jon meacham, seriously?as correct when i was said being episcopalian was a halfway house to full-blown atheistism. >> i'm wounded by all of these points, and i feel the soft bigotry of your anti-anglicanism. >> the immediate leak from constitutional law professor toy this -- to three lodgian is dizzying here. >> a lot of preachers i think would disagree with jon. that said, i have found it ironic that the gay rights movement over the past decade has been fighting hard to do two things. one, to get married. and have monogamous relationships recognized by the state. and two, to go to war, fight for the country, and die. you actually have -- these battles are not over progressive ideas. they are to be accepted into a conservative small sea, part of society. >> joe, can i just say -- >> and that's why there was real pshychological response to the president's bully pulpit. >> i think so. what it does is reinforce what i think people are learning, which is the gay couple that lives down the street, they're just li

it's a great service. >> jon meacham then puts it into a broader context. talk about your report this morning, asking the question, will 2012 be the dirtiest campaign cycle ever? don't we ask that every campaign cycle? >> we certainly do. and that's why we have a question mark on there. >> ah. >> sort of covered our butts on that one. the interesting fallout from last week's news that a super pac was considering drudging up this reverend wright news all over again. it was sort of the first counternarrative we had to the assumption that these super pacs which are flush with money suddenly coordinate with the campaigns. this very much was sort of a rogue effort by this super pac. the question i think a lot of folks are wondering is, will we see another instance like that during the cycle? meaning some millionaire or billionaire throwing their money in on a message that's provocative but not coordinated with the party. even though it's maybe just a one, two-day story and as you saw last week, the romney campaign ran for the hills and distanced themselves from

. >> and i wrote a diary, and actually jon meacham has been given permission only because they're noto be opened for 50 years because i'm pretty naughty. >> right, right. >> that's a good one. >> who would guess? >> not to my precious daughter. anyway, i wrote a diary. and he's allowed to read part of it. but i didn't -- i'm ashamed to say i did not write too much about we have a war going on. i really wrote more about, i don't know what, i haven't read my diary in years. it's in the library, and anyone who reads it other than jon meacham, just a certain number of years, will be shocked. >> well, i guess as an historian i'm not going to be reading that. >> well, barb is so unbelievably disciplined. it takes a lot of discipline to write a diary and then she would go to the white house swimming pool and swim laps every morning. >> now i can't. i just had new knees. they sink. i'm in real trouble. >> what fun it must have been to live with you! >> i don't know if george thinks that. i think he does. >> so, speaking of routines of the day, when i read your memoir, the funniest thing was w

jon meacham and donny deutsch are still with us.he table, the director of the earth institute at columbia university economist dr. jeffrey sachs, just back from a trip to china of all places. and in washington, we have senior national correspondent from bloomberg business week, joshua green, who has a new piece this morning entitled obama's bogus war on bain. we'll read that and talk about that. but first, why china is kicking our -- >> well, actually, not quite. we've been talking around the table for some time about how we wondered whether china is the next big bubble. who's the harvard economist that's been write being this? we had him on actually. in "the new york times" probably about six months ago that reflected i think our thinking that, yes, china is great, and china will keep growing at 10%, 11%, forever, until it doesn't. >> right. >> and the fact -- >> pop. >> and he had a great point. you know, your dad, everybody, i forget who was here yesterday, say you go to china, and you look at the airports, look at the infrastruc

what say you, jon meacham? >> it's totally politicizing it. it's calling something a cult, a religion with what you don't agree. if you are politicizing something, it means the other guy is beating your brains in. you can't respond. i thought the ad was fascinating on 100 different levels. one is bill clinton as witness to the prosecution is historically fascinating. yeah. it's political. guess what? it's going to be a close re-election and as mike says, democrats spent every year since 1968 on the defensive about american power and so the guy who the president who learned how to box from his stepfather by just punching back and punching back and taking punches until he learned how to do it is punching. >> the only thing i will say is republicans politicized it in the past. but, there are some noble examples of men who rise above mere politics in the midst of, i think, sacrifice by men and women in the military. the country as a whole. you are going to write a biography one day of one of those men, the last gentlemen. who refused? what refused

. >> we turn now to american voices, and one of our regular contributors, jon meacham. >> in a year of tumult, of selma, of medicare, of growing violence in vietnam, it is a largely forgotten moment. but it shouldn't be. on sunday, october 3, 1965, president lyndon b. johnson came to new york harbor to sign the landmark immigration and nationality act, a bill that dramatically illustrates our national dependence on, and debt to, those who travel here from elsewhere in the world. "our beautiful america was built by a nation of strangers," johnson said on that autumn sunday. "from a hundred different places or more they have poured forth into an empty land, joining and blending in one mighty and irresistible tide." johnson's words are worth remembering as we debate which highly skilled workers to allow into the united states, or, more precisely, which highly-skilled workers educated here we should try to keep. we are, of course, a nation of immigrants. and it's important to recall that we've always grown stronger the more widely we've opened our arms. not everyone, naturally, has agreed

i remember katty kay in 2009, "newsweek's" jon meacham had on the cover, we are all socialists now, talkingbout how the president was expanding the role of government, and in an exponential way. and katty kay said, you americans would make terrible socialists because you are so driven by work, you've got this thing in you that we englishmen and europeans don't have. that makes america america. and i think that ad cuts against the grain. >> you used the word "character." our character, john wayne, rugged individualism. and it's we will overcome, and yes the government is there. but we feel weak in that. you look at that and you don't feel proud in that. and so to mike's point, when you dig into it, it was really an us versus them, black versus white. so the overall take away is a little unfair. but in reality, nobody, even a progressive guy like myself, wants to see america portrayed that way. >> that's just it. a lot of america may be soft, but we don't embrace it. we don't want to brag about the fact that we're soft. and we saw that in the sort of rather abrupt turn at the end of the presi