churchill. back in 1943 when europe was in peril and the united states intervened in the second world war, the price of greatness is responsibility, said the british prime minister. if the people of the united states have continued in a mediocre station, struggling in the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the world, then they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans. one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems. without being convulsed by its agonies, and inspired by its causes. this is a difficult moment for the united states. it is only difficult because america has carried the burden of leadership and has involved itself in the agonies of the wider world. and that, mr. putin, is what makes this an exceptional nation. thank you so much for watching this afternoon. coming up, right now, the ed show with ed schultz, and we leave you with a pictu

winston churchill said better to jaw, jaw, jaw than war, war, war. it could deepen the humanitarian catastrophe. what can't be denied is russia has a vital interest in finding a political solution to syria. it does not want to see chemical weapons spread beyond the weapons of syria. >> beyond chemical weapons it does not want to see a civil war devolve. >> undercut the possibility of a broader reset, not only u.s. russian relations but u.s. relationship with the middle east so critical moving forward. >> peter, a question of how the white house happen run this, you wrote a great article in the "new york times," those americans frustrated by the lack of decisiveness, if you will coming out of the white house and yearn for the days of george w. bush and happy to see a deliberative transparent presidency, do you think this is working for the president? these are certainly high-stakes negotiations. if nothing ends up happening on the diplomatic front, i think it's highly unclear whether the president will even be able to get authorization from both the a

as winston churchill famously said, i cannot forecast to you the action of russia. it is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma. perhaps there is a key, russian national interest. it's worth askinging what makes putin's russia tick? >> with us is simon marks and sergei khrushchev, the son of nikita khrushchev the leader of the soviet union. this is a picture of father and son going back to 1959. sergei is now a senior fellow at the great brown university's watson institute for international studies. professor, thank you for joining us. i guess the first question is,ing what are russia's interests in syria? >> stability. russia don't want to have all this fighting on their borders. he had they are already feared about the taliban in afghanistan and now to have them near the caucuses, it will be nightmare for russia. they need stability and predictability and they think president assad is giving this stability and all this creating uncertainty because nobody who are they and who will be in power would they win. >> do you think, professor, that the united s

i doubt winston churchill. i doubt bill clinton. >> but he points -- you say it points to lack of leadership. >> i think it does. >> it could say also point to the fact that it's a strange german election. where there's consensus on a lot of issues. the incumbent is popular. as ann was saying. angela merkel, her ruling christian democrats, the runaway favorites in all the tracking polls, and yet she might lose her free rein. she may have to govern with some kind of grand coalition or finding some kind of a different partner. and the outcome is very uncertain. to get out the vote, mettle workers union ige metal trying to stir excitement among the german voters. >> doesn't like clips that go viral. but this one is basically saying -- getting people excited about some of the problems they need to solve. and trying to get them interested in an election where -- let's see. consensus mostly on europe. there's consensus mostly on syria. there's even consensus you can say on the environment. which is another big issue

as winston churchill said at the outbreak of world war ii, i cannot forecast to you the action of russia. it is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. perhaps there is a key. the key is russian national interests. tonight we will learn how seriously the president of our country takes the possibility that the interest of moscow suddenly agrees with ours. rachel. >> chris, i have so many times misquoted riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma, without clueing in that it was churchi churchill/russia. very helpful. thank you, chris. >> thank you. thank you. >> we will we be back. i want to bring in nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel covering the syrian civil war intensively who tonight is here the border in syria/turkey. heading into the speech tonight, the developments of the last day and a half have made it seem less lakely the u. ikely the u.s going to do anything in syria from where you stand in turkey and the region does it seem that way over there? how is that being received? >> we have spoke tine sen to sy rebels. they were drawing up war plans, 48 hou

churchill that said this. millions of people go to bed every night with the fear of death unanswered. and he had the same problem. and when billy graham was having meetings over there in london, he says i want to see you, mr. graham. he came over and billy graham talked to this man who went through the whole second world war, first world war and going way back in time and this man said in essence, i've reached the zenith but the one single burning thing that was on his mind, now what? i've had the praise of man, i have been elevated in all kind of positions, but he said to billy graham, i don't know what will happen when i die, and i want to know. think of that. if a great man like him would be that interested, then maybe you ought to pay attention and understand what god really has promised to you. billy graham left there with the assurance that this man had received jesus christ. will when i go to heaven, i'm gg to see churchill because of the work of christ. general douglas macarthur i served under him and

more often than not we make good decisions that is why i am a believer as winston churchill was, and the idea that we make snap decisions it is worthless to ignore it. if more candidates focus on that we could get an estimatemaking. of we all focus on imagemaking, a all candidates for equally handsome man equally well kept and really thought this stuff through than they could get down to the politics of it but even george washington understood this. when george washington walked into the first continental congress he was the only man who walked in in full military uniform. he was lobbying to be the first commander in chief before there was a commander in chief in the country. all of these guys thought about this and politicians today are smart they will think about it as well without painting themselves orange like john boehner looking like an overgrown impala. >> host: in "project president: bad hair and botox on the road to the white house" you write about william henry harrison and how he won? >> guest: a lot of beer. they called him -- he was a military leader. campaigned on this

this is an old cold war ," commonly retreated to winston churchill, although i have not yet found any proof that he said it. it was a sentiment that for a long time in this country this is i would distinguish ourselves from eastern bloc countries, democracy means when there's a knock on the door is probably the milkman. bring that up to show the perspective. you can think back on that and see how far we have come since the cold war. in the u.s. we have always had this -- from this firm line between the military and the police. there is a good reason for that. two very different jobs. the military's job is to annihilate an enemy. officers are to protect our rights. there are not similar jobs at all. the only similarities are that they both carry guns and are authorized to use force. unfortunately politicians think the jobs are very similar reals a lot, i think, about some of the policies we have today. but for the most part we have done a pretty good job keeping the military out of domestic policing. we don't have soldiers patrolling the streets, soldiers during search warrants. during

you can think about winston churchill and his election as prime minister in britain in 1940. the extent to which people around him said you got to seek terms with adolph hitler, that if you do not surrender, you will be destroyed. he refused, he refused to capitulate. he knew the odds were against him, but he saved civilization and freedom by doing that. you can look at margaret thatcher when she was able in 1979 to safer country from the ravages of socialism. she said i'm going to turn this nation around, against all odds. in our own nation, ronald reagan provided that same example of a president who came to office and who saved us from the malaise of the jimmy carter era. i think many times in history when you look back, you have the ability to see those moments. you do not always know them when you're living through them. we know right now as we sit here tonight that we are living through one of those moments, and it is a moment that we have all -- we have got to make a decision -- what are we going to do? are we going to let this president to his country down a path which

paraphrase winston churchill, we will do the right thing. i'm confident. the political perils, not just the economic peril for our country, republicans push it to that point, there will be hell to pay for them in the elections to come. my advice to them, as their colleague, don't do that. the democrats say go ahead and do that our country doesn't need that frankly, neither do they politically. >> seine to the president has said he won't negotiate when it comes to raising the debt ceiling, would you support the kind of measure that raised the debt ceiling for a short period of time if it gave a little more breathing space to work out a longer term deal? >> i think a number of us would agree with that. but ultimately, we have to summon the courage to do the right thing. and the right thing in the end is, as i said earlier, come up with a comprehensive debt reduction plan, where by the republicans agree to tax reform that raises revenues, democrat agree to entitlement reform, saves these programs for the long haul, saves money, doesn't savage old people or po

of course, that politician was winston churchill. he saw the danger based upon data, the size of the german air force, the building of munitions, the invasion of other smaller countries, the expansion of germany and their armed forces. he was ignored and ridiculed by his own party, by the leadership of his own party, but he kept talking, he kept raising this issue, he kept trying to raise and awaken the people of england. it was a very difficult task. in fact, our own great president john f. kennedy wrote his thesis as a student about this period in accomplish history, and the title was very provocative and i think forward thinking -- while england slept, and churchill tried to wake them up. had he been heeded, madam president, world war ii could have been avoided. there were multiple times when hitler could have been stopped by the slightest bit of resist tense on the part of the european powers. instead, the war came and five years later 55 million people died. not heeding warnings has consequences, and we can always find reasons f

winston churchill talked about war and war being so unpredictable. this essentially, although no one wants to call it that, would be an act of war, of bombing another country. and aren't there some hypothetics that do concern you? >> this is a military intervention. we'll have limited scope, limited duration and it's about as low risk of a military operation that we can run when we're actually using lethal weapons. jenna: would you green light this today? if you were in the position to do so? >> i would have done this 10 days ago. president obama did not seek political cover when he went to libya. other presidents have not done it. these kinds of operations that are very limited and you're not -- many in the country to a campaign of war, i would never have given the asad forces this kind of opportunity to hide and protect its resources. jenna: would you have even talked about it? we've talked a lot about it. would you have gone and done it? >> i would have done it and kept it as quietly as possible and then during execution, made an announcement to t

he's hoping that, you know, as winston churchill once said, the americans will eventually do the right thing if you just let them expend all other options first. he's left congress to it. i think they are expecting a vote by next week. >> yeah. what do you think? >> well, i think this is one of the kind of trickiest challenges in foreign policy recently. and how it has been managed so far has probably been everybody getting their nickers in a twist. the first question, of course, is after 100,000 civilians were so have died, why now? why this red line? >> they crossed the red line. >> absolutely. jon stewart was brilliant in "the daily show" i think yesterday if you haven't seen that one yet, it is brilliant. but this is extremely difficult. and in a way they're dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. i can't -- >> more dammed -- are they more dammed if they don't? >> if you were to ask me, to take a punt, i would say perhaps in the longer term. this is too little, too late. perhaps they should have either gone in earlier and done something more or to let the situation resolve. but

more often than not to that is why i am a believer in churchill -- as winston churchill was. the idea that remake those snap decisions if more candidates would focus on that here is the irony if we focused on the image making they all looked equally handsome then maybe we could get down to the politics of it. . . i'm tougher than nails. it ended up really killing him. he proved out tough he was. he bought folks at lough beer and would swig beer in the rally. he would stand in the rain swigging beer with people and they would realize he's not an old guy. he's somebody like us. he likes beer. it's a matter in the 1840 it only increased in scope. once we reach the age of television when everybody is in your living room. you feel like you want to be friends with them more. >> host: finally. one other book we haven't talked about yet. prime time propaganda. start by telling us about your experience as a screen writer for tv. >> guest: i started writing the book before i was interested in doing screen writing. it was the last thing i wanted to do. both my parents worked in hollywoo

to paraphrase winston churchill, i think we really are at the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end so we can't really say this is wonderful. we have to see what happens in negotiations on any number of levels. at the same time, i think we also need to recognize that diplomats, negotiators sit at two tables when they negotiate. they sit at the table, but barack obama is in effect sitting at a table with iran, with rowhani. but he's also sitting at a table with people here in the united states. and rohwhani is doing the same thing, too. so over the course of what will probably be a torturous set of negotiations we're going to have them both playing to domestic audiences at times and to international audiences at times and then saying things very quietly. >> it's clear that rowhani hard liners will throw a shoe and it seems to me that certainly our congress might be willing to throw a shoe at our president. up next, i want to ask how this president of iran is sort of creating a sense of credibility by acknowledging one sort of important historic moment, what this new leader

winston churchill is to have said that people occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as the if nothing ever happened. the truth that we all know about the medical device tax is that it has destroyed jobs, it's destroyed innovation, and it has hurt patient care. these are the very pillars that the health care law reform was actually supposed to support. repealing this policy sends a very strong and common sense message to the american people that congress might always agree on what is the right path forward, but we can absolutely recognize when a policy has set us on the wrong path, and today we have an opportunity to right this wrong. this amendment repeals a tax that is threatening america's global leadership and innovation. this is about saving lives. it's important that we do act now and today. let's stop the job losses. let's protect these high-wage jobs, and let's insure that america continues to invent, continues to innovate and continues to develop the very cutting edge and life-saving technologies for our patients. vote for the repe

you can think about winston churchill and his election as prime minister in britain in 1940. the extent to which people around him said you got to seek terms with adolph hitler, that if you do not surrender, you will be destroyed. he refused, he refused to capitulate. he knew the odds were against him, but he saved civilization and freedom by doing that. you can look at margaret thatcher when she was able in 1979 to safer country from the ravages of socialism. she said i'm going to turn this nation around, against all odds. in our own nation, ronald reagan provided that same example of a president who came to office and who saved us from the malaise of the jimmy carter era. i think many times in history when you look back, you have the ability to see those moments. you do not always know them when you're living through them. we know right now as we sit here tonight that we are living through one of those moments, and it is a moment that we have all -- we have got to make a decision -- what are we going to do? are we going to let this president to his country down a path which

churchill and franklin d. roosevelt, dearly loved by thatcher, reagan, bush and clinton, goes on to say france has taken england's place as u.s.'s closest ally. >> what be tabloid journalism at its best. >> so the question is, richard haas, what do we call english muffins now? >> freedom muffins? are they freedom muffins. >> the sun said the services would be held at the french embassy. just a twist. say one thing, there is something people are talking about here, a division of labor. the administration can and should strike with military force to underscore the norm against chemical use. we should be helping the moderate elements of the opposition to the extent we can find them, building them up, we should be helping the refugees in places like jordan. there still is the chance of a comprehensive policy. it's not going to turn things around. but it does get things moving in the right direction. >> i find it stunning that 50% of americans and what david gregory was talking about, why are we getting involved it

that's why i'm a believer winston churchill was. the idea that we make a snap decisions is worthless to ignore it. if more candidates have focused, we could get past the image making. if we'll focus on image may change, if a candidate selected a handsome, well kept, then they can get down to the politics. even george washington can understood this. when george washington walked in, he was the only one who walked manifold military uniform. he was plotting to the first commander-in-chief before there was a commander-in-chief in the country. all of these guys thought about it. the politicians are smart, they will think about it without pinning themselves orange. >> host: in the project president come you read about william henry harrison. >> guest: u.s.a. military leader. and so he the campaign on this platform upon the military leader, tougher than nails. that's what ended up really killing him. he went out of the rain and ended up dying after 40 days. he bought folks a lot of. he would sweep. rallies with people and then they would r

he's no winston churchill. he has zero wins in his column. when i think of the foreign policy mastery which comes out of "the weekly standard," which was an instrumental mouthpiece for the bush administration and before that they were calling for intervention throughout the balkans. i mean, they have never in their short existence, they have never met a war that they didn't like. he reminds me of a baseball manager like gene malk, the legendary baseball manager who had a career average winning percentage that was under .500 yet he kept getting hired by the next team. bill crystal has no -- you know, for all of his plaudits and things like that, he has no credibility on foreign policy. every decision that he has pushed and urged on america, including before 9/11, to start getting really antagonistic militarily with china, has been wrong. and it's about time that we stop paying that much attention to a kind of perspective on military action that coming out of "the weekly standard." host: charles krauthammer saying that the president and white h

winston churchill said people occasionally stumble over the truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happen the truth we all know about the medical device tax is that it has destroyed jobs, destroyed innovation and hurt patient care. these are the very pillars the health care law refrm was supposed to support. repealing this policy sends a very strong and commonsense message to the american people that congress may not always agree on what is the right path forward but we we can absolutely recognize when a policy has set us on the wrong path and today we have an opportunity to right this wrong. this tax threatens america's global leadership and innovation. this is about saving lives. it's important that we act now, today. let's stop the job loss, protect the high wage jobs and ensure that america continues to invest, continues to innovate and continues to develop the cutting edge and life-saving technologies for our patients. vote for the repeal of the medical device tax. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from new york. mrs. lowey:

churchill, generally do the right thing after exhausting every alternative. we are here today at a moment when we are exhausting and lots of alternatives, keeping the government running. david, thank you for your kindness and generosity and leadership in so many spheres. i want to also acknowledge their west -- darrell west, here at brookings. i am going to get to elaine in a moment and talk about this important new center. oneso want to a knowledge of your -- what of the board members here at brookings. one of the board members here at brookings. you have heard me say is absolutely the best partner anybody can ever have. our partnership recently ended very successfully but the will be eternal. if have to pick one person to be in a foxhole with it would be joel. a lot of my colleagues are here. --n was mentioned byelaine by elaine. my former colleagues in the congress, let's see. congresswoman who i greeted on the way in and some of my in the campaign years. my former campaign manager is here somewhere. an important leader in the campaign. my other colleague

and they are on may 15th, eisenhower, patton, omar bradley, winston churchill, king george the sixth and several dozen of the most senior commanders have gathered to review for it last time the plan called overlord, which is the invasion of france, which is to take place in three weeks. they met in an auditorium at st. paul's called the model room and the general said that girls were bundled up in their overcoats because even that was the middle of night, it was cold as a meat locker and they sat on hold with benches normally reserved for schoolboys. the poet john milton among other english luminaries had gone to st. paul. on the florida cop put it this auditorium was an enormous paris relief map of the normandy coast, where the rivers and teeth into the atlantic and a british brigadier and no skid stotts shuffled around on this hop is a discussed the individual locales and what would be coming in three weeks, the most famous battlefield in the world. the beaches, for example. utah, on a hot, gold, juno, sword and towns no one had heard of it soon would become infamous. towns like sa

churchill. they do the right thing after first exhausting every available alternative. we are here today in a moment when we are exhausting a lot of alternatives to keeping the government running. but, david, thank you for your kindness and for your generosity and leadership and so many spheres of our life together. i want to acknowledge darryl west, vice president here at brookings and get to elaine in a moment and talk about the important new center. but i also want to acknowledge one of the -- one of the board members here at brookings, my friend and long-time business partner joel hyatt who has some of you heard me say on many occasions absolutely the best partner anybody could ever have. i want to acknowledge the u.s. pension guarantee corporation hea hea head. so now to elaine. i have known elaine for 20 years. almost exactly 20 years. and i want to acknowledge her husband, tino, who also was in a previous lifetime a public servant running the x.m. bank. and their daughter-in-law, christie

at one point, when the war was over, winston churchill who had been defeated for office as soon as the war was over, the british said you're a great war leader, but we don't want you in peacetime. he was thrown out of office in 1945, he came to the united states with phil and at the the racetrack, he was introduced to joe kennedy, who he worked with when kennedy was ambassador. they hated each other. joe kennedy never forgave churchill because he didn't drink. and every time he went as ambassador to meet with the prime minister churchill, churchill would offer him a highball filled with whiskey. kennedy would say, i don't drink. two days later he walk in again and churchill would give him another huge glass of whiskey. join me. he would say i don't drink. finally kennedy couldn't figure out. churchill played the mind game with him, whether churchill was teasing him, or was so drunk he forgot from the day before that churchill didn't drink. they disliked one another intensely. the war was over. there was intense suffering. and churchill said to kennedy held out his hands and said, i'm s