CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Today on THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW:
The confident president. Despite the blood in Iraq, Americans lock arms with
Bush.
Plus Jack Kennedy's love life. The why and the wow.
Those hot stories and more on today's show.
What? Me Worry? Iraq spirals out of control, but Americans still salute the
president. Does self-confidence trump everything?
Only the shadow knows. John Kerry knows why he wants the White House, so why
doesn't he tell us?
`You're beautiful! You're classy. So let's get together.' That's Jack
Kennedy's line. So what's Bill Clinton's story going to be?
Plus Lawrence of Arabia lives. All that and more with a ready to buzz
roundtable on your weekly news show.
Announcer: From Congress to the West Wing, he's been a Washington insider.
Now he's one of the capital's top journalists: Chris Matthews.
MATTHEWS: Hi. I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to the show and let's go inside.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Profile: Norah O'Donnell of NBC News, Joe Klein of Time magazine,
Liz Marlantes of Christian Science Monitor and David Brooks of New
York Times discuss President Bush and the war in Iraq, John
Kerry's run for the White House and John F. Kennedy vs. Bill
Clinton
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Norah O'Donnell keeps tabs on the White House for NBC News. Joe Klein writes
a column for Time magazine. Liz Marlantes covers politics for The Christian
Science Monitor. And David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times and
an analyst on "The Newshour."
First up, what? Me worry? Over a hundred soldiers killed this month.
Foreign troops pack up and head home. Bob Woodward's new book shows a
president hell-bent on Iraq from the get-go. All that amid all the questions
raised by the 9/11 hearings. But in several new polls, Bush leads Kerry.
Gallup has Bush getting 50 percent of likely voters. Only 44 percent back
Kerry. That's an exact flip from early March when Kerry led.
Norah, what's this guy got? Is it self-confidence that just rules here?
Ms. NORAH O'DONNELL (White House Correspondent NBC News): Well, the Bush
campaign boasted that the president sh--shows enormous resiliency. That the
American rallied around the flag, rallied around the president in what has
been a very difficult month in Iraq, the worst month in terms of casualties
and death. What's noteworthy is that the American people give him strong job
approval ratings, strong record in the war on terrorism. Bush was behind by
one point in terms of the job in Iraq behind Kerry. In a month now, he's way
ahead of Kerry. That's a big switch for just one month. I think it should be
noted, however, though, that the wrong-track numbers--it's a number that
shows, do you think the country is headed in the wrong direction--57 percent
say that the country is headed in a wrong direction. That's the number that
pollsters care about. It's very high. If it gets a couple points higher,
that's the danger zone for the president.
MATTHEWS: Joe Klein:
Mr. JOE KLEIN (Time Magazine) : You know my favorite thing in the Woodward
book? Bush goes to the United Nations. He gives that brilliant speech from
2002, and he's looking at the audience and they're all stone-faced. They
don't have any expressions, and he says, `It's like a Woody Allen movie.' And,
you know, this guy has a kind of stratospheric EQ.
MATTHEWS: Emotional quotient.
Mr. KLEIN: He has great emotional intelligence...
MATTHEWS: Emotional intelligence.
Mr. KLEIN: ...and he's locked into the American people.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Mr. KLEIN: He knows that most American people don't like movies where there
aren't expressions.
MATTHEWS: I know. Liz:
Ms. LIZ MARLANTES (Christian Science Monitor): I...
MATTHEWS: Why's Bush--basic question because we all saw it. The press
conference a little while ago. Everybody saying, `Oh, he didn't know the
answers to what mistakes he'd made.' I thought he had a smidgen of humility
that people liked. When he said, you know, `I--I understand they don't like
being occupied. I wouldn't like being occupied.' A sense of, `OK. I get it.'
Ms. MARLANTES: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Is that it?
Ms. MARLANTES: And resoluteness, which is certainly something that everybody
picked up on. I would add to this that it's not that--I don't think Bush's
poll numbers are so great right now.
Mr. KLEIN: That's right.
Ms. MARLANTES: I mean, his approval ratings are not high. They're--they're
OK.
MATTHEWS: Give me a number, around 50...
Ms. MARLANTES: They're around 51, 52 percent.
MATTHEWS: Right on the edge.
Ms. MARLANTES: Right on the edge. So that's not something that the White
House is doing cartwheels over. However, it did come at the end of several
very bad weeks.
MATTHEWS: Well, why the flip, guys?
David, why the flip? Why was Kerry riding high about--for a long time. For
the last couple of months, almost and then, all of a sudden, the numbers go
the other way after the horror of the 9/11 commissions, all this horror going
on over there. Fallujah, al-Sadr, they're killing our guys. What's
going--why is it working for Bush?
Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Newshour): Well, first of all, it's shocking news that the
beltway debate has nothing to do with the American debate. There's a huge
gap. The second thing is people know that the...
MATTHEWS: Wait, the war isn't a beltway debate. It's...
Mr. BROOKS: I think that's exactly what people are reacting to. The other
thing that's new in the polls is that more people want to commit more troops
to Iraq. They want to win this war. They think Bush wants to win this war.
What is John Kerry's policy on the war? Nobody really knows, and that's
essentially it. They see a guy willing to stick it out no matter what
happens. The American people are pretty mature about it. They know there's
going to be casualties. They know they're really terrible guys we have to
beat and they want to beat them.
Mr. KLEIN: The irony of it...
MATTHEWS: One thing about, you mentioned in the Woodward book--go ahead.
Mr. KLEIN: The irony of it here is that what Bush did in that press
conference is adopt John Kerry's position on the war. Kerry's been saying for
a long time that we should have more troops there and he's been saying we
should turn it over to the UN, and that was the most shocking thing about that
press conference. He just said to Lakhdar Brahimi, `Take it.'
MATTHEWS: You know, the one thing about Bush is it seems that, even that
book, some people thought it was a tough book, the Woodward book. How many
people think the Woodward book was tough on Bush?
Mr. KLEIN: Not me.
MATTHEWS: Liz, was it tough?
Ms. MARLANTES: I think it totally depends on the length that you're reading
it through, and I think that is something that the White House has really
banked on, that this country is polarized right now and all sorts of events,
the 9/11 hearings, the Woodward book...
MATTHEWS: Hmm.
Ms. MARLANTES: ..people are going to read that through a certain partisan
lens, and they're going to interpret it as bad or good depending on where
they're coming from.
MATTHEWS: Why did they put it on the Web site, Norah? They put this
book--they're encouraging people--the Bush White House has said, `Read this
book.' Why?
Ms. O'DONNELL: Because they think that it overall shows him as a strong
leader who prepared for this war and, listen, the president asked all of his
advisers to cooperate with this book. Rumsfeld, who resisted and who does not
like Woodward, agreed to sit down with him for several lengthy interviews, and
they think that it benefits the president in the long term.
Mr. KLEIN: Actually, it shows him as a strong leader who didn't prepare for
the way. This--this book is soft on Bush and tough on the Bush
administration, I think.
MATTHEWS: I think you're right. He comes off as...
Mr. BROOKS: I guess I agree.
MATTHEWS: ...deliberate, if not deliberative. He knows what he wanted to do.
He knew it from day one.
Mr. BROOKS: And he also said to George Tenet, the CIA director, `This
briefing on the WMD doesn't look that persuasive to me. Do you really have
the evidence?' And he said, `Slam dunk.'
Mr. KLEIN: It goes back, but it goes back to the EQ issue. He doesn't like
the briefing because he can't sell it to the American people. He doesn't care
whether the WMD is there or not, it's whether it can be sold.
MATTHEWS: Do you think he's smart enough to hold a press conference to show
that he was still a more likeable guy than the press were? Ha! Just
guessing.
Let's check in with the Matthews Meter. We asked 12 of our regulars, `Why the
good poll news for Bush? Is he doing things right or is Kerry just doing
things wrong?' Let's find out. Five say it's because Bush is doing things
right. Three say it's because Kerry is doing things wrong and some are both.
Joe, you said both. You wimped out in the middle here. That doesn't surprise
me. What did Bush do right?
Mr. KLEIN: Well, well, Bush's resoluteness. The fact that he--he is very
strong and simple, and he also uses great moral language. The most sweeping,
moral language of any president since Kennedy.
Mr. BROOKS: You know who had the best week? It's Ralph Nader. Twenty-five
percent of American people want to get out of Iraq. He's the only
presidential candidate who wants to do that. He had a great week.
MATTHEWS: Clarity. Clarity, yes or no.
Next up, let's take a look at the Kerry campaign. Only the shadow knows.
John Kerry's still struggling to define his Iraq position, by the way, as you
make the point. Here's his most common attack against Bush in the war.
Senator JOHN KERRY: This president misled our nation. Promised that he
would, in fact, build an international coalition, exhaust the remedies of the
United Nations and go to war as a last resort. Those words, `last resort'
mean something to us, and we deserve a president that understands what they
mean.
MATTHEWS: Yeah? Help me here, Liz. Is this guy for the war in Iraq or
against it? Is it timing?
Ms. MARLANTES: Kerry's had--Kerry's had a very difficult position,
politically on this issue.
MATTHEWS: What is it?
Ms. MARLANTES: He's been accused of straddling and he has sort of shifted
around a little bit. Although to be fair to him, it's very hard right now
because Bush is moving, as Joe said, to Kerry's position. He's sort of taking
away some of that policy.
MATTHEWS: Going to the UN.
Mr. BROOKS: This is not...
Mr. KLEIN: This is...
MATTHEWS: Just to finish your point here, why doesn't Kerry just come out
against the war as you said Ralph Nader did. Why doesn't he just square this
issue one against the other guy?
Ms. MARLANTES: Oh, because that's not where the majority of Americans are.
The majority of Americans right now think we should stick it out and make it
right. The problem that Kerry has politically, and this is really hard, I'm
not sure he has an answer right now for how to get around this, is that he not
only has to convince Americans that they would be better off with him in power
than Bush, but he's got to convince them that he can make that change without
admitting a mistake or weakness in any way.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Ms. O'DONNELL: Right.
Ms. MARLANTES: And Americans don't want to do that.
MATTHEWS: You are so--I agree with you. I was going to say, `You're so
smart. I agree.' Because Machiavelli, the smartest of all, "The Prince," the
best book ever written about politics says, `The more people suffer for a
prince, the more loyal they become to him.' And we have suffered a little bit
for this war. A lot of families have suffered everything, and these people
are more committed.
Mr. KLEIN: I--I don't know, I don't know.
MATTHEWS: How do you explain otherwise?
Mr. KLEIN: I think it's much more complicated than that. The question that
Kerry refuses to answer is `Was the war worth it?' I think that he could say
at this point, `It doesn't seem so, but we've got to stay there because of the
mess.' Now, that's a compound sentence. People don't like compound sentences,
but he certainly needs to do better than he's doing.
MATTHEWS: Well, the president...
Mr. KLEIN: He needs an editor.
Mr. BROOKS: The Democratic Party problem with the war is they never took
substantive issue of whether to do it. Their complaints were always
procedural. Do we go through the UN? Do we go through multilateral
institutions? So he's stuck with a procedural policy. Exhaust the
possibilities of the UN or whatever that phrase was. That's no way to elect a
president.
MATTHEWS: Kerry gave a huge speech to coincide with the mission. He's
obviously going to try to exploit the picture of the president on the aircraft
carrier last year next week at the anniversary. What's he going to say that's
going to make any--Joe, what's he got to say that clarifies his position?
Ha? That's it. That's a good question.
Mr. KLEIN: It's tough. You know, Republicans are the masters of simple
sentences, especially this president. The Democrats' congenital disease is
that they live by the compound sentence and Kerry lives by--Kerry never met a
conjunction he didn't like. I mean...
MATTHEWS: I think you're right.
Mr. KLEIN: ...there's subclauses and codicils and all the rest.
Ms. O'DONNELL: But that photo-op with the "Mission Accomplished" sign on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln when the president landed in his flight suit,
even Karl Rove in the past week has admitted that sign should not have been
there. They acknowledge that it should not have been there when the president
declared major combat operations over. The question that can be made, was it
premature of...
MATTHEWS: Right.
Ms. O'DONNELL: ...this administration to declare a sort of victory and
not...
MATTHEWS: By the way, Karen Hughes admitted on an interview I did with her a
couple weeks ago that they had a big hand in putting that sign up. It wasn't
just the guys in the ship that did it.
Mr. KLEIN: Right.
MATTHEWS: It was the original cover story.
Mr. KLEIN: The reality on the ground is that this war has been a disastrous
policy, especially in the larger war on terror, and John Kerry has to figure
out a way to say that and has to figure out a way to say we can't leave it now
because it would make things even worse.
MATTHEWS: David:
Mr. BROOKS: What?
MATTHEWS: You--you've been adjusting your position about you--you've said you
thought the war would be less costly in the cost in terms of lives and just in
terms of hell, the terrible number of wounded.
Mr. BROOKS: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: I think you've been very sympathetic to that part.
Mr. BROOKS: I think it would be bad. I didn't think Muqtada al-Sadr would
be taking over towns a year after the liberation. Nonetheless, I do disagree
with Joe. It was the right thing to do. I think the reason people stick with
Bush is they understand we have these murderous bad guys out there in the
world. We can either hope they don't hit us again or we can go right into
their kitchen and take them out.
MATTHEWS: But didn't you just adjust--you just did what people accuse this
administration of doing. You threw together those murderous bad guys who
attacked us 9/11 with the Saddam Hussein regime.
Mr. KLEIN: David, we don't...
Mr. BROOKS: The people we're fighting in Iraq are not...
MATTHEWS: You did the same thing.
Mr. BROOKS: ...regular Iraqis. Ninety percent of the Iraqis whether it's
Sistani, the Dala party, the real parties in Iraq, they hate us, but they
don't want to go to an Iranian-style theocracy. The people we're fighting in
Iraq are al-Qaeda.
MATTHEWS: Well, that's since the war because we brought them in.
Mr. KLEIN: That's because of Bush's policy.
MATTHEWS: We started that war.
Mr. KLEIN: You know, the president's policy is we're going to go after those
who fund and harbor terrorists. The Saudi's fund the terrorists, the
Pakistanis harbor them. They're our allies. This doesn't make any sense.
MATTHEWS: OK. Let's go to the point we've been making for the last minute,
which is up to Bush to win this election and to hold the presidency, and if he
fails, it's up to John Kerry to take advantage of that. The big issue is the
incumbent and history shows that the incumbent presidents win or lose
depending on their own approval ratings rather than what people think of their
opponents. Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Bill Clinton, all won re-election with
approval numbers well above 50 percent in the campaign year.
TEXT:
Incumbent Presidents
Winners
Eisenhower 72%
Nixon 56%
Reagan 56%
Clinton 56%
MATTHEWS: Losers, Gerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr., all with
approval numbers well below half in the campaign year.
TEXT:
Incumbent Presidents
Losers
Ford 49%
Carter 38%
Bush 41%
MATTHEWS: Norah, the president's job approval numbers are just at 50 percent.
He's got to get them up, right?
Ms. O'DONNELL: He does need to get them up, and I believe that Clinton and
Reagan, who, of course, won second terms were a couple of points higher. And
so they acknowledge that and job approval tracks with that number I was
talking about earlier, where people think that the country's going in the
right or wrong direction. That's a very high number, 57 percent, who think
the country's going in the wrong direction.
MATTHEWS: I think we're going in the Bush direction right now. We'll be
right back with some dessert, a little more fun. JFK's many splendored love
life and how he kept it under covers. So why was Bill Clinton's case so
different? Plus high adventure. Lawrence of Arabia rides again. Great
stuff. Stick around.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: JFK's love life under covers. Don't miss it. Stick around.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Here's JFK and Jackie on their wedding day. But
what about the other beautiful faces of Camelot? Sally Bedell Smith's new
book treats all of us to JFK's special interests. Here's a great quote from
Sally. "Kennedy had little fear of disclosure," she writes, "either from the
press or the women who passed in and out of his life. Reporters covering the
president not only deflected plausible tips about Kennedy's love life, they
also disregarded their own eyewitness experiences."
Norah, you're going to start on this one. This is an amazing book. I've been
looking into it. I've been peeking into it. We all thought we understood
Jack Kennedy. We hardly knew this guy. He had so many interesting
relationships with sophisticated women in their 20s, many of them in their
early 30s, all this going on with people that you'd like to know, nice people.
All through the White House years while he's dealing with the Cuban Missile
Crisis, he's dealing with the Bay of Pigs, he's dealing with Berlin, with
civil rights, and all the time, he's carrying on this complicated traffic. Is
that something a president couldn't get away with today now that you're
covering the White House?
Ms. O'DONNELL: Well, it sounds simple to say but, obviously, it was a
different time, and there were--men and women were in different positions, and
there were more--I think, had there been more women covering the White House,
that perhaps there would have been a much different story, and we would have
treated it differently.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Joe, about the complications. Are you one of those
who says the president's private life, no matter how busy and complicated it
is and compartmentalized it is, he can still be a great president?
Mr. KLEIN: Yeah, I'm a pro-peccadillo journalist. I--I actually--I actually
believe that...
MATTHEWS: They help?
Mr. KLEIN: ...having an interesting personal life is a leading indicator of
success in the presidency. I think Bush, in part...
Ms. O'DONNELL: You think infidelity is something that's...
Mr. KLEIN: Oh, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Ms. O'DONNELL: ...noteworthy?
Mr. KLEIN: You know, look at Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan
even cut a pretty broad swath in Hollywood between his marriages.
MATTHEWS: So you think a more stimulating private life leads to a more
intellectual presidency, is what you said.
Mr. KLEIN: Yeah. Presidents who don't do so well are ones with high IQs and
low libidos.
Mr. BROOKS: Can I defend the Ten Commandments?
Ms. MARLANTES: I--I don't know if...
MATTHEWS: You're tying together the Bushes, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan into
boring presidencies because they were rela--they were faithful.
Mr. KLEIN: Oh, no. No. The fact that George W. Bush was a screw-up early
in his life stood him in very good stead, I think.
MATTHEWS: OK. Liz Marlantes, you're young, let me ask you this as a
political reporter. Suppose you're at the White House where Norah is right
now, and it's X many years from now and a young aide to the president comes to
you and says, `I've got to tell you. I've got a great story. The president
and I have been carrying on an affair.' Would you take that to your editor?
Ms. MARLANTES: Yes.
MATTHEWS: And would the editor, by your own experience, would the editor say,
`Let's put two or three reporters on it. Let's nail that story.' Or would
they say, `Go work on the nuclear proliferation story, it's more important and
leave that one alone.'
Ms. MARLANTES: No, I think we'd probably work on that story. I think--what
I was going to say is I think that now there's an understanding that
regardless of what some people may feel that it's not any of the public's
business, some people may feel quite the opposite. And I think the press now
basically can bring that to the public and the public can make up their own
minds. That's what happened during the Clinton years.
Mr. KLEIN: I think...
MATTHEWS: There was a rule of judge. There was a rule--an old rule of
journalism. As we were getting in this business years ago, it was quite
simple. If there wasn't something besides the relationship, if it was
involved with a lobbyist or involved with a spy potential...
Mr. KLEIN: Right.
MATTHEWS: ...or a gun moll. Like Clinton and--like Kennedy involved with
Judy Baker with Jane Caan in the Godfather. If there wasn't that piece
there, you left it alone.
Mr. KLEIN: But we're driving all the interesting people out of politics.
We're in danger, serious danger of government by goodie-goodies, and, you
know, I--I think we should watch out for the president who married his high
school sweetheart and did nothing else...
MATTHEWS: Uh-oh, Dave, would you defend Republicans there? We have this...
Mr. KLEIN: ...in his life to...
Ms. O'DONNELL: I think Joe would like to say that you think Newt Gingrich
should still be speaker of the House. Is that what you're saying?
Mr. KLEIN: I think that Newt Gingrich was a very smart, creative guy whose
voice was a valuable one.
MATTHEWS: And should've been still speaker of the House.
Mr. KLEIN: That's up to the Republicans.
MATTHEWS: Dodge ball. David:
Mr. BROOKS: Let's not glamorize...
MATTHEWS: I don't want to glamorize. Joe:
Mr. BROOKS: ...this guy was a take a ticket women, a lousy lover, a selfish,
lousy lover. He treated these women terribly.
Mr. KLEIN: He didn't even know their names.
Mr. BROOKS: He didn't even bother to learn their names, and we're supposed
to treat this, `Oh, this is so cavalier.'
MATTHEWS: He called them sweetie and...(unintelligible).
Ms. MARLANTES: This is pathological. I mean, reading these sort of
incredible volume of this. This was not a normal thing. This was by any
standard over the top.
MATTHEWS: Do you take the Norah position that if there were more women
reporters around, that there'll be less of this?
Ms. MARLANTES: I don't know about that, actually, because there were women
reporters back then who didn't report on it who were in some way flattered by
Kennedy's attentions or whatever.
Mr. BROOKS: There was an aristocracy. We had a democracy, and then there
was this little aristocratic class with European manners that existed for a
short time. It didn't exist before, it hasn't existed since. It was a moment
in time when the rules of the rest of America went by.
MATTHEWS: OK. Here's a dangerous story. If you're John Kerry...
Ms. O'DONNELL: Just to correct--can I just correct the record, because it
was Helen Thomas, during the Kennedy years, who was the first person ever to
get women brought into the White House press association. So the women were
not largely covering, you know, the president at that time.
MATTHEWS: Joe, I've got to ask you. You talk to Clinton every once in a
while, is his book going to come out right in the middle of this campaign,
like right before the convention? Is he going to have to talk about Monica
and all that mess again?
Mr. KLEIN: I don't know. I don't know. I haven't talked to him about that,
and I don't think he can answer that because he is deep in the middle of it.
Writing it in long hand up in Chappaqua.
MATTHEWS: OK. You know what the problem is? We're all going to get that
book and go right to the back of the book, the alphabet, we're going to look
up L for Lewinsky. That's the first story out of the book.
Mr. KLEIN: You know, that's the problem. That's why I'm kind of reacting.
Mr. BROOKS: Who are you kidding? You're going to look up Matthews in that
book.
MATTHEWS: That is my trick. M's first.
Norah, tell me something I don't know.
Ms. O'DONNELL: Very interesting story. Michael Kelly was one of the first
American journalists killed in Iraq. His son interviewed the president this
week and grilled him and asked him, `What's the worst thing that's happened
since you've been president.' And the president said, `Losing people like your
father.' Which I think was a kind thing to say but also speaks to the
president is deeply troubled by the loss of life in Iraq and has not spoken
about it as publicly as perhaps some people want him to.
MATTHEWS: Maybe he should. Maybe he should. Joe:
Mr. KLEIN: The Israelis are having a referendum on the Sharon plan for
settlements, taking the settlements out of Gaza, and he got the support of
Bebe Netanyahu and all the other right wingers, and yet, the polls are closing
and the right wing vote is increasing. He'll probably still win this next
week, but...
MATTHEWS: Getting out of Gaza.
Mr. KLEIN: ...there's tremendous--tremendous opposition to letting go of
those settlements.
MATTHEWS: I'm amazed at that. That's an amazing story. Liz Marlantes:
Ms. MARLANTES: Very, very interesting Senate primary coming up this Tuesday
in Pennsylvania.
MATTHEWS: Specter/Toomey, who wins?
Ms. MARLANTES: Specter/Toomey. I'm going to say Specter, but if Toomey does
manage to pull it off, there's going to be all kinds of repercussions. People
are going to say, `Oh, Pennsylvania might--might not be as much of a swing
state. What does it mean for Bush?' It's going to be a big deal.
MATTHEWS: David--I agree with all that. David Brooks:
Mr. BROOKS: Muqtada al-Sadr, the cleric in Najaf who started this fight, has
overplayed his hand. The moderates in Iraq don't like us, but they're
rallying to make sure that people like that don't take over.
MATTHEWS: Great. Great roundtable.
Thanks to everybody. Norah O'Donnell, Joe Klein, Liz Marlantes and David
Brooks.
I'll be right back with a grand story of high adventure and how Americans in
Iraq are trying to learn from it. Stick with me.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: It's great getting your e-mails. Keep them coming.
TEXT:
Chris,
Your show has energy and imagination.
Thank you!
--Elizabeth
San Francisco, CA
(Announcements)
Announcer: Closed captioning provided by...
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Commentary: Lawrence of Arabia and the war in Iraq
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Americans risking their lives to build a new Iraq are reaching back to an old
expert on the region, T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. His classic
memoirs, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" has become a brisk best seller in the
country. But some of Lawrence's wisdom is not so welcome.
(Clip from "Lawrence of Arabia," 1962, Columbia Pictures)
MATTHEWS: But Lawrence came to realize he was serving two loyalties.
(Clip from "Lawrence of Arabia," 1962, Columbia Pictures)
MATTHEWS: Americans in Iraq face the same conflict. To build an Iraq that is
truly free or to meet the desire of our country for an Iraq that offers us oil
at a decent price and behaves pretty much like we want it to. Lawrence's
wisdom offers a second warning, about the frightening zeal and violence of
Arab nationalism. Blowing up Turkish passenger trains may have once seemed
acceptable, even colorful as a war tactic, as did the stirring description he
gave to the Arab freedom fighter:
"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day
to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for
they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
Those lines once struck me as romantic, but not since the horrors of the World
Trade Center and hearing the shrieks of ecstasy as the dying hijackers hit the
towers.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign-off: The Chris Matthews Show
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: That's the show. Thanks for watching. See you next week.
