Right here. You asked a question, im going to answer it. Its a false choice to stay its obama care or nothing. There are numerous proposals, including the one im a cosponsorof. I yield back, sir. Let me take the time back. Are you serious what you just said . Are you really serious . After what we have gone through. After what we have gone through in the last 3. 5 years . Have you you can sit there and say that you had a legitimate alternative after these years . Weve gone through 44 votes, 48 votes now of you trying to dismantle this legislation. You ka ul that cooperation . I dont. Yep, thats one way of putting it. Welcome to morning joe, everyone. It is october 30th, the day before halloween. Thats how harold and i were on education. It wasnt that, kill the mood. We have pulitzer please historian john meacham. Are you going to do the Jonas Brothers right now . I did it earlier. I proofread it. No one proofread the Jonas Brothers. Thats a shame. Msnbc visiting analyst. Former democratic congressman harold ford, jr. Good morning. And in washington, we have senior Political Editor and White House Correspondent for the huffington post, sam stein. Sam, the piece of paper in front of you. Look at that. He comes with pages. You know why he got the notes from . Where . His plummer yesterday, he gave him the details. How did it go . Is everything working with the dishwasher okay . No, its not. Everything is hysterical. Now would be a good time for you to tell the audience, actually, your plummer works for the obama administration. Willie, do you believe all spoold up mia was yesterday. Everything was going fine, ten she showed up on set, whew. Id like to apologize. I said something that actually made sense and joe just more impressions today . Maybe. Maybe so, maybe a great thing. I dont know, i cant wait. All right. Why dont we get to the news . I love that opening sound byte. That was fantastic. Did you see the guys face just sitting there going he couldnt get to you know what, he had in ug to say. Feeter do i. Yeah. Were going to do the news. This morning, president obama will be in boston oh, good, hes going to see the red sox. I know you invited him. Sam, you want to go to the game . I would love to, i didnt realize i was invited until now, though. I just invited you. I will see you then. We bring sam . Okay. Are we bringing the plummer . Okay. Not for the red sox but to speak about the Affordable Care act. Kathleen sebelius is expected for the blame contractors. Shes profiling. Call in caroline kennedy. Saying they did not meet expectations. Its the proift sectors fault. However, late last night, chairman darryl is sa ell issa Government Agency there was not adequate november time to test the website. The woman in charge of the obama care marketplace testified before congress and apologized for issues with the site. He was asked when we will see how many people signed up for coverage through the obama care exchanges. You have no numbers on whos enrolled, so have you for the idea . We will have those numbers available midnovember. I am saying you will publicly release those number, do you have an idea on a weekly basis how many people have enrolled, how do you know how many people are enrolled . Jeremy kemp, we will have those numbers midnovember. I am sure you have been termed a quarterback of the rollout. I am sure you did not choose those words yourself. Can you guarantee no americans will have a gap in their health care. What i can guarantee, we have a program thats working. We will increase the speed of that system. Are you saying the system right now is work something. Im saying it is working, it is not working at the speed that we want and the success rate we want. I dont understand how this problem goes on. It goes on and on. Yesterday, the miss tavenner went there. She is in charge of the program. She didnt have answers on how many people were enrolled. She didnt have answers whether there will be a gap in the coverage. Let me answerer, there will be americans that are caught in that gap that will not have coverage because of this. That no answers. And politico was writing about it yesterday going, its shocking that they remain so ill prepared to answer the most basic questions about a system that theyre trying to implement to radically overhaul the way health care is delivered in this country. Clearly, she was put in an awful position. She should not have gone before that committee before more answers than they have. Come on, they dont want to give the answers i am sure the president of the United States knows how many people enrolled as of yesterday. I guarantee you the chief of staff, everybody in the west wing has a chart that shows how many people have enrolled in this program. If shes put in a bad position, which means she cant tell the truth. At some point john knows having covered so many president s or done so Much Research on various president s and what it takes to be successful, this is not the kind of path you want to travel. I know Kathleen Sebelius. I trust her, i would imagine going before the committee an repeating what the director has said here cant be good for the administration and ultimately wont be good in the short and intermediate term for the program, itself. Democrats and republicans will have to tinker with this and make changes over time. The real question comes from me. If, indeed its like the titanic, you tinker your way through the fog. The question becomes if and when the president has to delay the individual pan date. Obvious mandate. The question was that didnt come. We didnt see any coverage from that from the director. John, miss tavenner said the argument we almost heard for a month, the crushing load of demand, obama care is what caused the program through this website. She, too, it wasnt just Kathleen Sebelius, she said cgi federal is to blame. You think theyre glad they took this contract at this point . They have been thrown under the bus again and again. That doesnt pass the smell test, to many people are signing up, its just too popular. Except for barnicle still on the website trying to sign up. I have been trying to think of it as an analogy here, what has been like this and the potential longterm impact and stipulating that these are imprecise, this is in a way the progressive equivalent of declareing catch up of vegetable. The website problems have the potential for a generation to be used as an argument against governmentrun programs and it may not be fair. But this is like a 600 toilet seat in the pentagon. Its like the catchup is a vegetable. Its going to be used for years and years and the difference, fairly right, no, no, you cant make a face on that one, no eyebrow, because this is a problem. Hold ozbln this is a problem, this is a selfinflicted wound for people who believe in the Public Sector and it just is. You disagree with that . No. They rushed this. They shouldnt have rushed it and, you know, David Ignacious earlier this woke had a greater insight. He said, you know, this was an overreach politically. It was. The democrats shoved this through. Forget the filibuster, they got a fair majority. They didnt really have the support of the American People. He said, more importantly, i thought this was a great point, policywise, it was an overreach. It was too much. We are seeing now they cant handle this. The federal government as it is currently constructed cannot handle this. They should have been able to. I would argue, i agree with that. I dont agree with that. That it was a political overreach . Political overreach. This is a poor job of execution. They should have pushed this back if they were not ready. As a result, it will raise questions for the long term whether government and public entities can manage enormous projects like this. Here to my mind, to make one more early grand point. Please do. Ly not mention the french and indian war just yet. Heres the problem. Dam it, thats why were here. At the moment until there is some sort of transformative president ial or congressional leadership, which i dont particularly see on the horizon, this is the way its going to be. This is the new normal right now. So if you are in these narrow votes, you are going to end up with the responsibility to make sure that if you do reach one persons overreach is another persons ambition. If are you ambitious, if you drive it through, you have an enormous commensurate responsibility. I agree with you. We have a lot of things to talk about. There is one real important point, though, that i noeed you to get from john. Progressive government can work. We saw it with lbj, but historians have going to have to pass pretty tough judgment on this president for being as detached as he is in comparison to lbj. Who you listen to the lbj tapes, he calls subcommittee shachairm before a vote comes up. Hes angry at him because theyre not moving fast enough in a 54 vote. Like Linden Johnson was complete thats the only reason why medicare worked. Thats the only reason why the civil rights bills passed. It is, i guess, a lot easier to be a conservative president saying, were going to cut, worry going to abolish. Were going to do whatever, the stuff i believe in. But if you are going to be a progressive president , you better look at lbj and fdr as your role models, this president , this is one of the worst performances i think any of us have seen. I have a rollout of a major initiative. Its not just the website. Its all of these other things that really matter. And it was the explanatory role wasnt filled, fulfilled. Its been very tough. I think right now the conventional narrative about obama was, yes, he was overly isolated. Lamar alexander tells the story about Everett Dirkson being on the phone with lbj one afternoon saying, no, mr. President , i was there yesterday, i cant come down for a drink, i got to go home. He hangs up the phone, before he goes out of the office, he hears lbjs beagles in the hall. He had gone out, to the car, to the capitol to make him drink with him. Thats where the civil rights bill happened. Thats lamars story, but i think it is not to say if everybody had a drink together the kingdom of god would come. Its not over a drink. Everybody gets confused. We dont want him to drink or socialize, we want him to get locked in. Because we all know on the par gin, you get 5 . You get 5 if you know each other a little bit. Can i just say . I think everyone should drink together, first of all. Okay. All right. Thats it. Secondly, weve rushed to judgment on these things a little too quickly. I will stipulate, the world has been a disaster. The website has not been ready. The president has been clearly detached from the process, be you these things are moving objects and they take time. So Medicare Part d, for instance, did not roll out smoothly. The number enrolled in the Massachusetts Health care system in the first month was 123 people. Imagine if that was the result of the federal system on that scale. People would be laughing and criticizing it soundly. Of course, it ended up working on 97 enrollment at massachusetts. We cant rush to sweeping judgment so quickly. We will revisit this. Dont worry. We got a bunch of stuff to turn to. Talking about the government under surveillance of americas allies. The wall street journal reports the data was actually given to the u. S. By European Intelligence Services and not collected by the nsa. That could complicate the situation for several foreign leaders who have criticized the obama programs and recent disclose years about spying were meant a to shame americas top spy, it didnt work. Heres nbcs andrea mitchell. Reporter under fiemp frre fe moment they walked in, they were protesting about spying. But americas spy agencies were not apologizing to anyone, claiming, instead, all countries spy. Some of this remind me of the classic movie casablanca, my god, there is gambling going on here, its the same kind of thing. Do you believe the alloys have conducted at any time allies have conducted at any time spying on us or otherwise . Absolutely. Reporter they donted reports of mass phone records on millions of people in spain and france. Frances president and germany and more than 30 leaders in all, an invasion of privacy the u. S. Has not denied. What the administration will not explain is how president obama did not know as the white house claims. If the president didnt know, he certainly should have known. One would think that if he didnt know, he would have demanded the resignations of those who should have briefed him. Officials say the president pay not have known about merkel but would know the nsa spied on leaders, including friends. The president and his National Council would by a ware. Reporter europes most powerful politician grew up in east germany, notorious for spying on its own citizens, but being everybodies dropped by the u. S. Dont underestimate her. She has a long memory. This will be a reason why this will be a harsh problem for the americangerman relations for the next years. First of all, we have did you see that picture of barak barak with his arm around her, willie . She doesnt want to be touched. Shes german, she doesnt want to be touched. Look. Joe, this is a chance, be postpast sand, remember. Mr. President bush. Thats what im saying. This is posttraumatic stress. Stop touching her. Rubbing her shoulders, she flinches, shes uncomfortable. Thats an intimate hug. Hey, text me later. Stop, stop, stop. Okay. Joining us now from august. Obviously, meachams lying. Former director of the nsa and the cia, our friend of the show here general michael hayden. Thank you for being here on the show. George w. Bush, we were talking about the yesterday, did george w. Bush cap did the Bush Administration do this type of a baum dream. Of course, we did. Again, i will not get into any specifics here. But this is normal behavior between nation states. This is an r rated movie. This is how adult nations treat each other. Its fully accepted. Let me give you a concrete example. Remember president obama was kind of wetted to his blackberry when he was coming into office. Folks like me were saying, this is a big deal, we thought we worked out a compromise, nsa threw a couple defensive tools into the blackberry. Now he uses his blackberry. Let me give you the backdrop to that story, joe, mika. The most powerful man on earth, the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on earth was just told that his communications were susceptible to intercept by dozens of foreign embassies inside his own national capitol. We didnt render garments. We didnt protest. We realized. Thats the way things are. You arent shocked by Angela Merkels phone being monitored . No. Is this like the new tie tony blair was going to were before he left his house . General can i ask you a question, is it surprising to you, does it raise questions when the president of the United States says he wasnt aware after this kind of under surveillance and monitoring was under way . Should the president know or not know . What is your impression of that . I am kind of in the same place that senator colins was. You would have thought he would have known. On the other hand, i can imagine circumstances where he might not have known this specific or that specific. But your quote from like leiter in andreas piece is inseissive. It is impossible for me to believe that the administration, the white house the nsc did not have knowledge of what was going on. After all, what was happening was done in response to specific requests for information they were making. Oh, wow. General hayden, its willie geist. So you say everybody does it and this is a natural thing between nation states. Obviously, chance lor merkel was showing off her new encrypted cell phone at a press conference the other day. Down she under stood she has been monitored all the time, because she hasnt acted like it lately. You are right, willie, despite what i just said, do not make light of the very difficult political position this and the revelation of this has put her in. And shes a friend and we ought to bear some responsibility for that. I think what it is, will, is, not that it was being done, not even that it was discovered, because if the German Security services had discovered this activity, they won have paid it public. This would have been a private event, if an event at all between the United States and the germans. And again, we are not confirming or denying anything, when you got this out there in the newspapers and it is public and she has an angry population, its not fact of thats the problem. Its fact of being in the papers thats a problem. General sam stein has a question for you. General, i was shocked to see Dianne Feinstein demand more from the nsa. A friend said her going up to the nsa is like joe biden going after amtrak. So im wondering from your perspective, are you concerned about too much oversight . Are you willing or do you acknowledge there needs to be more oversight, more disclosure and transparency about these practices . Look, im fully in favor of more disclosure and more transparency. Its an easy do to the committee. Now, its quite another thing how much you want to make public to the American Public and, the really interesting question here is now the demand that european publics want to be told how we spy. Chance lor merkel asked the watergate question, what did the president know and when did he know it . A foreign loader asking that of an american leader kind of shows where the center lean of the current conversation now rests. We need to kind of push that back towards the middle a bit. General, sort of listening to Dianne Feinstein being shocked this was going on sort of reminded me of do i an feinstein and im sure you, too, Jay Rockefeller and other democrats shocked in 2006 at the sort of programs we were doing in 2002 and 2003 that they were fully briefed on. I guess theyre just playing for the stands . You know, i dont want to impute motives. Certainly, senator feinstein you already suggested has been a supporter and in a current climate a strong defender of nsa. Let me tell you the danger here, i mean this seriously. We have seen this movie before. Weve done it at least o