>> to thumb your nose at the hollywood convention, i'm in. >> you forget for five minutes it's a silent film. and it can happen only in america. this is piers morgan tonight. >> good evening on the eve of another of a series of what seems likenedless republican primaries. the big question comes down to this, who has the right formula to keep america great. listen to what mitt romney said today. >> you know, a patriot once said that a leader must lead, follow or get out of the way. we elected him to lead. he chose to follow, and now it's time for him to get out of the way. >> could obama ride an improving economy to victory? tragedy in washington state, could anybody have stopped it? the cast of a movie nobody thought would ever get made and a super bowl nobody would ever forget. join me now, a man who has to be happy on the giant super bowl win. frank rich largely writes for "new york" magazine. you have a beaming smile. i take it you enjoyed the super bowl yesterday? >> i'm a giants fan being a new yorker. it was a fantastic game, thrilling. i couldn't imagine -- maybe patriots fans didn't find it so thrilling. any objective observer would have to. >> it's a thrilling thing to watch. i have never sat through an entire super bowl show. apparently it got the highest ratings in history. it's an amazingly patriotic affair, isn't it? from the chicken wings to commercials, everything. put it all together, the real heart beat of america. >> sort of survey of american culture at any given moment. this year at least we were spared a wardrobe malfunction. american commercial enterprise. a patriotic fervor, pop culture, madonna now is mainstream, that shows us how much america has gone in the past couple of decades. a great barometer of a lot of things and a tremendous amount of fun. i think more people watched it or almost as a many people watched it sunday as voted in the last election. >> that's right. the parallels with the political situation are pretty straightforward in the sense you have two, i would say relatively close competitors now, depends who you think will win the republican race, let's assume it's mitt romney up against barack obama, who knows no property outside of fdr has ever been re-elected with unemployment over 8%. rather like the giants and patriots, it could go to the wire. who do you think will win as things stand. >> if you want to keep using that analogy to a fair the well, obama is sort of a new yorker because he did time at columbia. mitt romney, although he's trying to run away from it, is associated with boston and massachusetts. i wouldn't want to predict. i think it is very much up for grabs. we're seeing some small and unpredicted signs of recovery, particularly in the job numbers. the whole basis of romney's candidacy really is the economy is in the dumps and america is on the skids. if that doesn't happen, i don't know what he's going to be able to run on against obama. on the other hand, if we do have some kind of double dip recession no one is predicting right now, that would be probably fatal for the president. >> do you see any of the other republican candidates seriously threatening romney at this stage? >> yes. but a surrogate for president obama. i don't think any of them can take the nomination from him. they can do and are doing a lot of damage to the front-runner, running up romney's negatives, exposing every possible scandal at bain that they can. they're great for the democrats. i don't think santorum or gingrich or paul is going to get the nomination. >> it looks unlikely as things stand, however, if you believe all three of those named they're in this for the duration now and you would argue with ron paul and rick santorum, why wouldn't they? not much to lose. if they do stay there in, things can happen in politics. things can happen in events and to candidates way beyond any's predictionses. if they all stick there in the next three or four months, who knows how this may unravel. >> there's still, i think, in some quarters of the republican party that never warmed to romney for political and personal reasons, there's still some sort of fading dream of a brokered convention or some savior descending at the last minute during the summer. i don't think it can happen but technically, it can happen. what it shows, republicans really don't have a candidate that's a sure thing in an election they thought was a slam-dunk for them. >> i guess the longer it goes on, it's not great for romney. it does show he's not that popular with his own party. that in itself can be used as a negative to beat him with if he comes up against barack obama. >> absolutely. for much of the time, he's really only found fervent support, if it can be called fervent 25% of his own party. 75% of the party has been aligned against him, vacillating what candidate they may want but any non-mitt. it's gotten a little better for him. not really. you don't feel there's any great enthusiasm for him among the republican base. if you don't have that, what do you have? it won't mean he will steal democrats or really arouse independents. >> i want to play you a clip from the already infamous cries from the clint eastwood commercial from the super bowl yesterday. it was, i think, pretty well bordering on political. let's windchill a bit of this. >> this country can't be knocked out with one punch. we get right back up again and when we do, the world will hear the roar of our engines. yeah, it's halftime america and our second half's about to begin. >> i mean, i don't care what chrysler says or clint eastwood, if you're barack obama watching the super bowl and i'm sure he was with his family, up pops clint eastwood one of the biggest stars in the world highlighting one of your biggest success stories in this financial crisis, the successful bailing out of the car industry saying we're halftime, america, the message is pretty clear, isn't it? give the guy another half. >> one thing fascinating, it has a morning in america reagan ad to it. feels almost like a reagan ad. you're exactly right. it's basically saying it was a good thing to bail out detroit, let's not forget, mitt romney, the likely republican nominee actually wrote and op-ed peace in "new york times," saying let detroit fail and let these companies go bankrupt. you have clint eastwood nominally republican and may not have had political motives, lending his incredible prestige and classic voice and face to this reaganesque message essentially in favor of democratic policies during this recession amazing. >> how will they try and pretend this is not a political ad? if it is, it rachets up this whole obama hollywood thing. most of the hollywood stars i've been talking to appear to have gone lukewarm with barack obama. >> it's a different crowd from eastwood really not part of the hollywood establishment in that way. who does romney have? kid rock. kid rock, clint eastwood. not sure there's a contest there. >> you wrote for the "new york" magazine titled "who in god's name is mitt romney"? who is mitt romney? what's the real man like? >> according to all accounts, including people essentially friendly to him, he is a very reserved guy, whose main passions are his family and mormon faith, in whom he's been very active as leader and has had a lot of success a lot. made a lot of money and not known for spending, seems to be known for cheap, seems to be this robotic guy driven to succeed but not clear what he stands for beyond he's mr. fix it and will fix mr. america. i think that's a problem, he's not stupid, not a bad guy, but no there there on some level. >> you said he had no cultural interests and no apparent passions. he also has what i think could be a big weakness in a real campaign against barack obama, is this incessant flip-flopping. it really is there on his record on many big issues, he's done almost complete u turns. >> yes. his republican opponents have made that clear and i'm sure the obama campaign will make it much clearer, there's a feeling he doesn't have a core. he also doesn't have much to say. the piece you played earlier of him speaking about the economy today, and about the president getting out of the way, he's not a heater -- leader, these are the same canned remarks he made at the beginning of the campaign. he's not good contemporaneously and has trouble being interviewed by journalists and fills out speeches with lyrics and i think he will have a problem with the american people. >> i interviewed him twice, but very early on, back in the early part of last year. i liked him very much. i met his wife. i thought she was very nice, too. i thought we had a cordial interview. and i haven't seen him since and since then, they said it could be a tough start of the interview and there is a protective shield. >> absolutely. they kept him away from sunday morning shows, even fox. he does fox reluctantly and had a lot of trouble with one notorious fox interview and that's his team, as it were. he's not used to being questioned. he's someone who's lived in a bubble partially created by privilege and wealth and also by his own choosing. in this very good book that's come out, the real romney, two "boston globe" reporters a fair-minded book, people say it's like he's behind a mask. they don't know who the guy is. they don't hate him or dislike him. they don't know who he is or what he stands for. >> let's take a break. come back and talk foreign policy, whether america is now being reshaped permanently, and the rise of the twitter verse and social media. 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[ female announcer ] ask the doctor about your loved one trying the exelon patch. visit exelonpatch.com to learn more. i have my special guest, frank rich. two phenomenons really have happened in the last 12 months. one has been the arab spring. we're seeing that cascading to syria. also the rise of social media like never before. apparently the super bowl, during madonna's performance had 8,000 tweets per second around the world commenting. there's been nothing quite like it ever. it broke auld records through the twitter-verse. what do you think of these two phenomenons? they are linked in a sense. a lot of arab spring uprises were sort of created through young people coming together through social media. >> i was skeptical about it and i think social media is playing a role throughout the world and a huge role in a country like america, where there's not a to tallytarian regime cracking down on it as is the case of some arab kris. in the super bowl, the traffic was up by several hundred percent over the last super bowl, which is extraordinary. we saw with the planned parenthood-komen foundation frc fracas last week, what a role it can play in conveying public outrage and professional outrage, very quickly, much faster than print or television or any of the old media. >> i don't know about you, but almost every single person i know in the media or entertainment or law or november these bodies is now on twitter or facebook or usually both. and communicating with each other in that way. i book guests through twitter. i get all my news through twitter. i have arguments with people through twitter and give my opinion through twitter. almost like it's taken over my life. i see through other people's twitter feed, it is becoming an ever creeping presence in other people's lives. >> i'm a little bit old foggy than you are, try to keep it at a minimum because i don't want it to take over my life. as a news source, it is amazing, no matter what news site you turn to, cnn, top news organization, none can quite keep track what you're seeing if you're following a lot of people including journalists and news makers and getting the conversation and often the nice before it hits the establishment media. that said sometimes it can be wrong, people's deaths announced prematurely and political endorsements announced incorrectly. you have to view it with a trust but verify. it's fascinating and it obviously can have a huge effect on political change and political tumult. >> it would be remiss of me not to mention you're at frank rich ny. bombard us with your views. i'm sure they will be pouring in as we're talking. . >> let's turn to american foreign policy for a moment. it's been an incredible year, i would argue a good year for barack obama. if they started out the year, we will take out bin laden, get rid of gadhafi. mubarak in egypt and pull the troops out of ire rack and afghanistan as well. and you'd go, wow. but there is a sense of syria, can it be contained and egypt, how much of what's going on there, can it be controlled? should it be controlled? what do you think as an overview about america's foreign policy going forward? >> i think obama has been a very good steward and done all the things you said and managed the libya situation, which he took a lot of heat from both the left and the right, quite well. the situation in syria and iran and israel, so volatile, that obviously, we need someone who's prudent and is not going to be irrational in any way. i think obama has conveyed that kind of prudence and worked with two secretaries of defense and secretary of state he more than made his peace with a former political rival to manage pretty much to america's interest without going off half-cocked in any way. the problem he has to deal with, particularly if syria heats up or the iran situation heats up further, the american public is disengaged with foreign policy. they had enough of the iraq war he steered us out of as promised, not focused on the continuing war in afghanistan, doesn't even register as a concern in the polls. any american president including obama is going to have problems if america has to get engaged in a serious way because people don't want to spend the blood or treasure anymore. they are exhausted by the iraq war, whose results still remain dubious even now. >> i guess most americans right now are much more concerned about jobs and their homes than they are about anything on the foreign stage, aren't they? if they try and play against obama, he's weak on foreign policy, a, i don't think it's really true, given the boldness he has shown in many parts of the region, but also, i think it's the wrong issue. this election will be fought and won or lost on jobs and the economy, won't it? >> absolutely. look, mccain, mr. bomb bomb bomb iran, actual war hero, got nowhere in 2008 on foreign policy against the backdrop of a rapidly declining economy. and now you have republicans who aren't even as effective spokesmen for neoconservative policies as mccain was. in the case of paul, an out-and-out isolationist. i think it's a bunch of bluster and americans tuned it out and i don't think the elections will be decided on it and don't have their act together all they can say is obama is jimmy carter. the guy that took out bin laden will be hard to portray jimmy carter in terms of foreign policy. >> final question, do you think if barack obama wins the election, if he gets to that point, he will be a better president in the second term than he's been in the first term? >> yes, i do. first of all, he's capable of learning. i feel, even in the past few months, we've seen him step up, particularly on the jobs issue, which sort of was shunted aside, shockingly in my view and self-destructively for a couple of years in this administration. already, we're seeing him better seasoned. if he goes through a fight and wins again, i think he'll have learned a lot. i think he has already from his defeats as well as his successes. it might be an exciting term. it might liberate him. traditionally, the first term -- the second term doesn't turn out great. let's hope in his case he doesn't get hubristic, if he gets a second term and self-destrucks like some of his predecessors. >> frank, as always, a pleasure. thank you. >> you, too. coming up next, a tragedy in washington state, a best friend who says the murder suicide of her best friend is her worst nightmare come true. 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[ male announcer ] red lobster's four course seafood feast is back. get soup, salad, cheddar bay biscuits, dessert and choose one of 7 entrees. four courses for only $15. offer ends soon. i'm jody gonzalez, red lobster manager and i sea food differently. the mystery of a mother's disappearance may never be solved after a massive explosion and fire that killed josh powell and his two young sons. they believe he intentionally killed himself in the blast along with 7-year-old charlie and 5-year-old bbranden. >> all three bodies were found in the middle of the house done with malice and intent to get the result done. >> he was named as a suspect of interest but never charged. and his father was arrested for child pornography. police said they found 10 gallons of gas in the house and josh center, mails to his pastor and lawyer on how to handle his affairs. sunday was the worst day for her best friend. thank you for joining me. it must be an awful time for any connected with this family. what was your reaction when you heard what happened? >> i hoped it was an awful rumor. i hoped it wasn't true. when they told me they found the bodies of two children, i started screaming and crying. >> have you ever had any doubt that josh powell was responsible for susan's death? >> i had no