Ferchi

MR. ALTER Well, this-- this is how presidents are judged. ?Right now, the economy seems to be moving forward. ?There's been some good economic news.? You can imagine that if Mitt Romney had been elected, and this is one of the reasons the stakes were so big, David, that right now everybody would be saying, well, the economy is doing better again because we slashed taxes on the wealthy, we slashed regulations, we slashed programs for the poor. ?So this last election, I argue in the book, was hugely, pivotally important. ?It would-- if-- if Romney had won, it would have validated the entire conservative argument for what to do about the economy.? And it would have discredited things like infrastructure, which is critical for getting these folks that Tom was talking about employed and education.? Because the-- the Ryan plan and other things slashed funding for education, medical and scientific research that creates a lot of jobs.? So what the president I think needs to do is to get back on the beam with the big themes that got him re-elected.? The first person-- first president re-elected-- re-elected twice with more than 51 percent of the vote since Dwight Eisenhower in half a century.? So the-- the point is that he has to focus on college completion.? Because if they don't get a college degree, they are road kill in the global economy.? And he has to focus on rebuilding America and bringing the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, who was a big infrastructure man, built the railroads; Teddy Roosevelt, big infrastructure man; bring the Republican Party back to its roots, come together on a big infrastructure plan.