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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
He made his name bashing Clinton. But the "Hardball" host has broken from the cable TV pack over war with Iraq. And he has even warmed up to Clinton -- Hillary, that is.
Feb 14, 2003 | Chris Matthews barreled into American living rooms during the Clinton impeachment saga, when his CNBC show "Hardball" became the official cable clubhouse for Clinton haters -- and must-viewing for Clinton defenders with a masochistic streak. Nobody who watched Matthews' shouting, spittle-spewing performance art night after night could question his sincerity: Here was a one-time Peace Corps volunteer from a blue-collar family -- and a lifelong Democrat who had worked for House Speaker Tip O'Neill -- and he clearly loathed Clinton for bringing shame to his office and his party. But it was also true that Matthews saw the rightward drift in cable's audience, and he knew there were ratings in his rants against a liberal president. "Hardball" moved to MSNBC and became its top-rated show, and Fox News czar Roger Ailes (who launched Matthews' program when he was at CNBC) would build his primetime schedule around faux-Matthews scold Bill O'Reilly, another Irish-Catholic heckler who knows that the culture war matters as much as politics does to cable TV's angry, (largely) white male audience.
"Hardball" lost some of its edge in the early days of the Bush administration. Matthews needs an enemy, or at least a cause, to keep him charged. But the show has become must-viewing again for anyone tuned into the nation's latest political drama (one that cable news poohbahs also hope will boost ratings): Who wants to bury a dictator? This time around, though, Matthews is bucking the right. He's the only mainstream cable host who's openly opposing the administration's rush to war, and almost every night he battles bloodthirsty Iraq hawks and rails against spineless Democrats who won't muster the power to stop them. Even more remarkably, considering the media establishment's reluctance to take issue with Israeli leaders, he never misses an opportunity to critique the Bush administration's pro-Ariel Sharon Middle East policy, which he insists endangers the U.S. as well as Israel by denying the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations to statehood.
Some liberals still won't watch "Hardball," remembering the excesses of Matthews' impeachment shtick. In his new book, "What Liberal Media?" Nation press critic Eric Alterman insists Matthews is no better than Fox's O'Reilly, calling him "a showman rather than a journalist," though Matthews was a Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner and then the Chronicle for 15 years. Like O'Reilly, Alterman notes, Matthews is never more apoplectic than when going after elitist liberals, especially Hillary Clinton, whom Matthews nicknamed "Evita." He once bragged to Ad Week, "You're never going to see Hillary Clinton on my show," because, he predicted, she wasn't man enough to face his hardball questions.
But Hillary Clinton, at least, seems to have forgiven Matthews -- and he's sweetened on her, too. They sat down for an hour-long conversation late last year as part of the "Hardball College Tour," at State University of New York's Albany campus, and it was as flirtatious as a first date. In a long talk with Salon, Matthews admitted the New York senator has won him over with her hard work, but he says he still can't stand her husband. Still, with the Bush administration on the verge of war with Iraq, the "Hardball" host even admitted to second thoughts about his over-the-top crusade against Clinton, given the magnitude of the issues that threaten the nation today.
In the wide-ranging conversation conducted earlier this week, on the day that ratings-challenged MSNBC announced it had added ultra-right attack dog Michael Savage to its lineup, Matthews assailed neo-conservative Iraq hawks, slapped Bush for sitting "on Sharon's lap" (but explained why he likes him anyway), laid out what's wrong and right with Fox News, and worried about whether his antiwar stand is hurting his ratings.
You like to say that the missing element in the war debate is a debate. Why do you think that is?
It's so tricky to give an honest answer to this. Motives are so hard to get to. There are people opposed to this war who are trying to stop it, and there are people who are just posing as critics. For example, if the Democrats wanted to stop a court appointment because it was essential to NARAL, or Norman Lear's group, People for the American Way, they'd do everything they could: They might filibuster, you know they'd campaign hard against the person, they'd really try to win. From Bork to Thomas to Estrada, they go in, they try to win. And back during the Vietnam War, that was a real opposition, where you use all the power in your hands to stop something that's wrong for the country. You had [Sen. Wayne] Morse, you had [Sen. Frank] Church -- they went after the money. I don't see that in this debate at all. I see people who are just posturing.
Well, Ted Kennedy wants the president to come back to Congress for approval before we invade.
But they voted for the resolution before the election. And I can't explain that -- I can't explain Dianne Feinstein's vote. I can't explain John Kerry's vote. I can't explain Chuck Schumer's vote. This was a blank check for war
Though some of them tried to spin it differently.
This was worse than the Gulf of Tonkin. It was, "Whenever you get around to it, here's your hall pass, Mr. President." The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here. Once it was suggested that Saddam Hussein might give his weaponry to terrorists, or might use weapons himself in the region, then it became hard for the Democrats to say, "Well, that can't happen." They were unable to stand up and say: "Here's our policy. It's 'Unite the world against terrorism.'"
Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle. Certain arms agreements have to be enforced. There has to be respect for multilateral action. Then you use all that force to stop certain things from happening.
You don't say, like the Bush crowd, "I got this guy over here and I don't like him and I'm gonna get him, whether you back me or not." That's like what's-his-name, the guy who shot the kids in the subway
Bernard Goetz?
Yeah, that's what it reminds me of. It's that kind of foreign policy. We just go after the guys we don't like. I think we were on the road to greatness at the end of 2001. You had Germans picking up all kinds of terrorists in their country. The world was united behind us. Even Iran was helping out. There was an active effort to stop al-Qaida.
Then the administration tied it in to the regional dispute between Israel and its enemies, as if that's about international terrorism. No, it's not. That's a particular regional issue involving people who don't want Israel to have whatever it has, and Israel wanting to play tough with them. But now we're against that too -- as if we're going after the Basques, and the Provisional IRA too. We're not. We supported the contras. We're not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations.
But we started to sit on Sharon's lap, and say, "Oh we have the exact same foreign policy as Israel." Well, not necessarily. We support a two-state solution -- that's been our policy. Sharon's not adopting that. I understand why -- he's under pressure. But the U.S. has married a down-the-line, right-wing policy toward Israel with an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim policy toward the region. And that's too bad. We've always had a dual role in the region -- friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.
And you think that's driving our policy in Iraq?
Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel -- the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state -- the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people. The conservative media world, the Bill Kristols, they're all saying, "Don't deal with Arafat, and push regime change in Iraq." It's all the same policy, and that's the policy that's destroying this administration.
And then what? On to Iran, on to Syria? If you talk to the conservatives who come on my show, they want to squeeze Iran and Syria, maybe Lebanon too. And I don't know how much of this is the president's policy himself. You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East. I mean, they contend we're going to be received as liberators, not aggressors or colonizers. Well, how do they know? I mean, somebody honest like Ken Pollack will say, "You know, we don't really know." We're taking on a billion people. A battle for Baghdad could ignite a war with Islam. I think people in the Muslim world are going to see this as the Second Crusades. Every geography book in the world is going to say "American-occupied Iraq" over the map of Iraq. That's going to be the most glaring indignity the Arabs have ever faced. Every school in the Arab world will be a madrass school.
The way bin Laden points to the U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia
Right. And nobody ever explained to me why we kept troops there all these years, when we know it drove them crazy. We're not even using them this time around. So why not get them out? Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?
I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion. Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant. The question will be, "Do they hate us or not? Do they have a grievance?"
Well, do they?
Well, they will after this, won't they?
But don't they already have a grievance, with our policy toward Israel and the Palestinians?
I don't understand how we can justify the occupied territories. It serves no goal, except the political goal of Sharon within Israel. It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests -- it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.
