when he walked out of there that there was no chance for the report tore respond and besides, the camera was rolling. every politician should see that as a flashing danger sign. that does it for this edition of "reliable sources." we'll see you back here next sunday at 10:00 a.m. eastern and back to john king for more "state of the union. >> i'm john king and this is "state of the union. ." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com 17, government officials, politicians have had their say. key senators from both sides of the aisle and philanthropists bill and melinda gates. we've watched the sunday shows so you don't have to. we'll break it all down with donna brazile and ed rollins, the best political team on television. "sound of sunday" for november 29th. as president obama prepares to announce his new afghanistan strategy, key members of his own democratic party warn he must strike a difficult balance, persuading the american people that sending more troops now is the key to getting out of afghanistan as soon as possible. >> think he has to make a speech that shows that all of our efforts are pointed to our reduced presence in afghanistan, but i think he has to also indicate again and again how critical is it is to our national security. >> but a key republican senator says one thing the commander in chief must not demonstrate is a weakening of u.s. resolve. >> you cannot signal that they are going to be doing their part, but then as soon as it's inconvenient for us to stay, we begin to leave because that's exactly what we've done in the past. that's exactly what they fear. i talked to tribal leaders in kandahar. that's what they feared. they want us to make sure the job is done before we leave and that's why all of the talk about an exit strategy is dangerous and tells the taliban just to lay low until we leave and it does not encourage the europeans, for example, or other nato allies that this is a cause worth sending their troops to support. another leading republican says the president would be smart to set aside the health care debate and focus on what he sees is the two more urgent priority, the war and the economy. >> we're not going to do that debating healthcare in the senate for three weeks through all sorts of strategies and so forth. the war is terribly important. jobs and our economy are terribly important. so this may be an audacious suggestion, but i would suggest we put aside the health care debate until next year, the same way we put cap and trade and climate change and talk now about the essentials, the war and money. >> as you can see, we've been watching all of the other sunday shows so maybe you don't have to. let's bring in the best political team on television as we do every sunday that the hour and break down the key issues. in our new york bureau, republican strategist and cnn political contributor, ed rollins. here in washington, joe johns and senior white house correspondent ed henry, candy crowley and democratic strategist and cnn political contributor, donna brazile. let's start with the debate in the open of the program and i'll go to you first, what is the single biggest challenge for the president of the united states when he speaks to the united states, ed rollins? >> how long we're going to be there and equally as important what is the mission and how is the mission different than it was two years ago or four years ago. dechl democrats have to be convinced the president's party is very divided on this issue. i think he'll have the republican support he needs, but at the end of day, if this is not a bipartisan effort long-term they won't get the resources and funding to make it work. >> donna brazile, to ed rollins' point, the toughest sales job is the anti-war left of the democratic party. how does the president convince them to support him or keep quiet of the criticism? >> public support of the war has diminished across the board not just with the left, across the country and even across the world where we depend on troops from other countries to help us in afghanistan. the president gave a very thorough speech back in march, laying out our objectives. he said it was to dismantle, disrupt and destroy al qaeda. he also talked about the afghan government. i think the president needs to update us on what has occurred since march that requires to send more troops, more civilians and how will this be different than, say, what it was two years ago and even in the near future. so i think this is a very important speech to not just convince the left and convince the country that this is an important use of our resources. >> candy, jump on in, but first let's listen to one of the independents in the united states, bernie of vermont who works with the democrats most of the time, but he is making clear even before the president speaks, he thinks sending 30,000 more troops is a bad idea. >> i've got a real problem about expanding this war where the rest of the world is sitting around and saying isn't it a nice thing that the taxpayers of the united states and the u.s. military are doing the work that the rest of the world should be doing? so what i want to see is some real not national cooperation, not just from europe, but from russia and from china. >> not happening in the russia and china department. how complicated does it make it? this is enormously challenging anyway, why is it with all our men and women and all our money? >> what's interesting is when the president campaigned and he was the nominee for the democratic party he said the reason we can't get their cooperation is because we're go it alone, we're always off, we don't consult them and so now he's headed here where he's become the most traveled freshman president of any president, so is france going to step up to the plate? is germany going to step up to the plate? is nato going to step up to the plate? maybe they will and then he can see, you see? it worked. maybe they won't because they will send troop, the question is will they send combat troops? the thing people object to is u.s. is always the combat brigade. >> you're the white house correspondent, how much do they view that in the nato credibility test and never mind the sales at home, but will they have specific commitments of real troops and not 20 guys to be there for six months or 50 guys to train for six week. will they have real combat troops? >> they believe they'll get 50,000 combat troops from nato and that is key and critical because the president will only send 30,000 to 34,000 u.s. troops so to get to the 40,000 that general mcchrystal wants you need those nato troops to make the difference. that will be big and the other key will be what the president kept saying when they interviewed him in china a couple of weeks ago was endgame. endgame. we have to have the afghan army stand up and they have to accept responsibility and candy and i were talking about how this sounds like president obama and 2005-2006, as the iraqis stand up and we'll stand down. here we are almost into 2010 and while it looks like iraq will finally take over by the end of 2010 there's uncertainty about when the u.s. finally leaves can they really stand up? several years later. so the same may hold true for afghanistan. how do we really know whether they can stand up? >> i want you to listen before you jump in, evan bayh, he's a relatively moderate, a conservative democrat. of all of the democrat depps you'd think would be with the president, it's clear he wants to be, but even he understands the dicey politics here. he says send more troops, mr. president, and maybe not give the generals everything they want. >> think the president and the secretary of defense show some deference to the generals' recommendations. they're just recommendations and they're not the ten commandments. and you remember general west moreland wanted more, and general mcarthure in korea wanted to drop nuclear weapons on china. you take them into account and then make the appropriate decisions. >> i'm guessing, joe, the white house sent a memo to senator bayh, say whatever you want, but please don't add vietnam in the back half of the quote. >> absolutely right. the other thing that's really funny about this is obama is the guy the left voted for and obama said on the campaign trail that afghanistan was the problem. now he's sort of moving into that realm and actually owning it and the fact of the matter is he's probably never going to get a certain portion of the left on his side, either in the congress or out in the country. all he can really do right now is make a justification based on reasonableness about what you've got to do at this point going forward in the hopes that at least explain your position to the middle and realize that a certain segment is just not going to go for war, period. >> ed rollins, some conservatives have used the word dithering. we've been waiting that for 90 days since the recommendation has arrived to when the president will make his decision and now mr. president, we will support you as you send more troops and listen to senator lindsay graham, with the republicans saying you better sound tough. >> we'll be evaluated by some pretty tough characters in the world as to how we handle afghanistan. this is not just any place on the planet. this is the place where the taliban took control after the russians left, align themselves with al qaeda and attack this nation and kill 3,000 americans and hope the president will tell the world, our troops and anybody listening tuesday that will never happen again with this new surge of forces. >> ed rollins, how do you do it with the president with a divided country saying i'm sending in 30,000, maybe 35,000 more troops and the reason we're doing that is because we can get home sooner. >> the critical thing here and unlike iraq, there is no real arm ney afghanistan. there are 50,000, 60,000 troops that wouldn't be put into real battle at this time. we have to train 5,000 a month to get to the 134,000 mark which is now updated from four years ago. we have to build an army there to 250,000, 300,000, 400,000 that some people think they've never had before. iraq had an army that we dismantled foolishly and you can get soldiers and bring them back. you have an uneducated population and offering the taliban the same kind of money and saying who do you think long-term will be here? us or them? do you want to be part of the afghan army or do you want to be part of our group that is here and we will be here. that's a long battle and to a certain extent that's what the president has to say is that we'll be in there and hold them accountable and make sure they build their own army because if they don't build their own army there will not being successful and we're not stay there indefinitely. >> we'll talk about the dicey politics as the president prepares to give the speech monday night about sending more troops to afghanistan. stay with us. like she was drifting away. we wanted to be there for her... to hold on to her. mom's doctor said his symptoms were signs of alzheimer's, a type of dementia, and that prescription aricept could help. it's thought aricept may reduce the breakdown of a vital chemical in the brain. studies showed aricept slows the progression of alzheimer's symptoms. it improves cognition and slows the decline of overall function. 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(announcer) don't wait. talk to your doctor about aricept. back to our afghanistan discussion in a moment, but first this breaking news just in to cnn. the iranian state news agency is reporting that the iranian government has authorized the construction of ten new industrial-scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the nuclear program and a dramatic defiance of the united nations nuclear agency which has called on iran to suspend that program. the iranian news agency saying the decision comes days after the u.n. nuclear watchdog aefrngs censured iran over the program and it's now approved the construction of five uranium-enrichment sites that have been cited and proposed five additional sites. the decision was made during a cabinet meeting headed by mahmoud ahmadinejad. this is not the way the obama administration and the world were hoping iran would go. >> just 24 hours ago everyone was applauding the fact that the iaea had rebuked the iranians for the developments in guam. now this will give the administration perhaps and others the ammunition, i hate to use that word, but hopefully the impetus to go to the united nations and to finally propose those tough sanctions, but we have to keep china and russia onboard. that's the key to having any successful strategy before we look at the other options involved in trying to halt their nuclear program. >> in an odd way, candy, does it help the president? russia and china have been saying give them time, give them time, give them time. when they do something like this does it give the president of the united states say -- >> i've been the one out there and if you'll just come into the family of nations, and i think all along what this administration is calculated is, if they do these things with places likes iran and north korea and say you can come into the family of nations and here's how, and if they don't do that that they can come back to some of the nations and it's not just russia and china it's france and people who do business in i raabe that have been reluctant to impose the sanctions, they can come back and say we tried. we extend our hand and we've given a pathway and now you've got to come with us and do the sanctions. that's the stick to the carrot that they've been holding out there. >> how do they assess the iranians in the obama white house. when north korea does things like this eight out of ten timeses whether it's the bush administration, and the obama administration, they're saying they're trying to get attention and show boating on the world stage. is it the white house calculation that iran is different and they're dead set serious oaks panneding the program. >> >> they believe so. that's yet president in recent days was saying look, when he was inaugurated as president there was no consensus in how to deal with iran. they believe this shows that maybe they are, you know, bent on making sure that they can continue this nuclear program. that is going give fuel for the white house to continue to say, look, we've reached out. we've extended the hand. the president of the united states wrote letters to the government and religious leaders trying to reach out and they have consistently pushed back. so this gives them more fuel to say it's time to get tough before the u.n. and that is the key as you said with china and russia. they supported this iaea resolution. will they support sanctions before the u.n.? >> all of the choices are bad here. on the one hand you have china and russia who have a lot of business interests in iran and on the other hand, kind of like the idea of a country sticking its finger in the eye of the super power united states. they got off to a wrong start. there are a lot of people who say the united states should have gone the route of trying to destabilize this regime at the very beginning rather than finding itself in this position because all of your choices are bad. the thought of going in and bombing nuclear facilities is just terrible. the thought of trying to create some type of a dialogue with a country that's been playing sort of push me pull you, it's all really tough for this administration and somehow or another they'll have to unravel it in a peaceful way where the rest of the world looks at the united states and says, okay. i'm satisfied with that. tough choices. >> and ed rollins, a test to the president's toughness. is it not? his critics say he bows to the emperor of japan. he wants to negotiate with north korea and he wants to negotiation with iran. now he's sending troops to afghanistan, good for you, mr. president, maybe you took longer than we wanted you to and now you have a stronger showdown with iran. >> we drew a line in the sand and they walked up to the line and kicked the sand up to our face. they're not afraid of us. they watch cnn international. they know we're in two wars, they know we're bogged down and the choices are difficult, they're not afraid of us and they're not afraid of their own people and they've subjected them to cruelty and lack of governance, and i think to a certain extent, unless we can push the most severe sanctions on them and we take some other action, we'll live with them having nuclear weapons and i don't think that's good for their neighborhood and i don't think our ally israel will tolerate that very long. >> our assessment there, iran building new uranium-enrichment facilities. we'll continue to track that story and when we come back we'll get back to afghanistan and the president's big decision next tuesday night, sending 30,000 more troops to afghanistan and the challenge of selling that to a very skeptical american public. stay with us. let's get back to the big political challenge facing the president as he makes a major policy announcement about afghanistan. joining us in new york is ed rollins, the cnn political contributor and republican strategist, joe johns, ed henry, candy crowley and donna brazile. "usa today" gallup poll asked the american people how is president obama handling afghanistan and look at these stunning numbers. approval rating, 35%, down 21 points from july when it was 56%. disapproval of how the president is handling iraq now at 55%, up nearly 20 points from 37% in july. ed henry, they knew at the white house they were facing all this criticism, conservatives saying you're dithering, mr. president. the general is giving you recommendations. they believed they needed a long, well thought out deliberative process and do they see the numbers and they see the process is right, but have they paid a political price. >> the white house was weighing all of the different options and at the beginning of this process we knew the options essentially were 20,000 on the low end, 30,000 in the middle and 40,000 if you did the full mcchrystal. after this long process they wound up with the middle approach which is at the beginning a lot of people expected would do, split the difference. i think the other difficult issue and there's another usa today gallup poll that asked the american people what should president obama do? 39% said begin and a withdraw and they would say increase by 40,000. a split and these are the tough decisions that you're elected president to make. the american people, frankly, don't know what to do next. you're paid the big bucks to come up with the tough decision and frankly, deal with the consequences because they're not certain this will work. >> on that point let's listen to the american people. this is the question i asked. i've been in 45 states and it's a question i ask just about every one of them. who is the, enemy in afghanistan, should we send more troops or bring more troops home? this is the cafe in montana. >> think we need to bring our boys home. >> i would like to see them come home. >> we're not going to win either one of the wars by force. it's going to have to be winning the hearts and the minds of the people and how do we get from point a to point b because totally the ball has been dropped seriously ever since the start of these things. >> how do you back a government that can't do a fair election? how do you continue to put your money into that debacle like that when you don't even know -- if you would lead well, would it ever last? it seems like everything goes corrupt. >> donna brazile, how does the president, pretty fair-minded people there said look, he inherited this. the problems in iraq and afghanistan, started under president obama, but he's the boss now. they see the corruption in the election, they see the opium trade and eight years and billions of dollars and they say you know what? bring the troops home. how does the president convince them to sign back up. >> the president defined the objective. what is the objective in the war should have an objective. when we focused the last two and a half months on the troop level. once we know what the admission is and the objectives, then the troops should help define the cause of the campaign. i think we've spent so much time focusing on the wrong thing and trying to win over the situation in afghanistan, and it is important that we focus simply on training the afghan army, trying to hold those provinces and those areas where we believe the taliban is putting their mignons in and then bring our troops home, but i don't think the president can announce an endgame. it's a tough call. >> he needs to come out and draw that line from afghanistan to the united states of america and say, you know why we're here? do you remember 9/11? do you remember al qaeda? our mission, as he described early spring is to seek, destroy and get rid of al qaeda to a certain extent and the taliban when there's overlap there which is a lot of it. he needs to remind people that this isn't about propping up karzai. this is not about the afghan government. that's obviously an element you've got to strengthen, but it's not about that, it's about us, and if he can't make that connection, he's got a problem. >> if this continues to spiral downward, next year you have pakistan where they have nuclear weapons. >> and to that point, have the american people -- do our presidents, do our members of congress, do us in our business, do we spend enough time constantly reminding people? because even if things go perfectly in afghanistan, most of al qaeda is on the pakistan side. so essentially u.s. forces in afghanistan are the fire department that if pakistan does its job, al qaeda can't come across the border seeking refuge. >> absolutely. we don't necessarily do that good a job and here's what i mean. so much of this has been about process and the words that have been used. i've seen all these articles about whether this president has a foreign policy based in realism. there's been all of this talk about counter insurgency which might be the better idea versus counter terrorism which sounds like the better idea. so it's very difficult to sort of put this in a person's kitchen where they live and explain to them the stakes for you, the american public. this is the challenge also for the president to try to lay in it it on the line as we've said here and say this is what's in it for you, more safety and more security at home, trying to stabilize this region and getting out in a reasonable period of time. it's the words they use, in part. >> ed rollins, how much more difficult is this challenge because the world is a more fragmented, fractured, less predictable place than when you were sitting at ronald reagan's side in the end of the cold war. >> the lesson i learned from ronald reagan is you can't do it in one speech. no matter how brilliant the speech on tuesday night you have to go out and convince the american public of why you're there, particularly when you need the support of the congress. the biggest problem the president has today is he's got so much on his plate. he has job summit on thursday. he's going off the following week to do copenhagen and get the nobel peace prize and the christmas parties and the rest of it and there's nothing sustained and you have the health care being battled on the congressional front. so i think the bottom line here is he's got to basically realize he can't do it in one speech and it has to be a sustained effort and an educational process and the educational processes is we'll build them an army and once they have an army that they can defend themes and defend the region then we can back away. that will take a couple of years and the moment we start waving the white flag, we'll lose that battle very quickly. >> even as the president tries to sell this policy and rally support, one of the big questions is how do we pay for it? we'll talk to the house appropriations committee chairman later in the program. he said let's have a special tax so everyone knows that's the war tax. that's what it's cost. carl levine doesn't go that far, but he does think -- he does think we need to raise revenues to pay for war. >> we're in the middle of a recession and we're not going to increase taxes to pay for it. in the middle of this recession i don't think you'll be able to successfully or fairly to add a tax burden to middle income people. >> not to middle income people, but he says maybe a surtax or higher on upper income people to pay for the war. do we want to get into a taxist debate, paying for the war debate in the middle of the policy debate? >> in the middle of a debate on how to raise taxes to pay for health care, but i had sources in early october who were in the room when the president brought congress in to talk about his deliberations on afghanistan and they'll come back next tuesday and some of the key players and back in the meeting in early october i am told that david obie stood up and said if you escalate this war further we can be up to afghanistan for up to 20 years and it could cost $1 trillion over the next ten years. he is the chairman of the house spending committee and he knows how much this costs and to get to the point, i'm not sure that the american people understand not just the human cost, but how this is breaking the budget. this was inherited by this president and clearly, president bush did not find ways to pay for the wars in iraq, afghanistan, and this president will need to pay for it, because when you add it up with health care, the stimulus, et cetera, we're going broke. >> i find $30 billion, i saw somewhere -- to send those additional troops. this congress is not going say to this president, no, we're not going to give you money. it's not going to happen. there are enough republicans and enough moderate democrats and left democrats who think we ought to put those troops in. he's going get this money. the question is, like, do they want to tax the rich as they do want to tax the rich for health care reform as well. it's an okay battle to have right now because there really is a populist strain going on in the country that's saying, yeah, tax the rich. you'll hear the republicans fighting it, but it's not an up popular idea. i don't think the white house seems that crazy about the idea in this instance. >> i've want weighed in on this discussion, but leading democrats and others will raise the question simply because we need to put it on the table. look, we've spent almost $1 thill onso far in these two wars. we know that the afghanistan war has want been properly resourced but at the same time what it will cost as in terms of the lives of our brave soldiers and what it's costing the american people in terms of our tax dollars. so we have to have this debate and i hope we can have it in an honest way so the american people know exactly what the cost is. >> the thing i wonder about is how in the world will you sell something like that on capitol hill. you think of these two words, war tax. on the left, people will hate the war part. on the right, the people will hate the tax part and what do you have? you have the middle, but that creates what i've always called the halloween coalition where the wings just hate it. the people in the middle vote for it and it's shot down. >> it is not cheap. >> the halloween coalition. write that down. we'll take a quick break. when we come back we'll shift it to politics including there's a committee to dravt draft dick cheney, the former vice president, for president next time around. no kidding. stay with us. i'm john king and this is "state of the union." here are storiesic braing this sunday morning. struggling homeowners will fine out tomorrow morning what additional steps the obama administration is planning to take to help them avoid foreclosure. officials are planning to announce a new initiative to get long-term help for borrowers trying to modify the loan. the plan will provide more resources for homeowners and demand more accountability and transparency. investigators in russia are calling a deadly train derailment an act of terror. 26 people were killed and another 100 injured when an explosion caused several cars to jump the tracks friday night. several passengers were still unaccounted for. they found elements of an explosive device under the crater under the tracks where the train derailed. two previous attempts to meet with them have failed. woods was treated for minor injuries when he crashed his suv into a fire hydrant and a tree outside hear orlando-area home friday morn aingmorning. those are your top stories here on "state of the union." back with our panel. ed hello rouyns is in new york, joe johns, candy crowley and donna brazile here in washington. left's shift to politics. there's a proposed regz losing at the republican national committee and strive within the party especially with the new york congressional race, there's what some call the purity test for republicans and it would set the standards to to be a can and the to is up we support shawler governments, smaller debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like obama's stimulus bill. we oppose obama-style government-run health care. we oppose cap and trade legislation. we support victory in afghanistan by supporting recommended military troop surges and we support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion. if president obama is for it you have to be against it under the terms of the resolution to get any funding. ed rollins, you're the republican strategist in the group. a good idea? >> well, it would be a much better idea if members after they got elected lived up to those issues. any time the party -- >> say it, brother! >> any time the party sets a platform, candidates run on their own record and should have their freedom to go do what it is that they think is the best interest of their constituents depending where the district may be. those are nice principles and principles of the republican party for a long time, but the party ought to realize its role is not setting approximately see. its role is raising money, getting good kant ats and getting them trained and getting good campaign managers and once someone is elected and trying to hold their feet to the fire on those principles. setting a litmus trust prior to them running is foolish. >> the republicans have the wind at their back right now. the country is concerned about the spending and history says they'll do well in an off year anyway. is this the kind of thing they should be debating? >> no. there is a center inside the republican party that does not like all of the attention to palin at which probably won't like the attention to dick cheney as a potential presidential guy. they also are not going to like this sort of you have to be this, but it's the debate within the party, and we keep seeing it over and over again. it's purity versus a big tent. do we bring in people and if they have an r after their name and they'll vote for speaker and the speaker they vote for is a republican we're with them or do you go for pureity? and the ongoing feeling of the moderates inside the party is if you go for this sort of purity you're not going have a party. certainly not one that can win. >> at a time when one of the president's problems is that independent voters seem to be moving away from him and it doesn't seem like a strong political strategy to push independents out and say we'll go furth to the right. >> there's a lot of scoffing out there especially among democrats about this. how ridiculous, why would they do that? i have to tell you, though, we were all around when they rolled out the contract with america which sounds a lot like some of these thing, and i know it's a different time. it's a different era, a different president and so on, but you have to keep in mind that there's a segment of the population out there that will pay attention to this and respond to it in a fairly positive way. >> america had newt gingrich. you had to have a person behind this to push it and this is an e morphous, and you have to have a person. >> you've had litmus tests and purity and the like, did it help or hurt? >> john, i know what it's like to be in the wilderness and i also know how to have a flashlight and leaders to put forth the ideas whether it was bill clinton and al gore in the 1990s or obama who won last year. i think it is important that the republican party harness a new generation of leaders to come up with ideas that will help ignite a you in breed of leaders with the country, but to come out with the old tried ideas to produce what we're seeing, i don't think will get them anywhere. >> i don't think anyone, or dick cheney will cast himself as a new generation of leadership and here it is on the cover of "news week." chain ney 2012? that's an exclamation point and not a question mark. we got the release this last week. they draft dick cheney for president in 2012. the twrent 12 race for republican nomination for president will be about much more than who will be the party's standard bearer against barack obama. the race is about the heart and soul of the gop. there's only one person in our party with the experience, political courage and unwavering commitment to the values that made our party strong and that person is dick cheney. his daughter liz says she wants him to run, but he's not listening. on a scale of one to ten. he didn't run when he was vice president and had the deck stack in his favor. on a scale of one to ten, we think that is? >> look, he already ran the country for eight years -- >> ouch! >> there's a term limit. >> what did you say before? >> right. >> people used to call him darth vader and i think it was almost like a darth vader vacuum. the reason he's being talked about is there's a vacuum in the republican party as to who will seize the mantle of leadership. the only one getting as much attention is sarah palin and there are a lot of republicans who say she energizes the party and privately believe she doesn't have the experience. who's got the experience? dick cheney. >> in the immortal words of dick cheney several weeks ago, not a chance. >> so on a scale of one to ten, zero. >> it's time for a new generation of republicans to take their seats of the table. i endorse that concept. >> ed rollins, to the vacuum point. do things like this which i assume you think is a little silly, do they come up because we're a year into obama, we're heading into the midterms and 2012 can seem far off, but we need things to talk about. >> at this point in time there was no obama four years ago. he was ranked 99th in the united states senate. we will have a candidate, and obviously, re-elections are about the incumbent and if this president falters and continues to falter then i think you will find a young governor or an older governor who will come forth. i think our next nominee will be one of our governors, a new one or an old one. there's no leadership in washington who will step forward to be a presidential candidate. i remind people who want to draft dick cheney and i've known dick for a long, long time. i ran a re-election campaign for ronald reagan against a very popular walter mondale and we won 59% of the vote. you don't want to re-run the bush campaign all over again of 2000, 2004 and 2008, we need to run the campaign of 2008. >> i would say negative five on that one. we'll take a quick break. when we come back, when we come back, a lightning round. how to crash a state dinner. stay with us. we're back for our lightning round, and unless you were hiding in a cave, you do know a couple from virginia somehow managed to crash the dinner this past week. tareq and mikaily sal had i had not only got to pose with the vice president, but the president of the united states. i were not on the invitation list. there you see them with president obama and they went right through the security. they did go through the magnetometers and the president was not at risk, but certainly they were uninvited guests. >> you worked in the white house. the secret service says it is embarrassed. how did this happen? >> certainly, was there a breakdown on the part of the secret service and i assume it happened at the uniformed level and they're first-rate people, but there was a breakdown. the bottom line is how do you stop the breakdown? you prosecute. they basically trespassed and had no right to be there. the secret service has a tough enough task than for people to dress up and these people want a reality show, give it to them. called the -- >> ed rollins tough on crime there in new york. you've been in the white house many, many times. normally there's someone from the staff who is standing there with a clip board and it says donna brazile and then the secret service runs through your purse and rounds everything through the magnetometer. how? >> i don't know how it happened. this will require the white house social office as well as the secret service to go through everything that happened at that gate to find out how did they slip by? i've been to the white house countsless onones, they check everything. i was surprised. maybe i don't have a red dress. maybe it's the red dress. >> you know, there are so many things, one of the things i -- i totally agree. where was the social office there? why weren't they checking off names? it's a dual job for the secret service. they should be there screening these people, putting them through the mag ne tom ter, looking in their purses. that what they do, not checking them off the list. they had dual jobs there. plus, the fact they're dealing with important people and they don't want to, you know, do something that they shouldn't do. but it also brings to mind sometimes the simplest things don't get done. checking the name, hinckley was in a press pen without a press pass. there was a time and you may remember i think it was george bush the dad when a band came in and there were 14 members of the band but 15 walked in. they found this guy wandering around the white house counting noses. it's always the simplest -- that first line, the simplest thengs. >> we had a guy get on the international press charter that didn't belong on the trip. it wasn't the president's plane. somebody said, who's that? >> and how did -- they got past the first checkpoint, but there are many others when you go to the white house. why didn't somebody spot them. that's why tiger woods' wife was so mad. he didn't take her to the state dinner. anybody can get in. >> it's the firstate dinner, to. you can say mistakes happen. but the bottom line i think here is that, while we all laugh about it and everybody's talking about it, there is a serious problem when a person can walk in and get within wiarm's lengt of the president of the united states. because next time it might not be so, you know, no big deal. so funny. >> and the miaprime minister of india. >> a time-out here. ed r ed, joe, donna, candy. next we get out of washington to get a good meal. we head to helen na, montana. please stay with us. they all rs back on the highway. chevy equinox. with up to 600 highway miles between fill-ups. may the best car win. our cars speak for themselves, but this sure says a lot: the 5-year, 100,000 mile transferable powertrain warranty from chevy. with roadside assi0mance and courtesy transportation, it's the best coverage in america. one of the big issues i bet many of you discussed around the thanksgiving dinner table is the struggling economy. whether you might have a lot more or a lot less to spend this holiday season. that was on our mind, the economy as we visited the great state of montana. one of the things we did was a sit-down with the governor who says first and foremost the american people care about jobs. >> i can tell you what people care about most and that's jobs. if there's a concern about three or four issues that are at the top and that's health care and climate change and the war, they all are second place to jobs. >> second place to jobs. let's take a closer look at the state of montana. 6.4% unemployment, better than the national average. nearly 16% of montana's residents lack health insurance. it has the highest military volunteer rate in the country. steve's cafe was our diner stop in the heart of helena. our topics including the economy and the president's big decision about more troops to afghanistan. as we get toward the holiday season, a lot of people are asking, has the economy hit bottom? is it coming back? will we see people spending and head into the new year with more optimism? we're five months into a new business whaxt do you see? >> i think the economy, don't think it's completely bottomed out in my opinion. i don't understand why the stock market is going up the way it does. just seems to be responsive to news that is not really based on any facts sometimes. >> not on the real world. you don't see it on the ground. main street is not experiencing what wall street is. >> right. >> feel the same way? >> i do. and i feel that the unemployment rate and that scene shows the real picture more than what the stock market is doing. >> are you going to be a little more conservative this holiday season? >> somewhat. i probably won't spend as much, but i have a grandson i'll spend on him. all day long. >> he's recession-proof. >> right. and i'm almost done shopping. i shopped early. >> wow. >> because i expected them not to have as much and i wanted to get the things that i wanted ahead of time. >> our company has definitely seen a downturn in business. i don't see the bottom yet. i think it's probably going to be even tighter next year. our own family will cut back on spending considerably for christmas other than the kids. >> people in my town say, what do people think about health care, the economy, the democrats and republicans? a broader way to look at it is to ask a bigger question -- which is, is the country on the right track? is america on the right track right now? >> we just seem to be spending too much money on entitlements and earmarks and instead of taking care of the core of the country and the people in the country. >> look at the bailouts and the people didn't cut their top-level salaries and bonuses. i think that had a lot -- a real impact on the average person, the everyday person. >> is that the democrats' fault, the republicans' fault? >> it's both. >> the other half of this equation is we've got to stop being a consumer nation and start manufacturing. because when we're buying all of our goods oversees we're going to go backwards until we correct this. >> at this time of year when we sit around the table with our families and reflect on what we're thankful for, are you less thankful because of all of these difficult issues? more concerned? >> concern is the right word. thankful, i'm thankful that i'm working, thank that i have a roof over my head that we're making payments on and we're going forward. we're hacking on. that's the bottom line. >> we had an unemployment rate about a point and a half a couple of years ago. now it's over 6 again. it's kind of relative. when we were at 1.5, really there's no one there that you want to employ. we were down to we couldn't find good people. now you can find good people again. >> and many people with college degrees who you think would be working for corporations or big companies are working in lower level jobs. >> the photo on the front page of a member of your national guard. if all goes as currently on books, they'll be shipping out to afghanistan. >> hope not. >> in the new year. >> you're shaking your head. you say hope not. it's been eight years. do we need more troops