with associates. there are people from the business world, from massachusetts, perhaps from the olympics, also people obviously from church, and from acquaintances in politics and from outside who speak on his behalf, who know him and can testify on his behalf. so in that sense he s much less an unknown quality than obama was. and i think, therefore, it s easier for him to express himself. but obama had the advantage of being so unknown that he could sort of control and conjure up both a past and a future that he would offer the country, and the theme of the republicans is, we tried that, we tried the conju conjurer, that didn t work, let s get serious now with a serious man to deal with serious problems. jenna: interesting. we ll see what mitt romney shares about his personal life. how he shares some of his experiences that you mentioned, and maybe as well what happens for the next ten weeks. real quick here charles.
convention this year were people of stature who were seriously involved at some point in obama s life. standing up to say, i know barack obama, i ve been with barack obama. we have toiled together, you can trust him, i do. you said that was missing. romney has brought it up, condoleezzaa rice has brought it up, some critics have suggested that the president has the same problem that mitt romney has, that they actually are very similar in this way, that they remain a mystery, that people feel they don t really know these two men. what do you think about that comparison and how do you think mitt romney over comes that? well, i think there is a sense in which they are similar, because it s very, very difficult to understand the internal psychology of anyone, particularly at a distance. so i think in that sense romney is not that much different from any other presidential candidate who preceded him. but obama was absolutely different. he was utterly unique in the
romney understands. jenna: do you feel like he does, do you feel that is the message from the rnc, clear enough? yeah, yeah, why? he s talking about his choice for vice president, we are going to fix the economy. national security s biggest crisis right now is we don t have an economy where you need to have it. in you don t have a strong economic it s collateral damage. and secondly energy independence. once you have that what happens in the middle east it s far less critical to what we have today, we won t be beholden to the middle east. jenna: what do you think about the whole conversation coming up again, leading from behind, from the front, from the middle, it s easy to get dizzy. where are we right now, josh and what do you think the messages coming from the rnc and how that fits into the realities of what is happening all over the world today? sure, well it s very smart strategies for the romney campaign and the rnc to point back to reagan. in reagan you had a president who h
very mixed results and this is a legitimate kreut sits eupl. it s not clear whether leading from the front would solve the big issues of the day but that s what mitt romney would try if he were elected. one point to make though is that the administration said that their actions on iran, iran is the biggest crisis that they are going to face in foreign policy, it s a nuclear iran. they say they managed to isolate iran. 120 nations have represented to teheran to pay court to iran, which is part of the movement which iran thinks it s going to run. the whole notion that their most successful thing is diplomatic sanctions, energy sanctions against iran it shows you that lead from behind doesn t work. 120 nations are going to pay court to a country that we ve presumably alienated and isolated. jenna: including the u.n. secretary as well. interesting that kt brings up iran. we got during our show this new report from the nation until atomic energy agency.
of the speech were impressed with what they saw. that was good news for the ticket, and it d set things up nicely for mitt romney this evening if he can deliver. jon: when his name was first announced, democrats said we will win florida, because seniors are concerned about about medicare and paul ryan wants to change medicare. he gave a pretty good defense last night, didn t you? yes, and they will have to continue to do that. remember, historically, jon, the medicare issue comes up in the last couple weeks of the campaign. it can be a stealth issue conducted by mail and telephone and internet. this is not something that republicans can think is over. we have taken care of that now, we have neutralized issue no, it s something that you have to keep your eye on all the way to november 6. jon: part of the job of the vice presidential nominee is to go after the city sitting