In case you did not see last night's show.

Our panel will reassume in a moment but first let's check with Governor Haley Barbour, the Republican of Mississippi, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, so we have two former chairmen with us tonight. We're going to spend some moments with Haley. What issue, Haley, and obviously there's a problem, what concerns you the most?

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R), MISSISSIPPI: Well, I think the American people are concerned most about Iraq. Americans don't like long wars. That's not news, Larry. I mean ask Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman.

And, the news media apparently thinks its job is to every day to show on television here are the worst things we know of that happened in Iraq in the last 24 hours. So, the American people just get inundated with the bad side of the news.

The other thing politically for Republicans we just have to be honest about in the second midterm election of two-term Republican presidents, and that's this election in 2006, Republicans usually fare poorly.

Again, that's not news. We've known that the whole time and that's why I think a lot of our members are particularly careful and particularly skittish. They want to avoid what happened in 1986 or 1974 or 1958.

KING: Is the president a liability? BARBOUR: No, the president is not a liability but you're not going to run a campaign this year where you want to make the campaign about anything except the candidate himself.

Marsha Blackburn is going to run for reelection on why the people of Tennessee love Marsha Blackburn and that's going to be the issue and that's what Republicans want the issue to be. The Democrats are going to try to say Marsha Blackburn's really George Bush and you're mad at George Bush and that dog won't hunt.

If Marsha Blackburn, as she will, does a job, good job of reminding people why they elected her, the job that she's doing and then to remind people that life is a series of choices.

As Ed Gillespie said earlier, the choice is going to be between the Democrat opponent and the Republican incumbent. That's a whole lot different than saying "Do I think things could be better politically?"

KING: Do you fear the possibility that the Democrats will take control of the House?

BARBOUR: I think Republicans have to take it very seriously. We don't have very many competitive seats like we used to. The gerrymandering of the last 25 years has affected that. There's many fewer competitive seats than say in 1994 when Republicans took control of the House.

The Republicans must take that seriously. As I said, look back since World War II and the second midterm election of a two-term Republican presidency, I think it's unlikely the Republicans will lose the House but we better take it seriously.

KING: You were a major booster during Katrina, which ravaged your state, of President Bush. You boosted him throughout that tragic occurrence, yet he is getting hit left and right over the handling of that. Do you still share your enthusiasm over the federal government's handling of Katrina?

BARBOUR: Let me just say, Larry, the federal government made mistakes just like we made mistakes but the federal government did a whole lot more right than wrong. What I don't understand is when people look at Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, all of whom were ravaged by hurricanes in the last year and a half, we all got the same federal government.

But, in Mississippi and Texas and Alabama and Florida, we just hitched up our britches and went to work. Our people are not into victim hood. Our government never collapsed. We had unity of government every day.

Could the federal government have helped us more particularly early? Yes, sir, but look we have to learn to take care of ourselves. We did. Other states did, so I don't blame the federal government for everything that went wrong everywhere.

KING: And, governor, why so much bickering inside the party?

BARBOUR: Well, look, we've had the majority for a long time. As I said, we're in the second midterm election of a two-term Republican presidency and people understand that those are tough election years that our guys are going to be swimming upstream in some cases and they want to stay in the majority. They want to get reelected.

So, while maybe everybody could agree to vote for stuff going into '04, it's a lot easier for everybody to agree on everything. But don't ever forget Republicans agree on a whole lot more than we disagree on.

And that's just -- we lose sight of that when the focus is on a particularly difficult issue like immigration or the fact that we conservatives don't like the fact the government spends so much money. But we do have to admit because of Katrina and the war you can't spend as little money as we were trying to do back when I was chairman.

KING: Thanks, governor, always good seeing you, Haley. BARBOUR: Thank you, Larry.

KING: We go back a long way, Governor Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi.