margaret hoover, i want to begin with you because you write about this.his piece on cnn.com and, margaret, you talk about the age gap. hoping it plays a role. paul ryan 27 years younger than joe biden. your point is what? make a generational pitch. how does he do that? >> well, remember, barack obama won the youth vote 2 to 1 four years ago but massive disenfranchisement from this generation. he was there at university of florida by my appeal to paul ryan is, make a millennial appeal. like no other gop member in the entire party, paul ryan has talked about the crisis in generational terms. that the spending policies of 40 years, not democrats or republicans but both are actually generational theft. and that if there's one party or one person with the ideas to put the fiscal course of the country back in order for the next generation so they're not hit with more taxes or sluggish economy or both we have to fix the programs, medicare, medicaid, social security so they're there for the most vulnerable and my generation stuck paying for them and in terms of a

. >> cnn political contributor margaret hoover and former clinton adviser richard sock rah tease are. obama hanging on a lead in ohio. this new "time" poll has it as a tie. who has more paths to victory. >> president obama. ohio is way more critical for governor romney than it is for president obama. president obama has an edge in ohio, not just because of that poll which, by the way, is almost within the statistical margin of error and there are other polls that show it much closer. he has more campaign offices there, better ground game there, working on it for four years. whae doesn't have there is democratic registration. democratic registration has declined in the last four years. >> in ohio. >> in ohio. they need all the early votes. remember in 2004 when the exit polls were wrong in ohio. why were they wrong? democrats voted early and republicans voted later in the day. >> but on the early vote, he has a huge lead according to this "time" magazine poll. it's 2-1 in the early vote, 60% to 30%. president obama himself will be voting early in illinois, sending a message to people

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margaret hoover, i begin with you.o see paul ryan, you know, make this generational pitch to the millennials, capitalize on what the obama folks did in 2008. did he do it? was he successful? >> no you know, brooke, he didn't do it. he didn't read my piece. he didn't take it to heart. >> what? >> but, listen, one of the things i think paul ryan has the ability to do, which i say yesterday is speak aspirationally to the next generation. he has a message that appeals to what will be the economic future. i hoped he would do that last night. he didn't do it, but he did speak compellingly about debts and deficits and the impending debt crisis. he did speak to that area, which is his strength. but i think in terms of -- i think he was clearly trying to just hold his own against joe biden, one of the most experienced debaters and when i was joking earlier, probably the most esteemed debating society of the world in the u.s. senate. he held his own but didn't go further, didn't take it all the way home and speak aspirationally

margaret hoover and richard socarides. they mix it up almost every morning. it will be fun to talk about this. >> yes. >>> a suicide bomb in afghanistan has killed 40 people, including fellow officers and children. dozens of others were injured. interior ministry spokesman says the bomber struck right after morning prayers. >> pakistani teen malala yousafzai have been reunited with her parents. gun shot wound to the head inflicted by the taliban. she has become the symbol of courage around the world by risking her life for equal opportunity for education for girls. >>> current deputy commissioner adam silver will take over as the new nba commissioner. stern has presided over a period of unprecedented growth. michael jordan, shaquille o'neal, kobe bryant all became superstars during his time as commissioner. >> it is really the end of an era. >>> giants have taken the first two games. >> can you believe this? >> it is unbelievable. madison baumgartner struggled but pitched shutout innings. the infield actually was a double play hit. prince fielder tries to sco

we'll talk to john and his wife, margaret hoover, there they are, coupled up in new york. ally bank. why they're always there to talk. i love you, james. don't you love me? i'm a robot. i know. i know you're a robot! but there's more in you than just circuits and wires! uhhh. (cries) a machine can't give you what a person can. that's why ally has knowledgeable people there for you, night and day. ally bank. your money needs an ally. >>> mitt romney marched to the right in pursuit of the republican nomination. but john avalon says he didn't attract independents until he started marching more toward the middle. john avalon, want to welcome you and margaret hoover, i should say my political couple here in new york. john is a cnn krcontributor and margaret is a cnn political contributor and republican consultant. welcome back. and john avalon, i love the image are with the war shack test. at the moment, mitt romney is rorschach test with voter seeing what they want to see. this is the secret to his surge in the polls since the first presidential debate. rorschach 101, here it

john avalon and margaret hoover join me. john is in new york.olumnist for newsweek and the daily beast. margaret is in washington, she is a cnn political contributor and republican consultant and, ps, they're married, so that must make dinner time conversation very fun. john avalon, good to see you guys. john, let's begin with you. we have 90 minutes here in this debate, boca raton, florida, all on foreign policy. just as a neutral voice, how are the policies that different? >> well, that is actually a perfectly reasonable question. what we know is the rhetoric is different. mitt romney has been very unsparing in saying what he's against, trying to characterize president obama's foreign policy, which has been very popular with the american people, as apologizing for america. that kind of narrative riff which may be effective but it is not true. it is a lie. but what he's got to do is not simply saber rattle and try to attack the president, he's got to say what he's for. and that's a major challenge because it is not -- this becomes a question no

i see -- >> i'm sure she is. >> margaret hoover, jump in. >> look.ey did a great job last night, especially on the point saying, look. we need regulation. this is not a matter of no regulation versus regulation. we need some regulations but when you have 2,700 pages of a law that's basically going to codify too big to fail then you have got regulation that is are going to really hurt the economy and hurting small and community banks. he actually i think thought we nuanced in that answer and came off as pragmatic and problem solving so, again, soccer. i do disagree with john on that point. >> head shaking and smiling, the sign of a wonderful relationship. we have to leave it there. we'll continue another day. margaret, john, always, always a pleasure. >>> and now, let's talk about undecided voters. courting those undecided voters, president obama, mitt romney going all out to get their votes. stick around because my next guest says she knows where those undecided voters are and how the candidates can win them over. ou. so we invented a warning you can

margaret hoover is a former white house appointee in the bush administration.er at bloomberg.com. >> and major giuliani introduced me to my husband. the reason my husband and i were married. >> it changes my entire line of questioning for this morning. we're talking about round two, of course, in the presidential debate. president barack obama, challenger mitt romney spending the weekend getting ready to face each other again. at this point it looks like it's anybody's race. new "washington post"/abc news poll has the president ahead by three points, well within the margin of error. new political poll shows that the president's ahead by one point which would make it a statistical dead heat. former major judy giuliani joins us this morning. romney campaign surrogate. debated romney himself in the 2008 campaign. nice to have you with us. >> nice to be with you. >> talk about how you think a version 2.0 is going to go? we've heard from the administration's side i think the word they've used is more engaged or aggressive. >> passionate. >> passionate was the word.

our team this morning, richard socar socarides, margaret hoover, who worked in the bush white house, "new york times" columnist and john berman from "early start" sticks around, helping with the news. >>> revisiting that now infamous secretly recorded remark about the 47% who don't pay income tax. first he said the day -- the evening he actually -- those tapes got out, he said that those comments were not elegantly stated. now he is not standing behind those comments at all. here is what he told fox news. >> clearly in a campaign with hundreds, if not thousands of speeches and question and answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right. in this case, i said something that's just completely wrong. and i absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown that i care about 100%. >> candy crowley will be the moderator of the next presidential debate, which takes place october 16th. great to see you. let's start with this 47% thing. seems odd to me on a day that the governor could be doing a victory lap, talking about his terrific performance wedn

. >> let's get straight to our cnn contributor margaret hoover and the rest of our unsolicited advicergaret. >> thanks a lot, wolf. here we are, we've got a debate tonight. we have six 15-minute segments on the economy. carly, we were talking before in the green room. you think your question would be about taxes. what would you ask the governor or the president? >> well, first of all governor romney has been attacked with these ridiculous and clearly untrue ads from the obama campaign that he's going to raise taxes on the middle class. that's clearly false. i think governor romney needs to lay out what his tax plan truly is and why it's going to help everyone in america from job creators to middle class families. i think he needs to be very clear and explicit about that tonight. >> well, i mean, you say it's clearly false. i mean, there's obviously a big debate about it. as best i can tell the math doesn't work. we've gone from fuzzy math to no math in american politics. i want to hear what he has to say, but i think the big question that neither candidates's really answered is about

let's go straight to our cnn contributor margaret hoover who's joining us with an excellent panel. thanks a lot, wolf. here we are, polls, polls, polls. we're going to cornell first because you are the pollster, the democratic pollster on the panel. can you put it in context, is this just a snapshot, or is this trouble for democrats? >> it is a snapshot. romney had a good debate as you often see challengers have to have in order to change momentum. he brought home a lot of undecided leaning republicans at the time. clearly he's going to get a bounce just like kerry got a bounce, et cetera got a bounce. however some of these polls, sort of this game change we're seeing right now -- >> i didn't see it. >> pull back the reigns a little bit. there's still polling out there, the gap's rolling poll is interesting had him at 50 yesterday. focusing on one poll but there's a lot of different polls -- >> there's a new ohio battleground poll -- >> i was going to say, look at the battleground l atthe hour w tightening for the president. there's a four-point, basically a statistical tie. >> wha

margaret hoover, let me go straight to you.nk mitt romney smells blood when it comes to foreign policy. but is it really warranted? >> he certainly had an opening to talk about it. and frankly they needed to do something. the first thing you're talking about with mitt romney and foreign policy had been this trip to europe, europe, poland, israel, the olympics hadn't gone so well. now they have something to talk about. how did it go? i think the main difference and what they strive to do is paint a contrast between them and the obama administration. the contrast becomes part of their posturing. how are we going to approach foreign policy differently? the posture is that obama's foreign policy is lead from behind, i think mitt romney is really lean forward. we're trying to use our influence in the middle east to -- but really we're trying to use our influence in the region to get the outcomes we want in order to shape the policies that we want, in order to receive the outcomes that we want in the middle east. >> let's be honest,

margaret hoover. >> my unsuspected target is mark sullivan, the head of the secret service. advice is to pick up a book called diagnosing and changing unconditional culture. dhs inspector general's office come out with a report that suggests maybe the culture of impropriety is actually really rampant in the secret service rather than just having a few one-off bad incidents as service members soliciting prostitutes in colombia. apparently this may be far more widespread perhaps endemic within the secret service. massive cultural overhaul is probably needed. hopefully mark sullivan has not perjured himself. >> what's the name of this book again? >> "diagnosing and changing organizational culture." >> i'm pretty sure -- >> more organizations that want to read that. >> i'm pretty sure the secret service are the only business guys who go on a trip and use prostitutes. >> representing the united states of and compromising national security. >> on the public dime. >> on the public dime. >> i'm not saying it's okay. >> there are some bad apples. we also have to recognize there are a