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Fall. it had just shrunk nine full percent of gdp. )=myent of gdp. month. are we doing better than that today? the answer to that is yes. >> david, i don't know you at all but i have to tell you, who would you rather have make your case to st. peter than this guy, bill clinton? this guy can sell. what did you think of the impact of his convention address. >> part of that was set up by the fact -- i thought it was an unfortunate statement by republicans, were you better off than you were four years ago? you couldn't have picked a more unfortunate contrast. ultimately by setting it up as a contr...

Welcome back to "hardball." we know now that mitt romney blames his loss on obama's gifts. i should put the quote marks around that. the much maligned 47% came out in force. last night paul ryan distanced himself from his running mate's remarks. take a look. >> both parties tend to divide americans into our voters and their voters. let's be really clear. republicans must steer far clear of that trap. we must speak to aspirations and anxieties of every american. >> you know, it's hardly a montç and he's gone already. what a running mate. he ran away from his mate. the problem for republicans i...

This was largely due to his campaign's strategic decision to try to make the election solely a referendum on obama. as a result, there was little clear rationale for a romney presidency, other than he would not be obama. david winstin joins us, adviser to john boehner, unpaid, advised newt beginning rich. david, thanks for joining us. i was trying to read your thinking here and post election analysis. i think it's so interesting. if you get people angry about the way things are economic alley you think they'll blame the incumbent but it seems like a lot of people said, yeah, things aren't that...

>> no, because those policies got us in trouble in 2008 in a great many ways. bush inherited a surplus and left with a massive deficit. didn't monitor the financial system and so on. the most important point is david's right about, which is there's no such thing as a presidential referendum election. i've covered ten of these and they've all been choices. why? because these two candidates live in everybody's living rooms. people make a judgment about their character -- >> reagan was partially positive, just anti -- >> oh that became a choice election after reagan appeared in that one debate ag...

I have a choice. >> one of the other players, besides the two candidates was bill clinton, the former president, don't think anybody made a better case of making the case for obama than bill clinton. at the convention a critical moment when he explained the arithmetic of what obama inherited. >> in tampa the republican argument against the president's re-election was pretty simple, pretty snappy. it went something like this. we left him a total mess. he hadn't cleaned it up fast enough. so fire him and put us back in. when president barack obama took office, the economy was in free fall. it ha...