>> what do you think a tree can be? can it be stronger than steel? can a tree be biodegradable plastic? can it be fuel for our cars, or clothing, or medicine that fights cancer? with our tree cell technology, we think it can. weyerhaeuser, growing ideas. >> he is a nice guy. i just think he is misguided and in over his head. >> this week on "inside washington," who is the nicer guy, and who will do a better job with the economy? scandals with the gsa in las vegas. >> where crimes have been

committed, people will go to jail. >> secret service partying in colombia. >> what has been going on is embarrassing. >> that behavior depicted in those photographs absolutely violates both our regulations and, more importantly, our values. >> discovery's final flight and the future of american space exploration. >> it will never go in the air again. >> a changing media landscape and a salute to politico's pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist matt wuerker. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- let's talk about nice guys. at the cnn poll earlier this week revealed that president obama has a double-digit lead on mitt romney on likability,

confidence, and with women, but when it comes to who will get the economy going again, they are tied. in the cnn poll, among independent voters, obama's approval gap narrows to 5%. >> what would you say to president and mrs. obama? >> start packing. >> not so fast, governor. >> my responsibility is to get people to see the other side of them. >> "inside the circus," e-book by evan thomas and mike allen. "romney tried to be a regular guy, he just wasn't good at it." according to the latest "new york times"-cbs poll, when it comes to handling the economy, they are just about even. evan, may be nice guys and to

finish last. >> the nice guy it stuff matters, but what matters more is the economy could the clout on the horizon is europe. feel's problems -- you can the fear of a ripple effect. if that spain has an economic crisis, europe has an economic crisis, that is a threat to obama in november. >> nina? >> we up here may not care about who is nicer, we care more about who has better judgment. but the history of elections does not show that to be the case. al gore did not become president because people thought he was not a nice guy and george bush was. >> colby? >> we are early. we have not had debates, they have not gone face-to-face with each other. romney's rather patronizing

statement that he is a nice guy but in over his head will be tested in the campaign. >> charles? >> well, it is early. the nice guy thing -- romney's problem is not that people think he is offensively not a nice guy, i guess that he is stiff. -- it is that he is stiff. evan is right about this. spain is a cloud on the horizon, and italy is even worse. if that is an issue leading up to election day, stiffness, being sober, a stable, even solemn will work for the challenger if economic issues are at stake, which obviously there will be, and he is the guy with economic experience. >> john boehner, mitch

mcconnell, on board this week. what about the conservative base? >> the base has no where to go. it is obama or romney. blend the base at other choices, they had six others and that did not work. obama is the one who will mobilize the base. people are not going to stay home. >> i agree with that, sort of. there is no place to go. but the numbers, republican term o -- are now in the primaries, has been lower this year, which is amazing. when you are talking very small percentage is, it makes a difference. that is what karl rove determined -- the 2000 election was so close that he needed to drive the base, and george

bush won reelection in 2004 because of a very small number of people turned out and work enthusiastic. >> and the endorsements were sort of damning with faint praise. mitch daniels came out and said, "romney is campaigning to win, not as he would govern." he is not speaking to the people he needs to speak to, young people, poor people, to say "i can bring you into the system." he is just going to people with the big bucks. >> i am with nina on this. the get-out-the-vote stuff, it is unbelievable how fine it is. karl rove was able to find a certain voters. this fine-tuning, both campaigns do it, certain voters

in certain places. that can spell the difference. >> in a poll, condoleezza rice came in first, then chris christie, marco rubio, paul ryan. marco rubio says no thanks. >> you never believe that. >> rubio has his own version of the dream act where he would give us some children of undocumented immigrants legal status. >> if rubio passes in the vetting process -- assuming he does, he will be the obvious choice. if he says no thanks, he will have a horse's head in his bed and the next day he will accept. [laughter] romney will not take no for an answer. we have ways, we republicans. >> years ago i was interviewing

teddy white and i asked a question and he said, "that is an amateur's question." he said the cardinal rule of politics is what is around the corner. we are dealing with unknowns. >> israel could bomb iran, who know what that would do to oil prices. david ignatius at a column this week -- pretty informed b guy -- that there may be a deal in the works on iran so maybe it would not be a threat to the obama administration. word comes out of europe, spain is in a full-blown depression, the specter of a european clubs -- i am sure at the white house is plenty worried about it. >> overspending, they have not

adjusted, and now they are going through a painful adjustment process. greece is not out of the woods, italy is not out of the woods, portugal -- >> it is western democracy. the welfare state is something we cannot pay for any more. we used to have five workers for every retired person. now it is 3. soon we will have two. we cannot afford the benefits we all got accustomed to. >> they did have in europe and even worse real estate bubble than we did. beeper will building houses -- deeper or building houses in huge numbers. this is something to worry about. the germans are the only secure ones. they are the ones funding the bailout, as it were.

but they want austerity and only austerity. there is a lot of tension between them and other parts of europe in terms of not decimating the economy. you look at poll, you see how precarious most americans feel their perch. if gas goes up to $5, we complaint but it does not threaten our security. for a substantial portion of americans, that is not true. >> but the reason is not overbuilt housing. the reason is what evan is talking about, the inevitable result of an aging population and high technology. we live longer. at the time social security was instituted, the average life span was 62 years in the united

states. it is now about 80 years. with high technology, people live longer. cancer and alzheimer's are expensive, heart attacks are inexpensive. the tragedy is that it is happening in europe before it happens here. it is much more of an entitlement state. it gives us a few years of the way where we can do something, and we're not doing anything. we have a chance over the next three or four years to change it, and it can be done. entitlement reform and tax reform. we are utterly stock and unable to do anything. >> it does not matter who is president next year it must be done. >> a week of scandals. >> from what i understand, there were 20 to 21 women involved.

they could be employees of drug cartels, spies planting eavesdropping devices. >> senator susan collins on one of the three scandals engulfing washington this weekend. secret service in colombia with the president. the scandal reportedly involves military personnel. >> they are in a tough spot. this was a bad week for federal employees, but take the overall record. i spent 19 years as one. they do great work. what happened with the military happened it two years ago. what happened with the secret service was last week. the gsa scandal was also about a

year ago, and that was caught by a gsa employee. the system worked because he was going after waste, fraud, and abuse, and he founded. >> we have photographs of the american military personnel posing with body parts and so forth. "the l.a. times" had these pictures. a soldier said this is indicative of the lack of discipline. the military asked them not to run them, and they did any way. good idea, evan? >> yes. if the military is doing this stuff, they should expose it there is always this tension between -- the american military as measured against other militaries in history is extraordinarily disciplined. but in bonding rituals, these

guys sometimes go out and misbehave. they have been doing this for ever and sometimes it gets the better of them. >> i would not have run them. maybe i am a wuss, but if tomorrow some sort of bomb went off as retribution and people were killed -- i don't think what you learn from those pictures -- i grant you the shock value, but the article talks about it, and to me that was enough. >> charles? >> well, look, the decision of the newspaper was probably one that we would have made, that ought to be made. if there is information -- if you are always going to worry about the possible effect, you end up not learning anything. they chose a sample of a large number of photographs.

but i don't understand why people are so shocked. this happens in every ward. there were a lot of trees brought home after the second world war, korean war, vietnam war. now, you are not supposed to do it, you shouldn't do it, and any desecration of a body of a soldier or a civilian is in and of itself an offense. these were the bodies of the suicide bombers. these were not people who respected their own bodies. here are people who deliberately and maliciously destroyed themselves as a way to destroy others. that, on the scale of what is immoral, is lower than in would be in the case of a soldier was shot or a civilian injured. it is a sign of a lack of discipline, and that is the issue and that is white they will have to be reprimanded at least. >> the action is in their

reaction. the u.s. military responded appropriately. the secret service is responding to appropriately, and so is the gsa. it is not that these events occurred -- they are going to occur. but in the full scheme of how the federal service works, it has been good. >> there is political mileage in the gsa scandal. >> i want to say one thing about the secret service thing. let's not get carried away. whatever danger there was of planting a bug, there was a similar danger from somebody from room service. prostitution is legal in colombia. i and not happy this happened, but let's not pretend there is a huge national security injured.

> -- danger. >> my sources tell me the problem was there was a language barrier negotiating the group rate. [laughter] >> you are bad. >> there is a question about whether our culture, which is crude and getting cruder, creeps into something like the secret service. >> don't you think it happened 50 years ago? >> i do, so i hesitate to say this, but you wonder. >> everybody has a video camera so we see it more. >> we do have some video of the space shuttle discovery. where does the space program go from here? >> it is a sad glad day, if you want to put it in those terms,

because the decision to ground the shuttle fleet was made prematurely. >> astronaut john glenn. this week everything in washington and northern virginia came to a halt as the space shuttle discovery landed at dulles international airport prior to being delivered to the smithsonian. glenn says it is and national symbol of optimism and leadership and determination of the program is of mistake. i know this is a favorite topic of yours, charles, so run with it. >> its retire man, in bombing -- embalming in a museu m, is a sign of retreat. the real tragedy is not that it is retired -- it had to be, ultimately -- but the fallout

has been cancelled. we have no way of getting into -- follow up has been cancelled. be of no way of getting into orbit for the next decade unless we get a ride with the russians, and the russians have doubled their price. the chinese will be on the moon in the next decade. i think it is huge mistake for the united states. >> thousands of jobs lost at cape canaveral, colby, but we have a huge deficit. >> we are losing manned space flight programs. we are not terminating explicatio -- exploration of space. we do move on. >> but, you know, not to the extent -- people say we've lost images of the frontier society. >> i think we are continuing exploration that we established,

except we're not using manned flight to do it. we are using other technology. what is wrong with that? >> i am not prepared to compete for the romance of the manned space project, but every other program we have, we talk about how we have to cut, we cannot spend federal money to find new sources of energy, that would be wrong, we have to rely on private industries. but suddenly there is romance for the space industry and space exploration. i understand it, but this is sort a dichotomy here. >> what is going to generate new technology is the issue for me. if you can convince me that space exploration is a driver for new technology that will make our lives better, i say

keep it going. i don't know enough to know. maybe we should be spending on energy and environmental -- >> but space is at the frontier purred all kinds of things to be learned out there. >> out dying planet is an immediate thing. >> we are already on our way to mars, other planets, would not manned -- with not manned flights but other technology. >> what is the greatest legacy of european powers the latter half of the millennium? exploration. i mean, the expansion is one of the rare things in human history. we were the ones doing it in space, and we say we are no longer interested to read you want to spend it on the solyndra

or gsa -- [laughter] >> oh, come on. >> you choose where you invest, and this is the area were only the government can do it because of the risk and expense, and the payoff is enormous. all of our technology, global positioning satellites, weather technology -- >> we just are not producing more john glenns. >> i am kind of with evan, because i live here. >> i grew up in a political family. we were all political junkies. o cartoonist matt wuerker won the pulitzer prize this week. politico and the huffington post were two primarily online news

services to win. times are changing, evan. >> i hate to see the end of old dinosaur newspapers, but i don't think that is inevitable. may the best man win. >> is that newspaper in the morning a thing of the past, colby? >> i start my day on the internet. i never thought the time, or i would not want to have a newspaper that i could touch. i do read the newspaper but might primarily get my news onl ine. >> i hate reading news on line, because i have no sense of placement, what the editors think is important, no ability to see stories and browse and see that first paragraph of something i think it does not interest me and say, "that is

interesting," and keep reading. i think something is lost, aside from your i said, reading on -- eyesight, reading online. >> we are complete dinosaurs. it is like lamenting the dewey decimal system. [laughter] my son is a voracious reader of all the news. he has no experience actually holding a newspaper. the entire generation never developed the habit. dead trees are dead. it will be considered as obsolete as slavery. >> let's hear from matt wuerker. he says his job as a place where politics and art come together. >> it is at unique perch in the world of journalism. i am old school. i think a really good joke will

cut through and get people, no matter which side of the aisle. i think people are disarmed by humor. this is the great economic super bowl, with china all lined up, and on the other side, the usa, and we are pummeling each other. sports metaphors is a tradition in cartooning. obama is really a fun to draw. he has that megawatt smile and fabulous years. i moved to washington in 2000. it is different watching politics in d.c. you have a front-row seat to all this stuff, and watching the political game played up close is a real education.

>> matt wuerker, congratulations on the pulitzer prize. his inspiration growing up was his neighbor, paul conrad, a great political cartoonist for "the l.a. times." he was kind of an angry guy, but matt is not. >> talking about pulitzer prize winners, there is one right here, charles krauthammer -- >> and you. >> herblock. >> best job in the business. see you next week.