look, since this is not politics but performance, when an actor is dealing with a partner on stage, that s when it s happening. a partner on the stage, two people on that stage, and romney dealt with his partner. he addressed the president. he spoke to the president. obama seemed significantly to avoid him while he was offscreen, while he was waiting to speak, and even when he spoke, he was speaking i don t know to whom he was speaking, maybe the audience or the moderator, but he was speaking offcamera, he had an opportunity to speak to the camera, which is to speak to us, or speak to romney, those are the only two people on that stage with him. those are his partners and he avoided them both studiously. what a beginner s mistake for a great politicians. yeah. you would see him pivot, the line of sight, he s shifting back from jim lehrer to the camera to mitt romney, hugo. i wanted to comment on
clinton was president. he has a lot of credentials to say you know what? the middle class doesn t have to fall behind. that s the one period in most of our adult lifetime that the middle class was doing better. i think that s what he s going to focus on. you talked about unity. but the republicans will not have their former president or vice president there. and whatever the differences and there were a lot of differences and bad feelings including some expressed by me, they re putting them aside at the democratic party. but meantime, two of the biggest names in the gop won t be at their party s convention. dick cheney s skipping his party s convention to go fishing. amazing. and george w. bush won t be there either. remember his offcamera endorsement of romney from behind a pair of closing elevator doors? well, this is no surprise. the bush/cheney years left a smoldering mess.
john na thanh. guy, you said something interesting a moment ago. sam, he apprenticed with various people and learned the black arts. so who are these people? we re focused on sam here, but it sounds like he s the tip of the iceberg. the people who set the libor bank rates, who front run the market at goldman sachs and create these derivatives and trade ahead of their clients. it s a cultural thing. it s smart people, really smart people, mobsters that call them wise guys, wall street guys are smart guys. let s bridge it back to romney and once again, i m not saying romney is dishonest. be careful here. we talked about this offcamera between entrepreneurial rich guys and wall street rich guys. these entire art is about beating the system and proving i m smarter than the next number. you don t steal, you don t walk into it like a bank and steal a billion dollars. you dice it into a bucket at a time. it becomes invisible.
turning point and knowing who we pick now really matters. but crisis elections tend to bring drama, a broad sense of excitement and passion. we re not seeing that this year. we ve not seen political genius in mr. obama, whether you will vote for him or not, you know you haven t seen it. he seems to view politics as his weary duty. something he had to do on his way to greatness. as for mr. romney, it is a commonplace in punditry to implore him to speak clearly of where he ll go and how and why we should follow. what does this all suggest? voters this year will tend to be practical in their choice and modest in their expectations, which isn t all bad, but joy would be a lot more fun. i would say, passion and a clear division between the direction of this country, between these two candidates, would really help. oh, no doubt about it. you were talking to me about this offcamera a couple weeks ago, when you said, this is a year that calls for 1980.
unfolding diplomatic crisis. and why do women only make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men? i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. tomorrow marks one year since the u.s. mission that killed osama bin laden and today the terror leader s name is popping up out there on the campaign trail. the romney and obama campaigns are each trying to paint their candidate as the toughest, but for team romney, it s a built of an uphill battle right now. our national political correspondent jim acosta is watching all this unfold. what s going on in this fight? for months, mitt romney has been on offensive. he in this debate over the killing of osama bin laden, romney has been on defense, just the way the president wants it. as mitt romney was shaking hands in new hampshire, he was asked the question, he had given the same order to kill osama bin laden. even jimmy carter would have given that order. cnn breaking news. tonight i can report to the american people a