print, and those questions are being asked by them. i think the president showed it today. boy, is he tough. i think he was feeling to me his office today, the unique responsibility he has as commander in chief to make these decisions, and he has to make it s not just politics. this is bigger than that. anyway, i hate to say something s bigger than polit s politics, but this is definitely bigger than politics. andrea mitchell, thank you. have a nice weekend. the weather in d.c., best it s been. we finally got last fall. anyway, coming up, the other big issue in today s news conference, jobs. what was the president saying today? i m saying it s time for the president to promote something big. it s like that commercial where the director wants to blow up that ship. i want something big. if you have a do nothing congress, make him do nothing about something important at least. plus the obama administration s had a lot of successes. why don t we hear them saying that? well, we did it
personnel or our allies, and so we don t play with that. we don t play with that. you know, it s hard not to be cynical in politics, but i got the feeling well, i think he meant it. i think he was really hurt that anybody would say he s out there hot dogging on an issue like this. he was responding to what john mccain said, and john mccain is the one person who has said that they did this, white house officials leaked this, this and other covert operations deliberately. he s throwing it all in the same bag, like going after bin laden. and saying that the white house leaked this to make the president look more presidential, more macho for the campaign. that s not what dianne feinstein and mike rogers and the others from the intelligence committees are saying. they re the prime movers. they re demanding a special prosecutor. they re demanding the justice department. they called in the fbi director yesterday, the head of national intelligence, and they are really upset. they say
unfortunate. it was a compromise that he made. but he rescued this economy. he needs to take credit for it, not shy away from it because, as you know in politics, perception can have its own reality, and if the republicans are successful in a common perception that the stimulus bill failed, that it was a waste of money, he will suffer, and the fact don t show that. the facts show just the opposite. he saved this economy. the dow jones is at twice what it was in the last month of the bush administration. we were losing 776,000 jobs in one month alone. the gdp was dropping by 9%. the fact is that had we not had that stimulus, we would be in a ditch that we could not possibly have recovered from. he ought to be proud of that. and, in fact, he s got so many accomplishments that he ought to be proud of. chris, i think, to some extent,
and i appreciate them taking that action, but they left most of the jobs plan just sitting there. in light of the headwinds that we re facing right now, i urge them to reconsider. my take on this, it s time for the president to go big, force the republicans to say no to a big jobs bill that would actually put millions of people back to work. nia covers politics for the washington post. she s been on the road with governor romney. and selange is an msnbc political analyst. i have to start with joan. what s left in that so-called american jobs bill. it has a nice cover on it. we like the term american. we like the term jobs. and the word bill s okay if it s passed. since it s not passed, you can call it whatever you want. the american jobs thought, the american jobs notion, but it s not passed at all. prayer. prayer. perfect. it s not been passed. why doesn t the president if they re going to say no, as i ve been saying to spam, which is