Chris is back and hosting the show today from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. He's there ahead of tomorrow night's big Republican presidential debate on msnbc, and we'll preview what to look for on Hardball tonight. Already, the candidates are making plenty of noise: Mitt Romney released his jobs plan, Ron Paul is attacking Rick Perry for serving as Al Gore's Texas campaign chairman during Gore's 1988 presidential run in a new ad, and Michele Bachmann's campaign manager Ed Rollins is stepping away from the day-to-day operations. That last bit of news was first reported by Politico, which questions how durable the Bachmann campaign really is.
Meanwhile, the other big event this week is President Obama's jobs speech Thursday night before a Joint Session of Congress. The President spent Labor Day in Detroit at a rally with 13,000 union workers and supporters, and while the President was mum on details of his jobs plan, he once again promised a plan that would bring down the 9 percent unemployment rate and he called on his Republican opponents to “put country before party.”
Give 'em Hell, Barry! According to The New York Times, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan presented the president with a copy of Harry Truman's 1948 Labor Day speech - also in Detroit - the year Truman came from behind by campaigning against a "do-nothing Congress." According to the Times, "afterward, Mr. Levin said he told the president, 'Here’s a ‘give ’em hell’ kind of speech.'”