president obama, 45% support mitt romney. the tight race makes for pointed rhetoric. >> i know governor romney came to des moines last week, warned about a prairie fire of death. that's what he said, prairie fire. but, you know, he left out some facts. you know, his speech was more like a cow pie of distortion. [ cheers and applause ] i don't know whose record he twisted the most, mine or his. >> with a 24/7 focus on the economy, the soon-to-be republican nominee has begun to paint a picture of what a romney white house would look like, starting with the jobless rate. >> over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6% or perhaps a little lower. >> joining me is former new york mayor and romney supporter rudy giuliani. mr. mayor, you are also a former presidential candidate and a pretty astute observer of politics. let me start out with the broad-brush question, which is give me your most honest assessment of how you think the presidential race will play out this fall. >> well, i think the presidential race will play out largely based on the view the people have of the economy. i think if you look at just the last four or five months, about two or three months ago, president obama was looking pretty good in the polls, people were feeling a little better about him, the economy was doing better, unemployment had come down, jobs had come up, and the market was doing well, over 13,000. now jobs have teetered off, long-term unemployment seems to be at record levels. nobody had really been looking at it before, but long-term unemployment, the highest it's been since the depression for a sustained period and the market is in bad shape. it's down to 12,400, 12,500. now i think governor romney has the better chance. so you take that into september/october. if the economy doesn't improve between now and september or october, i don't think president obama will re-elected because i think it will be, no matter how much president obama tries to make it about romney, more importantly, it's going to be obama's record, and if that record is a weak economy that doesn't look like it's going to get much better, i don't think he'll make it. if he gets an economy that starts improving, then it could be anybody's ballgame. >> let me ask you about -- you were not always a romney supporter, you know, until he became obviously the presumptive nominee. i want to remind you of something you told our piers morgan in december of last year describing mitt romney. >> governor romney has almost a perfect record for a person to be running right now, experience in government, experience in business, understands the economy, but there is something missing, you're absolutely right. there's some kind of a personal connection that doesn't get made that the other candidates probably do a better job at. >> so how does he make that personal connection? it's something that a lot of folks have observed. is he beginning to do that in your view? does he need to do more? >> he is. first of all, every candidate is, you know, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20, there's no perfect candidate. and the reality is all of us have our strengths and weaknesses. i think it's no secret that governor romney's problem during the primary was that idea of making a personal connection. it shows in the polls, and i think he's doing a much better job at it. and, frankly, my advice to him would be, be yourself. if, in fact, you are a somewhat formal person, that's okay. be a formal person. mrs. reagan told me something when i first joined the reagan board that i always remembered. she said that president reagan, who she called ronnie, president reagan always kept his jacket on, even in the oval office, always, because he wanted to remind himself of the dignity of being president of the united states. so, i mean, that's who he was. so i think governor romney now that people see who he is, i think they're going to find a very intelligent, very engaged, very committed man who is the perfect choice for a period of time in which we have to revive the economy. i couldn't think of a better set of credentials to deal with the economy. so maybe the personal part won't become as important. >> as you know, this is the time where a candidate who is lesser known obviously than the president of the united states does begin to define himself, and there's equal pushback at this point from the obama re-election campaign, trying to help mitt romney define himself. one of the things that the former governor of massachusetts has kind of taken off the table, and something you criticized in 2008 as well as earlier, is his role as governor of massachusetts. you criticized him on spending. you criticized him on taxes. you criticized him on health care when he was governor of massachusetts. you know all those items are likely to come up at some point, brought up by, if no one else, the obama re-election campaign. speak to me now in your current role in defense of the things that you criticized before. how can he defend that record, do you think, against what surely will be some of the criticisms you yourself felt? >> well, i mean, there's a certain amount of personal ego in that. at that point, i was probably comparing his record to my record, and maybe it was circumstances or whatever, but i had massive reduction in unemployment. he had a reduction in unemployment of about 8%, 10% -- i think it was 15%. i had a reduction in unemployment of 50%. they had a groat of jobs of 40,000. we had a growth of jobs of 500,000, so i was comparing what i thought was my far superior record to his otherwise decent record, but the numbers weren't as great. that's all part of campaigning. i mean, the simple fact is that mitt romney has been far more successful in the things that he's done than barack obama. i mean, going way back, this is a man who ran a significant business, made it into a tremendous success which used to be -- used to count for a lot in america. he created dozens of businesses. i work with him when he took the olympics out of chaos. remember, we had to do the olympics in utah just a few months after september 11th. they were going to cancel the olympics. >> right. >> and mitt romney pulled it off and it was a great success. this is a man, unlike president obama, who had virtually no success before, community organizer, state senate, never really had a payroll to meet or any responsibilities. >> i'm not sure people would say that wasn't success, but he certainly was a community organizer, but now he's had four years of experience as president which isn't nothing at this point and one of their arguments is that that business experience that you're talking about that mitt romney is talking about doesn't really qualify him -- it's not a qualification to be president because it's a wholly different point of view -- >> candy -- >> i'm going to give you a chance to talk. i want to play something joe biden said. >> that's really jerky. >> let me play something joe biden said. >> your job as president is to promote the common good. that doesn't mean the private equity guys are bad guys. they're not. but that no more qualifies you to be president than being a plumber. >> it's your turn. >> well, i mean, the reality is that president obama can talk about his record as president if he wants to look at something where he theoretically thinks he succeeded but he doesn't talk about his record as president. you know and i know his campaign is running away from his record as president and basically they want to attack romney. when ronald reagan was running for re-election in '84, they spent a little time criticizing mondale, but most of it was morning in america, how he had turned around the country, the great successes he had because he had a record to run on. president obama is running against -- and we have found out what a president who has no experience is going to give us. he's going to give us tremendous failure, the largest debt we've ever had, the highest levels of sustained long-term unemployment since the depression. our economy is a disaster under obama. he vaguely knows what he's doing with regard to our economy. >> but the question here really is about mitt romney's credentials, and he's put bain as one of them out there. this is an outfit that made great money, it was very successful, but its business wasn't creating jobs, as you know. its business was creating wealth for people which is a great thing in america, it's what we do, but their argument is that doesn't qualify you to be president. >> well, what does qualify you to be president? does being a community activist for a saul linsky group and then a member of a state legislature for a few years and kind arriving in the senate and running for president on day one, does that qualify you to be president? or somebody who has run the olympics, governor -- let me finish. run the olympics, governor of one of our largest states, and run one of our most successful businesses in the country? doesn't that qualify you to be president? qualifications get decided by the voters. i would take romney's background for an america that has to turn around its economy way over obama's background, which has basically been a theoretical kind of background. never had any kind of responsibilities. never run a military unit. never ran a business. >> mr. mayor, i'm sorry, i have to leave it there. we're on a tight run here today. >> i think everybody got the point. >> i think they do and what they know is they get to decide. thank you very much. i really appreciate it. >> they do. absolutely. always good to be with you, candy. >> thanks. >> thank you. we want to turn now to the head of the democratic national committee, florida congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, candy. great to be with you. >> let me start out and just pick up on something the mayor was talking about, saying, listen, the american people decide about qualifications. saying that certainly mitt romney is every bit as qualified to be president as president obama was when he ran for president. do you quibble with that? >> well, there's a few things actually that i agree with rudy giuliani on. number one, the dramatic difference between rudy giuliani's job creation record and mitt romney's when he was given an opportunity to actually govern. massachusetts was 47th out of 50 in job creation coming off the last recession. and when mitt romney had an opportunity as a governor to demonstrate that he could take the central premise that he's using in this campaign for his qualification for president, which is his record at bain capital, to apply that in government in massachusetts, he has an abysmal record. when it comes to qualifications for president, i'd say that rudy giuliani is absolutely right. barack obama put his qualifications and his case that he made to the american people before them in 2008, and they elected him overwhelmingly against john mccain. and so for the last 3 1/2 years, president obama's had an opportunity to take us from the worst economic crisis that he inherited of any president since fdr and had 26 straight months of job growth in the private sector. and let me also just quickly take issue with what mayor giuliani is saying. we are running on president obama's incredible record of job growth. we've got a long way to go. but 26 straight months of job growth in the private sector, a resurgence in the manufacturing sector, an opportunity to rescue and thankfully rescue the american automobile industry when mitt romney would have let them go bankrupt. so we have a record that we're proud to run on. >> you would agree, we've been talking about bain and so has the obama re-elect committee for some time -- >> and we will continue to do that. absolutely. >> let me show our viewers an abc news/"washington post" poll. the question was which candidate would do better on handling the economy? romney, 47%. president obama, 46%. how about creating jobs? obama, 47%. romney, 44%. essentially, it is a dead heat. why is that if you've done such a great job as democrats, if this president does such a great job from bringing us back from the precipice, why do -- you know, why is it a dead heat that they think that obama would do as much for jobs or the economy as the president? >> well, what we continue to maintain, i mean, this election was always going to be close, and it will be close probably right down to the wire. president obama has acknowledged that while we've made progress, he is not satisfied with the progress that we've made. we need to continue to push hard. we've got a long way to go. but we have made progress by making investments in the economy, by striking a balance and making sure that through tax breaks for small businesses and the middle class, 18 different tax breaks for small businesses, an opportunity that we've taken advantage of to cut taxes for the middle class, make investments in opportunities for more students to go to college and get an opportunity to be successful, while mitt romney continues to support returning to the failed policies of the past, candy, and providing more and more tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and making sure they can continue to do well. >> again, given that you're running on the record and the things that you want to do in the future, why is it so dead even at this point? does it not say that a lot of the american people don't agree that this has been a great success? >> no, i think that if you look at the last few presidential elections, they've all been close. i mean, the american people are divided. we have a dramatic contrast, and completely different directions that the american people could choose to go in. we believe that the american people will choose to go in the direction that barack obama has been taking us because he's been fighting for the middle class and working families and because he wants to make sure everybody has a fair shot, everybody pays their fair share and everybody pays by the same set of rules. mitt romney wants to take us back to the policies that is got us into the worst economic crisis in the first place, let wall street write their own rules, repeal health care reform, and put us in a situation where we could give hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to people that are already doing well instead of making sure everybody has an opportunity to do well. >> in a quinnipiac university poll on your state, the state of florida, when you ask folks who you want to be president, romney 47%, obama, 41%. what is going on in florida that makes the president outside the margin of error, sort of losing at this point? >> there's a number of different polls. that one poll is a snapshot. there are other polls that show it neck and neck or president obama ahead in florida. he's ahead in most of the battleground states, ahead in ohio, ahead in wisconsin. particularly because he was willing to invest and rescue the american automobile industry, make sure that the 1.4 million jobs in the pipeline of that industry remained while mitt romney would have tossed them out and let detroit go bankrupt. this is going to be a close election, but when it comes to the battleground states that will really decide this election, ultimately, it's a choice between barack obama, who has been fighting for the middle class and working families, who has been making investments in education and giving people opportunities to succeed, and mitt romney who -- and the tea party extremists who want to focus on the people who are already in america doing just great and make sure they can do even better. that's the contrast. >> let me move you to a couple of other questions i have about other subjects. wisconsin, there's a recall of the sitting republican governor, recall movement. he's now leading in the polls up there. but it's coming up. you said, look, i don't think there's national implications to this, and yet, you will spend some of your time up there fund-raising for the democratic candidate challenging the governor, campaigning for him. if the republican governor should retain his seat up there, what will it say about the power of unions who have been fighting him and what will it say about putting wisconsin in play this fall? >> well, i am going there tuesday to campaign with mayor barrett. i think he has a real opportunity to win. we have put our considerable grassroots resources behind him. all of the obama for america and stated party resources, our grassroots network -- >> but are there national implications? >> i think what's going to happen is because of our on the ground operation, we have had an opportunity in this election, especially given that wisconsin's a battleground state, just like we did in the recall elections a year ago, to give this a test run. and so what i think the implications will be is that ultimately, i think tom barrett will pull this out, but regardless, it's given the obama for america operation an opportunity to do -- >> test run it. >> -- the dry run we need of our massive, significant, dynamic grassroots presidential campaign, which can't really be matched by the romney campaign or the republicans because they've ignored on-the-ground operations. >> let me ask you, i have 20 seconds, are you running for re-election? will you file your papers soon? >> oh, yeah. i already have done so. >> you filed your papers? there was a question out there, folks said you had not filed your papers. you're running? >> i filed my papers ages ago. i'm not sure where that question came from. not from you, but from others. of course i'm running for re-election and i look forward to earning the support once again of my constituents in my district in south florida. >> thanks. you might want to look at the statewide election site and correct that. >> i have. >> thanks so much. >> i'm fully compliant. thanks so much. >> thanks so much. head of the dnc, debbie wasserman schultz. we appreciate it. >> thank you. on this memorial day weekend, a report card on how this country is caring for its warriors. >> we have made progress. we have a long ways to go, and we cannot forget. >> serving those who serve, when we come back. ahh, now that's a clean mouth. i wish i could keep it this way. 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