joining me now is michael scherer, white house correspondent for "time" ç magazine. piece on the obama team's secret retreat appears in the latest issue on newsstands now. thank you for joining me tonight, michael. >> thank you for having me, lawrence. >> it's an extraordinary piece. i just can imagine the scene of michael beschlosh showing up, and you stress he was not there as a political adviser. he was there as a historian, a presidential historian. they wanted to know how did these re-election campaigns work for presidents in economic difficulty. how did it go? how did the retreat go? and what did they get from him? >> well, you know, the premise was at that point if you remember a few months ago there was a talking point in the press that the unemployment rate in the spring of the election year is more or less determinative of how the election is going to go. and that's not exactly how the white house wanted it to go. and beschlosh was brought in to explain the exceptions to that. 7.2% unemployment for reagan, in the high teens for roosevelt. and to explain how

long time, was able to make the case to the american people that he could handle the job. >> michael schererite house correspondent for "time" magazine with the mandatory reading of the week. thank you for joining us, michael. >> thank you. >>> how should president obama convince americans that he'll handle economic problems better than his republican challengers? chris hayes will join me next to help draw those distinctions. >>> and mitt romney decides it's time to go after a voting bloc he had given up, tea partiers. that has some tea partiers lining up to protest romney instead of listen to him. >>> one of our guests last night told us that polls don't matter, especially early polls of primary candidates. so next, we will be reporting to you the latest presidential primary polls and ask chris hayes to outline president obama's best strategy against his republican challengers. >>> and later, one of those republican challengers is suddenly getting a surge in tea party support, and so of course michele bachmann is attacking him. >>> in a new poll that allen lickman assured us last night abso