New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, sitting in for Mark Shields, discuss the week's top news including Europe's ongoing debt crisis, debate over Mitt Romney's role at Bain Capital and a Congressional Budget Office warning about political decisions that could trigger another recession.

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.

It's good to you have both with us.

RUTH MARCUS: Thanks.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what is more exciting to talk about than the Congressional Budget Office?

So, this week , there was a sobering report from the Congressional Budget Office, David, in which they warned the country could land in another recession if Congress does a couple of things, lets these -- doesn't let these Bush era tax cuts expire, and if there are serious cuts made in government spending.

And there are members of Congress who want both of these things to happen. So what do people think is really going to happen there?

DAVID BROOKS: Chaos, decline, apocalypse.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: You know, it's all going to happen. . .

RUTH MARCUS: Have a nice weekend.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Right.

No, the weekend will be fine. It is only going to happen in December. It will be after the election. And all these things come due, tax cuts, spending. All these automatic things start happening. And we hand this incredibly knotty problem on to a Congress which is unable to do the easy problems.

So dealing with a tough problem is going to be tremendously difficult. And so, is there any reason to be other than despairing?

I think there is a couple. And, again, this is silver lining land. One is, I think the Republicans have decided that what happened last summer wasn't good for them. They have taken the country to the brink. They are a little more chastened. They're a little more flexible on the idea that tax revenue, not tax rates, but tax revenues, should be allowed to rise, so long as the money can be thrown into the debt.

And so that is some flexibility there. But if you had to bet long-term will we do what we need to do, all these different things to get sort of a fiscal balance over the next year, I certainly wouldn't bet on that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Congress going to come to its senses?

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: Well, I don't think anybody should ever bet on that.

But David said that Republicans seem chastened. You certainly couldn't tell it from the comments of Speaker Boehner, who seems more than willing to do a replay of the disastrous, from my point of view, economically, and also disastrous politically for Republicans, replay of the debt ceiling showdown last time around , a year ago.

And what's going to happen is, all of this Taxmageddon, as we are calling it, is going -- because of the timing of it, we will probably kick the can down the road from the lame-duck, for maybe six months into the next Congress. And guess what? That is going to coincide with, collide with hitting the debt ceiling yet again.

So the CBO -- I just -- quick thing on the CBO report. CBO used the R-word, which is very, very scary, recession. If all of these things come to pass, they said, the economy would be in recession in the beginning of 2013.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which is what got everybody's attention.

RUTH MARCUS: Which got everybody's attention, but in some ways, that wasn't really the message that CBO wanted to send, because, yes, that would be a very bad outcome.

But the second thing they said is that the alternative, if you filled that entire fiscal cliff and cushioned it, and you just dug the debt deeper, the debt hole that much deeper, that would also be a terrible outcome, just later.

And so they have been begging in their very quiet-sounding CBO language, please, members of Congress, you need to both avert the fiscal cliff now and come up with a plan that markets can understand that you really have to fill the debt hole later on.

Whether Congress can manage that. . .

JUDY WOODRUFF: So -- but, David, Congress this year is watching the election. Not a lot is going on over the summer. So does a warning -- does something like this that is said in the late spring, does it really have an effect?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think they are taking it seriously. I know the Republicans are. They take the debt extremely seriously.

And how much they want to move is a matter of internal debate. So, publicly, Ruth is absolutely right, John Boehner is lining down these stark markers. Underneath, I really don't think those stark markers exist. I think there is some room for flexibility. There is some feeling, we need more revenue.

Now, the question is, you have got to disguise the revenue increases in a comprehensive tax reform. And the Republicans really want to do a comprehensive tax reform. They think it would allow them to secretly raise a lot of revenue, but also it would be good for the economy, it would create growth, more jobs, more tax revenues.

Democrats are -- and especially the Obama administration -- a lot less persuaded that tax reform would be a great thing. They don't think it would produce a lot of growth. They think, politically, it would be extremely tough to get rid of some of these big deductions.

And so it's very interesting to me to talk to people in the Obama administration and hear them being very tepid on the whole idea of comprehensive tax reform.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, meanwhile, Ruth, you have got in Europe this week, became clearer that there really are serious disagreements on what they going to do to get out of their own debt crisis.

What -- is there a consensus on what effect that could have here?

RUTH MARCUS: Yes. The consensus is bad.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: And the only question is how bad.

And that really, in a sense, though CBO didn't talk about it in their report, that just adds to the scariness and the height of the cliff, because what happens in Europe doesn't stay in Europe. We know that Europe seems -- the European problem just seems to be like a chronic disease now that we have been living with, and Europe doesn't seem to be getting well.

And as it's not getting well, and you see questions about economic growth in China, all of that has an impact on growth here, or lack of growth.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there a clear effect of all this, David, on the presidential campaign, or is it just wait and see?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, potentially catastrophic.

What's happened in the last couple of weeks in Europe is that a lot of Europeans have secretly decided, OK, Greece is gone. They are going to leave the eurozone. And the question is, do they have a soft landing, where Greece goes and Greece has to deal with some problems and the rest of Europe will suffer, but not cataclysmically, or does the Greek exit precipitate a whole series of other problems, which lead to a complete collapse of the euro, which would, according to one study, produce a 9 percent drop in European GDP, which would be cataclysmic, not only for them, but for us.

It would send us back into a pretty deep recession. And so I don't know if that is going to happen. Nobody knows how they are going to handle that prospect, but it could have a really negative, really, really negative. . .

RUTH MARCUS: And not that anybody is thinking about this in political terms, but it would have a very negative effect, obviously, on President Obama's reelection chances. And that's -- they are watching it very, very closely.

DAVID BROOKS: Their interest is in having Europe continue to kick the can down the road, so Greece, they will leave, but it will be maybe in 2013. The problem with that is you really -- you have popular unrest. You have got to reverse all sorts of agreements.

It's more likely that Greece will go. And then that's really a problem for Obama politically.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, meantime, the debate continued. It's separate, but it's connected in a way, this debate over whether Romney's experience running his private equity firm, Bain Capital, which sometimes did big leveraged buyouts of companies that cost jobs.

The debate continued this week, David, over whether that is a good qualification for Mitt Romney to be president or whether it says something kind of ugly about what goes on in capitalism.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Yes, I sort of think this debate hurts both candidates. I think Bain is not popular. It is not well-known. Most Americans don't know what Bain is, but it is not popular, the idea that he was in some sort of weird consulting group. It's not popular.

And so I do think they are exploiting it for a reason. Nonetheless, I do think hurts Obama, because it makes him look like a very conventional politician. I don't think, if you are a liberal Democrat, you want to be seen attacking business. People may not love business. They like it a lot better than government. And they don't want to see an anti-business Democrat.

And, finally, I just think the Obama administration -- or the campaign has demeaned itself with a series of falsehoods. They released this ad which had a whole series of falsehoods. The one was that this steel company, GST, was a healthy company until Bain took it over, which the ad suggests. Completely untrue.

Second, that Romney was part of throwing people out on the street when they finally did have to close this failing company. He was long gone from Bain. And then, finally, that these private equity companies load debt onto businesses. There is a study, though, reported in my newspaper. There is no more debt, no more default in these companies than in other comparable companies.

So it's this whole series of things which were untrue, which make Obama seem much more like a conventional politician.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So Romney is not hurt by this line of attack?

RUTH MARCUS: Well, in a sense, David is right. They are both hurt.

I think one of the reasons we're talking about Bain for a second week in a row is that we had the experience on Sunday of the Obama surrogate New York Mayor Cory Booker, who said he found it nauseating that these attacks were coming up.

If I were the candidates, I would get together very quietly -- and this is my modest proposal to them -- just have a pact that whatever -- that your surrogate is going to say something really dumb and damaging to you. My surrogate is going to say really dumb and damaging to me. Let's pretend they don't exist.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because it's happened on both sides.

RUTH MARCUS: Because it's happened on both sides. And here comes Donald Trump about to -- with his birtherism, about to have a big fund-raiser with Mitt Romney.

But the reality is that there's two Obamas when it comes to Bain. There is the Obama who gave a very nuanced, a very elegant answer when he was asked about it in a press conference this week.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In a statement. He was up there at the NATO meeting, right.

RUTH MARCUS: And then -- so there is nuanced Obama, and then there is jugular Obama, who talked about -- even if the ad were 100 percent true, who talked about Bain as a vampire.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But isn't the way campaigns always operate, where the candidate can be sort of above the fray and the ads can be much rougher?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

But, to me, one of the major questions of the Obama campaign is -- he campaigned in 2008 as an untraditional candidate. Now, he did plenty of negative ads and all that. Nonetheless, he was something very different. People were disgusted by politics could really be inspired by Obama, because it was a very different campaign.

And, privately, they would say, we're not going run a Clinton-type campaign. We're not going to be conventional politicians.

And so they really got a lot of independents excited. Now they are running a completely traditional campaign, literally regurgitating the exact same ad that Ted Kennedy ran against Mitt Romney. And so have they decided , we have just got to win this way? Or are they losing something?

I think they're losing something by being so conventional.

RUTH MARCUS: I -- we saw this coming a ways out. And here is why they are doing it and here's why it is a problem for Mitt Romney as well, is, if you look at, for example, the Washington Post-ABC poll that came out this week, it had Governor Romney leading the president 58-40 among whites without college degrees in terms of who would do the most -- which candidate would do better to advance their family's economic interest.

This is a group that President Obama is never going to win, but he has to be able to narrow that gap. He's never done well with that demographic. And this goes right at the core of the message. This man doesn't understand your needs, is the Obama campaign message about Romney. And that is a message that could stick.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Very, very quickly, Romney did give a speech this week on education.

David, did we learn something new from that?

DAVID BROOKS: It was -- I thought it was disappointing. In some ways, it was pretty normal Republican education positions, which was increase voucher, increase choice, increase charter schools.

And I think they are all fine. I think it was a step back from President Bush, who wanted to use the federal government to really leverage and create a lot more reform. And, secondly, it was just rearranging the bureaucratic boxes. We have learned a lot about education even in the last four years, about the importance of quality teachers.

What did Obama -- what Romney have to say about that? Precious little. So I thought it was stale, a little.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well. . .

RUTH MARCUS: Worse than. . .

JUDY WOODRUFF: In two words.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: Worse than stale, guts No Child Left Behind, ends accountability for schools as a condition of federal aid. You should be much more disappointed.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, have a good Memorial Day weekend.

RUTH MARCUS: You too, Judy. Thanks.

Barack Obama won two-thirds of the Latino vote in 2008, and no Republican has come close to winning a majority in 40 years. But she is working Colorado for Mitt Romney.

And even though she ran for a state House seat in 2010 and lost, she is optimistic that the GOP will soon be able to crack the code.

"Maybe it might strike folks a little odd that I would be a Republican," she told me recently. "But the Republicans truly believe in individual liberty, hard work, entrepreneurialism, allowing families to build themselves up and really succeed in this country. And all of those values are aligned not only with America generally, but also the Latino community."

This is a pitch Republicans hope will reverse a growing demographic dilemma. U.S. Census figures now estimate that more children of color are being born than Caucasians. This is not good news for a party that has been largely dependent on white voters.

Many Republicans know how these numbers work. President George W. Bush spoke expansively about big tents and the value of (legal) immigration. At a campaign appearance recently in South Florida, Mitt Romney conceded that failing to win more of the Hispanic vote would spell "doom" for the GOP. But when he arrived in Washington this week to speak to a Latino business group, he sailed through his speech with not one mention of the demographic dilemma.

How much of a dilemma? Check out this graphic from The Washington Post. One chart shows the rate at which Hispanics have voted for Republicans (sluggish) while the other shows the rate at which the Hispanic population is growing (robust).

"When Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States, about 3.7 percent of the electorate was Latino," Stanford political scientist Gary Segura told me. "In this election year it will be just under 10 percent. So the votes more or less tripled. And when you have that many more people and that many more voters they matter in more places."

Segura calls it "demographic panic."

Moreover, Segura points out that the story no longer begins and ends in Florida, Texas and California. "We are surprised to hear that Latinos count in places like Wisconsin," he said, "or Pennsylvania or Virginia -- places that we don't think of as Latino-intensive states but where there's a growing Latino population and a growing Latino electorate."

It is no accident that those are also 2012 battleground states. That's why I went to Colorado to try to tell the story this year. You'll see what I discovered on an upcoming PBS NewsHour broadcast. But suffice to say, the GOP's uphill battle is clear.

Ryan Call, the Colorado Republican Party chairman who learned to speak Spanish as a Mormon missionary, says his goal is to convince Hispanic voters that Barack Obama has failed them.

"The price of gas doubled under Barack Obama's administration," he said. "Those are the issues that are really hitting the Hispanic community the hardest. And those are issues that the president has really failed on. So for us as Republicans, how are we going to appeal to this Hispanic community? It's talking about those issues and outlining with great clarity and principle how we're going to help create opportunities for their businesses to succeed, jobs to be had, opportunities for higher education, those are the things that are the most important to our Hispanic neighbors."

It may be a tougher sell to convince Hispanics that Republicans support their views on illegal immigration, which concentrate on law enforcement and shrinking the pathway to citizenship

While polls show that most Hispanics do not cite immigration as their chief concern, Democrats and some worried Republicans acknowledge it is an emotional, gateway issue for first- or second-generation Latino-Americans who might otherwise be persuaded to consider voting for a Republican.

"The rhetoric that came out of the primary campaign in the Republican Party was so negative to Latinos generally that even Latinos who were not that supportive of immigration reform were offended," former Denver Mayor Federico Pena, a Democrat, told me. "So Republicans have an uphill climb here, but we have the challenge of making sure that the excitement level, the motivation, the enthusiasm is there not only among Latinos but among all Democrats."

There's the rub. Enthusiasm appears to be an elusive commodity this election year. Between now and the fall, an old formula will have to fall into place - each party will have to do its best to excite its base and depress the opposition. A lot of that activity will happen in Hispanic communities.

Gwen's Take is cross-posted with the website of Washington Week, which airs Friday night on many PBS stations. Check your local listings.

Supporters of President Obama listen to him speak during a campaign event Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa. Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.

As the nation prepares to spend a long weekend honoring the armed forces and gathering in backyards for barbecues, the economy continues to be the dominant issue in politics.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that middle-class white voters who say they are struggling financially -- a key group that will influence who wins on Nov. 6 -- overwhelmingly favor Mitt Romney over President Obama on some economic matters. The survey shows 58 percent of these voters believe the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would do more to advance their families' economic interests, while just 32 percent think President Obama is better.

The Post's Jon Cohen and Karen Tumulty write that the poll results "underscore a continuing challenge for Obama and the Democratic Party with white voters, and particularly those without college degrees -- who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are significantly more likely to be unemployed than those with higher education." It shows Romney "has a similar advantage on this question among white voters who have lost a job in recent years, or who have seen a family member or close friend face unemployment."

But the poll finds troubling spots for Romney as well. From the story:

Whites and nonwhites -- as well as voters across party lines -- agree that Romney would do more than Obama to advocate for the economic interests of wealthy Americans. By a 23-point margin, voters say it's Romney, not Obama, who would do more to advance the interests of Wall Street.

The president also continues to lead with non-white voters.

The unemployment rate and the feelings voters have about the economy will continue to be critically important as the campaign plays out this summer and fall.

In response to a story starring Democrats worried about the re-election campaign's tactics, the president's team tells Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei of Politico that Mr. Obama "has focused like a laser on the top priority for the American people: restoring economic security for the middle class."

You can check out our Vote 2012 Map Center here or below to see how the unemployment rates look state-by-state.

And use the Electoral College calculator in the Map Center here or below to see how that overlaps with some of the battleground states.

THE DEBT DEBATE

Speaking at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday, President Obama took direct aim at Romney's contention that he had overseen a "prairie fire of debt" by arguing that his administration has allowed federal spending to increase at the slowest rate in 60 years.

Mr. Obama added that Romney's tax policies would worsen the country's debt problem.

"He hasn't told you how he'd paid for a new $5 trillion tax cut which includes a 25 percent tax cut for nearly every millionaire in the country," the president said. "Five trillion dollars in new tax cuts -- that is like trying to put a fire out -- a prairie fire with some gasoline."

The president's visit came nine days after the presumptive GOP nominee stopped in Des Moines and delivered a speech calling for fiscal restraint.

"A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation, and every day we fail to act that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love," Romney said May 15, putting the blame squarely on the president. "Rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire."

The president shot back Thursday that Romney's "speech was more like a cow pie of distortion," adding, "I don't know whose record he twisted the most -- mine or his."

Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams responded in a statement Thursday: "When you listen to President Obama's campaign speeches, it's as if he's forgotten that he's been president for nearly four years and has a record to defend. President Obama has proven beyond all doubt that he is not serious about fixing our country's spending problem."

WRONGFULLY EXECUTED?

On Thursday's NewsHour, Ray Suarez talked with Columbia Law School professor James Liebman about his report, "The Two Carloses -- An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution".

Liebman detailed for Ray the overwhelming evidence that suggests Carlos DeLuna, who was executed in 1989 for the killing of a gas station clerk, was an innocent man. He called his report, the end of a several year effort, a "very big deal." He said:

[W]e see a lot of evidence that this actually is seeping into the public consciousness at a time of a great debate about the death penalty. Five states have abolished in the last five years. California is going to have a big referendum.

So we think that this is what scholarship is about and why, at a law school, it's our responsibility to put it out there for the public and let the public see. And we believe that, over time, this will become very much a part of the discussion, and it will be hard, very hard not to take it into consideration.

Watch the full segment here or below.

2012 LINE ITEMS

Peggy Noonan scored a phone interview with Romney in which he waxed philosophical about his campaign.

The Hill has the lead of the morning: "Mitt Romney has opened his checkbook for just one Senate race this cycle: Arizona, where one of his leading campaign surrogates is fighting with one of his cousins for the GOP nomination."

The Associated Press' Steve Peoples writes that Romney faced "tough questions about how his education proposals would affect black communities" during a visit to an inner-city Philadelphia charter school Thursday. He writes that Romney "struggled to defend his view that class sizes aren't a major factor in educational success. Local African-American leaders also said his push for more two-parent families isn't realistic in their community."

An AP review of campaign finance data "found that only a few hundred donors who contributed to candidates like Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum have changed course and gave to Romney's campaign or the Republican Party in April."

Gingrich, meanwhile, will join Romney and Donald Trump at a fundraiser in Las Vegas.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina met with Senate Democrats to talk strategy, reports The Hill's Bernie Becker.

Judy Woodruff writes about what she's keeping an eye on with five months to go until the election.

TOP TWEETS

RT @asmith83: A picture of Newt with a snake wrapped around his neck. I can't. politi.co/KKM0AV

Democratic South Carolina Congressional candidate arrested on drunken driving and gun charges huff.to/JAj430

Hate good-bye's but #amazing #essential long-time @NewsHour Sr Producer for Foreign Affairs @MikeMosettig deserves next chapter - #bigloss

we can't believe it. It's ace @NewsHour foreign policy sr producer @mikemosettig 's last day. Much boo hooing.

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Buzzfeed dubs this the weirdest campaign ad of 2012.

The New York Times Magazine devotes a cover story to the Wisconsin recall election.

Tom Barrett's campaign released internal poll numbers Thursday showing the Milwaukee mayor within striking distance of GOP Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin's June 5 recall election. The survey gave Walker a 50 percent to 48 percent advantage over Barrett. The margin is slightly closer than what has been seen in other recent polls, including one by Wisconsin Public Radio released earlier this week that put Walker up by five points. A Reason-Rupe survey released Thursday found Walker up eights points, 50 percent to 42 percent.

Hotline on Call found Walker and GOP groups have outspent Barrett and Democratic groups "more than 3-1 on TV ad buys" over the last three months.

Missouri taxpayers shelled out more than $1,100 for "a security camera to keep watch over a new bronze bust of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh," the AP reports.

Politico looks at Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry's attempt to influence political races and reassert his influence.

Herman Cain "is applying the same relentless promotional skills he displayed on the campaign trail to building a sprawling political-business machine to rebuild his tarnished brand and keep his voice--and his trademark 9-9-9 tax plan--in the national conversation," Politico's Kenneth Vogel and Juana Summers report.

Roll Call's John Stanton finds Democrats taking sides in the redistricting-fueled member-vs.-member House primary in New Jersey.

Indiana Democrats will criticize GOP Senate nominee Richard Mourdock, who unseated Sen. Dick Lugar, for apparently removing statements supporting the Republican "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan from his campaign site.

While doing damage control to excuse away his most recent mishap, former Washington, D.C., mayor and current City Council member Marion Berry stepped in it again.

A brawl broke out Thursday in the Ukrainian parliament over a bill to allow the official use of Russian in certain parts of the country.

The NewsHour on Thursday bid a fond farewell to longtime foreign editor Mike Mosettig. Watch the tribute video shown in the newsroom here.

Katelyn Polantz and Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama has no public events scheduled.

Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks to families left behind by fallen military service members at the 18th annual TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Va., at 11:45 a.m.

Mitt Romney has no public events scheduled.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

A new report published by Columbia Law School professor James Liebman and his students aims to clear the name of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed for a murder that he swore he didn't commit. Ray Suarez speaks with Liebman about the quest to prove DeLuna was innocent and put to death for another man's crime.

JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight: a murder in Texas 29 years ago, an execution six years later, and now a report that aims to clear the name of the man who paid for the crime with his life.

Ray Suarez has the story.

And a warning: Some of the images are graphic.

RAY SUAREZ: A man entered a gas station on a February night in 1983 in a dangerous neighborhood of Corpus Christi, Texas.

The clerk, Wanda Lopez, a poor single mother, was on edge when she called police.

911 OPERATOR: Has he threatened you in any way?

WANDA LOPEZ, victim: Not yet.

911 OPERATOR: Does he have the knife pulled out?

WANDA LOPEZ: Not yet.

911 OPERATOR: Is it in his pocket?

Get a unit on a 17 to the Shamrock. Got an armed robbery going down right now.

RAY SUAREZ: The man leaped over the counter, stabbed Lopez in the left breast, and wrestled her to the ground, splattering blood across the walls. An eyewitness saw the man flee. Forty minutes later, police had their suspect, Carlos DeLuna. The killer was another man, DeLuna insisted, another Carlos, Carlos Hernandez.

CARLOS DELUNA, defendant: Maybe, one day, the truth will come out, and I'm hoping it will. If I end up getting executed for this purpose, I don't think it's right, you know?

RAY SUAREZ: DeLuna maintained his innocence at every opportunity, up until Texas executed him six years later by lethal injection.

Prosecutors claimed Hernandez didn't exist. But while DeLuna waited on death row, Hernandez was telling people about the gas station murder. He also used the same kind of knife that killed Lopez to attack other women, including Dina Ybanez.

DINA YBANEZ, neighbor of Carlos Hernandez: Carlos was so -- bragging about the other one that he did at the gas station. Because somebody else was arrested, he will call him his tocayo and he will laugh about it because he got away with it and somebody was paying for something that he didn't do.

RAY SUAREZ: A tocayo is a person who shares your first name.

Carlos Hernandez died in prison in 1999. Now a 430-page report published by Columbia Law School professor James Liebman and his students in a human rights law review details the murder. They found mistakes in the police investigation, problems with the eyewitness identification, missing information in the trial where DeLuna was found guilty and in his appeals process.

Meanwhile, Hernandez stayed free and went on to commit crime after crime. The study concludes that, for the first time, evidence shows that a state has executed an apparently innocent person.

Professor James Liebman and his students at Columbia Law School have spent four-and-a-half years reassembling this story. He joins us from New York.

When he was in jail, Carlos DeLuna told people he was afraid to finger Carlos Hernandez, for fear of retaliation. But if Carlos Hernandez was a criminal already well-known to local law enforcement, convicted and charged with many violent crimes, why wasn't he a suspect already?

JAMES LIEBMAN, Columbia Law School: Well, that's hard to tell.

We know, actually, that he was a suspect in this murder. The police reports that we uncovered 20 years later showed that the police had actually focused on him within two months of the crime. We found his rap sheet, Carlos Hernandez's rap sheet, in the district attorney's file dated in May.

The trial was later in July, which was the first time that Carlos DeLuna had said to the prosecutors that it was Carlos Hernandez, but they already knew about him. And the police had actually picked up the fact that Carlos Hernandez was confessing to the crime in the neighborhoods of Corpus Christi. A lot of people heard it, but the police heard it as well.

RAY SUAREZ: From the very beginning, it seems like things didn't add up. Was there ever any evidence connecting Carlos DeLuna to the gas station and the killing of Wanda Lopez?

JAMES LIEBMAN: There wasn't a shred of forensic in evidence this case. Even though the crime scene was a very small, confined area that was just doused in blood, because the victim was bleeding to death from her knife wound, there wasn't a drop of blood, not even a microscopic drop of blood on Carlos DeLuna or his clothing.

We know because we found the photograph 20 years later that the person who committed the crime left a footprint in blood, very deep blood, almost like stepping in mud. But Carlos DeLuna's shoes didn't have a drop of blood on them.

RAY SUAREZ: Carlos DeLuna, the man who went to the death chamber for the murder, did have a police record. Did it include crimes of this type? Did it include violent crime at all?

JAMES LIEBMAN: It didn't include any crime ever with a knife.

Indeed, he was never -- or any other weapon of any sort. He was arrested many times and -- but he never had a knife on him or any other weapon. The most serious crime of which he was convicted, for which he had a two-year sentence and then parole, was an attempted rape in Dallas.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you spent years investigating this case, along with your team. What attracted you initially to the story of the two tocayos, the two Carloses?

JAMES LIEBMAN: Well, I had done a study that showed there was a lot of error in capital cases.

And people said, well, it just shows the courts are up to the task of finding all that error. So, we decided to look for cases where perhaps the courts weren't up to it. We looked for single eyewitness identifications, like this one, where somebody went to the -- got executed based on a single eyewitness identification.

And one of the first cases we came to was this one, where Carlos DeLuna said he had seen another man commit the crime, but nobody had ever produced this other man, Carlos Hernandez. So we sent an investigator to Corpus Christi and said, spend a day and see if you can find Carlos Hernandez.

And the second witness he talked to said, I know who Carlos Hernandez is. he's the uncle of my stepdaughter. And she has told me that he's confessed to this crime, killing the clerk at the Shamrock gas station some years ago.

So that's how the investigation then unfolded as we traced down the history of Carlos Hernandez.

RAY SUAREZ: But it's been almost 23 years since the execution. Did some of the facts that you just laid out for us exist before Carlos DeLuna went to the death chamber?

JAMES LIEBMAN: That's what's most frightening about this case.

This is one of the most ordinary-seeming cases. And at the time, it seemed ordinary, open and shut, and nobody paid it a second thought, including the lawyers who represented Carlos DeLuna on appeal, who told courts and told the governor at the time of clemency that Carlos DeLuna was certainly guilty and made legal arguments on his behalf, but not the argument that he was innocent.

So it took us to do this deep investigation 20-some years later to uncover what lay beneath the surface in this case, and could very well lie beneath the surface in many other cases that look just like this, as just a kind of run-of-the-mill case, where guilt has been established, and that's the end of it.

RAY SUAREZ: So you have called this run-of-the-mill, ordinary. What's the warning here for police departments, for prosecutors, for judges?

JAMES LIEBMAN: Well, the warning here is, even if you have settled on a suspect, you should keep looking, especially if you hear that other people are taking the blame for it.

And there's a broader message, too, that if we're going to use a penalty like the death penalty, that we have to take into consideration that the risk of executing an innocent person is real. And that's what this case has shown.

RAY SUAREZ: You know, for a long time, death penalty opponents have speculated about the existence of a clear-cut case of wrongful execution, and have said that, if they could find one, that would transform the national conversation about capital punishment.

And, conversely, people who support the death penalty have noted with some satisfaction that cases like that haven't come to light. How come this isn't a bigger deal?

JAMES LIEBMAN: Well, we think it is a very, very big deal.

And we put it out for the public to read. It's on a website, TheWrongCarlos.net. Every single piece of paper and videotape and everything else is there for the public to see.

And we see a lot of evidence that this actually is seeping into the public consciousness at a time of a great debate about the death penalty. Five states have abolished in the last five years. California is going to have a big referendum.

So we think that this is what scholarship is about and why, at a law school, it's our responsibility to put it out there for the public and let the public see. And we believe that, over time, this will become very much a part of the discussion, and it will be hard, very hard not to take it into consideration.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor James Liebman from Columbia Law School, thanks for joining us.

JAMES LIEBMAN: Thank you very much.

With a little more than five months to go until Election Day, Memorial Day about to signal the start of summer, and polls showing the presidential race very close, it's a good time to think about what to keep an eye on as the campaign kicks into high gear.

Some of these markers are obvious -- like economic indicators, the unemployment picture, the price of gas and housing. As long as those are negative, President Obama has to worry and former Gov. Mitt Romney has reason to hope.

The same goes for surveys showing most Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, or is off on the "wrong track," a popular question with pollsters. The latest Wall Street Journal - NBC News poll reveals just one-third of respondents believe the United States is headed in the right direction.

How much money are the campaigns raising? And where are they spending that money for advertising "buys," the paid messages that cost tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dollars to design and air? Which of the battleground states - the states that could swing either way in November - are drowning in a barrage of television and radio spots? (By the way, the co-director of that poll, Peter Hart, told the Wall Street Journal that there is such a small percentage of voters who are undecided in those states that, "Never before will so much money be spent by so many to persuade so few.")

Perhaps the most valuable evidence will surface as we simply follow the candidates themselves and their surrogates. Where are they spending most of their time? What audiences are they addressing? And most important, what are they saying? Is President Obama waxing positive about the change he wants to bring in a second term, whether to the economy, the environment or education -- or is he hammering Governor Romney's role in layoffs that took place at companies while he headed Bain Capital? Is he explaining why he believes his health care reform plan is better than critics charge, assuming the Supreme Court doesn't repeal it? Or is he avoiding the topic?

Is Romney sharing details of what he would do differently to help more Americans find jobs? Or is he mainly reciting his view of the failures of the Obama presidency? Is he answering questions about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, or is he changing the subject?

We can tell something by the subjects the candidates are comfortable addressing, and by whether they are on the attack or laying out their vision for the future. Are they answering the questions you as a voter want answered, or is there a nagging lack of clarity about their position on an issue that matters to you?

It will be natural at times to want to turn away from the nonstop heavy artillery each side will be firing at the other on the airwaves, in print, through the web and social media. But underneath all that, there is a battle over the direction this country should take in the next four years. It's a fight with real consequences.

We can wish campaigns would be shorter, but our often crazy electoral system is unlikely to change soon. My advice: take a deep breath and dive in. If you haven't been paying much attention before, now is probably a good time to start.

Follow Judy Woodruff on Twitter.

Mitt Romney addresses the Latino Coalition in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.

Mitt Romney continues to frame his campaign as the answer to a simple question: What would his presidency be like on Day One. A new television ad out Thursday -- like his first, also released in Spanish -- details three things the Republican would do on Jan. 20, 2013.

But unlike the first ad, in which said Romney he would approve the Keystone Pipeline, introduce tax cuts and repeal "Obamacare," the followup spot is more vague.

A narrator says Romney would announce "deficit reductions," demand China "play by the rules" on trade and repeal regulations "that are costing the economy billions." It offers no specifics.

Over hopeful music, the narrator declares: "Day One, President Romney announces deficit reductions, ending the Obama era of big government, helping secure our kids' futures."

It closes with, "That's what a Romney presidency will be like." Viewers only hear from the candidate in the approval message at the end of the spot.

The campaign did not disclose in which states the ad would air or the size of the ad buy.

Watch the spot here or below.

POLL MADNESS

A fresh batch of poll numbers out Wednesday show President Obama with an advantage over Romney in three key battleground states.

Mr. Obama leads the presumptive GOP nominee in Ohio (48 percent to 42 percent), Florida (48-44) and Virginia (48-44) among registered voters, according to NBC News-Marist. The Florida numbers contrast with a Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday that put Romney up 47 percent to 41 percent on the president in the Sunshine State.

All three states went for Mr. Obama in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004. For Romney, his path to 270 electoral votes likely starts with moving them back to the GOP's column.

But it appears adding a home-state politician does little to change the dynamic in these states for Romney. In Florida, an Obama-Biden ticket defeats a Romney-Marco Rubio pairing 48 percent to 44 percent. A Romney-Jeb Bush team would lose to the Democrats 47 percent to 45 percent.

The Democratic team would win Ohio by a 47 percent to 42 percent margin if Romney picked Sen. Rob Portman. And in Virginia, with Gov. Bob McDonnell on the GOP ticket, the Democrats hold a 46 percent to 44 percent advantage.

NBC-Marist also surveyed the Senate races in those three swing states and found the Democratic candidates in better shape than their Republican opponents among registered voters.

In Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown leads state treasurer Josh Mandel by 14 points, 51 percent to 37 percent.

In Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson is up on Rep. Connie Mack by four points, 46 percent to 42 percent.

And in Virginia, former Gov. Tim Kaine bests former Sen. George Allen by six points, 49 percent to 43 percent.

You can check out our Electoral College calculator in the Vote 2012 Map Center or below to see what happens if Ohio, Florida or Virginia swing for the president or Romney.

ROMNEY: BAIN TAUGHT ME TO LEAD ECONOMY

Romney spoke with Time Magazine's Mark Halperin to defend himself against the president's attacks on Bain Capital, offering a similar line he's used as the issue bubbled up and saying Mr. Obama is "simply not up to the task of helping guide an economy."

"[T]he American people are interested in, not so much in the history of where I was at Bain Capital, or that I have understanding of the private sector, but instead, has the President made things better for the American people? Are they better off than they were four years ago? Has he established the revitalization he promised he would bring to us? Did he hold unemployment below 8%?" Romney said, promising he would lower the unemployment rate to 6 percent by the end of his first term.

He added: "The fact is that I spent twenty five years in the private sector. And that obviously teaches you something that you don't learn if you haven't spent any time in the private sector. If you were to say to me, tell me what you learned from your schooling that would help you be a President, it's like, how do I begin going through a list like that? You learn through life's experience. The President's experience has been exclusively in politics and as a community organizer. Both of those are fine areas of endeavor, but right now we have an economy in trouble, and someone who spent their career in the economy is more suited to help fix the economy than someone who spent his life in politics and as a community organizer."

Here is a transcript and see video here.

ROMNEY OUTLINES EDUCATION PLAN

NewsHour reporter-producer Tiffany Mullon covered Romney's speech Wednesday to the Latino Coalition's Annual Economic Summit, a meeting of Hispanic businessmen and women at the U.S Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

She reports that as the Time interview was released, Romney sought to refocus attention on his policy priority for the week: education.

Romney made only passing reference to the Bain controversy, telling the crowd, "[I]n recent days we've heard a lot about business from the president and if you're feeling like you deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act, I can't blame you."

Standing beneath a sign reading "A Chance for Every Child," Romney outlined his education plan: a voucher-like plan to guarantee that federal education funds would allow low-income and disabled students to attend any school of their parents' choice. In some cases children would be allowed to attend private schools with public money -- with permission from the state. Similar plans have been vehemently opposed by many teachers' unions. But, according to Romney: "[T]he teachers' unions are one of the Democrats' biggest donors -- and one of the president's biggest campaign supporters. So, President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses -- and unwilling to stand up for kids."

Appealing to the largely Hispanic audience, Romney reiterated that his reforms would level the playing field for minority students: "Here we are in the most prosperous nation, but millions of kids are getting a third-world education. And, America's minority children suffer the most. This is the civil-rights issue of our era. It's the great challenge of our time."

It was Romney's first major education policy speech, warmly received by the assembled crowd of nearly 250, with only one minor hitch. Toward the end of his remarks a young woman could be heard questioning the candidate aloud, before being drowned out by the sound of applause and escorted out. Romney will continue his education push Thursday with an education roundtable at a Philadelphia charter school.

OBAMA TEAM FOCUSES ON GAY PRIDE EFFORTS

On Wednesday, the president's team unveiled "Obama Pride: LGBT Americans for Obama." NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns was on the call with Obama for America's LGBT national vote director Jamie Citron and national campaign co-chair Joe Solmonese, formerly of the Human Rights Campaign.

Solmonese said they said they plan to register voters at gay pride events and detail the efforts the president has made since taking office, which include signing a hate crimes bill, bringing the International AIDS conference to Washington and promoting anti-bullying measures, in addition to ending the "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning gays serving openly in the military.

"Mitt Romney would fight against our equality because he thinks we do not deserve it," Solmonese added.

2012 LINE ITEMS

Julie Creswell writes in the New York Times that the recent ads focused on Romney's tenure at Bain don't tell the full story of private equity.

Arizona's secretary of state said that officials in Hawaii have officially verified the president's birth records, clearing the way for Mr. Obama's name to appear on the Grand Canyon State's ballot in November.

The Obama campaign has a new web video reminding voters of Romney's "corporations are people" line in Iowa last year to help drive turnout to an event the president will hold at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday. Watch it here.

Gallup found that Americans are evenly divided in their views of Vice President Joe Biden, with 42 percent having a favorable opinion of him and 45 percent having an unfavorable one.

Former GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is conducting a "money bomb" to pay off his campaign debt. In an email to supporters, Santorum said he and his wife Karen "have both personally contributed the maximum amount we could to retire this debt."

The president's latest fundraising effort mixing politics and entertainment will see a campaign donor and a guest join the president and first lady Michelle Obama at actress Sarah Jessica Parker's home in New York City. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour will co-host, according to a campaign e-mail.

In the latest veepstakes push, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio gets profiled by the Washington Post.

Talking Points Memo posts its second in the series of spokespeople profiles, focusing on Team Romney.

TOP TWEETS

Ask me whatever. Chat today at 1 pm EST via @washingtonweek ! pbs.org/weta/washingto...

White House reporter @donovanslack is pretty handy with a camera phone, wouldn't you say? She's in Colorado today: politi.co/Lqah1g

Centerpieces at Romney event: bottles of tequila. Courtesy the company owned by Latino Coalition chair. twitter.com/tiffanymullon/...

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Fox News Radio's Chad Pergram looks at the debt ceiling fight through the lens of Professor Harold Hill.

"There is a growing sense among New York political insiders that next month's primary could mark the end of 81-year-old Rep. Charlie Rangel's storied Congressional career," Roll Call's Joshua Miller writes.

GOP Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren are locked in a tight race for the Massachusetts senate seat with each garnering 46 percent of the vote, according to a poll conducted earlier this month by Harstad Strategic Research for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A new Suffolk University poll found Brown with a narrow one-point lead over Warren, 48 percent to 47 percent.

The New York Times' Katharine Seelye and Abby Goodnough report on how Massachusetts voters are reacting to the controversy surrounding Warren's Native American heritage.

Maine independent Senate candidate Angus King is drawing criticism from his Republican rivals for donations he made to the president's re-election team and the Democratic National Committee before he announced his candidacy, reports the Portland Press Herald.

The Democratic Governors Association is sending an additional $1 million to the group Greater Wisconsin to support statewide television ads and get-out-the-vote efforts against GOP Gov. Scott Walker. That brings the DGA's total investment there to over $3 million.

In addition to the new Marist poll, a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows GOP Rep. Connie Mack with a wide lead over his rivals in Florida's Senate primary, former Sen. George LeMieux and Tea Party favorite Mike McCalister.

There are questions about the investigation into the Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal reports Carol D. Leonnig in the Washington Post.

Secret Service director Mark Sullivan publicly apologized for the scandal during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

Roll Call's Kyle Trygstad looks at Sen. Orrin Hatch's GOP primary race in Utah.

The buck stopped this week. A Harry S. Truman impersonator ceremoniously paid off a debt the former president had at a newspaper in Kansas.

The NewsHour looked at what went wrong with the Facebook IPO.

Cassie M. Chew and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama attends a campaign event in San Jose, Calif., at 11:30 a.m., delivers remarks on clean energy in Newton, Iowa, at 5:15 p.m. and speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, at 7:55 p.m.

Vice President Biden attends campaign events in Charlotte, N.C., at 12:45 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., and helps raise money for Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine in McLean, Va., at 6:30 p.m.

Mitt Romney visits Universal Bluford Charter School in Philadelphia at 8:45 a.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

In other news Wednesday, a Pakistani court sentenced Dr. Shakil Afridi to 33 years in prison for helping track down Osama bin Laden by secretly helping the CIA collect DNA. Also, a Senate investigation discovered 64 allegations or complaints of sexual misconduct against Secret Service employees in the last five years.

KWAME HOLMAN: A Pakistani court today sentenced a doctor to 33 years in prison for helping track down Osama bin Laden. Shakil Afridi was convicted of conspiring against the Pakistani state. He'd secretly helped the CIA collect DNA. His information helped verify that bin Laden was at a compound in Abbottabad. American commandos raided the site last May, and killed the al-Qaida leader. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior U.S. officials had called for Afridi's release.

A Senate investigation has discovered 64 allegations or complaints of sexual misconduct against Secret Service employees in the last five years. That word came today at a hearing chaired by Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. He said it underscores doubts that a scandal involving agents and prostitutes in Colombia was an isolated incident.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, I-Conn.: It is hard for many people, including me, I will admit, to believe that on one night in April 2012 in Cartagena, Colombia, 12 Secret Service agents there to protect the president suddenly and spontaneously did something they or other agents had never done before.

KWAME HOLMAN: Lieberman appealed to Secret Service insiders to come forward if they know about similar incidents.

Agency director Mark Sullivan apologized for the Colombia scandal, but denied it's representative of his 7,000 employees or the culture at the Secret Service.

MARK SULLIVAN, director, U.S. Secret Service: The thought or the notion that this type of behavior is condoned or authorized is just absurd, in my opinion. I have been an agent for 29 years now. I have worked for a lot of men and women in this organization, and I never one time had any supervisor or any other agent tell me that this type of behavior is condoned.

KWAME HOLMAN: Eight Secret Service employees lost their jobs over the Colombia incident. Sullivan said two who resigned are fighting to get their jobs back.

Oil prices fell below $90 a barrel today, in an ongoing retreat from the highs of last winter. The price was down nearly $2 in New York trading to $89.90, the lowest since last October. Wall Street was down, too, for much of the day, but recovered in the last hour. The Dow Jones industrial average ended with a loss of just six points to close at 12,496. The Nasdaq rose 11 points to close at 2,850.

After trading closed, technology giant Hewlett-Packard announced plans to lay off 27,000 workers by the end of their 2014 fiscal year. That's 8 percent of the company's work force. H.P. said its second-quarter earnings fell 31 percent.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called today for a major move to vouchers in public education. In a Washington speech, he accused the Obama administration of putting teachers unions ahead of student needs. Romney said he'd let low-income and disabled students use federal funds to attend the public or private school of their choice.

MITT ROMNEY (R): Here we are in the most prosperous nation on Earth, but millions of kids are getting a Third World education. And America's minority children suffer the most. This is the civil rights issue of our era. And it's the great challenge of our time.

(APPLAUSE)

KWAME HOLMAN: Romney also responded to President Obama's criticism of his work at Bain Capital. He told Time magazine his business background makes him better qualified to manage the economy.

Mr. Obama focused today on the U.S. role in the world after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spoke at the U.S. Air Force Academy commencement in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today, we can say with confidence and pride the United States is stronger, and safer and more respected in the world, because, even as we have done the work of ending these wars, we have laid the foundation for a new era of American leadership.

And now, cadets, we have to build on it.

KWAME HOLMAN: The president also rejected what he called the tired notion that America is in decline, indirectly countering criticism by Romney.

The World Health Organization now says most of the radiation spikes in Japan after last year's nuclear disaster were below cancer-causing levels. The U.N. agency also reported today that two locations around the Fukushima plant did show higher levels of radiation. An earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns in the plant's reactors in March of last year.

Those are some of the day's major stories.

Gwen Ifill and Michael Duffy, executive editor for Time magazine, will be taking your questions in Washington Week's third monthly Vote 2012 live chat on Thursday at 1 p.m. ET.

Duffy, this month's special guest, is a longtime Washington Week panelist and author of "The President's Club."

Submit your questions about the presidential election, politics and whatever else comes to mind for Ifill and Duffy in the chat below, on Washington Week's Facebook page or to Washington Week on Twitter.Tweet to @WashingtonWeek

President Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday en route to Colorado Springs to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.

For the second day in a row, a new national poll gives President Obama a narrow lead over Mitt Romney despite apprehension among voters about the state of the economy.

The president holds a 47 percent to 43 percent advantage over the presumptive Republican nominee among registered voters in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, with the margin just outside the poll's 3.4 percent sampling error.

Only a third of respondents said the economy would improve in the next year, down seven points from two months ago. Fifty-two percent said they disapproved of the president's handling of the economy.

Just a third of respondents also said they thought the country was moving in the right direction, compared with 58 percent who thought it was on the wrong track.

Voters were more evenly split when asked for their impression of the seriousness of the economic downturn. Forty-five percent said it is the kind of tough times that happen from time to time, while 48 percent said this was the start of a longer-term decline for the country.

The president outperforms Romney among key groups, including younger voters (55 percent to 35 percent), women (53-38) and independents (44-36).

He also receives strong marks on his handling of certain issues. By a 54 percent to 13 percent margin, respondents said his policies have made the war in Iraq better. He received a similar score on his handling of the war in Afghanistan (48 percent to 18 percent) and the U.S. auto industry (47-18).

Romney does better with white voters (52 percent to 39 percent), suburban residents (47-41) and Midwesterners (48-43). While his business background is seen as a potential advantage by nearly 60 percent of voters, the poll found that views were not yet formed about his experience at Bain Capital.

Only 9 percent said they had a positive view of the firm; 19 percent had a negative view. More than half of respondents -- 53 percent -- said they either weren't sure or weren't familiar with the firm.

In an even more important metric, Romney made up ground in the valuable swing state of Florida. A new Quinnipiac University poll of Sunshine State voters finds Romney leading the president by a 47 percent to 41 percent margin. A May 3 poll found the men basically tied. On March 28 Mr. Obama held a 49 percent to 42 percent lead over the presumptive GOP nominee in the state, which carries 29 Electoral College votes.

Explore the different scenarios for the battleground states in our Vote 2012 Map Center.

NEW OBAMA ADS

The president's re-election team unveiled two television ads Wednesday as part of its $25 million strategy for May. The campaign said the ads will run in nine states considered to be battlegrounds: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The spot titled "Personal" highlights the president's efforts to protect Medicare from "health care scam artists who prey on seniors." The narrator says the president's crackdown will help "preserve Medicare now and for the future."

You can watch the ad here or below.

The other ad, "Sacred Trust," is aimed at a different group of voters: military veterans.

The 30-second spot features the president in his own words applauding the sacrifices made by the troops and noting that the country has a "sacred trust" to care for veterans when they return home from the battlefield.

"It's not enough just to make a speech about how much we value veterans. It's not enough just to remember them on Memorial Day," Mr. Obama says.

You can watch that ad here or below.

The spots are the latest examples of how the campaigns are tailoring their message to appeal to specific voters.

BAIN BASHING

As Vice President Joe Biden kept up the campaign's attacks on Romney over his role at the private equity firm Bain Capital, Judy Woodruff moderated a debate between former Missouri GOP Sen. Jim Talent, a Romney adviser, and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat.

Talent said that although evaluating Romney's record at Bain is fair, he thinks the ads put out by the Obama campaign are "false and misleading." He also offered a talking point voters will likely hear a lot heading into the fall:

[F]irms that invest in distressed companies can't save them all. It's like doctors can't save all their patients, but, on balance, Bain under Gov. Romney created well over 100,000 jobs, which is certainly more than has been created in the Obama administration because we're down over 500,000 over the last three-and-a-half years.

Strickland said the president is "not attacking private equity and he's not attacking free enterprise."

"He's simply attacking what Rick Perry called vulture capitalism, where investors get really, really rich by buying companies, loading them up with debt, driving them into bankruptcy, taking away jobs and pensions and health care from workers," Strickland said. He also parroted the Obama campaign's line about what Romney uses to trump his experience to voters.

"He doesn't talk a lot about his experience and his record as governor. He wasn't a successful governor," Strickland said.

Watch the segment here or below.

In this week's Political Checklist, Christina, Judy and Gwen Ifill also discussed how Romney uses Bain on the trail. Watch that here or below.

2012 LINE ITEMS

The Romney campaign released a web video Wednesday using the president's comments about how Romney's record at Bain "is what the campaign will be about." The video then turns to a series of testimonials from people who share stories about their economic struggles.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza rounds up the Kentucky and Arkansas primaries, and what the results mean for the president and Romney.

Talking Points Memo runs down the spokespeople behind each presidential campaign.

Crossroads GPS went live with a major television buy attacking the president. Watch that here.

Priorities USA responds in an ad going after Karl Rove. Watch that here.

Politico's Josh Gerstein reports, "Just weeks after Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency officials warned publicly of the dangers posed by leaks about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, top officials at both agencies and at the White House granted Hollywood filmmakers unusual access to those involved in planning the raid and some of the methods they used to do it, newly released government records show."

The left-leaning Public Policy Polling's latest Pennsylvania survey found very little has changed in the Keystone State over the last 10 weeks. The president leads Romney by eight points, 50 percent to 42 percent, after holding a 49 percent to 42 percent advantage there in March.

The Associated Press' Phil Elliott writes about Romney's courtship of female voters.

Biden compared Romney's experience in private equity to that of a plumber.

TOP TWEETS

Crossroads' "Basketball" ad running in 10 states, has $9.7m behind it, according to ad trackers #HotlineSort

.@RonPaul fans work to put on festival just before Republican National Convention in #Tampa soc.li/OL2LHqS #rnc2012 @TB_Times

Sen. Mark Kirk met with Polish prez at his office, 1st trip back to work since he suffered a stroke #HotlineSort

Thank you @SarahPalinUSA for your endorsement on @Gretawire tonight! #utpol #tcot

Congrats to Donald Driver for bringing #DWTS Mirror Ball to Titletown. #Packers.

Congrats to Donald Driver on winning Dancing with the Stars. You made Wisconsin Proud!

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Jonathan Weisman writes in the New York Times about the efforts by Ron Paul supporters to sway down-ballot races this year, including their successful influence of a Republican House primary in Kentucky on Tuesday.

The Hill looks at House Speaker John Boehner's fundraising compared to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's.

Roll Call's Kyle Trygstad looks at the "gold rush" of outside money into California's primaries.

Scott Walker's hold on the Wisconsin governorship remains in jeopardy. A new poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted this week shows the Republican to be within the the margin of error. According to the most recent numbers, Walker now holds only a three-point lead over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat.

Actors Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and John Krasinski raised more than a quarter-of-a-million dollars Monday for Elizabeth Warren's Massachusetts senatorial campaign at a fundraiser at filmmaker J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production studio in Santa Monica, Calif. Attendees included Affleck's wife Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Zach Braff, Dana Delany, Tobey Maguire, Ed Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz, Alan Horn and Writers Guild president Chris Keyser, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Steven Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sally Field, Michael King, Harvey Weinstein and Alan Ladd Jr. also made contributions.

Polls on gay marriage are shifting since the president's announcement of his support.

The New York Times looks at the Senate Banking Committee hearings on the JPMorgan Chase losses.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that a tax or deficit reduction deal is unlikely before the November elections.

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., Chris Coons, D-Del, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., unveiled an immigration bill Tuesday that would create two new types of visas to attract workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake leads in his GOP Senate primary by 20 points.

Sen. Kent Conrad's pup Dakota, a familiar face in the Senate, is in remission from his doggie cancer, Roll Call photographer Tom Williams notices.

Cassie Chew and Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama delivers the commencement address at the Air Force Academy at 12 p.m., attends a campaign event in Denver at 5:35 p.m. and delivers remarks at campaign events in Atherton at 10:20 p.m. and in Redwood City at 12:10 a.m.

Vice President Biden hosts a reception for labor leaders at the Naval Observatory at 6:45 p.m.

Mitt Romney addresses the Latino Coalition's Small Business Summit luncheon in Washington, D.C., at 12 p.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

Following President Obama's lead, Vice President Joe Biden joined the fray Tuesday in questioning Mitt Romney's role at Bain Capital. Judy Woodruff hosts a debate on political strategy and private-sector experience between former Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The politics of private equity have come to the fore of the presidential campaign. Today, the president's reelection team kept up its attacks on Mitt Romney's role at Bain Capital.

VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: He's talking about he's better qualified to be president because of his business experience. So, look, he raised it. So let's take a look at his business experience.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Vice President Biden joined the fray in questioning Mitt Romney's private sector background today, one day after President Obama made it clear he believes it's fair to examine Romney's tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If your main argument for how to grow the economy is "I knew how to make a lot of money for investors," then you're missing what this job is about.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president defended a television ad released by his campaign last week featuring interviews with former employees at a Kansas City steel mill that Bain Capital acquired.

MAN: They made as much money off of it as they could and they closed it down. They filed for bankruptcy without any concern for the families or the communities.

MAN: It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But the ad's focus, portraying Romney as a corporate raider, has drawn fire even among the president's own supporters. Newark Mayor Cory Booker added to the storm on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

CORY BOOKER (D), mayor of Newark, N.J.: This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It is nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Romney camp released its own Web video response last week, touting Bain's role in bankrolling another steel company, SDI.

WOMAN: I think there's a lot of pride in what we've built out here.

NARRATOR: But SDI almost never got started. When others shied away, Mitt Romney's private sector leadership team stepped in.

MAN: Building a dream with over 6,000 employees today.

NARRATOR: Have you had enough of President Obama's attacks on free enterprise? His own key supporters have.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yesterday came another Romney Web ad using Booker's comments and those of former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford and former Obama administration auto czar Steven Rattner, all in defense of Bain.

On MSNBC last night, Booker said that was unfair.

CORY BOOKER: And so here they are plucking sound bites out of that interview to be -- to manipulate them in a cynical manner, to use them for their own purposes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In his remarks yesterday, President Obama defended Booker, and said Romney's business record was fair game.

BARACK OBAMA: This is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about, is, what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed?

JUDY WOODRUFF: And a new Washington Post-ABC News poll out today shows that voters agree -- 52 percent of those asked cited the economy as the single most important issue this election, but 54 percent said Romney's work with Bain was not a major factor.

When asked which candidate they would trust to do a better job handling the economy, a virtual dead heat; 46 percent chose President Obama, 47 percent, Gov. Romney. Romney has not addressed the issue of his time at Bain directly in recent days, but in a conference call, Romney adviser former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu said: "The Bain record, as a whole, is fair game. I think what you have to do is an honest evaluation."

This is not the first time Romney's been attacked on his Bain record.

NARRATOR: Mitt Romney became CEO of Bain Capital the day the company was formed.

WOMAN: They fire people. They cut benefits. They sell assets.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Romney faced similar criticism during the Republican primaries from a super PAC backing Newt Gingrich.

So is the Bain campaign push a wise political strategy for the president? And how will the Romney camp respond if the attacks keep up?

Well, to debate all this, we're joined by Jim Talent. He's a former senator from Missouri and a top adviser to Mitt Romney. And Ted Strickland, the former governor of Ohio and a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.

Gentlemen, we thank you both for being with us.

Sen. Talent, to you first.

The Romney camp is saying it's fair game to talk about his record at Bain Capital, so what is it in these ads that is off-base?

JIM TALENT, former U.S. senator, R-Mo.: Well, they're false and misleading attacks on private equity, and basically an attempt to distract the voters from the failed economic policies of the Obama administration and the condition of the country.

I mean, we have had unemployment above 8 percent for longer than the Great Depression, and the president doesn't want to talk about his policies. And so they're launching these attacks on private equity and free enterprise. And they're misleading. And, of course, that's what a number of Democrats have been saying in the last few days.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What is it -- just quickly, Sen. Talent, what is it that's false about what the ads say?

JIM TALENT: Well, first of all, one ad attacked Gov. Romney for the closure of a steel plant that occurred two years after he left Bain Capital.

But more broadly speaking, firms that invest in distressed companies can't save them all. It's like doctors can't save all their patients, but, on balance, Bain under Gov. Romney created well over 100,000 jobs, which is certainly more than has been created in the Obama administration because we're down over 500,000 over the last three-and-a-half years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gov. Strickland, how do you respond to that?

TED STRICKLAND (D), former Ohio governor: Well, I say to my friend Jim Talent those are good talking points, but the reality is when President Obama became the president, the month he took the oath of office, this country had lost almost 800,000 jobs.

He's not responsible for that. And he's not attacking private equity and he's not attacking free enterprise. He's simply attacking what Rick Perry called vulture capitalism, where investors get really, really rich by buying companies, loading them up with debt, driving them into bankruptcy, taking away jobs and pensions and health care from workers.

But Mitt Romney and his associates at Bain Capital walked away with multiple millions of dollars. That's what the president's talking about. And this is not a distraction. This is going to be the central part of the campaign, as it ought to be.

TED STRICKLAND: Which of these two candidates has demonstrated a concern for working people? And my contention is that Mitt Romney has looked out for his investors, but he hasn't really cared for the workers.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me -- and, Sen. Talent, there are workers who are quoted in these ads, Sen. Talent, who are saying some of the same things that Gov. Strickland just said.

JIM TALENT: Well, Judy, first of all, the investors in Bain Capital were largely pension funds. So the people who benefited from it were teachers and policemen and firefighters and retirees.

But, look, the White House knows the way private equity works. There's a reason Ted's argument is Basically with people like Mark Warner and Steve Rattner, who was the White House's auto czar at the time, by the way, that GM was closing dealerships in order to fix the companies, with Cory Booker. It's with our old colleague Harold Ford Jr., who have all criticized the ads.

And many of them defended Bain Capital's record as very strong, very successful and very ethical because it had a strong record of creating jobs. That's why the firm is successful. Four start-up companies alone, Steel Dynamics, Bright Horizons, Staples and Sports Authority created over 100,000 jobs.

And, Ted, we have lost a net of at least 500,000 jobs on President Obama's watch.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gov. Strickland, what about that and these other Democrats he mentioned who have said that the line of attack in these ads is not fair?

TED STRICKLAND: Well, quite frankly, the president came to power with a horrendous economic set of circumstances.

He is rebuilding this economy. He's doing it the right way, by focusing on the middle class. He's investing in education and our infrastructure. And he's trying to put forth programs that will benefit small business. The fact is that this president has been stopped by the Congress every time he's tried to take positive action.

But in spite of that, the economy's getting better. The economy in Ohio today is much healthier because the president saved the auto industry, because manufacturing is coming back. Living wage jobs are being created. And so the president is the one who has a program to move the country forward, Judy.

Mitt Romney is trying to use his experience as a venture capitalist as the justification for being president. He doesn't talk a lot about his experience and his record as governor. He wasn't a successful governor. Michigan ended up, I think, being 37th in the nation in terms of job creation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me stop you there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me just stop you there, because I want to come back to Sen. Talent.

Yes, go ahead.

JIM TALENT: Yes.

Yes, Judy, look, the problem isn't that Congress didn't give the president what he wanted. The problem is that they did. And he got the stimulus plan, which he won't even talk about now, got Obamacare. And to say that this economy is being rebuilt, I have to tell you, median income in the United States down $4,300. People are working harder and harder than ever before and barely staying in place.

The unemployment rate has effectively not gone down from where it was at the peak of the recession. The only reason it's gone technically from 10 percent to 8 percent is so many people are discouraged and have quit work. This economy is not getting better and the president's policies are the reason.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Sen. Talent, just quickly, I did look again at what the president said yesterday. He said, yes, private equity has a healthy role to play in the free market. He said that's part of a what a lot of businesspeople do. He talked about the role of private equity and identifying capacity in the economy to create new jobs.

But he said the role of a president is to look after the economic health of the whole community, the whole country, and not just of a company, which is what a -- would take place in a venture capital deal.

JIM TALENT: Well, let's -- Judy, let's tell the people at Solyndra that. Tell the people at Evergreen Solar.

The Department of Energy's inspector general -- and he's a non-political appointee -- found that billions of dollars were channeled to companies that have been started by politicians who were friends of the president. So the president has looked after those companies pretty well.

Look, these are attacks, misleading attacks on -- basically on private equity. That's how Harold Ford saw it, our old colleague, Steve Rattner, now Mark Warner, and I think there are going to be more Democrats coming forward because these attacks are so unfair and so misleading.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gov. Strickland, the president's focus here on economic fairness, is that a wise thing for the president to be doing in this campaign?

TED STRICKLAND: Absolutely.

Who doesn't believe in fairness? And the fact is that the president has not attacked free enterprise. He's not attacked venture capitalism. He's attacked Mitt Romney's assertion that he should be president because he made a lot of money for himself and his investors.

And the president was absolutely correct. The president's job is to look out for all Americans, not just the investor class. And the fact is that this president took a horrendous situation. Now, Mitt Romney wants to take us back to the Bush policies that led to this recession. And, as Bill Clinton said, he wants to do it on steroids.

We have got to move forward, not backward. The president is leading. He is laying out a solid foundation. And all we need now is for this Congress to get behind him, to cut taxes for small business, as he's trying to do, to invest in our infrastructure, to expand health care to our people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And. . .

TED STRICKLAND: The president has a plan. Mitt Romney wants to go back to the Bush era strategies, and that's a disaster for this country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gentlemen, we're going to leave it there.

Former Sen. Jim Talent, former Gov. Ted Strickland, thank you both.

In this week's Political Checklist, Political Editor Christina Bellantoni chatted with senior correspondents Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff about Bain Capital and President Obama's declaration that the election would be "about" Mitt Romney's record at the private equity firm.

Gwen pointed out that the Bain attacks fizzled out during the GOP primary in part because there wasn't a clear distinction in position. Now, the president is trying to portray himself as the guy who cares about the middle class, and suggesting Romney only cares about business.

Judy noted that when Romney is on the campaign trail, he very rarely talks about his experience as governor of Massachusetts. Gwen said the Bay State's strong Democratic trend is one reason voters hear more about Bain.

Cassie Chew shot and edited this video.

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

President Obama boards Air Force One on Monday after hosting the NATO summit in Chicago. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

Will President Obama's re-election fate mirror what happened to Presidents George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush?

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday gives reasons to support both outcomes, depending on which metrics are examined.

The president's disapproval rating on his handling of the economy, which was ranked as the most important issue by a majority of respondents, stands at 55 percent.

When people were also asked to compare their current financial situation with when Mr. Obama took office, 30 percent responded they were worse off, while 16 percent said they were better off. Fifty-three percent described their status as about the same.

"On this question, Obama's numbers continue to resemble those of George H.W. Bush, who lost his bid for reelection in 1992 amid a flagging economy," write Jon Cohen and Dan Balz on the front page.

Still, a majority of respondents said they were optimistic about their personal finances in the next few years (58 percent) or hopeful about the national economy (54 percent).

The president and Mitt Romney were essentially tied on two key metrics: who would do better handling the economy and who would do better creating jobs.

There remains a wide gap, however, between the Democratic incumbent and the presumptive Republican nominee on character issues. Asked which candidate better understands economic problems people are facing, 48 percent named Mr. Obama, while 40 percent picked Romney. The president held a 52 to 39 percent advantage on who has the "better personal character to serve as president."

The survey also looked at the potential impact of the recent wave of attacks by the Obama campaign on Romney's experience as a Bain Capital executive. Respondents were split when asked about "Romney's work buying and restructuring companies" before going into politics, with 21 percent saying it was a major reason to support the Republican and an equal number responding it was a major reason to oppose him. Fifty-four percent said that part of his background was not a major factor in their decision.

If the election were held today, 49 percent of registered voters surveyed said they would vote for the president, while 46 percent would choose Romney. The three-point margin was within the poll's sampling error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percent.

While the two men are deadlocked, the Post/ABC poll found that 91 percent of Mr. Obama's supporters said they were enthusiastic about his candidacy, while 73 percent of Romney backers said the same thing. A quarter of Romney supporters responded they were not enthusiastic about him, which compares with feelings toward Sen. John McCain in 2008.

As has been the case for months, the president's prospects for a second term appear to hinge on the fragile state of the economy, but he is buffered somewhat by people's opinions of him personally.

MR. OBAMA: CAMPAIGN WILL BE ABOUT BAIN

The president on Monday offered up his first clear explanation of how he sees the campaign, defending his team's attack on Romney over his role at Bain Capital.

As the media worked itself up over what Newark Democratic Mayor Cory Booker said about negative campaigning, Mr. Obama was at the NATO Summit in Chicago huddling with world leaders worried about the economy.

Hans Nichols of Bloomberg asked the president about the dust-up over Booker's remarks and to clarify views on Romney's responsibility for job losses that occurred during his tenure at Bain.

Mr. Obama did not back off, declaring, "This is what this campaign's going to be about." The president said Romney is not running on his record as governor of Massachusetts, but instead on what he did in the private sector.

"[H]is main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience," Mr. Obama said. "And when you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity...firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot."

For his part, Booker appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show to set the record straight.

The mayor said he only went on television because the GOP went too far in saying he was afraid of the president and in mocking him using the #IStandWithCoryBooker hashtag on Twitter.

"[T]hat slogan is what had me and my entire staff fit to be tied," he said.

"Anybody that listens to the entire 'Meet the Press' ... will see that I stand with the president," Booker said on the show. "I've been standing for Barack Obama before most people were standing with Barack Obama."

He then proclaimed on Twitter a series of reasons he supports the president using the hashtag "#IStandWithObama."

CHAMBER WANTS DONATIONS KEPT SECRET

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce figures to be a big player in the 2012 fundraising arms race, with plans to spend in excess of $50 million and by targeting specific congressional races. As far as how that money will be spent, most questions remain unanswered, NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns reports.

"We don't disclose where we get our money and we don't tell people how much we spend," Chamber President Tom Donohue told reporters Monday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

In April, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, participating in "electioneering communications" must disclose their donors. As a tax-exempt group, the Chamber of Commerce was not previously mandated to disclose its contributors.

"[Disclosure] is all about intimidation...they want to be able to intimidate people to not put their money into the electoral process," Donohue said. "We will have a vigorous...election program. These cases do not change that."

Donohue said it is in the chamber's best interest to avoid disclosure, because he knows a half-dozen "well-known business people" who were "fundamentally attacked" by the Obama campaign for their contributions to Republican groups.

The Chamber of Commerce spent $33 million in the 2010 midterm elections and is on pace to blow past that quickly. According to the chamber's executive vice president for government affairs, Bruce Josten, the chamber began spending for this cycle last November, the earliest it has ever ramped up.

Chamber officials said the group is ready to take some members of Congress to task for votes seen as unfriendly to the business community on the transportation bill and the Export Import Bank reauthorization. They said the group plans to spread its endorsements like "peanut butter," but the money will flow to the most competitive, chamber-friendly candidates.

"We endorse lots and lots of people, that doesn't mean we're going to spend any money on them. We're going to put the money in the races that are up for grabs," Donohue said.

"It's not just ads, which everybody fixates on, there is a lot of activity on the ground," Josten said.

The Washington Post has a related story Tuesday, looking at a fight that "has been unfolding this spring at annual corporate meetings, where shareholders are mounting an intensifying effort to push companies to disclose the money they spend on lobbying and political campaigns."

2012 LINE ITEMS

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is not ready to endorse the president's re-election bid, despite backing Mr. Obama in 2008 at a pivotal moment during the campaign, the Republican said on NBC's 'Today Show.' Powell said he is "still listening" to both candidates' plans.

The New York Times' Jeremy W. Peters takes readers behind the scenes of an ad from American Crossroads, from focus group to screen.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will host a fundraiser for Romney at his home in Wyoming, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Republican National Committee has a new web video Tuesday slamming the president for the high price of college and rising student loan debt.

Congressional Democrats tell Politico's Manu Raju that the president just doesn't call anymore.

USA Today made a nifty chart showing the 49 people and organizations that have contributed $1 million or more to super PACs this cycle, totaling nearly $116 million.

The latest Obama fundraising gimmick is a trip to New York to meet President Obama and former President Bill Clinton. "Meeting two presidents at the same time? Now, that's almost ridiculously cool," campaign manager Jim Messina writes in a fundraising email promoting the June 4 event. "This promises to be one amazing evening. Imagine how great it would be to be a fly on the wall when Presidents Obama and Clinton get together. Now imagine getting to be part of the conversation."

TOP TWEETS

Gingrich on Bain attacks: "I'm very surprised that President Obama went down this road." Um, seriously?

Getting the gang back together: @Priorities2012 video revisits Newt, Perry, Huntsman, Palin's anti-Bain attacks youtu.be/2fJhF6uctfM

NYJ owner Woody Johnson says Romney campaign offers big donors 2-day Utah team-bldng retreat in June. #2012

Romney finance chair says Romney events over 3 days in NYC area will raise over $10 million

Billionaire Stanley Hubbard intends to give "a lot" of secret $ to Crossroads GPS & AfP: "As much as I can afford":politi.co/MA9f4M

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Watch Gwen Ifill's report on the contraception lawsuit brought by Notre Dame and other Catholic organizations.

NewsHour reporter-producer Katelyn Polantz talked with Marcia Coyle about the Supreme Court's actions on benefits for children born of artificial insemination.

"Federal officials are investigating questionable campaign contributions to two Ohio officeholders, freshman Rep. James Renacci and state treasurer and Senate candidate Josh Mandel," the Associated Press reports.

The Washington Times' Jim McElhatton has new details about the General Services Administration scandal. Oversize Superman underwear were involved.

Roll Call's David Drucker and Joshua Miller use the front page to explore Sen. Rand Paul's influence in elections, starting with Tuesday's primary in Kentucky.

The Boston Globe on the role of campaign trackers in the Brown-Warren Senate race.

A Tea Party group has a new television ad for the June 5 Wisconsin recall election.

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie once donated to Planned Parenthood.

Outtakes from a California Republican's congressional campaign ad.

A new study suggests members of Congress have an unsophisticated vocabulary.

What ever happened to Katherine Harris?

A Talking Points Memo reader sent the blog images from an old coloring book about JFK.

Christina talked with NBC's Andrea Mitchell about the so-called "war on women" for More Magazine. Read the Q&A here.

Will Smith says he could play the president.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama has no public events scheduled.

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Keene, N.H., at 1:45 p.m. and attends a campaign event in Boston at 5:45 p.m.

Mitt Romney has no public events scheduled.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

President Obama called Mitt Romney's business experience at Bain Capital fair game Monday during a press conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Chicago.

"If the main basis for him suggesting he can do a better job is his track record as the head of a private equity firm, then both the upsides and the downsides are worth examining," Mr. Obama said.

The president's comments came a day after a top supporter, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, said the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's tenure at Bain Capital were "nauseating."

"If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with," Booker said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Booker's remarks stemmed from the release of a television ad by the Obama campaign last week that featured former workers of a Kansas City steel plant, GST, who blamed Romney for the business going under.

"To get up on national TV and brag about making jobs when he has destroyed thousands of people's careers, lifetimes, just destroying people," said Jack Cobb, one of the workers in the video.

The Romney campaign released a new web video Monday highlighting the comments from Booker and other Obama supporters who have questioned the Bain attack, including former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford and former "car czar" Steven Rattner.

The criticism from Democrats became Internet political fodder, but the president hinted Monday that he would not back off the Bain line of attack.

"Gov. Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He's not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He's saying, 'I'm a business guy. I know how to fix it.' And this is his business," Mr. Obama said. "And when you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is simply not to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot."

"If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about," the president added.

We'll post video of the president's remarks in this space soon.

Mitt Romney campaigns in St. Petersburg, Fla., last week. Photo by Edward Linsmier/Getty Images.

Bain Capital has taken over dozens of companies in its 28-year history. Any of its actions that resulted in laid off workers -- especially in a battleground state -- just might be getting profiled by President Obama's re-election team this year.

On Monday, the Obama campaign will again go after Mitt Romney's record as an executive at Bain Capital by focusing on a paper company that closed a plant in Marion, Ind. It's the second attack in a week that goes directly after Romney's business record, which the former Massachusetts governor cites as a reason he would do a better job on the economy than the president.

Like the television ad released last week, this video features workers telling their stories and suggesting Romney was responsible for their plight.

There is no real money behind this video, and it isn't clear if that will change. On Monday, the Obama campaign does an online push and will hold a conference call featuring one of the workers in the video. But an Obama campaign official said last week's initially small television buy putting the GST Steel ad on the air in battleground states will be expanded across Ohio this week.

The official said the new push will be posted on the RomneyEconomics website that went live last week with the GST Steel ad. The Obama team is "illustrating how Romney Economics is about doing whatever it takes to maximize profit, regardless of the cost to workers, companies and communities," the official said.

Watch it here or below.

The continued push comes after Obama backer and Newark, N.J., Democratic Mayor Cory Booker criticized the Bain attacks as "nauseating" on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"To me, it's just we're getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital," Booker said. "If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with."

But a few hours after the appearance aired, the Obama campaign flagged a "clarifying video" Booker had posted on YouTube. Booker spends several minutes explaining why he thinks the president deserves re-election, but he stood by his critique of negative campaigning.

The Obama team, for its part, released a 35-second version of Booker's YouTube video that focuses on Romney and backs up the campaign attack. In it, Booker says it is "reasonable" for the Obama team to examine Romney's record and that he has "no problem with that." Watch the short version here.

RON PAUL PRESSES ON

Texas Rep. Ron Paul's strategy to win political support without a presidential campaign seems to be working.

Minnesota saw the coup continue this weekend, when Paul won support from 12 of 13 representatives at the state's party convention. His supporters gave freshman state Rep. Kurt Bills the GOP nomination in the U.S. Senate race. Bills, who was endorsed by Paul, will face Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the fall.

The Texas congressman also picked up a majority of delegates at the state convention in Michigan, Romney's home state, plus a handful of delegates in Vermont. In Michigan, the Paul efforts resulted in Saul Anuzis, a longtime RNC member from the state, losing his seat in the shuffle.

"Victories in Minnesota and other states demonstrate that Ron Paul supporters possess the adaptability, organizational muscle, and unmatched enthusiasm required to continue winning delegates in upcoming contests," Paul national campaign manager John Tate said in a statement.

Paul announced a plan to suspend active campaigning last week. Instead, his campaign told supporters, he would focus on earning support from state delegates rather than voters. As the NewsHour reported, it's more about building a strategy for the long term than it is about 2012.

The Minnesota convention's outcome was in line with other recent state conventions where Paul supporters gained delegate spots despite losing the caucus or primary vote, such as in Nevada and Maine. Minnesota Public Radio reported that the state's event happened without the disruptions that Paul supporters gave to the Republican Party in other states.

Paul's delegate strategy won't prevent Romney's nomination at the convention, although some fear that rowdy Paul supporters might disrupt it. But it's clearer with each new delegate rounded up for Paul that he and his "liberty" platform will grab some attention from the nominee and the GOP in Tampa.

SHIELD AND BROOKS

On the Friday's NewsHour, Mark Shields and David Brooks talked with Jeffrey Brown about political tactics in the presidential campaign. David said the Obama team's attacks on Romney's time at Bain Capital are "80 percent unfair" and leave out important details about the companies Bain took over.

Mark weighed in on the Jeremiah Wright attack ad that was floated and fizzled last week.

"[T]his was a greedy proposal. It has no political saliency to it. The issue of Rev. Wright was litigated in 2008," he said. "[I]t is playing only to the conspiracy nuts and those who are convinced that he is either from Mars or Venus or Kenya."

David added that the campaigns "are losing control of their message" when outside forces attempt to drive the conversation.

Watch here or below.

Christina subbed for Hari Sreenivasan on Friday's Doubleheader. They talked about Rep. Paul and Americans Elect calling it quits. In the politics of sports segment, Mark and Christina agreed in their Preakness pick -- Daddy Nose Best -- while David went with Teeth of the Dog in honor of a golf course he once played.

Watch here or below:

2012 LINE ITEMS

The Washington Post's T.W. Farnam writes Monday that "the lobbying industry Obama has vowed to constrain is a regular presence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave" and visitors logs the president was the first to make public "suggest that lobbyists with personal connections to the White House enjoy the easiest access."

Romney welcomed Mr. Obama to the NATO Summit with an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune.

Jodi Kantor wrote a front-page New York Times story on Romney's Mormonism.

Romney's impressive haul in April was thanks to Republican National Committee fundraising, the FEC report filed this weekend shows. The presumptive nominee raised $11.7 million last month, less than the $13 million he raised in March. Romney had just over $9 million in the bank, compared with Mr. Obama's $115 million cash on hand, reports Aaron Blake of the Washington Post.

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times writes about how super PACs are reshaping the business of politics.

Politico's Abby Phillip reports, "The biggest donor in April to a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, Restore our Future, once got into a dispute that culminated with him driving a photographer's SUV into a pond -- an incident he called 'regrettable.'"

Politico's Anna Palmer outlines all the perks that Romney donors receive from the campaign.

Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz profiles the Romney camp's J.T. Jezierski, the man she says is "charged with the delicate task of serving as the chief conduit between hundreds of GOP Members and a presidential campaign hundreds of miles away."

The Tampa Bay Times looks at the careful negotiations of who will speak at the Republican National Convention.

The Associated Press notices that Romney is often campaigning on a bad economy in states where the Republican governors are campaigning on an improved local economy thanks to their own records.

Romney will speak at the Latino Coalition's Annual Economic Summit Wednesday in Washington. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also is giving a keynote address to the nonprofit small business organization.

Rubio gave a speech in South Carolina, lashing into the president's policies and sparking talk of a potential 2016 run.

The Associated Press looks at Romney's record in Massachusetts with a focus on Boston's "Big Dig."

American Crossroads has released a second web video mocking the president for saying his accomplishments are "great." Watch it here.

Kim Geiger of the Los Angeles Times reports that Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said it's "possible" he would keep the president's name off of the November ballot if officials in Hawaii do not send him confirmation Mr. Obama was born there.

TOP TWEETS

Florida emergency officials testing storm response with simulation of "Hurricane Gispert," aimed at Tampa during RNC convo #HotlineSort

Rick Santorum ended his campaign with $2.3 million in debt. He owes $762,988 to John Brabender. wapo.st/KcwcbU

Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign is over $1m in debt

Last week it was Chris Christie shaking his fist and saying "Booker!" Now it's the White House.

@NancyPelosi doesn't give a straight answer on @ThisWeekABC about whether she'd serve again as speaker if Dems win back House.

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Gwen Ifill (@pbsgwen) is reading two books that she says suggest politics today are smaller than politics of the past.

Asked Sunday by ABC's George Stephanopolous about perceptions he has had difficulty maintaining control of his caucus, House Speaker John Boehner responded, "It is hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed."

The editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Saturday endorsed Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker over Democrat Tom Barrett in the June 5 recall election. It wrote that Walker's "tough stance with the state's public employee unions" was "simply not enough to justify a vote against the governor."

The Journal Sentinel's Larry Sandler, Patrick Marley and Jason Stein also report on the labor money that may soon be moving off the sidelines for Barrett.

Jury deliberations resume Monday in the John Edwards campaign finance trial.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley got a behind-the-scenes look at the Pimlico stables in Baltimore ahead of Saturday's Preakness race. Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another is getting racing fans excited about the possibility of the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

Here's the NewsHour's update on the Trayvon Martin case.

The National Review's Katrina Trinko got into trouble for suggesting Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren plagiarized in her book, but it turns out Trinko was looking at the paperback version that came out one year later. She apologized and removed her initial piece.

GOP Sen. Mike Lee was forced to sell his Utah home in a short sale.

David Axelrod will campaign for Rep. Steven Rothman in New Jersey's redistricting-fueled member-vs.-member Democratic primary.

More fundraising reports for the campaign committees are in. Here's are the numbers for the House committees, and here are the Senate committees.

Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama attends the NATO Summit in Chicago and holds a 4:30 p.m. press conference. He speaks at the Joplin High School Commencement Ceremony at 9:15 p.m.

Vice President Biden has no public events scheduled.

Mitt Romney has no public events scheduled.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

In this week's Doubleheader, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks discuss the end of two campaigns.

For our sport of politics section, we talked about Texas Rep. Ron Paul's strategic shift -- relaying from presidential primaries to amassing delegates. Will he get a speaking slot at the convention? Mark and David aren't so sure.

Also up for debate: the Americans Elect effort calling it quits.

In our politics of sport section, David showed us his iPhone shot of commencement ceremonies at Yankee Stadium, but confessed he stayed true to form and wore his Mets cap.

We also took turns predicting the outcome of this weekend's Preakness Stakes race in Baltimore. The Doubleheader is on hiatus next week, but tune in June 1 so we can see if Mark and I were right to bet on Daddy Nose Best.

Katelyn Polantz shot and edited this video.

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

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks discuss the week's top political news including a recent Obama campaign video that tries to debunk Mitt Romney's job creation claims, JPMorgan Chase losses and the expected renewal of the debt ceiling debate.

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

Welcome back.

A few things bubbling under the surface of the campaign this week. I want to start with one, which was the focus on Mitt Romney and his experience at Bain Capital. Ads come out, competing narratives of that experience.

Mark, why the focus on that?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, you're Barack Obama, and the economy is the dominant issue, economy and jobs, and Mitt Romney has better scores on the economy than you do.

So you have to try and discredit or disqualify him on his economy credentials. And the irony is you have got two candidates in this race, both of whom are running away that from their signal legislative achievements of their career, health care.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: So, what you have got is Romney wants to talk about he's a turnaround specialist. And what -- the Obama campaign is saying, well, wait a minute, this isn't all about creating jobs. It's about creating profit. Sometimes creating profit means losing jobs.

JEFFREY BROWN: So they focused on this Kansas City steel company.

MARK SHIELDS: They want to establish that this wasn't just an economic -- without some pain and without some price.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you see in the focus on Bain Capital?

DAVID BROOKS: It was pretty similar to the ads Ted Kennedy ran against Romney where they got the unemployed people and said this guy's a vampire, he destroyed our company.

I personally think the ads are 80 percent unfair. This was a company. . .

JEFFREY BROWN: The Obama ad.

DAVID BROOKS: The Obama ad against the Bain activity and this steel company are mostly unfair.

This was a company that was on the way down. They had no other buyer. Bain comes in, buys the money -- buys the company, puts in $100 million. They hang to it for eight years, so it is not like they are just dumping it, and then the thing ends up folding anyway.

And so I think it was a legitimate business transition, an attempt to make a success. The 20 percent that's accurate is that they did load it with a bunch of debt. And Bain -- even though the company went down, Bain did okay. And so that part, they are right about. But it gets into a larger argument about creative destruction, that we have had this. . .

JEFFREY BROWN: And what capitalism is, right?

DAVID BROOKS: Really a ruthless pruning on the part -- especially pats of the economy that are globally competitive, manufacturing, high-tech.

And it's involved tremendous productivity gains, but also tremendous layoffs. And so it's perfectly legitimate for to us have a debate about that, in part, I think because Mitt Romney and a lot of Republicans see that churning as the model for the whole economy. And so that's a legitimate thing to talk about.

JEFFREY BROWN: That a big debate about what capitalism is, right, but how does it work politically?

MARK SHIELDS: But it is one that Mitt Romney has chosen not to make. Mitt Romney has sold us about Staples, a success. He helped this company. And Sports Authority and the jobs, 100,000 jobs.

If you are going to say I have created 100,000 jobs, I mean, the people who got hurt were the workers. I mean, the officers didn't. The officers of the company didn't. And Bain didn't. So, I mean, this reflects a value. I mean, is it going to be decisive? No.

But if you are the president of the United States and the economy is the top issue, and you are running behind, you better make sure that the guy on the other side doesn't appear as a just totally faultless tribune of this position.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, speaking of the nature of capitalism, another thing we learned this week is JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank, loses at least $2 billion and now it's probably more like $5 billion, right? Brings up all the focus on did the banks not learn a thing from the financial crisis and did regulation do anything and is more needed?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't think regulation is more needed. I think parts of regulation are more needed, but not to regulate failure.

Companies are allowed to fail. People are allowed to be stupid. And they lost $2 billion or $5 billion. That's being stupid. They pay the price, the head of the investment strategy out. And that's the way capitalism is supposed to work. That's how you chase in companies.

Where we have a public interest -- the idea of getting regulators involved and telling them, no, you can't make that hedge, you can't make that bet, you can't make that investment, that seems to me a recipe for disaster. Where we do have a public interest is making sure when people are stupid, they don't bring down the whole system.

And so making sure the capital requirements are high enough, that seems to me perfectly legitimate. But regulating within companies, and what bets they can do and hedges and upping the regulation in that sense seems to me completely wrong.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you see, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I disagree.

I mean once you've got these banks that are insured by the public, as they are, and the Volcker rule, which is very straightforward, endorsed by five secretaries of the treasury, which says with these deposits, you can't get into speculative enterprises, and expect that you are going to be bailed out.

And I think there's an overwhelming public interest here. You know, I think Barney Frank had some legitimacy today by saying they're complaining about the cost of applying and complying with the Dodd-Frank law, the banks are, saying it's $400 million or $600 million, and they're talking about losing 10 times as much.

And so I think there is a public interest. I stand in awe of the fact that none of these guys has walked into the bar of justice and what happened to this country, what they did to this country?

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, you say there is a public interest. Is there public interest in this? Does it play as a political matter when something like this happens?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think it's part of the big debate we're in the middle of.

And Joe Biden, the vice president, gave a speech where he talked about finance capitalism. He emphasized we have got to get back to making things. And so it was the good capitalism where the guy is out with a hammer, and the bad capitalism, these cowboys running around with credit default swaps.

JEFFREY BROWN: I was with Secretary Geithner yesterday in a Baltimore factory, and that was the emphasis, making things.

MARK SHIELDS: Manufacturing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And so I guess we're going to have this debate.

I think it is a completely bogus distinction.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why?

DAVID BROOKS: How do factories get capital? They get them through the capital markets.

Now, I'm not crazy with al the derivatives and credit default swaps. I'm certainly not crazy about the way people are compensated on Wall Street. But having the best capital market in the world is why we have a successful manufacturing sector. And the idea of separating the two seems to me economically illiterate. I understand politically why you want to do it, the wholesome guy with the hammer vs. those rich Wall Street guys.

But it seems to me economically illiterate. Nonetheless, it's part of the big debate we're having about modern capitalism, which is a service sector. We have a service economy. This is the other problem with the Obama strategy. They talk about manufacturing. We have a strong manufacturing sector. It happens to be 10 percent of employment. We are a service economy, and we have to have a strategy for a service economy.

MARK SHIELDS: I come back to the belief that we have to make something in this country. And are finally starting to make something. And I think that is important.

In answer to your question, Jeffrey, about is it -- does it have political saliency, there is no question that President Obama's message about fairness, about playing by the same rules, about everybody having a fair shot plays far better as a message in these times and situations like this than does Mitt Romney's, which is sort of a back to the future, we need less regulation, less government, smaller involvement. And I think, in that sense, the advantage goes to Obama and the Democrats.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay, another event this week is the beginning bubbling up, dare I say it, of the debt ceiling debate again, the debate that got kicked down the road, right, last year.

Was this, David, posturing or is there a real possibility of debating it during the campaign?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it was posturing. This is Boehner saying he was drawing a line in the sand, saying, no new tax, we're going to demand real spending cuts.

But I think was really more mobilizing the base. What happens, as everybody probably knows, is after the election in December, they have what we call Taxmageddon, where all these tax cuts, that all ends, a lot of spending sequestration starts. We really have a bunch of things all happening at once. And it is a potential for a complete catastrophe because the whole system goes kablooey.

And we are going to have to fix these things, deal with all these incredibly complicated issues at once. And the Republicans are saying, we are going to do fundamental tax reform. I happen to think they are right. Last time, it took two or three years. How are we going to do it in a couple of weeks?

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: And so I think what they are going to end up doing is kicking the can down the road.

JEFFREY BROWN: Again.

DAVID BROOKS: Again. And then we will see how the election turns out. But right now, everybody is posturing to say this is what we stand for. We stand are for spending cuts, or, in the Democrats' case, we stand for keeping the middle-class tax cuts, but not the rich.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you think this was all about this week, raising it. . .

MARK SHIELDS: I think it was all about Republican politics and I think it was incredibly stupid.

John Boehner is a savvy politician, an able politician. I think Republicans are looking at election results. They see a Lugar go down in Indiana to Mourdock. They see Orrin Hatch, who has recreated himself as a new conservative in the contemporary mold, barely holding on.

Deb Fischer upsets the Republicans and the conservative establishment in the Nebraska primary with Sarah Palin's endorsement. So they're looking over their shoulder. This is what got the Republicans in the problem they're in. Last August, and that deal, they've never recovered from it, as a negative.

Interesting. David had a piece which you pointed out that in the contraception argument with health care, that the Democrats' support for President Obama had fallen by eight points. The bishops, Catholic bishops have become the Republicans' new best friend.

So by raising this issue, the Paul Ryan budget, which cuts aid to the disabled, which cuts aid to immigrants' children, which cuts aid to the elderly, and to the -- those victims of abuse, the Catholic bishops came out and said, this violates the moral code. This is a violation of our belief in common ground and common good.

And so they are alienating the Catholic bishops. I mean, it makes no sense, other than politically within the Republican Party.

DAVID BROOKS: I do agree with that.

The message plays within the Republican Party, 28 percent of the country. It doesn't play outside. And in places like California, where -- I mean Pennsylvania, where you have a lot of Catholics, they are really enjeoparding whatever little chance they had.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, just a couple minutes here, and I want to get to the last story. It's sort of a non-story story, right? This is the group of Republican political operatives. And they propose an ad, an ad campaign, right, that would tie President Obama to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as almost happened four years ago.

And then it quickly gets disavowed, right, by Mitt Romney and others. What was that about? Does it tell us anything about the campaign?

MARK SHIELDS: It tells us first of all about greed. I mean, this was a greedy proposal. It has no political saliency to it. The issue of Rev. Wright was litigated in 2008.

President Obama gave the most popular and perhaps the most persuasive speech of his career in rebuttal to it. And in the past four years, people have seen him go to St. John's Church and other places and so forth. So in that sense, it is playing only to the conspiracy nuts and those who are convinced that he is either from Mars or Venus or Kenya.

So it really made no sense. It particularly made no sense when Mr. Ricketts, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, who was going to spend $10 million against President Obama while he is asking the people of Chicago to refinance the refurbishing the Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs. This is a guy who just slit his own throat by doing this.

DAVID BROOKS: And the campaigns are losing control of their message with all these different facts.

MARK SHIELDS: Absolutely.

DAVID BROOKS: And Romney, you can see how strongly he reacted. And Mark hinted at what is driving this.

The consultants get paid by the amount of ads that are taken out by these rich guys. And so they have an incentive to try to pump it up in ridiculous ways, and this was an example of that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you think we are going to see a lot more of that?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's going to be one of the stories of the campaign.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right.

Mark Shields, David Brooks, thanks, as always.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.

I've been flirting with this conclusion after diving into two enjoyable presidential history books by night while covering 2012 politics by day. The books, Robert Caro's "The Passage of Power" and "The President's Club" by Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs, take us inside the West Wing in a way screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's fictional White House never could.

Caro, in the fourth of what is scheduled to be a five-volume retelling of the operatic life and times of Lyndon B. Johnson, guides us through assassinations, missile crises and doomed wars -- all while peeling back the layers on one of America's most complicated presidents.

Duffy and Gibbs spread their story over decades, providing us with a rare look into the tiny club of men who know what it's like to hold nuclear codes and wear the Air Force One flight jacket.

Each book challenges our assumptions of what it takes to be president. These men are statesmen, but they are also -- without a doubt -- skilled and consummate political operators.

Johnson, as Caro tells it, was never more depressed than when he was a power-deprived vice president, never more insecure than when he was a powerful president on the brink of war.

Gibbs and Duffy describe how presidential membership has its unique privileges. Every president from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama recognized that it would be essential to rely on the only other men who had occupied the Oval Office -- even if they distrusted the politics or personality of those predecessors.

Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman's bad blood faded only in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when the men and their wives met for a drink at Washington's Blair House after the somber funeral.

In the end, the presidency is the loneliest and craziest job on earth, and once the oath is taken, it is sealed in quiet return visits, public photo-ops and anguished phone calls.

It is all very dramatic. But when I set aside these books and turned to my day job in recent weeks, this is what I saw:

Senate aspirants who denounce bipartisanship.

Campaign advertising that cast candidates in the worst, most sinister light.

Endless debates about cultural hot buttons that most voters say don't matter to them.

$50 million in super PAC spending that will pollute swing state airwaves for 26 more weeks.

Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps it is the veil of history that makes the challenges that confronted Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Richard Nixon seem so much more consequential than what we are seeing now.

I'm fairly sure that reporters of the time did not, for example, appreciate the full scope of the enmity between Johnson and Robert Kennedy.

"You hate to use words as a historian like hatred," Caro told me on the PBS NewsHour. "But hatred isn't too strong a word to describe the relationship between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. They hated each other."

Even the reporters who covered the rise of a charismatic California actor could not have known the full extent of the dance he and fellow Californian Nixon executed as they both clawed toward the presidency. "Nixon clearly did not think Reagan was in his league," former Nixon aide Patrick Buchanan told Gibbs and Duffy.

Yet, there is a pretty good argument to be made that things were not so dramatic then and not so puny now.

Caro, Duffy and Gibbs had the advantage of looking at their subjects through that most wonderful detritus of hindsight, presidential libraries and the work of dozens of other historians who have previously excavated the lives of our most powerful leaders.

For history's sake, I await the books that tell me the real arguments underway now. I'm not sure I could bear it if it turns out this period of history really was about hockey moms, birther debates and debt-ceiling standoffs.

Over to you, historians.

Gwen's Take is cross-posted with the website of Washington Week, which airs Friday night on many PBS stations. Check your local listings.

Floridians listen to Mitt Romney speak during a campaign stop Wednesday in St. Petersburg. Photo by Edward Linsmier/Getty Images.

So, what would a Mitt Romney presidency be like?

His campaign is giving voters a preview of what the Republican just might do on January 20, 2013, outlining a positive message in Romney's first television ad of the general election, a spot featuring upbeat music and three key promises.

A narrator pledges that on "Day One," Romney would: approve the Keystone pipeline, introduce tax cuts and begin the process of doing away with President Obama's health care reform law. "That's what a Romney presidency will be like," says the narrator.

Watch it here or below.

Politico reported Thursday that the Romney campaign's first ad buy would be in four battleground states: Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

The campaign did not disclose the size of the buy, but it also released a version of the ad in Spanish, a signal that Romney wants the push to be widely seen and offers another reminder that both sides are targeting Latino voters.

It ends with the presumptive nominee declaring, "Soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje."

GEITHNER TALKS TO THE NEWSHOUR

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner traveled outside the Beltway on Thursday, taking the president's economic agenda on the road by promoting small business growth in Baltimore.

Geithner visited Marlin Steel Wire, which manufactures products like baskets and shelving, employs roughly 30 workers, and exports to 36 countries. Geithner's trip was intended to highlight one item on President Obama's "to-do list" of economic proposals for Congress: a new-hire tax credit that would allow companies like Marlin to create more jobs.

Geithner gamely sported a pair of stylish safety goggles for a tour of the facility's workspaces and machines (the most impressive of which uses lasers to cut sheet metal), Tiffany Mullon reports, before sitting down with Jeffrey Brown for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview on the economy.

After noting that the Obama administration is "trying to get Congress to do some more things to help the economy," Geithner told Jeff he didn't understand the renewed debate over raising the national debt ceiling.

"Look at how much damage it caused the country last August, " he said. "I mean, it was terribly damaging for the country. And the idea you can govern effectively at this time in American history -- you know, we're fighting wars. We've got a major financial crisis in Europe. We have all of these challenges for the rest of the country with political politicians threatening to default if we don't adopt a partisan political agenda. It's deeply irresponsible. There's no basis for it."

Watch the full interview here or below.

GAY MARRIAGE ATTITUDES SHIFT IN N.C.

Alex Bruns reports that Mr. Obama's personal support for gay marriage may have shifted the opinions of some black voters in North Carolina. A new poll of Tarheel State voters by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling showed a 7 percent increase in the number of African-Americans who support the legality of gay marriage since the last PPP survey was conducted in the state May 6. The shift comes after the president's announcement, which came just after North Carolina approved a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Another interesting shift highlighted in the poll is among African-American voters who say there should be no "legal recognition of a gay couple's relationship." The earlier poll showed that 51 percent agreed with the statement, while the new poll found only 39 percent agreed.

Overall, a strong majority (58 percent) of North Carolina voters still think gay marriage should be illegal.

In related news, a PPP survey of Iowa voters found them "moving more and more in support of gay marriage to the point where they're now almost evenly divided on the issue." That poll showed 44 percent of voters think it should be legal, while 45 percent believe it should be illegal, a six-point shift from PPP's last Iowa poll on the issue in October. Gay marriage is legal in the Hawkeye State.

DUELING GRADUATIONS

Katelyn Polantz tracked the two big commencement speeches in Virginia last week, checking in with graduates and parents about Romney's and Michelle Obama's addresses at Liberty University and Virginia Tech, respectively.

She found it was hard to miss the political overtones, but many in the crowds were more interested in celebrating graduation than in the presidential race.

Watch Katelyn's report here or below.

DAILY DOWNLOAD

In our regular look at how the campaign is playing out online, Howard Kurtz and Lauren Ashburn of daily-download.com examined how the Jeremiah Wright ad proposal fizzled out in a matter of hours.

(Don't miss Terence's post on the evolution of the story.)

Kurtz notes how the dustup and subsequent walk-back "reminds you of how quickly these things happen now."

"That document in the old days would have simply been described to viewers, listeners, readers. And now you can read it for yourself if you have the stomach for it. But there it was," he said.

Watch the segment here or below.

The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty and Rosalind Helderman have an interesting look at how the New York Times story about the potential Wright campaign threw Romney off message when he wanted to be talking about the debt.

And Talking Points Memo has a profile of Joe Ricketts, the wealthy donor who commissioned the proposals.

2012 LINE ITEMS

Americans Elect has thrown in the towel.

Romney reached a 50 percent approval rating in the latest Gallup survey.

The Romney campaign released a new web video Thursday highlighting more average Americans hurt by the the president's economic policies.

Former Minnesota governor and presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty talked Thursday with Andrea Mitchell, sounding a bit like he was auditioning attack lines against Vice President Joe Biden.

"I think we get Joe Biden and Barack Obama very well. Vice President Biden hasn't been in the private sector since Gerald Ford was president. He has spent his entire adult life in government," Pawlenty said. "This is going to be a debate about the economy and to look to Joe Biden for that, somebody who has never not been in government, basically a professional bureaucrat, give me a break. I come from a blue collar background. I understand what jobs mean and Joe Biden doesn't have a clue."

When Mitchell pressed him about the veepstakes, Pawlenty gave a more forceful response than many on the so-called short list: "I'll do whatever I can do to help him. He's going to have a lot of great people to pick from."

The Hill has more on Romney's vice presidential vetting process.

CNN reports that a gay donor to Romney has decided to pull his support for the presumptive GOP nominee and support the president. The reason: Romney's stance on same-sex marriage.

The Obama campaign crafted a map attacking Romney's economic philosophy state-by-state. See it here.

TOP TWEETS

Surprised by the downfall of Americans Elect? NJ's @bethreinhard called it *last* September bit.ly/JRuvjP

Justice Stephen Breyer was the victim of a burglary, his second this year. njour.nl/JBLmYU

Jeff Brown talks with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on tonight's @NewsHour. twitter.com/tiffanymullon/...

Romney plane is the former McCain plane, flight attendant says.

Romney just accepted a check from woman in the audience. "Anybody Else?" he askswith a laugh. "Happens to me every day," he says.

OUTSIDE THE LINES

The NewsHour led Thursday's show with the nation's demographic shifts. Watch that report here.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Jason Stein and Patrick Marley look at how the recent jobs report in Wisconsin is driving the recall contest between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has $25 million in the bank. Some of that money is going to help Democrats with the Wisconsin recall effort.

The National Republican Congressional Committee announced its new favorite House hopefuls.

A PPP poll found both House races in New Hampshire, the always-swing state, tied.

Al Gore has a new girlfriend.

Republicans prevented Washington, D.C.'s non-voting Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton from testifying on a plan to prevent late-term abortions in the city.

A survey from the right-leaning Rasmussen Reports found the Republicans' new Nebraska Senate nominee Deb Fischer leading Democrat Bob Kerrey, a former senator, 56 percent to 38 percent.

Just in time for an upcoming summer of overheated partisan regulatory rhetoric, the Senate confirmed two appointees to the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve. Jay Powell and Jerome Stein fill the Fed Board for the first time since 2006.

NewsHour coordinating producer Linda Scott writes that on Wednesday, the House passed the Republican version of the Violence Against Women act by a vote of 222 to 205, with 23 Republicans defecting and six Democrats supporting the bill. The measure has drawn a veto threat from the White House, but before it even reaches that point the House and Senate must resolve the significant differences between the two versions.

The Senate bill expands the 1994 law that grants American Indians authority to prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on tribal lands and also offer protections to previously unspecified victims of domestic abuse, including immigrants and gays. The House version takes a narrower view, saying that language may be unconstitutional and omitted protections for those groups.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama addresses the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security in Washington at 10:15 a.m., meets with new French President Francois Hollande at the White House at 11 a.m. and travels to Camp David for the start of the G-8 Summit.

Vice President Biden attends a campaign event in Wilmington, Del., at 12:30 p.m.

Mitt Romney holds an event in Hillsborough, N.H., at 1:30 p.m.

Ron Paul addresses the Minnesota State GOP Convention in St. Cloud at 7 p.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

As part of an ongoing series on how candidates use social media this election season, Ray Suarez and journalists Lauren Ashburn and Howard Kurtz of Daily-Download.com discuss how President Obama and Mitt Romney use YouTube to bypass the "gatekeepers," or mainstream media, and get constituents to watch their campaign videos.

MARGARET WARNER: And to the presidential race.

Reports of a proposed attack ad campaign lit up the Internet today.

We go to Ray Suarez with our regular Daily Download segment.

RAY SUAREZ: And we turn to our regular look at the campaign as it plays out in social media and on the Web.

For that, we're joined by two journalists from the Web site Daily-Download.com -- that's with a hyphen. Lauren Ashburn is the site's editor chief and formerly with USA Today Live and Gannett Broadcasting. Howard Kurtz is Newsweek's Washington bureau chief and host of CNN's "Reliable Sources."

And, Howie, a story that was burning up the digital pathways fizzled election this afternoon when billionaire Joe Ricketts, who had promised to run a multimillion-dollar ad campaign attaching President Obama to his old pastor Jeremiah Wright fizzled. He couldn't pull the trigger on the campaign.

HOWARD KURTZ: This unfolded in the classic old media way, Ray, The New York Times obtaining a detailed copy of this plan to make Jeremiah Wright an issue, as he had been in 2008.

But it was just after 6:00 in the morning that David Axelrod, the Obama senior adviser, went on Twitter and posted his reaction. It was stunning. "Will Mitt stand up, as John McCain did, or allow the purveyors of slime to operate on his behalf?" And that speeded everything up, almost at a hyper-speed pace.

RAY SUAREZ: Along with the raw story, Lauren, we had the entire media strategy right there to be read from beginning to end online as well.

LAUREN ASHBURN: It was a 54-page professionally bound color photograph document that laid out exactly what the plan would be.

And by this afternoon, we had a statement from Joe Ricketts that said, this is not a campaign that I'm going to endorse and -- or run. And it went back and forth on Twitter with those remarks, and then the author of The New York Times piece coming out and saying don't forget, though, on page 26 of this 54-page document, it says, "With your preliminary approval at the New York meeting, here's this report."

HOWARD KURTZ: I do have to note that although this was leaked by somebody who was opposed to this and clearly was trying to sink it, the Times did note -- The Times interviewed the head of this super PAC, this pro-Romney super PAC, who didn't reject it out of hand, said it was being actively considered.

Of course, now the pressure got so great that not only did Joe Ricketts say, I reject any such approaches to politics, but Mitt Romney in an interview with a conservative online publication didn't waste any time in saying that he would repudiate this, even though technically he has no control over it.

LAUREN ASHBURN: But what's so interesting this is that Joe Ricketts didn't have to spend a dime. I mean, he has all the publicity he wants.

He's bringing back Jeremiah Wright, tying him to Obama, bringing up a 2008 story. If you remember , in 2008, President Obama -- or president would-be, right -- Obama said at the time, I am outraged at all of the comments that Jeremiah Wright had made.

And so it's bringing it all back, all back from that campaign four years ago. But no one paid a penny.

RAY SUAREZ: And it reminds you of how quickly these things happen now. That document in the old days would have simply been described to viewers, listeners, readers. And now you can read it for yourself if you have the stomach for it. But there it was.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Well, that's true.

And I think people become more engaged when they have the actual document themselves. It used to be that only the gatekeepers had the document. Now it's placed on Twitter, on Facebook, on The New York Times website. Everybody can take a look at it and starts all of these -- this commenting.

HOWARD KURTZ: That's the point. Everybody can not only take a look at it. Everybody can go on Twitter, on Facebook, any other social media site and weigh in. And that undoubtedly helped convince the Romney campaign it didn't even want to wait one news cycle before knocking this thing down.

RAY SUAREZ: Both campaigns have been active online this week. What have you got for us?

LAUREN ASHBURN: Well, we're talking about video.

In terms of video, it seems like the Obama campaign is still trouncing the Romney campaign. As you have said many times, Romney didn't have the resources to put into Web videos and Web ads. He was busy fighting in the states. . .

HOWARD KURTZ: Trying to win the nomination.

LAUREN ASHBURN: . . . trying to do it.

But take a look at this graphic that we have put together here on YouTube Politics, shows that the Obama campaign videos -- this is in millions -- the people who watched as of last week, President Obama's videos, 185 million views, and Mitt Romney's, 6.8 million. That's a pretty, pretty stark contrast.

HOWARD KURTZ: And the latest Obama Web video, which we will talk about in just a moment, also has a companion Web site, if you can put that up.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Yes. Here it is.

HOWARD KURTZ: And so the Obama campaign creates this RomneyEconomics.com with all kinds of information about Romney's tenure when he was the head of Bain Capital, and that company was a takeover company. It was buying steel plants in this case and other places.

Sometimes, jobs are created. Other times, jobs were lost. Guess which one the Obama campaign is focusing on?

LAUREN ASHBURN: Right.

HOWARD KURTZ: The steel plant in Kansas City where people's jobs were lost.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Right.

And we were -- if you look here, you can see the play button. They also put the videos on this Romney Economics Web site to make it very easy for people to see both the two-minute version and the six-minute longer version, where very heartfelt pleas by people who worked here, saying, if Bain hadn't come in, if Romney hadn't been here, we would still have jobs and we wouldn't have lost our pensions.

HOWARD KURTZ: Could we see an excerpt of that?

LAUREN ASHBURN: Oh. Why don't we go to the videotape?

(LAUGHTER)

RAY SUAREZ: I think we can.

MAN: It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.

MAN: It was like watching an old friend bleed to death.

MITT ROMNEY (R): As I look around at the millions of Americans without work, it breaks my heart.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, let's remember that if you had to buy the national time to show this to 185 million people, that would be expensive. This is cheap.

HOWARD KURTZ: The Obama campaign told me it has put this -- a version of this ad on the evening news in five states. That's a drop in the bucket. It didn't cost them very much.

Putting it on the Web, driving it out through social media, creating the website is a very inexpensive and effective way of trying to bring back something that's been an issue dogging Romney since he ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994. And that's the record of Bain Capital and where some people whose firms were taken over went bankrupt, lost their pension plans, in some cases lost their health care and lost their jobs.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Well, in talking to Ed Gillespie today, who is an adviser, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, his point in all of this is to bring it back to President Obama's record of the last three-and-a-half years, saying this has nothing to do with what Mitt Romney did or didn't do in his time at Bain Capital. What we need to focus on -- we meaning the Romney campaign -- is how the president has done in the last three-and-a-half years and the 23 million people who have gone out of work.

HOWARD KURTZ: Either out of work or are looking for work or have dropped out of the work force.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Lost their jobs.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, it's early yet with that big bulge for Obama video views. But the Romney campaign also is trying to describe the president's record economically and using film in the same way.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Right. And we do have a clip of that to show you.

NARRATOR: Millions of Americans are struggling under the Obama economy. Here are a few of their stories.

MAN: When the economy went bad, a month after my divorce, I lost my job, I lost my house.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, can you get tougher online than you can in a commercial in broadcast environment?

HOWARD KURTZ: I think so because you don't have to have the candidate coming out and saying, I approve this message.

But what's really fascinating to me, Lauren, is the way in which both of these campaigns are trying to tap into the anger and the frustrations of the pain of the economy, except Romney wants to do it on the economy of the last three years, blaming it on Barack Obama. The Obama campaign wants to say, you're running as a businessman. Here's what you did when you ran Bain Capital, focusing on a very different era.

LAUREN ASHBURN: I think what's interesting about the videos that we're seeing -- and coincidentally -- or, incidentally, rather, on Mother's Day both of them did Mother's Day videos honoring Ann Romney, honoring Michelle Obama.

Same reaction, though. President Obama has the video down. He has the people who -- watching videos captivated by his videos. Mitt Romney isn't there yet. He's making the effort to create these very well-produced documentary-style videos. He's starting to get -- the campaign is starting to get the hang of it, but it just hasn't. . .

HOWARD KURTZ: Are you saying he seems less personal?

LAUREN ASHBURN: No, I'm just saying it hasn't caught on. The videos coming out of the Romney campaign haven't really grabbed hold of the followers.

RAY SUAREZ: Lauren Ashburn and Howard Kurtz of the Daily Download, good to see you both.

HOWARD KURTZ: Same here.

LAUREN ASHBURN: Thank you.

Video shot and edited by Katelyn Polantz

The NewsHour logged 600 miles last weekend to witness dueling graduation speeches from first lady Michelle Obama and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Both chose to speak at schools in Virginia, a key swing state this year. About 30,000 people attended each of the ceremonies.

We wanted to size up the political talking points pumped into the speeches, and ask what graduates and their parents had hoped to hear. How crucial are these speeches in an election year when every word matters?

It's not surprising we found a divide in the speakers' approaches and in audience members' responses. Romney spoke at Liberty University, while Mrs. Obama spoke at Virginia Tech, the state land-grant university that also welcomed Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., to commencement.

What we couldn't show on camera were the many parents and graduates at Virginia Tech, in particular, who wished to avoid talking about politics that day. Instead, they said, they'd prefer to focus on the celebration.

That seems to be how the ceremonies played out nationally, too. Few national media covered Virginia Tech's commencement, and the Democrats' words found little play across the Internet. Romney's speech lit up Christian conservatives and political commentators as a defining moment of his 2012 campaign.

You can watch Romney's full speech at Liberty here:

The following Monday, President Barack Obama addressed graduates at Barnard College in New York City, and took a different tone altogether. You can watch that below.

U.S. Treasury Secretary speaks with the PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown Thursday at Marlin Steel Wire Products, a factory in Baltimore

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown during a factory tour Thursday that he couldn't understand why the debate over the federal debt limit is back again.

The visit to Marlin Steel Wire Products, a Baltimore manufacturer of wire baskets that employs 30 workers and exports to some 36 countries around the world, was part of an ongoing effort to get out of Washington to promote the administration's economic agenda.

Geithner made those comments during a wide-ranging interview about the economy that touched on sluggish overall job and economic growth, new turmoil in Europe, JPMorgan's spectacular trading losses that have put a renewed focus on Wall Street regulation plus a new flare-up in Washington over the federal debt limit.

Here are three excerpts of their discussion. First, the renewed debate over the federal debt limit:

EmbedVideo(3417, 482, 304);

JEFFREY BROWN: Here we are again this week where the debt limit question has bubbled up. Do you see --

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Can you believe it?

JEFFREY BROWN: Can you believe it?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: I can't. I can't. I don't understand it. I don't understand it.

JEFFREY BROWN: You can't because, you can't understand because --

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Because look at how much damage it caused the country last August. I mean, it was terribly damaging for the country. And the idea you can govern effectively at this time in American history -- you know, we're fighting wars. We've got a major financial crisis in Europe. We have all of these challenges for the rest of the country with political politicians threatening to default if we don't adopt a partisan political agenda. It's deeply irresponsible. There's no basis for it.

The secretary also discussed a "perception problem" with CEOs of major banks serving on the board of the New York Federal Reserve:

EmbedVideo(3418, 482, 304);

JEFFREY BROWN: Elizabeth Warren, who helped set up the Consumer Protection Agency for the administration, now running for the Senate in Massachusetts - she said that Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan, should not be sitting on the board of the New York Fed, that that just - it isn't right, because they help regulate those banks.]

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: That's not a new observation, not a new concern. It's been made by many people over the last several years.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you think it's right?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: I think it is true. And I think it's a problem that that - the structure of the Fed, established 90 years ago, and it's true for Federal Reserve banks across the country, creates that basic perception. And I think that's something worth trying to change. But the American people should understand that although the Fed was set up that way, those banks and the members of the board play no role in supervision. They have no role in the writing of the rules, and they play no role in decisions the Fed makes about how to respond to a financial crisis. Their role is a much more limited role, and the role is to help provide a perspective on what's happening in the economy as a whole. But I agree with you that the, that perception is a problem. And it's worth trying to figure out how to fix that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you think Jamie Dimon should be off the board?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Well, that's a question he'll have to make and the Fed will have to make. But again, on the basic point, which is it is very important, particularly given the damage caused by the crisis, that our system of oversight and safeguards and the enforcement authorities have not just the resources they need, but they are perceived to be above any political influence and have the independence and the ability to make sure these reforms are tough and effective so we protect the American people, again, from a crisis like this. And we're going to, we're going to do that.

The two also discussed how President Obama's economic record will play out on the campaign trail this year:

EmbedVideo(3419, 482, 304);

JEFFREY BROWN: So you think he's got a record on jobs and the economy that he can proudly run on?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Absolutely. And again, if you look at -- look at how we're doing relative to any other major country in the world today. Look at how we managed our crisis relative to what, not just how the U.S. managed in the past or how Japan did, but look at Europe today, and if you look at any measure that we can point to of economic strength, they provide overwhelming support for the choices he made early on. And remember, those were tough - very tough choices, put out the financial fires, get growth started. He did it with almost no help from his opponents, deep political costs, and those things made us -- make us stronger today.

Tune in to Thursday's NewsHour broadcast for the full interview.

The book showcases images from every election since President Andrew Jackson in 1828. Many of the images that come from before the 1900s are formulaic etchings of candidate head-shots paired with flowery slogans. They slowly give way to posters that resemble political cartoons -- minimalist posters laden with Helvetica text and psychedelic caricatures designed to appeal to the young voters of the 1960s. Then, of course, there's President Obama's "Hope" poster, drawn up by Shepard Fairey in 2008, that doesn't even feature the then-candidate's name.

In our accompanying slideshow, preview a sample 13 of the posters featured in the book.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that a conservative group tied to TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts would not implement the proposed campaign, which was first detailed by the New York Times.

A group of Republican strategists had pushed the effort, titled "The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: the Ricketts Plan to End His Spending For Good." The blueprint included clips of the Wright's incendiary sermons, which first came to light during the 2008 campaign.

Brian Baker, president of the Ending Spending Action Fund, released a statement Thursday on behalf of Ricketts:

Not only was this plan merely a proposal -- one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors -- but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take. Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.

When word of the campaign first broke Thursday morning, it resulted in immediate backlash from supporters of the president.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina issued a statement accusing presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney of "reacting tepidly" to the story.

"The blueprint for a hate-filled, divisive campaign of character assassination speaks for itself. It also reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics," Messina said. "Once again, Governor Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party."

For its part, the Romney campaign initially responded with a statement encouraging people to focus on jobs and the economy. Romney himself weighed in later in an interview with the conservative Townhall website.

"I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they've described," Romney declared. "I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity -- particularly for those in the middle class of America."

Still, the former Massachusetts governor charged that Republicans weren't the only ones launching negative attacks, saying: "I think what we've seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination. I hope that isn't the course of this campaign."

GOP strategists are working with billionaire Joe Ricketts, above, on a proposal to mount a "provocative" campaign against President Obama, the New York Times reports. Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images.

Update, 2:25 p.m. A few hours after the New York Times story made a splash, organizers behind the effort are saying they won't put a Wright attack on the air after all. Terence's post explaining the shift is here.

Welcome to the brave new world of super PAC spending.

The New York Times reports that a Republican super PAC is planning a major attack on President Obama, rehashing a ghost from the 2008 campaign. A 54-page document leaked to the newspaper suggests that the president's one-time, controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is not only on the table, but the subject of a proposed ad campaign.

The document, being circulated by a group of high-profile donors and consultants, outlines ads to begin around the time of the Democratic National Convention this summer and notes the aim is to "do exactly what John McCain would not let us do."

The Times also has a storyboard for a five-minute film criticizing the president's background and policies.

More from the story, by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg:

"The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way," says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.

The $10 million plan, one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama's former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as "black liberation theology."

The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an "extremely literate conservative African-American" who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."

A copy of a detailed advertising plan was obtained by The New York Times through a person not connected to the proposal who was alarmed by its tone. It is titled "The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good."

The proposal was presented last week in Chicago to associates and family members of Mr. Ricketts, who is also the patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs.

Brian Baker, president and general counsel of a super PAC called the Ending Spending Action Fund, said Mr. Ricketts had studied several advertising proposals in recent months and had not signed off on a specific approach to taking on Mr. Obama.

"Joe Ricketts is prepared to spend significant resources in the 2012 election in both the presidential race and Congressional races," Mr. Baker said in an interview Wednesday. "He is very concerned about the future direction of the country and plans to take a stand."

The document makes clear that the effort is only in the planning stages and awaiting full approval from Mr. Ricketts. People involved in the planning said the publicity now certain to surround it could send the strategists back to the drawing board.

The Times story already was reverberating Thursday, with the president's top political adviser, David Axelrod, calling it "stunning" on Twitter. Axelrod wrote: "Will Mitt stand up, as John [McCain] did? Or allow the purveyors of slime to operate on his behalf."

The news comes as Mitt Romney's campaign announced that the presumptive GOP nominee and the Republican National Committee nearly matched the president in fundraising in April. They raised $40.1 million, just shy of the $43.6 million hauled in by the Democrats. The campaign and RNC have $61.4 million cash on hand.

"We are pleased with the strong support we have received from Americans across the country who are looking for new leadership in the White House," said Romney campaign finance chairman Spencer Zwick. "Along with the hard work of the Republican National Committee, we will continue to raise the funds necessary to defeat President Obama in November."

The campaign detailed that 95 percent of the donations received in April were $250 or less, and made up about a quarter of the overall haul for the month.

At the start of the campaign, the Obama operation was viewed as a fundraising juggernaut with the potential to raise upwards of $1 billion, but if Romney and the RNC are able to keep pace -- and super PAC spending is factored in -- it could be the Republicans who have the biggest money machine this cycle.

WISCONSIN RECALL

In perhaps the most closely watched pre-November race, Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker has opened up a six-point lead on his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in the June recall election, according to a Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday.

The first-term governor received support from 50 percent of likely voters, compared with 44 percent for Barrett. Just 3 percent of voters say they are undecided.

Walker held a 48 percent to 47 percent advantage over Barrett in the last Marquette Law poll two weeks ago.

Republicans also appear to be more enthusiastic about the race, with 91 percent responding they were "absolutely certain" to vote next month. Eighty-three percent of both Democrats and independents said the same.

More Democrats, however, said they have been contacted by a campaign -- 83 percent -- than either Republicans (78 percent) or independents (76 percent).

"In a close election with so few undecided voters, enthusiasm, turnout and campaign contact with voters may make the difference," said Marquette Law School poll director Charles Franklin.

The contest is a rematch of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign that Walker won by 5 percent.

BOEHNER'S BUDGET SHOWDOWN

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has told President Obama that he wants to return to an issue that's been stagnant since last fall, saying that he thinks now's the time to decide what to do about the nation's debt ceiling.

Among other demands, Rep. Boehner says that Congress should add no new dollars of revenue and instead rely on spending cuts if the debt ceiling must be raised to prevent a federal default. It's obviously a move timed to the election season.

Judy Woodruff talked with Steven Dennis of Roll Call and Todd Zwillich of The Takeaway to get at the heart of the politics of the issue.

Republicans are measuring their risks and rewards in forcing this issue into the national discussion this week, Zwillich said. He noted that nothing actually needs to be done until late this year, saying:

This may even come after New Year's, and maybe this won't come down to a debt limit showdown.

Now, the speaker says we don't have to wait until the last minute. We can talk about this now. We can be responsible. Yes, Republicans want to have the discussion now. That doesn't mean that the president is going to take the speaker's bait and have a debate all throughout the summer and into fall over how and when to raise the debt limit and tie it with spending cuts. I don't think so.

If Boehner keeps his word, key programs such as Medicare will face cuts. "Austerity is pretty unpopular when you go to the people," Dennis said. (Read his latest story on the debt politics here.)

Watch the segment here or below:

2012 LINE ITEMS

Forbes looks at what Romney is worth.

The Associated Press' Steve Peoples and Thomas Beaumont write that Romney has no intention of competing in his home state of Massachusetts.

Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, rebuts the new Crossroads spots point-by-point in a web video.

On Thursday, the president's team will launch Veterans & Military Families for Obama. The "centerpiece" event will be in Norfolk, Va., and campaign organizers will hold phone banks and house parties in 16 states, including Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, North Carolina, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Colorado.

The Hill's Amie Parnes talks with Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in Chicago. He says the president can win North Carolina once more.

Don't miss our slideshow of historical presidential campaign posters.

TOP TWEETS

A widely forgotten '08 fact, btw: A GOP group dropped $7 million in the last week on a slashing, Wright-themed ad politico.com/blogs/bensmith...

somehow @ryangop has a way of popping up in places like this. like, next to Joe Biden for dinner. abcn.ws/JIXc2o (via @emilyabc)

Dairy Queen stop with @JoeBiden. He asked for chocolate vanilla swirl

Bill Burton emails that Mary Beth Cahill is going to be joining Priorities USA as a consultant on strategy and spending

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Someone is burglarizing Congressional offices, the National Journal reports.

The NewsHour got an update on the John Edwards trial Wednesday night. Watch the segment here. Politico's Reid Epstein writes about the five legal strategies Edwards can deploy.

Judy talked with former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., about his new book, "We Can All Do Better." In the book, Bradley calls for responsible action from ordinary citizens to instigate political change. Watch that here.

Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz writes that Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has made his decision final: He will not run for Congress in Washington state. Kucinich lost his Ohio seat in the Democratic primary.

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. But his topic of "inequality" was " too controversial to spread," the National Journal reports.

Elizabeth Warren is out with a new ad in Massachusetts.

Many Maryland residents will see their income taxes go up right away, with the state legislature approving a retroactive increase as part of an agreement on the budget. Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to sign the compromise. It's an issues we're tracking closely in our Divided by DC project, so stay tuned to the NewsHour for more.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times looks at the GOP backlash against South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint in the aftermath of the Nebraska Senate primary race.

The Miami Herald has details on some questionable tactics used within the Florida Republican Party. Former Gov. Charlie Crist is dishing about former state party chair Jim Greer's attempt to pressure him before the 2010 Senate race.

According to a new Census Bureau report, most of the nation's babies are members of a minority group.

Some Florida 8th graders have produced a video that they hope Mr. Obama will see.

Aaron Sorkin has signed on to write a movie about Steve Jobs.

Katelyn Polantz, Cassie M. Chew and Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama has no public events scheduled.

Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at a campaign event in Martins Ferry, Ohio, at 11:45 a.m.

Mitt Romney holds a campaign event in Jacksonville, Fla., at 2:30 p.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

Despite a nearly three-week run by the prosecution, John Edwards' defense attorneys rested after two days without calling the former vice presidential nominee, his mistress or daughter to the stand regarding the campaign finance charges he faces. Judy Woodruff and the AP's Michael Biesecker discuss the case's next steps.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We turn to the courtroom drama involving the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, John Edwards.

Edwards faces charges he violated campaign finance laws by securing funds for his mistress, Rielle Hunter. After nearly a three-week run by the prosecution, the defense has rested after just two days without calling Edwards or Hunter to testify. Closing arguments are tomorrow.

Michael Biesecker of the Associated Press has been inside the courtroom, and he joins us now from Greensboro, N.C.

Thank you for being with us.

And before I ask you about what happened today, Michael Biesecker, give us a sense of what the prosecution laid out over the time that it was in charge.

MICHAEL BIESECKER, Associated Press: Well, the prosecution presented 14 days of testimony from very close friends of Edwards and former aides that presented him largely as a liar, a liar who lied about his affair, who lied about fathering a baby with his mistress, and who lied about his knowledge of the money and covering it up.

They rested their case with an ABC interview from 2008 where he repeated all those lies, and they played it for the jury. So, the defense had to try to mitigate that damage in presenting its case.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And how did the defense do that? And, again, what -- just over two days, what did the defense say?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Well, since they didn't put Edwards on the stand, they had to attack the credibility of those who had questioned his.

They attacked the aide Andrew Young, the person who initially claimed paternity of the baby and who took $725,000 from a wealthy heiress, Bunny Mellon, that some of which was spent to cover up the affair. But the defense used the Youngs' own financial statements to show much of the money they received, almost $1 million in total between two donors, was funneled to build their $1.6 million dream home in Chapel Hill. It didn't go to the cover-up of the affair, at least the majority of it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there a sense, an understanding of why the defense decided not to call John Edwards, a celebrated trial lawyer throughout most of his career, or Rielle Hunter, the mistress?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Well, on Edwards, obviously, he made his living before he entered politics swaying jurors, and after he entered politics swaying voters.

But he took a -- he would have stood a withering cross-examination about his past lives, about his sex life, about the baby he fathered and denied for two years. And I think they -- when they did the risk analysis, they felt that the prosecution's case was weak enough that they didn't have to expose Edwards to the risk of what he might be forced to say on cross-examination.

For Hunter, if they put -- if the defense put her on the stand, that just would potentially remind jurors of the affair and the sordid tabloid nature of this whole scandal.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the core of this, Michael Biesecker, the notion that a campaign finance law may have been violated here? The core of that argument, either side -- is there some sort of consensus that either side has the -- made the better case on that?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Well, certainly, the defense contends that Edwards had very little knowledge of the cover-up and the money used in it.

But the defense has hammered that this was money that flowed from a third party, the wealthy donors, to another third party, the aide Young and the mistress, Rielle Hunter. Edwards never touched the money. It never went through his campaign account. And, therefore, they argued that these were personal expenditures between two individuals that didn't have anything to do with the candidate or his campaign, essentially a gift.

The prosecution counters that it was clearly a campaign finance violation because the money was intended to influence the outcome of an election, i.e., hiding the mistress from the public and keeping Edwards' campaign viable as he went through the early primaries in 2008.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tell us, Michael Biesecker, what has it been like covering this trial? It has gotten so much attention because of the sensational details. Watching -- we have seen pictures of John Edwards coming and going with his parents, with his daughter. Tell us about that side of this trial.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Well, for those of us from North Carolina, we watched John Edwards' meteoric rise from a local trial attorney to senator to vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.

And as rapid as that rise was, his life fell apart even faster. And all the sordid details, some of which were previously unknown, about that fall have tumbled out into the courtroom. You know, it's -- it's Shakespearian in its dramatic nature. And certainly there have been moments in the testimony, especially the testimony about his deceased wife, Elizabeth Edwards, and an argument they had at an airport in Raleigh where she ripped over her blouse when she challenged him about the affair, some of the testimony was so emotional, it sent his daughter, Cate Edwards, who has been sitting in the front row of the courtroom for most of the trial, fleeing in tears.

The defense has tried to refocus from all that emotion, all that sex, all that scandal back to the central technical legal issue of were these campaign finance violations and take the emotion out of it. And they had some success in trying to do that in the last two days.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, closing arguments tomorrow.

Michael Biesecker, we will be watching. Thank you.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Thank you, Judy.

Sen. Bill Bradley, the former presidential candidate and Democratic senator from New Jersey, talked with Judy Woodruff about his new book, "We Can All Do Better."

Bradley said the media, money in politics and a hyperpartisan Congress are all partially at fault when it comes to the dysfunction in Washington. In the book, Bradley calls for responsible action from ordinary citizens to instigate political change.

Woodruff recently sat down with Bradley to talk about a topic that has gotten a lot of attention: gridlock.

Woodruff asked if the problem can be fixed, and Bradley took on a hopeful note.

Bradley said:

I had a lot of people coming up to me saying that they were losing hope.

And so I wanted to write a book that would hopefully restore hope and give people a sense of the problems we've faced in the past and how we've overcome them -- wars and depressions and failures of democracy -- and then remind them that there's a goodness in the American people. That's something we can build on.

... I think politics in its best sense can celebrate the best of all of us. I think we have a systemic problem with our democracy -- two major systemic problems. One is the way we draw congressional district lines: gerrymandering. The other is the role of money in politics.

And those are the two things we need to address in order to liberate our politics and our government so that it can do the things that the majority of the people want to have done.

Battle lines were being drawn again Wednesday for a new fight over raising the U.S. borrowing limit, foreshadowing a replay of last year's stalemate. Judy Woodruff, Todd Zwillich of "The Takeaway" and Roll Call's Steve Dennis discuss the renewed war of words and how a new debt battle might shape the presidential campaign.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The confrontation over raising the national debt ceiling consumed Washington for much of 2011. Now the issue has reemerged. It was raised at a White House meeting today, and sparked a new war of words in Congress.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-Ohio: The issue here is the debt, almost $16 trillion worth of debt, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit again this year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Battle lines were already being drawn today for a new fight over raising the country's borrowing limit. The government will not reach the current debt ceiling until the end of this year, or maybe 2013.

But House Speaker John Boehner went into a White House luncheon with the president vowing to make it a prime topic now.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER: And what I'm trying to do is encourage people on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to be honest with the American people and to be honest with ourselves, to begin to tackle this problem in an adult-like fashion.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Boehner announced Tuesday that he will again demand spending cuts only, and no tax hikes, to match any increase in the debt limit. But Congressman James Clyburn and other leading Democrats charged it was a made-up issue to help Republicans score political points.

Clyburn said today, "I hope the president will not get roped in to this foolishness."

Boehner took the same stance in last summer's protracted battle over the debt ceiling. A last-minute deal averted national default.

And White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the president warned lawmakers today against letting history repeat itself.

JAY CARNEY, White House press secretary: We're not going to recreate the debt ceiling debacle of last August. It is simply not acceptable to hold the American and global economy hostage to one party's political ideology.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mr. Obama did not mention the debt issue during an event promoting his economic to-do list.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We want to sustain momentum. And one of the ways that we can sustain momentum is for Congress to take some actions right now, even though it's election season, even though there's gridlock, even though there's partisanship, take some actions right now that would really make a difference.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, like Speaker Boehner, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney raised the debt issue yesterday. He returned to it today, in St. Petersburg, Fla., with a national debt clock behind him for emphasis.

MITT ROMNEY (R): I find it incomprehensible that a president could come to office and call his predecessor's record irresponsible and unpatriotic, and then do almost nothing to fix it, and instead every year to add more and more and more spending.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Republicans and Democrats alike say they don't expect action on the budget or the debt ceiling until after the election.

To help us understand this latest political maneuvering, we are joined by Todd Zwillich, a reporter for the PRI's "The Takeaway" on WNYC Radio, and Steve Dennis, who covers the White House for Roll Call newspaper.

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

Todd Zwillich, to you first.

If nothing is likely to be done until after the election, why is the speaker bringing this up now?

TODD ZWILLICH, "The Takeaway," Public Radio International: Well, the speaker spoke to this yesterday at a conference here in Washington which you were at, Judy. We all saw you moderating a discussion there.

Take the speaker at his word. He said, I don't feel like I have any other tools to get Washington serious about spending cuts, other than the debt limit. Why would he say that? Because we've all seen this movie before. We remember how bruising it was last year when Republicans insisted on tying the debt limit to spending cuts, and it became a long, protracted fight, one that the president and the White House says they don't want to repeat.

There's a political angle to this, also, as well, of course. The speaker does his right wing some favors, probably does the conservative base that Mitt Romney is also trying to satisfy some favors by saying, we are dead serious about debt. This is our main charge against the president. It's an economic charge. It's a fiscal responsibility charge and we're here to solve it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Steve Dennis, what would you -- what light can you shed on why now, though?

STEVEN DENNIS, Roll Call: Well, I think if you look at the context of the election, considering that the debt limit isn't going to need to be raised probably until January or February of next year, this is about focusing the nation's attention on the debt, which is something Republicans would much rather be talking about and Mitt Romney, obviously, wants to be talking about. They want to have the issue focused on debt and deficits. . .

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rather than?

STEVEN DENNIS: The White House this week wanted to be talking about their new jobs packages. You know, they wanted to be talking about letting people refinance their homes. They want to be talking about small business tax cuts, all these things that are sort of passing out goodies, instead of dealing with a big barrel of pain, which is what's headed at the end of the year. We have got expiring tax cuts. We have got huge spending cut and we have got the debt ceiling increase.

Those are sort of three legislative nuclear weapons all about to go off. And everybody is holding one of them hostage.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But the fact that the speaker is talking about it now, Todd, Todd Zwillich, does that mean something can be done about it in the near future?

TODD ZWILLICH: Something can always be done. Congress makes the laws. The president signs the laws. Sure, something can be done. Will it? Not until after the election, and in terms of the debt limit, maybe not until after New Year's.

When you saw Jay Carney there say we're not going to do this again, you say, well, Mr. President, if the debt limit expires, you kind of are. Well, they have a little bit of power over this. Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, said yesterday essentially that the speaker's threat is largely hollow because we have some tools and if the debt limit expires in late November or December, we can -- we can -- we have some tools within Treasury to extend things out. This may even come after New Year's, and maybe this won't come down to a debt limit showdown.

Now, the speaker says we don't have to wait until the last minute. We can talk about this now. We can be responsible. Yes, Republicans want to have the discussion now. That doesn't mean that the president is going to take the speaker's bait and have a debate all throughout the summer and into fall over how and when to raise the debt limit and tie it with spending cuts. I don't think so.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let's talk just for a second, Steve Dennis, about the substance of this, what the speaker is asking for, only spending cut to match whatever the increase in the debt ceiling.

You talk today, as I did, to some deficit hawks, people who care about the debt and the deficit, and they say to do that is really realistically very difficult. You stay away from defense, you have got to go to programs for the poor, education.

STEVEN DENNIS: Medicare.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Medicare.

STEVEN DENNIS: I mean, these are third rails, and, you know, I think the real problem, the risk here that Republicans have is that, you know, they're having a hard enough time dealing with a sequester, which is $1.2 trillion in spending cuts that kicks in at the end of this year from last year's deal.

JUDY WOODRUFF: If they don't come up with a new plan.

STEVEN DENNIS: Right. So, how are you going to come up with new cuts for another $2 trillion increase? It is going to be very hard for them to do that.

And the risk here is, if you look what happened in Europe, they're forcing all these countries to do all this austerity and those governments are falling. Austerity is pretty unpopular when you go to the people and say, oh, do you want to cut Medicare? It doesn't really work very well politically.

So, the job here for the Democrats and the president is to go out to the folks and say, hey, if you follow John Boehner's prescription, we are going to decimate programs you care about, and take that to the election.

Now, in the meantime, though, there is a real risk -- people are starting to get nervous on Wall Street again.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just by the very -- the subject being raised.

STEVEN DENNIS: Just the possibility of a year-end fiscal train wreck.

Ben Bernanke's worried about if this -- all these three bombs go off at the same time, that the economy could go back into a recession very quickly. You know, if Wall Street starts thinking maybe they can't come up with a deal, that could be happening right around the elections. And, you know, that's a very volatile environment. We saw in 2008 when Wall Street gets nervous, you know, the politics can change really fast.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Todd Zwillich, you talk to folks on both sides of the aisle. Have the Republicans thought through that part of it? As we noted, Mitt Romney is out on the campaign trail at the very same time raising the debt issue. Coordination there or coincidence?

TODD ZWILLICH: Well, the speaker's speech yesterday was scheduled for a long time. It was clear that Mitt Romney was eager to get off of other issues that capitalized the campaign last week, gay marriage, for instance.

He wasn't eager to talk about that. John Boehner certainly wasn't eager to talk about gay marriage. He would answer that question saying, marriage is between one man and one woman, but I'm here focuses on the economy. You knew where John Boehner was going in terms of where he thinks the messaging should be.

Democrats on the Hill in terms of these fiscal bombs that are about to go off think they have some leverage here. Steve mentioned the sequester, and that's $600 billion of domestic cuts, $600 billion of defense cuts.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The automatic cuts if they can't reach an agreement.

TODD ZWILLICH: Which are going into effect Jan. 1, and everyone, including Republicans, signed on to. Democrats are sitting on the Hill telling me, we're fine with that. Republicans, sure, we can undo those $600 billion in defense cuts if you want to. We can tie it to the debt limit if you want to. Let's talk revenue. Put a dollar of tax increases on the table.

In terms of the election, as the president and Mitt Romney go to the public with these two issues, the Democrats' message is, yes, we have a fiscal problem, but the other side won't even consider a tax increase for the richest among us. You have heard that refrain. I don't need to explain it. Yes, we have a fiscal problem. Let's talk about balance, not just spending cuts that we have already taken from the middle class.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Steve Dennis, finally, what do we look for next? I mean do we look for meetings to be scheduled to talk about this?

STEVEN DENNIS: No, I think we're just going to get the same posturing we have gotten over the past year as far as the big picture, as far as the fiscal year-end cliff.

The real question, though -- they did talk also during this hoagie summit -- they did talk about things they can get done in the next few months, things they need to get done on student loans, things they need to get done on the transportation bill. Maybe they will take up one or two of President Obama's to-do list, maybe a small business tax cut.

There are some things that are really small ball that maybe they can get done as long as they don't attach tax increases, and that was the message that Mitch McConnell brought in -- the Senate Republican leader, brought into the meeting.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, meanwhile, the attention focused on the debt ceiling, but you're saying there was real practical work done as well.

STEVEN DENNIS: It wasn't really a negotiating session. But I think the fact that it was cordial, that they came out saying we may be able to get some things done I think is a positive sign for at least a few things sort of happening under the radar here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A good note to share.

Steve Dennis, Todd Zwillich, thank you both.

TODD ZWILLICH: Pleasure.

STEVEN DENNIS: Great to be here.

President Obama holds a jersey presented to him during a White House event Tuesday to honor the MLS champion LA Galaxy. From left, front row: Head Coach Bruce Arena, captain Landon Donovan and David Beckham. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised $43.6 million in April, a sign of the president's continued fundraising advantage over Mitt Romney.

The news was announced by campaign manager Jim Messina in a video emailed to supporters Wednesday.

The April figure is down from the $53 million raised by Democrats in March, but does not factor in a series of recent fundraising events, including one last week in Hollywood that hauled in a reported $15 million.

In the video, Messina says the resources will be needed to keep up not only with the Romney campaign, but with spending from outside groups attacking the president. "Oil company executives and other special interests are dumping millions of dollars in super PAC attack ads," he argues, adding: "The Koch-brothers funded super PAC spent $6 million dollars on TV ads attacking the president. Mitt Romney's super PAC put another $4 million on the air. That's $10 million in ads from two outside groups who can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money."

Messina also gives supporters an update on the campaign's different pathways to 270 electoral votes this fall, touting the hiring of staffers and opening of 42 field offices in key battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

"One of the most important things we can do is get our arms around that fact that this election is going to be close given the historic challenges the nation faced when the president first came into office," he says in the video.

Messina also says volunteers registered 15,000 new voters in North Carolina just last month, which he called, "A big deal, because we won the state by less than that last time."

"We can't count on anyone's old map, even ours," Messina says, one reason the campaign hired new staff in Arizona last month. "It wasn't a swing state this time around, but if we can help register the hundreds of thousands of eligible voters who missed out in 2008, we can put it on the table this November."

Check out the Electoral College numbers yourself in our Vote 2012 Map Center.

BIDEN TAKES ON ROMNEY

Vice President Joe Biden will make the administration's case for re-election to blue collar voters in Ohio on Wednesday, while also taking aim at what has become a main target for the Obama campaign: Romney's business record.

The vice president is expected to say that Romney's business strategy harmed the middle class and helped the richest profit. According to excerpts provided by the campaign, Biden will compare what he dubs "Obama Economics," the "philosophy that believes everyone deserves a fair shot and a fair shake, and everybody should play by the same rules," to "Romney Economics, which says as long as the government helps the guys at the very top do well, workers and small businesses and communities can be left to fend for themselves."

Biden will reprise the attack laid out by an Obama campaign ad on Monday, which focused on Romney's role at Bain Capital when it took over GST Steel.

Biden will say the Obama administration is "prepared to lower the corporate tax rate by 20 percent" and still wants to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, a longtime campaign promise.

From the prepared speech:

What does Governor Romney want?

He wants a new tax system that says American companies that move factories overseas don't have to pay any U.S. taxes on those factories. That's a huge incentive to move offshore. That's Romney Economics.

What does Governor Romney believe?

When China dumped all these cheap tires here, and we fought back and we won, Romney called it "protectionism." Said by standing up to China, we would somehow hurt American workers. That's Romney Economics.

SURPRISE RESULT IN NEBRASKA

Democrats are having a good morning.

State Sen. Deb Fischer prevailed in a Republican Senate primary in Nebraska, setting her up for a matchup this fall against former Sen. Bob Kerrey. Of the three major candidates vying for the nod to seek the open seat, Fischer was the least known with the least money and least organization. She was boosted late in the race with a endorsements from Herman Cain and Sarah Palin.

Fischer won 41 percent of the vote and most of Nebraska's counties, besting the state Attorney General Jon Bruning (who got 36 percent of the vote) and Treasurer Don Stenberg (who won 19 percent of the vote.) The two statewide elected officials received the majority of the attention during the primary, with the Club for Growth spending nearly $1 million on Stenberg's behalf and other national figures getting involved in the race.

The Omaha World Herald focused its coverage on how just how unknown Fischer is.

A rancher from Valentine in the rural northern part of the Cornhusker state who won her state Senate seat in 2004, Fischer "was truly the darkest of dark horses," the paper's Robynn Tysner wrote.

More from the story:

Her strategy from the beginning was to remain positive and to let her two opponents bruise and batter each other on the campaign trail. It worked.

To be sure, it's still a heavy lift for Democrats hoping to maintain the party's hold on Sen. Ben Nelson's Senate seat, but Fischer's victory gives them more opportunity to try.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Matt Canter gloated about what the party is calling an "accidental victory."

"These results set up a promising general election match-up between Bob Kerrey, a proven independent leader, and Deb Fischer, an untested hypocritical politician whose record and positions have never been scrutinized," Canter said, calling the Republican an "untested Tea Party candidate."

REVOLUTION'S NEXT PHASE

Judy Woodruff attempted to make clearer Tuesday night the forces behind Texas Rep. Ron Paul's decision to suspend his campaign.

Paul announced Monday that he would stop actively campaigning in states with upcoming primary elections, yet he would continue to pursue support from delegates in states that have already voted. The goal is to have parts of Paul's platform of "liberty" incorporated into the Republican Party's, a campaign memo said.

"By sending a large, respectful and professional delegation to Tampa, we will show the party and the country that not only is our movement growing and here to stay, but that the future belongs to us," his strategist Jesse Benton argued in the memo.

Judy spoke Tuesday night with Las Vegas Sun political columnist John Ralston and Brian Doherty, author of "Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired" and a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason.

The two said they were baffled by Paul's announcement. Ralston dubbed the strategy "running backwards."

Doherty said that Paul's efforts to end active campaigning may have been a way to pre-empt rowdy disturbances from his supporters at political conventions.

Paul's grassroots supporters are sometimes at odds with Paul's official campaign. They've expressed their support with a zeal no other candidate has seen this election season, Doherty said. For instance, this past weekend, they caused disruption and chaos at the Arizona and Oklahoma state conventions because of disagreements with state GOP leaders.

These supporters may not follow guidance from the official campaign, and many Paul supporters took to Internet message boards this week to express their unhappiness with the campaign suspension. Some of them believe, the NewsHour guests noted, that Paul may be able to overcome Romney's mass of delegates to take the nomination -- a near impossibility.

Overall, the Romney campaign must find a way not to offend or provoke Paul supporters, Ralston said, so the convention in Tampa this summer may be a graceful "coronation of the nominee" rather than a brawl instigated by Paul supporters.

Watch the segment here or below.

2012 LINE ITEMS

The Associated Press' Phil Elliott reports that Crossroads GPS will launch a $25 million, month-long advertising campaign in 10 states. The group will "open the effort Thursday by spending $8 million on a TV ad that castigates Obama on the economy by using his own words against him."

On Tuesday, Romney won 71 percent of the primary vote in Nebraska, and 73 percent of the vote in Oregon, inching himself closer to the overall delegate total he needs to officially capture the nod.

Former President George W. Bush has endorsed Romney.

In Iowa Tuesday, Romney called for austerity. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation, and every day we fail to act that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love," he said.

The president and vice president released their 2011 financial disclosure forms Tuesday. Mr. Obama and first lady Michele Obama hold assets worth between $2.6 million and nearly $8.3 million. Biden listed assets of between nearly $230,000 to $860,000.Among the Obama assets, reports Roll Call's Steven T. Dennis, a "fat account at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a mortgage on his Chicago home that he should probably refinance."

Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized the president's experience before taking office, saying Mr. Obama "never ran a state, never ran a business, never ran a lemonade stand."

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake writes about Americans Elect's struggles to find a third party presidential candidate to run in November. The group has gained ballot access in more than half the states, but no candidate has gained enough support to be considered at the group's online convention next month.

The president is leading Romney, 53 percent to 41 percent, in swing-state New Hampshire, according to a new survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling. The firm noted that Romney was up 46-44 in July.

New Mexico Republican Gov. Susana Martinez criticized Romney's support for "self-deportation" in an interview with Newsweek. The first-term governor has been frequently mentioned as a potential vice presidential running mate but has repeatedly denied any interest in joining the GOP ticket in 2012.

Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley will host President Obama for a fundraiser in Baltimore on June 12. An invitation to O'Malley's political email list noted it would be "one of his only fundraising events in Maryland."

The president demonstrated some pop culture prowess in a taped appearance on "The View" on Tuesday, correctly answering questions about "The Avengers" and the Kardashians. He drew a blank when asked to name "the controversial sex book that's on millions of women's bedside tables" -- "Fifty Shades of Grey" -- and also didn't know that Jessica Simpson had her baby earlier this month.

The president teased David Beckham about his age and clothing line Tuesday during the soccer star's visit to the White House for a ceremony honoring the MLS champion L.A. Galaxy.

Someone made a Tumblr inserting the president's official photo into historical images.

TOP TWEETS

Don't worry, @corybooker & I've got this! youtube.com/watch?v=wHN0Ze...

FACT: For every first-time donor Obama attracted in April, two workers dropped out of the labor force.

So proud to be running the 31st Capital Challenge 5K with Team Lugar this morning. twitter.com/senatorlugar/s...

In last night's primary, Oregon Rep. Pete DeFazio defeated the son of his general election opponent: bit.ly/JIdU0P

Just asked Lugar if he'll support Mourdock on the campaign trail now. "I have no comment."

.@SpeakerBoehner excerpt: "I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase."

OUTSIDE THE LINES

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, fired the opening shot in the next debt limit debate by insisting Tuesday that any increase in the country's borrowing limit must be matched by spending cuts. White House press secretary Jay Carney called on Republicans to avoid the "political brinksmanship" they engaged in last year.

The Las Vegas Sun reports that former Nevada Sen. John Ensign's chief aide Doug Hampton "appears to have reached a deal with federal prosecutors to settle charges he violated a cooling-off period prohibiting congressional employees from lobbying for at least a year after they leave their jobs."

Roll Call's Nathan L. Gonzales puts the "war on women" in context.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports, "Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year's elections to disclose their donors."

An appeals court refused to grant a stay on an opinion that would require political ads include a disclosure about the donors behind them. The case is still pending further appeal, but it means this election cycle could see some major changes.

Republicans are eyeing former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' seat in Arizona in the June special election so much so that Citizens United will buy a $100,000 TV ad in support of GOP candidate Jesse Kelly.

The Senate approved legislation Tuesday to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank on a 78 to 20 vote, reports The Hill's Daniel Strauss.

The Club for Growth is criticizing Republican freshmen in Congress.

Here is your daily update on the John Edwards corruption trial, courtesy of the News & Observer.

And Ruth Marcus devotes her column to the Edwards trial.

Katelyn Polantz, Cassie M. Chew and Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama holds a roundtable discussion with small business owners in Washington, D.C., at 10:30 a.m., attends a lunch meeting at the White House with House and Senate leaders at 11:30 a.m. and awards (posthumously) the Medal of Honor to Army Specialist Leslie H. Sabo Jr. at 3:10 p.m.

Vice President Biden delivers remarks at a campaign event in Youngstown, Ohio, at 12 p.m.

Mitt Romney holds an event in St. Petersburg, Fla., at 9:10 a.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @kpolantz, @indiefilmfan and @tiffanymullon.

Ron Paul announced Monday that his campaign would not spend any more money in the presidential primaries. But he's not suspending his campaign. Judy Woodruff looks at Paul's chances of continuing to impact the GOP -- and its upcoming convention -- with Jon Ralson of the Las Vegas Sun and Brian Doherty of Reason magazine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: Texas Congressman Ron Paul's announcement that he is suspending his campaign for president.

Paul's camp says that it will not spend any more money in Republican primaries, but will continue to try to amass delegates to the Republican National Convention through district and state party conventions.

In a memo, chief strategist Jesse Benton said Paul won't quit, even while acknowledging Mitt Romney's certain nomination. He wrote, "Our delegates can still make a major impact at the national convention and beyond."

But many of Paul's active grassroots supporters apparently aren't happy, insisting he has a chance still to grab the nomination.

Well, to help us sort all this out, we are joined by Jon Ralston, political columnist with The Las Vegas Sun. And Brian Doherty, he's an editor at the libertarian-leaning magazine "Reason." He is the author of the new book "Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired."

Gentlemen, thank you both for being with us.

Jon Ralston, to you first.

It's not a -- it hasn't been a secret for some time that Mitt Romney has this nomination locked up. So what precipitated this announcement from the Paul camp?

JON RALSTON, The Las Vegas Sun: Well, I think he's out of money, Judy. And that's the real problem for him in terms of going forward.

So he's going to do something that no other candidate in history has. He's going to run backwards. That is, he's going to go back to these states where he's been able to infiltrate the county and state conventions and grab as many delegates as he can to the national convention.

That's what he's done in Nevada. Long after he got crushed in the caucus here, he went back, did just that and won a majority of delegates to the national convention, 22 of 28 here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Brian Doherty, how do you see it? You've studied Ron Paul. Can they actually go out and collect delegates, even though they know he can't win the nomination?

BRIAN DOHERTY, Reason.com: They absolutely can.

One reason is that, to a lot of his fans, they still actually believe he can win, which I think is part of the reason they made this announcement. It was sort of expectation-managing for their own fans.

Over the last weekend in both Oklahoma and Arizona, state GOP conventions were sort of driven to chaos by fights, in some cases actual fights between Ron Paul people and Romney people. And I know that that sat the wrong way with the official campaign. They don't want their movement to be marked as the movement that leads to state GOP conventions breaking up.

In the case of Oklahoma, the Ron Paul people went out in the parking lot and held their own rump convention, which they claim procedurally was the real convention. I don't know, "Robert's Rules of Order"-wise, who's right. So these people are going to go on.

Ron Paul's announcement that he's pulling back is not going to discourage that delegate process from moving forward.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, when you say it upset the official -- you mean the official Ron Paul campaign.

BRIAN DOHERTY: Right. Yeah, the actual campaign, not the grassroots people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So is this -- you mentioned, Jon Ralston, what you have seen in Nevada. Is -- how much of a disconnect is there between the official campaign and then the grassroots supporters?

JON RALSTON: Well, certainly, I think Paul can try to distance himself between some of the folks that we just talked about who actually still think he can win, when he has no chance to win.

But the Ron Paul folks are animated by a lot of different things. Some of them really believe in what Ron Paul believes in, libertarianism, liberty above all, getting out of Afghanistan, not fighting wars the way that the Republican Party has advocated fighting wars.

But the bottom line is, Judy, is that he can't control them. And that's really what the issue is here. He is afraid that they are going to be portrayed or caricatured. But I think that that horse is out of the barn. That's already been done. And you can't stop it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Brian Doherty, help us understand the difference between what Ron Paul wants out of this process and what his -- many of his fans and supporters want.

BRIAN DOHERTY: I think what they want in the end is the same, which is to prove to the Republican Party and the world at large that their set of ideas has real pull in the Republican Party.

And you could say, well, if you're not going to win, why bother? But for that purpose, it does matter if you're coming in with 200 delegates vs. 500 delegates. It's a bigger signal to the world that, we are not just a fringe minority that can be ignored. We are important to the party moving forward. And he and his fans share that desire.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And how much of that are they likely, Jon Ralston, to get from Mitt Romney? What -- I mean, changes in the party platform, what?

JON RALSTON: Yes, that's the fascinating question here, Judy, because they may be able to get some things in the platform, but no one pays attention to the platform after the convention.

Can Ron Paul get a decent speaking slot? I think the Romney folks are going to be nervous about that. They're going -- they're already nervous. The Republican National Committee's fully integrated with the Romney campaign. They don't want disruptions on the floor. These conventions are supposed to be beautifully choreographed, no incidents, just a coronation of the nominee.

That's why Paul poses a threat. Plus, what happens after the convention? Can he keep them in the tent? Because it is a significant number of people, and in a close election in some of these swing states, including perhaps Nevada, those Ron Paul folks could make the difference.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there, Brian Doherty, the possibility of disruption at the convention? And -- and what are the Paul supporters going to do in the fall? Are they going to support Mitt Romney, or what?

BRIAN DOHERTY: I don't think they will support Mitt Romney. People talk about the Ron Paul vote, as if the vote is something that can neither be created nor destroyed.

But, in fact, what I think will happen to most of the Ron Paul vote is that it will disappear back to where it came from, which I have found is the great mass of Americans who tend not to vote at all. It's like 40 to 50 percent of Americans in most elections.

I think Romney will pick up a fringe of them who are really afraid of Obama. I think libertarian Gary Johnson will pick up a fringe of them. But Ron Paul people leave in what Ron Paul believes in. And they trust him in a way they don't trust any other politician. So I do not think that even if he wanted to could Ron Paul deliver his people to a Mitt Romney, who they didn't believe stood for what Ron Paul stands for.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Jon Ralston, we should point out that there is a Libertarian Party out there, which Ron Paul is not associating himself with.

So I think some people are confused looking at this saying, he is a libertarian in his thinking, but what he wants is separate from what that party is asking for.

JON RALSTON: Right.

Gary Johnson is the Libertarian nominee. And so Ron Paul is not going to go to the Libertarian Party. But I think some of his supporters will vote Libertarian. And I think Brian is right. They are going to dissipate. And they will decide what to do afterwards.

I do think, though, that Ron Paul running for president this time has gotten a lot more Ron Paul supporters engaged in Republican Party politics. They want to stay inside the tent. They want to be effective. That's why it's such a delicate dance for Romney at the convention, because if they feel that they haven't been at least paid attention to, if not kowtowed to, then I think it could be a problem for him afterward.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And remind us, Brian, what is it that they want most to change in government policy?

BRIAN DOHERTY: They want spending cuts that are real and that actually get you to a balanced budget in five years, like Ron Paul's budget proposal.

They want a foreign policy that disengages from the world and the Middle East and just sort of concentrates on national defense. They want a government that's not trying to manage Americans' lives. Ron Paul is very concerned with things like raw milk rage, federal agents busting down people's door for selling raw milk. These lifestyle issues that the federal government insists on policing, Ron Paul people don't want them to police anymore, which separates them from the GOP mainstream.

So, they -- in their minds, they want a return to what they think the original constitutional purpose of government is, which is basically just to protect our life, liberty and property, not redistribute income, not manage the world.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But just quickly, Jon Ralston, that at this point is not what the Republican Party and its nominee is talking about.

JON RALSTON: Well, exactly.

And that's why, again, they want to let the Ron Paul people be inside the tent in Tampa, but they don't want some of these ideas, which are heretical to what the modern Republican Party is, to be there in a prime time, I don't think. That's, again, part of this delicate dance the Romney campaign and the RNC are going through.

They don't want these people to feel alienated, the Ron Paul supporters who believe in the things that Brian talked about, but maybe not to the level of volume, decibel level that can be heard across the country in August.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We hear the two of you.

Jon Ralston, Brian Doherty, thank you both.

In other news Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Obama of putting the economy on a disastrous course by increasing federal spending and debt. In Syria, a roadside bomb struck a convoy that was part of the United Nations' observer mission.

KWAME HOLMAN: World markets fell again today, wary of the political turmoil in Greece. Wall Street was no exception. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 63 points to close at 12,632. It's lost nearly 5 percent of its value in the last two weeks. The Nasdaq fell more than eight points to close at 2,893.

And the price of oil hit a six- month low. It dropped below $94 a barrel in New York trading.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Obama today of putting the economy on a disastrous course. In Des Moines, Iowa, Romney charged that huge increases in federal spending and debt are endangering the country's future.

MITT ROMNEY: A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and across the nation. And every day that we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and the children we love.

I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno. We will stop borrowing unfathomable sums of money we can't even imagine from foreign countries we're never even going to visit.

KWAME HOLMAN: White House officials countered that Romney favors policies that led to high deficits and the recession in the first place.

And the president reinforced that point in an interview that aired on ABC's "The View."

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There are some very stark differences, legitimate differences, between the candidates and between the parties in terms of how we are going to make sure that everybody in this country gets a fair shot, every kid's getting a great education, how we create businesses, how we're creating more jobs.

That ultimately is going to be, I think, what determines how this election goes.

KWAME HOLMAN: Meanwhile, a new poll from The New York Times and CBS News put Romney ahead of the president by three points, 46 percent to 43 percent. That is within the margin of error.

In Syria, a roadside bomb struck a convoy that was part of the U.N. observer mission. Amateur video showed smoke rising from the first car and people running for cover. U.N. officials said three vehicles were damaged, but no one was hurt. Activists said, minutes earlier, government forces opened fire on a funeral procession nearby. They said at least 20 of the mourners were killed.

Prosecutors in Britain filed the first criminal charges today in the phone hacking probe that began 18 months ago. Rebekah Brooks and five others were charged with obstruction. Brooks is former editor of a Rupert Murdoch tabloid that's now defunct.

We have a report from Keir Simmons of Independent Television News.

KEIR SIMMONS: Rebekah and Charlie Brooks were once friends with prime ministers, she one of the most powerful journalists in the country, her husband a millionaire who went to Eton with David Cameron.

CHARLIE BROOKS, husband of Rebekah Brooks: I would just like to say that I feel today is an attempt to use me and others as scapegoats, the effect of which will be to ratchet up the pressure on my wife, who I also believe is the subject of a witch-hunt.

REBEKAH BROOKS, former CEO, News International: I cannot express my anger enough that those closest to me have been dragged into this unfairly. One day, the details of this case will emerge and people will see today as nothing more than an expensive sideshow.

KEIR SIMMONS: Rebekah Brooks has links with all of those charged today. She's facing three counts of perverting the course of justice, the first for allegedly conspiring with others to conceal materials from the Metropolitan Police.

They include her husband, Charlie Brooks, her former P.A., Cheryl Carter, the company's head of security, Mark Hanna, News International chauffeur Paul Edwards, and security consultant Daryl Jorsling. Apart from Cheryl Carter, they are all additionally charged with concealing documents, computers and other electronic equipment.

However, Cheryl Carter and Rebekah Brooks are both charged with conspiring together to permanently remove seven boxes of material from the News International archive. All of this was happening during the furor over the phone hacking scandal last year, when the News of the World here was closed down and Rebekah Brooks resigned.

And if the allegations are true, then Rebekah Brooks will have been involved in a cover-up at the very time that she was appearing in front of the cameras with Rupert Murdoch. Tonight, she said that is not what happened; it is not her judgment that is at fault.

KWAME HOLMAN: Observers say Brooks' coming trial could send new shockwaves through the Murdoch media empire, as well as Prime Minister David Cameron's government.

Mexico's most celebrated novelist, Carlos Fuentes, died today at a hospital in Mexico City. He was being treated for heart problems. Fuentes' wrote his first novel at age 29 and he became part of a generation of writers that drew global interest in Latin American culture. His work often focused on the failings of the Mexican Revolution. Carlos Fuentes was 83 years old.

Those are some of the day's major stories.