is he has a record to defend and on the one hand you can be aggressive in going after the challenge for the presidency. but on the other hand, you have to defend the fact that 23,000 americans aren t working. steve bif let you get out of here, are you were john kerry s campaign manage anywhere 2004. do you think he feels partly responsible for how mediocre the president s performance was first time around? i doubt it. i think john kerry is uniquely qualified to play the sparring partner. having watched mitt romney up close and having been in a lot of presidential debates. at the end of the day, the candidates have to get up on the stage and barack obama will admit, he didn t have his best night. but i think we want our politicians to be super human or our presidents to be super human and they re like everybody else. i don t think the president is going to have an off night tuesday, he ll have a great night tuesday. steve, joe, thank you so much
collam ca l ca lamty. what is it you re trying to say? mitt romney is the campaign. you represent that ship and how well it does. he s made these gaffes on his own both about the egyptian embassy and 47% of americans he spoke about that he said didn t have personal responsibility. i really truly believe mitt romney is a decent man. but he s twice shown by these gaffes, if that s the word you want to use, as commander in chief, is he willing to be a resolute type of leader that s thoughtful when he speaks about our crisis overseas. second, when he said about 47% of americans, that they don t have personal responsibility, he was speaking about our veterans coming home. those with post traumatic stress disorder, those students who get student loans republican president eisenhower in initiated that.
defense. as long as you re playing defense, you probably can t win. you have to score points and the way to do that is play offense by sharing your message. no matter what anybody says about words misspoken you have to consider the fact 12 million americans aren t working. you have to speak to them, undecided voters not hard d or hard r s. is mitt romney s campaign designed for those people? is he running a campaign designed for independent voters? he is running a campaign designed for independent voters. he knows he has to win in the swing states and people who haven t yet made up their mind. the point he has to stress to them is i m the guy that can put our economy back on track. you have a majority of americans who feel we re heading in the wrong direction and he has to show them he can take them in the right direction. joe makes a couple good points. one, he has to show persistence and not show he s panicking.
what does this release do for the questions about governor romney s taxes over the last two decades? craig, it does absolutely nothing. i described this in an earlier program on msnbc to attempt to replace this with the tax returns. this was an attempt to get the media to chase another story even though the romney camp knows the other story is bad, too. i think the 47%, that video was so damaging and so jarring to the romney campaign they decided they needed to distract the press at all costs even if the underlying story they were using is also bad, romney paying a lower tax rate than average americans. michael, senate majority leader harry reid accused romney of paying no income taxes seized on the friday document dump saying in part quote mitt romney manipulated one of the only two years of tax returns he s seen fit to show the american people and then only to conform with his public statements, reid said
number two, to what joe said, he does have an ability to demonstrate he is not only a caring family man but he cares about others. you can see it in his charity. but he hasn t done that. hasn t been captain of the ship, a future president of the united states demonstrated to half of americans he does understand they are personally responsible. i think his failure to do that is most harming. joe is right but he hasn t demonstrated that. 45 days out, can you really redefine yourself? if you haven t humanized yourself yet, can you do it now? i don t think it s a matter of redefining yourself. you have to make sure you reach the people that haven t made up their minds yet. there s like 23 of those people. half live in iowa and the other half in hohio. he has to convince people in