The Chris Matthews Show
May 10, 2009
Announcer: This is THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:
A scary place. Why is our new president taking us deeper into the most dangerous place in the world? Empires die in Afghanistan. First the British, and then the Soviets. And in Pakistan, the trouble gets worse. Is Barack Obama backing into a death trap?
War council. His hunch was to stay out of Iraq, so why are we going deeper into Afghanistan? Who in Obama's circle is selling this push? Do they really believe we can win or are they just being good soldiers?
And finally, ticket balancing. Should the Supreme Court mimic a political ticket? Should there be so many men, so many women, so many blacks, so many Latinos, so many gays?
Hi, I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to the show.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:
Katty Kay covers Washington for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Bob Woodward is assistant managing editor of The Washington Post. Andrea Mitchell is chief foreign affairs corespondent for NBC News and Richard Stengel is the editor of Time magazine.
First up, has Barack Obama found himself in a death trap? Does he really want to get deeper into that wild, ungoverned and ungovernable part of the world known as Afghanistan and Pakistan? For a frame of reference, take a look of the thinking that led us into Vietnam. He was President Kennedy on the last day of his life.
President JOHN F. KENNEDY: (From November 22, 1963) Without the United States, South Vietnam would collapse overnight.
MATTHEWS: So let's look at three big questions facing this president. Call them the three rings of fire. Number one: Is he stuck in Afghanistan? Is he doing what some say President Kennedy did in Vietnam, getting pulled in deeper? Then there's that next ring of fire. What's going on in Pakistan, especially in the old ungoverned northwest frontier. And finally, number
three: how to keep Pakistan's nuclear weapons from the Taliban?
TEXT:
Three Rings Of Fire
Stuck in Afghanistan?
Chaos in the Khyber Pass
Securing the Nukes
MATTHEWS: Bob, let's take them in order. Let's just look on the ground in Afghanistan. We're bombing, killing civilians. They don't like it. What are we going to do to make friends in that part of the world?
Mr. BOB WOODWARD (Assistant Managing Editor, The Washington Post): Well, if you go back to Iraq, one of the strategic gains was protecting the population. In other words, you have to do something for the people and they realize that
you can't go around killing Afghans and you pay an immense price, and we should. And so they're going to have to stop that or control it in some way like they learned in Iraq. That's the lesson.
MATTHEWS: Andrea, this week, late this week, you talked to President Karzai. What's he saying to us about this, in Afghanistan.
Ms. ANDREA MITCHELL (NBC News): He says money can't buy you love. Money and military forces cannot get the civilians in Afghanistan to believe in American power. At the same time he's denying the reality, denying what the Pentagon claims is that the Taliban killed those people and set the US military forces up. Now, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both started their summits this week for apologizing for the loss of life. They seem to be implying American
responsibility even before the investigations. They knew they had to do that because Karzai is so seized by this. This is a domestic political imperative for him, but the bottom line is the US military says it wasn't them. The US diplomats says it probably was. And Karzai says it was American bombing that killed those people.
MATTHEWS: This is the problem of occupation. We're trying to run a country, we're trying to make about work. It's a rural country. We hold the city. But when we try to knock down the Taliban advances in the countryside, we're bombing people. Now, the latest development I hear is we're going to try to embed troops in those villages as an alternative to bombing. Is that going to work?
Ms. KATTY KAY (BBC Washington Correspondent): Well, there are some indications that where there are American troops on the ground, attitudes towards those Americans are more friendly than they are in the rest of the country. But we also at the BBC have numbers that have come out recently which show that the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan and a perception that American feels cavalier about this and doesn't feel compassion for this is one of the primary reasons people cite, not just in Afghanistan but around the world, for the anti-American feeling.
MATTHEWS: Right across the border is that treacherous area called the northwest frontier of Pakistan, which the western powers and central powers in those countries have been fighting for years. How do we deal with that? That's where bin Laden probably is.
Mr. RICHARD STENGEL (Time Managing Editor): Well, and by the way, that's where Winston Churchill got his start, as you know, Chris. It is--the level of complexity in Pakistan makes the banking crisis look like child's play. What we are facing there is the unthinkable and we have to think about the unthinkable, is what happens if a jihadist government gets control of that country and has those nuclear weapons. The Taliban are now outside of just those tribal areas where they once were. They're moving towards the capital. I mean, the situation there is something that is a terrible hand that the
president has and there's a million different ways to play it, including giving--letting the military take over and trying to form a unity government.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Mr. STENGEL: I mean, it is a real problem.
MATTHEWS: Bob, it keeps bringing me back to Vietnam. Remember, we had Diem in there and Kennedy got him knocked off because he wanted to get a tougher fighting force in there against the Viet Cong. Here we are getting assurances This--late this week from the Pakistani central government that they're going to start moving harder against the Taliban forces, the militants and terrorists, they call them. Are they going to win that fight?
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, look what's going on in these tribal areas. We don't have control. The Pakistanis don't have control. And of course, this is where al-Qaeda exists. This is a--the center of terrorist control and President Obama said publicly, they're plotting to attack us in the United States there. That's also not just the nukes but the threat of terrorism.
And do we invade Pakistan? I don't think that will work.
Ms. KAY: But...
MATTHEWS: We can't do that, so we have to rely on that Pakistani central government, which...
Ms. KAY: Right. And...
Ms. MITCHELL: What central government. There is no central government. I mean, the fact is that Zardari, the leader, had very little support. Sharif, the Islamacist, have 86 percent support. And the Pakistanis are now finally beginning to get the message and pulling forces away from the Indian border, going into the Swat Valley. They shouldn't have made that deal. But they're pulling forces also away from Waziristan, where al-Qaeda is, where Osama bin Laden is.
MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. And that's the problem.
Ms. KAY: But the one...
MATTHEWS: Just a minute. That's the problem. What you've just pointed out is a group thought. For our reading on just how much influence Washington has over this situation in Pakistan, we asked the Matthews Meter, 12 or our regulars, does the Obama administration have enough control in Pakistan to keep that government in power? Ten say no, we can't keep that Zardari government in power. Only two say yes. And Katty, you agree with Andrea, we can't keep them in power.
Ms. KAY: Yeah, and I'm not sure that there's a consensus in Washington that he is the right guy to be in power anyway at the moment. I mean, what...
MATTHEWS: This is Benazir Bhutto's husband.
Ms. KAY: This is Benazir Bhutto's husband. And what you need in Pakistan at the moment is somebody you can harness a slight sense amongst the Pakistani people that is merging, that they do actually need to start fighting the militants. And there is some cause for optimism in Washington that the public mood in Pakistan is changing against the militants and that maybe the big threat comes from al-Qaeda and the Taliban unless at the moment from India. Now, if you could harness that...
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. KAY: ...if you can find a leader who can harness that, that helps Washington's course.
MATTHEWS: That solves the question; we have a shared ambition with that Pakistani government to fight the bad guys that we think are the bad guys or do they revert to their old habit of really not liking Indians?
Mr. STENGEL: Well, the problem is anything anybody says in Washington right now about this subject, you can't rely on because they're playing a multidimensional game. They have to say, look, we think Zardari is a good guy, yes, we think Karzai is a good guy. What they're really trying to figure out is who's the more evil of the two lessers. But what they need to do is they're playing a deep game. I mean, I do think, and I'm not an expert on this. I mean, the reliance on the military actually might be the best way to protect the nukes and basically say, you know what, forget Zardari, forget the opposition, let's have another coup.
Ms. KAY: Right. Except...
Ms. MITCHELL: But...
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, but...
Ms. KAY: Except that if have militants amongst the military...
Ms. MITCHELL: That's the problem.
Ms. KAY: ...who could--would be the people...
Mr. STENGEL: Right.
Ms. KAY: ...that took over, then you have the nukes fall into the hands of a military which is--has...
Mr. STENGEL: Well, at least a secret militant as opposed to overt militant.
MATTHEWS: Well, we always have the question at ISI and...
Mr. STENGEL: OK.
MATTHEWS: ...the Secret Service over there, who's on our side, who's on the
other side.
Ms. MITCHELL: Exactly.
MATTHEWS: Here's number three, and this is the worst part. The worst ring of fire, which is will Pakistan's nuclear weapons be kept in safe hands? Let me show you how confident the president sounds on this one. This was at a press conference a week or two ago, where he just stunned me with this statement.
President BARACK OBAMA: (April 29) I'm confident that we can make sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure.
MATTHEWS: Wow. How can we be?
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, but then you talk on background to somebody in the White House and ask them and I think this is one thing you can believe. How's the Pakistani government? Delusional. And I think that is exactly the way—and Andrea's right. They have no...
Ms. MITCHELL: And...
MATTHEWS: But are we delusional thinking we can keep the weapons away from the bad guys?
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, this is something where we have spent $100 million of American taxpayer money to help the Pakistanis have control over these weapons. You know, just like all weapons, there's no certainty, but look at the dilemma the president would have in saying, oh, we're not confident.
MATTHEWS: I know. Is there some side deal with the military over there that when they get the 24-hour warning that the Taliban's coming that we have a special forces unit that's stabilizes and grabs those weapons?
Ms. MITCHELL: Well, Colin Powell had that deal, as did Condi Rice, with General Musharraf, military man to military man. Powell, Musharraf, they got along, they had this triple-key system where we knew where their lockups were and we had them dispersed. The issue now is this central government is not that reliable and this military, for all of its competence, is not as reliable, is infiltrated, and they don't privately have the confidence. The confidence about the nuclear material, not just the weapons, what about the material, which is much more easily obtained by a terrorist.
MATTHEWS: OK. If the Taliban takes over that country and gets the nuclear weapons, they could give them to anybody they wanted to give them to, obviously. They could scare the hell out of India and have a big war over there, nuclear weapon against nuclear weapons. Where are you on this? Do you think there's a simmering or an explosive problem this year?
Ms. KAY: I think it is potentially explosive because there is this class in the Pakistani military which is very disgruntled with the leadership of the military...
MATTHEWS: All right.
Ms. KAY: And they tend to have extremist sympathies. That's...
MATTHEWS: And they're on the inside.
Ms. MITCHELL: Yeah.
Ms. KAY: The bottom line is why are we there? We are there to stop Pakistan falling into the hands of extremists and therefore controlling a nuclear country.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. KAY: Can you imagine the nightmare scenario that would be for America?
Mr. STENGEL: But we have to think the unthinkable. I mean, what they're all saying, they're saying, we don't have a plan B because they don't want to scare people that actually the unthinkable might happen. But they better have a plan B and a plan C.
Ms. KAY: Well, I think they're trying plans A through Z.
Mr. STENGEL: Yeah.
Ms. KAY: And Holbrooke is the guy that's really pushing this at the moment.
Mr. STENGEL: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: Bob, is this simmering for awhile or do you have a sense this is exploding?
Mr. WOODWARD: I mean, you never know. But I mean, look at all the high level attention in the White House, in the Pentagon, in the intelligence agencies...
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Mr. WOODWARD: ...on this area. And everyone says, you know, let's not talk about Afghanistan. The problem is Pakistan.
MATTHEWS: All right. Andrea, you're in.
Ms. MITCHELL: I think it's simmering and could explode and that's why they are so seized with it.
MATTHEWS: On a lighter point, before we break, things were pretty serious this week, of course, with Pakistan right out there on the front burner, as we've discussed it. But Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden had lunch at a burger joint this week across the river in Virginia. Let's watch that.
(Beginning of clip)
Pres. OBAMA: That's mine.
Vice President JOE BIDEN: I think that's mine.
Pres. OBAMA: That's yours. With all those peppers, I got to admit it looked pretty good.
Vice Pres. BIDEN: That's cheddar, right?
(End of clip)
MATTHEWS: Wow. Well, they shooed the cameras out before they actually started eating, but our last two presidents weren't so careful. George W. Bush did love his tacos, as he demonstrated on the campaign trail back in 2000.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: (2000) (Spanish spoken)
MATTHEWS: Yikes.
Back in Bill Clinton's early days his fast food addiction was the stuff of legend. "Saturday Night Live" did this in '92.
(Beginning of clip, "Saturday Night Live," Broadway Video/1992)
Mr. ROB SCHNEIDER: Do you favor the decision to send military forces to Somalia?
Mr. PHIL HARTMAN: That's a good question. Yes, I do. Let me tell you why, See, right now, we're sending food to Somali, but it's not getting to the people who need it because it's being intercepted by warlords. And it's not just us, it's other countries, too. In fact, your McNugget is relief from Great Britain to Somalia, intercepted by warlords. This guy's Filet-O-Fish sandwich, aid from Italy, warlords.
(End of clip)
MATTHEWS: When we come back, is there ticket balancing going on when it comes to filling that Supreme Court seat? Does the president almost have to pick a woman? Is it an Hispanic's turn? Plus scoops and predictions from all the notebooks of these top reporters. Tell me something I don't know. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. So who's going to get the Supreme Court seat? These days there's a lot of positive profiling going on. The conventional wisdom it'll be a woman.
Senator PATRICK LEAHY: (ABC News' "This Week"/May 3) Having only one woman on
the Supreme Court does not reflect the makeup of the--of the United States.
Senator ARLEN SPECTER: (CBS News' "Face the Nation"/May 3) Another woman would be good.
Senator SUSAN COLLINS: (MSNBC/Wednesday) I do hope that a highly qualified woman will be nominated.
MATTHEWS: And there's also plenty of betting it'll be an Hispanic.
Senator HARRY REID: (MSNBC/Wednesday) I believe we need more women on the Supreme Court. But we also should have an Hispanic.
Sen. SPECTER: (NBC News' "Meet the Press"/May 3) I think it's important to have an Hispanic on the court at some point.
Mr. PAT BUCHANAN: (MSNBC's "Hardball"/May 1) I think Barack Obama will be looking for a woman and an Hispanic, especially, because that's a tremendously broad section of the electorate. Growing hugely. Went for him two to one.
MATTHEWS: Bob, I think the president opened the door on this when he threw that word out, empathy. He's looking for someone, not a great constitutional scholar or a jurist, someone who can tell us what it's like to be an American if you're a woman, if you're Hispanic. Isn't that what he opened the door to?
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, first of all, presidents will pick somebody for the Supreme Court to solve a political problem. Obama doesn't have a political problem that he needs to solve with this pick. The second driver is picking somebody in his own image to a certain extent, you know, not Hispanic, not a woman. But look, Obama went to Harvard Law School, he was editor of the Law Review. That's all about the Supreme Court. He's got to be thinking what might I do if I went on the Supreme Court? And I think he'll pick somebody like Obama. Now, that could be a woman, could be an Hispanic. But intellectually, it's probably going to be somebody, and if you get in Obama's head, he thinks of himself as an outsider. And so it'll be an outsider.
MATTHEWS: Somebody is leaking from the White House. Somebody is sending guidance from the White House at the highest level...
Ms. MITCHELL: Oh, yes.
MATTHEWS: ...telling us to put women on the front page of The New York Times. All the faces that have been put out there are women.
Ms. MITCHELL: I have a slightly different take on the empathy business. I think he wants someone for a threshold question, a constitutional scholar, an impressive choice. That's his whole background. He's a constitutional law professor.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. MITCHELL: But he wants someone from that world who also has empathy.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. MITCHELL: You've got someone like Sonia Sotomayor, who is a Puerto Rican woman raised in the shadow of Yankee Stadium...
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. MITCHELL: ...by a single mom, who goes to Princeton, is summa cum laude, then goes to Yale and edits the Law Review at Yale.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, but she's involved in that firefighter case up in New Haven on what's going to be the losing side, it looks to me.
Ms. MITCHELL: Yes. I know you...
Ms. KAY: But...
Ms. MITCHELL: But you could find someone who has the legal credentials.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. MITCHELL: That's threshold.
Mr. STENGEL: But it's...
Ms. MITCHELL: Who also has real life experience.
Mr. STENGEL: Yeah.
Ms. KAY: One thing I want to...
Mr. STENGEL: But the legal credentials are not--I mean, what I think he meant about empathy, and we've been parsing the world empathy, what he means is that it's not somebody who's from the federal bench. We have more justices now who came directly from the federal bench than any time in history.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. MITCHELL: And not someone from the ivory tower.
Mr. STENGEL: Somebody who has practical experience....
MATTHEWS: Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan, has been put on that list by...
Mr. STENGEL: Right.
MATTHEWS: ...somebody in the White House, and she stays on the list. She's made it down to the final four on one of these lists. Is that for real?
Mr. STENGEL: She's like the female Governor Warren of California. He wants somebody who has practical political experience, who understands what American people's lives are like.
Ms. KAY: The other thing I...
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. KAY: Right. The other thing I would say is that if the White House is putting out all of these names of women and saying to newspapers and to reporters, put a woman on the front page, and then he doesn't choose a woman...
MATTHEWS: Oh, you're not kidding.
Ms. KAY: ...he's set himself up for a real set of disappointment among women.
Ms. MITCHELL: One other quick thing.
MATTHEWS: I'm with you.
Ms. KAY: The other thing is I think talking about what Bob said about somebody who's like Obama, I think he's going to look for a pragmatist. Obama sees himself as an intellectual pragmatist, and I think that's the way he's going to go.
Ms. MITCHELL: He wants someone who'll be an influential voice on the court.
MATTHEWS: OK.
To make Katty's point, asking, can he at this point not name a woman this round? He has future rounds. He'll probably get to pick a replacement for perhaps Stevens, for perhaps for Ginsburg at some point. Does he have to pick a woman this time? I think so.
Ms. KAY: I think he does have to pick a woman this time.
Mr. WOODWARD: No. Come one.
Ms. MITCHELL: I think he does, especially...
Mr. WOODWARD: Who's going--who's going to rebel?
Mr. STENGEL: Yes, yes, he needs to.
Ms. KAY: Yeah, yes.
Ms. MITCHELL: Especially if what Ruth Ginsburg...
MATTHEWS: OK. We've got four to one, Bob. Why not?
Mr. WOODWARD: Just because, he--this is--this is his area. I mean, not only did he do the editing of the Law Review and...
MATTHEWS: When your newspaper--when your newspaper starts to put pictures of males on the front cover, I'll believe it.
Ms. KAY: But he talks about empathy and there's one woman on the Supreme Court but he doesn't pick a woman?
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, have you ever been surprised by a Supreme Court appointment? Always.
Ms. MITCHELL: But take a look at what Ruth Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor
have said...
Ms. KAY: Yeah.
Ms. MITCHELL: ...publicly, that it's the only, there needs to...
MATTHEWS: Four to one, we think it's a woman. I'll be right back with scoops and predictions right out of the notebooks of these top reporters. Tell me something I don't know. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Katty, tell me something I don't know.
Ms. KAY: Chris, the person who's really driving more action from Washington on both Pakistan and Afghanistan is Dick Holbrooke. He is talking to everybody. People at State are saying we can't get rid of this guy. He's pushing us for ideas. He wants every possible option on the table.
MATTHEWS: Bob Woodward:
Mr. WOODWARD: I revised my opinion. I think Obama's going to pick a woman.
MATTHEWS: Andrea: What a man.
Ms. MITCHELL: For all the--for all the talk of getting the Pakistanis and the Afghans to talk to each other at their first intelligence meeting with General Pasha from the Pakistani side and the Afghan counterpart, the US realized they're going to have to be in the middle. The US is going to have to be right in the middle to make sure these guys are sharing intelligence because they won't talk to each other.
MATTHEWS: Right. Great. Richard:
Mr. STENGEL: Well, in a feat of Woodward-like derring-do reporting, I found out because the first lady as you know came to the Time 100 party this week, that she gets up early and lets the dog out in the morning first.
MATTHEWS: That is tick tock.
When we come back, the big question this week: The Republican Party has been declared dead. But we're going to ask the panel, who will be the face of the Republican resurgence when it comes. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Rick Stengel's Time magazine has this cover this week, The Party's Over, talking about the Republicans. So our big question this week here, tell me who will be the face of the Republican resurgence when it comes. I'm starting with you, Richard.
Mr. STENGEL: OK.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Mr. STENGEL: I think it will be Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney has a house in New Hampshire that he's now going to make his primary residence. That's the first primary state. He's talking about the economy, he's talking in a different way about re-branding the Republican Party.
MATTHEWS: Why New Hampshire?
Mr. STENGEL: OK.
MATTHEWS: Andrea:
Ms. MITCHELL: I think it could be Jon Huntsman, somebody from the West, somebody who's conservative, but who has a broader view.
MATTHEWS: And Utah governor.
Mr. WOODWARD: I think Rick's right. I think that Mitt Romney. The Republican Party likes people who try and almost gets the nomination and then come back. It's that resilience.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, yeah.
Mr. WOODWARD: It's--but I think Newt Gingrich is going to try. And you know, there's the possibility that Arlen Specter will switch back to the Republican Party and then he can be the face of the Republican Party.
Ms. MITCHELL: That's good.
MATTHEWS: Bob, speaking about resilience. Katty Kay, the face of the future Republican Party when it comes back.
Ms. KAY: Well, if he didn't have a job he was clearly loving at the moment, I'd be tempted to say Joe Scarborough, who writes a great piece in Rick's magazine this week. But...
MATTHEWS: Who's just been booked for "Morning Joe."
Ms. MITCHELL: Five days a week.
Ms. KAY: I'm going to have to say--I'm going to have to agree with Rick and Bob. I think if the economy stays bad, that is Mitt Romney's strong suit, and they're going to look for somebody who is stable, who knows his stuff on the economy, and he's a charisma-free zone, but it won't matter particularly.
MATTHEWS: You think he could be the leader of the party?
Ms. KAY: I think--I think if the economy stays bad it plays to his strengths.
Mr. STENGEL: Right. I mean, the economy worked for him during the election, even though he didn't get the nomination.
Ms. KAY: Right.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Mr. STENGEL: He can say, `Look, I know how to fix this.'
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. KAY: If it had been Mitt and not John McCain in those last two months...
MATTHEWS: OK. I predict Rudy Giuliani beats Paterson for the governorship of New York next year and gets all the news in the big media market, especially where Time magazine is headquartered.
That's a good--been a great roundtable. Katty Kay, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, Rick Stengel.
MATTHEWS: That's the show. Thanks for watching. Happy Mother's Day and see you all here next week.
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