On the syndicated weekend program the Chris Matthews Show, Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein and NBC's Norah O'Donnell discussed the appeal behind Barack Obama's message, and why his possible candidacy in 2008 might work:
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KLEIN: The hype is that he is really smart...and he isn't the kind of hyper-partisan bloviator that we've had...
O'DONNELL: ...Go back and read his speech before the Democratic National Convention. Of course there is that line: there is no red America, there is no blue America, there is only the United States of America...it kind of tracks with the language we have heard from President Bill Clinton lately about the common good...
One important thing: Obama can speak very well. So many Democratic politicians, whether former presidential candidates or current senators, act as if they take a podium around with them wherever they go. They lecture, not discuss -- and that hurts their cause. Only few, like Bill Clinton and maybe John Edwards, speak as if they are having a two-way discussion with whoever is listening to them. Barack Obama does it better than both of those two. Remember, before Clinton ran for president, many people thought he was boring. Obama has not even declared his candidacy and people find him so charismatic and interesting to listen to. That says something right there.
On the syndicated weekend program the Chris Matthews Show, a panel of columnists spoke about Bill Clinton’s global initiative, and how it puts him miles apart from the current President with regard to his image around the world:
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KATTY KAY: “The more unpopular George Bush is, in retrospect, Bill Clinton looks like a pretty good thing. And you’ve seen those bumper stickers: ‘At least Bill Clinton’s lies didn’t kill anybody’ – and those are known all around the world as well.â€
Unfortunately, Fox News doesn't see it that way. Watch the .
Today on the MSNBC show Hardball, host Chris Matthews interviewed Frank Rich, a NY Times columnist and author of the new book . The two voiced concern over how President Bush is approaching Iran in the exact same way that he approached Iraq prior to the invasion, as if he has not learned any lessons over the last three years.
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MATTHEWS: "Apparently Bush is like the old recording advice. I mean, he is speaking today as if he had never experienced anything in the world since 9-11 -- that he had had no bad experience with WMD, no bad experience of failing to connect it to 9-11, no horror of a war that Dick Cheney didn't even think there would be a war in Iraq. He (Cheney) said 'I was surprised there was a war.' All that knowledge he has now absorbed, and he is still back to the original recording, the original talk-up for the war. What does that tell you about the President, Frank Rich?"
RICH: "Nothing good. I mean, you want to believe that our leaders will get information and learn from it. We may agree or disagree with them ideologically or on any issue. But to not learn anything or not correct the course where so many lives are involved."
Frank Rich has it exactly right. We can argue with neoconservatives about international policy until we are all blue in the face. But what is even more disturbing is when they say that if they had to do Iraq all over again, they would do it the exact same way. Individuals that lack the reason and humility to admit fault and adjust accordingly should not be in positions of trust, not to mention the White House and Pentagon. ------------------------------------ Other sites blogging about Iran: , , , , , .
Bill Maher was at the top of his game on Wednesday evening's edition of . The host of the HBO show pointed out formal contradictions, as they say in philosophy, about Bush's responses immediately following the 9/11 attacks. For example, if it was so important for Bush to get away from the east coast on 9/11, flying to Louisiana and Nebraska, why was he reading ?
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MAHER: "He should have gone to the places where he went on 9/11. He was in Florida. Then he heard there was an attack on New York, so of course he flew to Shreveport, Louisiana. And then he heard that there was another plane that went down in Pennsylvania, so naturally he went to Nebraska. So I think to commemorate 9/11, he should have gone to Florida, Louisiana and Nebraska. And of course, I also read that on the night of 9/11, he was in bed by 11:30. Yes, on the day that changed everything, Chris, he still hit the hay before Nightline...You can't have it both ways. The attack can't be such that you can waste seven minutes just sitting there, and also be so dire that you have to go under ground."
And then Bill Maher commented on Dick Cheney's appearance on Meet the Press last week:
MAHER: "And the Cheneys, and the Bushs and the Rumsfelds -- they don't even care when they get caught in lies. Tim Russert presented a lot of tapes of Cheney lying about this. And Cheney's response basically was, 'Well yes, those specific lies, okay you got me on those. But my overall lies still pertain. We still need the war.'"
We all know that Karl Rove's exploitation of our fears about terrorism will not work as well today as it did in the past. But still, it might be enough to energize the conservative base, which since June has been angry with the Administration about their immigration policy. So the question is whether labeling the Democrats as terrorist-friendly will be enough to get conservatives off their butts and out to the polls on election day? It just might. ----------------------------------------------- Other sites blogging about this issue: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
This afternoon on MSNBC's show Hardball, Republican strategist Ed Rogers and commentator Mike Barnicle got into a heated exchange over the Iraqi Prime Minister's indifference about the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Rogers tried to downplay it, and blamed Democrats for ever bringing it up -- while doing his best to prevent Barnicle from even getting a word in.
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BARNICLE: "Ed, first of all, the Israeli Lebanon conflict is not a sideshow."
ROGERS: "It is for the Prime Minister of Iraq."
BARNICLE: "Second --"
ROGERS: "Sure it is."
BARNICLE: "Well then why did he inject himself into it by issuing a statement in support of Hezbollah."
ROGERS: "He made a mistake. His foreign ministers come back and tidy it up."
BARNICLE: "Ed."
ROGERS: "He was here to say thank you. Thank you to America. Let's give him that."
BARNICLE: "Ed, before he --"
ROGERS: "Let him go back to what he needs to go."
BARNICLE: "Ed, could you take a breath? Please?"
ROGERS: "I'm breathing."
BARNICLE: "Before he got here to say thank you, he injected himself into this 'sideshow,' as you call it --"
ROGERS: "So?"
BARNICLE: "--with his support of Hezbollah."
ROGERS: "So?"
Does anybody get the irony here? If this were any Democrat saying it was okay for the Iraqi Prime Minister to defend a terrorist organization, Republicans like Ed Rollins would be labeling them as treasonous.
This completely contradicts Bush's rule of not working with any countries that support terrorism.
Many conservatives who watch the Colbert Report each night have no idea that he is actually making fun of them. During the Tuesday night show, he tried to back guest Chris Matthews into a rhetorical corner on the issue of Iraq, using the typical right-wing tactic of turning any criticism of U.S. policy into a criticism of the U.S. itself:
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COLBERT: "You never supported the war. Why? Everyone else did. Even the Democrats did."
MATTHEWS: "I thought it would end up creating more terrorism than when we started."
COLBERT: "Boy, you got egg on your face now."
MATTHEWS: "I know. Yeah, you got me. This has turned out to be a real winner."
COLBERT: "Well, listen. We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here, right?"
MATTHEWS: "Oh, that's how it works? There's just a limited number of them?"
COLBERT: "Do you not listen to the President? That's what he says."
MATTHEWS: "You know, people aren't born terrorist -- they become terrorist."
COLBERT: "Mhmm. So wait a second. Are you blaming terrorism on the United States?"
MATTHEWS: "No, I'm saying people --"
COLBERT: "You say we made terrorists."
MATTHEWS: "No I didn't. I said --"
COLBERT: "Oh come on Chris. Put it together."
That rhetorical tactic worked very well against Max Cleland in 2002 and against John Kerry in 2004. But now that a , the tactic of labeling people as disloyal to the United States is a losing political strategy. -------------------------------------------------------- Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , .
The progressive blogosphere, including this web site, is somewhat guilty of letting a few months ago as a "Fox News Contributor" slip through the cracks. This is a huge issue. Do you see CNN hiring Markos from or John from to be their political analysts? No, because cable news does not have a liberal bias. In terms of both popularity and credibility, Malkin is not even close to the level of Markos.
At least MSNBC learned to never have her on again. Look at this clip from Hardball in 2004. Talk about not getting her facts straight!:
Media watchdog groups like , and other progressive blogs have pounced on commentator Chris Matthews for his alleged conservative media bias. From a personal standpoint, after watching Matthews' MSNBC show "Hardball" ever since the election campaign of 2000, I don't find a consistent pattern of deliberate bias from Chris Matthews. Most notably, he was one of the first mainstream media figures to criticize the rationale for going into Iraq almost an entire year before it happened. He holds both sides accountable. And although he thinks that the Democrats have had a weak message on national security issues since late-2001, even I feel the same way to an extent.
In knowing that I do not hold any personal grudges against Chris Matthews, I should let it be known that I disagree with him from time to time. One of these instances was on the latest edition of the syndicated weekly program "The Chris Matthews Show". During a brief commentary at the end of the show, he tried to deflect blame away from Secretary Rumsfeld, making the Defense Secretary look like a misled fall-guy: Click to watch clip >>>
CHRIS MATTHEWS: "But let's pause and ask if this (the criticism of Donald Rumsfeld) is right? I once asked the Secretary of Defense if he'd ever advised President Bush to invade Iraq."
(Beginning of excerpt of video with Matthews and Rumsfeld) DONALD RUMSFELD: "He did not ask me, is the question. And to my knowledge there are any other people he did not ask."
CHRIS MATTHEWS: "Doesn't that surprise you as Secretary of Defense?"
DONALD RUMSFELD: "Well, I thought it was interesting." (End of except of video with Matthews and Rumsfeld)
CHRIS MATTHEWS: "It was, of course, not Rumsfeld's call; nor would he have been the one out front and center basking in the credit had the war gone as advertised."
There are a few flaws with Matthews' conclusion. First off, how are we to know that Rumsfeld would not "have been the one out front and center basking in the credit had the war gone as advertised?" Secondly, Matthews is focusing too heavily on the decision to go to war, and not how the war was fought. Rumsfeld, as the leader of the Pentagon, had a huge say as to the number of troops that were sent into the war zone. He and Cheney ignored what many political science academic types like myself refer to as the Powell doctrine: overwhelming force coupled with a clear and realistic exit strategy. Rumsfeld, instead, advocated a much smaller ground force, unfortunately making it so that we had to decide between protecting Iraq's infrastructure and protecting its oil reserve. As imagined, we chose to protect the oil reserve -- not the message we needed to send to the Arab world. That was Rumsfeld's responsibility.
I tend to agree with Matthews that the ultimate burden of responsibility rests on the commander-in-chief. But at the same time, the commander-in-chief should always expect to have competent people around him that understand war. Rumsfeld let Bush down.
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