called cane, the clash that defined modern economics. >> and that tois the great division between the two of them. cane's always wanted to intervene. he always wanted to change the world and he merely wanted to tob and in see be the keynesian charges was always there, waking its finger saying it will all go terribly wrong. >> we conclude this evening with an appreciation of the life of mary duke-- a giant of a woman whowas a gre iend of mine who died in durham, north carolina on wednesday at age 91. >> her mother used to say never let the sun go down on your anger. and i say never let something like that ruin your life. you've got to make up with your parents. you've got to make up with somebody with whom you have had problems. and it was really wonderful, it really brought us together. >> politics and economics in the life of a great woman. when we continue. >> funding for charlie rose was provided by the following city, this is charlie rose. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie ro. . >> rose: we begin this evening with a wrap-up of the week in politics and the economy. la night the republican candidates faced off in the final debate before florida's primary next tuesday. mitt romney was on the offense any one of his best performances yet. >> i don't own stock in either fannie mae or freddie mac there are bonds that the investor has held through mutual funds. and mr. speaker, i know that sounds like an enormous revelation but have you checked your own investments? you also have investments from mutual funds that also invest in fannie mae and freddie mac. >> we should have had a whistle-blower and not a horn tooter. he should have stood up and said these things are a disaster, this is a crisis. he should have been anxiously teing the american people that these entities were causing a housing bubble that would cause a collapse. that we've seen here florida and around the country. >> i want to make sure i understand, is he still the most anti-immigrant candidate. >> i think of the four of us, yes. >> go ahead, governor. >> that is simply index causeable. mr. speaker, i am not anti-immigrant. my father was born in mexico. my wife's father was born in wales. they came to this country. the idea that i am anti-immigrant is repulsive. don't use a term like that you could say we disagree on certain policies but to say that enforcing the s. law to protect our borders, to welcome people here legally, to expand legal immigration as i approve, that that is somehow anti-immigrant is simply the kind of overthe top rhetoric that has characterized person politics too long. >> rose: there was also news on the economy today that the gdp grew 2.8% during the fourth quarter of 2011 although this was less than economists had forecast. president obama hopes to ride the wave of an improving economy to re-election in november. joining me to from washington david leonhardt of "the new york times", greg ip of the economist, mark halperin of "time" magazine and jeff greenfield of pbs's need to note. i'm pleased to have them here on this try to look at what happened this week in politics and what happened in the economy. i begin with politics, mark halperin what is the impact of ts debate on what was already happening in florida? >> well, it's not all that common to have conventional wisdom be absolute and nearly uniform across the political-- but i think in this case it is. there was some polling data suggesting that while gingrichurged across south calina he hain the kept up the momentum through the week. he hadn't performed well in the first florida debate and romney will use that performance to go to a lead and santorum's strong performance would take some votes from gingrich. the conventional wisdom is that romney is now set up to win this primary perhaps easily and have a decisive hold on the nomination. i think there are two pieces of that, that if you unpack them, one is prably true but not definitely and the other i don't think is true at all. if romney is in a pretty good position to win this de better on the early vote because there is more organized before gingrich surged and he has been very strong. his team has been very strong in discombobulating gingrich not just in the debate but on the campaign trail. romney winning this, though, i don't think settles it because gingrich is now angry. and if you look at the calendar, although the conventional wisdom is it favors romney in february t gives gingrich opportunities to try to come back, even if he loses. >> rose: more on that you have been in florida doing interviews for need to know, especially with some of the older citizens down there. give me a sense oflorida, mood in florida, what is on their mind. >> i talked to people and what is on their mind is cause you've got this interesting potential tension. the republicans as a group, as a party have been pushing entitlement reform whether it is paul ryan or almost any of the other major voices. the aarp, not a disinterested observer, took a poll last november that showed the overwhelming majority of florida republicans don't want this touched. and perhaps even more dramatically they don't want to touch for younger people cause that's the approach at t entitlement reforms say. we won't touch grandma and grandpa but you younger folks we might. and the seniors feel that is a foot in the door. and you know, i think more broadly, when you go beyond just seniors but certainly was the people that i talk to, you heard what i think is still the fundamental overhang to use-- the fundamental overhang of this whole election which is a deeper fear than we have seen in a long time, that the good times are over. that the united states is facing a period unlike any we've seen in decades. that the low hanging fruit has been picked and we are going to be a scarcer place than we were and our kids are to the going to have it nearly as well as we did. >> voters will vote out of fear rather than hope? >> certainly to-- certainly anxiety and the other part of this which i don't want to filibuster here is the question of who gets the blame. if there is a resentment fact their gingrich has tapped into and he has, in a way, is president obama interested in turning that resentment toward his adversaries namely the wall street financial folks. because i think people have said wait a minute, to coin clinton's phrase, we worked rd, we play by the rules. the ground is eroding from under us. what are we going do about it, without do we vote for to protect us and without do we vote out who is helping to be responsible for this. it's a very kind of-- be there for months i think >> rose: let me go to washington, dave, you are the bureau chief, but economics is where you won a pollitzer prize. tell me how you see the political campaign and the economic issues in it so far, especially in florida. >> well, clearly romney started off running a campaign based on the notion that the economy was going to be the defining issue this year. if you go back and look at his announcent speech which i think was a fairly effective political speech, i was struck at how much it borrowed it selled from bill clinton's 1992 campaign. the idea of saying this time to a democratic president, you've had your chance. it hasn't worked. give someone else achance. we do now see the sort of bubbling up, this possibility that the economy will improve. it has been improving a little bit. then again we've had three straight years in which the economy improved early in the year only to be set back by some combination of forces, often involving europe, sometimes involving gas prices. and so i think the really big uncertain question is going into the general election, is do we feel like we're on an upward trajectory which would obviouy be very goodor obama even if things are still not good. or do we feel like we are yet again kind of bumping along in which case this economy first campaign that romney imagined and i think it's important to say, the white house still sees romney as the overwhelmingly likely nominee. that doesn't mean it will be wrapd up quickly. done even mean the white house right but they think they are going to be running against mitt romney. that economy first campaign that romney was planning, if the economy gets knocked off stride yet again is mething that you have to think will have a very good chance of succeeding. >> with respect to the economy, greg, would look at this week where we had both the federal reserve making a kind of pronouncement abo how they saw economic recovery in the future of changing an interest rate as well as the numbers that we got at the end of the week. what do they suggest. >> well, there is a kind of deflating week on that score, charlie. in the last few weeks we kind of felt a gentle wind with some numbers like claims on unemployment insurance and the unemployment rate coming down and the stock market doing reasonably well. what we learned friday is the economy grew at only 2.8% annual rate in the fourth quarter. now albeit that was the best rate in a year but that was after a pretty crummyier and less than people had been hoping for. if you look at the components of that growth, i mean exports were weak, consumer spending was weak. a lot of the growth came from firm as cummulating inventories which was not a sustainable source of growth. and the federal reserve kind of ndicated that sort of downbeat view. they came out on wednesday with a remarkae package of announcements. where amonother things they lowered their forecast for growth this year. and they said that the interest rate which they had already said ty hoped keep at 0 until at least the middle of 2012 would probably stay there until the end of 2014. noon the one hand awe plaud the federal reserve on the one hand by saying this growth is unacceptable. so we're doing these moves to try and like spur a little bit more. but on the other hand it's a pretty grim statement about how rough things are, that they feel compelled to do this. >> so this is bad news for president obama? politically. >> it's bad news in the sense that shall did -- well it's bad news in the sense it is affirming what we already knew, that the economy is weak. but it's positive news on the margin in the following sense, that the people who are able to do something about the economy are doing it. the fed's actions on the margin will help. it will help keep long-term interest rates down and one of the surprise positives of the last few months ithat the housing market which was more or less given up for dead in the past years is low and behold showing signs of life. more people asking for mortgages. more people buying houses. home builders who had been basically all sort of preparing their bankruptcy filings now seeing more traffic through their model homes and so forth. and the fed's action will help on that score. and going back to something that david was saying about, you know, obama sort of like campaigning on the economy this year, when i oked at these numbers, i was struck by the similarities of what we are seeing now. and 2003, actually, in the fall of 2003 the economy had shown almost no job growth. the democrats were hammering bush as the first president to preside over no job growth sinceoover and so forth. and it turned out that 2004 was a decent year. decent enough to really take away that liability. now obama has a much bigger hole to dig himself out of this year. but if the mix of news this year tends towards rather positive, rather than negative, i think that that suggests that his chances might be better than we've been thinking. >> this also raises a question for me to both of you about lex ability. that was romney's issue. then after south carolina and after the sort of rage anti-elitism announcements of the speaker, it seemed that he had tried to grab he elect ability and no longer was it a negative for him. does it still play and how does it play. >> he elect ability for romney? >> yes. i think it is a very positive thing for him. within the people in the republican party who have wrung their hands about romney as a weak general election candidate, people who tried to draft other candidates into the race, gingrich is weak and erratic performance this past week makes them feel like romney is a safer choice, head-to-head polls the president against the two republicans lately have been very much in romney's favor. and romney's ability to go after the president and-- to go after gingrich, rather, and his stng debe performance is giving people confidence, maybe this guy can pull it off. on the other hand, even as he has been going after gingrich he effectively, lebl ability, the question is he elect ability on his personal financial disclosure and taxes really has unnerved some republicans. you saw rupert murdoch tweet out about taxeturns that he felt this made romney unhe electable. and that say big concern for republicans, that this notion of romney as someone people can't rate to, as someone who has a tenure about his own image is something that really does-- . >> rose: my impression is he had done well in this debate by basically saying look, i earned this money myself. and i'm not embarrassed because this is what americans admire. >> as a matter of thee at call performance no question he did it well in the debate there are still a lot of questions within the political community that are defining romney for people paying close attention regarding what these accounts were all about, symbolically and substantively and we don't know the answers yet. >> i would also point out -- >> charley-- . >> rose: . >> the full roated defense of entrepreneurial capitalism or private equity or however you want to characterize romney's performance resonateone way with the republican party. it may resonate in a very different way with the 130 million americans who vote. and that's part of the trap. we've seen this in state elections. we've seen it nationally. when you have to move to satisfy the base in the spring, you've got a lot of ground to cover in the fall when are you talking to a different group of people. it's clear i think it's a good work that mark used, theatrically romney looked better last night than i think we have ever seen him. gone was the bumbling incoherent of trying to explain himself. he was strong. the clip y showed was quite dramatic is you had a taller romney, being very style kpx, lking at gingrichho would not even look him in the eye it was a coanding perfoance. but the argument, i mentioned this at another place we were at, the notion that the republicans are going to make thurston howell the iii who goes to the union club and asks dinky to come in and handle his blind trust, that may not be the best place to be in the fall of 2012. and romney still has work to do on that. >> rose: i think was greg that i heard or was it david, either one. >> it was me. it's actually, it's good a followup point to jefs. which is obama has long had this weakness among working class voters, right, hillary clinton beat him among lower income voters. she beat him among people who don't have colge degrees. and obviously he is strong among latinos and african americans but he is extremely week among whites in that group. and what is interesting about romney is that in some ways it may take the electoral map a little bit back to what it used to be. it seems to give obama more of a chance in a place like ohio because romney may be even weaker on some of those issues. 's still going to work the white working class male vote but the question is by how much. but he may be weaker there. he may be stronger among some of the kind of independent suburban voters in places like colorado and virginia. and so the obama campaign was looking at the map and they were saying how do we win without ohio given some of our struggles there. and they talked about lorado and virginia and north carolina. what is interesting with romney is he may take effect of something that is a little more like a bush carey map. we have no idea how close it is going to be in which the industrial midwest may actually ultimately be the thing that determines it. and it's just interesting to think about how obama and romney in this economy both have sometimes had trouble connecting to that working class reagan democrat vote. >> charlie f coy just jump in there for a moment. i think an interesting question is here that obama realizing that his economic numbers are not anything to boast about, is trying to portray himself as a person without people can relate to better in terms of looking after them in coming years. and th is why the attack on romney's wealth. it is an interesting question, i think, because historically rich bashing hasn't been very good for winning presidential elections. it's not a country where we resent the rich, we actually want to be rich and so on. but romney's background may be a liability and suggesting the template is different. traditionally i think americans thought of the rich people they admired were people who sort of made things. people like romney's dad who ran a car manufacturing company, what hurt romney so ch in the last few weeks is not the fact much that he is so wealthy t is that the wealth has been so associated with this high octane finance with so many people blame the financial crisis. the big question mark in my mind will be in coming months assuming romne does prevail, does the business background which was souch his, like, the main factor on his resume which suggested he was a guy that could beat obama, does that continue to be the case or does obama and the democrat successfully use the kind of wealth class division issue to try and beat him down? >> thought on that? >> to me it always back to controlling your public image. romney has not done a particularly good job of controlling his public image this week even as he is defining gingrich in ways that are eliminating him as a prospect, at least in florida right now. romney has got his olympic resume, his positive bain resume and he's got his record as an executive in the private and public sector. >> rose: and as governor. >> as governor and private sector. all of that has taken a backseat to why dow have an account in the cayman islands y do all these people who worked for bain companies lose their jobs. why are you uncomfortable talking about your tax returns. he must, if he's going to be president, he must get back to being in control of his public image and projecting the positive aspects of the private sector record. the demoats have been killinhim this week. again even as he has been dealing effectively wh gingri they have been killing him on the bain stuff, on the tax returns, on the cayman islands. and they have to the been able to tight that successfully. successfully enough with the public election but not the general election electorate right now. >> being a repository of mostly useless political information, i remember a campaign in 1976, bill brock was a senator. it came out, he was a wealthy man, that he had-- . >> republican senator from tennessee. >> he had used all kinds of tax avoidance skilled to pay a low rate in taxes. all that fall, thousands of buttons appeared in tennessee reading i paid more taxes than bill brock. and he went down to a rather, you know, stunning defeat at the hands of jim sasser. i think the point, you know, that was made earlier about it's not that you are rich, it is how you got rich, and what did you contribute to the country in being rich. i mean henry ford, another piece of information, won the 1916 michigan republican presidentialrimary. people thought of him as a potential president. we often look at business leaders and say well yes, that's an executive. but the idea that you, having gotten rich, you p