Hardball with Chris Matthews
Tuesday, February 1, 2005

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

We’ve got a firefight coming here over the president’s speech. Deborah Orin is Washington bureau chief for “The New York Post.” And Amy Goodman is the host of Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now” and co-author of “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.”

Let me ask you, Deborah, is the president on a role after the elections in Iraq on Sunday?

DEBORAH ORIN, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, “THE NEW YORK POST”: Yes.

I mean, but it’s not just—it’s not even so much the president is on a roll. I think that what the elections on Sunday did was make a lot of American have a second thought about what is going on in Iraq. There was an interesting column in “The Sun-Times” today by somebody—“The Chicago Sun-Times”—by somebody who opposed the war, saying, whoops. Maybe those of us who oppose the war need to stop, take a think, and consider at least the possibility that maybe Bush was right about Iraq.

I mean, there is no way to look at the joy on the faces of those people as they held up their ink-stained fingers and not feel a sense of joy yourself.

MATTHEWS: Is that the way you reacted, Amy?

AMY GOODMAN, HOST, “DEMOCRACY NOW”: I think the real issue is the occupation of Iraq. People will do anything to be able to determine their own futures. And that’s what they saw, risking their lives, going out and voting during the election.

But there were only certain populations who did that. And they came out in very big numbers, the Shia population, the Kurds. Sunnis overall did not come out. And that’s going to be a very significant problem that must be addressed. But the overall issue that was before the election and right now is the occupation of Iraq. And across the political spectrum in Iraq, people want the U.S. out.

MATTHEWS: Well, will the elections encourage a faster departure of U.S. forces, Amy?

GOODMAN: Right now, what a new government will ask for remains to be seen. What Iyad Allawi, the unelected former CIA asset, the prime minister now, is saying is that they can’t afford to have the U.S. leave.

But I think the violence is targeted at the occupation. And as long as the soldiers are there, the violence is going to continue.

MATTHEWS: Should we leave now?

GOODMAN: Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: Let me...

ORIN: You see, Chris...

MATTHEWS: Yes, go ahead, Deborah.

ORIN: Chris, it’s sort of sad to me to hear Amy talk, because she is speaking for such a defeatist, depressive, anti really essentially democratic view. Everything the United States does is wrong.

Sunday was a day of joy. It wasn’t simply, as she would like to present it, a day of anti-occupation. The Iraqi people were dancing with American soldiers. They were celebrating with American soldiers. The people who did not vote, some of them are thugs. And others of them are intimidated.

But to suggest that this was a vote, an anti-American vote, is just—it reflects a fringe, negative, defeatist view. And I think most Americans on Sunday looked at that election and they will listen to what Amy said and say, that’s nuts.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you a question, Amy, a little more sophisticated, because I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m not usually perhaps this fine-tuned in my thinking.

I’ve been listening to Wolfowitz for about three years now. And unlike some of the other neocons—and I don’t mind that phrase—he seemed to have been focused very much not on Middle East hard-line politics, but on the idea that the Islamic world, based upon his experience in Jakarta as ambassador to Indonesia years ago, are ready and willing and in fact have an appetite for democracy.

Did he not prove his case on Sunday with the tremendous turnout in Iraq?

GOODMAN: Well, I think that democracy...

MATTHEWS: Did he not prove that argument, that people want to vote? They don’t want clerics. They don’t necessarily—well, they may not mind clerics. They want to be able to go to a ballot box and participate in their government, that Arabs want to do that and they’ve never been given a chance.

GOODMAN: I think elections are important, but I also think it is absolutely critical that these people have the right to determine their own future. And that is not going to involve U.S. troops there.

But I do have to respond, Chris, when you talk about Paul Wolfowitz, yes, the former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. It brings up a whole other issue, but that it’s also absolutely critical, is, Wolfowitz returned from the tsunami-struck area of Indonesia, Aceh. And he said that the U.S. should restore military aid to the brutal Indonesian regime. I don’t think he’s concerned about democracy in Iraq.

And I certainly think it is clear that he is not concerned about the well-being of the people in Aceh, because to call for the support of the Indonesian troops, which have been cut off for years because of their brutality in Timor, exposes exactly who Paul Wolfowitz is.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you, I’m just concerned about elections and his belief in elections. I want to ask you this both.

Let’s go to—let’s go to Deborah. If we have another election, which we hope to have in December, for the permanent government of Iraq, and these people campaign—and some will campaign for keeping troops in for a year or two. Some will campaign rather unclear on that point. Some will say let’s get them out immediately.

The people of Iraq will get to choose what kind of a leader they want, won’t they? And they’ll get to choose whether they want to us leave or not. Isn’t that the ultimate democratic test?

ORIN: Absolutely.

And I think, in the end, what the Iraqi people want and what the American people want is the same thing. We all want our troops out of Iraq and we want the Iraqis to defend their own country. The question is, when will they be ready? I mean, you had the interim president of Iraq, who is a Sunni Muslim himself, today saying it would be nonsense to talk about pulling troops out right now because the Iraqis aren’t ready.

And I think, with a lot of the interviews that you saw on Sunday from people as they were going to vote, they would like to run their own country. But they also want to be safe doing it. And so, I think you can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But I want to go back to what you said before about Paul Wolfowitz and the faith in democracy, because I think that what he believed, what he said was validated. Everybody laughed when Wolfowitz and some others had predicted the Iraqi people would greet us with flowers and sweet meats. And that happened to some extent in Kurdish areas, but not in the rest of Iraq.

But this was the equivalent. This was sheer joy at the ability to vote, people bringing their children to watch them vote.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

ORIN: People posting on Web sites: I did it. I voted. I had the courage to do it.

MATTHEWS: Yes, well, it could also be read...

ORIN: It’s an amazing celebration.

MATTHEWS: It also could be read that those people want to get control of their country again and they want us out. That’s not the same as welcoming us with open arms and saying, now it is time for you guys to begin to move and we want to take over. That could be read, couldn’t it?

ORIN: It could, except that if you saw their attitude toward the American soldiers and if you saw the way they celebrated, that wasn’t what that vote was about. It just wasn’t.

(CROSSTALK)

ORIN: It would be a perversion to say it was.

MATTHEWS: OK, let’s come back to talk to Amy and also to Deborah Orin of “The New York Post” when we come back about Howard Dean. It looks like he’s beating—in fact, he’s smacking the soft fat middle of the Democratic Party, it looks like, in this fight for party chair.

We’ll be right back to talk about the ascendancy of Howard Dean.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: We’re back with “The New York Post”’s Deborah Orin and Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now.”

Amy, what do you make of Howard Dean as the new chairman of the Democratic Party? It looks like it’s on the way to happening.

GOODMAN: Well, I think it is very significant. First of all, it shows money talks. He was very successful in raising money for his presidential campaign, especially using the Internet and getting new voters. And I think that is what is really speaking.

And I also think it is very significant that he represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, as opposed to the direction that the Democratic Party has gone, which is very much vying with the Republicans. And this could signal a change, although, of course, it remains to be seen what happens if one individual can do that.

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that John Kerry would have won the election for president had he offered a clear alternative to President Bush’s foreign policy?

GOODMAN: I think that John Kerry tried to out-Bush Bush. And it was a fatal miscalculation.

I mean, that point, when he was asked the question when he was in the Grand Canyon, if you knew then what you know now, would you make the same move, would you vote to authorize the invasion, when he said yes, he opened himself to ridicule by the Republicans in what are you complaining about and by the Democrats, a lot of scratching of heads.

And I think, ultimately, that led to a lot less mobilization of new voters who were truly opposed to war and looking for a real alternative opposition. That’s what the two parties should be, oppositional to each other.

MATTHEWS: Yes. I think a lot of people are still scratching their head over that decision to say he would have gone to war over a case of WMD even if he’d found out there was no WMD.

Let me go to—because that was the argument for the war in the beginning.

Let me go right now to Deborah Orin.

What do you make—looking at politics today and the two parties and signals being sent here? What do you make of the smoke signal that Democrats like Dean now?

ORIN: Well, I think it is interesting. It is a total change.

Remember, right after the election, the Democrats were saying, we need to move more to the center. We’ve gone too far to the left. We have to talk to moderate voters. We have to talk to red states. And we have to talk more about moral values. Now we’ve got Howard Dean almost certainly going to be the new chairman. And he says moral values are code word for right-wing fringe.

So, the idea of the moving to the center has been thrown overboard. And we’re going to find out whether or not it is a good idea. An awful lot of Democrats have told me that they think, if Howard Dean had been the candidate, they would have lost 49 states.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

ORIN: Now, we’ll never know because it never happened. But I do think it is going to make a big difference.

I mean, just for example, Howard Dean the other day on the Sunday shows came out against the confirmation of Condi Rice as secretary of state. Now, that is a fringe position in the Democratic Party. There are 45 Democratic senators and only 13 of them took that position. The only black in the Senate, Barak Obama, didn’t think that position. Hillary didn’t.

And so, to me, that suggests that, for all Howard Dean says that he has become kind of a born-again centrist, that he’s actually pretty much far over on the left. And we’ll find out whether Amy is right and that there are oodles of voters waiting to come out and vote. I think this is going to be a disaster for the Democratic Party.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask Amy to speak for herself, to some extent.

Amy, just think right now. I know this is freeform thinking and it’s right on the spot. But think of who you think of right now as having the true voice of the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party. List a couple of people you think are the true voice of the heart and mind of the Democratic Party right now in 2005 in February.

GOODMAN: Well, I don’t think it is so much about individuals. I think it is about positions. It is about people taking strong stands.

MATTHEWS: No, who? Well, give me an example of somebody you think speaks for the Democratic Party right now.

(CROSSTALK)

GOODMAN: Like against Alberto Gonzales, like against Condoleezza Rice.

MATTHEWS: But who? Who do you trust now? Who has the true voice of the Democratic heart and mind right now? Who is it? Who do you recognize? Give me three or four names of people you think are true Democrats.

GOODMAN: Well, I’m not going to give names. I would talk about positions.

MATTHEWS: Why not?

GOODMAN: Because I think it is positions that matter. And we shouldn’t focus on personality.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: If you can’t say who your leaders are, how can you call yourself a political party? I mean, what are the Democrats if they don’t have a leader?

(CROSSTALK)

GOODMAN: I think it is about—I think the Democratic Party...

MATTHEWS: Who speaks for progressive America?

GOODMAN: I think the Democratic Party, what we should be talking about is positions that have to do with preserving Social Security, that have to do with being against torture.

MATTHEWS: Yes. Well, that’s why you’re losing. Why you’re losing. now is, you can’t even point to your leaders.

At least George Bush is the leader of the Republican Party.

GOODMAN: It’s not about my leaders. It’s about...

MATTHEWS: Name a leader. Name a leader that you trust.

GOODMAN: It is not about my position. It is about not my thoughts about people.

MATTHEWS: OK.

GOODMAN: It is about positions. And I think that’s what counts.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, that’s the problem. If the Democratic Party is tongue-tied about who their leaders are, that’s the beginning of the problem.

Thank you very much, Amy Goodman, for coming on. Please come back.

Deborah Orin of “The New York Post,” thank you.

Content and programming copyright 2005 MSNBC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 2005 Voxant,Inc.

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