jim maceda, nbc news correspondent. thanks very much. now joining me at the table is new york times lead blog editor, viktoria de francesco soto, beth fui, and julian zelleze, professor at princeton university and author of governing america. welcome on this momentous day. before we begin the discussion, i just want to bring up something senator mccain said just coming back from ukraine. expressed a very troubling thought yesterday. let s take a look. finally, let me say a word about military assistance, and this is my personal view. ukraine is going to need a long-term military assistance program from the united states, equipment both lethal and
the problem i have with it is i do think this particular program at this particular time when you have all the things going on in the world that you have this president losing the respect not only of russia but also many of our allies that he d pick to trade the dignity of the white house and leadership for getting more web hits. i think what it really does is shows that obamacare has some huge problems that are going to make this something, anything but the affordable care act. it s clearly going to become more expensive for every american because of the way the signups are going. julian, i want to play a memorable moment from another former president speaking of the dignity of the presidency and of the white house. let s take a look at that. i know. i dent think weblgd get mr. nixon to standstill for a sock it to me. sock it to me? now, john, if the presidency can survive richard nixon saying sock it to me, then certainly it s okay for the president to
go on between two ferns to push a policy that is his signature policy. well, my big problem is that on both sides of the aisle, democrat and republican, we are tearing down the institution of the presidency in this country. i think both sides have to lower the rhetoric. second of all, right now with what s going on in ukraine, what s going on with venezuela, what s going on with jobs and so many places in the world, the last thing this president needed to do is when his numbers are falling to look like he cares more about humor and comedy than he does about leadership. so i don t blame the president quite frankly. i blame those people around him. sometimes you have to protect people from a bad idea. they should have tackled him to the ground before they aloud him to do this. all right, julian. has the institution of the presidency been destroyed because of between two ferns. not at all. the dignity of the office might have been hurt by campaign finance and issues like that. n
presidents have been doing this for a long time. jfk did it as well when he ran. i think in this media environment, you have to go on different kinds of shows. the line between soft news and hard news is no longer as clear as it used to be. i don t think this is what will hurt americans impression of the presidency. i think if anything, reaching out to broader audiences is something that presidents need to do now. from an international point of view, the biggest disgrace that our country faces having lived in the u.k. until just last year is the fact we have millions and millions of uninsured americans. this is incomprehensible to our western european allies. that is the greatest disgrace they see for our nation. beth, i was going to ask you, feeding off of julian s point here, what option does the president have when only 5% of the american young people are getting their news from the traditional means? what other option does he have? right. you have to go where people are. tha