating is you hear the statistics from jack jacobs and also from davidis brings you back to the fact that this president has doubled down on that strategy, on the bush/cheney strategy on drone attacks. gitmo's still open. we could go down the laundry list. politically, though the president pays no surprise for continuing many of the bush/cheney policies from his own base, right? >> well, there are people, obviously, on the left who complain about those things, and you can find those people in the blogasphere. there are people who howl about them on occasion. but the truth is the, the president remains extraordinarily popular among not necessarily left-wing bloggers, but actual liberals out in the country. still has an approval rating over 85, 88%. there's never been a moment in his presidency where there's been any real threat of a primary challenge, which has been kind of amazing. there's always at least a threat of a primary challenge. he's not had that at all. i think that just owes to, it's one of the results of the extraordinary polarization in our

. >> john heilemann. >> do you thinkitis a real deadline and if it's not met, there will be real seriousalways took the treasury secretary words when he said it's august and we need to act by then. i believe there are serious consequences. we are looking at this in a responsible manner and trying to begin to make a down payment on managing down the debt and deficit. >> ezra klein. >> in march, your joint economic committee saying successful debt spending composed of 85% spending cuts and 15% revenue increases. what happened between march and now that made that no longer operative? can you tell me? >> i don't think i have ever been for increasing revenues in this kind of economy, especially. we have a problem here in washington. that is, taxpayer dollars are not being accounted for in a fashion that i believe most americans are expected to account for their own money. this is their money. what we are trying to say is, let's begin to manage down the debt and deficit. let's stop borrowing and spending so much and get a handle on this to grow the economy. i don't believe there's been any cha

back with us on set we have john heilemann and savannah guthrie. >> savannah, the asian markets, a littleto the home stretch, and some very bad things people in the know, in the markets, very bad news. >> well, that's not a surprise. right? i mean, we've known if we've got this close that things would start to get bad, what, for months, and now we are this close. >> and we've still got nothing. >> and things are starting to get a little edgy. >> what happened? why can these people not do a deal? bring it in for a landing? >> no. we are at that place now where, you know, where the fundamental ideological and political convictions of the two sides want proven to be unshakable have proven to be unshakable and they are now serenading each other and saying we fundamentally believe different things about the size and role of government, what this is all about and we're not ready to yield. people can get the votes together and in the absence of being able to put together a coalition that will pass, i think we are where we are. >> so what happened on friday night? savannah, we had the white house