president obama speaking. he is the most important surrogate and as you know andrea, you want to have a guy with that kind of credibility and a guy that can talk the owls down from the trees. indeed. great piece. new york magazine, john heilemann, thank you so much. no accident that hillary clinton was taking the blame for benghazi on the eve of this debate. up next debate expectations with bob shrum and michael gerson. you re watching andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. live from hofstra. [ cat 1 ] i am not a vegetarian. look at these teeth! they re made for meat! [ cat 2 ] do i look like i m stalking plants? [ male announcer ] most dry foods add plant protein, like gluten but iams never adds gluten. iams adds 50% more animal protein, [ cat 3 ] look at this body! under this shiny coat is a lean, mean purring machine [ cat 4 ] i am too! hahahaha! [ male announcer ] iams. with 50% more animal protein.
he s not here. what are the three states if you were robert gibbs and the campaign you d be most concerned about. first of all, robert, i m impressed with debate expectations. now it s not just strong, exceptionally strong. i think he ll be good tonight. that is chris christie-like in your promise of a are you promising a narrative change? i m walking away. look, i will say this, i ve watched the sort of lead-in. i m used to cable gloom. but, you know, i what about auburn gloom? i would say the coffee is dark, but i don t think the overall mood is quite as bleak. we ve been through a lot of these times in campaigns. i ve listened to this sort of alan keys and john mccain which pretends we were handed the nomination. i said general election. i know that. but let s not suggest that a year and a half primary doesn t
are biting their tongues, postponing what could romney told donors in the spring said he would consider limits home mortgage deductions, he seemed to explicitly take that off the table. home mortgage interest deductions and charity donations would continue to be deductible expenses. obama called on ohio state university students to vote early. grab your friends, grab everybody in your dorm. grab everybody in your frat terfrat romney meanwhile seemed to lower debate expectations to a stunningly low bar for his
delay. i want to make sure we don t step on each other. let me fully give you this question. are the debate expectations, are we playing a silly game here? doesn t the president need to do well? doesn t governor romney need to do well? the idea that the other will do better, isn t this kind of silly? i can tell you, chuck, that i agree with governor sununu that this debate can t be about decibels. what it does have to be about, particularly for governor romney, is details. thus far, we have not seen any details. what we have heard during the news reports about governor romney s debate preparations is he seems to plan to treat the debate stage like a schoolyard playground in practicing zingers. but president obama plans to take the debates seriously. continue the conversation that he had with the american people during his convention speech and talk about the specifics about
slated for closure during the previous administration. here are the facts. the $5 trillion tax plan that mitt romney and paul ryan put on the table, you can t pay for it without raising taxes on the middle class and raising taxes on seniors. the same economists who mitt romney referred to to back up his plan said you couldn t pay for it without eliminating the mortgage introduction which many middle class families rely on if they have more specifics, we are interested to hear those tomorrow night. so far we haven t heard how you pay for it without raising taxes on the middle class. as we look at a new quinnipiac poll, it s finding more of the majority of americans think the president will win the debates. the president has done his best to temper debate expectations looming out there, saying he s just an okay debater. is your campaign worried these high expectations could backfire on the president? the president will come into the debates prepared. mitt romney has been preparing fo