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From Hardball Oct. 6, 2009. Pat Buchanan claims President Obama has a 'messiah complex'. Seems Pat can't quit repeating John McCain campaign slogans.

Matthews: Do you believe he turned over too much power to the hill?

Fineman: I think there’s a way he’ll get a bill but he’s not going to get the bill he should have gotten by the way he’s doing it.

Buchanan: I don’t think he—I don’t know that he really cares. I think he says here’s the Congress… here’s the Congress and you guys put together this bill. Get all your people in there. Get it together. Get it down to me and I’ll sign it.

Matthews: Okay that gets the voters.

Buchanan: He’s got a messiah…

Matthews: But does he have a motive, does he have a clear cut policy motive like Reagan did or…

Buchanan: No, I think he’s got a messiah complex.

Matthews: What’s that mean?

Buchanan: It means he has succeeded by being President of the United States. His very presence there and who he is and who Michelle is has elevated this country, and he can get things done because of who he is.

Matthews: So you’re saying he’s just a prom king?

Buchanan: I think there’s an awful lot of that, you know, walking across big man on campus about him.

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David Shuster subbing for Keith Olbermann gives us a lovely dose of the hate mongering and openly racist protests that were Glenn Beck's 9-12 rally in Washington DC, and some clips of Republican politicians who thought fomenting this hatred by participating was a good idea.

Howard Fineman weighed in and said that there are a lot of Republicans who don't like what's going on because it's going to lose them independent voters that they need to win elections, but are afraid to say so in public. So much for any of them standing up for the courage of their convictions.

Shuster: Howard, the Republicans are not merely condoning the behavior of the fringe element of their party but embracing it. A message of intolerance helps the Republican Party how exactly?

Fineman: Well it doesn’t help them. And they’re not all embracing it but I’m sorry to say they’re afraid to say so on the record. I talked to numerous Republicans today. A lot of them are very upset that for example Joe Wilson, the Congressman from South Carolina, a lot of them don’t think someone like Glenn Beck is doing the Republican Party any good. The Republicans need not just their core voters to thrive in the 2010 elections, which they indeed may. They need independent voters in the middle and there’s a tug of war going on David between the desire of independents to support the Republicans over issues like the debt and the deficit and the way some of the Republicans are behaving that repels those very independents.

Shuster: Well speaking of Sen. DeMint told the crowd on Saturday and repeated today that the protesters were informed. Given what some of those signs had to say about the President, wouldn’t that be fomenting hatred, if not violence?

Fineman: Well, at the very least it’s looking the other way and they’re looking at the glass of tolerance half full when in many cases there isn’t even a glass David. But what the Republicans I talked to today said was this. These people are there because of big government. They’re there because of fears about the debt and the deficit. And I think to some extent that’s true. I’ve been to Tea Parties. I’ve been to town hall meetings. I can sense that.

But there’s something deeper and darker that’s also there and we may as well look straight at it. There are racial fears. There are religious fears. There are regional fears. There are ethnic fears. These are coming to the surface. Like depth charges our politics has now brought all this to the surface and that’s also what we saw out there on the Mall. There’s no question about it. And there are not enough Republicans who are willing to say that on the record.

Shuster: Glenn Beck’s stated goal of wanting to move this country back to where it was on 9-12-2001 when the country was united, how did that work out for him?

Fineman: Well, he can pretend to cry all he wants on the stage and call himself a televangelist. He’s not into uniting the country from everything I’ve seen. He’s making a boatload of money dividing the country. When you say with no real evidence whatsoever that the President of the United States hates white people, you aren’t behaving in the spirit of 9-12. You’re behaving in a spirit that we thought we gotten rid of in the end of the Civil War and at the end of the second Civil Rights movement. So, you know, he can cry crocodile tears all he wants. That doesn’t seem to be what he’s actually doing.

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Chris Matthews was off this week with Norah O'Donnell filling in so there is one good thing I can say about this week's show. None of the guests were interrupted or talked over. That said, check out this ridiculous "Matthews Meter" question. And six of their panelists thought the venom was partly Obama's fault, including Howard Fineman.

Once again driftglass nails this one in his post Sunday Morning Comin' Down -- "The Tell-Tweety Heart" (warning, not safe for work):

Epilogue:

While six of the "journalists" who make up the "Matthew's Meter" say, yes, the anti-Obama hatred was unavoidable, six say Obama partly brought it on himself.

Fineman: He didn’t talk to Main Street. He needs to spend every minute of every day constantly reassure crazy people on the Right that he doesn’t want to abort Sarah Palin's baby and shoot grandma in the head or turn Murrica into a Franco-Islamic Communist Caliphate. This is perhaps unfair, but after all, he is Black.

Jokeline: I was at some town meetings this summer, most recently in Arkansas. And this is an awful lot about race. And not just because of Obama’s name or skin color. If you’re working class white, you’re seeing Latinos and Asians.

driftglass: And bears. Oh my.

But why is this coming up now during a health care debate?

Jokeline: Because they’re being egged on by demagogues in the Republican Party. By Boss Rush Limbaugh. And I call him The Boss, because there is not a single, Republican elected official who is willing to call him out on his lies.

Cooper: Because there are a lot of White people – particularly in the South – who have just lost their s#%t over a Black man being President.

Fineman: Let me repeat it in case I was not condescending enough the first time – this White House needs to constantly kiss wingnut ass every way they can think of. Maybe it’s unfair, but after all, he is Black. Also he was forced to behave like a filthy, filthy Liberal to save the economy from crashing and burning, and the doublewide trailer crowd who his policies probably saved from living in refrigerator boxes and begging for nickels on freeway overpasses will never forgive him for it.

There's lots more at driftie's place. Go on over there and check out the entire post. I don't want to give too much of it away to spoil the fun, but I thought it was priceless.

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I love navel-gazing on the part of the media, where they decide collectively that they were right to create a meme which takes over the media. On this weekend's The Chris Matthews Show, pundits Howard Fineman, Michael Duffy and Ceci Connolly agree that it was appropriate for them to ask President Obama about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., because "it's an important issue."

MATTHEWS: It’s all about identity politics again, and at the same time these people on the far, far right are talking about whether he’s a citizen or not, this comes up.

DUFFY: And when the White House Press Secretary calls it a ‘distraction’, you know it was a mistake. And his mistake was pretty simple, which was that he didn’t really have all the facts, and was not in a position to talk about it. He was right to take it up, because it is an issue that is important, and it’s one in which he is completely versed, and you can see from the rest of his statement, that he knows exactly what to say. But I also think it came at the end of that press conference, which was about a completely different subject, and I think he was a little punchy by then. He was talking about you know what would happen to him in the White House, and it was a joke and he kind of lost the seriousness of the moment and I think got off track…

MATTHEWS: Yeah, I agree with that, the moment was important. I think he was a little angry, a little fatigued. These guys get up at five in the morning and this was eight at night. Is this going to be around a while?

Get the meme? Obama the angry black man being asked to speak on behalf of the entire African American community--and you know he is versed in this. Howard Fineman sort of treads along the edges of why even asking Obama his opinion of Gates' arrest was racist (because, honestly, can you imagine the media doing this to President McCain, had he won? I don't think so), without fully realizing it:

FINEMAN: ...(T)he progress that he made—the Sotomayor nomination—she did convince people, by her bearing, by her knowledge, by her experience, that she was eminently qualified and in that sense, was beyond this. Both of her race, but beyond it. This is not what Barack Obama’s political advisors wanted him to be doing up there. Because it turns it into a racial conversation, per se, at a time when he’s being president of all the country. And trying to be president of all the country and this feeds into the narrative of what I call the RNC—the Rush Newt Cheney RNC—which is all about fear, accusation and division. Barack Obama as president has to be about national unity.

Apparently to Howard, Barack Obama has been doing a good job up until this point of not making white Americans realize that he's African American and making them feel comfortable with other people of color. But now, Howard's worried that Obama has lost his white constituency:

FINEMAN: He went to great lengths as a candidate, to say that he could be president of all America. He understood all the different cultures and wanted to learn about all the different cultures of America. This kind of thing sets him back with working class whites.

Sigh. Can I remind you bobbleheads that it was YOU collectively that raised this subject? This was a local issue, albeit with a semi-famous person involved. This is not a federal issue, nor did it need to be addressed by the President of the United States, especially since the only justification for it is that Obama and Gates outwardly share a skin color (although both are of mixed-race heritage). Isn't it reasonable to assume that the President of the United States has enough on his plate without being thrust the mantle of spokesman for the entire African American community and trying to make white people more comfortable with the age-old issue of racial profiling?

As far as Gates is concerned, there was no clear cut right or wrong on his arrest; both sides escalated the situation beyond where it should have gone. But in terms of pulling Barack Obama into the debate and letting it take over the news cycles for days and days when very real issues (um Afghanistan, any one? Health care reform? The economy? Any of those ring a bell?) are left undiscussed is simply giving red meat to the right wingers eager to derail any actual progress in this country. And the responsibility for that falls on bobbleheads like these clowns, not Obama.

Transcripts below the fold

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I caught this yesterday and just got around to posting it. Apparently Steve Benen had the same reaction to it that I did. Gingrich, a statesman? Are you kidding me?

FINEMAN: I'm just saying as between Newt Gingrich, who was the main speaker at this dinner and Sarah Palin, I'm not sure ideologically, and in terms of scaring moderates that there's that much difference between them. I guess that's my only point.

MATTHEWS: I have to tell you, time does heal all wounds. Aren't you amazed at how Newt Gingrich has come back almost like Lazarus, Howard? The guy was sort of taken out of this town on a rail. He was tarred and feathered. He had all kinds of personal problems we will not go into. He had all the problems you can imagine Clinton had, on top of the fact that he had blown it politically in the Congress. He had lost all credibility. Now, he's back as the Obi Wan Kenobi of the Republican Party.

FINEMAN: Well he's a statesman. He's a....

MATTHEWS: How'd that happen?

FINEMAN: If you hang around long enough, that's part of it.

MARTIN: He's a survivor.

FINEMAN: He's a survivor and he's a thoughtful guy. I mean, there's no question that he's a fascinating guy to listen to.

MATTHEWS: He is fascinating, the guy. He's one of the world's great fire crackers.

Uh....Chris...Howard...that happened because the media has elevated him to that level. Not that he deserves to be there. And why shouldn't you mention just what those problems were? You sure didn't show Bill Clinton the same deference.

What's really astounding is listening to Howard basically say he scares the hell out of everyone almost as much as Palin in one breath and then call him a "statesman" in the next. Good grief.

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Charlie Cook tells us how he really feels about the Republicans wonderful idea (which didn't end up being passed) to rename the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party" and how anyone who voted for the ridiculous proposal should be treated. I'd like to know why Chris Matthews thinks the Republican's, rightfully called out by Charlie Cook, childish name calling could ever be considered something along the line of "fun"? It always strikes me as nothing other than downright meanness.

Matthews: Alright. I've known for years we've lived with uh..and it's been kind of fun in a weird sick way, every time you heard a Republican at a Republican convention or at a party event would say "the Democrat party" rather than Democratic party and you know that didn't hurt anybody. It's just a stupid way of saying, like Bob Dole used to do it all the time. Now they want to go further and call it the Socialist, or the Democrat Socialist Party. In fact the Associated Press today got it screwed up and referred to it as, they were going to call them the Nationalist Socialist Democratic Party, the Nazi party. That was a typo I guess.

Cook: You know, this reminds me, I laughed when you use the playground metaphor because that was exactly right. It's like in school when you say "Oh your mother wears combat boots". I mean this is just stupid, sophomoric, towel snapping. And the thing is you know Republicans didn't lose fifty four House seats in two elections, fourteen Senate seats and the Presidency for nothing. I think that people, the American people have effectively put them in a time out chair.

They're not listening to Republicans and they don't really care what they say. The question is do Republicans take this time and use it in an effective way to figure out okay, when we get allowed to rejoin the class, when people start listening to us again, what are they, what are we going to say and maybe what can we say that might be more appealing than what they were saying the last two elections.

Fineman: The RNC has no clout, has no place on the landscape. That RNC has been replaced by another RNC, which is Rush, Newt and Cheney.

Cook: You know Republicans should take a list of everybody that votes for this resolution and say okay here's a list of people we should never listen to again, because these are people that are part of the problem, and look for forward thinking people. People that put the party in a position where people might actually want to vote for them again.

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Chris Matthews frames his question for this week's panel around the GOP talking point that President Obama is letting Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel run the show and that he's ceding his power to "tax and spend" liberal Democrats. Our favorite little concern troll Erin Burnett tries to say that this is going to hurt Obama because Congress' ratings are so bad. Even Tweety gets forced to call her out for it and reminds her that their ratings are actually going up, not down. Her lame response is that their poll numbers are still lower than Obama's.

Andrew Ross Sorkin tries to say that President Obama has been on the road campaigning for his ideas so much that he isn't actually making any decisions and letting Rahm Emanuel make them for him.

There are a ton of other things that could be picked apart from this segment but here's what gets my goat after watching it. When did we ever hear any criticism of Bush and just who his "brain trust" was? When did we hear any criticism of how the Republicans spent money when they were in charge?

We just went from a guy who spent the first two months of his presidency on vacation and clearing brush at the ranch to one who could potentially be one of the most intelligent and hands-on presidents in the history of the country. As an outside observer, what I see is a President who is highly involved in the decisions that are being made and who knows how to bring in all parties, listen to what they have to say and then makes a decision.

So what do we get from the Villagers? Obama is taking orders from Nancy Pelosi and he's not running anything. Really?

The other thing is I wonder is if any of these people would ever care to remind viewers of something they should have learned in a third grade civics class. We have three co-equal branches of government. President Obama is not ceding anything. He does not write the laws. The Congress does. He can sign them or veto them but he alone cannot get anything done. What in the hell do they think he's supposed to do?

I know we had a President who thought he was some sort of dictator and a compliant Congress willing to rubber stamp anything he wanted, but that's not the case now. We've got a hair-slim majority in the Senate and if President Obama does not work with them, absolutely nothing will get done. Tweety and his panel need to lay off the Republican Kool-Aid.

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During a discussion on how the stimulus bill got passed where Chris Matthews wants to frame the discussion on whether there was a "win" or a "loss" for President Obama, Andrew Sullivan calls out the GOP for their hyprocrisy on when they're concerned about fiscal responsibility.

Matthews: The Republicans have taken a rather unusual position here. Well maybe not unusual but certainly a stark one Andrew. They're voting "No". That's a bet.

Sullivan: They're also saying "We are the party of fiscal conservatism". Now they managed....

Matthews: Since when though?

Sullivan: I think like ten minutes ago. I mean they spent for future debt of this country, they added thirty trillion dollars in a period of boom. We are now in the swiftest down turn in employment in decades and they're quibbling over something like four hundred billion dollars worth of spending. It doesn't make any sense. The hyprocrisy of these people, their ability to turn on a dime and not even acknowledge their own responsibility. If they hadn't spent the amount they spent in the last eight years we wouldn't have this crisis in the sense we'd have much more leeway to spend our way out a recession.

The one moment you don't want to be a fiscal conservative is when the global economy is headed down into a down draft. And yet that's the one moment these Republicans pick to allegedly stand up for their principles. It's insane I think and frankly all these news cycle spins, that's the old politics. The new politics is we're in a terrible economic crisis. Have we done enough to get ourselves out of it?

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The panel of Bob Woodward, Kelly O'Donnell, Anne Kornblut and Howard Fineman making excuses for the Obama administration and Congress if there are no prosecutions for torture committed by the Bush administration.

Matthews: How do you read that...what he just said?

Woodward: No. In other words he's not going to, he doesn't want investigations. I mean if, first of all in some of these things, it's so ambiguous and uh, he has got to get beyond the past. He does not want to create the feeling, which in a sense this week he did create by saying he's going to close Guantanamo, that the war on terror is over. It is not over. What he said is some of the tactics, namely torture and harsh interrogation tactics are gone but the war continues and if there is a, some sort of perpetual investigation of these things the message will be we're going soft and I tell you those in the intelligence world and the military and I think Obama himself doesn't want to send that message.

Matthews: Well let's talk about the Republicans on the Hill. What are they worried, aren't they trying to hold Eric Holder's feet to the fire and say "Promise you won't launch an investigation as our new Attorney General".

O'Donnell: Well one of the problems is if they do dig back into all of these things you do lose some of the Republicans support and President Obama's trying to reach out. You also reinforce what detractors of the Bush/Cheney years already think. So there's very little political upside. And so Eric Holder has been certainly tested and they definitely, Republicans definitely want to be able to feel like they can stick with their strong principle of defense without having to worry about digging back into some of those things.

Matthews: Yeah. Anne obviously the people on the left, the netroots people, John Conyers up on the Hill, they want action. They want some kind of at least an extra-legal kind of truth and reconciliation commission like you had in South Africa that doesn't prosecute but does investigate.

Kornblut: And yet we haven't heard any signal from Obama or the White House itself that they would authorize that, encourage it. Even something that would be as sort of as benign as a truth and reconciliation commission, every indication is they want to leave that to reporters, historians. They want to move on, you know the Hill can do what the Hill can do, but they're not behind it.

Matthews: Well why did we prosecute people at Abu Ghraib for abusing prisoners if we're not going to prosecute people who may have authorized that kind of treatment?

Fineman: It is an issue. But Obama has to run the country and he and the leaders of the Democratic Party on the Hill have said "It's not worth the cost". I mean I know that Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate wants no parts of this. Whatever John Conyers is going to do on the House side, he's going to do and you'll hear a lot of noise from him and maybe some investigations. But it's not going to be backed up by the Democratic leadership in Congress. It just isn't.

(crosstalk)

Woodward: Well who would you investigate and prosecute? I mean the people who did these interrogations and so forth believed with good reason they had authority from the President.

Matthews: They had orders.

Woodward: Now you know it's too late to impeach Bush. It's over.

Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece this week exploring how the concept of "balance" corrupts any sense of honest media analysis. Case in point: The Washington Post's Dan Balz trying to equate Barack Obama's attacks ("erratic","uncertain","lurching") to John McCain's attacks ("he's an untrustworthy, un-American terrorist sympathizer").

Balz’s article is about the increasing use of “character attacks” in the presidential race, and rather than state the truth — that the McCain/Palin ticket is now relying almost exclusively on some of the ugliest and most outright dangerous character smears seen in a modern presidential election — Balz instead pretends that this is a phenomenon of which both sides are guilty in equal measure.

This clip from the Chris Matthews Show is yet another fascinating example. Tweety, Howard Fineman, Gloria Borger, David Ignatius, and Cynthia Tucker simply can't bring themselves to state the obvious.

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In a rational world, a legitimate attack on your opponent's unsteady and erratic leadership during times of crisis is light years away from the vicious, dangerous types of character assaults we're hearing from the McCain camp. I mean think about it: They're not even trying to sell policy anymore. Instead, they're linking the terms "Barack Hussein Obama" and "terrorist" to the point where John McCain is forced to remind his traveling lynch mob that Obama is not, in fact, a "scary Arab." And when he does, he gets viciously booed.

We shouldn't underestimate the significance of John Lewis' recent remarks. There's a reason McCain told Rick Warren that he's one of the wisest people he knows.

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  Someone had to say it.

Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

"I think they are going to it way too many times. It's the original story that defined John McCain, that still when you read it in his book 'Faith of my Fathers,' when you read about it in 'The Nightingale's Song,' you can't help but have admiration and respect for the guy. And I think he wisely for many years stayed away from it as a political tool, he really did. But now it not only defines him, it's become a crutch in the campaign. And I think he is in danger of trivializing it. By the time they get to the convention in St. Paul, there might not be much of it left to use."

This is just another sad chapter in the tragic descent of John McCain. Sure McCain has used his powerful biography to help him throughout his political career, but I highly doubt he's comfortable with the depths he's now forced to sink to in order to compete for the presidency. Again....tragic.

Brandon Friedman at VetVoice has more...