they share an abiding belief not to mention, irresistible public relations. i think ted recognized that this odd bed fellows combination, so to speak, would get a lot of attention. some people call them the odd couple. well, it is a very odd couple, isn t it? or is it? judge for yourself. as we were getting ready to argue bush versus gore yes did we have this conversation? we said, someday someone is going to come to us who will want to get married. and they ll be gay. and we ll do this together. that actually we talked about that. that second i don t remember. our senior political analyst, gloria borger joins me now from washington. gloria, fascinating interview. nice job. what do they agree on, anything in this case, if anything? well, they actually agree on more than you would think, particularly in this case. they both see it as sort of the last civil rights case left to be fought in this country. and they see it as a very, very
financial crisis, but stronger than it has ever been. that is a commitment that i m making to you. thank you for the commitment that you ve made to me. god bless you. thank you, guys. thank you. president barack obama in washington speaking in front of the afl-cio, its executive council meeting. and this has really become the theme over the last couple of weeks as the president has been out and other democrats talking about the last eight years, the big years, the eight years of president bush, and that s going to be the theme coming up to this election. this is very much what ed henry said to us, to you, a few moments ago, it s very much about the election coming up. the president said it took nearly a decade to dig the hole we re in and it will take us some time to dig out, he s not going to lie but it will take some time to get out of the hole. he also talked about the surpluses during bill clinton saying they re not going to go back and turn this into a deficit. he said america s
that the public when you look at the polls, they just don t feel like they re we ve dug out of this recession yet, despite the steps the president has taken, so he s trying to make the case, this is a friendly audience, as you noted, and white house aides say he ll lay out sort of, you know, how he passed the stimulus, how he s now pushing for a small business tax relief bill that he thinks will help, and also just last week we saw him in detroit at gm and chrysler plants showing how the auto bailouts while deeply unpopular right now helped save a lot of jobs. he s going to continue to tout those initiatives. you hear the republican criticism, though, this is a fierce political environment just a couple months before the midterm elections, the republicans saying the stimulus has not worked as promised or as advertised. the president has been very aggressive, though, in framing this midterm election that s coming up as sort of a sign that he inherited a mess from the bush administrati
he was a wonderful, wonderful man to know and to work for. and, of course, president bush this year, too. that would be bush 43. i will to the best of my ability. the president s whose election olson successfully defended before the supreme court in 2000. a memory that wasn t lost on chad griffin. i knew i was in foreign territory. but i saw enough in that office to know just how republican, you know, of a world that ted olson comes from. and my world could not be more different than that. also on display was olson s extraordinary legal track record. with 44 supreme court victories under his belt. and here are the quills. now, you get one of these every time every time you argue a case in the supreme court, at the desk is the quill. weeks later, reiner says the deal was sealed here at his california home. was this kind of like an out of body experience for you? i mean, here you are sitting and
what we do next, and then we thought about the idea of a possible legal challenge to proposition 8, and saa friend o my wife came across the table. reporter: the friend suggested they find an ally in her former brother-in-law, who turned out to be ted olson, a towering figure in the conservative legal movement. so, that stunned you, right? yes. it more than stunned me. it stunned me, but i said, if this is true, this is the home run of all-time. i mean, the idea that ted olson, this archconservative, solicitor general for george bush, who had argued bush v. gore and basically put me in bed for a couple of days i was so depressed after bush v. gore was interested in gay rights, i thought, let s check it out. reporter: but didn t you have any doubts about ted olson? you know, they say that politics makes strange