'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Jan. 31st State of the Union

Guests: Hilary Rosen, Craig Crawford, Rudy Giuliani, Jon Meacham, Eugene Robinson, Dianne Feinstein, Howard Dean, Ken Mehlman, John McCain

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC ANCHOR:  Good evening.  This is America‘s big night to hear from the president.  It‘s his once a year open mike.  For the next hour, he‘ll talk and we will listen. 

No, State of the Unions are not interactive not yet, but if the president and his people do it right—and some years they do—he‘s gotten a handle on what we‘re thinking and feeling before he‘s figured out what he‘s going to say.  It‘s called making the connection. 

You even see—even though it‘s just this one voice tonight—the president is going to hear—we‘re going to hear from him now.  A State of the Union really is a conversation between the leader of the country and the people of this country. 

And don‘t go by tonight all the standing and applauding by the senators and members of Congress out there.  Decide whether you feel like standing and applauding yourself. 

By the way, tonight we‘re going to hear the Democratic response, as well, later on tonight from Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, who‘s just been elected, just took office. 

As we await President Bush to enter the House of Representatives, we‘re joined by “Newsweek” managing editor Jon Meacham.

Jon, it‘s a State of the Union address.  But I guess the big question: 

Can this president, at a time of a divisive war, unite the country? 

JON MEACHAM, MANAGING EDITOR, “NEWSWEEK”:  Well, that is the great question.  And the speech is clearly going to be about the projection of American values and making good on the sacrifices we‘ve already made, the young men and the young women who have given so much in the field of Iraq. 

We will hear a great deal about September 11^th and a great deal about the president‘s notion that you fight terrorists abroad instead of here.  That argument broadly has not been accepted by the American people as the Iraq war has gone on. 

And in an interesting way, I think what the president is doing is continuing to make a case which has not changed much in the past couple of years, betting, I think, that the strength of his conviction will overwhelm the details and the situation on the ground. 

This is a big historical bet.  Thomas Payne said in 1776 that we have it in our power to begin the world over again.  But he also said tyranny like hell is not easily conquered.  And in a way, the president has the first part of that, and one worries about the second. 

MATTHEWS:  The president enters the year now—it‘s called the six-year itch of a presidency.  We‘ve seen Watergate.  We‘ve seen Monica.  We‘ve seen presidents like Nixon go down.  We‘ve seen Iran Contra nearly bring down President Reagan. 

Is there anything the president can do tonight to avoid a six-year itch that can hurt him badly? 

MEACHAM:  Well, he seems to be in fairly good shape on that.  The numbers are down.  The numbers are generally down in the sixth year, as you say. 

He‘s making—you hear the word—listen tonight for the word “history.”  Count how many times President Bush uses it.  He is playing a long-term hand and counting on the fact that the American people have more patience; as St. Paul said, that they will be patient in tribulation more so than the people in Washington or many of the people who are particularly obsessed with politics. 

It‘s an interesting bet.  Most presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, who have laid out big goals have always done so in couched in terms of a journey, not a destination.  FDR said in 1945 that we have learned we cannot live alone in the world, but our own system is not perfect yet. 

And the wonderful line of President Kennedy‘s that all that he laid out would not be accomplished in the first hundred days, or the first thousand days, or even the life of this administration, but let us begin. 

Bush is a bit more bullish, a bit more hawkish than that.  He seems to indicate in his demeanor, in his words, that he thinks he can bend history now. 

MATTHEWS:  Right.

MEACHAM:  And he wants us to come along with that.  And a lot of people don‘t...

MATTHEWS:  Jon, I want to ask you about one problem with that perhaps romantic notion of a presidency.  We saw Harry Truman leave office with 23 percent in the midst of a war that had bogged down, Korea.  We saw Lyndon Johnson leaving the presidency with equal bad luck, and Carter with the hostage crisis.  Commitment may not be enough.

Let‘s see—first of all, we have to take a break here from our conversation. 

There is, of course, the first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, coming into the gallery where she will watch the husband give the State of the Union. 

Of course, there‘s Anthony Williams, the outgoing—the lame duck, I should say—mayor of Washington, D.C., standing right behind her.  We‘re going to try to keep touch with everyone that comes in tonight.  We earlier saw the vice president and the speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, fulfilling their ceremonial role in welcoming the president tonight.

But there, of course, is probably one of the most popular people in this country, I think actually the most popular.  That‘s Laura Bush.

Jon, can‘t beat her, can you?

MEACHAM:  No, you can‘t, and she has—it‘s interesting watching her the past few weeks, making a remark about Senator Clinton, and she has a certain steel magnolia quality to her.  A very tough woman from Texas.  She‘s a very effective spokesman for her husband, I think, in ways that.... 

MATTHEWS:  To get back to my question—I‘m sorry, let‘s get back to my question.  Even though our president is committed strongly to a policy doesn‘t mean it‘s going to make it, does it?

MEACHAM:  It doesn‘t.  And that‘s one of the great challenges, I think, that President Bush has for the next two years, and it‘s not just a political challenge, it‘s not just a historical, historian‘s roundtable kind of challenge, because our young men and our young women are out projecting force and projecting our values and our system out in the world.

But as we saw in the Palestinian election last week, as we have seen elsewhere in the world, the projection of our system does not necessarily mean the transmission of our values.  And democracy is a long and hard and difficult thing to get used to. 

MATTHEWS:  OK, excuse me, Jon. 

MEACHAM:  It takes (ph) a long time.

MATTHEWS:  Jon, a big moment now, of course, we are going to see perhaps the new chief—the new justice of the Supreme Court.  Coming in now is going to be members of the Supreme Court.  Just a few of them, but they are important members, obviously ,and here he is, Sam Alito, just confirmed today, just sworn in today as a member of the Supreme Court. 

MEACHAM:  Well, those are a president‘s DNA.  It‘s something that they leave for a long time. 

MATTHEWS:  There is John Roberts, the new chief justice of the Supreme Court, followed by Clarence Thomas, another associate justice who had himself a very difficult time coming into through confirmation. 

There is Stephen Breyer.  Used to work on the Senate as a staffer.  He apparently likes to come to these occasions.  Some members of the Supreme Court have decided not to come because they feel that they are used as props.  They can‘t applaud.  They simply have to sit there, and they prefer not to be used that way.  That‘s the way some of them look at it. 

MEACHAM:  It‘s a very interesting week for the president, given two of his appointees who will be there for a long time.

MATTHEWS:  OK, let‘s—well, here is one of the most popular people in the country, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who has been all over the world lately trying to pull together a stable world.  John Snow, the secretary of the treasury—that‘s the second ranking cabinet official in tenure. 

And then we are going to see some other people.  John Snow, as I said, secretary of the treasury.  Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, behind him.  Then we got Elaine Chao, and we‘re watching Mike Leavitt, who is the former governor of Utah.  He is coming along here. 

And there‘s Rick Santorum, who is facing very tough reelection up in Pennsylvania.  He is coming along in line as one of the official welcomers.  There he is, one of the most controversial figures in the country, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense.  We just saw him pass in the room. 

That‘s the cabinet.  I just saw Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary.  They are all coming in for this very ceremonial occasion.  Once a year this happens.  They all come in, the members of the executive branch. 

There is Joe Lieberman, who ran for vice president, the senator from Connecticut, a Democrat who supports the war 100 percent.  There‘s Sam Alito receiving the congratulations of the members of the Senate.  There‘s Rumsfeld again with the congresswoman from Texas, from Houston, Sheila Jackson-Lee, who always grabs that center seat.  We were talking about that earlier.  She always comes early and grabs that seat.  Bill Natcher of Kentucky used to do that every year.  Jon, he was there three or four hours ahead just to get that seat for 30 some years. 

MEACHAM:  Right.  As I recall, the congresswoman in particular started wearing red in the Reagan years, hoping to catch the president‘s eye in the way Nancy did. 

MATTHEWS:  Nancy Reagan had that wonderful costume she wore often, that fashion statement. 

Here‘s Sam Alito, getting another closeup from the camera.  It must be an amazing thing, to go through two or three weeks of pounding over your clubs you have been in, the mutual funds you have owned, the question of whether you are a good guy or a bad guy, and then finding yourself now in the winner‘s circle here for life. 

MEACHAM:  Well, you know, what‘s fascinating, when you look at that picture, you see Roberts, Thomas and Alito and obviously Justice Breyer.  But I remember when Justice Thomas came through his trial by fire back in ‘91.  He said, I‘m going to be here for 40 years, so you might as well get over it.  And you think about Alito and Roberts, who are very young, very energetic.  President Bush has let a fingerprint on the country up there behind the Capitol and the Supreme Court for generations.  And it‘s something that has gotten the due attention it should, but in an interesting way, aside from the war, the most important thing that may happen tonight is simply the presence of those two justices appointed by President Bush, who will be there for decades. 

MATTHEWS:  That‘s right.  And I‘m looking, here is Norm Mineta, the only Democrat in the cabinet, coming through as well that line down the center of the aisle between the Democrats and the Republicans. 

There is a friend of Judge Thomas, shaking his hand heartily there. 

It is something to watch these guys, Jon, close up, because even though they argue with each other, they have an amazing magnetism for each other.  They just like to get close to each other.  They love the crowd.  The—the almost coziness of this affair. 

MEACHAM:  Well, it‘s the biggest Kiwanis Club meeting in the country, in a way.  Politics, as you well know, and have written about so well, is both a retail business and a wholesale business, and the hand-to-hand contact in a good way is part of the business.  Politicians, remember, the great—the greatest politicians go into it because they love people.  The root of the word, poly, means people, means the city.  And I think this is actually a wonderful thing for the country to watch, because I think the president will even allude to it, the partisanship that we see, the screaming, the banging around that we see left and right, and, yet, you look at this and you do see that these are human beings who are taking their place in a republic, the world‘s oldest functioning democracy.  This is a system created by a bunch of very young, remarkably young men in the late 18^th century, Madison and Jefferson and Washington.  And here we are nearly two and a half centuries later, operating basically under the same genius. 

And it‘s because of the personality and the values and the essential decency, I think, of the men and women of the country, and the men and women that the people in the country send to that building. 

MATTHEWS:  You know, we don‘t like to think of ourselves as an old country.  Always holds to the vanity for us that we are a young country after all these two centuries.  But you know, in that room, Jon, and you are an expert on this, maybe it doesn‘t go back as far as Andrew Jackson, but it goes back to the Antebellum days.  They were debating the Civil War in that room. 

MEACHAM:  They were.  They were.  And that room is not far from the old Senate chamber, where they—the Supreme Court first met, where John Marshall presided just downstairs.  A lot of history in that (INAUDIBLE). 

MATTHEWS:  And history is about to be made, Jon Meacham, managing editor of “Newsweek,” because the president of the United States is about to be introduced by the doorman there, the official doorman.  He is going to introduce him.  It‘s the sergeant at arms, and it‘s going to be very interesting to see this arrival of the president in a house that is truly divided.  The Republicans support the president overwhelmingly.  The Democrats have a problem with this war, and their goal, their biggest goal is to defeat the Republicans and take control of this very room this November.  So there is a lot of politics in that room tonight.  And we will see if the president can create some unity.  I think that‘s the goal of every president. 

Here he comes. 

WILSON LIVINGOOD, SERGEANT-AT-ARMS:  Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States. 

(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS:  It‘s always fascinating to watch this receiving line.  It‘s the opposite of running the gauntlet.  People really do want to say hello to him.  And you will see people from both sides.  There‘s Harry Reid behind him.  Roy Blunt, who‘s running the (INAUDIBLE), Republican leader of the House.  We‘ve got Bill Frist, the senator from Tennessee, the Republican leader just to the president‘s left.  You see Nancy Pelosi, fights the president every day on that floor.  The House Democratic leader.  She‘s from San Francisco.  She is in red.  Somebody pointed out the women tend to like red tonight.  The men don‘t have the license, I guess, to wear red.  Jon Meacham, that would be a statement. 

There is Sheila Jackson-Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from Houston, Texas, a Democrat.  And another woman I don‘t recognize with kind of a pink shirt on there. 

Now he is leaning over to the Republican side.  He wants to give them a little more time than the Democrats, I think.  That‘s interesting. 

Let‘s see if he stays to that side of the aisle.  There is Pelosi right with him with the red jacket on, the top Democrat. 

MEACHAM:  Well, this is one of the great rituals of the presidency that George W. Bush is very, very good at.  The quick word.  The pat on the shoulder, the quick nickname.  And he‘s someone who does enjoy this part of the job.  And he‘s going to get up there and talk about very tough things, things, as you say, that we are deeply divided about, matters of life and death.  That young Americans are risking their lives at this very hour.  And yet there is something, I think, noble about the general applause, the sense that we are one country.  I don‘t think it‘s hypocritical.  I don‘t think it‘s simply theatrical.  I think it represents a truth that we are all in this together. 

MATTHEWS:  Here he goes. 

MEACHAM:  And there are a lot of men in that room and women in that room who want to be giving that speech in three years. 

MATTHEWS:  And there is a lot of them that like each other, even though they are on different sides of the aisle.  And I can attest to that, having worked up there for years, there are a lot of friendships over there in that very room.  And here is the president, congratulating, thanking both the vice president for receiving as president of the Senate, and the speaker of the House, who will now I believe introduce him, Dennis Hastert from Illinois. 

(APPLAUSE)

(STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)

MATTHEWS:  Well that was an unapologetic defense of this administration‘s policies, a call to arms to continue those policies for the next three years.  There is no lame duck in this president‘s speech.  There is nothing but “I‘m going to do what I‘ve been doing.  Get used to it, support me, or fight me, but do it civilly.”

We saw the president tonight make a number of strong statements, one defending the war in Iraq, saying it‘s necessary to go after failed tyrannies, oppressive states, because they‘re the states that harbor terrorists and attacked us on 9/11. 

He said much the same thing in defending the NSA surveillance program, which has been so controversial and fought over between those Democratic and Republican aisles now for weeks now.

He said “we could have caught two of the al Qaeda terrorists, the hijackers of 9/11 itself, perhaps, if we‘d had access to this kind of surveillance ability.”  He talked about them being on the telephone overseas, to here in the United States, as they prepared for the mass murder of 9/11 in 2001. 

He made it clear he will not let the government of Iran build a nuclear weapon.  He spoke directly to the Iranian people, in a way that might suggest down the road, some effort toward regime change, clearly identifying with the opposition in Iran.

On a number of other points, clearly there was partisan division tonight.  On the tax cut, making it permanent.  You could see watching tonight that the Democrats do not want to make the Bush tax cuts of 2001 permanent.  They think they‘re unfair, they think they give away too much federal money that they would like to have to spend on federal programs.

On entitlement reform, he acknowledged, I thought in a rather nice way, that he lost the battle over Social Security reform last year, but that the fight must continue because we need entitlement reform.  And in a very self-referential way, saying both he and Bill Clinton, his predecessor, both as he put it, favorites of his father, are reaching 60 and better be prepared for the fact that a lot of these entitlement programs are not going to be able to pay the benefits they have in the past.  Big stuff there on entitlement reform and on keeping the tax cuts.

Then a very sensitive matter for the president, ethnically.  A lot of Americans believe he was unfair in the way he responded to the New Orleans debacle, to the flooding of New Orleans, the way that the aid did not get to the people in time to keep some of them from dying.  He made the point tonight that we‘re going to make up for that.  I think that was in his words tonight, we‘re going to make sure that the programs for the people down there are not just temporary, but better education, better jobs, better housing, a better future, for the people of the Gulf Coast and of course New Orleans, in particular. 

So there was a lot in the speech tonight.  I thought tonight, looking at it, the most powerful message was global.  “We‘re going to continue with this war against tyranny in the world,” as the president has divided it and decided it.  It‘s going to be a war to bring down tyranny, it‘s because he said that‘s the only way to prevent terrorism from coming back and hitting us as it did on 9/11.

A second 9/11 reference, the NSA surveillance program.  The president today was using the leverage of his strong reputation for how he dealt with 9/11 to win the policy in Iraq, to win the policy perhaps toward Iran, if we have to get to that in his presidency, and clearly to defend his surveillance program, using the National Security Agency to cut in on, to interrupt, to listen in on electronic transfers of information between the United States and those countries, which we think are harboring terrorists even now. 

It was a very powerful speech.  I think the emphasis is on foreign policy, but let‘s check that with our other guests right now.  “Newsweek” managing editor Jon Meacham is with us.  Jon, your search for a headline has already begun for this weekend‘s “Newsweek.”  What did you find tonight?

MEACHAM:  I thought it was an unusually compassionate speech on the domestic front in particular.  I completely agree with you about the hawkish global view, which is not surprising at all. 

What I found most newsworthy is the president often stumbles and is not a particularly elegant speaker when he‘s not really committed to the ideas that he‘s talking about or he‘s not very familiar with them.  I found him just as fluid on the domestic policy as he was on the foreign policy, which is unusual in the last four years.

So I think in a way, I wonder whether there were discussions in the White House that one of the ways to answer the confidence question that had come up after Iraq, after the aftermath in Iraq, and the Katrina problems, to try to fight the competence question by going back to a kind of compassionate rhetoric.

And if so, I think it worked fairly well.  I think he has become, interestingly, George W. Bush has managed to become a hawkish Woodrow Wilson figure, an idealist, who clearly wants to project Democratic values and democracy around the world, by force and by the force of rhetoric and the force of arms.

MATTHEWS:  The world has a billion people who are Islamic, who have the Muslim faith.  Here‘s the president saying that he is basically declaring war here, if he hasn‘t done it already, against what he calls radical Islam.  Will the Islamic people of the world read that as a declaration of war against them?  Or will they single out in their own myths, the people who are active terrorists?

MEACHAM:  I thought it was fascinating that he mentioned bin Laden and al-Zarqawi tonight.  So I think we should check this, that may be the first time in a while he‘s mentioned bin Laden.  I don‘t think that the Islamic world is going to see this as a declaration of war by the president of the United States.

I don‘t think he‘s said anything particularly new about that.  He made a, I thought, fairly coherent case for his position on trying to get at both the root causes of terrorism.  There is this debate, it will go on for decades, if not centuries, about whether Iraq in Richard Haass‘s phrase was a war of choice or a war of necessity.

President Bush believes it to have been a war of necessity.  I think it was fascinating to watch one of the great divisions in the chamber tonight was when the president said we are winning, and you saw the people to his left, physically, jump up and the Democrats did not applaud at all. 

MATTHEWS:  Let‘s go right now to Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC‘s “SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.”  Thank you for joining us, Joe.  Your reaction, your headline notes tonight.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC ANCHOR:  Headline note for me was that the Republicans that I served with and Democrats that I worked with when I was on the Hill, are nervous this year.  Both sides very jittery.  Before I have in, you had Republicans talking about scandals, talking about all these reform packages.  They know they have to pass to try to insulate themselves.

MATTHEWS:  No mention of that tonight.

SCARBOROUGH:  No mention of that tonight.  But there was anger and resentment among a lot of the Republicans saying I can‘t believe we‘re having to do this.

MATTHEWS:  Do what, I‘m sorry, Joe.

SCARBOROUGH:  Pass all these reform packages that they‘re going to be passing. 

MATTHEWS:  You mean $30 for lunch instead of $50.

SCARBOROUGH:  That‘s right, former members who are lobbyists not being allowed to go on the floor.  Can you believe that?  But also though...

MATTHEWS:  ... How about the gym, can they still go to the gym?

SCARBOROUGH:  This is important for me.  I am not a registered lobbyist, I can still work out in the House gym.  However, they‘re passing tomorrow a law that says that if you‘re registered lobbyist and a former member, stay out of the gym. 

Now I thought it was very interesting, also, on the part of the speech where there was the biggest division seemed to be where the president said we were winning the war in Iraq and then he followed up and said military decisions are going to be made by military leaders, not politicians in Washington D.C.  Obviously we all immediately thought of Lyndon Johnson in the White House, picking bombing targets during Vietnam.  Democrats stayed seated, Republicans stood up.

MATTHEWS:  You know what I thought at that time?  I thought—I didn‘t think any of the generals over there were really given the freedom to say how many troops they needed because when Shinseki said this is going to take a couple hundred thousand troops, not 100,000 troops, he was cashiered.  So this idea that these guys are free to think out loud, I thought has been yet to be proven.

SCARBOROUGH:  And that‘s the thing that always irritated me on the Armed Services Committee, where you‘d have the generals come up and they‘d be speaking for the president.  It was Bill Clinton when I was on the Armed Services Committee, now it‘s George Bush.  They parrot, for the most part, the generals or the admirals, 99 percent of them, parrot what the Pentagon...

MATTHEWS:  Or else.

SCARBOROUGH:  ... Or else.  I will say, though, as John Meacham said, the president seemed a lot more confident.  He usually stumbles and bumbles, but talked about reducing foreign dependence on foreign oil, talking about tax cuts, portable insurance programs.  And I just loved the term—I always love when this happens.  I love the terrorist surveillance program.  Baby, it gets no better than that.  You know what you can do with a terrorist surveillance program?  Anything you want.

MATTHEWS:  I know, anything you want.  The only time he didn‘t smile after an applause line was when he talked about, he wasn‘t going to have an amnesty program for illegal aliens.  He knew that was not the time to smile if he wants to carry a number of states in the southwest.

SCARBOROUGH:  No doubt about it, but he was a lot more controlled tonight than he has been in the past.  He needed to be.

MATTHEWS:  I think he was at the top of his game.  Let me go to MSNBC chief Washington correspondent Norah O‘Donnell who‘s standing by in  Statuary Hall, the old House of Representatives, greeting members as they come back.  Norah, what do you hear?

NORAH O‘DONNELL, MSNBC CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT:  Well, Chris, clearly a very bold speech by the president.  It wasn‘t a laundry list as we had heard earlier.  I was struck in particular by two things.  One, the mention of bin Laden twice. 

He didn‘t call him Osama bin Laden, he called him bin Laden twice.  We checked.  It‘s the first time the president has ever mentioned him in a State of the Union address.  Very interesting, especially in such a speech that is watched by so many tens of millions of Americans here in the United States, but also, of course, overseas. 

Also, on the issue of Iraq, the president offering no ground at all, saying second guessing is got a strategy.  Saying that they have a clear plan for victory, that the work is difficult, but that he is confident in the plan.  All of that particular significant, signaling the president is not going to back down, if you will, at all.

Although he did suggest there will be a draw down in forces, but it will be decided by commanders on the ground, and not by politicians in Washington D.C. 

And then finally, Chris, you know, I noticed there was an interesting use of speech construction when he was talking about Iraq, which clearly is a controversial subject.  When he said in Iraq we‘re winning and the Democrats didn‘t stand up.  The president would then end that section about Iraq by saying, “we must support our military in their vital mission.”  That then got everyone to stand up at the same time.  It‘s an interesting speech construction used by the president.  He repeatedly mentioned the men and women who are serving in the U.S. military.

MATTHEWS:  OK, I can understand why that would work, Norah.  Hold on there, let‘s go to Gene Robinson.  Eugene Robinson, one of the top columnists for “The Washington Post.”  Sir, your headline in the paper tomorrow, what do you think it‘s going to be?  Your commentary, I should say.

EUGENE ROBERTSON, COLUMNIST, “WASHINGTON POST”:  What did we hear that was really new in this speech?  I‘m not sure there was a lot.  I think he was in good form for George Bush giving a speech.

But on Iraq there seemed to be a lack of willingness to address the actual situation on the ground.  I mean, things have not gone that well.  There is this insurgency, which he mentioned, but he didn‘t quite mention how that stands in the way of his achieving his goals there.  And it was like that through the speech.  He‘d kind of go up to a topic, but really not give a lot of specificity.

MATTHEWS:  He really never connected Iraq to 9/11 very effectively.  He said that the hijackers came as a result of a failed state, a repressive state—Afghanistan, when in fact the hijackers came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

ROBINSON:  Exactly.  So, you know, which he cited as our friends, who are moving along the path to democracy.  And by the way, I missed those giant steps that Saudi Arabia seems to have taken in our democracy.  I guess I...

MATTHEWS:  Don‘t go see the movie “Syriana,” because you won‘t see any giant steps.

ROBSIN:  I guess I was off that week.  But you know, and on the domestic stuff, I mean, the energy stuff was interesting, but is switch grass really the way?

MATTHEWS:  OK, we‘re going to have a Democratic response that‘s been prepared nationally.  It‘s going to be delivered, as I said earlier tonight, by Tim Kaine, the newly elected governor of Virginia.

It‘s going to be interesting, Joe, you and I know, and you of course,

Gene, and also Norah watching, will he actually respond to anything the

president actually said tonight?  Or will he deliver a speech that was

already written, without any identification of what the president might

have said?  Joe, do you think he‘ll respond or just give the speech

SCARBOROUGH:  They never respond.  These are usually the worst five to 10 minutes in Washington D.C.

MATTHEWS:  Because?

SCARBOROUGH:  Because the person who‘s selected to respond, and I know, I was always angry at who they responded—for some political reason, usually...

MATTHEWS:  ... You would have jumped at it.  You would have jumped at the chance.

SCARBOROUGH:  Well, of course, if they had selected me, I would have thought it was a good selection.

MATTHEWS:  Let‘s take a look, let‘s see how he does.  This is the new kid on the block, Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia.

(DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE)

MATTHEWS:  Jon Meacham, who‘s also joining us tonight, he‘s up in New York, he‘s the managing editor of “Newsweek” magazine.  Jon Meacham, this is the new kid on the block, the newly elected governor of Virginia, and here the Democrats had an opportunity to respond to the president‘s very forceful defense of his foreign policy, including the war in Iraq, including the threats he had to make, he did make. 

Most Americans would against Iran‘s nuclear program, his NSA surveillance program, and here the Democrats had a fellow come on tonight and say this is how strong he got, “Are the president‘s policies the best way to win this war?”  That‘s it.  That was the criticism.  Are they afraid to take on this president on his central, signature issue of the war in Iraq?

MEACHAM:  Well, I hate to say it, but I do think that that response illuminates a good bit of the Democratic problem right now, which is that there has not been a powerfully articulated critique of this president and there is a—there‘s much to critique, obviously.

MATTHEWS:  Are they afraid because of divisions within their own party over policy, to make a clear statement? 

MEACHAM:  I think they‘re afraid because the people who get elected president who are Democrats are centrist governors.  And I think that they have a very hard time playing to—keeping the left wing of their party happy, which is the base, and they‘re the very active people, they‘re the most vocal people, they are the people who have an almost irrational hatred of George W. Bush, in the way the hard right in the Republican Party had a irrational hatred of Bill Clinton. 

I mean, some things never change.  One thing that comes out of that speech by the governor, he quoted, that was from Jefferson‘s first inaugural, “We‘re all federalists, we are all Republicans.”  He had to say that because he had been called an atheist and an infidel and the charge in the campaign of 1800 was that if you elected Thomas Jefferson, America was going to hell. 

So for 208 years, we‘ve had partisan problems.  I don‘t think saying there is a better way is going to fix that.  What I do think is the president, at least seemed to me, to be a bit more in command of his material and a bit more coherent, frankly, than he has been on many occasions in the past.

And I think that there may be some opening here, in a critical year of his presidency, to talk to him.  I mean, who would have bet that we would have heard George W. Bush talking about how we‘re addicted to oil?  I mean, that‘s a good sign.

MATTHEWS:  Yes, being from the oil patch guy himself, yes.  We‘ve got to go right now.  Thank you very much, Jon Meacham, the managing editor of “Newsweek” magazine, thanks for joining us.

Let‘s go right now to one of the leading senators on the Hill, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, she‘s with us right now, a member of the Judiciary Committee and the Select Intelligence Committee.  How would you grade the president‘s speech tonight, Senator?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA:  Well, I‘d grade it probably a “B.”  I thought it got marks because it covered a number of subjects, but it wasn‘t quite what I had hoped he would say about the war on Iraq.  You know, I think it‘s time for the president to tell us how and when we‘re going to see some changes in American troop presence, and we didn‘t have that.  And there‘s a lot of speculation about troop reductions that are going to take place very shortly, and I thought he had an obligation to clear some of that up, and he didn‘t. 

I thought on health, you know, the Medicare prescription drug program is a mess.  In California, it‘s creating all kinds of problems.  And this goes all over the United States. 

I thought he should have addressed himself to it.  I mean, people really care.  They‘re not getting the drugs they need.  There‘s a lot of confusion.  And he could have, I think, had a big impact there. 

His proposals for HSAs have a problem, and the problem is we have 42 million uninsured Americans who can‘t save because they can‘t afford to save and they don‘t have health insurance.  So how do they get some kind of coverage? 

This is part of what drives up, I think, the cost of health care.

MATTHEWS:  The president defended his NSA surveillance program tonight, Senator.  And you‘re on the Intelligence Committee, the Select Committee.  What did you think of his defense? 

He said there were two hijackers back in 2001, the killers that killed our 3,000 people, and he said if they‘d been able to do some surveillance on those two guys, he implied, we wouldn‘t have had 9/11? 

FEINSTEIN:  Nobody doubts that, and I think that‘s true.  And we‘re all for doing surveillance on al Qaeda.  But this isn‘t necessarily just about al Qaeda.  Nobody knows what it‘s about.  Nobody knows how many. 

And that‘s what you have an intelligence court, a secret intelligence court for, to vet a request and see that it‘s a bona fide request, that it is what the administration says it is. 

He also said something that really concerns me, and that is that he believed he had statutory authority to carry out electronic surveillance on Americans.  I know of no statutory authority to do that. 

We all want to get at al Qaeda.  And if it‘s just al Qaeda, every single one of us are all in favor of it.  But the problem is we don‘t know exactly what it is.  We don‘t know how many.  We don‘t know how many generations of taps.  We don‘t know who‘s going into a database and who isn‘t.  And that‘s where the oversight responsibilities have broken down. 

MATTHEWS:  Cindy Sheehan was taken into custody tonight to the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that said, “2,045, how many more?” That‘s obviously a reference to those Americans killed in Iraq. 

Do you think getting arrested is a good way to develop a campaign against you for the Democratic nomination next time?

(LAUGHTER)

FEINSTEIN:  I don‘t think so, but that will stand on its own. 

MATTHEWS:  Do you think—let me go back, you were laughing. 

I want to move on.

The president made a very tricky statement tonight, which I wonder how you think being on intelligence, will go around the world. 

He said we‘re at war with Islamic—what he called radical Islam.  And he identified under that umbrella not just terrorists, but all the people who have a problem with our Western ways, our attitudes toward sexuality, toward gender rights, all the things that seem to scare a lot of the people in that part of the world. 

Do you think that was too big an umbrella to go after? 

FEINSTEIN:  Well, of course, it‘s a very big umbrella. 

I mean, we‘ve got a lot of people who don‘t like us and we have a lot of people who even hate us.  And one of the reasons they hate us is because there‘s an arrogance. 

And I think this president really needs to show that this is not an arrogant nation and that we care deeply about other people, and I think he tried to do some of that. 

I agree with his comments about Iran. 

I mean, we want to be any freedom-loving people‘s good friend, but we don‘t want to see Iran with nuclear weapons. 

And, you know, you have a new Iranian democratically-elected president who has just said Israel should be destroyed.  And now you have Hamas elected, whose position is Israel should be destroyed. 

So we have to take a very strong position when it comes to the protection of our allies and I had wished he had been a little more specific there. 

MATTHEWS:  The president‘s main argument made tonight rather well, I thought, was, you know, we‘ve got to bring down tyrannies in that part of the world and we have to replace them with elected governments.  And those elected governments will be more moderate and more peaceful than the tyrannies that preceded them. 

And yet you look at Egypt and Saudi Arabia, those are very, you could argue, corrupt administrations, if you wanted to, but they‘re basically friends of the United States. 

Are we better rolling the dice with elections in that part of the world that turn out people like the guy you just mentioned, whose name is quite long, in Iran and the Hamas majority now ruling on the Palestinian territories?  Are we lucky?  Do we think we‘re going to always get the party we want to win? 

FEINSTEIN:  Well, I think there are some misjudgments that you can turn countries that have only known totalitarian or dictatorships overnight into democracies—countries that have no rule of law, that have no real economic infrastructure, and whose people are really mired in poverty. 

I think that‘s extraordinarily difficult to do.  A true democracy is a very delicate force to build, and it takes an infrastructure.  It takes an enlightened electorate for number one.  It does take rule of law—because we‘re a democracy based on law, not based on the rule of an individual. 

And so my own view is that we really ought to push for stability, for peace, for economic upward mobility, and stop pressing elections so fast in countries—because it certainly didn‘t work very well in Iran; it certainly hasn‘t worked well with Hamas now; and who knows how it‘s going to work out in Iraq. 

We all want it to go well, but there are some indications that it very well may not. 

MATTHEWS:  Well, thank you very much.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, thanks for joining us tonight.

FEINSTEIN:  You‘re welcome.

MATTHEWS:  We‘re joined now by the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” Brian Williams, and NBC‘s Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert. 

Gentlemen, Brian, you first, the headline out of tonight‘s speech? 

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR:  I will—since I don‘t do opinions, I will rely on smart guys like Tim Russert. 

And I think, if you add up the collection of opinion of the people we talked to after the president‘s speech, Chris, I think Americans who are depressed by the divide, who prefer to see cooperation, both parties getting along, may not see a whole lot that they like upcoming in 2006. 

Part of the president‘s motivation behind the speech tonight, he believed that this is a speech he wanted to give for a long time.  Portions of it, he thought would be taken as conciliatory.  Well, you saw what happened in the chamber. 

Tim and I were sitting here watching, and, in the kind of in Madden-ization of television, you could have used a Telestrator to draw a line right down the middle of that chamber, the group sitting, standing, silent, cheering, and then the applause, the standing ovation that was sarcastic, it really is a divide not seen in a good long time. 

MATTHEWS:  Tim? 

TIM RUSSERT, NBC WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF:  Chris, exactly. 

Looking at the view from the president‘s podium, it was like the Red Sea parted and the Republicans went eight feet up and the Democrats went below sea level on issue after issue after issue.  And so I think there will be a lot of different headlines from this speech, through the prism of the viewer, based on their own ideology. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes. 

RUSSERT:  The interesting thing for me is, was the president‘s acknowledgement, recognition, that this is, in the words of one of his top advisers, an unsettled country. 

There‘s an awful lot of angst and anxiety, and he‘s aware of that.  And he knows that the war in Iraq plays a central part of that, as well as the lack of a response to Katrina.  And it has put us now in a position where it‘s very difficult for either party to get their way. 

The president suggested he wanted to reach across the aisle and do some things.  And then, a few pages later in the speech, he talked about the domestic eavesdropping program, and said, by the way, members of Congress sitting right, who escorted me in, they all knew about this. 

So, it‘s going to be a give and take, back and forth, and I don‘t think much is going to happen, other than lobbying reform, because both parties need that, the Democrats to show that they cleaned up Washington, the Republicans to show they‘re not that all bad and they got the message, too, and they‘re in this together with the Democrats for clean government.

MATTHEWS:  Well, Brian, it looked to me, and Tim as well, there‘s a couple times there, especially on the Patriot Act, when the president mentioned that, and there was, as you both said, a very clear Red Sea divide between the two sides.

And yet there were a couple of exceptions.  I think it was Ben Nelson of Nebraska who stood up, out of order, and I thought it was like the guy in church who gets the standing up and the kneeling wrong, you know, the one who does it at the same time. 

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  Brian, it takes some courage, doesn‘t it, now to stand against your own party in these very vivid demonstrations of point of view. 

WILLIAMS:  Well, that‘s right. 

And as the TV critics go on and write about what we have aired tonight, the camera crews, networks take their terms operating the pool cameras inside the chamber.  And the shots directors choose to take are part of the editorial story that television tells of these events. 

So, if you were watching closely tonight, you won‘t soon forget what we call the cutaways of Senator Clinton from New York at opportune moments, the look that Chris Dodd seemed to be giving Senator Nelson as he sat down, the moments of high emotion, when the president‘s eyes filled up.  It looked like he had to avert his eyes back down to his text before looking back up at the parents and families in the box. 

So, we tell another version of the story that you would not of course get from the dry paper script. 

RUSSERT:  You know, Chris, on that same theme, when the president mentioned earmarks, and, as you know, there are 15,000 earmarks now in Congress, tens of billions of dollars for these pet projects back home.

And the president said, I know you‘re going to deal with that. 

There‘s one John McCain clapping furiously. 

(LAUGHTER)

RUSSERT:  That was it.  What sound do you hear?  That‘s John McCain clapping.  And that was it.

MATTHEWS:  Yes. 

(CROSSTALK)

RUSSERT:  And that is a real reform measure that a lot of people on both sides of the aisle don‘t want any part of, because it affects the pork that they bring home. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes.  I think that‘s like mentioning corn in a pigpen, isn‘t it?

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  Everybody‘s thinking, I like my earmarks. 

Let me go to Brian for the little news value tonight that was off the floor.  The Democrats gave a response tonight, which is very formal in these parts these days, by Tim Kaine of Virginia, the newly elected governor. 

But then Cindy Sheehan out there probably made the front page again, if not the second or third page, by getting arrested.  I think she was taken into custody—I want to be careful here—on a misdemeanor charge of causing a little commotion up there, because she wouldn‘t take off her T-shirt, which said, “2,245, How Many More?” an obvious reference to the number of killed in action in Iraq.

Is that going to upstage the Democrats‘ response, that someone from the left is now being sort of the icon now of opposition to the president? 

WILLIAMS:  Well, sadly, we ran out of time on our side of the broadcast, and we badly wanted to ask a few people that question, whether the invitation by this Democrat member of Congress from California was at all bumped up the chain or received anyone‘s blessing. 

Tim being a good lawyer, we looked up some case law in the business of wearing slogans on T-shirts.  There have been arrests this past year for slogans people were wearing that spoke against the president.  I know there‘s at least some Supreme Court case law on the trouble you can get into if you wear one to school. 

But we‘ll have to see how much attention this gets tonight.  I think the Democrats tomorrow morning will end up all kind of agreeing, perhaps silently, that this was a—not a badly needed sideshow tonight. 

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  In other words, Lynn Woolsey of California probably issued a ticket to the wrong person. 

Tim, your assessment as to the media value here.  Is this going to be the problem for the Democrats who criticize the war in a more perhaps sophisticated manner to try to make a subtle point that‘s patriotic, when there‘s someone out there who lost a son in the Afghanistan war and feels very passionately, to the point of wearing a T-shirt into the House of Representatives?

RUSSERT:  Well, there‘s no doubt Cindy Sheehan has become a lightning rod.  But that point that you just raised, Chris, is very important.

She gave her son to this country.  He died.  And so a lot of people, I think, understand that and deeply appreciate her sacrifice.  On the other hand, she appeared yesterday with Ramsey Clark, Saddam Hussein‘s lawyer, at a panel here talking about evicting George W. Bush from the White House, impeaching President Bush.

So, clearly, she‘s been radicalized by this whole experience.  There are many Democrats who would prefer that this form of protest in her persona not exist. 

On the other hand, there are a lot of activist Democrats who believe passionately that she is the one...

MATTHEWS:  Right. 

RUSSERT:  ... with her demonstrations down in Texas that galvanized support against the war and against the president, and she‘s a real heroine. 

It‘s very analogous to me about the debate that played out yesterday in the Senate about Judge Alito; 25 Democrats said, we have to filibuster, we have to close this place down in order to make the point.  And 19 other Democrats said, wait a minute, we live—we run in red state districts, Republican districts.  We have to be more centrist, more moderate, a real debate within the Democratic Party. 

MATTHEWS:  OK.

Tim and Brian, we have got the Democratic Party chairman, who can offer a thought on this, Howard Dean.

Mr. Chairman, I have got one question for you and then I‘ll turn it over to the other fellow here, my colleagues.  The question is:  Is it good for your party to have someone speak rather moderately—and perhaps too moderately—like Governor Kaine of Virginia, who really didn‘t stick it to the president on the most critical issue in the country today, which is the war?

And then you have somebody out in the galleries who‘s going to get all the media attention.  Is that good for your party to have someone like Cindy Sheehan stealing the spotlight from party‘s spokesperson?

HOWARD DEAN (D), DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN:  I think it‘s pretty hard to steal the spotlight from a governor who‘s accomplished as much as he had.  I think Tim did a terrific job—in a very thoughtful, moderate way—highlighting the differences between this president and the Democratic Party.

And the principal difference is I‘ve heard this speech three or four years in a row now.  And the truth is, the president talked about clean energy, while he‘s putting hundreds of thousands of tons of toxics in the air.

He talked about better health care while he‘s making it harder for seniors to get their drug prescriptions.

So I thought that Tim Kaine did a terrific job and I don‘t think he‘s going to be upstaged by anybody—probably including the president.

MATTHEWS:  Brian and Tim?  OK.

I want to ask you another question:  Do you think the Democratic Party has a problem on this front, which is certainly if you look at the polling, Governor, four out of five Democrats think we shouldn‘t have gone to Iraq.  The leadership is divided.

Do you have a problem finding people in the leadership on both sides of the House—the House and Senate—who will speak for the majority of Democrats on the war issue?

DEAN:  I don‘t think so.  I think we‘re all in this pretty much together. 

And let me just take one second, since this is MSNBC, to thank the Barnham (ph) family in Durham, North Carolina.  I‘m here with them and their neighbors.  And we watched the speech together.

I think the Democrats are unified pretty much on Iraq.  There‘s got a huge difference between Jack Murtha, say, and Joe Biden.  The difference between us and the president is we believe if we‘re going to defend America, we first start by having to tell the truth to our citizens, our soldiers and our allies.  And, secondly, we need to use our brains as well as our brawn to defend the country.

There‘s no American that‘s against defending the United States. 

There‘s no American that doesn‘t think that we need to deal with al Qaeda.

The question is:  Can we tell the truth to the American people about how to deal with al Qaeda and with terrorism?  And the truth is the president‘s biggest problem is he doesn‘t have much credibility left.

MATTHEWS:  The president said tonight that he has to use the surveillance ability, the electronic surveillance ability of the National Security Agency to prevent another 9/11.  He said there were two hijackers involved in 9/11, one of the 19 killers, who in fact were identified that they were using telephones to connect with the people overseas.  We would have caught them, he implied.

How do you respond to that?

DEAN:  Also, I‘m afraid, not so.  The truth is we didn‘t catch them because we weren‘t listening.

There isn‘t a Democrat that doesn‘t support spying on al Qaeda.  The difference between the Democrats and the president is we believe the president should follow the law.  The law says the president does not have unchecked authority to spy on any American he chooses, which is what‘s going on now.

The fact is that 19,000 times, presidents, including this one, have gone to court and asked for permission to spy.  All but five of those times, they‘ve got it.  We‘re not asking the president to be soft on terror.  We‘re just simply asking the president to both lead the nation, but also to follow the law.

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about a couple points tonight.  Tim mentioned it, Brian mentioned it, that there were divisions clearly in the hall tonight of the House of Representatives, where you could see, actually, the Republicans cheering like mad and the Democrats not doing that.

The Patriot Act:  What is the difference between the two parties on that issue?

DEAN:  There‘s some issues that have to do with following the Constitution, with upholding the rights of ordinary Americans to go about their business.  For example, we don‘t think the president ought to be able to spy on people who use libraries and randomly go through whatever they ask for.

But I think the problem is the Democrats—and I think the American people—are out of patience with this president.  Imagine telling people he wants to improve education three weeks after he cut $14 billion out of Pell Grants, so kids can‘t afford a college education.

MATTHEWS:  This is a president who, for four years, has said one thing and done another. 

We‘re going to win in 2006, Chris, and then we are going to win the presidency back in 2008.  And, when we do, we will deliver jobs based on energy independence.  We will deliver a society where everybody has health insurance, just like 36 other countries in the world.  We will deliver a national security which relies not just on strength, but also on telling the truth. 

MATTHEWS:  Governor, thank you very much.  And you may be right in both fronts, 2006 and 2088.  Thank you for joining us, the Democratic national chairman, Howard Dean. 

We‘re joined right now by the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman. 

There was an optimistic challenger right there. 

What do you make, Ken, of Howard Dean‘s claim that he‘s going to win both houses of Congress this year and the presidency in 2008? 

KEN MEHLMAN, CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE:  I think he‘s wrong. 

I think that—I‘m confident we‘re going to keep our majority in 2006. 

I also thought the president gave a great speech tonight.  I thought he laid out a whole series of initiatives. 

Whether it‘s expanding access to health care, whether it‘s reducing foreign reliance on energy, whether it‘s improving education—all of these are areas where I think Republicans and Democrats can work together. 

MEHLMAN:  And I hope the Democrats will join this president in working together on these things. 

MATTHEWS:  Well, it doesn‘t look like they want to join him on the Patriot Act or on continuing the tax cuts of 2001.  They seem to be mocking him on Social Security reform? 

MEHLMAN:  Well, I was disappointed in that, I was disappointed that people were standing up and applauding about the fact that Social Security continues to go bankrupt.  That seems to me to be putting partisanship ahead of retirement security. 

I do think on the Patriot Act, look, we mentioned the divide among Democrats.  The fact is, there are a lot of Democrats, like most of the American people, who recognize that we weren‘t safer on September 10^th, that we do need these new tools. 

And, again, I think we‘ve got to get beyond this notion of attacks and work together, whether it‘s the Patriot Act, whether its energy independence, whether it‘s improving education. 

You know, Chairman Dean mentioned education.  The fact is, in 2005 you saw all-time high minority test scores because Democrats and Republicans, Ted Kennedy and George W.  Bush and others, came together and passed No Child Left Behind.  Let‘s do the same thing once again. 

MATTHEWS:  Let‘s talk about the red hot issue of immigration—illegal immigration, if I can use that term. 

The president tonight said no amnesty, period.  Now, I thought that he was working on a plan that would allow people who are here, the nice way to put it is without documents, to formalize their legality here, to become legal residents of the United States.  He said tonight:  No, I‘m not going to permit any amnesty. 

What‘s the truth here? 

MEHLMAN:  Well, the truth is the president doesn‘t support amnesty.  He does recognize that if you want to actually deal with illegal immigration, you‘ve got to eliminate the magnet that‘s bringing people here illegally, and that magnet is jobs. 

And so if you have a temporary worker program and you make sure that folks who are here now have to wait in the back of the line, aren‘t able to get in front of folks that have been waiting in line, and that wouldn‘t be fair, there‘s a way to accomplish both goals. 

He‘s opposed to amnesty.  He is for a humane, a fair and economically effective temporary worker program.  I think that‘s the right approach. 

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Ken Mehlman, you‘re great to have.  Please come back to “Hardball” often.  You‘re a great guest.

MEHLMAN:  I will.  Thanks.

MATTHEWS:  Thank you, sir, chairman of the Democratic—of the Republican National Committee.  We heard from both sides.

MEHLMAN:  Republican.

MATTHEWS:  I got you.  It‘s an important distinction.

Let‘s bring in now Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. 

The same question, Senator. 

Were you surprised the president was so strong in saying he‘s against amnesty? 

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN ®, ARIZONA:  Well, it‘s a little bit question of definition here. 

I‘m against amnesty, too.  I mean, that—we tried it in the ‘80s and failed.  But many of us—and I think most Americans—are in favor of an earned citizenship, which would take many years, pay a fine, learn English, and then earn citizenship. 

The alternative is to send 11 million people back to where they came from.  And no one has ever yet explained to me how you do that.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think the president was clear on that tonight?  It sounded to me like he was against legalizing people here illegally, which most people think of as amnesty.

MCCAIN:  I don‘t—I don‘t think so.  I think what he was saying is, no amnesty like we did in the ‘80s, which was a total failure, but an earned path to citizenship, paying a fine, because you broke the law, working for at least six years before you could even be eligible for a green card, and then getting in the back of the line behind everyone else, and showing—learning English, I think, is a reasonable proposal that most Americans would support. 

And, again, what do you do with 11 million people who are here right now illegally?  I don‘t think you can send—somebody is going to have to explain to me how you do that, how you send them all back.

MATTHEWS:  Right. 

Let me ask you about the president‘s comments about Iran.  I know you have been talking about it in strong language.

MCCAIN:  Yes. 

MATTHEWS:  The president tonight says, we will not permit the deployment, the development of a nuclear weapon by the government of Iran, certainly not the government now.  How do we stop it? 

MCCAIN:  I think the first thing we do is what we have already basically said we‘re going to do, with the cooperation and help of our European allies, to go to the United Nations Security Council. 

We will see what Russia and China do.  I hope they abstain, and we—and we do sanctions.  And, if that is—not work, then we have to get some kind of coalition of people who are involved.  We have to exhaust every single effort.

But I don‘t think you could take the military option completely off the table.  Otherwise, you don‘t have any leverage.  But I—I am confident that the president will exhaust every possible measure.  And one of the good-news aspects of this is that, so far, the Europeans, to their great credit, are sticking with us. 

MATTHEWS:  Do you believe that regime change by force is one of the military options? 

MCCAIN:  Yes, but I think it would be extremely difficult. 

I think what the option that would be considered will be a military operation to destroy their nuclear capability, not for regime change.  But we have got to be heavily involved in a pro-democracy movement in Iran and helping them, the same way we tried to helped oppressed people during the Cold War.  They are under an oppressive, repressive government that in no way represents the will of the majority of the Iranian people. 

MATTHEWS:  What is the fight between your party and the Democrat party, Democratic Party, over the Patriot Act?  I couldn‘t believe how dramatic it was, the way only Ben Nelson, the more conservative Democrat from Nebraska, stood up, and everybody else stood down on the Democratic side when the president praised the Patriot Act. 

MCCAIN:  Well, I think that the Democrats who have had some concerns.

That concern, as you know, has been shared by, I think, four Republican senators.  I know there are very active negotiations going on now.  And I hope we can get it resolved, because I think almost everybody agrees we need to renew the Patriot Act.  And I strongly believe that. 

There are some minor concerns that I hope can be worked out.  But it‘s

unfortunately, it has become a partisan issue.  And that‘s an unhealthy sign, Chris, about the lack of any kind of comity—C-O-M-I-T-Y—that exists here in Washington. 

MATTHEWS:  What did you make of the president‘s appeal for comity, for civility?  And I just one to offer one demurral here. 

I do remember that, back when he wanted something you could argue in the worst way, which was the authorization for possible military action against Iraq, he jammed that vote right up against the election of 2002.  That wasn‘t a very civil thing to do, to force the Democrats to vote right before an election to give him, basically, full authorization to do what he wanted to do, but wouldn‘t say what it was.  Was that a civil move? 

MCCAIN:  I think the situation in Iraq called for that vote to be taken.  We had taken a vote during the Clinton administration that called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Chris.  There‘s just too much partisan...

MATTHEWS:  But that was by democratic means, not by war. 

MCCAIN:  Listen, I can tell you examples of Democrat partisanship right up in the most recent days. 

MATTHEWS:  Right. 

MCCAIN:  We have got to cool the rhetoric. 

For example, the president called for oil independence from foreign oil.  Let‘s sit down and work that out.  What programs can we support?  What projects?  How can we do this?  Everybody knows it‘s in the national interest to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  Let‘s start on some issues we can agree on and change this environment. 

I know we have got a short time, but you saw the piece by the former Reagan aide about when Tip O‘Neill came. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes, it was a wonderful story.  It was David Broder. 

MCCAIN:  A guy you used to work for.

I was very touched by that. 

MATTHEWS:  Right. 

MCCAIN:  Can‘t we do a little more of that, and maybe not like that, but at least get some of that spirit back?

MATTHEWS:  Do you think there‘s a hope for a real bipartisan effort?  Because, obviously, what you just said is manifestly true.  We use our cars every day of our lives.  We use gas every day of our lives.  And we don‘t have enough here.  Therefore, we depend on the Middle East and the rest of the world. 

Do you really believe that, in our lifetime, we could actually find a bipartisan way to make ourselves relatively independent of those parts of the world that are always trouble? 

MCCAIN:  Absolutely.  And I think the president laid out a very good proposal that we could implement, including, by the way, the use of nuclear power, which I know is controversial.  But that—that‘s a technology that is available now. 

MATTHEWS:  Well, you‘re a very popular fellow, John McCain. 

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  Senator John McCain, you‘re the man of the middle tonight, calling for civility.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  That will sell, I think.

MCCAIN:  The president called for that, too. 

MATTHEWS:  I think the president was very good.

MCCAIN:  Thank you. 

MATTHEWS:  So, was it a good speech?  Give it a grade, A to D. 

MCCAIN:  I thought it was an excellent speech—A. 

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Thank you very much, Senator John McCain.

MCCAIN:  Thanks.

MATTHEWS:  We‘re just getting going here on HARDBALL tonight.  We are going to be on the air for another couple of hours, until 1:00 a.m.  Eastern. 

And I actually enjoy this long time to really look at all these top issues, because State of the Union is a time to really go into five or six issues that we‘re going to be arguing about for the next here, including who the next president is.

I did notice the Hillary Clinton tonight—and this will drive her people crazy—was chewing gum.  I don‘t quite get that.  We will find somebody to defend that.  We will get reaction to the gum-chewing of Hillary Clinton and the president‘s speech tonight from a man who may want to succeed him, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.  I want to hear him on Hillary‘s bubblegum. 

This is HARDBALL‘s live coverage of the State of the Union on MSNBC.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST:  We‘ve got the home team about to join us.  Campbell Brown, Chip Reid up on Capitol Hill and Andrea Mitchell.  But let‘s start with David Gregory down at the White House.

David Gregory, what are they giving themselves for the president‘s speech tonight, as a grade? 

DAVID GREGORY, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  Well, you know, you wouldn‘t be surprised to hear them say that they were quite pleased with this, that this is a speech the president wanted to give for a long time.  I think there‘s going to be multiple headlines, some domestic, some foreign. 

Obviously, the president‘s gone a lot more incremental, as the columnist Fred Barnes said today.  These are not huge, sweeping proposals like you heard last year, a la Social Security.  That got a big response from Democrats tonight, when he said—the president said that Congress had not acted on Social Security. 

But I think that this was an attempt by the president, in the war on terror and the war in Iraq, to make an argument directly to the American people, which is no matter what you think about how we got into the war, we have now crossed that midline, where we‘re better than 50 percent into this war, against radical Islam, a phrase used again and again tonight.  And we simply can‘t turn back.  There is no retreat. 

So he offered an olive branch to the Democrats, in one sense, and war critics, saying look, this goes beyond just one party.  Future presidents are going to be fighting this war.  And on the other hand, being very combative, by saying, “Look, I‘ll take your opinions.  I‘ll take your advice, but you know, hindsight and second-guessing is no strategy.”  So a real push and pull there.

MATTHEWS:  Why do you think he talked about the need for civility between the two parties, right up front?

GREGORY:  You know, I do think it‘s part of a general effort—it‘s sort of a play for legacy here.  It‘s a bigger statement about the way he views the world now and sees this struggle as going beyond his presidency.  I think there may have been a message to a future president, Republican and Democrat—I‘m sure in his mind he prefers a Republican—to continue this policy, to continue the war on this footing. 

This was a very aggressive speech, saying that we‘re only going to set the course of history in the right direction if America asserts its leadership in the area of economic matters and in fighting this war on terrorism. 

What I wondered, at hearing the speech, Chris, and I thought it was striking, but he referenced the fact that war critics had influenced policy in the way the White House prosecutes the policy in Iraq. 

I wonder if it‘s too late in his presidency, though, to say that we shouldn‘t let anger harden to the point where we can‘t do anything but disagree.  I think a lot of those judgments have already been formed, and you saw that in the chamber tonight, by this—this gulf that was described between the two parties, particularly on this issue of the war and how to go about fighting the war on terror. 

MATTHEWS:  Last question, you‘re a real student of the president.  You‘ve covering him now for a number of years.  What did you make of the construction of this speech?  Was it a group effort?   Was it a Bush effort?  Was there a smart speech writer mind behind it?  Whose mind do you think was working as they developed these thoughts tonight, as the president did?

GREGORY:  Well, I think the way he approaches a lot of these speeches, that he‘s got a thematic approach and a message that he wants to send, and he‘s got a smart team of speechwriters who try to craft that and put it into his own voice. 

And the president said this is really a speech and a message that he wanted to deliver.  The White House was advertising this as not your run-of-the-mill State of the Union speech.  And I think that‘s in part a reflection of political reality, that they know in this election year, that coming up for big, sweeping policy proposals is not realistic. 

And on the other hand, as I say, I think this was a speech that goes beyond his presidency.  It‘s a larger statement about the course that he has set.  And he‘s making a statement about the fact that this is going to have to be followed in one way or the other beyond this presidency, fighting radical Islam, fighting this war in some fashion. 

And so the two parties have to find a way to coalesce around a single strategy.  Because remember, he may have written the first chapter in this war on terror, but the next president, and this is going to be incredibly important in the 2008 campaign, is going to have to chart the course for the future chapters of how we fight this. 

MATTHEWS:  David Gregory, chief White House correspondent for NBC News, fine work.  Thank you for joining us tonight. 

Let‘s go to Campbell Brown, also of NBC News, who hosts the “WEEKEND TODAY” show and has been a familiar face in Washington for many years. 

Campbell, I just saw the president tonight.  It was almost like somebody said to him, as they were developing this speech weeks ago, stick to your strengths, Mr. President; 9/11 is still your baby.  People trust you.  They think of you as a man who came back from that horror and led us back to self-confidence.  Talked about it a lot tonight. 

CAMPBELL BROWN, HOST, “WEEKEND TODAY”:  Yes, and I think—we‘re here in Statuary Hall, Chris, which is, as you know, essentially the spin room after the speech.  And I think that was one of the things that struck me, is that Democrats seem relieved, in as sense, that he focused so much, not on terrorism, but brought up issues like health care and energy, because that‘s where they think they have far more of a fair fight. 

They do not want to fight him on terrorism.  It‘s been a loser for them all along.  And the fact that he is now focusing on those issues gave Democrats some maneuvering room.

They are more than willing to take him on on health care and able to point to things like problems with the president‘s prescription drug plan.  The same thing with energy, having had a victory with on ANWR.  You noticed he didn‘t even mention that in the speech tonight.  And also able to paint the president as tied to big oil. 

That that is more of a—much more of a level playing field for them than terrorism and 9/11.  Any time he brings up 9/1, as you know, that has been far more where the president‘s strength lies and where he connects with the American people. 

MATTHEWS:  Were you struck by the fact that the Democrats, at least a lot of them did on camera, actually guffawed, actually laughed out loud, I guess, in a simple way of putting it, when the president admitted that he had blown it on Social Security reform?  They seemed to really enjoy that admission.

BROWN:  I know.  And that‘s one of the things that I think was also striking, was how clearly the lines were drawn coming into this. 

I mean, it‘s been a couple of years since I covered the president day to day, but I was there in the very beginning, when he talked about change the tone.  And for him to come full circle and to come back to that and to see how divided they still are, I mean, it was so clear in the sense that Democrats had already laid out where they were going into this.  The spinning started well before this speech.

But what was also striking to me was talking to Republicans, is that that‘s where the White House really is struggling right now, having to prepare Republicans in advance and try to get them onboard in advance of this speech. 

Because this is the first State of the Union where they haven‘t been guaranteed that post-State of the Union cheerleading by Republicans, given Republicans‘ concerns right now about a number of issues, as they head into the midterm elections.  The president‘s poll numbers, his policy on Iran, which conservatives have been critical of, and of course, spending. 

So in a sense, that‘s who the White House has been most aggressively targeting leading up to this, making sure that they stay on the reservation. 

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about your perception.  You‘ve been working up in New York now for the last several years, or months at least, and you were in Washington. 

Is there a sense, as you get away from Washington, especially up in New York—I know this is a tough reporter‘s question, because it‘s about the world you live in up there.  I keep hearing from people that when you live in Manhattan, people in our business, in journalism, you never get this 9/11 thing out of your head, as opposed to down here in Washington, where we just argue politics all the time. 

BROWN:  I think that‘s true.  I think that‘s true for a lot of the country.  And what I was reminded of, frankly, tonight in being here and in being in the chamber for much of the speech, was that the theatrics that go along with this and the camaraderie among members of Congress. 

Even though these lines are so clearly drawn along partisan lines, leading up to the president‘s remarks, for example, you had members of Congress in the chamber, schmoozing each other prior to the speech.  Then you had that group of congressional leaders who left the room, who were going to then escort the president in at the beginning of his speech. 

MATTHEWS:  Right.

BROWN:  And they came into the room and greeted their colleagues as though they hadn‘t seen them in five years. 

MATTHEWS:  I know.  I love that.

BROWN:  And they were in there schmoozing with them five minutes earlier.

MATTHEWS:  I love it.

BROWN:  So you forget, you know, the traditions and the theatrics that go along with events like this, that we‘re not as privy to being here on a daily basis. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes, I think what I saw tonight—I mentioned earlier, Campbell, but I‘ll let you join in with.  They‘re really all pack animals, politicians.  They really like being in a group.  They like it close up and cozy.  And you‘re right.  It was like meeting people after a 20-year college reunion and they‘d just walked out of the room 20 minutes before.  I thought it was great.

Thank you for that observation, Campbell Brown of the “THE TODAY

SHOW.”

BROWN:  You bet. 

MATTHEWS:  Let me—let me go to Andrea Mitchell, foreign affairs correspondent, chief foreign affairs correspondent. 

Andrea, I‘m curious, because I know you have already been to the tickers now for about an hour, trying to pour over this.  What is going to bang around the world overnight and probably has already reached the first editions in London and Paris and the Arab world?

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  Well, first of all, reaching

trying to reach over the head of the ayatollahs, and of Iran‘s radical new president, directly to the Iranian people, calling upon them to reject their own government.  When, by all accounts, this very young populace in Iran is fiercely behind the chauvinistic call for nuclear technology.  This is a point of pride, of nationalism.  And so it is very unrealistic, according to most accounts, for them to really be encouraging this rebellion in Iran. 

But this is very much the theory right now within the administration.  Condoleezza Rice is trying to promote it.  She has just flown back today from London, where she was meting with all the allies, and they took one step forward, by their lights, in pushing toward referring Iran to the U.N.  Security Council. 

MATTHEWS:  All right.

MITCHELL:  As you know, the international group will be meeting on Thursday on that. 

MATTHEWS:  But you know what scares me—or concerns me, I should say, is  that the word—the phrase “regime change” is often used in a Democratic sense and then it becomes a military campaign. 

That was the case in Iraq.  First of all, the people advocated changing that regime of Saddam Hussein, said, let‘s do it by opposition politics.  And then, after 9/11 they said, “No, we can‘t wait for that.  We‘ve got to blow it away with military force.”

Is there a possibility that we‘re hearing the early arguments for military action to knock down that regime in Tehran?

MITCHELL:  I don‘t think so.  I think they feel that, if it‘s going to be knocked down, it has to be from within. 

If there were a military option, Chris, they‘d take it.  They don‘t have one.  They don‘t have a clear shot.  They don‘t know where all the nuclear technology is.  And the ramifications of a military action now, when we are stretched so thin, against Iran, when Iran is positioned where it is in the Middle East just is not a practical—practical option. 

The other thing, on the subject of 9/11, which you were just discussing with Campbell, is we‘re going to hit them—we‘re not going to let them hit us again.  That whole business of calling back 9/11 and the war on terror and framing Iraq and framing, of course, the eavesdropping policy within the 9/11 construct.  So say, you know, we‘re not going to let them—we‘re not going to sit back, in other words, sit back and wait to be hit again.  And that—that received a cheer in the hall. 

Now, as we pointed out before, and as you and Tim and Brian have been pointing out, the cheers in the hall were all completely partisan for almost everything, except for our military.  The few cheers that were joint were for the military in Iraq. 

But you saw the divisions there, and I just don‘t know how he pulls anything together, particularly on the domestic initiative.  But also on these foreign initiatives.  It‘s a year after he said that democracy‘s on the march.  We saw the outcome with the Hamas election, and here again, he‘s repeating that call, but we don‘t see any real evidence that it is pragmatic. 

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Thank you very much, Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News. 

Just to get the point right now that Andrea raised, which is will anything get done legislatively, let‘s go to Chip Reid up on the Hill. 

Chip, that‘s a great question.  I mean, the president touched on a number of hot issues.  Let‘s get away from the big picture stuff.  Let‘s talk about making the Bush tax cuts of 2001, which benefited so many people at the top and near the top, will they be making that permanent?  Will we get—will we get entitlement reform?  Will we get some of the other things the president asked for tonight?

CHIP REID, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  No, no, and no, Chris.  That stuff just isn‘t going to happen this year.  You know, in an election year it‘s almost impossible to get a big agenda through, anyway.  And things are just so bitter up here right now.  It‘s even worse than most election years.

The Democrats are just determined to take this place back in the fall, especially the House.  And everything‘s about November.  Everything is oriented toward making the Republicans look as bad as they can possibly make them look on this so-called culture of corruption and on the issues.  And there‘s just no incentive for the Democrats right now to work with the Republicans to pass Republican priorities.  And certainly, the Republicans aren‘t going to help Democrats help them. 

There‘s only one issue today.  Nancy Pelosi‘s office sent me a press release during this speech.  And they went through their usual litany of criticisms: culture of corruption, once again, he wants health savings accounts for people who can afford to pay money into that, but what‘s he doing about the 40-some million Americans who have no health insurance?  And on and on, the whole litany of criticisms.  And I mean, just ripping into him, just like they‘ve been doing all week. 

But there was one glimmer of optimism, one area where they were talking about bipartisanship, where Nancy Pelosi was and Republicans are, and that is on this new initiative for hi tech, more math, more research.  A lot of people would say, “Yes, but that‘s just not the center of what‘s going on.” 

But you know, it really could be.  It‘s about global competitiveness.  It‘s about hi tech, doing away with our dependence on oil.  Maybe there is something in that area, where they could actually get together and work on something in a bipartisan way.  Well, in theory, at least, it sounds good, but it‘s just hard to imagine. 

I‘ll tell you, when I heard George Bush say even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger, I was just momentarily stunned, because it is so late for something like that.  You don‘t have to spend much time up here on Capitol Hill to know that they have already hardened into anger.  It is just too late for that.  It was just such an odd line to say something like that in the speech, with things as bitter as they are up here right now. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes, you‘ve got to think when the Democrats are thinking proper nouns, you know, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove...

REID:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  ... when they hear the St. Francis of Assisi argument from the president, they must wonder, “Wait a minute.  You guys are tougher than we are.”

REID:  Exactly.

MATTHEWS:  “You‘re better at it than we are.” 

REID:  Exactly.  The Democrats just think they‘re playing fire with fire.  They are finally getting—trying to be as tough with the Republicans.  And the Democrats have been just brutal recently. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes.  Well, anyway, thank you very much, Chip Reid up on the Hill, who knows his stuff up there. 

REID:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  Thank you.

Now we‘re joined by former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani. 

Mr. Giuliani, thank you for joining you.  Mr. Mayor...

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY:  Thank you, Chris.

MATTHEWS:  ... I‘ve been saying for a long time, and I think the president‘s people must think a lot harder about it, that the next president of the United States is going to be even more on the ball than this president when it comes to terrorism, which brings to mind the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.  Is this the issue of our time, terrorism and security?

GIULIANI:  Well, the president was really on the ball about terrorism tonight.  And he has been throughout his administration.  I can‘t think of someone that could have articulated it better, what‘s at stake, what we‘re doing, the long term vision, the reason for the terrorist surveillance program. 

I thought the president was very, very good tonight at explaining what he‘s doing and why he‘s doing it, particularly on terrorism. 

And I thought he was very, very bold to talk about more energy independence and particularly his statement about Americans being addicted to oil.  I think that was a—that was kind of a surprising statement, but one that I think can really set a goal for the president, that‘s somewhat different than he‘s had before. 

MATTHEWS:  Do you own a car?

GIULIANI:  Do I own a car?

MATTHEWS:  Yes, do you drive?

GIULIANI:  Sure.  Absolutely. 

MATTHEWS:  I thought you were a big-city guy.  I thought you were a New Yorker.  I thought New Yorkers used the train, the subway, that sort of thing?

GIULIANI:  Well, yes.  I can‘t say that I drive as much as the average American living in Manhattan, but actually, I like to drive for relaxation.  It‘s—because I don‘t get to do it very much.  You can‘t drive too far in Manhattan. 

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about one of the problems with the president.  I will now play devil‘s advocate, and I‘m sure you‘ll be able to handle me. 

One of the concerns of people who have no political bent whatever must have in these times is the element of surprise.  Nine eleven was a horrible surprise...

GIULIANI:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  ... even though a month before the president has been given a presidential daily briefing note that said bin Laden to attack within the United States. 

Certainly, the fact that there were no WMD‘s in Iraq once we got there was a surprise.  Maybe a pleasant surprise, but a confounding one.  The fact that there was going to be a war on your hands after the president declared “mission accomplished” was a surprise we didn‘t like at all.  It cost us a couple thousand guys and many arms and legs by the thousands. 

The fact that Hamas, after we struggled to get an election in that territory on the West Bank, gets elected in a landslide was a surprise.  Condi Rice said that the other day.  Shouldn‘t an administration that‘s got all this surveillance equipment and all this information and people around the world be less surprised than these people have been all these years?

GIULIANI:  The fact is that the evaluation of intelligence is an art, got a science.  And you know, you try to gather as much intelligence as you can.  You try to figure out what‘s going on inside a country. 

I think particularly the prediction of September 11 is the most understandable.  I mean, I lived through it.  I remember it, and I remember how horrible it was.  But I think pre-September 11 it probably was hard to understand the significance of a lot of the things that you were hearing. 

And I think one of the reasons the Patriot Act was passed and has to be reauthorized and the one of the reasons why the president has authorized a terrorist surveillance program in the United States, is he has he wants to avoid that surprise in the future. 

And he realizes how tenuous it is, how difficult it is, that no matter how much you search and how much you look, you can miss the piece of information that connects all the dots.  And I think that it‘s a little bit disingenuous to be criticizing the president for the terrorist surveillance program and then also criticizing...

MATTHEWS:  Right.

GIULIANI:  ... because he may have missed September 1 or he may have gotten weapons of mass destruction wrong. 

MATTHEWS:  He made that point, yes.  He made that point tonight.  The president made that very point tonight. 

GIULIANI:  I think President Bush is doing exactly what a President Lincoln or President Roosevelt would have been done in those circumstances.  And I think this is very weak around the Democrats, when they attack him for it. 

MATTHEWS:  Well, let me ask you about a problem that has nothing to do with bipartisanship.  About half the issue is on one side of the issue, and half‘s on the other side.  It‘s so close and it never changes.  It‘s always about 50-50 whether we should have gone to war in Iraq. 

Now, the president implied tonight that the reason we went is because we have to go after these tyrannical states.  We have to bring them down, because they harbor terrorists.

The problem with that argument, if you do it narrowly, is the guys who attacked us on 9/11 may have had some support from the Taliban people in Afghanistan, but the smart guys on those planes, those killer planes, were from Egypt.  And a lot of the thugs they brought aboard were from Saudi Arabia, two allies of ours. 

So can we say that going to war in Afghanistan and in Iraq is in any way a response to being hit by guys from our friendly countries, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

GIULIANI:  Yes, Chris.  This is—was my view pre-the Afghanistan war and even ore-the Iraq war.  When I was dealing with the attacks of September 11 and thinking about what we should do about it, moments I had to think about that, it seemed to me we had to approach this by deconstructing the world terrorist movement. 

And it seemed to me logical that one of our targets would be Saddam Hussein.  He was one of the big supporters of terrorism.  He had—he had the possibility of having weapons of mass destruction.  He had attempted to develop nuclear weapons in the past, which put him kind of in a different category than even some of the other terrorists. 

It seemed to me on a sort of scale of what we had to accomplish in the three or four years after, you know, 2001, one of the things that we‘d have to do was take out Saddam Hussein.  That was a critical piece in deconstructing world terrorism. 

MATTHEWS:  But you‘re wrong on one point there.  Mayor, you‘re wrong, because—let me just make this historic point, which is factual. 

Osama bin Laden offered the Saudi Arabian government his strength, his powers, to the extent he had them, to defend them if there was an attack by Iraq, by Saddam Hussein. 

Before all this hell has broken loose the last couple of years, before we went to war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein and Islam and bin Laden were enemies.  We brought them together.  But how can you say that Saddam Hussein was in league with bin Laden, when bun bin offered Saudi Arabia to defend them against him?

But you‘re focusing too much on just bin Laden.  Bin Laden is important, bin Laden has to be pursued, bin Laden has to be - power has to be taken away from him.  But the reality is there‘s a vast movement, that if you just reduce bin Laden‘s power, there still are elements of the world terrorist movement that threaten us, that have attacked us in the past.

MATTHEWS:  Certainly.

GIULIANI:  And that could attack us in the future.  So you‘ve got to take a whole network apart. 

And I thought the administration focused on that, you know, right after September 11, very effectively when they seized bank accounts, they arrested people.  People are asking me a question I don‘t know completely the answer to: why haven‘t we had numerous terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001?  Everyone assumed it.  I was being told that would happen by very responsible sources. 

I believe one of the reasons that we haven‘t is that we‘ve had an aggressive, multifaceted attack on terrorism, which means that we‘re not just focusing on bin Laden.  Yes, we‘re focusing on bin Laden, but we‘re focusing on the entire terrorist movement.  And if we‘re going to deconstruct terrorism, we have to do that.

And I think the problem that—that was created was we put so much emphasis on weapons of mass destruction when there were 10 other good reasons to remove Saddam Hussein, that that has now become kind of the criticism of the argument. 

MATTHEWS:  Did you know the president...

GIULIANI:  The other nine reasons were more important than the weapons of mass destruction. 

MATTHEWS:  The president said something really astounding tonight.  I don‘t know if you were privy to it.  This information, that two of the killers of 9/11, two of the hijackers—he didn‘t give their names—were on the telephone.  They were sleepers here in the United States.  They were in sleeper cells, talking to people over in that part of the world where this terror came from. 

And we could have nailed them if we‘d used better surveillance or when you had more access to the electronic transfers of information, where in fact, we‘re tapping them.  Were you surprised that we were that close to knowing the situation?  We knew they were on the phone, for example, but we didn‘t have the electronic tap on them. 

GIULIANI:  I‘ve never heard it quite that way before, so I can‘t tell you that I knew that we were that close or we weren‘t. 

I do know about the FBI agent, the FBI agent who wanted to—who wanted to contact the people on the criminal side in the FBI with the information that he had, and was prevented from doing it because of the wall that took place.

And it seems to me that the Patriot Act, taking that wall down, gives us a protection against that happening in the future. 

And the ability that, if you have a certain amount of information, sort of an instinct, that somebody‘s going to engage in terrorism, that now there‘s more of a capacity to act on that, where in the past there were a lot the prohibitions before the Patriot Act.  But the exact situation you‘re talking about, I‘m not aware of that.

MATTHEWS:  So now we can use surveillance and we can use counter espionage, counterintelligence, basically, to pick up bad guys and prosecute them?

GIULIANI:  Yes.  And we can have the intelligence agents and the FBI talk to the people who do criminal investigations.  When we weren‘t allowed to do that in the past for some period of time. 

And there are agents in the FBI that believe if they were able to do that, there might have been a chance to appreciate the attack.  No one will ever know the answer to that.  And somehow I think that kind of reconstruction, you know, is—maybe it‘s helpful to try to avoid problems in the past, but you‘re never sure you‘re right about that. 

MATTHEWS:  You know, I hear through the grapevine, Mr. Mayor, that you were drawing inordinate crowds out in the country, especially in the Southeast.  You‘ve been touring the country, going to big cities in the South, all around the South.  And you‘re getting tremendous reaction from people.  I heard you had, like $7,000 at one event, $17,000 at the other.  These are crowds the president can‘t even draw, probably, in a good day. 

You went to the evangelicals.  You‘re looking like—dare I say it—a candidate for president.  Under the radar but definitely a candidate.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR:  It‘s a lot easier—it‘s  a lot easier to draw crowds and be popular, when you‘re not in office, because you don‘t have to make decisions.  I remember when I was mayor, every time you make a decision, half the people would disagree with you. 

MATTHEWS:  I understand that people that can‘t even spell “Giuliani,” know the name Rudy, and they like you.  And you really have a shot at being the next president of the United States. 

GIULIANI:  I always liked it better when I was running for mayor, when people started calling me Rudy, because I thought I‘d have a chance they‘d vote for me.  So—and the movie really came out the year that I got elected mayor and every once in awhile I watch it again on cable.  And I say thank goodness it came out at exactly the right time. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes, but you went to Manhattan, not Notre Dame, right?

GIULIANI:  That‘s right.  But you know, if you grew up, going to Catholic schools, everybody was a Notre Dame fan. 

MATTHEWS:  What do you think, Mr. Mayor—and I know you‘ve been very tough on these crimes like breaking windows and squeegee operators.  You like to stop crime at the lowest level to prevent any kind of escalation. 

GIULIANI:  The broken window. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes.  This is more of a Catholic school hall monitor issue.  What did you make of the senator from New York, the junior senator, chewing gum in the House of Representatives while the president was giving a speech?

What do you make of that?

GIULIANI:  I didn‘t notice that she was chewing gum. 

MATTHEWS:  She was. 

GIULIANI:  I saw her smiling a few times.  I didn‘t notice that she was chewing gum.

MATTHEWS:  Well, do you think that might be, like, a broken window situation?

GIULIANI:  I know—I know—I don‘t know that she was chewing gum.  I remember a couple times when I was chewing gum at St. Antony‘s (ph) grammar school, and it hurt.  The response was a very difficult one.  But I don‘t know that she was chewing gum. 

MATTHEWS: She‘s doing something there.  Anyway, thank you very much.  If I‘m wrong, I‘ll correct myself tomorrow night.  But I think she had a wad in there.  Anyway, thank you, Mr. Mayor. 

Straight up (ph), Rudy Giuliani on, much more reaction and an analysis of tonight, the serious stuff.  We‘re getting back to this day (ph).  And by the way, if we check that video out more, maybe I‘m wrong. 

You‘re watching HARDBALL‘S live coverage on MSNBC. 

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  Members of Congress, however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our nation has only one option.  We must keep our word, defeat our enemies and stand behind the American military in this vital mission. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH:  Abroad our nation is committed to an historic long-term goal.  We seek the end of tyranny in our world.  Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism.  In reality the future security of America depends on it.  On September 11^th, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed an oppressive state.  7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS:  Well let‘s go back to Gene Robinson of “The Washington Post” and of course Joe Scarborough of “Scarborough Country.”  That was a powerful statement.  I will contend if we argue about it for years, but it‘s a powerful statement.  In order to fight terrorism we must go to other countries that have failed systems and bring them down and replace them with democracy.  I didn‘t hear the democrats offer up a big response tonight.  

ROBINSON:  They hardly said anything about it at all.  I mean it was, Tim Kaine standing their giving a response, it was as if there were an elephant in the room.  He did stop for a second and say nice elephant and continued to move on.  And actually I don‘t see how the democrats can conduct the campaign this year, to say nothing of 2008, without addressing the issue in some way.

I think what is now being called the terrorist surveillance program is actually a good place to start.  I mean I don‘t think most Americans really like the idea of domestic surveillance by the NSA.  But if they allow the president to frame the issue as a terrorist surveillance program, well who in the world could possibly be against that?

MATTHEWS:  Well, tonight he did just that, Gene, and he said there were two of the 9/11 19 hijackers who killed the 3,000 people and attacked the Pentagon right near here—and he implied we would  have nabbed them and stopped the whole thing if we‘d had this kind of surveillance then.  

ROBINSON:  But of course they could have done the surveillance and then sought a warrant, under the FISA statute 72 hours later or whatever.  I mean he didn‘t really deal with any of the inconsistencies involved in the program.  Which I think really concerns people.  I think the democrats would have been smart to go at that issue. 

MATTHEWS:  Do you think the NSA is still a contentious issue that we haven‘t decided who‘s going to win on?

SCARBOROUGH:  No, it‘s not.  You know it‘s interesting—

MATTHEWS:  You think it‘s a win for Bush? 

SCARBOROUGH:  It‘s a win for Bush.  (inaudible) on the judiciary committee while Bill Clinton was president, was offended by a lot of the roving wiretaps, you have libertarians with the ACLU getting together.  And what I found out very quickly when I was fighting those roving wiretaps, Americans don‘t care.  They believe, for the most part, if you abide by the law, you got nothing to worry about.  I think it‘s a --  

MATTHEWS:  Well you know Mrs. Martin Luther King just passed away, and not to go over that, it‘s a sad day of course, the woman died.  But, you know what, that was an issue for a lot of the 60‘s and 70‘s and 80‘s. 

SCARBOROUGH:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  Wiretapping of Martin Luther King by the Kennedy administration.  

SCARBOROUGH:  It‘s a long time ago.

MATTHEWS:  And you don‘t think that has still fire power when you‘re being tapped?

SCARBOROUGH:  I don‘t think it does in middle America.  I‘ll tell you what, Jon Meacham said that the democrats, and I thought Kaine‘s response, just like I said before, was pathetic.  Not because of this man, but because it‘s always milquetoast.  I disagree with Jon Meacham who says Democrats don‘t have a platform to run on that they can unite their people by. 

If I‘m a Democrat and I‘m running anywhere in America, I talk about the culture of corruption that has risen in Republican Washington, I talk about the culture of waste, the biggest deficits ever, the biggest debts ever, under a Republican administration.  And I talk about the fact that Americans are dying across the world and we‘ve got a president and a Congress that really still can‘t tell us why it is they‘re dying. 

Now, on that third issue, I take exception with that.  But those three messages, hammered home for the next 10 months, wins Congress for them.  Why can‘t they do that?  Why do they put Kaine up there? I have to tell you, I fell asleep two minutes into it.  Why can‘t they just say what they believe in?  That‘s how you win elections.  I always tell people running for office, it doesn‘t matter what you say, Americans aren‘t that ideological, would go nine miles an hour going forward, believe what you say and keep hammering it home, and you will win.  Democrats.

MATTHEWS:  You know that there‘s an answer to this question, I‘m going to try it with Gene.  The answer is on the war in Iraq, that four out of five democrats looking at every poll are completely against the war, they think we should have never gone, they think it‘s horrendous, they‘ll say worst than a mistake, it was a blunder and it was awful.  Their leaders will not take that position, A, because some of them want to be president some day and their hedging their bets, they want to look like moderates.  The other is a lot of the more conservative democrats who contribute to campaigns, like the war.  There is a real division in the party.   

SCARBOROUGH:  John Kerry didn‘t take that position last year.  

MATTHEWS:  Why don‘t the Democrats oppose the war, if they oppose the war?

(LAUGHTER)

SCARBOROUGH:  That‘s the question of the last two years.  

ROBINSON:  That‘s the question, if they oppose the war.  I think there‘s a split in the Democratic Party, but I think they‘re nervous about it.  They don‘t want to come of as not supporting the troops.  They want to come off, and it‘s difficult, you know once you voted for the resolution, it‘s very difficult to say that well I voted for it, but I meant to authorize—what Kerry tried to say. 

MATTHEWS:  When the president read the letter from the soldier who was killed in the war, it‘s very hard not to emotionally say, no mas, I don‘t want to argue about the war right now, for at least a few minutes, out of respect for the soldiers who died .

ROBINSON:  . you know why are they dying? I think that is a way to frame it.  

SCARBOROUGH:  And the thing is, the Republicans‘ weakness and the White House may not like that, is the fact that you‘ve got a president who‘s not the most articulate guy in the world, and the fact that the person in the United States Congress who has best delivered the message on why we‘re in Iraq, Tony Blair.  When he gave that speech, and you sat there and then you said, oh yeah, that‘s why we‘re over there.  But the president‘s not delivering it articulately. 

MATTHEWS:  So the English can teach their children how to speak?

SCARBOROUGH:  I hope so.  There might be help for all of us.  But because there‘s a problem with articulating that message, Democrats should hammer home .

MATTHEWS:  Let me get through this, Joe Scarborough, maybe Rahm Emmanuel who was on tonight, the head of the Democratic Campaign Committee, is still listening. You said there are three opportunities, number one culture of corruption.  Number two.

SCARBOROUGH:  That‘s how we beat Democrats in 1994.  Number two, the second way we beat Democrats, said there was a culture of waste, the biggest deficits ever, the biggest debts ever, the biggest wasteful spending ever, the most earmarks ever, that‘s how we beat democrats in 1994.  And number three, our guys are dying all over the world for reasons we don‘t know.  Republicans talked about on Bosnia, we talked about it on Kosovo, we talked about it on Clinton rule.  

MATTHEWS:  See and I think the answer why the Democrats can‘t come out against waste is they have a whole shopping list of things they want to spend money on the minute they get in there.  

ROBINSON:  Sure, they got to get in there. 

SCARBOROUGH:  You know, you don‘t have to mean it.  Just say it.  That‘s how they got elected.  The same people that got elected in 1994, running against corruption, running against waste... 

MATTHEWS:  Gene, you‘ve got a stronger hand here than he‘s allowing you to admit.  You don‘t have a couple deuces in your deck.  The latest polling shows that the Democratic Party, not that you‘re here representing them, but the Democratic Party has about a nine-point lead in who people are going to vote for, for Congress this year.  That‘s enough to win back the House if it holds. 

ROBINSON:  If it holds, yes, if it holds and if it‘s distributed in the right way.  I mean, you know, if you could take that advantage and spread it over all the congressional races you‘d do well. 

MATTHEWS:  If it‘s not just being rolled up in New York and California?

ROBINSON:  Exactly. 

SCARBOROUGH:  It‘s all brand x stuff, though.  When you get on the campaign trail and I‘m running against you .

ROBINSON:  Exactly, if you.

SCARBOROUGH:  You know what I say, I say OK buddy, what are you going to do on Iraq?  Oh you‘re against the culture corruption, how did you vote.  If you don‘t believe anything, I‘m going to hammer you all across the district. 

MATTHEWS:  So why do people say, in our own poll, “The Wall Street Journal” “NBC” poll, we just got it in our hands yesterday, that they like the democrats‘ policies, they like the republicans‘ leaders? 

SCARBOROUGH:  Well they do.  It‘s a brand x thing and again, that‘s why democrats need to step forward and say this is what we believe in and don‘t allow jackasses like me to chase them around districts beating them up, saying, “Where do you stand on education.”  And again, I‘ve been saying for some time, you can‘t beat something with nothing.  And right now the Democrats are offering this mishmash, they‘ve got it clear --  I‘ve given them three talking points.

ROBINSON:  Speaking of, you know you don‘t have to actually believe it, you talked about ..

SCARBOROUGH:  You can run for office. 

ROBINSON:  The president talked about our addiction to oil and seemed to, I don‘t think he actually uttered the phrase energy independence, but that seemed to be what he was trying to say.  Yet I detected no substance in what he said other than well we‘re going to invent some new stuff and some new technology and that‘s going to -- 

MATTHEW:  Cheney doesn‘t like that, does he? Cheney, he‘s an oil patch guy.

ROBINSON:  Cheney doesn‘t even like the new technology.

MATTHEW:  He said conservation is sort of a moral issue, it‘s not really important.

ROBINSON:  But of course there are things that could be done, for example, fuel economy standards with some teeth in them.  And that‘s a technology we know how to make work now.  That would save a lot of oil and go a long.

SCARBOROUGH:  You‘re right.

MATTHEWS:  You know the people are responding faster than the politicians, because you guys, SUV sales have come down, because people are realizing when you have to pay what, three bucks a gallon or two-and-a-half a gallon, filling that tank is a lot of money.  So people are adjusting here.  

SCARBOROUGH:  And this is an issue also that you brought up, energy independence.  More and more Americans are saying wait a second, why is that we are still dependent on these regimes that are using our money to build weapons that could possibly kill us? 

ROBINSON:  Or using our money to fund jihads .

SCARBOROUGH:  George Bush and Dick Cheney and the oil patch Republicans are way behind the curve, you wait and see.  If Giuliani runs, when McCain runs, they‘re all going to be talking about raising the energy efficient standards, they‘re going to talk about energy independence.  It will happen.  

MATTHEWS:  Why do people always demure when you say this war in Iraq has a lot to do with oil, when in fact common sense will tell you if Kenya went to war, I hope it never happens, with Tanzania, we‘d never get involved.  If Chad got involved with (inaudible), we‘d never get involved.  If Argentina went to war with Paraguay, we wouldn‘t get involved.  We‘re not interested in that part of the world because of economics, so why do we deny that?

SCARBOROUGH:  Two million people die in Sudan in a civil war over the past 10 years, Rwanda, we all know what happened in Rwanda over the course of a year, completely ignored.  If there was oil in Rwanda, if there was oil in Sudan, we would have been there in five minutes.  People are still dying in Sudan every single day, but there‘s no oil there, not a lot to speak of.  

MATTHEWS:  Why do people stop back from the economic—remember James Baker, who was secretary of state, secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, the Bush administration?  He said the reason we went to the first Iraq war after the invasion of Kuwait was jobs, jobs, jobs.  It was economics, it was oil.  Why does this administration always point to philosophy as the reason we go to war?

SCARBOROUGH:  Because of 9/11.  The president believes exactly what he said, which is we can no longer come inside the border and say okay, well let the Israelis and the Palestinians kill themselves all they want, it‘s not our problem. 

MATTHEWS:  So what are you saying, we‘re doing this for oil or we‘re not doing it for oil? 

SCARBOROUGH:  Well we‘re doing it for oil and we‘re also doing it because people that have a lot of oil are also able to fuel a jihad that could level Washington, D.C. and Manhattan.  

MATTHEWS:  In every house in America, why are we there, as you asked, it‘s still a profound question, that isn‘t fully answered by any of these people.  When we come back, Joe will be right back, we‘ll look at the president‘s state of the union by the numbers.  This will be a lighter take.  How many words did he use, what buzzwords and themes did he emphasize tonight? 

We‘re going to count them up, reporter David Shuster‘s going to be with us to do it from the bar across the street, Bistro B‘s, a hot spot right here in Washington.  Plus MSNBC‘s Tucker Carlson, you‘re watching HARDBALL‘s live coverage of the state of the union and we continue through the night. 

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BUSH:  I am confident in our plan for victory, I am confident in the will of the Iraqi people.   I am confident in the skill and spirit of our military.  Fellow citizens we are in this fight to win and we are winning.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

MATTHEWS:  Welcome back to HARDBALL‘S extended coverage of the State of the Union.  HARDBALL correspondent David Shuster has a look at the president‘s address tonight by the numbers, literally by the numbers.  He‘s going to talk about the words tonight and he joins us now from Bistro B which is a—actually it‘s a wonderful restaurant, about a four star right across the street from us on Capitol Hill. David?

DAVID SHUSTER, HARDBALL CORRESPONDENT:  Chris right now it‘s occupied by a group of people from a shipping company in California, in fact let‘s ask them.  What did you guys think of the president‘s speech tonight, thumbs up or thumbs down? 

UNIDENTIFIED MEN:  Outstanding. 

SHUSTER:  The reason I think they‘re saying outstanding Chris is they actually have some business from the administrations here, I can‘t get any criticism from them.  But in any case, I guess we‘re welcome to the B.  The speech Chris tonight was 51 minutes and it was interrupted by applause according to our count, 64 times.  We talked earlier tonight about the key words and phrases we were expecting to here from the president tonight. 

Let‘s start with foreign policy.  The top word was terror.  The president used the word terror, terrorist or terrorism 19 times.  He mentioned the word freedom 17, Iraq 16, security 10, Iran six, and democracy, three.  When you look at some of the key words and phrases on domestic policy issues, the president talked about the economy or economic issues 11 times, reform nine, hopeful nine, history seven, health care two, social security three, and remember Chris he mentioned social security 18 times a year ago.

Now, as far as how the speech was divided in terms of priorities, we counted 256 sentences, only seven of those sentences were on Iran, 35 were on Iraq.  So, five times as much of the speech, at least according to sentence count, was focused on Iraq, as opposed to Iran.  Now we‘ve also been tracking the blogs here tonight and with me is our esteemed correspondent Tom Curry, national affairs correspondent for MSNBC.com. 

And Tom you wrote what I thought was one of the funniest blogs tonight, and it was the moment when Judge Alito was with Justice Breyer or Justice Alito, and they met somebody that apparently Alito didn‘t know.  Tell us about that?

TOM CURRY, MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT:  Right at the beginning of  the speech before the president  started speaking, the cabinet came in and I believe it was Treasury Secretary John Snow who was introducing himself to Justice Alito and Justice Breyer.  And you could tell from Alito‘s face that he didn‘t know who this tall ball headed man was.  And then Breyer seemed to lean over to him and explain to him who John Snow was.  Breyer was serving as his buddy, Alito‘s the new guy and Breyer was the old veteran, being at the state of the union address.  So he was trying to help the new guy. 

SHUSTER:  And that is a blog you will only see on MSNBC.com courtesy of Tom Curry.  Now Tom, we both have been talking about how the blogs have been talking a lot about Hillary Clinton‘s reaction to the president when the president was talking about the NSA, the eavesdropping program.  Tell us a little bit about what we‘ve seen?

CURRY:  Yes, the conservative bloggers picked up the Hillary Clinton reaction shot, which you saw in the network.  And she had a kind of puzzling smile on her face and she was shaking her head slightly, when the president was saying that this program was appropriately briefed to the appropriate members of Congress.  He was defending the program and said it had prior legal precedence behind it.  She seemed very skeptical and had kind of a funny grin on her face, so the bloggers picked up that. 

SHUSTER:  And the other thing about it, some of the bloggers also talked about the actual language the president used when the president said that the appropriate members of Congress had been kept informed and some of the liberal bloggers complained, well, actually the non partisan congressional research service says that those briefings were not within the law. 

But in any case, another issue that‘s getting a lot of attention by both liberal and conservative blogs has to do with this applause line, that when the democrats suddenly stood up in applause when the president was talking about social security, what are we seeing about that? 

CURRY:  The bloggers on the left are saying who is the genius who put in that perfect applause line for the democrats to allow them to take credit for defeating the social security proposal last year?  The right wing bloggers were saying, oh it‘s just the democrats applauding their own failure to fix a growing problem with this entitlement program.  So that moment which you saw clearly on camera got a lot of commentary.  

SHUSTER:  Tom Curry, thanks as always, it‘s always a pleasure to watch any political event with you.  And Chris, that is the story from Bistro B.  Again, bloggers are going wild and the shipping company that we‘ve been asked not to identify, they are not drinking at the bar, just to clarify—

Chris.

MATTHEWS:  OK thank you very much, David Shuster.  Up next, Norah O‘Donnell‘s right here already with Tucker Carlson, they‘ll be joining us to talk about this tonight as the brains begin to settle in on the key facts of tonight‘s speech.  You‘re watching HARDBALL‘s live coverage of the state of the union on MSNBC.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BUSH:  Because America needs more than a temporary expansion, we need more than temporary tax relief.  I urge the congress to act responsibly and make the tax  cuts permanent.  

(END VIDEOCLIP)

MATTHEWS:  We‘re joined now by MSNBC‘s chief  Washington correspondent Norah O‘Donnell, the host of  “SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY” on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, an unlikely name for—And CNBC‘s Ron Insana, who knows what he‘s talking about.  He‘s the host of “THE SITUATION”—no offense, Tucker Carlson‘s also joining us.  Let me ask you about the, first of all, quickly, making the tax cut permanent, is that likely to happen?

RON INSANA, CNBC ANCHOR:  Not this year.  I mean the president might get an extension to fix the alternative minimum tax so that we don‘t go from six million people who paid it this year to 16 million people who‘ll pay it next year.  There might be some work around the edges on tax issues, but probably not a permanent extension of the tax cuts, not in an election year, not right now. 

MATTHEWS:  So there‘s nothing really great news out there for the investment class, as republicans call it? 

INSANA:  Well the investment class for now has capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent, that‘ll last until 2008.  The president‘s been trying to get them to 2010, so at least there‘s a couple years left on those things that make investments on Wall Street pretty attractive.  

MATTHEWS:  So it‘s still better to have money than to work for it?

INSANA:  Always. 

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about this energy thing because we‘ve been hearing, since I remember Jerry Ford used to talk about, you know, about getting rid of our dependence on foreign oil.  Jimmy Carter had us wearing sweaters with the thermometer down.  Nothing ever happened.

INSANA:  The president used the word addicted to oil, I mean that phrase, that‘s going to be a headline tomorrow.  By the same token I think if there were to be—if this were to be taken extremely seriously, you‘d see a response in the oil market tomorrow.  If this was a $200 billion program, a marshal plan for energy that would wean us off petroleum dependence in the next five to 10 years, oil prices would fall precipitously, and there‘s no reason to believe that that‘s going to happen, it doesn‘t look like it --  

MATTHEWS:  How do you as a market reader read how the market will read it tomorrow? 

INSANA:  That probably is a nonstarter.  I mean you know there are obviously some proposals that make sense, I mean moving towards hydrogen fuel cells, moving toward hybrid batteries that have longer power, you know longer shelf life.  All those things are already happening in the private marketplace, but by 2025, you know that‘s still 19 years out, the oil market‘s not going to discount that tomorrow.  If the president said by 2012, 2015 we‘re going to reduce our petroleum dependence by 75 percent, that would be a much bigger deal. 

MATTHEWS:  We had the chairman of the democratic congressional campaign committee from Illinois Rahm Emmanuel, a new member of congress, actually not that new, but he was a Clinton aid before that.   And he said the oil companies like Exxon made $33 billion this past year.  That‘s a lot of money.  He said we should tax them and  use that money to provide for an energy transformation program where we don‘t rely that much on oil.  Any chance of that happening? 

INSANA:  Not a chance in the world.  I mean one of the things that was very interesting was that -- (laughter) first of all I mean you did not hear President Bush say we‘re going to drill in Alaska.  You did not hear him talk about—

MATTHEWS:  But aren‘t we already approved that, we‘re already on course for that?

INSANA:  Well that was in the budget reconciliation bill, but that hasn‘t gone through all the way.  But he didn‘t make any other statements about domestic exploration production.  He did not throw out any sobs to the oil industry when Exxon made more than $10 billion in the fourth quarter.

MATTHEWS:  And no efficiency standards—

INSANA:  . on a $100 billion revenue.

MATTHEWS:  And no efficiency standards?

INSANA:  He didn‘t mention that either.

MATTHEWS:  So where is the reality in this bag of energy conservation programs, where is the reality?

INSANA:  Well a lot of it‘s happening already in the private

marketplace.  Of course you know, the demand for hybrid cars is already

seeking the supply -

MATTHEWS:  That‘s what I was thinking about earlier.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST:  Sure.  That‘s what I was talking about earlier.

RON INSANA, CNBC:  So that technology‘s coming along.

The administration, according to one economic official I spoke with this morning, thinks we are on the cutting edge now of making some real technological breakthroughs.

But by anyone‘s account, we are five to 10 years out before that stuff unfolds.

MATTHEWS:  Everyone‘s retirement plan, no matter where they work, has and I‘ve learned this by talking about public policy for a number of years.

Social security, even though it‘s not adequate for a lot of people, in fact, it‘s tough to live on social security, is the bottom basis for most people‘s retirement programs.  You get social security, on top of that you get a company pension of come kind, if you‘re lucky, or a 401K.

The president basically, again tonight, said these entitlement programs are going to hell in a hand basket.  They‘re not going to last through the boomer period.  They‘re not going to last through us.  What‘s that going to do to the market?

INSANA:  Nothing.

MATTHEWS:  I mean, look, they‘ve already discounted that.

INSANA:  The market‘s got this pretty well wired.  And, if you talk to really smart people like at the Federal Reserve for instance, they think social security can be fixed in 15 minutes in a room where people come up with a couple of simple, smart ideas.

MATTHEWS:  Higher taxes.

INSANA:  Well, not necessarily.  You know, indexing for longevity, you know, they‘re raising retirement age.  We‘re all living on average now to 77, 78.  If you were 65 in 2001, you‘re going to live another 18 years...

MATTHEWS:  That‘s a better idea if you‘re a senior partner at a law firm and you can fiddle around in the office.

INSANA:  Right, if you‘re not a blue...

MATTHEWS:  But if you‘re driving a truck or a forklift, or you‘re working carrying bags of cement all day, you don‘t really want to be doing that into your 70‘s.

INSANA:  Right.  Right.

No, but by the same token, our economy‘s not quite constructed that way anymore as it was 30 or 40 years ago.  You know, manufacturing is less than 14 percent of the economic output where services is the bulk.

MATTHEWS:  So if you‘re going to whack away at a keyboard you can do it through your 70‘s?

INSANA:  With any luck, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  So you have just given a depressing report.

INSANA:  Medicare‘s the real problem. Medicare‘s the real problem.

MATTHEWS:  And that is the economic impact statement of tonight‘s speech is a big fat goose egg as far as you‘re concerned.

INSANA:  Well, not necessarily.  I mean, I think there were some very interesting themes.  Whether or not the president can get them through Congress, you know, in his current state where he is somewhat politically weakened is an open question.

But there are some nice ideas in there with respect to competitiveness, with energy efficiency.  Those are all, you know, lofty ideals.  Whether or not their passable this year is probably a little less likely.

MATTHEWS:  Joe, what do you think of that?  The president came through; you were pointing out that the Democrats had a lack of substance to their battle cry tonight.  Does the president has a lack of real cargo in terms of policy on the domestic front?

JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST, “SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY”:  On the domestic front, yes.  I mean, when you talk about economic policies, obviously the president‘s going to keep pushing for tax cuts and pushing to make it permanent.  How big of an issue will that be in the 2006 election, probably not much.

And when the president starts talking about energy efficiency and getting off of oil dependency, nobody believes it.

MATTHEWS:  They just don‘t believe...

SCARBOROUGH:  Listen, I mean, he‘s from a different culture.  I mean, he‘s from a Texas culture and Cheney‘s...

MATTHEWS:  So the clapping is for the cameras?

SCARBOROUGH:  The clapping is for the cameras.  You know, the president also talked about hydrogen cell cars back in 2003.  God, I mean, that really went a long way.

But there‘s no doubt that this is—he is on the leading edge, though, of this issue.  By 2008, you are going to have Republicans and Democrats alike talking about raising the energy efficiency standards and doing a lot of different things to get us off the dependency of oil.

MATTHEWS:  I want to exploit your reporting because you were up there and none of us were.  Up there with the former house chamber, which is called the Statuary Hall.  I was asking—I prepped you because I really think this is wild.

Who was most interested in getting to the cameras tonight after the speech?

NORAH O‘DONNELL, MSNBC CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT:  Republicans.

MATTHEWS:  Not Democrats?

O‘DONNELL:  Not Democrats.

MATTHEWS:  And what‘s that tell you about that earnestness?

O‘DONNELL:  Well, it‘s interesting because Republicans have been anxious and dismayed and worried about these mid-term elections.  They need the president.  They need his numbers to go up so it helps their own numbers.

But a lot of them liked this speech a lot.  They like a strong confident president on the offense.  And they like this proposal, you know, to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.  But, you know, you know what it is?  You asked me earlier today, “What‘s going to be the headline in tomorrow‘s paper?”

MATTHEWS:  Right.

O‘DONNELL:  That‘s going to be one of the headlines.  That, and asking for more teachers in high schools.  Those are the domestic big headlines.

That‘s what this proposal was.  A lot of them though, “Oh, that‘s pretty good.  You know, I like it.”  There was sort of this sort of gauzy wonderful feeling that was going on.

MATTHEWS:  I love it.  So all this talk that hear and all the constitutional debates over the role of Article I or the Congress and Article II, the executive, and they always say we have to protect the privileges of Article I, the Congress.  They really want a big brother in the White House?

O‘DONNELL:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  They love the fact that a big tough president comes up there and says, “(INAUDIBLE) old man.”  And pushes the program for them.

O‘DONNELL:  I also think in some ways too this was, to some degree, a partisan speech.  The president started it off by saying, “We need to act in a spirit of good will.”  And then he said, “We have a choice to make in this country.”

And he really hit the Democrats hard by saying, you know, “Second guessing is not a strategy on Iraq.”  And hit them hard about we‘re going to win, et cetera, et cetera.  That‘s what the party wants to hear.

However, I mean, the White House believes, if you tell the American people, “Look, there‘s victory.  There‘s light at the end of the tunnel.  This is how we‘ll win.”  They‘ve gone back.  They‘ve done the historical research.  They believe the American people will stick with them.

That‘s fine, but they‘ve been trying to do that several months and the polls, our own MSNBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, suggests they‘re still having some trouble.

(CROSSTALK)

They‘re nervous.  They‘re nervous.  I mean, I was on the floor before the speech and actually through the first half of the speech. 

Republicans...

MATTHEWS:  You can go back to the floor still?

SCARBOROUGH:  I have a card...

MATTHEWS:  But you can‘t go to the gym or what?

SCARBOROUGH:  I can go to the gym.  I just...

MATTHEWS:  As long as you never go as a lobbyist.  Right.

SCARBOROUGH:  As long I‘m not a lobbyist, I can go wherever I want on Capital Hill.

But I was floor before and they were very, very nervous.  The fact that you said afterwards they were running camera shows, the president delivered tonight.

MATTHEWS:  Tucker, you‘re thoughts on the speech tonight.  We haven‘t gotten to you yet.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, MSNBC‘S “THE SITUATION”:  Well, you know, I love the fact that Bush is proud of America.  I think it‘s—the problem with some of his adversaries, I think, they‘re instinctively embarrassed of a lot of things America does.  And Bush isn‘t.  I mean, he is just proud of the country and that‘s really appealing.

Where I part with Bush and where I think he policies become really problematic is when he becomes proud of spreading democracy abroad and makes that kind of the end of, you know, the purpose of America.  And democracy is a mechanism.  It‘s a means.  It‘s not an end, right?

And so, when Bush gets up and says, you know, “Democracy is good for its own sake.”  And then the next sentence says, you know, “Hamas need to disarm.”  He doesn‘t see the contradiction between the two.

Democracy produced Hamas, right?  And so, you know, I‘m not an Isolationist, but I think that‘s troubling and inconsistent.

SCARBOROUGH:  You sound like Pat Buchanan to me.

CARLSON:  Well, actually...

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON:  Hold on and I‘ll tell you why I felt that way.  Bush could...

MATTHEWS:  ... whatever his name is.  The guy from—I did memorize the pronunciation.  I‘ve lost it now, the one that‘s heading up Iran.  He was elected.

CARLSON:  Well, that‘s exactly—I mean, look, when tonight—and I‘m not democracy obviously, you know.  It‘s a marvelous system, however...

SCARBOROUGH:  Oh, Tucker, you know you all.

CARLSON:  Democracy reflects the nature of the people who participate in it.  Stable cultures produce stable governments. 

When Bush gets up and he says to the people of Iran, look, you know, “We want you to determine your future and we‘re good with whatever you determine, but that doesn‘t include your nuclear program.”

Let‘s be totally honest.  The president‘s job is to protect America and protect American interests.  It‘s not to make other cultures or other nations happy or prosperous.  It‘s to protect this culture and this nation and I just wish he would say that.  That‘s my complaint.

SCARBOROUGH:  You know, before the war—and I agree completely with Tucker.  I was just joking with him.  Before the war, you know, we‘re all talking about democracies in the Middle East and everybody got angry when Turkey opposed us going into Iraq.

MATTHEWS:  Right.

SCARBOROUGH:  A democracy of sort in the Middle East.  And it just shows time and time again you‘ve got to be careful what you wish for because it‘s going to come back and bite you.

MATTHEWS:  France is a democracy as well.  Did you forget that?

SCARBOROUGH:  Well, that‘s debatable.

MATTHEWS:  Really.  Don‘t get boorish here.  Don‘t be a (inaudible).

SCARBOROUGH:  You know, Tucker‘s a knuckle-dragging Isolationist.

(LAUGHTER)

That‘s what they‘re called.

MATTHEWS:  Knuckle-dragging?

CARLSON:  More every year, I have to say.

SCARBOROUGH:  They say that about Buchanan.

MATTHEWS:  No, I get the feeling...

SCARBOROUGH:  No, No.  Tucker‘s xenophobic.  I forgot that.

MATTHEWS:  More like (inaudible) to what you‘re describing him as.

Let me ask you, Tucker, while we have you.  This war the president‘s made the centerpiece of his entire life.  The war in Iraq.

CARLSON:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  He‘ll call it a war on terror.  He‘ll use a lot of general terms about tyranny.  But in the end, his decision to go to Iraq, is that selling in America today?  If you look at the polls, if you look at who you look at, is the argument that we should have gone to war with Iraq as a matter of decision holding up?

CARLSON:  Right.  No, that debate‘s over.  I think Bush has lost that debate.  I don‘t think it matters, however, because the new question is, “Are we going to be humiliated or are we not going to be humiliated?”  That‘s the only question that matters.

Bush is wise to the extent—and I think that he‘s beginning to internalize this—to the extent that he avoids the argument about why we went.  It almost doesn‘t matter at this point.  The question is are we going to get thumped?  Are we going to lose?  Are we going to damage America presage?  Are we going the way American‘s feel about themselves in their own country, which is the end, is the most important thing?  Or are we not?

And that‘s the question facing America.  And on that question, he has America on his side.  People do not want to lose or be perceived a humiliated.  That‘s unacceptable to Americans.

So I think everybody, even Democrats, the Left, they‘re all on Bush‘s side, or most of them are, on that question.  Nobody wants to see America have it‘s face rubbed in the dirt because everyone recognizes that would be a disaster for the whole world.

MATTHEWS:  OK, thank you very much.  Stick with us, Tucker, I‘ll be talking to you in a moment after this break.

Norah O‘Donnell, thank you.

A long night for everybody.  Joe Scarborough, Ron Insana, it‘s great to have you here from CNBC.

Tucker‘s staying with you, as I said.  And when we come back for our big final hour—we love it here—we‘re going to put it all together with our hardblogger all-stars.  What will the country be talking about tomorrow morning, next week, and for the rest of the year?  Big stuff.

Don‘t go away.  You‘re watching “HARDBALL‘s” live coverage of the State of the Union on MSNBC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  Tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran.  America respects you and we respect your country.  We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own future.  And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with the free and democratic Iran.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS:  Welcome back to “HARDBALL‘s” live coverage of the State of the Union.  We‘re joined now by another group, an interesting group.  Democratic activist—now there‘s an oxymoron—Hilary Rosen; and MSNBC‘s Tucker Carlson; MSNBC Political Analyst Pat Buchanan, of course; and former Democratic strategist Bob Shrum.  He‘s not with us.  He‘s up in New York right now.

Bob, I‘m going to give you the first shot because—God, you‘re looking feisty.

Let me ask you, Bob, do you think it was a homerun for the president tonight?

BOB SHRUM, MSNBC ANALYST:  Well, I thought it was an interesting and cleverly constructed piece of rhetoric.  The first part of it was Reagan, a defiant defense of his foreign policy, even if you think it‘s wrong.

The second part was Nixon.  There he was, much to Pat Buchanan‘s distress, calling for the federal government to do something about healthcare, energy, education.  Now, after what he did to prescription drugs, I don‘t think he‘ll do anything very good for healthcare.  But that‘s to help buy off people so that he can pursue this foreign policy.

And the third part was Rove, give something to the base.  So I thought, at that level, it was a very, very interesting speech.  And you‘ve got to give the guy credit for one thing.  He believes this stuff.  He stands up.  He says it.  And he doesn‘t give an inch.

MATTHEWS:  Well, the question, Pat, he may believe the substantive things, he clearly believes in the Iraq policy.  It‘s his.  But when he says, “I want civility.”  And then he punches the Democrats in the nose twice, “Here I am on Iraq.  I‘m right and you‘re wrong.  Here I am on NSA spying.  I‘m right, you‘re wrong.”  Those aren‘t exactly words of comity and getting along are they?  You didn‘t see common ground tonight?

PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST:  Well, I don‘t see incivility in his...

MATTHEWS:  No, but he‘s—but he‘s  -- you didn‘t...

BUCHANAN:  You‘re right.  I think he did have a defiant, resolute, unyielding position on the war.  He‘s correct.  He was very, very tough.  As a matter of fact, he indicated those who opposed him may be defeatists and there‘s certainly a lot of Isolationists in there.  He was putting them in a box.

MATTHEWS:  So you‘re one of those guys?

BUCHANAN:  Well, I know it is but I didn‘t see it as uncivil.  I saw it as a very, very tough defense of his side of the case.  It‘s a debater‘s argument, a strong one, but I didn‘t see any signs of un-civility there.

MATTHEWS:  Let me go to Tucker.

Tucker, how did you look at the president in terms of his manner tonight?

CARLSON:  He was...

MATTHEWS:  He was talking civility.  Was he mannerly in addressing these hot-button issues?

CARLSON:  Yes, of course.  I mean, look, it‘s a political speech.  He‘s a politician.  He‘s the president.  He‘s a Republican.  Yes.  And, you know, also I think the stakes are high.  And so I think, you know, he didn‘t cross any lines at all.

I mean, you know, I was personally annoyed at his digs at people who don‘t agree to his foreign policy as Isolationists.  People who don‘t agree with his trade policy as Protectionists.  I, of course, think that‘s unfair.  But it‘s doesn‘t—I mean, it‘s ludicrous to say that‘s mean.  I mean, come on, you live in Washington.  You know what I mean.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think he was factual in saying that the terrorism that struck us so hard on 9/11 came from one of the governments we took down?

CARLSON:  No.  I think that his...

MATTHEWS:  It‘s not a factual statement?

CARLSON:  Well, I don‘t know.

MATTHEWS:  Those hijackers came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

CARLSON:  Right.  But, I mean, the plan was hatched in, devised by, supported by al Qaeda based in Afghanistan, al Qaeda being the de facto government of Afghanistan.

MATTHEWS:  But all these guys were in Germany actually.

CARLSON:  Well, sure but...

MATTHEWS:  I mean, if you want to get into the country that harbored them.

CARLSON:  Look.  No, look...

MATTHEWS:  No, just a minute.  If you‘re going to use it as an argument for going to war with a country, what country the people operate out of, we should have attacked Germany.  I mean, I‘m saying it‘s ludicrous...

CARLSON:  If you‘re asking me if, in his speech, if what he said tonight a justification for the invasion of Iraq, I would say clearly no.

MATTHEWS:  That‘s what I was thinking.

CARLSON:  Oh, I thought you were going to say Afghanistan.  I was, you know, I think it...

MATTHEWS:  Either one.

Let me ask you, Hilary, the Democratic response tonight, we watched it without effect.  Tim Cane, apparently a very good fellow, a very good family man.  He‘s apparently a very good, religiously committed.  I guess a lot of people—certainly I did—think that‘s a good thing.

But I don‘t think he set any fires tonight.  He had a fire behind him.  Looked like it was coming out of his rear-end, actually, that fire most of the night.  But it didn‘t look like he started any fires tonight.  Do you think he was dramatic tonight, Tim Kaine.

HILARY ROSEN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST:  Well, I think Democrats missed an opportunity tonight having Tim Cane doing this response, this canned we-all-love-America splotch.

MATTHEWS:  Pre-arranged speech, by the way.  It was written before the president‘s.

ROSEN:  I frankly thought—you know, and I want to get back to Iraq.  But I thought the president led with his chin on a few things that the Democrats could have made much more hay out of.

MATTHEWS:  Like?

ROSEN:  Like, for instance, on the domestic programs.  We he said he‘s

for energy independence, and yet for the last two years he fought every

single provision in the energy legislation that would have provided for

alternative fuels or renewable energies or the other things, and helped to

got his Republican allies on The Hill to do the same.

MATTHEWS:  Shrum, do you want to jump in so we can get—when you‘re done.

ROSEN:  When he talked about healthcare—when he talked about healthcare and that he was going to fix the healthcare system, when tomorrow the House of Representatives is going to probably pass a bill that will knock 100,000 children off of Medicaid and also include a $20 billion give-away to the health insurance industry.  And, somehow, blamed the healthcare problem on, you know, escalating entitlement costs.  It was offensive.

And I thought the Democrats really had something here.  People care about that.

MATTHEWS:  OK.

Bob, you‘re an old speechwriter.  Bob, would you have been make something of a Democratic response on those points?

SHRUM:  I used to—I actually used to write those things years and years ago.  Look, I thought Governor Cane‘s speech was not very effective.  I actually thought it was life-imitating satire.

The line he used constantly is his repetition line, was, “There is a better way.”  As you remember, Chris, that is the line that comes from Robert Redford‘s movie “The Candidate,” which indicates...

MATTHEWS:  We‘ll we can‘t give away (ph).

SHRUM:  Right.  Which tells you the candidate doesn‘t have anything to say.

ROSEN:  He wants...

SHRUM:  Now, look, Democrats can take one lesson from Bush and from the Republicans, if you strongly believe in something, you ought to stand up, you ought to say it and you ought to fight for it.

And this constant search for a safe position is what leads a lot of Americans to say, “We‘ll maybe they‘re not strong leaders.  We kind of think their hearts are right on healthcare.  We think they‘re right on education.  We may even think they‘re right on Iraq.  In fact, we increasingly think they‘re right on Iraq.  But for heaven‘s sake, why don‘t they stand up and say it.”

MATTHEWS:  Why didn‘t the Democrats tonight—I know you care about these issues, women‘s rights, a pro-choice position on abortion rights and things like that.

Here we have the confirmation of a very conservative judge to the Supreme Court today.

ROSEN:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  At noon.

ROSEN:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  And yet the Democrats found it hard to say what they thought of that.

ROSEN:  Well, and I would go one step further to—you know, George Bush started out his speech with a tribute to Coretta Scott King.  When you think at what he‘s doing to the Supreme Court, goes against everything that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King stood for.

MATTHEWS:  How so, by the way.  Hilary, why do you say that‘s true?

ROSEN:  And nobody commented on that.

MATTHEWS:  Why do you say that‘s true?

ROSEN:  Well, they‘re against affirmative action.  They‘re against gay and lesbian rights.  They‘re against the voting rights acts extension.  I mean, every single thing...

CARLSON:  Well, wait.  Since when was Martin Luther King for affirmative action?

MATTHEWS:  I defy you to...

ROSEN:  Well, Coretta Scott King came out very strongly over the last 15 years for affirmative action.  So there‘s just no way that we‘re going go...

MATTHEWS:  Admit it, Tucker, you have no idea what Coretta Scott King‘s position on affirmative action was.

TUCKER:  I actually...

MATTHEWS:  I don‘t.

CARLSON:  Look, I‘m taking any stand against Coretta Scott King.  I‘m merely saying, to say that Martin Luther King endorsed affirmative action is a total crock.

MATTHEWS:  Let me take a—let me splice this thing a little bit.

Pat, if he hadn‘t mentioned Coretta Scott King‘s passing, he would have been attacked at least by people like yourself, right?

ROSEN:  Well, that‘s probably true.  But...

BUCHANAN:  True.

MATTHEWS:  So mentioning it out of courtesy, you attack him?

ROSEN:  No, no, no.  I was saying that I thought the Democrats have issues that they‘re not talking about.  I think Bob is exactly right.

When we say, “Where are we going to be?  How are we going to differentiate ourselves?”

Dianne Feinstein I thought, earlier on your show, said it right about Iraq.  That he keeps talking about this is a values issues, not as a war strategy problem that we have.  And he‘s talking about things historically on this values access that he is winning that debate on and Democrats can win on our issues and we‘ve got to get out there and try to talk about them.

MATTHEWS:   I want to talk about something that is paramount in our

lives.  The president statement tonight, a forceful central argument that -

when we come back.  But here‘s the question.  Is it the business of the United States, this country, its military and economic power, to go around the world looking for tyrannies to bring down.  Is that the mission that the founding fathers had for us, the sort of Napoleonic notion that democracy here ain‘t good enough?  We‘ve got to go around the world and use our force to establishment. 

Is that something the American people are ready to buy or shouldn‘t we?

We‘ll be right back with this panel.  I‘ll let everybody respond.  Should we make the business of this country going around the world and knocking down tyrannies?  We‘ll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH:  Our enemies and our friends can be certain the United States will not retreat from the world and we will never surrender to evil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS:  We‘re back with the panel.  And we‘re joined right now by Craig Crawford who‘s over at Bistro B.

Craig, are you over there in a crowd of people right now?

CRAIG CRAWFORD, CORRESPONDENT, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY:  No, not really.  It‘s winding down here.  We did see a big rat go by here earlier.

MATTHEWS:  Well, then I‘m going to put to you the first question tonight.  That‘ll help business.  I want to ask you about the big question tonight.  The president said it‘s the business of the United States, as he understands our country, to go around the world and basically bring down tyrannies.  He made it so clear.  Do you buy that?  Do you think the American people will buy that?

CRAWFORD:  No, I don‘t.  And I‘ll tell you what, Chris.  What was missing in this speech is—what was almost missing anyway, was there were only six sentences in the next to the last page of this speech devoted to the loss of an entire American city in the year before this State of the Union.

I think that was something that will probably be noted in New Orleans at least.  And that is something the president needed to provide the leadership on.  Because what I‘ve been seeing around here in Washington for some time now, Chris, is I think this city—the federal government is abandoning New Orleans.  What money they‘ve got is about all they‘re going to get.

So many members Congress, you know, they‘ve got their own states and districts to worry about.  And that‘s when the president needs to step forward and pull the country together.  And I found it incredible that six sentences in the next of the last page of the speech was devoted to that.

MATTHEWS:  We‘ll be back to you, Craig, in a minute.

Pat, the central question of the speech tonight.  Should our government be out to bring down tyranny?

BUCHANAN:  To end tyranny in this world.  That‘s what the president‘s theme was in his inaugural.

Here‘s what he‘s doing, Chris.  He is taking the war in Iraq, which was about knocking over Saddam Hussein, getting rid of the weapons, putting us in there strategically, and like Wilson did, putting it in a much, much larger heroic context. 

You know, Wilson said, “This is the war to end war to make the world safe for democracy.”  He puts it in that kind of context in order to keep all the people around him on it.

Secondarily, even if you lose this war or the war goes badly, it was a cause where we dared greatly.  Should it be America‘s cause?  What was it John Quincy Adams said July 4, 1821?  “America goes abroad not in search of monsters to destroy.  We‘re the supporters of liberty everywhere.  We‘re the vindicators only of our own.”

That‘s a traditional American foreign policy, which a lot of us have argued for in the post-Cold War era, as wiser for this country.

Now, the president‘s very selective in his overthrowing of tyrannies.  If you really want to overthrow one, why go all the way to Iraq?  Why not do it in Cuba?

MATTHEWS:  Or Zimbabwe.

BUCHANAN:  And Cuba‘s right new door.

MATTHEWS:  I mean, our old alliance with Zaire.  We‘ve had some real SOB‘s over the years who might have been tarnished.  Chang Kai Shek has probably been considered.  You know, a guy I always sort of liked because he was on our side.  But I‘m sure he wasn‘t a Democrat.

BUCHANAN:  That is the—you‘re exactly right, Chris.  When the United States is really in it, in a war, we will accept anybody, the Shah, Samosa, Pinochet, Chang Kai Shek, the Korean general; Salazar, anybody.  If you‘re in a deadly serious war where your vital interests are stake.  We aren‘t in that.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Well, it looks like we‘re looking for those types of situations.

We‘ll be right back with this strong view from Pat.  We‘ll hear more from Bob Shrum in this fight on this front.  And also Tucker, who‘s always hard to predict, but I think I know where he‘s going.

And, Hilary, we might have unanimity here.  We might find common ground before the evenings out on the issue of whether the United States should be in the business of looking around the world for tyrannies and bringing them down.  We‘ll be right back with out panel on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS:  Tucker Carlson, it‘s your turn on the question of the president‘s central point tonight, Our job is to get rid of tyrannies in the world.

CARLSON:  Well, here—I mean, here‘s the question.  If you thought the country was truly threatened, would you die to protect it?  Of course you would.  So would I.  I‘d be proud of my son did—sad but proud.  Would you want your son to die so Iraqis could vote for some Islamic party?  No.  Of course not.  You would be pleased, I suppose, if democracy came to Iraq, but in an academic kind of way.  But it‘s not a—war is not academic.  It‘s a question of, Would you be proud if your son died in pursuit of the aim of the war?  And if the aim of this war is to bring democracy to Iraq, that‘s just—that falls below the very high bar, as far as I‘m concerned.

And moreover, again—this is such an obvious point, but it‘s worth making once more—democracy is not an end, it‘s a mechanism.  It‘s a means to good government.  And the end is good government, and when you listen to the president speak in this very utopian way—and I respect a lot of things about President Bush, but you really get the impression that he believes democracy is the final goal, and that‘s just not true.

MATTHEWS:  When did he get that idea?

CARLSON:  I think it—I mean, you know, far be it from me to...

MATTHEWS:  In 2002 or what?

CARLSON:  No, of course, after 9/11.

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

CARLSON:  It—right, that America has this divine mission.  I believe America does have a divine mission, but I‘m not certain that‘s it.

ROSEN:  That‘s it.  Well, and I agree with everything that Tucker and Pat said, but I think the further point may be something that ties in with what Craig said before, which is the cost of doing—of being the world‘s parent, is huge at home, whether it‘s Medicaid cuts or whether it‘s not being able to pay to rebuild the levees in New Orleans or whether it‘s—whatever it is, that the strain in resources...

MATTHEWS:  But I want to stick to this...

ROSEN:  ... on what‘s happening...

MATTHEWS:  ... point, the idea that...

ROSEN:  ... are huge.

MATTHEWS:  ... it‘s the goal of the United States Defense Department -

it‘s still called defense—to go around the world and bring down dictatorships, which we don‘t like because they are tyrannies, not because...

ROSEN:  Look...

MATTHEWS:  ... they‘ll come after us, but because we don‘t like—why don‘t we go get...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  I mean, it sounds ludicrous to us all.  Of course, we won‘t do it.  There‘s no oil there.  I mean, we‘re not going to say it, but we know that the president...

ROSEN:  The president got reelected...

MATTHEWS:  Right.

ROSEN:  ... and people support him on the war because they believe what they are being told, which is that we are safer at home.  That‘s his job.

CARLSON:  No, that‘s not why.  They support Bush because they believe America is good, and Bush believes America is good.  And a lot of the people, I believe, who argue against Bush don‘t believe it...

ROSEN:  No, he...

CARLSON:  ... but the American public wants to hear...

ROSEN:  ... succeeds when he works...

CARLSON:  ... America...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Bob Shrum, your chance...

ROSEN:  ... the fear factor.

MATTHEWS:  ... on the central philosophical argument, that it is, in fact, the manifest destiny or the destiny of the United States to end tyranny in the world.  Is that a reasonable goal for our country?

SHRUM:  Not put that way.  I believe America is not only good, I think it‘s the best country on the face of the earth.  But if you go back to the founding of the country, what they were arguing for, the Founding Fathers, was to use the power of example to promote democracy around the world.  When you start using military force and you start putting it in places that have no democratic tradition, no civic society, and aren‘t ready structurally for it, you‘re going to have the Palestinians electing a terrorist government.  Ahmadinejad won in Iran in a huge landslide.

MATTHEWS:  Right.

SHRUM:  So the notion that Bush seems to have that democracy is a sprinkler system to put out the fires of terrorism is just wrong.

MATTHEWS:  And of course, we went for this.  Pat, you and I agree about it all this time.

BUCHANAN:  Sure.

MATTHEWS:  But after World War I, the Wilsonian war to make—what is it, the make the world safe for democracy—we created the Weimar republic, the weak German government, the weak democracy, which led to the election of the Nazis.  I mean, it‘s not always going to have a good result.

BUCHANAN:  Well, it‘s not.  The point is, free elections will bring you basically what the people want.  In Bolivia, they want Evo Morales, and the Indians up in the hills want to come down and repossess what was taken away from them 500 years ago!

MATTHEWS:  Right.

BUCHANAN:  Wherever you go—take a look at Venezuela, populism and Bolivarism is on the move.  In the Middle East, it‘s Islamic fundamentalism.  You give them elections, they—listen, the Muslim Brotherhood will win the next election in Egypt if you make it a free and fair election.

MATTHEWS:  Or Syria.

BUCHANAN:  Yes.  I mean, Syria, they will, as well, if you knock those people over.  And so the point is, there—I think what the—the president‘s problem is this.  He looks at democracy as free elections are it, but as Tucker says, there‘s a tremendous amount more to a democratic republic.  You need all these institutions first, before you have these things.  In our own country, you start off with elections, what?  You had men who owned property, white males.  That was it.  That‘s the people who voted.  And it‘s going to take time for that.  The president—but the president‘s going to have to answer this question.  He‘s running around, talking about democracy, the democracy crusade.  OK, Islamists have won virtually every election, from Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Ahmadinejad, Iraq...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Our NBC poll—and I love to go back on this because it‘s

it‘s an objective poll, in coordination with “The Wall Street Journal,” run by a Democrat and a Republican pollster—say that we asked the people an open-ended question: What would you most like to happen by the end of this year, 2006?  And it was, to me, wonderful because the first place result was so much above all the others, it really meant something.  Pat, it said, Get the troops home by the end of the year.

BUCHANAN:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  Very simple statement.  Did anybody hear the president say he‘s going to do that tonight?

BUCHANAN:  Tucker is—I share what Tucker said earlier.  He‘s exactly right.  The Americans want the troops home.  They do not want this country defeated.

MATTHEWS:  So how do we reconcile those two goals?

BUCHANAN:  Well, they‘re leaving it up to the president.  But those two are the two goals they want.

MATTHEWS:  Well, how can they—how can God...

BUCHANAN:  Look, if the president...

MATTHEWS:  ... reconcile those two goals?

BUCHANAN:  If the president took those troops out and this thing collapsed in chaos and civil war and everything was poured down the sewer...

MATTHEWS:  OK.

BUCHANAN:  ... they would blame...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Let‘s go to Craig Crawford across the street.  Craig, I want to ask you this.  It seems like people believe that—the American people, not that we can speak for them, but the polling goes after this—they want our troops home.  They don‘t want the humiliation of defeat, like we saw with the helicopters taking off at the American embassy in Saigon back in ‘75.  Can we get both goals?

CRAWFORD:  I don‘t think so, and I think a lot of people, you know, acknowledge that.  And I think the president‘s losing some of the public because it‘s becoming very johnny-one-note.  He just keeps repeating it over and over again.  And you know, repetition is not necessarily eloquence.  And I think that part of the problem with this speech, I found, was always setting up these straw men of his critics, you know, saying that his critics are isolationists, that they want to retreat and that the whole issue is whether we retreat, and he‘s fighting this.  And I mean, his critics aren‘t saying these things.

But the beauty of the straw man argument is you put your opponent in the position of defending himself and explaining his remarks, and it ends up making them look weak and wishy-washy.  And so it‘s all rhetorical and spin, and I think a lot of Americans are seeing that.

ROSEN:  And the president, I think, abdicated something tonight.  He said the generals are going to make the decision on when the troops come home, not the politicians.  And when he said that, what he was really saying is, I can‘t define success anymore.  I‘m going to let the generals define success.

MATTHEWS:  What does he mean by that?  Does someone know what the president meant by that?

BUCHANAN:  Well, he means...

MATTHEWS:  Pat?

BUCHANAN:  He means when the generals say the conditions on the ground will allow us, with security, to pull out the troops, then we‘ll pull them out.  We won‘t do it to some political timetable.

MATTHEWS:  But stability is a subjective term...

ROSEN:  That‘s exactly right.  What is the goal here?

MATTHEWS:  There is no such thing...

BUCHANAN:  Chris, we‘re going to...

MATTHEWS:  ... as stable point.  There‘s always...

BUCHANAN:  ... find out...

MATTHEWS:  ... going to be trouble in that country.

BUCHANAN:  Well, there‘s going to be trouble.  We‘re going to find out

let‘s suppose hypothetically, and I hope it doesn‘t happen—that this governmental thing just collapses and it breaks out into a three-way civil war.  I think the American people will then be saying, You know, Mr.  President, we did our best, and we‘re not going to...

MATTHEWS:  OK, why...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  ... is it humiliating?  Everybody‘s assuming that there‘s this big dichotomy, a division between leaving and staying with pride and coming home with humiliation.  Can we stay with pride, where we‘re taking the side of the Shia, who are the majority, against the Sunnis?  Is that a point of pride?  And can we, on the other hand, be blamed—Shrum, you‘re in here, Bob—can we be blamed if we see a sectarian feud over there that‘s escalating, and we say, No mas.  We‘re not taking one side.  We‘ve given you people a chance to settle your fish over here.  Do it.  We‘re out of here.

SHRUM:  Chris, I think that‘s a very smart question.  I think it‘s the bottom-line question because we can talk all we want about humiliation, winning.  The president said tonight we‘re winning.  There‘s no evidence we‘re winning.  The fact is that reporters are now saying the place has become a black hole.  The level of violence is escalating.  You see these splits in the government.

The—Iraq is going to be the great fundamental failure of the Bush administration, and that failure is going to come at some point, in some way.  The question is, How many more Americans and Iraqis are going to day for George Bush‘s failure?

BUCHANAN:  Look, let me say...

MATTHEWS:  Why don‘t the Democratic leaders—and you‘ve worked with a number of them—ever put it that clearly and boldly?  That is a clear position.

SHRUM:  Well...

MATTHEWS:  I don‘t hear Democrats talk like that.

SHRUM:  Because I—because I...

BUCHANAN:  Howard Dean does.

SHRUM:  I guess because I‘ve retired, and it‘s—you know, but it‘s what I believe.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Seriously.  You advise so many Democrats, and they don‘t have that—I‘m not saying you‘re right, but you‘re clear.

SHRUM:  Well, I don‘t...

MATTHEWS:  And they don‘t have clarity tonight again.  They put out this guy from Virginia, who doesn‘t seem to have a position on the Iraq war.  Their leaders—Pelosi has it, but she says, I don‘t speak for my party.  Where is the clarity?

SHRUM:  Well, I think she should speak for the party, and I think we ought to take a position for what we believe.  I said earlier, one of the things I admire about Bush is that on this issue, for example, he actually stands up, even though I think he‘s totally wrong...

MATTHEWS:  Right.

SHRUM:  ... and he will not give an inch.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  ... convention speech in 2004.  The Democrats can‘t say this, You know where we stand.  And that‘s the problem.

We‘ll be right back with the panel for more on this State of the Union address 2006.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH:  Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens.  Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH:  It remains essential to the security of America.  If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS:  I think that was the best line of the night, Pat.

BUCHANAN:  I think it was not only the best line, but the president‘s most under attack on that issue, and he came out hardest, most direct, totally unapologetic, I‘m going to do it, we‘re not going to let them hit us again.  I think—again, I think he‘s winning the issue because the Democrats won‘t get up and say, Stop this!  Cut off those antennas!  Stop listening!  They won‘t do it!

MATTHEWS:  They thought they had him on the run, Tucker...

CARLSON:  Yes!

MATTHEWS:  ... for about two days, and then they—then he—they cornered him, he said, OK, let me check the numbers here.  Oh, I‘ll win here.

CARLSON:  I‘m not bragging...

MATTHEWS:  And then he fought!

CARLSON:  ... but I knew—and I have mixed feelings about the program itself, but I knew the second this story broke that he was going to win on this.  He turned exactly around and hit them right in the face with it...

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON:  ... for the obvious reasons!

ROSEN:  This story is not over.

CARLSON:  It may not be over, but at this point, we know enough that if the public were opposed to this, Bush would be on his way to impeachment.

ROSEN:  No.

CARLSON:  But the public is not opposed to it, and that‘s the bottom line!

ROSEN:  What we know is—what we know is when the public...

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN:  ... talk about, Chris (INAUDIBLE) Well, he‘s supposed to go to this court...

CARLSON:  The international...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Hilary, speak.  You‘re in the opposition here.

(CROSSTALK)

ROSEN:  There‘s two polls here.  One says, Do you approve of the president trying to wiretap al Qaeda operatives?

MATTHEWS:  The bad guys.

ROSEN:  The bad guys.  The other is, Do you believe that the president ought to be going to court and through legal channels...

BUCHANAN:  The FISA court!

ROSEN:  ... to get this authority...

MATTHEWS:  Well, yes, Pat!

ROSEN:  And there is a majority saying that they should.

BUCHANAN:  Look, see, that‘s...

ROSEN:  A majority says...

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN:  You‘re talking legalities.  Let me say I think you may have a legal argument...

ROSEN:  We‘re not talking legalities, we‘re talking (INAUDIBLE) we‘re talking Richard Nixon.

BUCHANAN:  Hold it!  When you talk...

(LAUGHTER)

BUCHANAN:  When he says...

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN:  He says al Qaeda ain‘t going to hit us, and you say, What about the FISA court, who do you think wins that, Chris, politically?

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN:  For heaven‘s sakes!

ROSEN:  No, no.  People believe there is something bigger at stake, and it‘s connected to the last conversation...

CARLSON:  Yes, maybe they do.  I mean...

(CROSSTALK)

ROSEN:  And when there is a conversation...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  You know what you need on your side of the argument?  An example of someone who was surveilled upon.  I don‘t care if he‘s a college professor from Franklin and Marshall, just some regular guy who was—but all we‘re getting now is speculation by even the ACLU.  They have a plaintiff.  He—I don‘t know how he‘s going to get standing because he says, I think I have a student over in Egypt who may have been surveilled here as a category.  You don‘t have standing...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  You need an example of somebody who was...

ROSEN:  This is the problem with our...

MATTHEWS:  ... snooped on.

ROSEN:  ... current lack of balance of power.  If Congress were really doing an independent branch of government and these hearings coming up were really going to say, Who are you surveilling, and what‘s the story?  Is this a political vendetta?  Are you surveilling protesters...

MATTHEWS:  OK...

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON:  But Hilary, there wouldn‘t be any...

ROSEN:  ... or are you surveilling...

CARLSON:  ... balance of power if the Democrats had their...

ROSEN:  ... bad guys?

CARLSON:  ... act together and had a better argument.

MATTHEWS:  OK, let me ask you about the conclusion of tonight‘s speech.  Bob Shrum, I think the scorecard tonight will not be available until November, the scorecard being how the House elections go.  My feeling is, as journalists—at least, those of us who are journalists and have to get these facts—well, there‘s only one way to decide whether the president wins tonight or this year.  Does he keep control of the House?

SHRUM:  Oh, well...

MATTHEWS:  Do you believe this president is more likely or less likely to lose the House of Representatives, which costs 15 seats, he‘s out, and losing the power of subpoena, by the way, with it, to his enemies, by tonight‘s effort?

SHRUM:  I don‘t—I think tonight‘s effort is less relevant because I think words of mass delusion won‘t work anymore.  I think people are responding to real facts on the ground, whether it‘s in Iraq or in health care or in their own lives.  And I think that‘s what they‘re going to vote on, and right now, I don‘t think the president has much of a case.  His domestic...

MATTHEWS:  OK...

SHRUM:  ... initiatives are going to be like cotton candy, they‘re going to disappear in the next three days.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think, Tucker Carlson, that the president created some momentum tonight to keep the House?

CARLSON:  Sure.  I mean, the—look, the—the only way that Bush—that the Republicans lose the House—and as we‘ve been talking about all day, that would—that would be a massive—that would be the disaster for this administration.  The only way they lose it is if the president becomes so unpopular that there‘s just a tidal wave against Republicans.

MATTHEWS:  He‘s at 39 now.

CARLSON:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  How low does he have to go?

CARLSON:  Well, I don‘t know.  I actually think this is probably the nadir, unless, you know, “The New York Times” reveals something we don‘t know.  But I still think Rove is right, it‘s all about security unless the Democrats can come up with a countervailing argument that convinces Republicans (SIC) that they are the party you support if you want to keep your family safe.  And I see no evidence they will.  I still think Republicans probably squeak through.

MATTHEWS:  Hilary, does he get a better bounce out of this or no bounce?

ROSEN:  Well, I‘m not sure there‘s much of a bounce.  The AP headline said, The State of the Union is fretful, and I think that that‘s true, and that will continue to be so for a few months.  I think the place to capitalize it on, frankly, there are more Senate seats that are...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Six seats is a lot to pick up, a lot, to turn that around.

ROSEN:  Either house...

MATTHEWS:  Because I think they‘re...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  I think the Democrats are going to lose a couple Senate seats, too, make it even harder.  Right?  Could happen.  Anyway...

ROSEN:  It could happen.  Nonetheless, I think...

MATTHEWS:  But things are looking up for you guys...

ROSEN:  ... the Republicans are in trouble.

MATTHEWS:  ... in Rhode Island lately because the guy up there is getting fretful.  That‘s Linc Chafee, who just switched and voted against Judge Alito.

Anyway, let‘s wrap things up tonight with HARDBALL correspondent David Shuster, who‘s still across the street, and he‘s got a few live ones over there at that bar we‘ve been talking about, Bistro Bis, in Washington—

David.

DAVID SHUSTER, HARDBALL CORRESPONDENT:  Yes, well, Chris, the bar has pretty much emptied out, and this is, of course, the time of night when I guess people start to sober up.  And I suppose I don‘t want to end this on a downer, but Chris, you know, on HARDBALL, we focus so much on previous State of the Union speeches and what the president‘s said over the years.  And if you look back to the 2003 State of the Union, that was the State of the Union speech where the president talked about the “axis of evil,” Iran, North Korea and Iraq.  And the message, as we reported so often, was the fear of a mushroom cloud, the fear that one of these countries would get a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists, and instead of 3,000 people being killed on a 9/11, the next 9/11 would involve nuclear weapons and 30,000 people would be killed.

Well, tonight, when you look at the president‘s speech, out of 256 sentences in the speech tonight, 35 were on Iraq, which we now know did not have nuclear weapons but in which we‘ve had 2,000 soldiers killed, and seven sentences were on Iran, which we know is trying to pursue a nuclear enrichment program, which late tonight we found out has violated the latest U.N. warning, and so that continues to be an issue.

And so again, when you look back at the president‘s theme from three years ago, what the nation was fearful about, what the president said we should be fearful about, I suppose it‘s the ultimate irony, and perhaps a very sober one, that tonight, the priority, of course, for this president, for the administration right now, is Iraq because of the problems there, and the problems that, I suppose, the Bush administration said we all had to fear three years ago, namely a country that‘s part of the “axis of evil” that wants to get nuclear weapons, that only gets seven sentences.

MATTHEWS:  OK, thank you, David Shuster, over at Bistro Bis, my colleague and compadre.  Thank you, sir, for holding out and closing that bar tonight.  Thank you, David Shuster.

SHUSTER:  Thanks, Chris.

MATTHEWS:  Let‘s go right now—I want to go back to Hilary.  You know what wasn‘t mentioned tonight?  You know, it was a 19 -- rather, in 2002, the president talked about an “axis of evil.”  And tonight, he only addressed two of those points in that axis, Iran and Iraq, of course.  No mention of North Korea.  Any thoughts on that, why we didn‘t hear a word about North Korea tonight?

ROSEN:  No good news of the president in North Korea.  He‘s got nothing to report and—and it seems like no strategy.  And where they are with Iran is troublesome enough to the American people, and I think laying out additional pros with North Korea ends up being alarming because we really are in a similar situation in North Korea that we are finding ourselves right now in Iran.

MATTHEWS:  You would think there was no other part of the world, Pat, we are so focused on the Middle East right now as an obsession.  It is the all-consuming—American foreign policy‘s the Middle East.  We‘re spending, by the way, more money on this war than anything we‘ve ever done before.

BUCHANAN:  Well, it‘s—that‘s exactly right.  You mentioned North Korea.  The “Bush doctrine” has been defied successfully by the North Koreans so far.  The Iranians, though, they‘re very, very—are concerned about, especially with this new guy, especially what he‘s saying about Israel.  And it‘s right over there, and it‘s the heart of the oil area of the world.

MATTHEWS:  Yes, well...

BUCHANAN:  It‘s—it‘s...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  If you like elections, he‘s the kind of guy that wins elections.  Anyway, thank you, Hilary Rosen.  It‘s great to have you.  Tucker Carlson, as always, hard to figure, conservative, old conservative, I think.

CARLSON:  Pretty old.

MATTHEWS:  Pat Buchanan—paleo-conservative.  Thank you very much, Pat.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  And Bob Shrum, the once and future leader of the Democratic Party, thank you very much for joining us.  And special thanks tonight to all of our friends at Bistro Bis.  We have lunch there a lot, HARDBALL‘s home away from home for some.  Thanks for letting us come over tonight.

Tomorrow on HARDBALL, much more reaction and analysis of the State of the Union address.  We‘ll be joined by former commerce secretary Don Evans from Washington.  I‘m Chris Matthews.  Good night.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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