How does the Obama campaign turn the page?

>>> in today's politico briefing, the obama campaign is playing defense after a very tough week getting beaten by the romney camp in fund-raising, losing the recall battle in wisconsin and those gaffes we have been talking about from high profile surrogates and the president himself. so how do they turn the page? joining me now is politico's roger simon . they have a strategy of going out and being aggressive and turning out these videos, but the fact is they still are playing defense.

>> they are. it was a horrible week and it will take more than a week to repair the damage. it wasn't so horrible in the president's actual gaffe, you know, the private sector is doing fine. what was odd was that this is a campaigner who almost never makes gaffes. he went through a tough campaign four years ago against hillary clinton and almost never said a wrong word during the primaries and during the general, and here we have a president who called a press conference and makes this bobble --

>> and he could have fixed it in realtime, stop himself and go back and say what i mean of course is --

>> that's the thing. he's smart, he's good, he's i think is why the reaction has been so strong. not the words, but whoa, this guy doesn't make mistakes, what's happening here, if you're his supporter to begin with, you're wondering is there going to be more of this or what.

>> arguably, it's early, it's june, and things can get fixed, but you just think this is a piece of tape that is going to pop up everywhere.

>> it is, and here's the problem. it's a problem for both candidates. i once interviewed roger ayles for a book and he said --

>> when he was campaign advisor before he was --

>> campaign advisor. he said what you do is you create a cartoon of your opponent, one phrase, one line. the cartoon of mitt romney is doesn't care about ordinary people . the cartoon of president obama is doesn't understand the economy. now, both campaigns are going to build as much as they can to enforce those cartoons so that is what people have in the back of their minds when they go into the voting booth . there are issues. there's going to be other things. but they are trying to build a not so subtle negative issue that you can't trust your vote to the other guy.

>> roger simon , thank you very much.

>> thank you.