• Post Show Thoughts: Foreign Policy Front and Center

    News this morning on the polling front as Chuck Todd debuted fresh numbers from our NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll showing a dead heat between Mitt Romney and President Obama. They are currently tied at 47%, a number Chuck said should worry team Obama as election day gets closer. 

    Two top Romney campaign supporters this morning were also happy about those numbers. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) told David, "The trend is in our direction... The enthusiasm and energy are on our side." Similarly, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) said, he likes the way his home state is shifting towards Romney and added "I think [the polls are] only going to get better for the Republican side, both in Florida and nationally, as we move forward."

    David Axelrod, chief re-election strategist to the president, responded to the latest poll numbers: "We feel good about where we are." He cited both strong numbers in specific battleground state polls as well as early voting numbers that he argued "have been very favorable" to the Obama campaign. 

    Also, just 36 hours before the third and final presidential debate, we had a robust conversation on foreign policy with the roundtable. David was joined by Democratic Strategist and Former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers; Republican strategist Mike Murphy; NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman; and NY Times White House Correspondent Helene Cooper, who along with colleague Mark Landler, broke a story in today's NY Times saying that Iran and the U.S. government have agreed in principle to one-on-one talks over Tehran's nuclear enrichment program.

    You can watch the entire program on our website including our full conversations with Senators Rubio and Portman, as well as David Axelrod.

    We'll be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. 

  • Axelrod: Obama wants to fix economy, not retain power

    By Jillian Eugenios

    President Barack Obama’s phone call to Mitt Romney yesterday to congratulate him on his GOP nod was a friendly gesture in an otherwise contentious election race.

    Some say the public is feeling a lack of enthusiasm due to the relentless negative ads, a criticism that comes amidst Obama’s slipping numbers in key battleground states across the country. 

    “They’re called battleground states for a reason,” David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama re-election campaign told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday. He pointed out that Mitt Romney is low in the polls in his home state of Massachusetts. “I don’t think anyone’s lost their home state and won the presidency in one hundred years,” he said.  

    John Heilemann of New York Magazine interviewed Axelrod for the magazine's latest issue. Heilemann said that as Obama and Romney hurdle toward the election booths in November, the campaign trail will provide a “bracing revelation” about what Obama truly is: “not a savior, not a saint, not a man above the fray…but a brass-knuckled, pipe-hitting, red-in-tooth-and-claw brawler determined to do what is necessary to stay in power — in other words, a politician.”

    Axelrod contested that Obama is not interested in staying in power, but in “advancing the agenda that will move the country forward.” He said Obama is simply looking forward to having a debate with Mitt Romney, and that he believes in the signs of a strong economy. “There are things we have to do in order to promote it,” he said.

    Axelrod alleges that it is Romney who has been attacking the president relentlessly over the last year and a half, “misrepresenting his record, and his own record. We do have a responsibility to straighten that out.”

    Lauer countered, “So in other words, they did it first and you’re firing back?”

    “No, I think people need to know what the facts are,” Axelrod said. “The facts of where we’ve been over the last three years.” He went on to criticize Mitt Romney for asserting that he is an “economic guru and savior.”

    More: Obama, Romney parody 'Call me Maybe' thanks to digital hijinks 
    Video: Obama makes congratulatory call to Romney  
    Colin Powell declines to endorse President Obama  
    Obama 'somber' in interview about his progress, election