warrant that could give the president a pretext if he so choses to fire rosenstein. and bill kristol, back to you for a moment. if tonight s story was reporting, say, the dismissal of rosenstein, the dismissal of mueller, question we all get asked a lot that you may have some wisdom on, do you trust that there is a common core in both houses of congress of commonsense republicans and democrats who would do something, switch mueller the next day to a special prosecutor statute, continue the work without dropping a stitch, would they save the day in terms of the investigation that a lot of people have said will speak to the future of our democracy? i hope so but i can t be confident based on their performance so far. i agree with jeremy and joyce that sessions may have been wrong if he calculated as i
that s a harsh character attack politics. and i think he owes mr. romney an apology on that. on the issues there s plenty to disagree about. but that s a lot for i think a presidential staffer to say about somebody. it s not fair. the problem with this flip-flop politics, everybody s vulnerable in politics. because when you get new information you change. barack obama ran and beat hillary clinton by being left of the iraq war talking about shutting down guantanamo bay. promise to the country. gets elected. doesn t shut it down. now i m not going to attack him for that because the reason he doesn t shut it down, he got new information, i think he did the right thing. you have to be careful. everybody in politics who s ever looked at new information or done anything is vulnerable to 9 flip-flop attack. certainly romney is but it s unfair to make that a character assault. let me introduce, we talked about what s going on in iowa right now, walter isaacson you look at the new presidentia
the domestic side, daley said both democrats and republicans have made it very difficult for the president to be anything like a chief executive. this has led to a kind of frustration. let s figure out what we can do without congress, and push the envelope on some of these things. do-nothing democrats? no. if you look at where we are right now, trying to pass the american jobs act, cutting taxes for the middle class, putting construction workers and teachers back to work, pretty much everybody in the democratic party and washington governors out there are standing with the president. so there s only one reason, one reason we won t make a huge impact on the economy. and it s because the republican party, and i make this point but he singles out of the democrats. who and why are they doing that? well, listen right now, the situation beer in right now, the republican party, almost in unison here in washington, and let me make a point, the republicans out in the country, mainstream
and economic upheaval. so the only plan right now in front of the american people, in front of congress, that would create jobs in the short-term is the president s. now we ve done some work with the republicans, obviously. we massed some trade deals that s going to help us sell fords and chevys in south korea. passed patent reform. so we have been able to work together. and hopefully in the next 60 days we ll come together to cut taxes for the middle-class and do everything we can on the economy. we still have confidence on that. on the economy, look what the stock market did this week. friday s close was over 12,000, on track with the largest monthly ascendance, 2.5% economic growth in the last quarter. does the president see any green shoots here on the economy? well, listen, there s far too many people still out of work. the middle class still feels a lack of security, and that s been going on even predating the recession. so for a lot of people out in america, this is an urgen
89% in a recent poll said that they don t trust government very often. and then, as tom writes about, and i ll put another example on the screen, of the tone here. it s so easy to just vilify the other side, as you write about, tom, in the book. slashing rhetoric and outrageous characterizations have long been part of the american national political dialogue. but modern means of communications are now so pervasive and penetrating they might as well be part of the air we breathe, and therefore they require tempered remarks from all sides. otherwise the air just becomes more and more toxic until it is suffocating. so we have such a limited scope of problem solving. that s not what steve jobs had. he had a big scope. but you know, he was also able to pay people to be able to do what he asked them to do. and blom ma can t pay the republicans to be able to get them to compromise. and that s his challenge. the challenge really of both process, and policy. we ve got a country where we do ha