legislative agenda, strategy, you want behind you because congress reacts more to constituents than announcements of incoming president. unless he has overwhelming like welfare reform a rally cry in 1990s, democrats voted for it, not because they wanted to but because constituents demanded. unless you have backing, you have big things to move. big things about donald trump when they learn what leader he will be, the last guy in the room, keep people guessing, we know that. we also know he is the kind of guy when all the chips are down and everything is crashing to a horrible end, he comes up fighting somehow. i m just not sure how that kind of formula fits in a presidency, as the leader of the free world. problem is, he was fighting when things were up.
kirk joins us now along with news an finance anchor from yahoo! thank you for both being on board. ronald reagan after six years lost his narrative, lost his connection with the american people. this happened remarkably early in barack obama s why. lost stimulus, bipartisanship he hoped to gain. here is a guy that comes in on the change candidate, transformative. all of his staff believed, as you guys were talking about earlier. he runs into the republican wall almost immediately and thought with a certain amount of hubris he was going to do just enough to get him on his side without a single republican vote he jams through the i remember that super bowl party he was saying to, i think, jon kyl, we won, you lost. exactly. the ap wrote how shocking how
that he s great at sort of presenting these big picture visions of places we d all like to be. he s not so great at providing road maps for how get there. bob, you look disgusted. i think that the president is supposed to be as chief executive the big picture guy. yeah. and then it s up to staff to get us from here to there. he should be i disagree. peter s argument sounds a little bit like conservative projection. i think the people who haven t outlined a good alternative are mostly republicans in the house who seem to oppose everything without a solution, even when you get into detailed fiscal debates, they can t really tell you which exemptions they want to deal with, how they want to deal with this budget mess. i think what the president has to do ultimately is stitch together a narrative that connects the things we know that s out there. there s an economic problem, a gun violence problem and a problem of faith and trust in our institutions. and forgive the word pl
make a fetish out of the unemployment number. it not representative of the economy as a whole. most people think of the economy as a whole in terms of how he or she or himself or herself are actually doing and the numbers about people being optimistic about the economy are going up which definitely benefits the president. all right. let me ask you a bigger question because i know i m the big picture guy. no question about it. okay. last night, romney and the president were answering the question about how romney is different than george bush. let me play that answer for you. president bush had a very different path, very different time. my path is designed in getting small businesses to grow and help people. george bush didn t propose turning medicare into a voucher. george bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform. he didn t call for self-deportation. george bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for planned
to his day job. he would have to make a choice to fill up the gas tank to get to work or do i give up my entrepreneurial dream. $40, he wrote, means a heck of a lot. it means a heck of a lot. that s what this debate is all about. this is what s at stake for millions of americans. this is why it matters to people. it matters a heck of a lot. i m asking the american people to keep their stories coming. tell us what $40 means to you. if you tweet it, use the hash tag $40. call, tweet, write your congressman, write your senators. tell them, do not let up until this thing gets done. don t let taxes go up on 160 million working americans. don t let americans out there looking for work and the economy is starting to improve but they don t have a job yet, don t leave them without a lifeline in terms of cutting off their unemployment insurance. when a plane is lifting off the ground, you don t ease up on the throttle. you keep going. our plane is up there, but we re not at cruising al