Mark Shields and David Brooks agreed on one thing in our year-end Doubleheader Friday: that the gaffes that defined 2012 were primarily from Republicans. I was filling in for Hari Sreenivasan, who is enjoying a break for the holidays.

We talked about the Hawaii Senate shenanigans this week, and the upcoming special election in Massachusetts, as the Democratic field seems to be clearing for Rep. Ed Markey as everyone waits on what ousted Sen. Scott Brown will do. (I'm still holding out hope that Mitt Romney will run for Senate in his home state.)

Speaking of holding out hope, we each gave our predictions for the NFL playoffs for our "politics of sport" section. Yes, I'm still high on the 49ers.

Please subscribe to the Morning Line and follow Christina on Twitter.

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JEFFREY BROWN: And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Well, developing fiscal cliff, walking, walking, walking, David.

A short time ago, the president came out of the meeting with the congressional leaders, and he said he was modestly optimistic. Are you?

DAVID BROOKS: No. No. No.

I think everyone is trying to look busy, so when we go over, they can say, well, we tried. He came back from Hawaii. He had to do something. And so they had a meeting.

If you don't have new offers, you are not really making progress. You could have a nice frank exchange, but they are in the business of making a deal.

And there is really, as far as we know, no real evidence that they moved. So I remain convinced, as I have been, that we are probably going to go over. And then, once that happens, then all sort of things start aligning. Speaker Boehner gets reelected as speaker. He doesn't have to worry about that.

It's a lot easier to pass a tax cut for the middle class than to try to do it beforehand. Everyone goes crazy outside. And so there is a little more pressure. So I still think it's much more likely that not much is happening.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you think? Looking busy, that's all that is happening right now?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think that it was a chance for Speaker Boehner. David is absolutely right. On Jan. 3, if he has the votes in the Republican Caucus -- and there is no reason to think that he doesn't -- then will be re-elected speaker of the House.

But if 17 Republicans -- and we know that there are more than that number of rebels or iconoclasts in that esteemed body -- decide to not vote, then John Boehner is in a limbo.

But I think, once he is re-elected as speaker on the 3rd of January with the new Congress, first of all, there are more Democrats then in the Congress, both in the House and in the Senate.

And, in a strange way, Speaker Boehner's position is strengthened internally, but he has to face a terrible moment of truth. And that is, now they're pushing the Senate to act first.

And if the Senate passes anything, it comes to the House, and the likelihood of what comes out of the Senate, even by way of agreement, Jeffrey, is something that will not get a majority of Republicans.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, but you are jumping ahead to next week.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: This meeting that was today -- and I'm looking at the wire story and I hear words like constructive, positive, hopeful, optimistic.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, constructive and positive. And it's with Mitch McConnell. And according to the president, in his statement, it's with Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, and Harry Reid, the majority leader.

And they have been so incredibly productive and cooperative and collegial for so long, that it is probably -- we probably -- we will probably have it before 10 minutes.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: I think there is a good chance...

JEFFREY BROWN: We could start the champagne early.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. But the reality of $500 billion in tax cuts and spending cuts and tax increases and the negative 5 percent impact on the gross domestic product over the year will sober them up, and I think they will act.

JEFFREY BROWN: But the action is all in the Senate. Is that correct?

DAVID BROOKS: I don't know why that is.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: That is what people have decided.

But that doesn't seem -- one of the things that struck me -- I think it struck Mark too -- about the president's press conference is, he is saying, oh, these politicians in Washington, they're squabbling. I should write a letter to the White House and find out who is in charge here.

Well, it happens to be you, Mr. President. You are sort of involved here. And so, to me, if I have to talk about the flaws of each side, the president still is sort of, oh, those politicians should figure it out. The Republicans have a larger problem. It's sort of a Freudian problem. What do Republicans want?

It's been unclear for a month what their message is, what their goal is. They -- sort of without defining a general strategy, they have been casting about this way and that, doing the stupid things like plan B. And they are still in that problem. They still don't know what they want to use this moment for.

At least with the president, you know he wants to pass a tax increase on the upper class.

MARK SHIELDS: The president does have the political advantage. He has the card -- political cards.

The Republicans have put themselves in the position of being seen as the tribunes of the deserving or undeserving rich. That -- essentially, it comes down as the sticking point they don't want taxes raised on the richest 1 percent, one-half of 1 percent, one-tenth of 1 percent.

And it is a terrible position for them to be in. But if some agreement is not reached early in January, then I don't -- I think that the political tactical advantage that the president has and the Democrats have will be lost if the economy starts to go south on us, because it will lead inevitably to a loss of public confidence in the public sector, in the ability of our -- just to do anything...

JEFFREY BROWN: But every Friday, you guys sit here and you talk about the political calculations of our leaders. You know, we did that all the way through the campaign.

You're suggesting that if I ask you what is the political calculation of the president right now or of the Republicans, you sound like you're saying, you don't know or they don't know or...

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think that Obama knows.

JEFFREY BROWN: He knows.

DAVID BROOKS: He knows. He looks at the next four years and he thinks, what do I want to do? I want to do some economic stuff. I want to do some climate change stuff. I want to do immigration, but I can't do that if we're going have a budget showdown every six months. So I need to crush them with this and get us out of the showdown era.

And that's why they have put so much emphasis, the White House has, on getting rid of the debt ceiling limits and having at least a two-year agreement we won't do this, because he needs to get us out of the showdown era. So I think the White House has thought this through.

JEFFREY BROWN: And crushing means even if we go over the cliff.

DAVID BROOKS: They will take the short-term hit...

JEFFREY BROWN: Blame the Republicans.

DAVID BROOKS: ... ... because they need to get beyond the showdown era.

Now, I should say I don't think it's fiscally sensible, what they are doing. But, politically, at least I understand what they are trying to do. With the Republicans, I really don't understand what they are trying to do.

MARK SHIELDS: David Rogers, the very competent and professional reporter, congressional reporter for now Politico, formerly for The Wall Street Journal, I thought raised the central question here.

And that is everybody in Washington is enamored of Lincoln, and the movie, and how he horse-traded, and how brilliant he was, and the people he -- the things he did in order to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

And David Rogers' point is, it ought to be -- instead of Lincoln, it should be Grant, that you have got to figure out a way, as Grant did, that the defeated troops can leave with their horse and their mule, so that they can go home for planting.

And David used the word crush. And I think that -- I have heard that from Democrats as well. I think you have got to figure out. You are going to have to have a partner for the next four years, at least to some degree, on an ad hoc basis, not that the Republicans are all going to be collegial all of a sudden.

But to crush and humiliate, I think, would be a mistake.

DAVID BROOKS: I should say, when I was saying that, I was trying to simplify what their strategy was.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right. Right.

DAVID BROOKS: I totally agree. You have to give people a chance to get to yes.

And I have to say that I do think the only real concession that has been made since the election was Boehner essentially saying, we will at least give you $800 billion in new revenue, and we will probably go up on the rates.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: And I don't think the Democrats did enough to sort of draw him out on that.

Now, maybe his caucus wasn't there yet, and they will get there in January, but I don't think there was enough seduction, saying, we're going to get you that, and we will give you this in exchange for that.

The president apparently, reportedly, at one meeting said, you get nothing for that. You have got to go further if you want something from me.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: It might be easier for John Boehner if it passes the Senate, and it comes to the House and say, look, this is the only train that is leaving Dodge.

JEFFREY BROWN: And is the only train just about the tax rates or hikes or is it a grander deal?

MARK SHIELDS: No, I think it is -- the president is right. I think it's unemployment extension. And I think it will be the tax rates.

But I think there's going to be enough matters left. The Alternative Minimum Tax would be in there as well. But I think there will be enough matters left, Jeffrey, that it will force them. And that's why you want to have at least a minimum of goodwill. It will force them to have to deal with the larger issues still remaining. And they're considerable.

JEFFREY BROWN: You think so?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Those will still be out there.

DAVID BROOKS: There's still the debt, the general debt problem. There's still the crushing deficits. So they still have to do some big things, let alone do immigration reform and all the other stuff.

It's a little like TARP, I think, what is going to happen. When they -- remember, the House voted no, and then the markets just collapsed. I think we might see something like that in the first week in January, and then there will be a focusing of the minds. But there will still be the need to cooperate for the next year or two.

MARK SHIELDS: But we have already seen an erosion of public confidence. And we have seen a slowdown of economic activity.

So, I mean, it's like this is already built in. I agree with David that the TARP analogy is a valid one. But I think TARP was so dramatic and so immediate. This has almost been a slow change. It is like it's built in.

JEFFREY BROWN: And having what impact on the public?

JEFFREY BROWN: ... cynicism and...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I think there is a loss of consumer -- or, certainty, a diminution of consumer confidence.

And I come back to -- not to sound like good government 101, but I come back to the fact of confidence in the public sector. You want to do something about immigration. You want to do something about climate change.

In order to do that, there has to be a public reservoir, a public confidence that we can act effectively, the government can be an instrument of change for the better.

If the government can't even keep government open, I don't see how you then say we can be transformational.

DAVID BROOKS: And even speaking in strictly economic terms, lifting the top rates from 36 to 39, whatever it is going to be, is bad. It's not good for economic.

But the arm of doing that is minuscule compared to the harm of the country losing confidence in its government. And so even if you are the sort of person who doesn't really like tax increases, I think you have to weigh these two harms.

JEFFREY BROWN: This is a depressing conversation.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you. Well, let's...

JEFFREY BROWN: Before we end, let me ask you some thoughts about General Norman Schwarzkopf.

Mark, your...

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I thought the interview with Michael Gordon was good. He's far more knowledgeable on the subject.

But two items about Norman Schwarzkopf. One can't reconstruct the period from 1945 to 1991. There was an erosion of public confidence in the United States military.

There was a yearning in the American psyche, American emotion for another Ike, another Douglas MacArthur, whoever, Hap Arnold, and George Marshall. And what happened was, he filled that in 1991.

It was a brilliant success militarily. And what he did, I thought -- and I think of it right now with all this rush about the war drums and going to war in Iran -- he was constantly saluted as a hero. And he said, it doesn't take courage to order man into battle -- order men into battle. It takes -- or into combat -- it takes courage to be one of those men who goes into combat.

And I always thought that was -- to me, that, in many respects, is an epitaph, a reminder that it isn't the general, remarkable though he might be. It is actually the person who puts his or her life on the line.

JEFFREY BROWN: And yet he was one of the -- he became the sort of celebrity general, didn't he?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And I generally don't like that. You can sort of define generals into the theatrical categories, the MacArthurs, the Pattons, or the nontheatrical, Omar Bradley, George Marshall. I tend to like the nontheatrical a better.

Nonetheless, I recall once in the '90s, I was in Egypt. And you're never supposed to quote a cabdriver, but I was being driven by a cabdriver in some part of Cairo. And he didn't speak any English. But he turns to me and goes, "Schwarzkopf." And he really loved the guy.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And I guess, for that theatricality, it helps. People like that kind of leader at...

MARK SHIELDS: In fairness to him, he did earn three Silver Stars in combat in Vietnam. So, he wasn't just somebody in the -- just 10,000 yards offshore viewing the action through heavy-power binoculars. He knew war firsthand.

JEFFREY BROWN: And we can't really talk about him without talking about President George H.W. Bush. And he seems to be improving, so we will wish him well. We will say happy New Year to him and also happy new year to you guys.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you very much.

JEFFREY BROWN: And Mark and David keep up the talk on The Doubleheader, recorded in our newsroom. That will be posted at the top of the Rundown online later tonight.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And now to the analysis of Shields and Gerson. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.

David Brooks is off tonight.

Gentlemen, it's good to have you with us.

MARK SHIELDS: Good to be with you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Mark, the fiscal cliff, it's still with us. It's still out there. The president made a last-minute statement late this afternoon. Where does everything stand?

MARK SHIELDS: Nobody knows, Judy.

What happened last night in the Republican Caucus is precedent-shattering. I mean, it really is, that John Boehner could not get a majority of his own caucus to support what had become the Republican position, endorsed not simply by him, but by Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy and Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

And it's a real problem. I think it puts at risk Boehner's own leadership and his ability to deliver Republicans. It weakens the bargaining position for Republicans in the final negotiations. But I don't know how much closer we are, because I think it strengthens the liberals in the Democratic Caucus, which is going to make it tougher for the Republicans to accept it, because a weakened Republican means a strengthened, emboldened Democratic liberal group.

And I just think that there's too many moving parts at this point to say, this is what is going to happen.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you -- what do you -- can it get done, Michael? I mean, it's. . .

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, I generally agree with Mark.

And today was supposed to be the end of the world. I think it feels like it for Boehner. This is a case where he ended up with 40 to 50 members of his caucus that wouldn't support anything on this.

MICHAEL GERSON: And they were to the right of Grover Norquist. Norquist was open to the Plan B.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because he had endorsed Plan B.

MICHAEL GERSON: Right, exactly. So, they want to go off the cliff flags flying. It marginalized Boehner and the Republicans in future negotiations, and raised a question of whether anyone can get a governing majority in the House of Representatives when it comes to the budget.

Those are really serious matters. Now, it does go to the Senate, where Harry Reid and McConnell can try to come to some, you know, functional surrender for Republicans on rates, and kick the can on a lot of other issues, and see if that can pass in the next 10 days.

But that still would pass -- have to pass the House. And so I think the chances of backing off, off the cliff are higher than they ever have been.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You know, I listened to some of these recalcitrant House Republicans today, Mark. And they were saying, I was not going to vote for a tax increase, when my constituents would never have gone along with that.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think there's two realities, here, Judy.

First of all, there's a lot of Republicans, and more than a few Democrats, who are terrified of one thing. That's being primaried, a primary opponent who is going to run on your right if you are a Republican, on your left if you are a Democrat. But it's really become a problem for Republicans, because this has been an article of faith that -- said before it is since 1990 that any Republican in the House or the Senate has voted for a tax increase on Capitol Hill, any Republican.

Now, of the 241 Republicans now in the House, 212 of them have come to the Congress since 1990. So, they have never voted for a tax increase. They don't know anybody who has voted for a tax increase. And they were being asked to vote for a tax increase for a tactical advantage on a piece of legislation that they knew the president, A., would veto, B., wouldn't pass the Senate.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Only on people earning over a million.

MARK SHIELDS: A million dollars, but they were going to give up their virginity, their political virginity, and risk a primary challenge -- that is how they saw it -- by doing this.

What they failed to address is the reality that, when you are the -- part of the governing party in any institution, the House, the Senate, anyplace else, you have a responsibility to make sure that you can govern. And what they did was, they robbed the Republicans, that 40 to 50. They robbed the Republicans of that -- that sense of leadership, of governability, and robbed them, I think, and reduced the brand of the Republican Party even more.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is it a fundamental disagreement over what governing is?

MICHAEL GERSON: Yes, I think that that is part of it.

I think what they couldn't answer is how they are going to get a better result. . .

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

MICHAEL GERSON: . . . after you -- when you go over the cliff, or later on in these negotiations, because they're not. This actually undermines their negotiating power and position, which -- because it is a foolish position to be in.

But it does -- it raises some really big issues. I mean, one of them here is that we now have a president and a speaker who both wanted a deal, OK? By every account, they wanted a deal. They tried it twice. And they couldn't make it happen.

Now, they -- and I don't think they can make it happen. It's a serious kind of governing challenge right now. If you look, we have got a short-term political crisis. We have a long-term fiscal crisis. And we're providing no confidence whatsoever that we can approach those things as a government in a mature way.

We look increasingly like we have the dysfunction, the governmental dysfunction of Europe, without the excuse of being separate countries. And, you know, I think it's a serious challenge to America's standing in the world, that -- the views of credit markets. And Washington is not taking that yet with sufficiency seriously -- seriousness.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

I would just add, and not in a partisan way, but the 213 -- 215-209 vote last night in the House before the whole thing came apart, which was that -- to not take the sequestration funds out of defense, but to take them out of domestic spending, was a party-line vote; 209 Democrats stuck on that. Not a single one broke.

And I think -- I think you are seeing far more unity in the Democratic ranks than you are in the Republican ranks right now. I agree it is a governmental problem. If the whole thing comes to a grinding halt and we see it reflected in the financial markets and the stock market and elsewhere, then it's a governmental problem. It's not simply a Democratic advantage, a Republican advantage.

But, right now, the real fault lines are in the Republican Caucus.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we don't -- sounds like neither one -- none of us knows where this is headed.

So let's move to another subject.

Michael, the president today named John Kerry to be secretary of state. It had been widely believed he wanted to choose the U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice.

John Kerry -- what do you make of the choice?

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, it's a -- I think, a safe choice and a good choice. I mean, this is a man who has had three decades on the Foreign Relations Committee, former presidential candidate, would have immediate standing on the global stage, similar to Hillary Clinton, in this kind of job.

He's also been a troubleshooter for the president in some key ways, under the radar screen. When South Sudan was separating from the North, and it looked like those negotiations were breaking down, Kerry came in and really made a difference there. So, I think that, I mean, he looks good after the Rice nomination. He is a less controversial nominee.

He has a lot of respect among his colleagues in the Senate. And so I think that the president -- you know, it was not -- not particularly a hard choice.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think James Mann and David Ignatius put it very well, I mean, that he is -- he is experienced, probably unmatched in experience. He does bring considerable stature, on a first-name basis with many of the people around the world with whom he will be dealing. He has done, as David pointed out, back-channel missions for the president, whether it's dealing with Hamas, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

And he is eminently confirmable. That's in the Senate. There is no question about it. And it opens up a possibility of a Republican seat in Massachusetts. So, Republicans are cheered by that.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, just quickly, before we leave that, there was a -- and this -- we heard this mentioned earlier, that some -- there is still conversation about whether the president is going to name, may name Chuck Hagel, former Republican senator, to be secretary of defense.

A lot of criticism has risen up. Outside groups are saying they are going to defeat him if he's named. What is going on there?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

Well, I mean, certainly, Chuck Hagel has been subjected to withering criticism for his lack of constant or at least unswerving support of every Israeli administration. That has been a central part. There are people who have personal issues with Chuck Hagel.

I personally think, A., he's close to the president. He was close to the president when the president was in the Senate. And I think he brings to it credentials that are sadly lacking in this administration. I mean, this is somebody who has spilled blood, shed blood for his own country, spilled blood for his country, faced combat, chose to go to Vietnam.

He had orders to go to Germany as an enlisted man. He insisted on going to Vietnam, where he faced serious combat. I just think -- I think he brings to it the first Vietnam veteran to be secretary of defense and the only enlisted man ever to be Secretary of Defense. I think those are credentials that are needed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Any thoughts on that?

MICHAEL GERSON: I think that, sometimes, people say these trial balloons are a sign of presidential weakness if they don't go up.

They're not really. They're actually a smart way for a president to gauge this. I think the opposition to Hagel is growing. I think it is rooted in disagreements, not just about Israel, but about defense cuts, but about his views on Iran, which are significantly to the left of president, and because he has -- he doesn't have a lot of respect of former colleagues here, which are already coming out, and many of them in opposition.

I think it's an unlikely nomination.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me turn you both to the gun control discussion.

We heard from the head of the NRA, Mark, today, Wayne LaPierre, who is advocating putting an armed guard in every school. The president has launched a task force this week. Where do you see this headed?

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, to call Wayne LaPierre and the NRA have a tin ear, I think is an understatement. I mean, they seem to be almost whining about criticism of their position, that it somehow was rooted in the press bias or elected officials who have gun-free school zones.

You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in all the -- all the wars, all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, in those 43 years.

We have half the guns that are in the world are in the United States. I mean, guns are a problem. And I think they still have to be confronted.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Something like 280 million guns.

MICHAEL GERSON: Yes. And we're not going to get rid of all those guns. That's not going to happen. The question is. . .

MARK SHIELDS: Well, we could do -- we could do Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and tax ammunition.

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, yes.

I think that there -- but there are a series of reasonable measures we could take, even going back to what we were doing in the 1990s, when it comes to ammunition, and magazine size, and assault -- certain types of semiautomatic weapons.

You should be able to make that case. We have swung so far in this debate in the libertarian direction, that those are fairly minimal burdens on anyone's rights when it comes to this that might have a marginal positive in fact -- impact on gun violence.

But any solution is also going have to deal with mental health issues. Security in schools, I don't think it's practical to put armed people in tens of thousands of schools. But security in schools, as well as reasonable gun controls, we're going to have to do a bunch of things in this area.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Sobering topic, and we will be coming back to it.

Michael Gerson, Mark Shields, thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you, Judy. Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Merry Christmas.

MICHAEL GERSON: Merry Christmas.

MARK SHIELDS: Merry Christmas to you. Thank you.

For loyal fans of the Doubleheader, this is the big enchilada. Each week this year we've talked to NewsHour regulars Mark Shields and David Brooks about the sport of politics and the politics of sports. We've conducted these chats far enough away from the formality of the NewsHour set, so as to get them to loosen their ties a bit and so they can share their ridiculous wealth of sports knowledge. (Has ESPN figured this out yet?)

We rolled up some of the best moments of the year into one video. Enjoy.

It takes a village

You'll notice that politics editor Christina Bellantoni hosted the chat a few times when I was on the road this year. I thank her for that. If you've read any of the previous posts you'll also notice that Justin Scuiletti and Joshua Barajas have been shooting and editing these and at some points Cassie Chew, Terence Burlij and Katelyn Polantz wielded the camera. Alex Bruns has also helped to wrangle our heroes every week.

Resolution for 2013

Part of the charm of these conversations is that they are unscripted and they happen when our esteemed guests have a few spare minutes before they go downstairs to appear on the program. You'll see that we've been caught at different states of preparedness. We've sometimes done the whole thing with one camera, and sometimes two, sometimes with a hand-held microphone hovering beneath us and sometimes with lapel mics. It's a little inconsistent, but we'll try to do better, we promise.

In the meantime, we hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and we'll see you next year.

Justin Scuiletti edited this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, gentlemen, we have all been torn up all day long today with this terrible shooting in Connecticut.

David, it -- just, it is beyond understanding, so how do we make sense of something like this?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that you realize the tremendous difference between the process of the grief, the process of the shock, the process of processing all we're feeling today, and the policy process.

One is just this innate outpouring of grief. And then the policy process is about cost-benefit analysis, about studies and counterstudies. You're trying to figure out what would work. And so you feel almost cheap on a day like today. You think, down the road, we will talk about what works, what doesn't.

Already, the debates are starting, gun control, all the different policy options on the table. But I am willing to enter into those debates, I guess. But you just want to register the -- just the emotion you feel for the scenes, the empathy you feel for the parents and so on.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president certainly did that today, Mark. But it seems to me we ask -- we ask the same questions over and over again every time one of these things happens.

MARK SHIELDS: You're right, Judy. And I agree with what David said.

I would just point out the president delivered his remarks in the James S. Brady Press Briefing at the White House, James S. Brady, who was shot and crippled permanently in an assassination attempt when he was press secretary to President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

And we have the thoughts and the prayers and the flags at half-mast. But what we don't have -- and it's the hallmark of a -- I think, of a cowering political and public body -- that is, we don't have a debate. We don't have a discussion.

And the question about -- is not whether somebody stands for or against this, whether you even bring it up. And the reality is that in the United States of America in 2012, it's easier in many states to rent an automobile -- to buy an automatic weapon than it is to rent an automobile. It's more demanding.

And I just -- you know, one of the things about having been in the Marine Corps is that they teach you how to use guns. They teach you how to use rifles and handguns and automatic weapons. And you come away with just one conclusion, if you reflect on it, and that is they are tools of destruction. They are meant to kill people. That's all.

They're not sporting equipment, as Jim Lehrer has remarked. And they're not tennis rackets. They're not shoulder pads or baseballs. I mean, they are tools of destruction meant to do what was done today. And I just think our society has failed to confront, and particularly our political leadership, but all of us have failed to confront that. Oh, gee, it's too tough an issue.

But, I mean, the reality is, there are too many guns in hands of people who just shouldn't have them. And if we can license people who clip our toenails and promote prize fights, then we sure as hell ought to be able to license people who have automatic weapons.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I guess I don't know anything about this case. We don't know who the shooter is. I guess we know now what the weaponry was.

But after the Aurora case, I tried to look into and made my best decision about what would work. And it's very frustrating, because it's very hard to find things that would work.

But there are sort of two avenues. There is the mental health avenue, which is -- and it should be said that, the 98 percent of people who have mental illnesses are not violent. Even people with schizophrenia doesn't mean they are violent.

But there is a small minority who do become violent. And so my belief was that being more aggressive, more assertive in trying to find those people and trying to deny people with those particular sorts of mental health issues access to guns was the way to go.

I think it would be helpful in the media if we did not publicize these people, especially if they have committed suicide. Don't put them on the cover of magazines. Don't put their faces on TV. Don't release their names. I somehow think that would diminish some of the perverse heroism of them.

As for the gun issue, I think there is a good case to be made for gun control because of the normal amount of killing that goes on with guns. I am a little more skeptical that gun control would reduce these sorts of incidents, because if you look at where they happen, they happen a lot here, they happen a lot in Europe, they happen in Korea, and Norway was the worst. Some of these are very tight gun control regimes.

Second, the people who do them tend to be disturbed, but also meticulous planners. And in a country with 300 million guns, I'm skeptical we can keep it out of their hands. So I might be willing to pursue -- I think it is a good idea to pursue more gun control. I am skeptical it will help prevent these cases.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, the president said today that -- he said something should be done, he said, regardless of the politics, in so many words. Do you think that is going to happen?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't know.

I think the president has to lead, I mean, because it's obvious that what we have is the National Rifle Association essentially has paralyzed the political process in this country. And Democrats who have any sort of rural constituencies are terrified to support gun control or even to bring up the subject.

And Republicans are in lockstep, just sort of reflecting on the Second Amendment. I mean, we did ban machine guns in this country. You know, that's been done, and bazookas. I mean, that -- we have had success in certain weapons. And, you know, I -- it requires an enormous national will.

But I don't know how else we're going to get that debate going, except by the tragedy of...

DAVID BROOKS: I would -- just purely in the political -- the politics of it, a few points. First, gun ownership is way down. It's -- we are at a historic low.

Second, oddly -- and I'm not sure why -- I don't have any explanation for this -- support for gun control laws has dropped significantly over the last 20 years. I'm not sure why that is.

The third point is that these kind of shootings historically have had no effect on public opinion in the gun debate. And then I guess my final point would be, I think if we're going to control guns, we really have to do it massive.

I think I'm all for getting rid of the assault weapons and machine guns and all that tough, but if we want to prevent something like this, we have to really think seriously about drastically reducing the number of guns in our society, and particularly -- this is an old Patrick Daniel Moynihan idea -- the number of bullets. It is very hard to control 300 million guns. The bullets are a little easier to control.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But that makes it very unlikely, doesn't it, that something would happen?

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, I think we won't know until it's -- you know, until somebody takes that leadership. I mean, there have been, you know, a few lonely voices in Congress. I mean, Schumer has -- Chuck Schumer, the senator from New York, has done it, raised it. But it's going to require obviously a larger coalition than that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A couple of other things that have happened this week I want to ask the two of you about.

David, this really pushed out of the news the story that everybody was talking about last night, that -- Susan Rice withdrawing her name to be secretary of state. What finally moved her to take her name out, do you think, and what does it say?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't really believe it was without White House acknowledgment. I think if she had a sense the White House was going to fight for her, I think she would have been happy to fight.

She had a piece in The Washington Post today laying out the case for her. I think it is a pretty decent case.

I hate it when these things happen, especially when there is no egregious sin that has been committed, and there certainly was none in this case. And so I wish frankly she -- somebody would have fought a little harder for her. I think the ultimate...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Are you saying the White House didn't fight hard...

MARK SHIELDS: Well, they -- the president made a very strong case early on.

And then she went to the Hill, and things deteriorated. And then it has sort of been nothing.

And maybe they didn't want to nominate her at all. We really don't even know that. But she certainly was left hanging around for a little while without much support. And they clearly decided this wasn't the fight they were going to have.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there a lesson in all this?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, don't be the good soldier. She was the good soldier.

Secretaries of defense and state refused to go on the Sunday programs to explain what the policy and what the findings were from Benghazi. The director of the CIA did not go. And so Susan Rice did on that fateful Sunday after the ambassador's assassination.

I think that's probably the first example, first lesson. She was out there by herself, I mean, make no mistake about it. The chorus of support was pretty muted.

And when the criticism came, she -- the president said she was extraordinary and got a big hand at a Cabinet meeting, but I didn't see anything further organized in her behalf.

And there were -- obviously, beyond John McCain's own apparent vendetta toward her from the 2008 campaign, there was -- when you get Susan Collins and people like that starting to line up against you, I mean, there seemed to be a building resistance. It was going to be a tough fight.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

And I would just I think she -- it wasn't her. She became, I think, for the opponents, a symbol of the Libya policy, which a lot of people didn't like the way the Libya thing was handled, even before Benghazi. And so it shouldn't reflect on her professionalism and competence, but she became a symbol.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we will find out in a few days whether it's John Kerry or somebody else. And we can talk about that later.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, yes. Oh...

JUDY WOODRUFF: You want to...

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, just -- John Kerry is interesting to me. He and Ted Kennedy were never close, even they were both senators from Massachusetts together.

But, like Ted Kennedy, he has become, I think, a better public servant and certainly a better United States senator since he lost the presidency. Kennedy after 1980 became really the dominant figure in the Senate. I think John Kerry, since he lost the presidency and gave up all hopes of the White House, has become a far more formidable, influential and important senator.

And I think that he would be a different kind of secretary of state.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Less than a minute.

John Boehner may have gone back to Ohio for the weekend. Fiscal cliff, do you know something behind the scenes that's happening that we don't know about, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I know the gestalt, which is negative, that maybe we will have some limited deal, but it doesn't look good this week. This has not been a good week.

MARK SHIELDS: Remember this. We have not voted on any entitlements in this country since 1983. We have not voted to -- Republicans have not voted to raise a tax since 1990. No Republican in the House or the Senate has voted.

I mean, this is a -- we're heading into a major area. So, if it's halting, if it's slow, if it seems not quite open and dynamic, be patient. You know, I think we will get there. But I do think it's going to be difficult.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we're glad the two of you are part of our gestalt, Mark Shields, David Brooks.

MARK SHIELDS: I wonder what gestalt means.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

MARK SHIELDS: Judy.

DAVID BROOKS: Good to be here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So we got in the habit during the campaign of talking about the unemployment numbers at the start of every month.

So, Mark, today, it is past the campaign, but let's not break the habit. The report comes out, more jobs created than expected. The rate went down. What does it say about the economy?

MARK SHIELDS: It's always a great -- better than expected, that's when your candidate finishes fifth in the New Hampshire primary. Hey, it is better than expected.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Judy, the numbers were better than expected, but it's not good news for the economy.

We have a lower rate, 7.7 percent, for the worst possible reason, not that more jobs were created, but, quite frankly, that Americans got discouraged and stopped looking.

So, there's fewer people looking for work. And then we find out that the jobs created in September and October were not what we hoped for.

This is Jack Welch's revenge, remember, the former president of General Electric, who accused the whole thing of being rigged. And it was just a bad joke. But, I mean, no, but it's not good numbers. Construction numbers -- employment was down, and so was manufacturing. So, I just don't think -- in spite of better than expected, not good.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you see a silver lining somehow?

DAVID BROOKS: No.I too fixated on the labor force participation rate, which I think there were 350,000 fewer people in the labor force.

And I think if you step back and look at this recession, the collapse in labor force participation is astounding, and especially male labor force participation, when you were up here, and over decades, it's just collapsed. I think it's down around in the high 60s.

And so that's just historically very troubling news, that a lot of people are retiring early, a lot of people are trying to get on disability, a lot of people not entering. And so there are a lot of men in particular, but women, too, men in particular in their 50s and 60s. And they're out of the labor force.

And that's just bad for them and bad for the economy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, every month during the campaign, we talked about whether this was good or bad for the president or for Mitt Romney.

What about right now, Mark, with what the president is trying to do, the fiscal cliff, other issues? Is this a factor?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it's probably a disincentive about not reaching a deal.

I mean, I think that this adds a little sense of urgency to the process that the economy is precarious. And, therefore, we don't need to test it by putting it in a further stress test of not having some sort of a resolution of the current dilemma and crisis.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, David, what about the fiscal cliff? I mean, where does everything stand? We had Speaker Boehner come out today and say, no progress.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think that was just the public show.

I think there has been progress, not substantive progress, but atmospheric progress. I think the Republican Party, I think the House Republicans have rallied around Speaker Boehner. The ones who were troublesome for him a year-and-a-half ago have essentially said, you cut the deal, we will go along with you. You have our support.

And so that is a big gift of flexibility to Boehner. And I think it's an acceptance of the reality that rates are going to have to go up, at least a little.

And then, as for the president, we don't know much. That is still an opaque box. But my sense is that they know the issues. They have been through this before, that the atmospherics are right. And now it's a question of their skill as negotiators, because there's delicate balances here.

The Republicans want to give, probably a little on the tax rates. The president has to sort of lure them over and say, OK, you're giving -- we will give you this on entitlements. And you have to do this little dance here, and do it gently, and with a little gift, a little carrot, a little stick.

And if they can do it competently, I think there is a pretty good chance now, just atmospherically, that we will get a fiscal deal before we go off.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see the dance?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't see it quite the same way David does.

I think the Republicans are facing reality. Everything is going against them. It wasn't simply the election return, the reelection of the president. But, today, an Associated Press poll came out. His job rating is at 57 percent, the president. Other than the blip that he got after the Navy SEALs' operation against Osama bin Laden, this is the highest it's been in three-and-a-half years.

The Republican brand as a party remains an albatross around people's neck. And the Republicans have seen throughout this debate as people who are apparently willing to raise taxes on 98 percent of Americans in order to shelter the 2 percent from paying any more.

And I just think that argument and the dynamics politically have hurt against them -- against them. There is a sense of inevitability, that the rates are going to go up. I agree with David on the necessity for a delicate touch and all the rest of it.

I don't think John Boehner has control of his caucus right now. I'm not sure he can sell a tax increase, even if it does involve entitlement -- taming of the spending of future spending on entitlements, seriously. I think he's in a tough bind. I think they have the goodwill, but I'm not sure he has the votes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But you're saying the president in your mind clearly has the upper hand?

MARK SHIELDS: Has the upper advantage and has the upper hand. And the question is, I mean, is he going to be sensitive to Boehner, that Boehner can come out of it with his dignity and self-respect and reputation intact?

I mean, this is what you do, Judy. John Lindsay was the mayor of New York. He was a marvelous public figure in many respects. He had three separate negotiations in which he basically decided to negotiate with the teachers, the subway workers.

He gave them what they wanted, and they ended up hating him, because he somehow just didn't have that ability to honor his adversary, to elevate his adversary.

I think this is a test for the president and for the administration on how they handle it, that John Boehner can come out of it not a diminished figure. But he's got all -- he's holding all the cards right now, Barack Obama.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But you see the president having as many cards as Mark?

DAVID BROOKS: No.

I think the president clearly has the upper hand. I do think, if we do go off the cliff and we do go into recession -- and I think the fiscal cliff is completely unpredictable, and it could really -- especially with a fragile economy.

The Wall Street and the corporate economists are deeply scared about it, that recession really would, you know, wreck his term, because we would be obsessed with that for the next couple of years.

And so I don't think it's a total walk for him, but I think he clearly has the upper hand. And then there is just the sheer fact of the numbers. Say they reach a compromise. And I think the Republicans are likely to cave on the rates. And then you close a few deductions.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You do think they will?

DAVID BROOKS: I do.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because they are saying right now they are not going to cave.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. There is going to be no deal with that.

And they are not going to go into January, as Mark said, and say to the country, hey, we're going to raise your taxes, but we have got to serve the rich people. They're just not going to do that, with the polls, so they're going to cave. And they are not going to get up to 39 percent, but they could get up to 37.

But then -- so say you get to $1.2 trillion in new revenue. You still need some spending cuts.
And so the president, I think, and the -- Boehner, they know what the options are. There is the Social Security what they call the COLA, how fast Social Security benefits go up. They're raising the Medicare retirement age -- or Medicare eligibility age, which is not so great.

There's Medicare Plan B, raising the cost of the premium there. There's lots of options on the table. And to get something that matches the $1.2 billion -- or trillion in new revenue, you have got to have some real cuts. And that is something he can offer Boehner.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But what about that -- you touched on that -- what about this conservative chorus now in the House who are saying that Boehner has already given up by just even being willing to raise revenues?

 I mean, and they're now -- some of them are saying, we're not sure we're going to vote for him for reelection. How much -- does he really have serious pressure from the right or not?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, the problem he has is, if 18 of them -- he threw four people off committees this week, three of them for not being sufficiently supportive of the caucus position, being to the right of the caucus.

And so he starts off by making four enemies, basically, Walter Jones of North Carolina being sui generis, being very much of a maverick. But he's made enemies. If 18 of them decided not to show up and vote for John Boehner on the 3rd of January, he wouldn't be the speaker.

I don't think that's going to happen. But he's in a position where he's got to -- he's got to be able to come back to his people, as David said, with, look, yes, we're going have to vote for these increases. We can't be tarred as the party of millionaires and billionaires, even though we raised everybody else's taxes. And these are the cuts we got.

I think it's easier to make people who are better off pay more under Medicare than it is to cut benefits.

DAVID BROOKS: Plus, part of the deal is going to be the Democrats are going to have to promise 100 votes for the thing in the House, so you can get a number.

JUDY WOODRUFF: To get it there.

DAVID BROOKS: Republicans who will -- they are going to say to 100 Republicans or some large number of Republicans, you guys are in danger of being primaried. You are vulnerable. You can vote against this.

And they have got to give a lot of Republicans permission to vote against this thing. But they can still do that and pass it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: One of the voices criticizing Boehner was Jim DeMint, the senator from South Carolina, who surprised everybody and announced yesterday, David, that he is stepping down from the Senate.

What does that say about him? What does it say about conservatives in the Congress? What does it say about the Senate?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it says a couple things.

One, he gets a nice payday now, running the Heritage Foundation. He will make some decent money. And he's not a rich guy. He's not, by senatorial standards anyway.

Second, I think it says he's not a legislator. He has never been -- he is good at filibustering. He's good at blocking things in the Senate. He has never been somebody who is crafting complicated legislation, cutting deals. He's not involved in that.

And then, finally -- and I think this is the big story -- like a lot of people in the Tea Party, he likes the purity, he likes the bold stroke. He doesn't like the messiness of politics. And, in my view, people like that tend to marginalize themselves.

They tend to go off to a place where they can be pure, but as a result of that going off to where they can be pure, they make themselves more marginal.

And I think that is what DeMint is doing. And I think a lot of people in the Tea Party are going to say, I would rather be pure than in the fight. And they're going to go off where they can be pure and protest.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you...

MARK SHIELDS: Well, there is a lot of money there. And I don't mean for him personally, but there is a lot of money on the right.

We saw Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, left the FreedomWorks, which is a group very associated closely with the Tea Party, walked out with an $8 million buyout. You know, you don't get that, for goodness' sakes, in Wall Street today, I guess. Maybe you do.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think are you wrong about that one.

MARK SHIELDS: All right. OK. David is -- David knows.

DAVID BROOKS: ... expert on...

MARK SHIELDS: David knows these people better.

DAVID BROOKS: ... golden handouts.

MARK SHIELDS: But I just say, he's going to make a million dollars. He's the fourth poorest...

JUDY WOODRUFF: You mean his salary at the Heritage.

MARK SHIELDS: At Heritage, at least a million dollars.

But I think the key is, Judy, that it changes the whole definition of what a senator is. The two senators who preceded him to South Carolina served a century between them, Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings. And here he is in the middle of his second term.

And he is not a legislator. He isn't interested in crafting compromises or consensus of anything of the sort. He's been very open about what he does believe and what does matter to him. And out he's going to be a -- basically a political figure with a platform and a good paycheck outside. And he can be pure. He doesn't have to worry about the rest of the caucus.

He leaves with his legacy, Marco Rubio, whom he supported earlier, Pat Toomey, whom he supported against Arlen Specter. But he also leaves, you know, senators -- Democratic senators reelected in Nevada and Missouri and Delaware as a consequence of his supporting unelectable primary Republicans.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We have about only 20 seconds, but one of the moves in the Senate among these conservatives was to deny the U.N. treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities.

How does something like that happen?

DAVID BROOKS: It's an embarrassment for the country.

This was a treaty that could have given Afghan vets who have lost limbs the greater ability to go abroad and live with dignity. And to do it for black helicopter reasons, to vote against this, it is an embarrassment.

MARK SHIELDS: You have heard of a profile in courage. This was a profile in cowardice. It really was, I mean, Republicans who are terrified of a primary, of a challenge on their right. And so they come up with this bogus explanation or theory about blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers coming into homeschooling parents and ripping their child away, having disembarked from the black helicopters.

It's a total fabrication. And to do it as Bob Dole sat there on the Senate floor asking for their support is a travesty.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gentlemen, we thank you both, Mark Shields, David Brooks.

And Mark and David will keep up the talk on The Doubleheader, recorded in our newsroom. And that will be posted at the top of the Rundown later tonight. 

'Tis indeed another Friday which means it's time for the Doubleheader, where syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks tackle the sport of politics and the politics of sport. Tonight we discuss the fact that three states of the nation, by popular vote, have made marijuana more legal or less illegal depending on how you look at it. The federal laws however have not changed.

In an extended sports section we talk about the phenomenon eclipsing D.C. known as RG III. For the uninitiated, he is the dazzling quarterback of the Washington Redskins who is able to pull out plays where there should not be any. We also talk a bit about the picks for the Heisman trophy which will be awarded Saturday night (RGII won it last year). Mark did get serious for a moment in his concern for NFL players based on the new Boston University report. Our Friends at Frontline had an article worth reading on the latest developments. I mentioned that the Newshour had aired a piece by Stone Phillips on the force with which very young football players hit. Its worth watching.

Have a great weekend.

Joshua Barajas shot and edited this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:

Follow @hari

Support Your Local PBS Station

Gentle people of the World Wide Web, welcome to another edition of the Doubleheader where we talk about the sport of politics and the politics of sport with none other than New York Times columnist David Brooks and syndicated columnist Mark Shields.

Today in the serious portion of our segment we discuss David’s latest column featuring the X-Tax. It’s a consumption-based tax that is gaining traction among conservative think tanks.

In the politics of sport portion, this was a big week for Indiana college teams — Hoosier basketball and Irish football. Both our pundits have Indiana connections. You may be in awe of the depth of their trivia.

Have a great weekend.

Joshua Barajas shot and edited this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:

Follow @hari

Support Your Local PBS Station

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, David, where are we on the cliff? Over, under, sideways? What's your metaphor?

DAVID BROOKS: We're going backwards. We're going backwards.

JEFFREY BROWN: Backwards.

DAVID BROOKS: I guess that is a good thing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Backing away would be good.

DAVID BROOKS: We're going toward the cliff.

JEFFREY BROWN: We're going towards the cliff.

DAVID BROOKS: And so what happened is, the election happened. Obama wins. Clearly, he ran on raising tax or raising revenue from the top 2 percent, centerpiece.

Republicans are not stupid. They sort of understand that. And so they went through a process. The day after, Boehner said, OK, revenues, but not rates, and some began to drift over, OK, rates.

And so you have had movement, until Friday or until yesterday, Thursday, when Tim Geithner goes up there and delivers an ultimatum, which is a chest-thumping stick in the eye to the Republicans.

And all the migration suddenly stops, and suddenly they get outraged. And so they are back -- they are going back to where Grover Norquist wants them to be, because they are outraged because they feel they have been insulted. They feel this is not a negotiation, this is a war.

And so I think what had yesterday from the administration was a bit of negotiation incompetence, because they have pushed us -- the psychological process the Republicans were going through, which they have to go through, has now been pushed way back.

JEFFREY BROWN: Where do you think we are?

MARK SHIELDS: I'm not quite clear as dire in my assessment as David.

I think that, first of all, David is absolutely right, that the president didn't run on big ideas or a grand agenda, but he did relentlessly, endlessly emphasize that he was committed to raising taxes and returning to the pre-Bush tax cut rates of the Clinton era.

I think that we are in a little bit of a chest-bumping stage. The process...

JEFFREY BROWN: You call it chest-bumping. He called it stick in the eye. So, it's different versions of...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. That's right. Well, but I think what we're seeing -- I think you see some Republicans, no, we're not going to do a thing, we're just going do it with closing exemptions and eliminating exemptions.

And that is really what Mitt Romney ran on, that he was going to -- rates. I think Barack Obama is showing a different side of negotiation than he has in the past. He has been criticized by many, including me on occasion, for giving away the store.

JEFFREY BROWN: From his left.

MARK SHIELDS: From his left.

 I mean, but on his health care bill, brought in farmers, brought in all the drug companies and said, OK, we're not going to invest with you. You support this. And he gave away -- first the negotiations on the debt ceiling, the same thing. He was negotiating with Medicare cuts right at the outset.

And people said, wait a minute. So here he comes in, he shows a little spine, a little steel, and he says, this is what I said I was going to do in the way of increases. And they say, well, wait, wait, but what about these Medicare cuts?

The only people who brought up Medicare cuts were the Republican, who talked about Obama was going to cut $716 billion. So now we're in a situation where nobody wants his or her fingerprints on the Medicare cuts.

OK? The Medicare cuts, I can assure you -- and this is going to upset a lot of people -- will appear in the negotiations. They will be -- paternity will be denied.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: But they will miraculously appear. And I think we have got the outlines of what will go ahead as a deal.

JEFFREY BROWN: But who is playing what hand? Who is playing from strength here at this point?

DAVID BROOKS: Oh, on this, the president has the strength. There's no question about it.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: First, he won the election.

Second, the polling shows that people are more likely to blame the Republicans.

Third, if you look at the way the rules of this fiscal cliff are structured, the Republicans lose big. The defense -- the cuts, the sequestration, the cuts come out of defense disproportionately. So they come out of Republican districts.

So a lot of Republicans have said, hey, this is not a great place to wage this fight. We would rather not fight here.

JEFFREY BROWN: But what do you think about Mark's point about his -- his coming on -- you are he saying he's got a strong hand, but he came on too strong still.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And he has over-read his mandate.

The Republican -- the Democratic mantra now is, oh, I don't believe in mandates. I'm not going to over-read my mandate. And then they go in and over-read the mandate.

And the second mistake he is making, he is making exactly the mistake that President Bush made after he won reelection, when he tried to do Social Security reform. Instead of sitting down with the people you are going to need, he goes around the country, because, frankly, for recently a reelected president, it is a lot more fun to go out and give speeches around the country than to have a two-way conversation in Washington.

And so they have not had these two-way conversations. It is essentially -- the actual talking process is just in abeyance.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, what do you think about this mandate question? Because earlier this week, I interviewed two congressmen on this question. And Keith Ellison, the Democrat, was talking about the mandate.

MARK SHIELDS: Right.

JEFFREY BROWN: The Republican was Tom Price. And he said whatever mandate the president and the Democrats think they have, it is no greater or less than the mandate that we as House Republicans also have. So there.

MARK SHIELDS: So, I mean, all respect to Dr. Price, the majority of Americans who voted in congressional elections voted for Democrats, rather than Republicans.

But because of the way the lines were drawn creatively in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Republicans ended up with the majority. He's right in the sense that -- and this is the problem that John Boehner has as he tries to craft a compromise within his own caucus.

And that is that the Republicans who are in that caucus, two-thirds of them won in districts of over 60 percent, so their only worry is a primary. They don't have to worry about Election Day in November. No Democrat is going to beat them. They are very safe Republican districts.

And so they are concerned about that. My quarrel with David is David is focusing on the process right now. And I'm saying the president is not good at congressional relations. He never has been. According to Mark Knoller at CBS News, who is the keeper of the flame in all of these things, he has played golf 104 times. Three times, he has played with a member of Congress, twice with Jim Clyburn, once with John Boehner.

I mean, he's not...

JEFFREY BROWN: That's a way of keeping score in Washington, right.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. He's just not -- he's not somebody who schmoozes. He is not somebody who is good that way.

But what we judge is not the process. We judge the product. If the product that he comes out with is good, is balanced, is fair and is just, and moves the country's economy, and starts the decline of the deficit, then it's good. And the process will have worked.

If it doesn't, if it isn't, then we can go back and revisit the process and say the process was flawed.

DAVID BROOKS: Oh, the process getting there is the hard part.

We could all in our heads draw up a deal, but he has had people over the last couple of weeks, Republicans, taking risks. Boehner took a risk. Tom Cole, member of the House, took a risk. And he undercut them. He made them look stupid with what he did yesterday.

And they feel furious. They feel burned. And so you have got to help your people along. You have got to make it more possible. And so that's why I think it's -- you have just got to -- when he did -- what he offered wasn't only a balanced deal. That would be fine if he had offered something balanced.

He offered something even worse from the Republican point of view than what he had offered a couple years ago.

So he started withdrawing things off the table, and it seemed like chest-beating.

MARK SHIELDS: We just went through an election, David. The Republicans are the ones who are for Medicare cuts. They really are.

So what he is basically saying is, OK, this is my proposal. I am going to increase taxes. I won that. OK, now where is yours?

JEFFREY BROWN: This sounds like -- it must be the debate at the White House.

MARK SHIELDS: Do you want to come up with the Medicare cuts? You want to come up with the Medicare cuts? No, we don't want to come up with the Medicare cuts.

JEFFREY BROWN: It sounds like the two guys on the president's shoulder, right?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, no, but I would say...

JEFFREY BROWN: I got to be tough because I won, or the process, I got to...

DAVID BROOKS: I got to actually cut a deal.

And he is in favor of a balanced approach. And he is president of the United States. In this, the way the world works, he proposes and then people debate his plan, or at least his approach. He doesn't have an approach because he doesn't have a balanced approach.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, let me ask you about another subject, the Kwame piece that we saw on the filibuster.

Is this -- you know, it's rules. It's sort of arcane stuff, right? But is it something bigger there? Is it about real gridlock?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, it is bigger. It's real -- it's deadlock. It's dysfunction.

The key was that the last time they did the filibuster rules was 1975, when they cut it to three-fifths of those present and necessary to cut off the debate, the 60 votes.

And then it was bipartisan, the reform. I mean, this is strictly partisan right now.

If the Democrats are in charge, the Democrats want to change it. But the deadlock and the dysfunction, and the use of the filibuster in the last five years as a political weapon has become just a matter of course of every day, I mean, on the simplest thing.

And I just think a very simple, simple reform would be, if you are going to lead a filibuster, you have got to be on the floor. You have got to be -- you have got to be able, willing and provide the...

DAVID BROOKS: Listen, in 2005, the Republicans tried this. They were the majority then. They tried it. We called it the nuclear option.

And I thought it was terrible then. I think it is terrible now. I really think rights of minorities should be protected in the Senate. But if you look at the Senate today and the speeches today, everyone's position has entirely flipped. So all the Republicans who were saying, oh, the filibuster is out of control, now they are for this.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: And all the Democrats, they are suddenly for the filibuster. Tom Harkin was one of the big proponents in Kwame's piece.

I wrote down something he wrote on May 19, 2005: "For more than two centuries, Senate rules and traditions have respected the rights of minorities."

JEFFREY BROWN: Which I think is what we heard from Tom Coburn in the piece tonight.

DAVID BROOKS: Right, exactly. So everybody has flip-flopped on this, depending on where you sit.

MARK SHIELDS: Harry Reid, to his credit, has said that he has flip-flopped.

(LAUGHTER)

 MARK SHIELDS: He has. He admits -- he admits his position.

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, one more subject is Susan Rice.

At the beginning of this week, last weekend, it looked as though there was a bit of softening of the harsh criticism of her. She goes up to the Hill this week. She talks to some of her harshest critics. They come out and they sound as down on her as ever.  

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I don't know what -- we don't really know what happened in those meetings. The crucial one was with the moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine, who is a very careful, very thoughtful and very moderate in temperament and in philosophy senator.

And she had a 75-minute meeting with Susan Rice and came out sounding more doubtful than before.

So I don't know what happened in that meeting. I think the essence of this thing -- and I'm guessing from the body language -- is the politics. People think she's too political, too partisan.

JEFFREY BROWN: Susan Rice.

DAVID BROOKS: Susan Rice, and that sometimes she has been kind of -- you know, she can be tough.

I think she's at many times at the U.N. been quite effective, but she does have more of a political aura than we are used to in our diplomats. And the only thing I would say is, the job of the secretary of state is to go into a room with somebody, have a meeting and get somewhere.

And if she couldn't get somewhere with Susan Collins, then that is a little bit of a problem.

DAVID BROOKS: What do you think? Is it about Benghazi? Is it about the politics? Is it about Susan Rice?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, Benghazi is a mystery to me. I mean, I think Benghazi is, who lost China? It's almost like the Republicans are looking for that silver bullet. And that eludes me.

She's partisan. Susan Rice is partisan as a U.N. diplomat, unlike statesmen like John Bolton, who preceded her there, who was just such a total...

JEFFREY BROWN: I sense some...

MARK SHIELDS: ... a totally bipartisan...

MARK SHIELDS: ... totally bipartisan, nonpartisan figure.

MARK SHIELDS: But I found that Susan Collins -- I agree with David. Susan Collins has a moderate philosophy. She's moderate in manner.

I found her criticism a little interesting. She found fault with Susan Rice for having been the spokesman for the party -- for the Democratic administration's position on the foreign policy issue.

And, you know, Colin Powell, God bless him, and says this will be the shame of his life, he was the one who made the case for going to war in Iraq, you know, as the spokesman.

I think this. What struck me was the administration has really handled this badly. I mean, you don't send her up to the Hill to meet with people unless you're going have some friendly meetings too, you are going to have some positive people come out and say -- Claire McCaskill, I don't care, Amy Klobuchar -- say how wonderful she is.

And at the same time, what you have got to have is other people. Where are the endorsers of her? I haven't heard from Madeleine Albright. I haven't heard from Hillary Clinton. She is just kind of out there by herself, which may be a message in itself.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. We will keep watching that one and everything else.

Mark Shields, David Brooks, thanks, as always.

And if you want even more from these guys -- and, of course, why not, right?

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark and David keep up the talk on The Doubleheader recorded in our newsroom. That will be posted at the top of the Rundown later tonight.

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JEFFREY BROWN: And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who's in Philadelphia tonight.

So, David, far-flung correspondent, we will start with you.

Mohammed Morsi is the essential mediator one day, and then seen by some as a potential dictator the next. What do you take from this week about the implications for the continuing American role in the Middle East?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Well, first, I thought President Obama deserves a great deal of praise for how he's handled this. He could have really taken it out on Israel. Some people thought he has not been supportive of Israel. Some people thought that since Benjamin Netanyahu was a little pro-Romney, it seemed, during the campaign, there might be some bad blood there.

But I think it has to be said, over the last couple of weeks, the Obama administration has been extremely supportive of Israel. And so that's one thing.

And then the second thing they have done is, they have worked with the new Egyptian government. And that wasn't necessarily a done deal either. And so they have given us this cease-fire.

And so we had a pretty, you know, serious military exchange. But the American-Egyptian relationship wasn't frayed. The American-Israeli relationship wasn't frayed. And, importantly, the Israeli-Egyptian relationship, while frayed, is still functioning.

And so I think they have done a reasonably good job of stabilizing things. Now, Morsi has taken this opportunity to create a bit of a constitutional crisis there, and there we're going to have to stick to our guns and be the pro-reform force, even for somebody who is trying to usurp power.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark, does it suggest that President Obama might have to spend more capital and time on the Mideast than perhaps he wanted in his second term? This actually happened while he was in Asia.

MARK SHIELDS: It did happen while he was in Asia. And I agree with David.

The irony, of course, was that during the campaign between him and Hillary Clinton, which turned bitter in 2008, one of her most famous needles of him was the 3:00-in-the-morning phone call. Was he up to it?

Well, we found out he was making phone calls at 3:00 in the morning which apparently contributed to the resolution David has just described.

And he was in Asia, you're right, Jeffrey, because we have been preoccupied with this region for the past 20 years, of the Middle East, I mean, starting with the Iran -- the Iraq invasion, driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in the administration of the first George Bush, all the way through the past 12 years of wars. There's just -- and continuing with Iran.

So, I think that the president did show restraint. I would go a little bit further than David. I thought Benjamin Netanyahu did everything except put a Romney button on his lapel and a Romney bumper sticker on his car. There was no question about it.

But I think he understands -- he's up for re-election -- the people of Israel do not want to see relations with the American people and the American administration in any way strained. And I think he understood his position as well.

And we have got people not being killed right now, and that is good.

JEFFREY BROWN: David, just thinking again about the president being in Asia for what they have called his pivot to that region, to China, and then, of course, the Middle East bubbles up again. Do you -- what does that portend, do you think, for his foreign policy and his attentions?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, I have to say we didn't really talk much about foreign policy in the campaign. And there was sort of, I think, an underground consensus on what to do.

But one certainly had the sense this week that foreign policy was going to be a big theme in the second term. Basically, you look around the world and the global project is in crisis all over the place.

The Middle East is what it is. And I still think the fundamental issue is the Arab Spring and whether it turns into an Islamist spring. Europe today is still at a bit of a pass where they can't get their fiscal house in order. That's really a long-term problem.

You look over in China, first, the Chinese experts I speak to are pretty pessimistic about the Chinese economy, some thinking growth could fall to as low as 3. Political reform is certainly not on the acceleration there. It's probably on the deceleration. And who knows what effects that could have.

The global project has sort of been a problem, and it could be what Obama spends the next four years on. And I have to say, as someone who is critical of a lot of his domestic policies, I think he's been pretty good.

He's certainly someone who has a very cautious, nuanced and prudent foreign policy. He doesn't try to simplify complicated issues. And sometimes it's overly cautious, but in mysterious times like these, overcaution is not the worst of sins.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark, he does, the president, that is, find himself still embroiled in this question of Benghazi, and particularly focused on Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador.

MARK SHIELDS: He does.

And just one point that David made I wanted to follow up on, and that is, the Arab spring has made it impossible for any leader -- Mubarak could really ignore Hamas.

But now, given the Arab spring and the democratization of policy, even though we see Mr. Morsi today sort of reversing that policy, proving that both elected and unelected leaders can be dictatorial, that Hamas got a preeminence and a prominence that it had not had before in this showdown, that we had Tunisia, we had Egypt, we had Turkey all basically endorsing, much to the demise and disadvantage of the Palestinian Authority and its decline.

So, I think that's a real -- the Benghazi thing is fascinating to me, basically because I think the charge against Lindsey Graham, for example, is unfair, that somehow he's driven by terminal sexism. This is a senator, a Republican senator from South Carolina, who did vote for the confirmation of Elena Kagan and for Justice Sotomayor as well.

JEFFREY BROWN: You're referring to him coming out against Susan Rice.

MARK SHIELDS: Coming out and threatening -- threatening this filibuster with John McCain, which I think is an irrational act on their part. I really do, not simply because presidents have an option and should have the benefit of the doubt on a confirmation to the Cabinet.

This isn't a judicial lifetime appointment. And I don't think either Senator Graham or Senator McCain was particularly vocal when Secretary Condoleezza Rice was nominated for that position, having been national security adviser, and predicted the arrival of the mushroom cloud because of the nuclear weapons that Iran -- that Iraq was then, under Saddam Hussein, harboring.

So, there seems to be a degree of irrationality. The president has now made it a big fight. And we have seen liberal press people come out citing the shortcomings, personality shortcomings of Susan Rice. I mean, it's just a -- it's sort of a bizarre season, and I can't figure out where this is going.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, David, what do you think? Why have Republicans made this such -- made her such a focal part and made this such a fight?

DAVID BROOKS: I guess my theory is that she's a sharp-tongued, blunt person, and, in the past, she has taken some shots at John McCain and others. And so this is their chance.

They have no wellspring of sympathy with her, the way they actually probably do with John Kerry, her potential rival to be the next secretary of state, having taken a bunch of delegation trips with Kerry around the world. And so I suspect there's a lot of old history here that is bubbling up.

Personally, I don't think it should be disqualifying if Obama decides to choose her as the next secretary of state. Listen, she's ambassador to U.N. She's not in charge of intelligence, and she's not in charge of intelligence reports.

It is simultaneously true that they do seem to have scrubbed the intelligence report that she got of any al-Qaida mention. That was probably done within the intelligence community herself.

Her job as U.N. ambassador was just to tell what that intelligence report said on the Sunday shows, and that's what she did.

So, I don't think there's any reason to disqualify her based on anything that's happened in the last year. And, frankly, I guess I would cut her a little slack for some of the political attacks she's taken. So, I guess I don't agree with Graham and McCain on this one.

But if you're going to be a diplomat, you should probably be diplomatic all the way around.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: And if not, you're going to come in for a little criticism.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: And Benghazi has almost taken on a Yalta-like fascination, or who lost China. I mean, that it seems to -- there's no question there are legislate questions about why the security was so inadequate, but the idea that this was some master conspiracy hatched in some foreign capital just seems a little bit beyond...

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, guys, I just...

DAVID BROOKS: I...

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes, go ahead. Go ahead. David, you wanted to jump in?

DAVID BROOKS: Oh, I just would say I think this is echoes of the WMD thing, where the Bush administration was accused of lying when I think they were just being led by -- misled by intelligence, and now they're trying to put the glove on the other hand.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, I just wanted a pivot of our own to domestic politics for -- in our last couple minutes, because this week also saw the resignation of Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., Mark.

He resigned Wednesday, citing health reasons. We know he's been treated for bipolar disorder. He has said he's under federal investigation. He came in with all kinds of promise. This seems to be the end of a career, political career.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, he did.

And I liked him. I thought he was an able legislator, elected in 1995. I mean, he was only 30 when he came in and went on the Appropriations Committee, and moved beyond his father's shadow, was involved in bringing clean water to his own community and scholarships for and funding for preparatory schools.

He really -- he did something beyond what was predicted for him. But he got -- he got sucked up in one of the terrible scandals in not simply Illinois. When a governor, especially a corrupt governor like Rod Blagojevich, wants to appoint a United States senator, and the bidding and auction gets in, and he allowed himself, apparently, or seemed to, become involved in the auctioning of that seat to replace Barack Obama.

And the irony is that nobody has moved, Jeffrey, from a congressional black district, overwhelming majority minority district in this country, to a statewide office like the United States Senate. And if Barack Obama had beaten Bobby Rush in 2000 in that primary, he probably never would have been -- grew from it as well. That was the best thing that ever happened to his career.

And I just -- I think Jesse -- Jesse Jackson Jr. had five press conferences in his first five years in the Congress. He wasn't a publicity hound. He was a real legislator. And it's sad.

JEFFREY BROWN: David, what do you make of that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, there are two issues here.

There is the use of the campaign funds, which we put off to the side, and we don't know how serious that investigation is. And that may have been enough for him to resign.

Then there's the mental health issues. And I guess I think we should adopt a posture of extreme tolerance on those mental health issues. A lot of fine people, including Abraham Lincoln, I'm thinking about it, had some mental health, periods of depression, Winston Churchill, and they seemed to do OK.

So, if at all possible you have a public servant who has some mental health issues and maybe has to take some time off, I do think we should try to be tolerant of that.

And so I was saddened that he had to leave, if that was the reason, rather than the investigation.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, David, both of you, in a word here, because we're really at the end, last week, David, you and Ruth were so negative about the campaign. You called it the worst campaign I ever covered.

We're in the glow of family Thanksgiving, turkey, all that. What are you thankful for in American politics?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I'm thankful for politics.

And I have been raving about the Steven Spielberg "Lincoln" movie, which takes you -- shows what you politics really can do. And it involves some nastiness, some dirtiness, but it shows why politics is still a noble profession.

JEFFREY BROWN: Aha, a movie.

Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it's great. I endorse "Lincoln," which I have seen.

I still like the humor of politics.

We didn't see much from either presidential candidate. But Rick Perry, an unlikely source, produced great humor when he said standing next to Mitt Romney in all the debates, he kept expecting Mitt Romney to lean over and say, excuse me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, now, that's a funny line, and coming from Rick Perry.

And I just like the fact that we can still laugh at ourselves...

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. OK. Thank you for injecting -- keeping the humor in politics.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark Shields, David Brooks, thanks so much.

Need some talking points to get through your holiday dinner? Need a comeback for your uncle who has wildly different views on health care and the fiscal cliff, or your brother-in-law, who had the other guy's name on his lawn signs? Want to sound super smart? Let us help you.

We've compiled the best talking points from Mark Shields, David Brooks and special guest Michael Gerson from three of the biggest political issues of the past year--the Presidential election, the fiscal cliff, and the Supreme Court's health care ruling--to give you a good starting point no matter which side you're on.

Think of it as a guide to taking the Shields and Brooks approach to the fiery issues. Not that there's anything wrong with throwing the sweet potatoes rather than passing them. In honor of the heated holiday argument, we applaud that too.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Brooks and Marcus. That's New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, filling in for Mark Shields.

Welcome to you both on this Friday.

RUTH MARCUS: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, David, what do you make of this negativity that Andy Kohut is saying shows up in these post-election polls?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he said first 68 percent of the respondents thought that the campaign was more negative than in the past, which tells me that 32 percent are wrong.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: It was more negative than in the past.

RUTH MARCUS: Good math.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I know, like Mark Shields.

Yes, I think it was the worst campaign I ever covered. And I think Romney was all over the place. Obama ran a very negative campaign. The level of tolerated dishonesty was higher than any I ever covered.

They used to start campaigns by giving big speeches on policy, and people like Ruth and I would chew over them. Those speeches, I guess they decided they didn't need to give them, because the policies weren't there.

The only ray of hope, I would say, in the campaign was conducted, is the campaigns, especially the Obama campaign, is much better at door-knocking, face-to-face, door front interviews. And I do think, because of that and because of all the information that's given to canvassers these days, they do have a lot of actual conversations.

And so you could argue that it was terrible at the surface, but at the level of one-to-one person on the door stoop, there might have been some good news there.  

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you read this negativity?

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: That's really pulling out happiness from the pile.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes, I wasn't going to just linger on that point.

RUTH MARCUS: So, the negativity is totally justified. David mentioned 68 percent. The other number in there was 51 percent who thought there was less discussion of issues. I don't know where the other percentage is, because it was a remarkably substance-less campaign.

I will give you one example, the fiscal cliff. The minute the election ended, we swiveled and said, OK, so, what about that fiscal cliff? Where were the questions about the fiscal cliff during the campaign?

I will find my own bright rays of hope, though, because I think the voters are right in their assessment of this campaign. If anything, they might be too charitable.

The first is that I think every campaign, subsequent campaign picks up where the last one left off and makes up in some ways for the failings of it. And so I think we will see from voters and from us, the underperforming press, a demand for substance from candidates, those speeches that we all revel in.

And, also, I think that the one place where I do disagree with the voters is that I see a little bit more hope for compromise in the aftermath of the election than they do.

You can see it -- and we will get to that in some of our later discussion -- in some of the rhetoric of Republicans after the campaign, because what they took away and what I think both sides took away from the campaign was hearing the voters on a desire for compromise and bipartisanship and performance.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And wouldn't that be something, for the politicians to be more positive than the voters?

RUTH MARCUS: Wouldn't that be something?

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I want to ask you about the fiscal cliff in just a minute, but on the campaign, before I let that go, David, Gov. Romney had a conference call this week with his big donors in which, among other things, he said the reason President Obama won this election was because of gifts, big government contributions, money spent...

DAVID BROOKS: Programs.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... on programs, on different Democratic constituents.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you make of that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, this was a gift. It was a gift to the Republican Party, because it gave them all something to push against.

And so a number of people like Governor Bobby Jindal and others leapt to criticize what Romney had said, and said, no, first of all, we respect voters. We respect the decisions they make, secondly, that these programs are not gifts.

And I think this is important, because one of the core arguments for the Republican Party this campaign was, you got big government and all the people who are dependent on it, and we should go for smaller government and people not be dependent on it.

And the idea was that people who are dependent on government are getting either -- some illegitimate thing. But pushing back on Romney, the undertone of what Jindal and others have said is that, no, government programs that help people succeed, help them rise, those are not illegitimate. Those are legitimate things.

And so I think it represents -- or potentially represents -- a way for the Republican Party to slightly alter their attitude about government from a crude position that all government programs are bad to a more nuanced position that some programs actually do help people and we appreciate those programs. And so I do think it is the beginning of a shifting in the party, at least potentially.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you explain what Romney said?

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: Well, you could go back to that 47 percent video.

He does seem to have this view that is really fundamentally, as David said, as Gov. Jindal said, disrespectful towards voters. It believes that voters vote only because you dangle shiny baubles of government programs or other handouts or benefits or policies that they favor in front of them, and they immediately vote in favor of that.

And I think voters, sometimes to the frustration of Democrats, have voted against their economic interests, have voted against some of their own interests. Voters are much more complex than Governor Romney was giving them no credit for.

I also think it really confuses pandering and catering to voters with how with substantive policy-making. Governor Romney looked, for example, at what the president did on giving the children of illegal immigrants a way of staying in the country and just saw it as a gimme, you know, gift, bribe to the Hispanic community.

I look at it -- I think David probably looks at it too -- and I think it is good policy, humane policy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it's something that certainly has given folks something to chew on for the next few days.

But on the -- but, just quickly, David, on the fiscal cliff, which Ruth raised a minute ago, there was some positive noise coming out of the congressional leadership today after the meeting in the White House. Does it look like they could actually agree?

DAVID BROOKS: I remain a pessimist on this one. You know, I do think the Republicans are in a tough spot. The public is against them on raising taxes on the rich.

The way the fiscal cliff is structured, they're at a severe disadvantage. So, they're in a spot and they're showing some flexibility. They just lost an election.

Nonetheless, I think the president is driving a hard bargain. His attitude and I think a lot of Democrats' attitude is, they pushed us around. We have got the advantage. Let's push them back.

And I think that will yield some short-term benefits. I think President Obama is going to end up asking the Republicans to capitulate. He's going to give them no easy path to yes. He's going to ask them really to humiliate themselves by agreeing to tax rate increases that they have said no to again and again.

Nonetheless, he will probably win that, just because of the way the landscape really does favor him.

What it will hurt is a long-term effort to really solve our fundamental problems. Raising taxes on the rich closes the deficit by a little, but not very much. We need a big solution. And if we go to a war over this, I'm afraid that will make the bigger deal, which we need, very hard to get down the road.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that what you see happening?  

RUTH MARCUS: Well, I share some of David's concerns. And I do think that we just need to prepare ourselves. On the way to the fiscal cliff, we're going to be on a fiscal roller coaster.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: And it's going to look absolutely terrible and dire before it gets solved, if it gets solved.

But there is -- it's going to -- there are going to be numerous moments where it looks like as if they can't bridge the gap. It is clear that the president, despite his words of conciliation and I'm open to compromise, if you have an idea, bring it forward, I will take a look at it, the administration is fundamentally convinced that it can't come up with the revenue that it believes it needs without raising tax rates.

I -- the reason I'm somewhat optimistic is I am hearing so -- I have been on the phone all day with senators of both parties and House members of both parties.

And I'm hearing so much more flexibility from the Republican side than I am used to hearing, not -- on two ways, first, that we can have revenue, and not revenue from the magic elixir of growth, but real, scoreable revenue, you know, from -- hopefully, from their point of view, from broadening the base, which is, by the way, a great idea, but also that raising tax rates is not the Republican red line that I was worried that it might be.

And so I do see -- I do see a path to a solution.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you're hearing...

DAVID BROOKS: You could argue, if they know they are going to capitulate at the end, they might as well capitulate in the beginning.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: And so there is some possibility. I still think they are asking a lot.

And I still think, when we get to the ugly phase -- and there will be ugly phases -- there are two ways of doing business in Washington, the boring deal-making phase where everybody lowers the temperature, or the circus phase, when it becomes an economic culture war.

And I'm afraid, when we get into the turmoil, the circus will come to town, all the talk radio people, all the TV people will be on a furor, and then things will spin in a very bad direction.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, just quickly, I want to ask both of you about the Benghazi -- the latest on Benghazi. Former CIA Director David Petraeus went to the Hill today, talked in private to two congressional committees.

There is an outcry from several Republicans for an investigation, David. But there is pushback from others. But the other thing I do really want to get to is what is going on in Israel with the Palestinians. So...

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Well, first, on Israel, I want to know what the Israeli strategy long-term is. I want to know what they think they are doing, how -- they're in this moment in the middle of the Arab spring. How does the attack they are doing tie into a long-term vision of some future for the Middle East?

I see the reason for the attack. You don't want to get bombed, but you would like to see some political vision going more than a month or two ahead. And that is absent. You have got Hamas there.

To me, you want to show the non-Hamas Palestinians some opening, so they have an incentive to break with Hamas. Israel is certainly not doing that. I understand the defense. I don't understand the political strategy.

RUTH MARCUS: The thing I find most interesting about what is happening -- obviously, what happening in Israel, what is happening in Gaza is terrible for the people involved, the innocent civilians who are being killed on both sides.

But the most interesting thing that I think it will raise for us and help answer for us is, what is going to be the stance of the new Egyptian government? It's -- last time -- the Egyptian government has traditionally played a calming, brokering, somewhat peacemaking role. What is President Morsi willing to do? What does he feel that he has the flexibility to do? What can he do?

And, here, the U.S. government can play a helpful role, because there are things that Egypt -- as with Israel, there are things that Egypt wants from us, not only U.S. aid, but help in getting this IMF loan.

And I think, however this is resolved, because it's not going to resolve the long-term problem, perhaps it can help clarify, hopefully in a good way, the Egyptian role. It could open up and just shatter that long-term linchpin of stability in the Mideast between Egypt and Israel.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But do you see a role for the U.S. in the short-term?

RUTH MARCUS: Yes, in making -- in explaining quietly to Egypt that essential nature of keeping the peace treaty with Israel and calming down the situation, and probably the same quietly for Israel, which has, of course, bigger news that it has from the U.S., which is to say Iran.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Yes.

And I would say I think Syria still remains the most fragile thing. The explosion of Syria, that would really spill into everything else.

And so our role -- I don't know what our role is in Syria, but I have a feeling our attention will be focused where Margaret -- Margaret is.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes. Her reporting was excellent earlier tonight.

The two of you are excellent. Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, thank you both.

Topic 1: Super PACs. The Sunlight Foundation reported this week on return on investment of all the outside spending groups. It's worth a look.

Topic 2: Mark Shields and his uncanny ability to do long subtraction on-the-fly, which neither Brooks nor I seem to have. (But then that's the difference between growing up with calculators and...not.) I reference another touchstone -- whether or not you grew up in an era when Snuffleupagus wasn't visible to anyone other than Big Bird.

Topic 3: The Los Angeles Bryants, err, I mean the Lakers fired their coach after a lousy start. Eventually there was a Bieber reference. I'll leave it at that.

Have a great weekend.

Joshua Barajas shot and edited this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

We have seen you earlier this week, because something happened on Tuesday.

MARK SHIELDS: It did.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But we wanted you to come back on Friday.

So, before we talk about the election and the fiscal cliff, Mark, this bombshell today that CIA Director David Petraeus stepping down after acknowledging an affair, once, what, the brightest light in the United States military.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I mean, the flag officer of his generation, really, I think it's fair to say.

And when people start talking about you running for president, it is, in itself, a great tribute. But I do feel badly. I feel this is a man who has given 35 years, more now, two years at the CIA, of his career, of his life for his country in public service.

And one of the -- Ronald Reagan said a lot of things, some of which were wise. And one of the really dumb things have said is that the best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away. Well, David Petraeus and a lot of other people in civilian and military really great minds and great public servants.

And I just want to kind of think about that right now and be grateful for the service he's rendered to his country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A stunning thing.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I saw him a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him about what it was like to be at the CIA. I know he had loved the military and loved his service in the military.

I was just curious what he thought. And he spoke about the people in CIA in such awestruck terms, their quality and especially the idea of they are all doing it in secret, and no will ever know what they do, and sort of that admiration for the service, which he embodied.

But, you know, it's a -- I think the Greeks understood this, that the very qualities that made him a great general make you a charismatic hero. And that attracts people. And it also, you know, being a charismatic hero for so many years, you probably get a little puffed-up vision of yourself as well.

So, this is an old story. And so he -- I think, in general, if he hadn't been head of the intelligence agency, he could have survived this. But when are you head of the CIA, this is not permissible. And so I'm confident he will go on to do something important. And, you know, one of the things he spoke about was maybe running a research group. And he has a Ph.D.

And I think that would be a useful way to spend his life.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We heard the tribute to him from the folks, the gentleman, the colonel who Ray interviewed a moment ago.

So, let's go, let's talk about this issue that the president spoke about today and Speaker Boehner, the budget, the taxes, the fiscal cliff.

Mark, the president, it seems to me, is drawing a line, as he has before. And he said, whatever it is, it has got to include taxes on the wealthy. The speaker is saying exactly what he did before, it can't include taxes on the wealthy.

So where do you see this going?

MARK SHIELDS: I see it going to demolition derby.

I mean, we're in a little bit of a game of chicken right now, with the date pending at the end of year, and with a lame-duck Congress, with members who are leaving, who were defeated, who are retiring. But I think there's very few things we could say came out of this campaign of 2012. I mean, there weren't any nine-point programs by either the president or Governor Romney.

But no one can argue that Barack Obama didn't stand clearly and unequivocally for raising the taxes on those earning over $250,000, just as Mitt Romney stood for repealing Affordable Care Act. Those were sort of the two linchpins.

So the president does have, I think, a legitimate point of view. The speaker acknowledges that we're going to have to raise revenues. And I thought the conversation between Bob Corker, the Republican from Tennessee, and Ben Cardin of Maryland, just both reelected, was the most encouraging that I have heard in a long time.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Corker put it in terms of closing loopholes.

DAVID BROOKS: Right, that the Senate is not the problem here. If it goes up to the Senate, we would have a deal.

And I do think there is room for revenue. There is a distinction that Boehner makes between raising the rates, which the president wants to go up to 39.5 or 39.6, and keeping the rates the same, but closing loopholes to get more revenue that way out of the rich.

You can't really get as much revenue that way. But -- so there is some room for a deal. I'm just struck by how complicated it is. You know, Corker kept talking about entitlement reform. And he's right. That's absolutely necessary. But that is a phenomenally complicated thing to do.

And then on the other side, to close loopholes or even to raise rates, you probably have to do some big tax reform. Well, in 1986, when they did tax reform, you had some incredibly skilled legislative craftsmen, Bob Packwood and Danny Rostenkowski, who also had their personal failings.

But it took them two years. And these are the people at the top of their game, and in a non-polarized body. And so I'm just struck by the incredible difficulty of what's ahead of us. And so I'm a pessimist. I think we're going to go over the cliff, at least for some time. Everybody's taxes will go up. And we're going to -- they're going to play some real brinksmanship.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But is it made any easier, Mark, that the president was reelected? And, as you are suggesting, he did have a mandate on this particular question.

MARK SHIELDS: I think it does.

I think the president has a tactical advantage, Judy. And that is, you have to understand this about Republicans. Ronald Reagan did sign, in fact, 11 tax increases while he was in the White House in his eight years. But he had -- you know, he was Mr. Conservative, so he was given some latitude.

George Herbert Walker Bush, president 41, facing the deficits, really ballooning deficits of the time, unprecedented deficits, collaborated with Democrats in Congress and with some Republicans and passed a tax increase.

He paid dearly for it. The country got fiscal health out of it, but he paid. He got a primary challenge and he got the wrath of a lot of the base of the Republican Party, and he lost reelection.

Bill Clinton then came and again to restore fiscal, to sustain fiscal health, increased taxes, without a single Republican voting for it. And what happened? He paid a price. The Democrats lost control of the Congress and for 40 -- after having it for 40 years in 1994.

And the lesson that was learned was learned by Bush 43, who came and cut taxes twice. Now, under Bush 41 and Clinton, we had sustained economic growth and fiscal sanity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And higher tax rates.

MARK SHIELDS: With higher tax rates.

Under Bush 43, with two tax cuts, we had an economy in torpor and we doubled the national debt. And -- but it's become an article of faith -- and David can explain it -- that Republicans, that, you know, you don't go near a tax increase of any sort.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. I'm thinking about the word torpor. I haven't heard that in a little while.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: First -- couple things to say.

First, we had -- marginal rates have been -- over the last 100 years have been all over the place, up to 90, 70, and basic revenues have been the same. They have been around 18 for basically decade after decade. So there has always been a way to get around the marginal rates.

Second, I actually agree with Mark on this one. The idea that business is booming when the top rate is 36, but would collapse at 39, is just not supported by any actual evidence. And so a marginal rate difference of that much, I don't think would make a big difference. And if it was up to me, you would go up there.

When you get around 45, 50, then you really are setting in some perverse incentives. So I basically agree that it wouldn't be that economically harmful. But it is an article of faith that the government is already too big. And Republicans don't want to give more.

One of the reasons, I should say, I think I'm pessimistic is not only because the Tea Party is still there, and they're still pretty good at posing -- putting primary challenges to Republicans, but this time even though the president I think does have somewhat of a mandate, the left is much more organized and much less willing to compromise.

So, a lot of people on the left say, A., we gave at the office. We have already had some serious spending cuts last time. Now it should just be tax revenue. The president in his Des Moines Register interview said $2.50 in spending cuts...

JUDY WOODRUFF: For every...

DAVID BROOKS: ...for every dollar in tax revenue. I really do not think the Democratic Party is going to accept that ratio. They are going to want 1-1 or 1-0. And so I think a lot more Democrats are willing to walk off the cliff.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And so what does that mean?

MARK SHIELDS: I'm not sure they are. David may well be right.

I will say this. The president does have a real tactical advantage, I mean, because Republicans have all signed this pledge, and they are against it. If we just go to the 31st of December, taxes automatically increase. So then whatever he came in with a plan, Republicans could say they are voting for a tax cut...

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: ...when he comes in and then with closing the loopholes.

I think the initiative has to be with the president. And it has to be in total collaboration with the Congress, and that's both parties. It is not just the president and the speaker or the president and Harry Reid or -- but it's got to be Republicans in the Senate. It's got to be Democrats in the House.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Basically saying, we will let the Bush tax cuts expire for the middle class and anybody...

MARK SHIELDS: Let them go up. And then they go up. And then you come in and you are Lochinvar. You are writing a tax cut, even if it does close a lot of loopholes.

And Bob Corker made the point, although it's not enough to raise revenues, but you make people high income choose what they want in the way of their tax expenditures. Do they want to give it all to the universities, their alma mater, or do they want to give it to medical science in charitable form, or their church, or do they want to, you know, buy that new Mitt Romney house in the West Coast?

DAVID BROOKS: Can I just make one point that will be germane to a lot of viewers, I think?

One of the likely ways to close loopholes, you don't tell people which loophole you are going to close. You say you can deduct up to this amount.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: And so my big fear is, people will take the mortgage deduction, but there will be no money left over for the charitable deduction.

And charitable giving, giving to PBS will just plummet. And I think that is a real danger that people who care about private philanthropy in this country should be thinking about over the next year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that is a formula, again, we heard Senator Corker talk about, putting a cap on it.

So before -- we have got a few minutes left. But I want to show something to our viewers. On the day after the election, the president went over to his campaign headquarters in Chicago, and he talked to the volunteers. I guess some of them are paid. Some of them are volunteers.  

And I want to show people what he said and get comments from the two of you. Here is what the president said on Wednesday.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I am absolutely confident that all of you are going to do just amazing things in your lives.

And, you know, what Bobby Kennedy calls the ripples of hope that come out when you throw a stone in a lake, that going to be you.

I was just looking around the room and I'm thinking, wherever you guys end up, in whatever states, in whatever capacities, whether you're in the private sector, or the not-for-profit, or some of you decide to go into public service, you're just going to do great things.

And that is why, even before last night's results, I felt that the work that I had done in running for office had come full circle, because what you guys have done, the work that I'm doing is important. And I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of all of you and what you...

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, you could see he was tearing up there, David. That's not a side of the president he's shown very much of before.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Some of it is fatigue. Some of it is from stress. But I think the big thing there and what he talked about at the beginning before that little segment was his own life, as a young community organizer, not doing so good, but really being affected by that process and seeing people out there that were sort of doing that course, though, as he said, more -- smarter and more effective than him.

And so what was nice about it was is, it wasn't, oh, we won this election, yahoo, we won. It was about the life courses of the people in that room, the young people in that room. And it was a very nice moment as he talked really much more about them than about him. And I think that's really passing it on, generativity, that got him moved.

MARK SHIELDS: A couple of quick points, Judy.

First of all, we don't see an emotional Barack Obama. He's a very cool customer in public. We see the big smile. And we see occasional pursed lips to express either solemnity or displeasure. But that's about the register and the range of emotions we have seen.

What we saw there, I think, yes, partly fatigue, but obviously authentic and genuine. After -- at that event, talking to one of the young people there who I know who has worked the last 18 months, 18 hours a day, seven days a week, the president went to each of the people, 700, individually and hugged and shook hands with each one of them.

And it was quite an incredible moment for them. But, obviously, this was something that he felt, as well as just expressed verbally.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We only have a little bit of time. But why do we think he hasn't shown that side of himself before?

DAVID BROOKS: He's never been the angry black man.

I mean, Barack Obama rose to political prominence and success in this country controlling his emotions. He's got a wonderful smile. And the smile is quite disarming and engaging and really winning.

But he's never -- he doesn't show the dark side. There's never the scowl. There's never the loss of temper, even very rarely raising his voice. And I think it had to be just an act of incredible discipline as part of his political career.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I guess I would -- I think he has a writer's personality. And I mean that as a compliment, actually, that it is a little detached and a little more aloof. But it was nice to see it there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Extraordinary piece of tape.

And David Brooks and Mark Shields, an extraordinary week from the two of you. Thank you. We will see you next week.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark and David keep up the talk on the Doubleheader, recorded in our newsroom. That will be posted at the top of the Rundown later tonight.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And finally here with us, where they have been during the campaign, the conventions and last night, election night, are syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Gentlemen, I know you have had a good night's sleep. I saw you just a few hours ago.

David, you're not in Washington right now.

Mark, you are.

But welcome back.

Let's start out -- let me just start out by quickly asking you, David, what more is there to be said about last night and the way everything unfolded?

DAVID BROOKS: Don't mess with Big Bird. It was the revenge of PBS.

No, I'm not sure that was a voting issue.

You know, the fundamental issue is that this is a country that is an incredibly diverse country that has changed demographically, a lot more Latinos, a lot more Asian -Americans, a lot more single women, a lot more single men, and a lot more college-educated men. And, culturally, the Republican Party didn't move.

And so they have got to do what every single company in the country basically, every single university has done, adapt to the new reality. And so they got have to put up a story that will appeal to these groups, these new and rising groups.

And the problem they're going to have is they're going to want to say to themselves -- and already a lot of Republicans are saying to themselves -- well, we have just have to fix immigration reform, our policy on immigration reform. That's necessary, but not sufficient.

They have to come up with a story about how you make it in America. If you look at the Pew surveys of the Latino community, of the Indian-American community, Asian-Americans, ferocious commitment to work, at the same time, a real belief that government helps them be industrious.

And so the Republicans have been to be focused on work and say, we will accept those parts of government that will help you rise and succeed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, what did you take away from last night and what the voters were saying and who they were?

MARK SHIELDS: I took away Virginia, where if you just looked at the black vote and the white vote, it was the absolute split between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

But, because of Latinos, because of Asian, and because of other nationalities, Barack Obama carried the state. And that -- David's point I think is a point well taken.

It's a changing American electorate. It fell to 72 percent white, the electorate, which is still whiter than is the nation as a whole because of participation.

But I think this -- the change -- this was the last election that the Republicans had a chance. I mean, we can argue whether it was voter repression, but it certainly was made more difficult to vote if you weren't a white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, native-born. And I think this was the last gasp of that constituency.

And at the same time, Judy, one other quick thing, and that is, there's a terrible temptation on the part of the press after an election. If you win, you're a genius with an I.Q. north of 300. If you lose, you're somehow a dullard who probably isn't able to tie your own shoes.

The Romney campaign did several things right. The Obama campaign did several things wrong.

The Obama campaign did more things right, and they won, and they had, in the final analysis, a better candidate than did the Romney campaign.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Keep it in perspective.

So, David, yes, the electorate is changing, but this president comes back to a divided Congress, a Republican House of Representatives, a Democratic-majority Senate, a few changes here and there. What is really different now?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, in some ways, astonishingly little.

We have spent $2 billion and we basically switched maybe four seats, maybe a few more, a couple in the House, a couple in the Senate. So we have got basically the same cast of characters. It was throw the bums back in.

And so we are still fundamentally a very evenly divided, very polarized country.

And so some of the issues that we have just been talking about, like immigration reform, I think on the elite level, there's a lot of just bipartisan desire to do something.

But there is a lot of hostility to the idea of giving people a path to citizenship. There's a lot of belief and a legitimate belief that immigration does lower wages for working-class native-born Americans.

So, there is going to be a lot more hostility because of what's out there in the country.

And then, on the fiscal cliff, I believe John Boehner is absolutely sincere that he would like to do something with Obama. And Obama said he wants to have a plan with 2.5 -- $2.50 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. That's the basis of a plan. Can they sell it to their bases? Much harder to know.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, Mark, the president did win reelection. He has won, barely, but he did win a majority.

MARK SHIELDS: He sure did.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He's been sent back to office -- I mean, into office for a second term. Doesn't that count for something?

MARK SHIELDS: It counts. It does count for something, Judy. And the president is the only nationally elected officeholder.

Each of the people who is elected and will be taking the oath of office on the first day of the new session is himself and herself elected as well. I just hope that the Republicans would learn, and the Democrats as well, from the great lesson of Ronald Reagan.

To be a rhetorical grave-robber and take one of the great conservative icon's words, he said, somebody who is with us 80 percent of the time is our 80 percent -- he is our ally and friend, or she is our ally and a friend, now that there are so many women in the Senate, and not our opponent, not a traitor.

And I think this has punished the Republicans in their nominating process. I think, sometimes, it punishes the Democrats, this idea of ideological purity.

And I hope that that can be somehow submerged as we try and fashion and craft compromises that are difficult of the thorniest of problems for the -- Congress has confronted in recent history.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, David, do you think that's possible? Do you think that is going to happen?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's possible.

It's a huge advantage that Boehner and Obama have already been through this once. They have got the policy documents. They are sitting there in the White House. They're sitting there on Capitol Hill. They have got all the statements, all the e-mails. So, they have been through this.

They have made some big mistakes in the negotiating process. But, so, the fact that they have already done this and failed is a huge advantage as they go forward.

The stumbling block last time -- there were a couple -- one was the gang of six. The senators came in out of left field and sort of messed everything up.

But the big stumbling block is, neither was sure they could sell it to their own bases.

And, already, on the liberal side, there are a lot of people mobilizing against the grand bargain. And on the Republican side, whether a lot of those House Republicans will go for it, I think that's still unknown.

But I do think there is a sincere desire. And there's a path forward through tax reform to get some revenue. There's a path forward, and we can be more optimistic about it now than we could -- we have been able to for the last two years. That's for sure.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see it?

MARK SHIELDS: This is the one time, Judy, in 2012 -- Gordon Lichtman, a lawyer friend of mine from New York, pointed out to me -- I hadn't thought of it -- that Barack Obama has never run as an incumbent.

Every time else, he has been an insurgent, whether it was challenging Bobby Rush, whether it was running for the Senate, running for the presidency, taking on the Clinton legend and all that. He ran as an incumbent in 2012. It was a different kind of campaign. It was his record that was being scrutinized, examined.

Now he never faces the electorate again. That's an advantage. He can be the lame duck or he can be playing to history. And I think his motives will be seen as less political and more open and more in the public interest. And I think that gives him an advantage in presenting his case now. He's not worried about the next election.

And nobody could accuse him in 2012 of having been a party stalwart. He ran as an independent contractor. He won. And he won an impressive majority victory.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying maybe that will make a difference. Well, we will talk to...

MARK SHIELDS: I hope.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I heard you say that.

We will talk to the two of you on Friday. Welcome back. Get some rest between now and then.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields and David Brooks, thank you.

GWEN IFILL: You can find two other NewsHour regulars who will weigh in on last night's results online. Presidential historians Michael Beschloss and Richard Norton Smith offer their perspectives on our website.

Mark Shields and David Brooks met up Friday in the NewsHour newsroom for a final pre-election Doubleheader. I filled in for Hari Sreenivasan, who is hosting the PBS election special, "What's at Stake," which airs at 9 p.m. ET.

We started off with the guys sharing which Senate contests they will be watching Tuesday night. David picked Indiana, and Mark agreed, with both saying a win by Rep. Joe Donnelly looks more likely. The Washington Post on Friday moved the race to "lean Democratic," one indication that Republican state treasurer Richard Mourdock's rape comments have made a difference on the ground. David noted that if Mourdock loses, it's another Republican seat that would have fallen thanks to the tea party.

For our "politics of sport" section, we talked about the traditions of big sports games predicting presidential winners.

And don't forget the "study" showing college games can actually give candidates a 1.6 percentage point boost come Election Day. Call us skeptical.

Joshua Barajas shot and edited this video. Special thanks to Reporter-Producer Tiffany Mullon and Desk Assistant Jeremy Blackman for sports research.

Please subscribe to the Morning Line and follow Christina on Twitter.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

It's just another Friday. Not much going on.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Not at all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Not at all. So, we just heard that report, David, about immigration, the issue in Iowa.

How do you see the difference between the two candidates on immigration on the Latino -- what is of concern to Latino voters?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Of course, it's tough to know.

Barack Obama gave an interview to "The Des Moines Register" I guess a week or so ago which he thought at the time was off the record, though it was subsequently made on the record, and we now know what he said.

And one of the things he said was that he has plans for a second term. The first is to get over this fiscal cliff. And the second is to do a big push on immigration, so, a budget deal, then immigration reform. So, to him, immigration reform is the second big item on the agenda.

And yet it has barely come up in the last three or four months. He has not raised it, for obvious reasons. It is a tough issue. And Mitt Romney has not raised it, for obvious reason. And so I think, if Obama is reelected, I'm not so sure with Romney -- I think my suspicion is, if Romney is reelected, it is not going to be a top priority.

MARK SHIELDS: Reelected?

DAVID BROOKS: Elected.

MARK SHIELDS: Elected.

DAVID BROOKS: I just gave him a cold chill.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: So if -- maybe in the second term, it will be.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: If Obama is reelected, it will be.

And I suspect they would be happy to go back to what George W. Bush was trying to do a few years ago. But it is a tragedy that we haven't really talked about it, because it is much harder to get something passed if it hasn't been talked about.  

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see it?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the Republican Party is cursed. And it's cursed itself.

They spent 22 debates, presidential candidates arguing about who was the most against or the strongest for building the biggest, widest, most daunting, even electrified wall to keep people out. And Mitt Romney ran considerably to the right of Newt Gingrich, of Rick Perry. He was the most strident, round them all up and toss them out of the country.

Then the parties spend energy, time, and political capital to pass repressive legislation in state after state to make it more difficult to vote, primarily for Latinos. And, third, they don't campaign in their neighborhoods or their community. They don't ask for their vote.

And, finally, Mitt Romney, in his unguarded moment at Boca Raton in his 47 percent speech taped without his knowledge, says that he would be better off if he could run as a Latino because his father was born in Mexico.

I mean, if you are a 19- or 20-year-old Latino, this is going to cost your support for the Republican Party for a generation. They have ignored George W. Bush. They have ignored Jeb Bush, his brother, who has been quite enlightened on the subject and said, you cannot, in this country, continue to win only with white people's votes.

And I just -- I think that the very enlightened voices I heard in Iowa in the piece, you know, I hope the Republicans heed them, because we are looking at an election right now where Barack Obama will probably get over 70 percent of the Latino vote.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, a net negative for the Republicans?

DAVID BROOKS: Oh, yes, increasingly.

And I agree with the political analysis. I do think there is a pretty bipartisan, from Democrats, too, desire to close the border, to secure the border first, before they trust Washington to do anything on immigration reform.

But as far as the political prognosis goes, I don't think you have to trust me. You can talk to Karl Rove. You can talk to Ken Mehlman, anybody who has run the Republican Party over the last 10 years. They can look at the demographics.

It is pretty simple and obvious that it has just been shrinking and that, within a few years, you have got swing states -- maybe even not even swing states anymore -- New Mexico, Nevada, or Texas starts becoming a swing state in four or eight years.

MARK SHIELDS: A blue state.

DAVID BROOKS: And so the trends are just so damn obvious, but they have walked the other way.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, the campaign, the rest of the campaign, Mark, jobs numbers out today. But how do they fit in and where does this stand right now?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, don't pop the champagne. We're a long way from 5 percent.

But, I mean, the jobs numbers were better than expected, which is always good. And they were increased from both August and September. They were higher.

And coupled with rising house prices, home prices, and the confidence and optimistic index being highest, it's the highest in five years, this is all encouraging news.

I mean, it's not determinative news, but it's all encouraging news for an incumbent.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Does it affect the campaign, do you think?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I'm not sure the last jobs numbers really have a huge effect.

In 1992, George H.W. Bush had bigger jobs numbers. He had really significant growth. People's views on the economy had already been locked in. And so a lot of that is happening.

Nonetheless, if you look over the last couple of weeks of the campaign, you would have to say there have been a series of events that have helped the president, none of which are usually consequential in themselves, but together sort of add up to a "teense" of momentum.

And that would be the Colin Powell endorsement, the Bloomberg endorsement, the jobs numbers, a whole series of things that have sort of gone the president's way.

And so, if you look at the polling, there has been a slight bit of movement nationally, rock-solid wins -- or not wins -- but leads in the swing states.

And then the final thing -- and this is something you should really look for in a reelect race -- what's the president's job approval number? That's something that is just a very good indicator. And I looked this morning. And it was 49.5 or so, if you average a bunch of polls together.

That's good enough. That's putting you very close to being good enough to win. That's about where...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Under 50 percent?

DAVID BROOKS: It's under 50, but George W. Bush was very -- was more or less around there when he got reelected. So, it is possible to win with a 49-plus job approval number.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see it? This is the week of the storm. The president was off the campaign trail for a few days.

MARK SHIELDS: Sure. Two things.

I think David's right about the job -- the president's job approval number. In fact, rather than averaging polls, I just went and looked at the same poll. Wall Street Journal/NBC poll asked the same question in 2004, just before the election that they did in 2012.

The incumbent president then, George W. Bush, had a 49 percent favorable job rating, 48 percent unfavorable. Barack Obama is 49 percent favorable, 48 percent unfavorable.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Exactly...

MARK SHIELDS: Exactly the same. Right direction for the country, 41 percent then, 41 percent now.

And would you be pleased, positive if the president were reelected? Fifty percent said yes then; 50 percent say yes now. So -- and George W. Bush won with 50.7 percent.

I think the biggest event, quite beyond either party's control, was obviously the tragic Sandy storm, and the death and devastation it left in its wake.

But, at a time -- Judy, only elected executives, mayor, governors or presidents, are legitimate spokespeople at a time like this.

It is interesting. I didn't hear a single Grover Norquist small-government champion at the time when the storm comes down and we're looking for help, we're looking for whether it's bringing in C-110s to -- C-130s to bring in equipment, to de-flood the city, all the way around.

And I think the president stepped up, and he got an unanticipated validation from Gov. Christie, one of Mitt Romney's strongest supporters, the keynoter at the convention, who said the president has been excellent. He's been -- gone beyond. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to work with him, that FEMA had been phenomenal.

And you will recall, at the 2000 debates, first debate, Jim Lehrer asked George W. Bush, tell us one good thing about Bill Clinton. FEMA and James Lee Witt. And what was the tragedy of George W. Bush's administration? FEMA and Michael Brown at the time of Katrina.

Barack Obama rebuilt it. And we are seeing the work and we're seeing it respond.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think the storm could be making that much of a difference in the perception of the president?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think the perception, and you see activity, and you see the Chris Christie thing. People are saying, why is Christie doing this? Is he thinking about his own presidential ambitions or his own reelect ambitions?

I don't think there is anything of that.

When you are the governor of a state, a state you love that is in your heart and soul, you feel an intense sense of stewardship. And when it gets walloped by a storm, the politics just seems irrelevant, I think, at that point.

And Christie has said this: I don't care about the politics. If he is going to help me with my state, he is going to help the people of my state, then I'm grateful and I'm going to work with him.

And so I think it is as simple as that.

And I think you can -- perfectly willing to hold the view that he's not a good steward of the economy, he's not good on budget negotiations, but he's good on this. And we worked together on this. I don't think that is politically inconsistent.

But, nonetheless, as a gestalt about where the election is, it's people being reasonably confident. I think Bloomberg, Christie, Obama, they have emerged reasonably well out of this.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, just three more days until everybody goes to vote who is going to vote -- there has been a lot of early voting.

MARK SHIELDS: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, Mark, what are you looking for in these last few days? What are you listening for out there?

MARK SHIELDS: I guess, you know, Ohio as much as anything, Judy.

I mean, I don't think -- I have listened to the windup speeches, the closing arguments. They haven't made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Maybe I'm missing something. Mitt Romney began by telling us he -- I believe in America. He's ending it, I believe in America.

Barack Obama says, I represent change, and don't go back to where we were.

Romney is sort of the candidate of restoration, and Obama is the candidate of continuation. But I -- you know, I don't -- there is no defining event, I guess, or statement that I'm looking for in the last couple of days.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What are you hearing from the candidates?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I thought Mitt Romney gave maybe the best speech of his campaign today, sort of a little late. It was in Wisconsin. A number of people said it was a speech he should have given at the convention. It was more eloquent.

It wasn't an original, new argument. But it was a more eloquent, a more beautifully phrased speech of why do you think the next four days years will be different than the last four, and things about business, the PTA doesn't have a union, but President Obama will -- he will really step short on education reform, because he has to answer to his political supporters.

So, it was familiar arguments, but phrased more beautifully.

Will it swing votes at this late date? Sort of dubious. But there have been occasions when votes have shifted in the last three days. I think of the DUI story which hit George W. Bush in 2000 -- the first -- 2000.

MARK SHIELDS: 2000, yes.

DAVID BROOKS: I think that did shift. But it takes something sort of extraordinary.

MARK SHIELDS: The thing I think that will stand out, if we hadn't had Sandy, would have been the story of the week is the really shameless ad that the Romney people put on in Ohio that Chrysler was going to ship its production overseas to China, in spite of the fact that China -- that Chrysler has already committed $500 million of creation of production in Toledo and 1,100 new jobs there.

But it was just -- it was really scaring people, you know, that somehow the president had been part of bailing out Chrysler and GM in order to ship those jobs and the production overseas to China.

That was -- and he got attacked by the most Republican papers in the state, including the Youngstown Vindicator, as just being an indefensible -- and I just think it had to be the product of a conclusion that the auto bailout really was a mountain too high for him to climb, and they had to somehow destroy Obama's credibility on the subject.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the Romney campaign is saying the ad is accurate, that it is factual.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, they seem to be the only ones, though, to be honest saying that.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And so one of the questions of the campaign is, does mendacity hurt you? Has anybody been hurt by doing a dishonest ad? So far, we haven't seen all that much evidence.

I do think there is some evidence that people are just getting sick of it. They are saying this is the most dishonest race we have seen, though it is possible that some of the very early ads that Obama ran against Romney last summer could turn out to be the crucial things that turn the whole election, and I think a number of them were as dishonest, not maybe as dishonest as this one...

JUDY WOODRUFF: About Romney's business.

DAVID BROOKS: ...about Romney's business career and what he was allegedly closing, when he had left Bain long before, and things like that.

But I hope somehow we learned a lesson that dishonesty doesn't pay. But, so far, it's hard to see. No one in the campaigns has drawn that lesson. They have drawn the lesson dishonesty pays.

MARK SHIELDS: This is one that brought General Motors and Chrysler off the sidelines. Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Chrysler, and GM saying, this is beyond anything in partisan politics.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we don't want the two of you to be on the sidelines. You are going to be right here with us next Monday, next Tuesday, as long as it takes until we know what the result is.

Mark Shields, David Brooks.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Mark and David keep up the talk on The Doubleheader, recorded in our newsroom. That will be posted at the top of the Rundown later tonight.

In our politics of sports section we talked about the San Francisco Giants, who as of this writing, are heading into game three of the World Series with a 2-0 lead. Both men wanted to root for the underdog Detroit Tigers but we all pandered to our wonderfully supportive audience in the Bay Area. Thanks KQED viewers.

Have a great weekend.

Justin Scuiletti shot this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:

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Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

MARK SHIELDS: Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, we just heard the professor say, Mark, whoever wins Ohio is going to win the election. Is that how you see it?

MARK SHIELDS: I never argue with a tenured professor.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: No, I think he's absolutely right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I often argue with tenured professors. But this one happens to have stumbled upon the truth.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: No, I do think it's very hard to see Mitt Romney winning without Ohio. It's possible to see Obama winning. But Romney really has to win.

And the paradox of the election, one of them, is, if Barack Obama does win, he should give Steve Rattner, who successfully ran the auto bailout, some sort of high-level government job, or at least a big case of wine to thank him.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: And the second real irony is that if Mitt Romney wanted to carry Ohio, he should have given a lot of money to the environmental groups who were trying to stop fracking.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: The fact that they were unable to stop fracking means that the job growth in -- especially in Eastern Ohio has been pretty sensational, not only the energy products itself, but because of the cheap energy it's generating, you are beginning to see fertilizer plants and other things like that.

So, you are getting some pretty broad prosperity out of that, and more to come. And that is as a result of the shale gas.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, you know that state well. Does one candidate or the other have more going for him at this point?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Judy, I mean this is the year, truly. You can forget the Big Apple and forget big D. and L.A. It is Chillicothe, Zanesville, Steubenville that really is -- this is the big casino of this election.

I don't see how either one of them wins without Ohio. I will be very blunt about it.

And I think that what is interesting about Ohio is it is whiter and older than the country. And that's been -- the Republican growth area has been among white, more white and older voters.

And so it is sort of counterintuitive. Ohio has one-sixth the percentage of Latinos or Hispanic voters than the country does at large. I mean, it doesn't have the minorities that you associate with sort of Democratic growth or the Democratic coalition.

And I really do think David's right. Steve Rattner did a great job, but it was Barack Obama. And Mitt Romney was wrong. And they're still on the defensive about this.

As recently as Thursday night in Defiance, Ohio, Rob Portman, senator from Ohio and the surrogate debate substitute for President Obama, introduced Mitt Romney, saying let's get this straight.

Mitt Romney was the first guy -- Barack Obama took GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy. Mitt Romney was for guaranteeing loans. I mean, they're still trying to explain it.

And he's very much on the defensive. So Obama is running better with whites and white males in Ohio than he is elsewhere, in large part because of the auto bailout, and they have got a great ground game in Ohio too.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. We should emphasize it's not a slam-dunk for Obama.

MARK SHIELDS: Not at all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes. Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: If you look at the polls, it's pretty -- it's been a very steady two-point advantage in the state for Obama.

And one of the oddities of the race so far is that the national numbers, probably a slight Romney favorite right now. The state numbers, like Ohio, an Obama favorite.

And I don't know too many experienced political hands who expect that to continue, that you get a disjunction between the national numbers and some of these swing state numbers.

Usually, they come together. It's possible that if -- say, Romney gets a plurality or a majority of 50.6, it's possible to see him losing the Electoral College. If he's up over 51 or 52, it's hard to reconcile a two- or three-point win with an electoral loss. The numbers have got to be pretty close.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because the two are more likely to go in tandem is what you are saying.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I mean, it's a crazy system. And David and I can have that debate. This Electoral College is indefensible.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We can talk about that next week.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, in the off-season.

But let's understand this. There is a Republican advantage in Ohio. Ohio is more Republican than the nation. And, internally, there is one Democratic statewide officeholder, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. All the other offices are held by Republicans. Republicans have strong majorities in both houses of the state legislature.

And the congressional delegation is 12-4. The lines are drawn 12-4. It may end up 11-5 because Betty Sutton may win a district where she's running against Jim Renacci. But that's -- it's 12-4.

So it's a Republican state going in. The irony is for Mitt Romney is that John Kasich, who you saw in the piece, the governor...

JUDY WOODRUFF: The governor.

MARK SHIELDS: ... is extolling all this good news that we just heard.

And the Romney people don't want to hear that, because part of their message is, we have got the economic key, and it can't have already happened in Ohio under Barack Obama's watch.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let's broaden it out.

You said that -- you were talking to David about the difference between Ohio and the rest of the country. What does it look like across the country right now in this campaign?

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: You know, I have read so many very confident people over the last 24 hours totally confident that Obama is going to win or totally confident that Romney is going to win.

I don't think we can know. I think something is going to happen in the last three days. There will be a shift and something will happen. I do think there has been a contrast in how the campaigns are operating in the last couple of weeks.

And Romney's trying to go big, with big change. Paul Ryan gave, I think, quite a good speech on social mobility and poverty earlier in the week. Romney gave what was billed as a major speech on the economy. I'm not sure how new it was. But they are trying to go big and talk about big issues.

The Obama campaign, I think, is going small and going even deeper into microtargeting. They have got this Lena Dunham video targeted to single women. They have got a series of more tightly targeted. They're doing the binders. They're still doing the binders full of women, so much more negative stuff.

So, I -- personally, I don't know if it will be effective. Personally, I like the way the Romney campaign has tried to go a little more substantive, while the Obama campaign is still, I think, overwhelmingly negative.

MARK SHIELDS: I just come back to the Walter Mondale race with Gary Hart. Where's the beef?

I have heard Romney talk about big change, big change, big change. I know he is large bills, but I didn't know he was big change.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: This is just -- I mean, it's just an adjective and a noun.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: As far as Paul Ryan's speech on poverty, I mean, Paul Ryan's budget, 62 percent of the cuts in his budget came from programs for poor people on increment maintenance.

I think it's wonderful to talk about social mobility. I think it's great to talk about community. But, I mean, when the rubber hits the road, who's going to pay for it? I mean, who is going to pay the cost?

I mean, there wasn't a single pit of burden imposed by Paul Ryan in his budget on those -- the luckiest, the most advantaged, the most privileged of all of us in this country. So, I mean, yes, you can say he is taking on entitlements or whatever else.

But, you know, let's not talk about poverty, when in fact we're cutting the lungs out from those at the very bottom.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, you are saying they are walking away from what they...

MARK SHIELDS: I just -- well, listen, the Obama campaign has been silent on the subject of poverty. I mean, middle class is their mantra.

And I think David's point about they're single issue is absolutely true. I think that they have been one-dimensional in their approach to women. It's been all about reproductive rights.

They haven't talked about the issues of equal pay. They haven't talked about our daughters' rights, I mean, who might be flying a helicopter in Afghanistan or be a special education teacher or be...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, why do you think they're doing that?

MARK SHIELDS: I think -- I think they are very much in the segmentation of the electorate. I really -- I mean, that's -- they were going to assemble a majority this way. And I don't -- I think -- to me, you know, if it wins, then I guess it's a successful strategy.

But the problem it is, Judy, when you do win, what have you won? I don't think either of these campaigns has been constructed, that if they do win, they're going have any kind of a mandate they can point to.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

I agree with some of Mark's criticism of the Paul Ryan speech. But at least it was sort of a substantive speech. I went back.

I said, am I imagining the way old campaigns used to be? I went back and looked at some of the 1980 speeches, or the debates, Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan.

They actually were talking about the major issues of the day, the Soviet Union, and inflation and stagflation.

If you look at the major issues of the day, well, widening inequality, well, that has not really been talked about. A wage stagnation, that has barely been talked about. Global warming, you go down the list of the big issues of the day, and this -- this campaign I think more even than real-life campaigns, it's not imagining some...

... campaign, even more than recent campaigns, has ignored a lot of those issues.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you think that is?

DAVID BROOKS: Because the consultants have taken over.

And I think both of the candidates are not particularly sincere, especially Mitt Romney. And so they're not running on things that sort of motivate you to get into public life. They have decided they have got strategies of how to do it, and the candidates are playacting out those strategies.

MARK SHIELDS: I challenge either one of them to tell -- President Obama doesn't have grandchildren -- but tell his daughters what he is proud about in this campaign, I mean, or to Mitt Romney, that huge, handsome, wonderful family of his, and say, this is what grandpa stood for in 2012.

Judy, when you win -- whatever you say about Ronald Reagan -- and I said a lot -- but he ran on double the defense budget, cut taxes by a third. So when he won in 1980, there was a mandate to do it. And I don't see any mandate coming out of this election, unless I'm missing...

DAVID BROOKS: And even -- one of the things that offended me this week is Barack Obama running -- Obama running an ad, I think in Ohio, that ends with, Mitt Romney, he's not one of us.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. That was...

DAVID BROOKS: And that's code. That's an old code language.

And, you know, you just -- as a sense of principle, you just don't run that ad with that sort of slogan. And so, it is again part of the dispiriting part of...

MARK SHIELDS: And we saw the debate on Monday night.

We saw the old Mitt, who said, Iraq war, I was for it, I supported it then, I support it now. What does he say on Monday night? We don't want another Iraq. I'm not Dick Cheney. I'm George W. Bush.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And a lot of talk about peace.

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, peace, peace, peace, the new Mitt. We had the new Nixon in '68.

I mean, the new improved Mitt, he did the same thing on Iran sanctions. He was talking about an aerial strike. He was talking about an invasion or an attack upon Iran as recently as months ago.

And now he is saying, no, I'm all for sanctions. We have to do it peacefully and diplomatically. So, I mean, who is this man? Who are you? You know, that is...

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

And I feel like we're coming to the end of this campaign with the two large questions unanswered, crucial questions. Would Mitt Romney buck the Republican Party at any time if he were elected president? And, secondly, does Barack Obama have sort of a second wind, a second burst of policy creativity?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, he did put out this 20-page statement of his.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, but that was a rehashed statement of small things that -- frankly, if you go to his book that he wrote in 2007, I bet most of those things are in that 2007 book.

And so they're fine. They're, you know, community colleges, more math and science teachers. I'm for all that kind of stuff. But it's not exactly a huge agenda.

And so you trying to -- you're a voter. You are trying to imagine, what's the next four years going to look like? I think it's very hard because those big questions have been unanswered.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it's only 10 days to go after this. And I was going to ask you about the ground game and all kinds of other things. But this has been better than that, better than the ground game.

DAVID BROOKS: It's important for us to vent emotionally.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields, David Brooks, thank you both.

And there is more politics talk with Mark, David, and Hari on The Doubleheader, recorded in our newsroom. That is going to be posted at the top of The Rundown later tonight.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: And with that, this final debate between President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney is done.

We watched them shake hands with the moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS. And I'm sure any moment now, their wives and families will come on stage to give them a hug and wish them well.

GWEN IFILL: They greet each other as if they like each other, even though, from watching 90 minutes of that exchange, it didn't much look like it, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It sure didn't.

Gwen, this was a vigorous debate over a -- shall we say, a small list of countries, most of which are located in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and there at the end a little bit on China.

I think we did hear do two clear, direct-to-the-camera closing statements from these candidates. And I think we saw, Mark Shields, a more, shall we say, restrained Mitt Romney than we have seen in previous debates.

MARK SHIELDS: No, I thought Mitt Romney played the hurt, attacked party, and played it quite well.

And I thought the president went after him. He was quite aggressive right from the outset. You have got -- you're fighting Cold War policies of the 1980s, the social policies of the 1950s, the economic policies of the 1920s.

And I think that was the president's strategy, to rattle him, and to expose the inconsistencies, the sort of the Etch-A Sketch that has been part of the litany of accusations against Mitt Romney.

GWEN IFILL: Mark Shields, syndicated columnist, is joined by David Brooks from The New York Times.

What did you think about the competing visions that the two visions that the two candidates laid out tonight?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, first, I wrote down, who is the challenger and who is the incumbent?

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Because, from the style, you would think that Mitt Romney was the incumbent and in the lead and that Barack Obama was the challenger and behind. He was much more aggressive, trying to upset the race.

So, stylistically, that was sort of the most interesting part. Substantively, if you actually listened closely, there is a lot of agreement on Libya, on Syria. I thought they were equally demagogic on China, and even on Iran...

GWEN IFILL: On Afghanistan.

DAVID BROOKS: ... on Afghanistan, just tremendous amounts of underlying disagreement.

Politically, I guess I would have to say it was sort of a tie, maybe because Romney looked equally presidential. You give a slight edge to Romney if you were thinking about political polls. I can't imagine it will have a tremendous effect on the polls.

GWEN IFILL: Did these candidates tonight have to -- did they have different goals tonight? Mitt Romney, who came with the wind at his back, was trying to maintain that. And what was Barack Obama trying to do, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think Barack Obama was reflecting the reality of the polls, that it's been slipping and heading in the other direction, trying to change the trajectory of the race.

And I thought he made a strong case against Mitt Romney. He was obviously not hesitating to go personal upon him. I agree with David. They felt they had to disagree, even though there wasn't disagreement.

But one thing they didn't disagree on was they argued over who cares more and loves Israel more. I got 22 mentions of Israel, zero of Europe, zero of Asia, other than China. Japan went unmentioned. India went unmentioned. You know, it was just...

GWEN IFILL: If you start the list, you to go to Mexico, every place in the continent of Africa.

MARK SHIELDS: The entire North American continent.

DAVID BROOKS: Mali -- Mali had a very good night, though.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, Mali got mentioned.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mali came up several times.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David, it did seem to me that Mitt Romney had a clear strategy of not trying to get rattled -- not only not get rattled, but to be agreeable, to be, as you said a minute ago, presidential, above the fray.

I think I counted at least three or four times where he said stepping back here to take a bigger picture.

DAVID BROOKS: Partly, he's got to distance himself, frankly, from the Bush administration, some perception, oh, he is Republican, he is going to get us into a lot of wars. He mentioned peace more than George McGovern probably did in equal debates.

Then, a lot of the swing voters are women. And he doesn't want -- he wanted -- he doesn't want to feel too aggressive and too hostile, so he wants to feel somebody who is secure, someone you can trust.

And then, finally, he just wants to seem presidential. And so those were obviously the three goals. And there is one thing. If you give Mitt Romney some goals, he will pretty much stick to them.

GWEN IFILL: Was it me, Mark, or was the president also trying to stick it to Mitt Romney on several different occasions, most notably the horses and bayonets line?

MARK SHIELDS: Horses and bayonets.

Mitt Romney -- we're basically ending two wars, and Mitt Romney wants to increase defense spending. And there is just -- there is a certain disconnect there with -- I think with most Americans that would seem to make sense.

And his complaint is that the Navy will be smaller. And the president, I thought, it was -- depending upon how you feel, was it too mean, was it was too snide, or was it, in fact, a pretty devastating rebuttal of Romney?

And the fact the president understated the number of nations -- I think Jane's military guide is that we spend more than the next 15 nations.

GWEN IFILL: He said 10 nations.

MARK SHIELDS: He said 10.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: But, you know, I believe it's 15 at the last count.

And Romney -- the interesting thing is, Romney keeps saying government doesn't create jobs, but if we cut defense spending by -- it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. So, apparently, government spending creates job if it's in defense, but not if it's in non-defense. I think that seems to be the...

DAVID BROOKS: I do think there's a defense of the Romney budget, which is, we're pivoting to Asia. That requires a fair number of ships.

We also -- and Romney made this point, which is the Middle East is sort of going into, as they said tonight, tumult many times. Tumult came up a lot.

GWEN IFILL: Yes, it did.

DAVID BROOKS: So you can't have it -- you can't be more aggressive in the face of really a deteriorating situation in the Middle East with a pivot to Asia with fewer ships. And so I do think it is intellectually defensible.

The interesting thing is how people will respond to the tone of that -- the bayonets line. I found it a little condescending. It was tough, though. I suppose Democrats will like it. Some people may find it a little condescending and mean.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, are you saying the president should have been more laid back at that point or what?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, you know, I would have tried to equal the toughness. He is tough. He's allowed to go on the attack. I would have tried to have a more positive forward vision.

I continue to think that is lacking.

GWEN IFILL: There was a big chunk in the middle of the debate, I counted it at least 15 minutes, where they weren't talking about foreign policy at all.

MARK SHIELDS: No.

GWEN IFILL: They were talking about education and energy production.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. economy.

GWEN IFILL: And teachers and automobiles, you name it. They were talking about the U.S. economy. There is clearly a method to that madness, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, no question. I mean, that is what the election is about. That is what is paramount in voters' concerns, and that is where it is going to be decided.

And I think the president, at 15 minutes after the hour, said we can't be strong internationally unless we are strong at home. And then he made his case. And we found out that teachers unions are -- if you're strong against teachers union, it's going to upset the mullahs in Tehran.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right.

Also -- also listening to this debate here with us in the studio in Washington is our colleague Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN: And I am as, again, once again on debate night, I'm here with presidential historian Michael Beschloss and our political editor, Christina Bellantoni.

The long and short of it, Christina, the short of it, the quick -- what did you -- what did you get from social media and other places?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: It is exactly what Mark and Judy and Gwen and David were just talking about. Domestic policy ended up coming up a lot, and that was something that a lot of different people were responding to.

And it was also a little different in this debate, because video played so much of a factor. There were a lot of things that the president and Mitt Romney each brought up from the past, sort of fact-checking each other, where there is YouTube video of that example. So that...

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: ... flying around.

JEFFREY BROWN: What kind of things? What kind of things?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Well, specifically what Mitt Romney said about Russia, what the president did when he went on that trip that he talked about in 2007 -- or 2008, going to overseas to visit troops as a candidate.

So, video of that was surfacing where people could actually go back and fact-check that. It was less of the "let Detroit go bankrupt" question, which is an op-ed and you -- sort of nuance there with the headline. This was an actual go watch the video.

JEFFREY BROWN: Michael, what did you hear tonight?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, presidential historian: Well, I heard something that had a lot of resonance in history, which is that incumbent presidents debating, they usually try to disqualify their opponent.

Barack Obama, I think very few people would say tonight that he didn't show himself more comfortable talking about foreign policy. He's been doing it for four years. But Obama wanted tonight to disqualify Romney as commander in chief, as sort of an amateur, a warmonger. Couldn't quite do it.

And he's in a long tradition of that. Ford couldn't. Jimmy Carter couldn't. George H.W. Bush could not 1992. They lost an opportunity to stop an opponent who was really coming on.

And in Romney's case, I think he felt that if he got through 90 minutes without -- while holding his own, without doing himself any harm, it is sort of a tacit way of essentially gaining the upper hand in this debate.

I was amazed that it took until 9:43 for him to use the words apology tour or to accuse Obama of what Democrats had been accused of by Republicans for 40 years, too much weakness. Had he been more aggressive, you would have heard that probably in the first 10 minutes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Of course, it was interesting. because this is the campaign where it was all about the economy. These are issues that rarely get much attention at all. So was there -- how did that strike you, just as you hear them ticked off and how people were reacting to them?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Well, both of them were trying to relate them back to domestic issues, as we were just talking about. And, actually, we were paying attention to this group of -- quote, unquote -- "Wal-Mart moms," a focus group that is happening out in the battleground states.

And most of the moms were responding to the domestic issues. And so this was again -- you know, as they are fighting over female voters that we keep discussing, they're trying to target those things. And I also know...

JEFFREY BROWN: So, that's the 15 minutes Gwen was just talking about that just -- targeting them.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Yes, exactly.

And Mitt Romney talked quite a bit about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, which is not something he has talked about all that much in some of the other debates. It's not something he talks about -- much about on the trail.

One thing that I noticed in social media in particular tonight was both sides were doing spin on each answer, which makes me think that it was a little bit more of a draw than some of the other debates had been, a little more clearly for one man or the other.

JEFFREY BROWN: Of course, these are also incredibly complicated issues, you know, what do you do about Syria, what do you do about Afghanistan, to get -- they don't get into ads. They don't get into the stump speech usually, and hard to get clear into a debate.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: That's right.

And so basically these candidates are trying to cast an impression, because exactly what you are saying is right. And Romney was trying to do, in a way, what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 against Jimmy Carter. There was about 10 percent undecided voters who were saying, we might vote for Reagan, we're worried that he is a warmonger. He said things. When Obama said that Romney had been all over the map, it was just what Reagan was accused of.

So what Romney was trying to do, especially with women, was say, I'm not a warmonger. I'm not someone who you need worry about as commander in chief.

JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask just you, do you -- because it is the last one of these things, right?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Right.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you have a sense, an overarching sense that these debates were more important or influential, perhaps, than debates past?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think in one sense.

And that is, when you have a challenger who is as little known as Mitt Romney has been -- for instance, you know, it's oftentimes the case that Americans have known a political figure who has been on the scene, sort of who is sort of familiar to them as a challenger. That's not true with Mitt Romney.

So they have watched him three times, 90 minutes, three debates. He had a chance to essentially say, I am a worthy alternative to Barack Obama. Hard to argue that he didn't do that.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, of course, these are, as we have talked about from the beginning, the first ones to really be taken in with several screens at a time and social media.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Exactly. And that is where it is actually a very small-D democratic. You are opening this process up to a lot more people, and particularly those younger voters.

They are getting engaged in a different type of way by following along through their own social networks, whether that's on Twitter, Facebook, or even and just watching YouTube clips later. It's very different than that traditional sitting in front of the television right when you are at home at that one point of time.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Exactly.

And, of course, we have to mention that horses and bayonets joke that we were talking about a minute ago. That, of course -- you know, no debate is complete without somebody starting Tumblr...

JEFFREY BROWN: That is the one, huh?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Right. And that is really what hit.

Also, the '80s joke that the president made, you know, the 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back. The immediate joke on Twitter was, the 1980s called. They want their joke back.

JEFFREY BROWN: OK.

Christina Bellantoni, Michael Beschloss, thanks so much.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Thanks, Jeff.

JEFFREY BROWN: Back to you, Judy and Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: Before we go back to the site at Lynn University, I want to talk to you guys a little bit about another interesting thing, which was that President Obama was -- kept saying repeatedly, you are all over the place, that you are all over the place. Every time you have offered an opinion, you have been wrong.

And, invariably, Mitt Romney's response, Mark, has been to say, you know, attacking me is not a policy, is not a policy.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. That's right.

And I thought the president made the charges. I didn't think he followed up on them. And I think, in order to do that, you have got to say, you did on this date and you did on that date. And Romney just kind of deflected it by, as I said earlier, sort of the hurt approach.

I did think that Romney's strongest argument, whether it was substantive or not, was on the -- on China. That is the fight for the Midwest. That's the fight for Ohio. And, China, play by the rules really does resonate with an awful lot of Americans. And the president was wrong when he said the Iraq-Iran war was 20 years ago.

It was 32 years ago. And, finally, I would just say that the theme that Washington's broken was used by Bill Clinton in '92, George Bush in 2000, Barack Obama in 2008. And now it's being used by -- again and resonating by Mitt Romney.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, we're going to back now to the debate site at Lynn University, where Gwen and I are joined by Ari Shapiro and Scott Horsley of NPR.

Ari, you have been following Mitt Romney. What did he want to do tonight, and did he do it?

ARI SHAPIRO, NPR: He felt like he had the momentum going into tonight's debate. And so I think he wanted to be a little bit more cautious than President Obama, who was a bit more aggressive this evening.

Mitt Romney, as you remember, had had a few missteps on foreign policy, whether it was his summer trip overseas or his initial response to the Libya attack. And so he seemed to me to be a little more cautious this evening, and also de-emphasizing the sort of neoconservative aspects of, you know, going to war, aggression, things like that, instead saying, we can't just kill our way out of these problems and we're going to be out of Afghanistan in 2014 somewhat more definitively than he had been in the past, to deflect the attacks that might have portrayed him as a warmonger.

GWEN IFILL: And, Scott, the same degree to which Mitt Romney was being, as Ari described it, was holding back some, it seemed like the president wasn't holding back at all. Was that part of his strategy?

SCOTT HORSLEY, NPR: No, he wasn't holding back at all.

And it was interesting. Even when Governor Romney was talking, the president was staring straight at Romney and just looking daggers at him, almost contemptuous of his opponent here. And I think what he was trying to do was remind people of those missteps that Romney has had during the course of this campaign.

He said over and over again that whenever Romney has expressed an opinion on foreign policy, it has been the wrong one. Wrong and reckless was his refrain.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Scott, the other thing is, I noticed the president, at one point, when Governor Romney accused him of the apology tour, the line that we have heard a lot from Governor Romney, he came back forcefully, I think in a way that we had not heard from him.

SCOTT HORSLEY: Well, you know, at first, he just sort of shrugged it off and said, look, the fact-checkers have all looked at that and said there was no apology tour.

And then, when Romney persisted, that is when the president opened up with both barrels and said, look, if we are going to talk about tours, if we're going to talk about overseas travel, when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn't bring my campaign contributors along. I didn't hold fund-raisers over there. I went to the Holocaust museum. I went to people who had been victims of missile attacks.

It was very powerful. I thought it was akin to the moment in the second debate when again the president turned on Governor Romney when they were discussing Libya and said, that is not how we behave, just a level of contempt from the president.

To some people, it will look strong. To others, it may look condescending.

GWEN IFILL: Ari, I wonder whether the Romney folks went into this debate deciding, because they would be sitting next to each other, because he had done so well in the first debate and at least, in many people's respects, in many people's opinion, did well by holding his own in the second debate as well, I wonder if they came into this deciding they were going to lean back a little bit and make this less, just look presidential and walk away from the fight.

ARI SHAPIRO: You know, I think the Romney staff, they knew that they -- the -- the recipe for success for them wasn't going to be in fighting President Obama on every foreign policy issue.

In fact, there were a lot of issues where Romney said, I agree with President Obama on drones, on Iran, on the approach to Syria and so on and so forth. Instead, they believe that this election will be won or lost based on the economy. And so you saw Governor Romney at every possibility pivoting back to the economy, back to the unemployment numbers, back to, you know, college-educated students who can't find jobs that fit their education.

They thought he needed to sort of pass the commander in chief test today. President Obama, as he reminded the audience again and again, is the sitting commander in chief. But the Romney staff thought that if people in the audience could perceive Romney as a potential commander in chief, that would be enough for them to get through this debate.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Scott, finally, just quickly, we did hear the president try several times to pivot to the economy and talk about how we need to have a strong America in order to do these other things. That had to be part of a strategy on their part.

SCOTT HORSLEY: Absolutely.

I think they -- they understand that foreign policy is not going to be the decisive issue for a lot of people. And they said, look, if you're going try to balance the budget, you don't start by adding $2 trillion to the military budget.

GWEN IFILL: Ari and Scott, very quickly, where do they go after this? Where do they go? Are they all just going to set up camp in Ohio, or are they traveling to other places?

Ari?

(LAUGHTER)

ARI SHAPIRO: Surprisingly, Mitt Romney's schedule for the next few days doesn't include Ohio. Tomorrow, he's in the Las Vegas area. And then he overnights in Colorado, in Denver. Then he's back to Nevada for an event in Reno, before going to Iowa.

GWEN IFILL: And, Scott?

SCOTT HORSLEY: And the president has a cross-country trip that is going to take him to six states in three days, including two visits to Ohio.

GWEN IFILL: Sounds exhausting.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: For you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Scott Horsley and Ari Shapiro, we thank you both for that, for being with us from Lynn University, the site of this debate.

So, as we wrap up here, David Brooks, where does this leave the campaign?

DAVID BROOKS: You know, Michael Beschloss made the point that a number of incumbents have tried to disqualify their challengers.

And it occurs to me, you can try, you can push hard, but if the challenger doesn't help you, if the challenger doesn't self-disqualify, then it is hard to make that stick. And so you look to see, did the challenger makes mistakes?

GWEN IFILL: So, if Romney wouldn't fight back tonight...

DAVID BROOKS: If he doesn't fight back, if he doesn't make any blunders, if he doesn't liberate Central Europe or that sort of thing, then I think he survives and he does reasonably well. You count this as a moderate good night for him.

And I do think he said, I'm peaceful, I'm secure, you don't have anything to fear from me. So, he at least rose to the level of being presidential.

GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

No, I thought the key point was that he wasn't -- there was nothing neocon about him. He is not talking about going to war. And, strangely enough, he had a variation of the president's strategy in the first debate, which was a little bit rope-a-dope. In other words, I'm going to clench, I'm going to agree, I'm going to cut down the differences, except when he felt that obligatory -- had to make some rhetorical differences on Libya and Syria earlier.

But there really weren't any substantive -- then he emphasized the agreement -- he, Romney. And I think, in that sense, the clench worked for him and his manner worked for him. I mean, he was steady. In the second debate, there was moments at which I thought his petulance -- he was about to lose his temper. There were physical interchanges between him and the president.

And tonight, boy, he was a lot more disciplined.

GWEN IFILL: Win, lose or draw?

DAVID BROOKS: Draw, with maybe a tint of Romney advantage, just a tint.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But it does raise the question if there's anything the president could have done to draw Romney out. And it sounds like the answer is no. He came not to be drawn out.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, no.

In other words, the only thing I think he could have done was to do what Romney does from time to time, which is to question and say, now, wait a minute, Governor. You said this on this date and you said this on this date. Which one is the real Mitt Romney?

I mean, and that -- I think that was the only thing he could have done further. And Romney just didn't go for the bait.

GWEN IFILL: Mark Shields, David Brooks, I hate to cut you off, but we have got to go.

With that, we end our special report of this final debate between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney.

The "NewsHour" will have extensive coverage both on air and online in the last two weeks of this closely fought campaign, including reports from key battleground states and our usual in-depth analysis of the issues shaping election 2012.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And speaking of online, our analysis of tonight's debate continues with Christina Bellantoni on our after-hours live-stream.

We are going to see you again here tomorrow night at our regular "NewsHour" time.

For now, I'm Judy Woodruff.

GWEN IFILL: And I'm Gwen Ifill.

Thank you, and good night.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

GWEN IFILL: Voters get one last chance tonight to see the president and his Republican challenger meet face to face. They will go at it over foreign affairs, with 15 days until Election Day.

As the candidates prepare for their third and final debate in Florida tonight, fresh polls show the presidential race closer than ever.

President Obama and Governor Romney will be seated for tonight's discussion of foreign policy at LynnUniversity in Boca Raton.

Entering tonight's face-off, the two are now in a dead heat nationally. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows them tied at 47 percent among likely voters. Another Ohio survey, this one conducted by Quinnipiac University and CBS News, show the president leading 50 percent to 45 percent. He had been up 10 points in last month's survey.

The president also appears to be losing his edge over Romney on the question of who would be a better commander in chief. In the NBC poll, his incumbent's advantage has now narrowed from eight points to three.

With both candidates preparing for tonight's meeting, their running mates spent the day on the stump. Vice President Biden was in Ohio.

VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: We went from losing 800,000 jobs a month when we took office to creating an average of 167,000 jobs a month for 30 months in a row. And they still say America is in decline.

Ladies and gentlemen, you know better than I. This is preaching to the choir. America is not in decline. Here's what it is. Romney and Ryan are in denial.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

GWEN IFILL: And Republican Paul Ryan flew to Colorado.

REP. PAUL RYAN, R-Wis.: Mitt Romney and I are not going to run away from these problems. We're going to run to these problems to solve these problems because they get out of our control. That's what leaders do.

We're not going to kick the can down the road. We're going to lead. And I will tell you what. We're not going to spend the next four years blaming other people for our problems. We're going to take responsibility.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

GWEN IFILL: With 15 days left, both campaigns are burning through their considerable cash reserves.

The Democrats spent $111 million in September, mostly on ads, leaving the president and his party with $149 million cash on hand. Romney and the Republican National Committee, meanwhile, spent $55 million last month and had $183 million left at the end of September.

Here with us now to preview what to expect tonight are syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

If I had said to either of you six weeks ago that everything in this election would be so tight that it would depend on the third foreign policy debate, what would you have said to me?

DAVID BROOKS: Surprise, and advantage Obama.

Now, I should say I think the underlying tenor of the past week has been shifting toward Romney. I think there's been a slight momentum shift toward the challenger over the last week. And that puts a little more pressure on Obama.

Nonetheless, I do think this is his natural home turf. He's thought about foreign policy a lot more than Mitt Romney. I think it's his chance to really deliver a serious blow.

For Mitt Romney, the idea I think for tonight is just to come out with a tie, just kind of look presidential. Don't scare anybody. Just, you know -- he has much lower ambitions, I think.

GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that, Mark?

Is it more important for whoever wins this debate tonight to come out with a detailed grasp of foreign policy or just look like a president?

MARK SHIELDS: I think first of all, Gwen, there's competing theories on what President Obama should do.

One argument is that you take the question and you just turn it right back to domestic, that for America to be strong in the world, we have to have a strong, vibrant economy at home and a growing economy and better education. And that's what I'm about.

The second is to trump Mitt Romney's very limited credentials and his stumbles, quite frankly, whether it's Russia or Great Britain and his own trips abroad and try to exploit that.

But what's -- David is right.

The underlying tenor of this campaign, the internals, if you would, of the polls, have been moving in Romney's direction. I mean, he's now seen as better on the economy. He's now seen as better on the jobs. All these numbers are up in that Wall Street Journal/NBC poll you just mentioned before the first debate.

I would say right now the president has enormous responsibility tonight.

And that is, it's the Goldilocks factor. He was too cool in the first debate. He may have been a little too hot in the second debate. I think he's just got to strike it right here tonight. And I think that is the key for him.

GWEN IFILL: They're going to be seated at a table much like we are, so that might be -- like, I can reach out and touch you if I wanted to, which probably might not be a good idea in the campaign -- at the debate tonight.

But does it matter that they talk about America's longest war, Afghanistan, or talk about Iran and whether we will negotiate, and talk about these granular foreign policy issues which are on the table?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, it's very Middle East- centric, I think a too un-Europe centric, a little too un-China centric for my taste, very Middle East to AfPak centric.

I still think the president has to go -- he has chosen for reasons which mystify me a campaign centering on disqualifying his opponent. I think he should have done a lot more positive about his own agenda, but he made this call.

I think if the momentum is shifting toward Romney, he has to double down on that. He has to say, this guy is really dangerous. He's really contradicting himself.

And even though they are sitting down in a less combative format, I do think he has to remind people, we really can't trust Romney, because that's the strategy they have chosen in this race. I think it's probably a little too late to change it.

MARK SHIELDS: I think Romney -- the mystery to me is, he's really relied upon I would say the discredited neocon position that George Bush listened to, which really resulted in the Republican repudiation in 2006.

That wasn't a defeat based upon the economy in 2006. It was America's dissatisfaction and really anger with that foreign of Bush's in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

And I think the more he sounds like maybe we ought to get tough with Iran or even think about going in, I think it puts him in a position where it strengthens the president as the grownup.

DAVID BROOKS: I agree with that, too. I think people don't want somebody who is going to be super aggressive, maybe threatening wars. They know that foreign policy challenges are filled with uncertainty these days. There's no really good option in most problems.

They want to show somebody who can show a little discretion. And Romney would be making an error to be super, super hawkish.

GWEN IFILL: First debate, we said Romney needed a second look. Second debate, we said Obama needed a second look.

And now we're in a third debate. Who needs the second or third look the most tonight?

MARK SHIELDS: The president does.

And I think it was said to me this weekend by a very wise person that we will look back on the first debate of 2012 the same way we looked back at John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, that that established Richard Nixon as the equal of -- Jack Kennedy as the equal of Richard Nixon, which he hadn't been. Nixon had been more experienced.

The first debate, the implications of it, fallout from it remain profound and real and have shaped this race.

DAVID BROOKS: And then Vice President Biden, I think, won that -- their debate. I think Obama won this last debate.

And so far, if there's an effect in the polls, it hasn't been visible, to me at least. That first debate had a huge effect, the last two not so much.

GWEN IFILL: So, who they speaking to tonight? Are they speaking to the undecided women in suburban Columbus? Are they speaking to the nation at large? Who counts tonight?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, they're speaking -- that's the great thing about it. You're speaking to everybody at the same time.

The president's problem is -- one of his problems is that he has an advantage, a lead of five points in that NBC/Wall Street Journal poll among registered voters.

But they're tied among those most likely to vote. It's a problem of excitement, of generation, of convincing his people that their vote matters, that this is an important election, that he's going to make a difference and really to gin them up.

DAVID BROOKS: And I'm fed up with microtargeting. I think they have spent way too much time microtargeting.

There's been a loss of vision for both candidates.

And so if I were counseling the two guys, I would say, don't worry about the undecided voter in Columbus. Just speak your mind and give people a sense of who you are.

MARK SHIELDS: But you have got to raise the stakes of this race, I think, in an inspiring sense.

GWEN IFILL: Well, we will be watching to see whether they do any of what you say tonight.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: David Brooks, Mark Shields...

MARK SHIELDS: If they're smart, they won't.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: ... thank you so much.

Mark and David will be back with us for the PBS NewsHour debate special at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

And, online, our live stream will offer analysis and samples of the NewsHour's extensive reporting on foreign affairs. Also, our live blog will provide reaction from both sides on what's said on the stage in Florida tonight.

We also talk about the Tigers over the Yankees, and whether the candidates were sincere in their politeness at the recent Al Smith Dinner.

Have a great weekend.

Cassie M. Chew produced this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:*

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Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight, to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, David, three days after the second debate, how does it look?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, at the start of the first two debates, Obama had this huge personality advantage over Romney, personal likability.

Debate one, that goes away. Debate two -- there's a strong momentum toward Romney. It's back.

It's not back, but we have sort of hit the equilibrium, where they are both quite popular now. And so now it's raw, who is going to be a better president? There is not a big personal difference. There is policy differences.

And so after the second debate, where people liked Obama's presence, they liked his forcefulness, Democrats were cheered.

And so now he goes into the third debate and the final whatever it is, 19 days, with slight structural advantages. People are looking at every poll every 13 seconds. But that's too much information. He's got a slight structural advantage.

JEFFREY BROWN: It is interesting. Do you buy it, that they are both popular now? Because months ago, when we were sitting here, we would say there wasn't much enthusiasm for either in a way, you know?

MARK SHIELDS: No, the enthusiasm is certainly up there for Romney at this point. And I don't think you can overstate the importance of the first debate in the election of 2012.

By his unilateral disarmament or disengagement, call it what you want, the president enabled Mitt Romney to expunge all the negatives that the Obama campaign had put on the air about him and to establish himself, to make a dash for the moderate middle, to create the new old new Mitt, or the old new Mitt, with sort of an enlightened or progressive position on regulation, on health care, and all the rest of it.

And once that's established, OK, and not contradicted, it just gives him an advantage. That was 70 million people. There have been 70,000 commercials run in Las Vegas, 70,000, but not -- I mean, you don't begin to approach the same number and the immediacy of content as you do in a presidential debate.

So Obama had a tough job in the second debate, Jeffrey. He had to, first of all, reassure his base of own supporters that he was the guy they remembered, that they admired, they had worked for, they hoped for. And I thought he did do that.

In Romney's first debate, because Obama wasn't even there, he was very even in disposition and tone. And I think in the second debate, Obama got under his skin, and he became peevish, he became waspish. There was a petulant side to him, a little garrulous.

And I think that and -- that and sort of his outburst and certain hectoring of the president, I think it hurt him. I don't think it in no way approached the decisiveness of the first debate. I mean, the first debate was a rout. But I think this was a solid Obama victory.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. Well, so now we move to one more, Monday, on foreign policy.

Now, beyond a few areas, have we had much of a deep discussion about foreign policy? What are you looking for in this one?

DAVID BROOKS: We have had a discussion of Benghazi, and I suppose we will go over that ground again.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But what I am looking for is not a rehearsal last four years.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: I think what each candidate is going to try to do and should try to doing is not so much define what are they going to do on Iran or what are they going to do on Benghazi or what are they going to do on China, how hard are they going to bash China.

It's to lay out a vision that reflects their personality. Frankly, I think very few people are voting on foreign policy this year, but I do think they are voting on vision for the country and what policy reflects their personality.

Dick Morris, God love him or whatever God wants to do with him, did have a nice formulation, which is that character -- or policy is as an illustration of character. And how you see America's role in the world is going to be reflection of your character.

So, I'm actually looking for forward-looking broad vision, more than who said what about Benghazi on what Sunday show.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: I stand second to nobody in my admiration for Dick Morris and David Brooks. It is an interesting couple.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: But I will say this. I think it's more about values than it is about character.

And I think the principal value right now -- or the principal temptation for Gov. Romney, as the newcomer, as the challenger, is to go in and try to dazzle with figures. Nairobi, of course, is the Kenya, and they have got a transportation problem. And the G8 nations, I will name them for you.

JEFFREY BROWN: Showing his bona fides.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. And I think that is a mistake.

I agree with David that a debate of Benghazi does neither of them any good at this point. And I think it particularly complicates Gov. Romney's life, because in order -- Hillary Clinton, who is the most popular public office holder in the country, OK, beyond anybody, even more popular than her husband -- I mean, together they are off the charts. But 70 percent -- and she's more -- exceedingly popular with women.

JEFFREY BROWN: A celestial couple, huh?

MARK SHIELDS: Exactly.

She took up -- and she stood up and took up responsibility this week. Now for Romney to go after Obama on Benghazi, he's got to go through Hillary Clinton.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: That is tricky.

And I would say this about the president. Leaders don't understand voters really admire and appreciate when someone steps up and says, it's my responsibility. It happened on my watch.

JEFFREY BROWN: It doesn't seem to have stopped them. Even today, we saw Paul Ryan talking more about Benghazi.

MARK SHIELDS: I know it. I know it. But I don't think the president -- I think the president, the other thing he ought to do is stand in defense of Susan Rice, not give the appearance -- that she was operating on the information she had. Our information was wrong. This is it, but, I mean, to disabuse sort of conspiracy theorists, but also to stand up for one of his own.

I don't think, quite frankly, he has done that.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you think? Is this hurting the president, as it kind of drags on?

DAVID BROOKS: I personally don't think so. I think the hardest argument -- the argument that they could make, the Republicans could make of the president is, you spent four or eight years criticizing Dick Cheney for misleading the country based on false intelligence, and now you're misleading the country based on false intelligence.

So, it's obviously not the same size issue, but that's basically what they did. They had bad information. It was politically convenient for them, and they repeated them. I don't think many people really blame them. They were given what the CIA -- David Ignatius is reporting the CIA told them, this is what happened. They repeated it. It was easy.

I generally think, don't get in that. Obama's weakness on foreign policy -- his strength is that he does what's politically astute and he is always cautious. He's not throwing the U.S. into anything big, whether it's Syria or Iran. He's trying to do enough, but not to commit resources.

And so it's a bit of a passive foreign policy, I would say somewhat realistic, but passive. And so Romney has some room there to say, here's my vision. Here is what America is going to look like in the 21st century.

And I think that is where he should go, rather than re-litigate.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, let me switch gears a little bit to the targets of the campaigns, because this was a week where we just heard over and over again women, women, women, women. The first -- the debate, of course, we heard about women in binders.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

No. Well, in the second debate, that's right. And I would say this, that because of the first debate, it gave Mitt Romney a chance to appeal to particularly suburban women, who have been an awfully important constituency of the Democrats.

How important? I would just point out this to you. In neither debate did the president mention minimum wage, collective bargaining, union, working poor, the economic bread-and-butter issues of the Democratic Party, the New Deal and post-New Deal Great Society were based upon.

What did he -- five times, he mentioned Planned Parenthood. I mean, there was a sense that there is a cultural divide now in the Democratic -- that this is a cultural constituency on social issues you are going to pick up on, whether it is abortion or same-sex marriage or contraception.

And so it is a real difference as they go after the women and I think the women's vote and particularly the sense that they were relying upon this. And whatever -- whether it's even, as some polls have suggested, a couple of polls, but there's been a loss of support. And I think there will be a major, major, almost frenzied effort to recapture women from the Obama campaign.

JEFFREY BROWN: And are they both appealing to the same group of women or what do you hear and who do you hear them getting through to?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

We should say that women are more likely to vote Democratic, but it is still going to be like 53-47.

JEFFREY BROWN: Women are more likely to vote, period.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And they're more likely to vote -- decide later than men.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But these are generalizations in their splits. But within -- if you are going generalize about women as a group...

JEFFREY BROWN: Why not?

DAVID BROOKS: And why not?

JEFFREY BROWN: Because here we are.

DAVID BROOKS: It's easy for us to say.

There are a couple of different demographics. It seems to me all that talk about Planned Parenthood appeals more toward college-educated, upscale suburban women, where it seems to me the core of this electorate is what the pollsters call waitress moms, who are high school-educated moms making, say, $38,000, $40,000 in Ohio, maybe with a kid.

And so those women have slightly different concerns, a little more concerned about economic security, a little more concerned about education.

But Clinton was the master at talking to this demographic. And basically he painted a picture of, you're trying to do your best, you're trying to raise your family, but you got all these hostile forces coming into your home and trying to mess up what you are creating. And so I'm going to protect you from that.

And even things like the V-chip, if you remember that back in Clinton's days, that was part of this strategy, school uniforms. I'm helping you get the order that you have built. It is not going to be messed up.

That was a great strategy because that appealed to real anxieties. I'm not sure either of these candidates have that sophisticated an understanding of what is driving so much anxiety, especially among that demographic.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, last couple minutes, and I wanted to save a little time to talk about George McGovern. He's in hospice care. His family has put out a statement that he is no longer responsive. He's at the end stages of his life, was the statement.

Mark, your thoughts.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I should acknowledge that I was an admirer of George McGovern. And I worked in his 1972 campaign. But I think what's misunderstood about George McGovern -- and to define him by that loss is to really be unfair.

He went off to war as a 22-year-old from South Dakota. He flew the B-24, which is a big lumbering four-engine craft. It was vulnerable to German aircraft. He did 35 combat missions.

And Stephen Ambrose, the poet laureate of American military heroes, said George McGovern was as great a patriot as he ever knew, that he had the trust, confidence and love of his crew. And his acts of courage were just enormous.

And I think that we owe him an enormous debt. Stephen Ambrose said, I just want to show you that don't have to be a hawk to be a great patriot. And George McGovern was that. He was a great patriot.

He devoted his energies and time to feeding the hungry and to trying to stop the United States from two wars we shouldn't have gone into, Vietnam and Iraq.

And I just think he should be remembered for that leadership, rather than just the 1972 race.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

And some of the descriptions of the planes he brought back home after they had been shot up were incredible descriptions of things he did. He was an incredibly decent man throughout his Senate and even the presidential runs, just incredibly nice.

If I could make a cheap political point, he wrote a piece in 1992 for The Wall Street Journal. After he retired, he bought a B&B, a bed and breakfast, in Connecticut, Stratford, Conn.

And he wrote a piece saying, you know, if I had been a small businessperson before I was in the Senate, I would understand what a pain all these regulations are.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: And he said, I would have been a better senator if I understand what happens when you are trying to live under all this.

So that is maybe a political point.

JEFFREY BROWN: But is there a political legacy that either pro or against -- reacting against still or that comes down to liberalism today?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I would say a lot of the people he brought into the party in 1972 went on to reshape the Democratic Party to this day. And...

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: Bill Clinton among them.

DAVID BROOKS: Exactly, and Gary Hart and other people.

And, so, I think he had a huge legacy within that -- within the party.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

You would agree?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

No, I would agree. I mean, he proved that you could be peaceful and a patriot at the same time, and that the two weren't in any way mutually exclusive.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Mark Shields, David Brooks, thanks, as always.

And Mark and David keep up the talk on The Doubleheader, recorded in our newsroom. That will be posted at the top of the online Rundown blog later tonight.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

GWEN IFILL: And with that, the second debate between President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney is done, as the families, the wives -- that's Ann Romney there coming up to greet her husband.

And, of course, we're going to see, I imagine -- at the same time, the president is making his way toward his wife, Michelle Obama. And they're supposed to go and also greet members of this town hall.

I'm -- we're going to bring in here with -- I'm here with Judy Woodruff, of course.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Gwen, I think we saw a very different debate from the first presidential debate. This is a president who displayed more energy.

You heard him use the word fight there. But this is a president who seemed to be fighting for the job of president for a second term. And that was something that was, I think, very much in question after the debate that we -- that happened in Denver earlier this month.

And, David Brooks, how did you see it?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I guess, if we go by winners and losers, I guess I would have to say Obama won this debate, more poised.

I thought Romney gave some good answers. There were two really good answers that Romney gave on the -- what the last four years have been like, differentiating himself from George W. Bush.

But, in general, I thought Obama was more poised, more fluid, more natural, had some moments, some television moments, objecting to Mitt Romney's characterization of his actions after the Benghazi attack. A series of moments.

The crosstalk between them, I thought he seemed a little more in control. So I would think that, in the balance, as these things are judged, the edge tonight would have to go to the president.

GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't know what the masked man was who showed up tonight at Hofstra, but he wasn't there in Denver. That's for sure.

I thought the president was a lot more forceful, a lot more aggressive, no question about it. He had certain specifics to achieve. He mentioned Planned Parenthood five times. He was obviously unnerved, his campaign had been, by the numbers that women voters who had been his staunchest supporters were -- had somehow softened in their support for him.

I thought that Mitt Romney's best answer by far was the one that Mr. Jones asked about why President Obama deserves a second term. And he made the case why President Obama didn't deserve a second term. I thought that was his strongest.

But he -- on the taxes, let's be very frank about it. He is not convincing. He's not persuasive, Mitt Romney. I thought the president was very aggressive pointing out you can't abolish the estate tax, keep the Bush tax cuts, cut taxes across the board by 25 percent, eliminate dividends and capital gains taxes for most people in the country, and somehow not reduce revenues.

And that just isn't plausible. It isn't believable. And I thought from that point forward, the president really had the upper hand and was more aggressive.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think -- I want to ask both of you...

GWEN IFILL: We neglected to introduce our handsome and talented duo...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields.

MARK SHIELDS: Michael.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: Mark Shields, syndicated columnist, and David Brooks of The New York Times.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we're continuing to see the pictures at the debate site.

But, go ahead, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Can I tell you what the lead is -- OK -- what the lead is? Women in binders.

I mean, that is -- that will be the clip that will be seen around the world, Mitt Romney. And the interesting thing about that is, he told the story about the women in his Cabinet, was that was affirmative action. That is affirmative action.

He got all these men. And he said, no, no, can't we find some women? Go out and find some women. That's the definition of affirmative action.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: And I will be interested to see The Wall Street Journal editorial page attack him on that tomorrow.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about, David and Mark, what the president had to say about a second term? Did you get a clearer sense tonight of what he's going to do?

DAVID BROOKS: No. No.

And this is the core of vulnerability. Each side has a core vulnerability. Romney has the vulnerability that a lot of his numbers don't add up. And, as Mark said, I thought it was frankly nice to see a politician pay for that. And he paid for it tonight.

Obama's vulnerability, he doesn't have much of a second-term agenda. Romney didn't make him pay for that tonight, particularly, and neither did any of the questioners. And, so, in that way, the president got off a little lighter on his core vulnerability than the Republican.

MARK SHIELDS: I hate to say I agree with David, but I do.

I mean, the president has yet to tell us how his second term would be different from his first term and it will be better, the country. I thought he overused the first person singular pronoun, the president did. It was "I, my administration, my people, my ambassadors."

I mean, there wasn't enough "we." I don't think -- strangely, he didn't connect well in the room with the people. I didn't think either one of them did. There was no Clintonian moment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There was not a Bill...


GWEN IFILL: Yes, there was a lot of crossed arms.

But I'm really curious, because this debate was so different from the other debates we have seen, with people in the audience, with walking around. They seemed to almost get into it a couple of times.

How did that strike you? I was a little uncomfortable, I'll be honest.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I think that was -- I thought you were wondering, is somebody going to throw a punch?

GWEN IFILL: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: It got hot. They argued with Candy Crowley a little too much about the rules. Never do that.

And I thought those -- at those moments, I thought they both looked bad, when they were trying to talk all over each other. The alpha male competition works when you're talking about something. When you're just trying to be Mr. Alpha, it looks boyish.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We're going to bring in our Jeffrey Brown right, now who is joined by some friends of ours -- Jeff.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

I am joined by presidential historian Michael Beschloss and our political editor, Christina Bellantoni.

The short and long of it.

Start, Christina. You were looking at the "as it happens" take from social media. What was jumping out?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Yes. We were, in particular, looking at women this evening.

And one of the things that really stuck out was something that they just mentioned, of course, with this comment about women full of binders. That was -- it's obviously some pretty colorful language.

(LAUGHTER)

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Or binders full of women. Excuse me.

And, you know, that became sort of an instant meme on Twitter. But it also was something that women were responding to on Facebook in personal posts with their social networks. And we also were tuning in to a group of Wal-Mart moms that were in a focus group that were sending us from dial tests from that all night long. And that was the thing...

JEFFREY BROWN: What were they saying? What were they...

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: A couple different things.

They were not all that interested in the response that the president gave about how Mitt Romney and George W. Bush were different, whereas that really trended on Twitter. A lot of partisans were very exercised about that.

And, also, they were very frustrated by the working of the ref with Candy Crowley and talking to her about not being enough time. That is what women didn't like to see tonight.

JEFFREY BROWN: Michael, the longer view here. What echoes did you hear? What Jumped out at you?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, presidential historian: 1984, Ronald Reagan as president was debating Walter Mondale, famously, bad for him, turned in a performance that thought that -- many thought that President Reagan had lost it. He just wasn't with the intensity that he had had before. People wondered whether he was up for a second term, a lot of the same things that were said about Barack Obama.

The thing is Reagan in the second debate, after the first one had caused him in some polls to be actually tied with Walter Mondale, reversed the damage, swept it away.

So I think -- with this performance tonight, I think Barack Obama may very well do the same thing.

JEFFREY BROWN: What about the format question that they were all -- the guys were just talking about with especially some of those confrontational moments?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Yes.

You know, this is the sixth town meeting debate. And the idea of this in the first place when it was started in 1992 was that it's one way of making sure that at least you have got one debate where they're kindly to each other because they're not going to confront each other.

This was the iciest town meeting debate of all six. I used to think that 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore was an uncomfortable evening. Compared to this one, that was Valentine's Day.

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN: Christina, you had spoken to both -- both campaigns today.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: They knew what they were talking into, but...

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: They did. And they also each had their points they wanted to make.

And one of them -- we talked to the campaign in Chicago, Obama's campaign, Mr. Obama's campaign, and they said he would definitely be talking about self-deportation. He made sure to bring that up before the question about immigration was even asked. This is something that he really wanted to target Mitt Romney on.

JEFFREY BROWN: Were there other themes that you were expecting to hear that perhaps didn't come...

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: They each said -- both camps said they really wanted to connect not just with the people in that room, but with the people at home.

So, that's why you saw a lot of personal stories weaved in. But one thing that you heard from both were a lot of specifics. And that's what people were responding to positively both in social media and in these traditional focus groups that we looked at.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. Well, go ahead. Do you...

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, and the other thing is that, in terms of degree of difficulty, it's almost always harder for an incumbent president running for reelection because he's got to defend the record. He's done all sorts of things for four years.

The challenger can always say, I will do this and that, I will do better. It sounds better. So I think by that standard also, Barack Obama did very well tonight.

JEFFREY BROWN: But he was under pressure, as you said, to come in and try to make up for lost ground.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN: We were listening for would he -- would he mention things like the 47 percent?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Right, which he did at the end.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Very end.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: But what he didn't do is what we have seen with other incumbent presidents, which is they're very heavy on rebutting what the challenger says, very light in terms of saying what they would do in the second term, Ronald Reagan especially.

JEFFREY BROWN: OK, Michael and Christina, thanks so much -- back to you, Judy and Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: Thanks, Jeff, Michael, and Christina.

We're going to go back now to Hempstead, New York, the debate site at Hofstra University, where we're joined now by Ari Shapiro of NPR and Jonathan Martin of Politico.

Jonathan, so give me some sort of sense. We know that there was pre-debate spin, during-debate spin, and post-debate spin. Who thinks they won?

JONATHAN MARTIN, Politico: Well, to give you a sense for who the campaigns think won, President Obama's surrogate and top advisers, Gwen, were out there a good five minutes tonight before the debate even ended in the spin room.

David Axelrod and company came marching out to claim victory. Soon after, the Romney folks were there. But there is no question, on the heels of a poor performance in Denver, Gwen, President Obama's high command is exhilarated tonight. They think he had a really strong performance here in New York and that he has gotten this thing straight.

I was really taken by the extent to which President Obama laid out an indictment of Governor Romney. In fact, I can't recall a sitting president taking after a challenger in the way that President Obama did tonight.

It was reminiscent of what Governor Romney did during the primary debates when he would store so much information in his head about Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum and then, during the course of a 90-minute debate, lay it out there. Immigration, women's issues, taxes, spending, it was all there. It's just an entire binder of oppo.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Speaking of binders...

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Ari Shapiro, let's turn to you now.

You have been following Governor Romney on the trail. How did Governor Romney, what he had to say tonight compare to what you have been hearing lately and the first debate?

ARI SHAPIRO, NPR: Very similar to what he had been saying on the trail.

And, also, I thought it was a very similar Mitt Romney to the Romney that we saw in the first debate. What was different was his opponent. You saw Mitt Romney keep coming back to, whatever President Obama promises, you have to remember that we have had four years of what Romney describes as the Obama economy.

He kept citing the number that he always named on the stump, 23 million people looking for work, dropped out of the work force, don't have a job or underemployed.

And one of the things that was really interesting to me was that, as the conversation turned to certain groups that President Obama has to win over, whether it's women, whether it's Latinos, while President Obama was offering specific prescriptions for women's health, for example, for immigration policy, Mitt Romney said the most important thing, whether you're a student -- asked about student loans -- is, you need a job. You need a better economy.

Whether you're a woman asking about pay equity, he says, you need a job, you need a better economy. For him, it just kept coming back to the same point again and again and again through the 90 minutes.

GWEN IFILL: Jonathan, that last question which gave each candidate a chance to redefine himself, if he chose to, or to clear up a little misunderstanding about themselves, was their strategy going into this campaign -- into this debate tonight for each of those candidates about what they wanted to do and how they wanted to come away?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, I think, in the case of President Obama, it was certain to be much more aggressive and to lay out a much tougher case against Governor Romney than he had in the previous debate.

And, for Governor Romney, I think it was to make sure that he gave as good as he got. And, look, I think Governor Romney had some good moments in this debate tonight. I think he was really on his message talking about the president's record in the last four years, but President Obama was just so relentless in his attacks against Governor Romney that I think most folks will recall this debate for just the extent, the ferocity, if you will, that President Obama laid down his case with.

It was really remarkable. I think this was pointed out by Mr. Beschloss, and that is, it was almost stunning to hear so little about a second Obama term. He was entirely focused on just taking down Romney's record.

It's clear that his campaign thinks that's the imperative here. You have to really take down Romney to win.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we are going to leave it there, Jonathan Martin and Ari Shapiro, both of you joining us from the debate site at Hofstra University in New York.

So, come back here to our two guests, Gwen, David and Mark.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there any danger, though, that the difference that we saw in President Obama tonight was so different that there's any risk in I guess a different persona?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think the risk, as Michael and Jonathan were talking about, was the iciness and the coldness.

GWEN IFILL: Ari and Jonathan.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, Michael too.

GWEN IFILL: Oh, Michael as well. The's true.

DAVID BROOKS: Michael earlier.

GWEN IFILL: That's right. That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: I want to give him full credit.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: You know, whether -- how that plays.

It's clearly, the people who are on their side -- they're going to love that. But how -- those few who are undecided, those few who are persuadable, the two of them are not particularly likable people -- I mean, not likable in this context.

GWEN IFILL: Not warm and fuzzy.

DAVID BROOKS: They're not warm and fuzzy.

And for people who are judging more on personality, who is like me, who I -- who gets me, I'm not sure they see each of them really saying, oh, I want to -- he gets me.

GWEN IFILL: And the president seemed determined to come back time and again to Mitt Romney's consistency, or lack thereof, on any number of issues. He kept circling back to that.

MARK SHIELDS: He did.

And even where Mitt Romney had an advantage -- I thought when he -- on the president on immigration, the president has never introduced comprehensive immigration legislation.

GWEN IFILL: Or gun control.

MARK SHIELDS: And gun control, both of them.

Both issues, interestingly enough, brought up by questioners, I mean, which -- in the town meeting, which is a good recommendation for the town meeting.

But, in both cases, I thought that Mitt Romney wasn't a very effective messenger because of his own problems or his own primary record on immigration. So, I mean, he isn't in a position to make the case, even though I think the president was vulnerable.

And I do think that there wasn't a flash of humor really or really even vulnerability. There was never a sense of humility that either one of them gave.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you think that is?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I just think -- I think the stakes are too high. I think we're at a 48-48 race, or whatever you want to call it.

And the president knows that he got his head handed to him in Denver. And it hurt him. And there's been a four-point change in the polls since then. And he had to be tough. And Mitt Romney is a natural combatant.

DAVID BROOKS: The person who is deemed to have won the debate is the person who dominates the room. And so it becomes alpha male.

GWEN IFILL: Is it still 48 and 48 tonight -- after tonight?

DAVID BROOKS: I think -- I think Obama will get a little something out of this. That would be my guess.

But I say that with some trepidation, because the coolness, you know, I think that may not -- it won't help Romney, but it may not swing things.

GWEN IFILL: Well, especially, as Christina was observing, about women and whether women liked that exchange and the attempt to kind of push the moderator around.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right. And I was looking at some of that very same reaction, reaction online.

So, with that, that does end our coverage of this second presidential debate.

GWEN IFILL: We will see you again here tomorrow night at our regular "NewsHour" time.

And, for now, I'm Gwen Ifill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff.

Thank you, and good night.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: The polls are close, the nation is watching, and time is growing short. It all makes for high stakes tonight in the second of this fall's Obama-Romney debates.

QUESTION: How are you feeling about tonight?  

BARACK OBAMA, U.S. President: I feel fabulous. Look at this beautiful day.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president was in good spirits this morning as he left his debate camp in Williamsburg, Virginia. He headed for Hempstead, New York, and his second showdown with Republican Mitt Romney, who had been preparing in Boston.

Meanwhile, the campaigning continued without letup. Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan arrived at a Lynchburg, Virginia, event with flags flying.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-Wis.), Vice Presidential Candidate: This is not just an election about more take-home pay or more job creation. It's not just about preventing a debt crisis from turning us into Europe. It is about what kind of country we're going to be, what kind of people we're going to be.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the Obama campaign turned to former President Clinton in a new Web video charging the Romney tax plan favors the wealthy.

BILL CLINTON, Former U.S. President: I know how this works, because I'm one of those folks. If I get Governor Romney's 20 percent income tax cut, you can take away my home mortgage deduction, my charitable deduction, my deduction for state and local taxes, and any other tax deduction I have, and I will still get a tax cut.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, debate arrangements were concluding at Hofstra University on Long Island, where 80 undecided voters, selected by Gallup, will fill these seats. Candy Crowley, CNN's chief political correspondent, will moderate.

In that role, she's selecting from questions submitted by the audience in advance. Individual voters will ask their question. Each candidate will get two minutes to respond. And just this afternoon, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced a format change: that the moderator will be allowed to pose a follow-up.

The candidates will be limited to one-minute responses to those questions.

GWEN IFILL: And here with us now to preview what to expect tonight are syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.

Welcome, guys.

Who has the most to prove tonight, Mark?  

MARK SHIELDS: President Obama.

We have been told time and again by all sorts of scholars that campaigns don't matter, debates don't matter. Yet, since the first debate less than two weeks ago, we have seen a four-point swing in President Obama's -- in President Obama's disfavor in the favor of Mitt Romney.

And, so, this is the test. I mean, before the first debate, Gwen, Republicans were crawling out on the 23rd floor ledge ready to look into abyss. And they have more than crawled back in. They were energized and emboldened by Mitt Romney's performance last week.

The positions reversed, mood swing. The Democrats...

GWEN IFILL: They gave up the ledge and handed it over to the Democrats.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. And the Democrats were staring in the abyss.

And Miss Manners were offended and some other observers of the Marquis of Queensbury rules, but Joe Biden did in fact energize Democrats. But it's all up to the president. Campaigns are -- presidential campaigns are about the future. He has to define the future, how it's going to be different from what it's been through in the first and the difference with Mitt Romney.

GWEN IFILL: Michael.

MICHAEL GERSON: Yes.

No, I agree with Mark. One of the most disturbing things that came out of the first debate for President Obama was that Mitt Romney took the lead on who has a plan for the economy and who has a plan for the debt, which he had not led on those before. That puts pressure on Obama not just to be tough tonight, not just to be spirited, which he needs to be, but also to be forward-looking.

That is a difficult communication challenge. In the polls and focus groups that came out after the first debate, it was obvious that people don't want continuity. They actually want change. President Obama has to be an incumbent who has an agenda for change, which is not an easy, you know, task that he has in this debate.

GWEN IFILL: And Governor Romney has to be what?  

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, he has to keep doing what he's been doing. It's easier to keep momentum than to shift momentum.

He needs to continue to distance himself from the worst excesses of his party and have an answer when the president comes back at him on that, which I think will be an interesting part of the debate tonight. He needs to talk about his plan for the future, but he also needs to be able to empathize with people in the audience.

You know, Mitt Romney is a man of tremendous personal generosity by every account, but that doesn't always translate into an ability to empathize with average voters.

GWEN IFILL: Well, you bring up an interesting point, which is we're talking about a town hall format. Both of these gentlemen have done dozens of town halls with friendly audiences on the campaign trail.

But tonight they don't know who is going to ask what and what to prepare for. So, how is this different?  

MARK SHIELDS: It's different in the sense that instead of saying, tell us, what is your plan, Governor Romney, that's going to save America because I know you're going to do it, or President Obama, tell us how wonderful you are, the questions that most of them get at town meetings, they're going to be, what are you going to do about my life?  

And I'm sure there will be somebody with a plaintiff cry almost for help, for solace. And I think this is one place where Governor Romney is sorely tested. He is not somebody who is at ease in this situation, displaying empathy in a public situation or identifying easily with strangers.

I think the president -- I think this is the natural playing field for the president, in that sense of the town hall, which you will recall President Clinton, then Governor Clinton, so effectively demonstrated in 1992 and got as a consequence a six-point lift in the polls after that second debate in 1992 at the town meeting.

GWEN IFILL: Does this change the expectation scheme to style over substance, because you want to see the way these candidates relate, rather than what they say in answer to the questions?

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, there is inherently -- in a town hall format, there's more style. I mean, you have to determine when you walk, you know, when you walk towards people who question you, when you walk around the stage, without looking like you're wandering.

GWEN IFILL: When you check your watch.

(LAUGHTER) 

MICHAEL GERSON: Yes. I mean, it's the only format where, you know, looking at your watch became a national scandal. It's not a normal kind of circumstance, the hyper focus a these things.

And I think the biggest difference in a town hall format though is exactly that one. You can't ignore the questioner.

MARK SHIELDS: No.

MICHAEL GERSON: When a journalist asks you a question, you can ignore them and people actually like it.

GWEN IFILL: Sadly.

MICHAEL GERSON: Right, exactly.

But these questioners are the stand-ins for every man and every woman. And how you treat them becomes a symbol of how you treat voters.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

GWEN IFILL: Especially if you have key groups which you're trying to appeal to. Both or trying to appeal to women voters, for instance.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

GWEN IFILL: How do you do -- do you just turn the question into a question that speaks to those audiences?  

MARK SHIELDS: You can't.

This is a question really of judgment and of -- really of feel for the candidate, because if you're the questioner and you ask me, Mark, what are we going to do about the metric system?  We should adopt it for economic efficiency. I can't then say we would adopt the metric system if this son of a gun hasn't paid -- libel 47 percent of Americans as moochers and layabouts.

GWEN IFILL: Hard to change the topic.

MARK SHIELDS: You have got to answer the questioner and do it in a way that contrasts difference with you and your opponent, but not in a way that appears just using the questioner as a vehicle and really ignoring what their real concern is.

MICHAEL GERSON: Right.

I do think -- I think Romney's challenge is that empathy challenge. I think the president also has a little bit of a challenge from his history in these formats, where he has two minutes tonight.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

MICHAEL GERSON: It's hard for him to clear his voice in two minutes. He once had a question at a town hall format that he answered for 17 minutes.

So he's going to have to find ways to empathize, to answer questions, and pivot effectively. And I think that's a challenge for him tonight.

GWEN IFILL: I remember -- was it a town hall meeting -- where the president was -- where a seemingly friendly looking audience member said to the president, I'm exhausted defending you.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. That was here in Washington. A woman said, I'm just tired, Mr. President. I mean, she was a supporter who had just grown tired, and her own travails had really done it.

GWEN IFILL: What are the biggest mistakes or accomplishments for each of these guys tonight?  

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, the president has to play both offense and defense.

I mean, he didn't play either in the first one. He's got to be able to defend himself, parry, any time that Governor Romney raises in his answer a criticism of the administration. But I think the biggest challenge for the president is to lay out the differences between himself and Governor Romney and also that sense of whoever captures the future -- neither one of these candidates has captured the future in 2012. Whoever does, I think, has a real leg up to winning the White House.

GWEN IFILL: Michael.

MICHAEL GERSON: I agree with that.

I'm going to be looking for three specific things tonight as well. I am going to be looking at how does Mitt Romney deal with the auto bailout issue, because both of these men are running for president of Ohio right now. And that is going to be a big issue. He knows it's coming. His answer is going to be very, very interesting.

How does he deal with social issues? Because Romney is not very comfortable on that set of issues traditionally. And I think it will be interesting to see if Benghazi comes up, because how Obama deals with that is complex. The answer is -- you know, he's going to have a difficult time providing an adequate answer there without getting into more trouble. So there are some specific things that come out of this debate that really make some news.

GWEN IFILL: OK. I'm writing those three things down, Michael. And I will be watching for each of them later on tonight.

MARK SHIELDS: Governor Romney may not be comfortable on social issues, but he has been flexible.

(LAUGHTER) 

GWEN IFILL: Oh, boy, you had to get that in. That's what you're watching for tonight.

OK. Mark Shields, Michael Gerson, thank you both very much.

It's another episode of the Doubleheader, where we talk about the politics of sport and the sport of politics with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

We started our chat musing about the extent to which campaigns co-opt what's in the air, and in some cases, what's been on-air. The Hollywood Reporter writes that the creator of Friday Night Lights would like the Romney campaign to refrain from using the phrase the show made famous: "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." Just last week Sesame Workshop (the folks behind Sesame Street) put out a statement to the Obama campaign to stop using Big Bird in a campaign ad. (As of Friday 10/12 the advertisement is still on Youtube.)

In the politics of sport section, we veered away from Major League Baseball and steered toward the story breaking across the cycling world this week, that of Lance Armstrong and his alleged role in doping through the peak of his professional career. For background see the conversation fellow NewsHour cycling enthusiast Ray Suarez conducted earlier in the week.

Have a great weekend.

Justin Scuiletti shot this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Gentlemen, welcome.

So, we just heard it from Paul Solman, Mark. Is it the markets or is it the pollsters or the academics who give us the most accurate forecast?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, we're all prisoners and products of our own experience. So, like Lech Walesa, I have always trusted the polls.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: OK. And you are going to leave it at that?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I just -- I have relied on polls.

I'm fascinated by the market, as well as the academic study. But, you know, a good pollster is something once, one finds good pollsters, is to cherish and to value and to learn to trust.

JUDY WOODRUFF: To embrace.

MARK SHIELDS: Mm-hmm, to embrace.

DAVID BROOKS: I like the checks, whoever gets the most money.

DAVID BROOKS: That's it.

Listen, I like the polls. I like -- whoever is ahead in the polls is more likely to win than the other guy. I get that. I like the economy. It's really important in determining an election. What I hate are the forecasts, when they say so and so has a 66 percent chance of winning or a 32 percent chance of winning.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: Because, if you tell me you think you can quantify an event that is about to happen that you don't expect, like the 47 percent comment or a debate performance, I think you think you are a wizard. That's not possible.

The pollsters tell us what's happening now. When they start projecting, they're getting into silly land. I mean, the last comment -- not to pick on the Iowa markets -- believe me, I pay tension to the Iowa markets. They have done better in the last -- since 1988.

That is a sample size of six. What study would have a sample -- we have had six national elections since then? Who has a study with a sample size of six? So I like the polls. I like the economy. I don't like the forecasts.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, you heard it here.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Wow.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, now let's talk about what happened last night, the debate between the vice presidential candidates. It's 24 hours later.

Mark, what stands out?

MARK SHIELDS: What stands out is that Barack Obama has had two character witnesses. Bill Clinton in September made the case for Barack Obama better than Barack Obama has made it for himself. And Joe Biden in October made the case for Barack Obama and his record and his administration better than Barack Obama has.

And I would hope that Barack Obama will study the game films of both Clinton and Biden in preparation for next Tuesday night. I mean, I think Joe Biden gave -- Democrats today were singing all over town. I mean, they were tap dancing, they were so happy, in large part because he brought passion.

He made the case. He brought the case against Mitt Romney, the 47 percent, the fact that Mitt Romney's effective tax rate, what he pays to the federal government, is lower than that of a secretary or a firefighter. It was just -- it was just -- it reminded Democrats on why they were Democrats too. And I think that really, really did help.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So he brought what the president needed last night?

DAVID BROOKS: Halfway. He lifted the morale of the Democrats, but I think it is simultaneously and also true that he offended a lot of people.

A lot of Republicans were deeply offended. A lot of independents will be offended. There are sort of two phases in the series of the debate, for the people who watched, which was a lot, by the way. I was surprised.

MARK SHIELDS: Fifty-one million.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. So, people are really interested. So it's very high ratings.

But then there's the discussion period about the debate. And that discussion period is mostly about Biden's manners. And so I personally didn't like the manners. I find Biden extremely engaging and charming and also annoying simultaneously.

And so, if I had interrupted Mark -- or if anybody came on the "NewsHour" and behaved the way Biden did, we would kick them off in the middle of the set. It is just not what discussions should be like.

And not only the "NewsHour." You could go on HARDBALL, and you don't talk that way. And so I do think the extreme condescension, the constant interruption, the weird smiling, I do think that will dominate the discussion phase.

And I do think that will turn off people because independents really don't like the way politics works. And I do think that will help symbolize it.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, not to get into markets and academics and polls, but there was one poll done by CBS of independents and uncommitted voters. That was their entire sample after the debate. And Biden won 50-31.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just independents?

MARK SHIELDS: Just independents, just uncommitted, or people who were supporting a candidate, but said they could switch, could leave that candidate.

And so Biden did -- I didn't find -- I mean, Joe Biden's default facial expression is a smile. I mean, if he's irritated, he smiles. He's got great teeth. I don't blame him for smiling.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: But if he's happy, he smiles. If he -- if he is a little nervous, he smiles. I didn't find it to be -- I mean, he did interruption, but I didn't find it to be so over the top.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You didn't think it took away from the substance?

MARK SHIELDS: I think that you could certainly -- on a split-screen, you would prefer it that he hadn't done it the way he did it. And there were occasionally some sounds of displeasure.

But I thought at no point did Paul Ryan express or manifest, other than the one time he raised the question -- and I thought it was perfectly appropriate on his part -- where he said, I think we would be better off if -- people would get more out of this if we didn't interrupt each other.

And I thought that was an appropriate statement on his part.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, it's interesting you say that, because last week, the president was criticized for not engaging. But your point is, the vice president went too far in the other direction.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, there's engaging and not engaging. You make your case strongly.

And I think Obama made -- had several chances to make his case strongly on health care, on Social Security and other things and just didn't make his case. But that doesn't mean you interrupt every few seconds. That doesn't mean you mug for the camera when the other guy is talking.

I think it's more that. And, as I say, what we have to do in the next -- what the next president is going to have to do and vice president is deal primarily with the fiscal cliff right away, which is all these things we are winding down. That will take a very complex set of tradeoffs with the other party.

And so, and, by the way, so I don't think -- Biden, so condescending, I don't think he set his campaign up for thinking they will take that seriously. And I do want to add one thing, which is a paradox. What I am discussing so far is the presentation we saw last night.

I do think, by the way, that Biden actually in reality in the Senate has been a deal-maker.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And more of a deal-maker than Paul Ryan.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: So, I do want to separate the presentation...

JUDY WOODRUFF: This is a different format.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. This is a campaign debate.

I mean, and Joe Biden has had, you know, a record of 40 years of working across the aisle, of being open and friendly to -- understand this. Joe Biden was on a rescue mission last night. He was in damage control, because, in Denver, the president of the United States was guilty of unilateral disarmament against Mitt Romney.

He just didn't -- it's a lot better to have a debate when both people show up. And Barack Obama didn't show up. And that left Joe Biden with a real -- he had to make the case that wasn't made. And because the president didn't even engage in Denver, you can see, in spite of the polls in Paul Solman's piece, you can see the surge of Mitt Romney in a state like Florida, where the issue of Social Security, the president said, well, there's no real difference between us.

That gave Mitt Romney an opening that he has driven at least two Cadillacs through. And...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, what...

DAVID BROOKS: Would you ever do that? Would you ever -- we debate on TV. Would you ever behave the way he did?

MARK SHIELDS: No, but I just -- I didn't -- see, I didn't find it as offensive as you did.

And I think if that happened, it would show in your face. Now, maybe because Paul Ryan was so preternaturally cool last night and calm -- and he was, and I thought to his credit, and by contrast -- but he never registered a sense of outrage or anger that he was hurt by it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about on the substance, though? Did we learn anything new from the two of them? Are we -- are there difference between the candidates, the Romney-Ryan team and the Obama-Biden team, is it more clarified as a result of last night?

DAVID BROOKS: I think there were vulnerabilities we knew about which we saw developed.

So Ryan's weakest moment by far was trying to defend the tax plan and how are you going to balance the budget. He really was -- that was an embarrassment, because he just doesn't -- there is no substance. There is no answer to that question, how are you going to cut all these taxes?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because they haven't laid out the...

DAVID BROOKS: The cuts.

DAVID BROOKS: And, you know, somebody released a study today. If you got rid of every loophole out there, you could reduce the rates by 4 percent. So he's promising 20 percent, and not getting rid of every loophole. So it just doesn't add up. So, we saw that exposed.

The Benghazi thing, that hurt Biden a little.

JUDY WOODRUFF: This is Libya.

DAVID BROOKS: The Libya thing.

I think a lot of things actually in retrospect, as I think about the debate, were not explored as much as they should have been, the jobs and Medicare. I think that actually the Republicans dodged a bullet, because with Ryan sitting right there, Biden could have spent a lot of time on Medicare, attacking the Ryan plan, which is an unpopular plan. And I think the Republicans, since it was so truncated, they dodged that one.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I just think Joe Biden was taking on one against two.

I mean, so, the case -- for example, he pointed out, which the president didn't even mention last week, that Paul Ryan had been a sponsor of President Bush's bill to privatize, partially, Social Security. And, you know, he -- I thought -- maybe they aren't new issues, but to most voters they are new issues.

And I thought he raised them very effectively. What Joe Biden can do is, Joe Biden can talk and put a human face on issues. It doesn't sound like a Washington think tank or a policy conference of white papers. Joe Biden talks like he just came from talking to people, whether it's in a church hall or at a community center. And that is a -- that's a great gift, and it's something the Democrats need desperately.

DAVID BROOKS: And it was a deficit of Paul Ryan, as one of us said last night, that when he was asked about character, when Ryan was, he talked about policy. And so it was -- it was a much more earthy...

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the vice president called him on that at one point.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And he is an earthy, rooted, very authentic guy who was talking about his past, talking about his family all the time.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, as we wrap up here, where does the race stand now and what does the president and what does Governor Romney need to do next Tuesday?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think it's basically a tie.

I think, if you look at nationally, Romney is up one. If you look at the swing states, Obama is up one. Obama still has an advantage in Ohio and some those other states, but it's extremely close. And so, to me, what Romney has to do is fill in that bipartisan thing, which I think that's what -- that was effective for him in the first debate: I can work across the aisle.

You know, it depends on which Romney you are choosing from, but he has to fill that in. And Obama has to lay out more of a vision. I still go back to that again and again.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And he has to do it in a town meeting format, with voters asking questions.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. And he can't come out and try and overcompensate, the president can't, for his missing in action in Denver, because it is a town hall format, and you're answering the questions of real citizens.

And you just can't turn and say, well, that's a good question, Judy, about climate change, but let me tell you about David. He didn't pay his taxes.

You can't do that there. But it has got to draw -- he has got to draw differences, Judy. He's got to give a sense of how the next term is going to be different from this term, I mean, how it's going to be better.

And remember this. I mean, since the debate, the president seems to have talked about the debate every day, and I was too polite and so forth.

This election is about the people. It's about the voters. And I think that's so important for him. For Mitt Romney, he's got to forget -- he's never going to be likable. I saw that again -- again in Ohio this week,a focus group done by Peter Hart. They're just never going to like him.

So what he has to do is sell himself as the Lee Iacocca 2012, that I can turn this country...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Competent manager.

MARK SHIELDS: That I am the guy. He saved Chrysler. I can save the United States of -- you know, the economy. That's all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, every Friday night, the two of you save the NewsHour.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, geez.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields, thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Mark and -- I know. I know.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Mark and David are going to keep up the talk on the Doubleheader. That's on our website coming up after this program.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And with that, this sole debate between Vice President Biden and his Republican challenger, Congressman Paul Ryan, is over.

We are watching them as they begin to leave the stage. I expect their wives and families will come up to join them.

Gwen, this has been a debate that was contentious from the first moment it began on foreign policy. And it's moved across the spectrum from foreign policy to domestic. And we have seen quite a disagreement between these two gentlemen.

GWEN IFILL: Well, the one thing about having only one vice presidential debate is you get to cover a broad range of issues. It's not just about domestic policy. It's not just about foreign policy. It's also about everything, even though they didn't get to a lot of issues, obviously. You don't get to them all.

But what we saw was an actual debate. It seemed that way that they actually engaged with one another.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I think the fact that they were sitting at a table together, it seemed as if they truly engaged on every -- on issues from Libya, Iran, the economy, taxes, Afghanistan, and Syria.

Let's get...

GWEN IFILL: I have to say, Judy, I have done two of these debates, one standing, one sitting. And when they are sitting, they are better debates.

We go to some reaction now from syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. They have been watching the debate with Judy and me in our studios.

And what do you think, David?

DAVID BROOKS: It's about Joe Biden.

First of all, you know, he sort of -- because of his persona, because of his facial expressions, he sort of becomes the center of attention. And so I think a lot of Democrats will take a look at how aggressive he was, how aggressive at malarkey and all that stuff and will say, yes, that's what we wanted from Obama. We wish he had done that.

Some people will look at the smirking, what some will see as condescending, and be a little off-put. I suspect Republicans will say that.

But I do think the least you could say about this debate is that it will have stanched the Democratic sense that things are slipping away, because they will be cheered up by this.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, how do you see it?

MARK SHIELDS: I thought the contrast in styles was remarkable.

Paul Ryan, for the first time on a national stage, was incredibly cool, and Joe Biden was incredibly passionate. I mean, each was himself. I do think that, stylistically, Joe Biden did the Democrats an enormous service tonight. He brought passion, emotion. He made the case.

He did 47 percent. He did the two letters that Paul Ryan had sent for stimulus. I mean, he went after Romney's tax rate, and compared it to that of ordinary people and said the people working, fighting in Afghanistan tonight are not freeloaders.

I mean, I thought, in that sense -- I thought Ryan handled himself quite well. There was no misstep that I saw. And he just -- it was -- I thought it was a very good exchange.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Paul Ryan had a quip tonight in which at one point he said that Joe Biden was under duress to make up for lost ground. He was obviously referring to the president's performance, which was widely judged, especially by Democrats, to be lackluster this week.

Did he make up for lost ground, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I think among Democrats.

I'm trying to put myself in the mind of independents. And do they see Biden and say, oh, he's really passionate, or do they say that guy is just one of those fighting politicians?

GWEN IFILL: Is he grinning or is he smirking?

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

And so I like -- I personally like talking Joe Biden better than listening Joe Biden. And so I didn't like the listening manner. I thought it was too histrionic.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You mean when he was smiling?

DAVID BROOKS: Smiling and interrupting, I thought, a little too much.

And so -- but when you think about the independent voters, one of the things that tremendously appeals to them and did in the last debate is, who can make politics better? And so that -- who can change the tone, as George W. Bush -- who can get us beyond the stale debates?

I'm not sure they will see either of those two guys as getting us beyond the bitter partisanship.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

There are just -- there were a couple of little twists in there. I thought that what President Biden said that -- Vice President Biden said about the capital gains and carried interest being two of the big loopholes, I hadn't noticed the administration pushing hard to repeal either one of them.

But at the same time, I just thought he really kind of hung Ryan out to dry on the no details on the tax plan. I mean, that really was exposed. And his answer is, we're going have a bipartisan solution.

And that really does -- I mean, people don't...

DAVID BROOKS: He didn't get as much chance on Medicare.

Frankly, from my interest, I thought there was too little time spent on domestic policy, which is what people are voting on. So, I thought that sort of minimized that. He definitely hit Ryan very hard on the tax stuff. Didn't get the Medicare.

But the chief Biden-Obama vulnerability is still there, the lack of a positive agenda. So, you saw both vulnerabilities.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That is what I wanted to ask both of you, if you think one or the other got the better of more arguments or less, or it was a draw? I mean, how did you see it on the -- the -- just the sum value -- the sum total of the arguments that they were making?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I'm probably belying my own -- my own biases, but I...

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: That is why we have you here, Mark. That's OK.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, that's right.

And Mr. Bias, speaking for biased Americans everywhere...

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: No, I thought Biden -- I thought Biden had a bigger task to perform tonight, and I thought he did it.

And Ryan's job was certainly not to lose momentum from last week. And I think -- what was fascinating to me is that Biden went after a lot more ferociously and aggressively than Ryan went after President Obama, until the very end.

GWEN IFILL: Well, except that we did -- in the foreign policy section, on which there was a lot, he did say more than once that it was devastating and the unraveling of U.S. foreign policy.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

GWEN IFILL: So he clearly was going after the Obama administration policy when it came to foreign policy.

MARK SHIELDS: But, in a sense, personalizing the Romney inconsistencies on the auto plan, just confronting when Paul Ryan into -- sort of rhapsodized about Romney's personal generosity and charitableness, and he came right back and said, it wasn't the auto industry -- the autoworkers and so forth.

I just thought in that sense it was -- it comes down to what your taste is. And my taste is Joe Biden.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Well, one of the interesting things is the contrast of age, contrast of generations, contrast of political styles.

DAVID BROOKS: So Biden grows up in a generation really hearkening almost back to the New Deal, where politicians were just relaxed and were sort of sort of out there.

Ryan grows up in the television era.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: And very disciplined, very policed, very policy. Even when he was asked a character question, in the end, he talked about policy.

GWEN IFILL: You make a very interesting point about their age gap. In fact, this is the largest age gap between two...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Forty-two and 69.

GWEN IFILL: More than Reagan and Mondale, more than -- which we heard so much about, you know, the comment that Reagan made about Mondale's age or lack of inexperience -- or experience -- and also more than we saw with Cheney and Edwards a few years ago, where there also seemed to be a huge gap.

So, I wonder if the smiling wasn't about exacerbating that gap.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I found it insulting because maybe I'm more closer to Ryan's age than to Biden's.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: But I do think there is a difference between children of maybe the '50s, '60s and children of the Reagan era.

There is just a different tone in how people talk. And I think you saw it there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we -- I think we're going to go to our colleague Jeffrey Brown now, who is with -- Jeffrey, you are there in another studio.

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN: I am here.

I'm joined by presidential historian Michael Beschloss and our political editor, Christina Bellantoni.

And we are going try to do the first draft of history and then the longer look.

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN: But, Christina, you get the first draft, which these days is a zillion tweets, right?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: What was happening?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Well, a lot of things.

First off, partisans that are out there on Twitter or looking at Facebook were far more encouraged tonight on both sides. You saw a lot of desperation and people wanting to sort of see the president do better last week, and a lot of Republicans saying that Mitt Romney had really won.

But, tonight, you see Democrats far more encouraged by what you were seeing. But what you also saw were the campaigns taking a little bit more control of the messaging on Twitter. The Obama campaign or partisans on the Democratic...

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean as it was happening?

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Yes, on the Democratic side started a hashtag called #RyansChoice, where they really able to put in some of their policy zingers as the debate was going.

And that actually remained a trending topic for most of the night, which didn't happen last week at all. That sort of went out of control with other topics that ended up being a little bit more interesting.

And then you also saw a lot of the reaction to, as Mark and David and Gwen and Judy were just talking about, the facial expressions of all -- of these candidates and...

JEFFREY BROWN: Particularly with Joe Biden.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: Right, but also Paul Ryan and his looks.

So, what we see on Twitter is that people will create pictures or funny things like that and get a little bit more of the joking elements. But the policy did shine through a little bit tonight.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Michael, it was said going in, we said it earlier tonight, that this had a lot more riding on it than most -- the usual vice president debates. How did it feel to you?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, presidential historian: Well, you know, if you look for a historical precedent, 1976, second debate, Gerald Ford made this enormous gaffe saying that the Soviets didn't control Eastern Europe.

Then came a vice presidential debate between Walter Mondale and his choice, Bob Dole. Everyone on the Republican side was hoping that Dole in that debate would stop the bleeding. Dole did the opposite, said, you know, what, Democratic presidents have been responsible for 1.6 million deaths in the 20th century. Didn't help at all.

I think, in contrast to that, if Democrats were looking at this debate as something that would stop the bleeding that started when Barack Obama had a bad night last week, I think this is going to do it.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, that is a first look.

I'm going to throw it back to Judy and Gwen now, and we will come back later.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we are going to go back to the debate site in Kentucky at Centre College, where Jonathan Martin of Politico and Sam Youngman of Reuters have been covering this.

Jonathan Martin, you have spent some time following Joe Biden around the Obama-Biden campaign.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: You're getting your tie adjusted right now. We want to you have your tie on straight for this.

Jonathan, just based on watching...

JONATHAN MARTIN, POLITICO: I'm here and ready to go.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Based on watching Joe Biden on the trail -- and you know what the Obama-Biden team has been doing.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How did -- how did Joe Biden come across tonight? What did he accomplish?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Judy, this was the full Joe Biden, Joe Biden in full tonight.

What you saw this evening here at Centre College was what people who have been watching him on the campaign trail, not just this year, but for the last 40 years in American politics, have seen. He is demonstrative. He is at times over the top. He is what he is. Some folks like it. Others don't. But it's raw. It's authentic. And it's certainly -- it's real.

Look, I think he had some clear blows tonight on Paul Ryan on substance, certainly on the issue about whether or not Ryan wanted to have stimulus projects back home in Wisconsin for his district, on questions about the entitlements in this country, and certainly on the Romney comment over the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay taxes.

The big question to me is, was Biden's Bidenisms, his mannerisms, his reaction in so many of those shots that we saw on our TV screen tonight, does that overshadow some of what I think were some good moments of substance tonight for Democrats?

GWEN IFILL: Sam Youngman, you're home tonight in Kentucky, but you have been spending a lot of time on the road traveling not only with Mitt Romney, but also with Paul Ryan. Did he come with a plan tonight that he executed?

SAM YOUNGMAN, Reuters: Well, I don't know that he was ever able to get whatever plan he might have had into motion, because Joe Biden was just on offense from the very beginning.

Look, Paul Ryan told us yesterday in St. Pete, he said, you know, look, this is going to be my first big debate on the big stage. Joe Biden has done this a hundred times.

And I think it showed tonight. I think Biden's message was basically, hey, welcome to my turf, rookie. The thing that Paul Ryan I think did very well tonight was keep his composure. I think that people that -- people that like Joe Biden really liked what they saw tonight. People that don't like Joe Biden probably found him very obnoxious and overbearing.

My sense is probably that Paul Ryan probably scored points with quite a few people when he asked the vice president to stop interrupting, that the American people would be better served by a better, more I guess polite debate.

I don't know that -- you know, I don't know that Paul Ryan did any real damage tonight. But he certainly didn't draw any blood.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jonathan Martin, to the extent the Obama campaign was feeling the need tonight for the vice president to get them back on track, is there a sense that the vice president was able to pull that off tonight?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, that's what the Obama folks are certainly saying right now.

I had one senior Obama official e-mail me and say, if you are talking about mannerisms, then you lost, which is to say that the Romney focus on the vice president's mannerisms was a concession that on substance they had lost the evening.

I think the point that Christina made earlier is right on. For partisans on both sides tonight, you felt good. Ryan got in there, his first debate, against a 40-year veteran of American politics. He did OK.

And Biden, I think he showed the kind of offense, the aggressiveness that so many Democrats, Judy, were hoping for from the president last week. I think Democrats are feeling a heck of a lot better tonight than they were last week in Denver.

The big question to me is, what did that remaining middle out there tonight in places like Ohio, in Florida and Virginia, what did they think? Were they turned off by Biden's interrupting, by Biden's sighs and his laughs, or were they, you know, content to think, well, that's just Biden being Biden? He is an old politician who talks a lot. And he is who he is. And the fact is, you know, on substance, perhaps they liked what he had to say more.

I really thought that when he went after Ryan on entitlements, saying where I come from, folks can't afford that, was really effective.

GWEN IFILL: Yes. Let me...

JONATHAN MARTIN: And then, towards the end of the debate -- real fast -- when Biden said -- or when Martha Raddatz asked the question of Paul Ryan, do women in this country have to worry about legal abortion, the pause that Ryan gave, I thought, for a lot of suburban women was damaging.

GWEN IFILL: Let me ask that question to Sam Youngman, because Paul Ryan doesn't spend a lot of time talking about foreign policy on the campaign trail, even though that was the bulk of this debate tonight.

I wonder how much he seemed -- did he seem to you like he was cramming for that, and also did he seem like he was prepared for that question about abortion and Catholicism at the end?

SAM YOUNGMAN: Well, I don't think there is any question that the Romney-Ryan ticket would have preferred that all 90 minutes tonight would have been about the economy, with maybe 10 to 15 minutes just on Benghazi.

But that's not what the debate was. And I think Congressman Ryan showed that he had been really cramming on foreign policy. He showed, I think, great familiarity with the situation in Afghanistan, even though I think the Romney-Ryan ticket continues to struggle to sort of show what they would do differently in Afghanistan.

Quite frankly, my brother is a veteran of Afghanistan, and I was thrilled to hear it discussed so much tonight. But I do think that one of the criticisms you will hear from Republicans probably going forward was that there wasn't enough discussion of the economy tonight.

I don't -- I tend to agree with Jonathan. I saw a very long pause from Congressman Ryan when the discussion turned to abortion. I don't think he was probably prepared to discuss that, at least not in such a point-blank fashion. He did get some questions on it yesterday. But I don't think that he was ready for that to be such a hot debate topic.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Sam, Sam Youngman, and Jonathan Martin, we thank you both for joining us. Appreciate it.

SAM YOUNGMAN: Thank you.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And now we are back in Washington, and we want to go once again to our colleagues here in the other studio -- and, Jeffrey Brown, back to you.

JEFFREY BROWN: I want to pick up with you, Christina, pick up on what we were hearing about the mannerisms vs. substance, the screens we were talking about, the dual screens, sometimes the split-screen. It depends how people watch.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: It really does. And you are influenced by what you are seeing on that screen and maybe the second screen.

Pew Research Center just came out with a poll today that showed that 11 percent of people that are watching these debates were watching it with another screen, whether that is your laptop on your lap, your computer there with you, or maybe it's on your iPhone. And that means you are monitoring your social networks. You're posting on Facebook. You're reading what people are saying on Twitter.

And you are influenced by what others are saying. You think about last week and the reaction to a lot of that, people were saying immediately that the president lost that debate and that sort of meme began very early on in the debate.

Well, this evening, people felt like Joe Biden came out swinging, was aggressive, and that all surfaced. But one of the things, these campaigns are both really trying to look at young voters. The president has an advantage with them at this point, but the Romney campaign is really trying to target them too.

They have a very strong digital campaign that they are trying to reach them through all of these different social networks to be able to share photos, images, personal stories that you heard tonight in that debate, and they're really trying to push that on social media.

JEFFREY BROWN: So a general and a specific question. Does that change the way we take in these debates?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Oh, enormously.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Because, in the past, people would be basically glued to the screen for most of the time.

And, you know, one big difference, I think it is so much better, because we were talking a moment ago about 1976, when Gerald Ford was talking about the Soviets not dominating Eastern Europe. The polling for the first 24 to 48 hours found that many Americans didn't realize that that was a gaffe. It didn't hurt Ford until elite commentators, like all of us, said that the president had said something that he shouldn't have said.

JEFFREY BROWN: Present company excluded.

(LAUGHTER)

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, we were not doing it at that time.

But, nowadays, you wouldn't have to wait the 48 hours, because, with Twitter, instantly, a lot of people would have known that that was a very bad thing to say.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so, specifically, on this debate, does it feel like the substance I mean, and the look, does it feel like it will be one that is remembered for something specific?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Oh, I think so.

If Barack Obama wins, I think this is the night he turned things around. And the other thing is that the times that people win a vice presidential debate is when they control the airspace, they look more like a plausible president.

And I think, tonight, Joe Biden largely learned from another figure in American politics. And that was the way Mitt Romney controlled that airspace last week.

JEFFREY BROWN: OK, Christina, quickly.

CHRISTINA BELLANTONI: I will just point out really quick that Twitter also asked people to do fact-checking. And Joe Biden criticized Congressman Ryan for voting for the wars, it was pretty clear very quickly you could say, actually, Joe Biden also voted for those wars, and he left that out, which is something you might need to read in your newspaper the next day, as opposed to instantaneously.

JEFFREY BROWN: Christina Bellantoni, Michael Beschloss, thanks so much -- back to you guys.

GWEN IFILL: Thanks. Thanks, Jeff.

Back here with Michael -- Michael.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: Mark Shields and David Brooks.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: Back with the people after the elitists over there.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Good to be with you, Gail.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: Exactly where I am going here.

Thank you, Michael.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: So let's go back to the war of Scranton vs. Janesville. This is in the closing statements, as well as throughout. They were both trying to prove who was realer. Who won that fight?

DAVID BROOKS: Joe Biden won that fight.

I mean, he was more real. I mean, it's a different reality. I mean, it's Scranton. It's "Honeymooners" vs. Michael J. Keaton. I mean, they are just from different eras. And so -- but I do think Biden naturally talks in the language of the kitchen table. And Ryan naturally talks in the language of Jack Kemp, the Empower America, Heritage Foundation.

And so I think, if you just went with realer, I think Biden would have -- you have to say Biden.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And he knew the unemployment rate in his birthplace.

MARK SHIELDS: He did.

I thought that, tonight, you found out why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden in 2008. Barack Obama has the coolness of Paul Ryan cubed, and even more -- and less bombastic, or garrulous, or gregarious, or passionate, as Joe Biden is.

And I think Joe -- he realized the need he had. And I don't think he ever probably realized it fully until tonight, how much he needed it. And I think that -- that -- it's a complement to Obama's coolness, that Joe may be tough as a steady diet, I mean, 365, but when you want somebody to go out and make the case about real people, he is authentic and he is persuasive.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He doesn't lack for passion. When he's making the case, he just, -- it just exudes from every...

MARK SHIELDS: It really does.

MARK SHIELDS: It really does. Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: I have got a picture of my phone with a water -- super-soaker water gun running around. I mean, he's just out there.

I would say, though, that he -- I don't think this changed the campaign particularly. I think it an extraordinary vice presidential debates that changes the campaign. I think it improves the mood for Democrats. Whether it changes -- it might -- I really do not think it will change the momentum.

GWEN IFILL: Is it possible that may have been the point for the Democrats? You were talking about the independents before, but the Democrats, who were so spirited...

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: Let me disagree with David.

GWEN IFILL: OK.

MARK SHIELDS: I think the mood is -- was the campaign.

I mean, this week the number of Democrats I talked to who were down on Barack Obama, who were perplexed, who didn't know what had happened, what was wrong, I mean, ones who had been picking out their inaugural garb, it seemed, just 10 days ago, now, all of a sudden, they were really apprehensive and angry and disappointed.

And I think that that mood had been changed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the president.

MARK SHIELDS: In the president and the prospects, and the idea that Mitt Romney was going to be president and...

DAVID BROOKS: Is anybody going to tell a pollster a different question?

I mean, to me, the only people who could possibly tell a pollster a different answer would be independents who are turned off, oh, it's just politics as usual? And I think that would be a reasonable -- quite a small number.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What is this they say? Democrats fall in love with their candidates, and Republicans...

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. Republicans fall in line.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It's all about emotion.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

Well, I think that the message obviously was intended for working-class and blue-collar.

GWEN IFILL: Well, we will know in the hours to come whether they got that, Michael -- Michael Shields, Mark Shields.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Gail, just one final thing.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: I do think -- I think the split-screen that's -- I mean...

GWEN IFILL: Watching the reactions.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, I mean, I think that could be a problem for Joe as the day goes forward and we see a lot of tape of that.

GWEN IFILL: Mark Shields, David Brooks, thank you very much.

That ends our coverage of the only debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

We will have live coverage of the remaining presidential debates here on PBS.

Next week, President Obama and former Governor Romney will meet for the second time at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. CNN's Candy Crowley will be the moderator for that meeting.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we will see you then and right here tomorrow night at our regular "NewsHour" time.

But our debate analysis continues online with political editor Christina Bellantoni on our after-hours live stream.

For now, I'm Judy Woodruff.

GWEN IFILL: And I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you, and good night.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tonight's vice presidential debate marks another high-stakes moment in the campaign.

The Romney-Ryan team is hoping to hang on to its new momentum, while the Obama-Biden camp is trying to win it back. That left all of the pressure on the number twos today, as the hours counted down.

The candidates were sounding upbeat, ahead of their face-off at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Vice President Joe Biden departed his home state of Delaware today for the debate.

JOSEPH BIDEN, U.S. Vice President: I'm looking forward to it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Republican vice presidential nominee, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, arrived yesterday.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-Wisc.), Vice Presidential Candidate: Feel good about it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But the public show of confidence belied the tension, as several new national polls show Ryan's running mate, Governor Romney, with a slight lead, though within the margin of error. That made what happens on the stage tonight even more critical.

President Obama called his vice president to wish him luck today, and voiced support for his man last night in an interview on ABC News.

BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States: I think Joe just needs to be Joe.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Mitt Romneyplayed up his running mate's chances at a Wednesday event in Ohio.

MITT ROMNEY (R), Presidential Candidate: I think Paul Ryan will do great.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The debate will run 90 minutes, and be moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz. The presidential contenders will meet again in New York on Tuesday.

Joining us for the debate later tonight and here right now to preview what to expect are two familiar faces, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.           

Gentlemen, welcome.

So, David, this is not the top of the ticket, so how important is it?

DAVID BROOKS: More so than pretty much all the previous vice presidential debates, mostly because of the momentum. 

If you look at the polls, obviously, there was a huge bump initially for Romney-Ryan after the first debate, but then it's been magnified, in part because of the way the Democrats reacted. A pollster told my friend E.J. Dionne that when Republicans hate a poll, they want to kill the pollsters. When Democrats hate a poll, they want to kill themselves.

(LAUGHTER) 

DAVID BROOKS: And so they have been reacting with this emotion which I think has magnified the effect.

And so the momentum for Romney-Ryan has continued. So this is the night that you will either accelerate that momentum or reverse it.

MARK SHIELDS: Republicans, Judy, who just 10 days ago were savaging all polls as part of a sinister liberal conspiracy to discourage the Romney-Ryan are now trumpeting them...

(LAUGHTER) 

MARK SHIELDS: ... every survey that comes out.

But there's no question there's been a total change in morale in the two -- in the entire campaign.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just in a week.

MARK SHIELDS: Just in a week.

The president didn't show up last week. He said let Joe be Joe in that little clip we saw to Diane Sawyer. I don't know who Barack was last Wednesday. And I think a lot of Democrats are just troubled by that. They were very, very disappointed.

And Republicans are emboldened. Last week, Democrats suffered from overconfidence. They thought President Obama would go in and wipe the floor with Mitt Romney. And obviously they were very, very wrong.

But this week, by a 13-1 margin, Republicans think that Paul Ryan will win. And that's -- so, there, the overconfidence factor now is on the Republican side.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So what does that mean Joe Biden needs to do tonight?

DAVID BROOKS: I think they each have an assignment.

I think Paul Ryan's assignment is to show that they can be bipartisan. One of the things that really helped Romney, people -- he was portrayed as this sort of right-wing wacko who was never going to compromise. But he said, look, I can compromise. And when you looked that the data on how people watched that debate, it was that theme he hit that really propelled him and it was also something the Obama campaign was completely unprepared for.

So I think one of the things Paul Ryan has to say, yes, I'm a competent guy, too. I'm flexible. I have my beliefs, but I know how to deal. And so that would be him.

For Joe Biden, there are two things. One is to fill in the blank of what the Obama administration wants to do the next four years, and not only to lay out some policies, but to lay out an energy and a passion to win and do those things. And then finally he probably has to use the Medicare issue with the Ryan plan, the Romney-Ryan plan. Is it politically unpopular? And he has to bring that up.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see it, Mark? What do they each need to do tonight?

MARK SHIELDS: I would say with Paul Ryan that he's got to keep it going.

The Republicans are on a roll right now. They feel they're on a roll. But I would say he should heed the council of Robert Frost to John Kennedy who said, be more Boston and less Harvard to Jack Kennedy. I would say be more Wisconsin, more Waukesha, than Washington, D.C. 

He cannot start to try to give in words his PowerPoints.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Budget Committee talk, you mean.

MARK SHIELDS: Budget Committee talk.

If he mentions sequestration once or the committee as a whole or the motion to recommit, eyes will glaze over and their cause will be hurt. And he's got to somehow play -- do what David said, stay on the offense, but at the same time, he has got to be able to parry the differences between him and Governor Romney, and especially the changes that Governor Romney -- there are several incarnations that he's gone through.

He's got to be able to I think parry that, not to get into the weeds on it, but to be able to parry it. As far as Joe Biden, I think he's got a tougher, but in many ways more simple -- he's got to lift the spirits of dispirited Democrats.

I think he does that -- he is the happy warrior, very much so, a lot more so than the president. But he has to play both offense and defense. Last week, the president played neither. By defense, he's got to be able to say this is what we have accomplished and point out especially in states like Ohio and Michigan the difference the auto industry has made and student loans being -- the interest being removed and the preexisting condition.

All of those things, he's got to do it. And at the same time, he's got to go on offense as far as the other side is concerned to make -- question about Mitt Romneyand the Romney/Ryan and the fractures and fissures within their own program.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the other thing tonight, it is 90 minutes, David, but tonight we are told the questions are going to alternate between domestic and foreign policy. How does that change what we should look for?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, we can all expect that Joe Biden will do a lot better on the foreign policy. It's never been Paul Ryan's main interest and it's always been Joe Biden's main interest.

So you would think he would have some natural advantage there. One quick disagreement I have with Mark is I'm afraid Ryan is going to go too Waukesha. I think -- I'm struck by the fact that the two most important performances of this campaign, Bill Clinton's and Mitt Romney's in that debate, were both the two wonkiest.

Somehow, I think in a moment of great cynicism, people like to be talked to as in a serious PowerPoint sort of way in which a lot of us in the media think, oh, it's over their heads, they are going to be bored. But I think a lot of people actually are responding to that this year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, don't be folksy?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I wouldn't go too far away from the statistics and data, which is Ryan's home turf.

MARK SHIELDS: The difference is Bill Clinton used the word arithmetic.

I have never heard Paul Ryan use the word arithmetic. Arithmetic is a word that is understood by people who only went to the sixth grade or people who have Ph.D.s. It's one thing to be wonky and at the same time not to do it in obscure language that's off-putting.

But, on, I do think as well that the question of a vice president is always, Judy, he's Mr. August when he's chosen. Joe Lieberman was a popular choice in 2000. But the real test of any vice president is Mr. October, what he does in this debate. Paul Ryan was a popular choice among many conservatives, but this is his moment of truth. And there's going to be a lot of nervousness.

DAVID BROOKS: But I think you would agree it's never about them. They have got to talk about the number ones.

MARK SHIELDS: No, no, but, I mean, their performance.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: And you recall Joe Lieberman did a, can't we all get along, as did Jack Kemp in 1996?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, in three hours, it all gets under way, and the two of you are going to be with us for the whole thing, Mark Shields, David Brooks.

MARK SHIELDS: Wonderful.

It's another episode of the Doubleheader, where we talk about the sport of politics and the politics of sports with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Tonight's semi-serious topic is how our two analysts feel about the upcoming debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan.

We also tackle the sudden-death games playing out in Major League Baseball. Shields says if you don't like one of the teams, you're un-American. Take a listen.

Cassie M. Chew produced this video. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter:*

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