March 2009 - Posts
By Chris Matthews
President Obama held his much anticipated press conference Tuesday and delivered his most pronounced message since taking office. He wants to be a president who does more than muddle through. He wants to be a transformative president on the model of Roosevelt and Reagan. He wants to do big things.
Tuesday's press conference showed he that he's president for celebrity or popularity. He was saying "I'm not going to be Bill Clinton and do school uniforms and family home leave, I'm going to do big stuff. Dick Morris is not advising me. I'm here to do business like the big guys, like Reagan and Roosevelt and maybe Lincoln. I'm going to be an important president or I'm not going to be a good one."
The president stressed the urgency of getting Congress to pass his budget. I found it odd that no one asked the big question: How is he going to do it? Will President Obama will use that special budget procedure that allows him to win his budget through the Congress on just 50 votes plus that of the vice president?
There are only two ways to pass bills: You get them through the budget procedure that allows you to do it with 50 votes or you wait around and try to get 60 which he‘ll never get. Wasn't that a good question that never got asked?
I think President Obama has a very coherent plan: He is going to force the United States Senate to vote up or down on his budget. He's not going to let them walk away and do it piecemeal. He's going to wrap up energy, health care and education into one big casino style vote for Congress to take or leave. It looks to me like he is to insist that they take it up as a reconciliation matter where they only require 50 votes to do it. I think he's going to jam it. I think what we're seeing here day after day is this push.
I think last night's speech was about President Obama saying, "I'm not here just to get by. I'm not just here to get through the business cycle. I'm going to change the American economy to compete in the future."
Hardball's Chris Matthews used St. Patrick's Day to comment on the recent violence in Northern Ireland and how it threatens the peace kept in that part of the country for over a decade.
Watch Matthews' commentary below.
On Wednesday, Former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer talked with Chris Matthews showing his support for George Bush's presidency and legacy.
Watch the complete video below.
By Chris Matthews
Suddenly the man on the radio is the next voice you hear, the Oracle waiting in your car, waiting for noon eastern to tell you what's happening, who the bad guys are, what matters in the fight. Rush Limbaugh says it's about money - about the rich betting punished with higher taxes, the poor benefitting from the Great Society, Wall Street getting unfairly blamed for it all. That's what he's selling: the old time religion of capitalism.
RUSH LIMBAUGH AT CPAC CONFERENCE: So what is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation?
The White House is more than happy to treat Rush as the leader of the opposition, based on the reception his speech got at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend. President Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs commented on this issue Monday afternoon.
ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Watching cable clips over the weekend it seemed to me that there were a lot of people in that room who agreed with him.
So is Rush the de facto leader of the Republican Party? It's what Rush wants, what some on the right seem to accept. It's what the Obama people want. Is it what the Republican voters really want?
Watch a Hardball debate between MSNBC's Pat Buchanan and radio host Michael Smerconish about Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party.
