Presidential Candidates Prepare for First Debate
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome, everybody. Our STARTING POINT this morning: Lowering expectations. Is Mitt Romney already preparing for defeat before the debates even start? A surprising new memo obtained by CNN shows his surrogates are ready for the worst, yet it could be just spin. We're going to take a look at that. Plus, a return of the refs. The end of last night's game looked similar to Sunday's botched game that created national uproar. But did the real refs make the right calls this time? And eavesdropping on history. Newly released recordings from President Kennedy's Oval Office give insight into moments like the Cuban missile crisis. Listen.</s>JOHN F. KENNEDY, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: How advanced is this?</s>ARTHUR LUNDAHL, CIA ANALYST: Sir, we've never seen this kind of installation before.</s>KENNEDY: Not even in the Soviet Union?</s>O'BRIEN: More of those recordings just ahead. And he's not just a talented basketball player. Tyson Chandler from the New York Knicks has another passion. He'll join us to talk about photography. It's Friday, September 28th. And STARTING POINT begins right now. Welcome, everybody. Our team this morning: Jose Baez is with us. He's an attorney, the author of "Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony, the Inside Story." Abby Huntsman joins us. She's the host of "Huff Post Live," daughter of Governor Jon Huntsman. Richard Socarides is with us. I kind of mangled the name, didn't I? Socarides, sorry -- hey, I'm getting over a cold, come on, people. Writer at NewYorker.com, former special advisor in the Clinton White House and lawyer, practicing attorney, we just learned. John Berman is host of "EARLY START," who sticks around and helps us with our news. Starting point, this point: President Obama campaigning in D.C. today. Mitt Romney is going to meet with voters in Pennsylvania. The debates just days away. Mitt Romney or his campaign is trying to lower expectations. We have seen the same thing on the President Obama side as well. But there's new memo that's been obtained by CNN, where Romney adviser Beth Myers tells campaign surrogates there are several reasons why the President will likely win the first debate. One reason that's given is this -- "This will be the eighth one-on-one presidential debate of his political career. For Mitt Romney, it will be his first." Jack Markell is Governor of Delaware. He's the Chairman of the National Governors Association. He supports President Obama's re- election campaign. It's nice to have you back with us. We certainly appreciate it. You know, as much as we talk about and we have been talking about in the last hours, the Republicans doing this on the GOP side, kind of the same thing is happening on the Democratic side. Let's play a little tape.</s>ROBERT GIBBS, OBAMA CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISOR: Mitt Romney, I think, has an advantage because he's been through 20 of these debates in the primaries over the last year. He even bragged that he was declared the winner in 16 of those debates. So, I think in that sense, having been through this much more recently than President Obama, I think he starts with an advantage.</s>O'BRIEN: Here's what Jen Psaki said -- she's the Obama campaign spokeswoman -- yesterday, "I will just take this opportunity to say that Mitt Romney has been preparing earlier and with more focus than any presidential candidate in modern history, not John F. Kennedy, not President Bill Clinton, not President George Bush, not Ronald Reagan has prepared as much as he has. So there's no question he will have a lead on how prepared he is." So you would think reading that, that President Obama has never really even successfully navigated a single debate. Isn't it simple what we're seeing here, as lower the bar, that way, everybody, you know -- you lower expectations so if anybody does pretty well, you win the game, you win the debate?</s>GOV. JACK MARKELL, (D) DELAWARE: Well, I mean, the facts are the facts. I think the one thing that we all remember from the Republican nominating process, was how many debates there were. I mean, as much as I didn't want to watch them, I kept finding myself watching them because I was amazed by all the things going on. But one after another after another, Romney did seem to win and he was declared the winner by most of the pundits. But in the end, it's about both of them going out there and doing the best they can.</s>O'BRIEN: But, you know, it's also how people perceive it as well. If you look at a CNN/ORC poll that talks about who's more likely to win the debates -- let's pop that one first. Obama -- 59 percent believe he will win the debate; Mitt Romney, 34 percent believe. So, that's got to be a concerning number, right? If the expectation is very high, if you don't meet or reach above that, you have a problem. Are you worried about that?</s>MARKELL: Well, my guess is what people are really saying, they believe President Obama really understands their issues, their concerns. He's got a better plan for the future.</s>O'BRIEN: Governor, I'm going to stop you right there. I'm going to stop you right there, because that's not what they're saying in the poll. Honestly, please. It was so smooth, it was so smooth and yet so ridiculous, I have to stop you in the middle. What they were asked is who is more likely to win the debate, 59 percent, a very healthy majority said it will be President Obama. So my question is: with all that expectation overwhelmingly he is going to win -- that's problematic, isn't it?</s>MARKELL: Look, I mean, in the end, the amount of time we spend talking about debates itself is sort of interesting to me. I mean, they're both going to go out. They're going to do what they can. I mean, again, the -- Mitt Romney has spent a lot more time for these debates, had all the debates earlier this year. The President is a good communicator, there's no question about it. But in terms of debate one-on-one, Romney has had a lot more experience last year getting ready for this.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes, in terms of debate one-on-one, the President has done eight, where Mitt Romney has done none presidential one-on-one debates. And here's from this Beth Myers memo. "Four years ago, Barack Obama faced John McCain on the debate stage, just four short years ago. According to Gallup, voters judged him the winner of each debate by double digit margins and their polling showed he one won it by an astounding 33-point margin." Her point being, like, he's good at this. He's been good at it. He's done this a lot, maybe he hasn't had the primary debates, but he is going to be the winner. Do you think it's as simple, if you win the debate, you can win the election here?</s>MARKELL: Well, I think it's a lot more than that. I think people are going to -- people are looking for somebody who can be president and a good president. They're looking for somebody who understands the concerns of the middle class. They're looking for somebody who has a plan to build an economy for the middle class. In the end, that's what this is going to come down to. The debates are an important moment but I think it's a lot more than who wins one debate or another debate.</s>ABBY HUNTSMAN, "HUFF POST LIVE": Governor Markell, it's Abby Huntsman here. What do you think Obama's biggest challenge will be? What do you think Romney's advisors are telling him, how can we knock him off the seat? Is he getting him to speak off-the-cuff? Is that his biggest challenge?</s>MARKELL: Look, I think you never know what questions are going to be asked, and certainly the President has not asked for, you know, my advice nor what I expect he will. But I think he's got a very good message to tell. And I think, you know, what I'm hoping what comes through the debate, is everybody remembering what a difficult situation he inherited. We were losing 750,000, 800,000 jobs a month when he came in. We've now had 30 months in a row of job growth and created over 5 million jobs during that time. That's really the story. So my hope is the President his plenty of opportunities during the debates to make sure that message gets out there.</s>RICHARD SOCARIDES, NEWYORKER.COM: You know, I think that -- I actually think the Romney campaign is right. I think that Obama -- President Obama is good at this.</s>O'BRIEN: A former Clinton advisor.</s>SOCARIDES: I think President Obama is good at this. I mean, I think Romney had more practice. Governor Romney has better practice; he's more kind of loose about this. But President Obama will probably not make a mistake. I think he is favored and I think people are looking for Governor Romney, any little mistake he makes, people are going to go after it. So I think I would say to Governor Markell, you're looking pretty good going into this.</s>JOSE BAEZ, ATTORNEY: Why not come across strong?</s>O'BRIEN: That's an interesting question. Jose just said, why try to be the underdog? Because we see it on both sides. I guess I sort of understand the value. Why do that?</s>MARKELL: Well, to the effect the President has an advantage and to the extent your poll shows that, I think it's because people believe he's got a better message -- I mean, he's got a stronger message. So much of the debate is who's got the stronger message. The President has a better message and I'm not surprise the people think he could do better on that --</s>O'BRIEN: I'm not so sure the polls say that. I'm not sure the poll says that. I think the poll says, "Who do you think is more likely to win the debate?" and they're not asking who has a better message. That will be reflected in the debate. But we could argue that to 'til the cows come home.</s>HUNTSMAN: I tell you what? Romney has got to win the substance debate. That's the one area that he's got to win if he wants to be successful.</s>O'BRIEN: We'll see. All right. Thank you, sir, Governor Markell.</s>MARKELL: That will be --</s>O'BRIEN: Go ahead, I'm sorry.</s>MARKELL: That will be very difficult.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This is why the whole debate game is such a farce.</s>O'BRIEN: Governor, I always it when you come in person because then we could all sit around and physically beat up on you, too. Nice to have you, sir. Thank you for being with us. I'm sure we will keep talking about the debate, there's a bunch of them in our future. CNN is going to, of course, have complete coverage of the first presidential debate, which is happening next Wednesday. You can watch it live on CNN. Also, CNN.com starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. There are other stories making news today outside of debate prep, believe it or not. John Berman has that for us.</s>BERMAN: Right. Elections are not created on curves. We'll just leave that there. Neither are football games. And the NFL's real refs are feeling the love in Baltimore last night as they returned from the lockout, putting the replacement out</s>LEON PANETTA, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: What terrorists were involved needs to be determined by the investigation. It clearly was a group of terrorists who conducted that attack against that facility.</s>BERMAN: Meanwhile, staff is being removed from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli due to security reasons. The man who made the anti-Muslim film that ignited protests across the Muslim world is in custody in Los Angeles this morning, but authorities claimed it has nothing to do with that movie. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is being held on alleged parole violations in connection with his conviction for bank fraud. He was ordered not to use computer devices or use aliases without approval from his provision officer. Yes, he used a fake name to make "Innocence of Muslims". Police are getting ready to dig into a driveway in suburban Detroit, searching for the possible human remains of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa again. He vanished 37 years ago. A tipster claims to have seen a body being buried at that house in Roseville, Michigan around the same time that Hoffa disappeared. All right. It is politics "Saturday Night Live" style. Check out President Obama talking jobs.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who here has a job? There we go. There we go. And what do you do, sir?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a manager at Burger King.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go! Have an HOA. And where were you four years ago? Probably working the counter, right?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was a vice president for Bank of America.</s>BERMAN: No matter what happens in the debate, "Saturday Night Live" will win the election.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes. As they did four years ago. So there are some newly released secret recordings from President Kennedy's Oval Office that give insight into historic moments like the Cuban missile crisis. Listen.</s>KENNEDY: How advanced is this?</s>LUNDAHL: Sir, we've never seen this kind of installation before.</s>KENNEDY: Not even in the Soviet Union?</s>O'BRIEN: The calmness with which they're speaking really belies how anxiety ridden this entire debate was. A historian who released the clips is going to talk with us next. Also, are you a Sam Adams fan or maybe a Dos Equis fan? Are you just a fan of beer, John Berman? Well, apparently, your favorite brew could say a lot about your politics. Tough call, coming up.</s>JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": According to a new poll, New Jersey voters actually support a proposed law that will require dog owners to put their animals in a safety restraint or crate in the car. You have to have your dog in the car with a seatbelt on. More bad news for Mitt Romney.