'Hardball College Tour:' Barack Obama

“Hardball with Chris Matthews” kicked off its 2008 college circuit today as the “Hardball College Tour” hosted Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama live from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, HARDBALL:  Live from West Chester University outside Philadelphia, the “HARDBALL College Tour,” with our special guest, Senator Barack Obama!

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-IL, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  All right!

MATTHEWS:  Wow!

OBAMA:  How about that!

MATTHEWS:  Wow!

OBAMA:  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

MATTHEWS:  One of the perks, Senator, of being president of the United States is that you have your own bowling alley.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  Are you ready to bowl from day one?

OBAMA:  Obviously, I am not.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  Ha!

OBAMA:  But I figure there might be some bowlers here at West Chester.

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

OBAMA:  I just want to thank all of them for hosting us, Dr. Adler and all the students, so—this is a wonderful group.  Thank you so much for having me.

MATTHEWS:  I know you’re a pretty good b-ball player.

OBAMA:  Basketball I can play.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Let me give you some good news.  This is good news.

I’m going to announce it here.  An endorsement from you from the Philadelphia area, an important endorsement.  Forget issues like who’s ready from day one or who do you want answering a 3:00 AM phone call in the White House or the ramifications of NAFTA.  To us, the most important issue is very simple and one that no one is talking about in the battle for the Democratic nomination for president.  Who’s the biggest jock?  And it is based on the answer to that, obviously, earth-shattering question that we proudly endorse Barack Obama for president, “Philly Sport (ph)” magazine.

OBAMA:  That’s what I’m talking about.  That’s what I’m talking about.

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

OBAMA:  That’s what I’m talking about.

MATTHEWS:  And now we play HARDBALL.

OBAMA:  Fire away.

Obama on Iraq
MATTHEWS:  That was the warm-up.  How do we know that you’re tough enough to take the heat from the right, from the radio address (ph), from the right-wing radio, from the right-wing columnists, if you begin to pull our troops out of Iraq and they start screaming, Who lost Iraq?

How do we know you’re as tough as Dick Cheney to ignore public opinion and do what you believe in?  Because he’s certainly tough enough to do it.

OBAMA:  Well, first of all, you don’t ignore public opinion.  You try to shape public opinion.  And you try to shape it with the truth, not with false facts, not by shading intelligence reports.

And you know, in terms of my toughness, look, first of all, I come from Chicago.  And you know, politics in Chicago, as it was once said, is not tiddlywinks.  It’s not beanbag.  You know, it’s a tough town.

But what I’ve been able to do is to rise politically without compromising my ethics, without compromising my principles.  I think during the course of this campaign, we’re going up against a pretty tough political operation with the Clintons.  Nobody’s ever accused them of being—being soft.  And so far, we’re doing pretty well.  And you know, I am very confident that  when it comes to issues like Iraq, a war that I stood up against at a time when it would have been politically convenient to be for it, or at least to be silent, when it comes to tough issues like talking to leaders we don’t like, something that defies some of the conventional wisdom in Washington but I feel very strongly about, then I’m going to stick to my guns and try to persuade the American people that we need to go in a new direction and fundamentally break with the failed policies of the past seven-and-a-half years.

MATTHEWS:  When the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania—and they’re the only ones that can vote—and all these people told me they’re all registered, right?

OBAMA:  Absolutely.

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

MATTHEWS:  And how many of you are for this gentleman?

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

MATTHEWS:  And how many of you are for Hillary?

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

MATTHEWS:  OK, fair enough.  What’s the difference between you?  I mean, this—their parents are watching.  They’re watching.  Their friends are watching right now.  And they want to go in that voting booth aware.  What is the real difference in how you would get us out of Iraq from the way Senator Clinton would get us out?

OBAMA:  Well, first of all, I think it does bear mentioning that Senator Clinton voted for the war.  And I say that not because it is something that’s in the past, but it points to judgment in the future.  I think Senator Clinton was much more cautious.  She got swept up in the arguments that were made by the Bush administration.  And I think that what you want in the next president who has confidence and judgment to move in a different direction.

She has said she wants to pull troops out, and I take her at her word.  I intend to pull them out, as well.  And I think that we both agree that you have to be as cautious getting out as we were careless getting in.  She has, though, suggested that she wants to leave troops in to blunt the influence of Iran in Iraq, that that would be one of the rationales or justifications for how she would structure forces inside of Iraq.

I think that’s a mistake.  I think that that’s mission creep.  That is not the original reason why we went in.  Originally, it was because of weapons of mass destruction.  We know those aren’t there.  It was because Saddam Hussein was a terrible tyrant.  He is now gone.  We should not be maintaining permanent bases in Iraq.  We should have no combat operations.

If you look at the recent fighting in Basra, it’s between Shia militias.  And in fact, we know that Iran had some influence in settling the dispute, partly because the government that we helped to install is very close to the Iranian government.  So what I want to see is getting our combat troops out, no permanent bases.  We should protect our embassy.  We should protect humanitarian forces in the region.  We should up our commitment to humanitarian aid inside of Iraq because we’ve got two million displaced persons inside of Iraq right now.

And we have to initiate the kinds of political settlement that includes all the factions inside Iraq but also those surrounding Iraq, the regional powers—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, but also Iran and Syria, who are going to have some say about what happens in Iraq, no matter what we do.  And it’s important for to us bring them to the table in a broader international effort so that we’ve got a stable country and we can start focusing on what we should have focused on in the first place, the war in Afghanistan and going after al Qaeda and bin Laden and those who killed 3,000 Americans.

(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS:  The way you tell it, it sounds like Hillary Clinton and John McCain have a similar policy of maintaining the American presence, military presence in Iraq indefinitely.  It sounds like they’re the same.  Do you believe that?

OBAMA:  No, I don’t think there’s a huge difference between any of the Democrats and John McCain.  I mean, John McCain got upset, I think, today, apparently, because I had repeated exactly what he said, which is that we might be there for a hundred years, if he had his way.  Now, he’s now arguing, Well, I didn’t mean that we would be fighting a war for a hundred years, we might just be present.  What he is talking about is having a permanent occupation and permanent bases inside of Iraq.

We are spending right now $10 billion to $12 billion a month inside of Iraq.  That’s that’s money that could be spent giving college scholarships to all these young people.

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

OBAMA:  It’s money that could be spent getting jobs here in America, rebuilding our infrastructure, as I’ve proposed.  But more importantly, it is—it would mean a sustained presence at a time when we should be focused on finishing the war that needs to be won against al Qaeda in their home bases in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan, where we know that they are planning to attack U.S. targets.

MATTHEWS:  What’s the impact economically?  This state has lost 183 guys and women killed in that war.  Of course, the personal losses are unimaginable and hard to measure.  But economically, we’ve lost in this state 200,000 manufacturing jobs under President Bush.  A lot of people believe you can’t reproduce those jobs, we’re going to have to go to high tech or something.  Can you honestly do what Mitt Romney did in Michigan and say we’re going to get those jobs back?

When I was growing up here, a guy could come out of high school, and he could go get a job at Bud or Vertal (ph), a big industrial plant, build big things...

OBAMA:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  ... big jobs building trains, building subway cars and airplanes and provide for a whole family, get the kids through college, one guy working, one family member working.

OBAMA:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  Will we ever get back to those days?

OBAMA:  Well, I’m not sure that the same jobs are going to be back.

But I think we can produce good jobs that pay good wages and good benefits.  I mean, here’s how we do it.  First of all, we’ve got to stabilize the housing market because right now, even businesses with good track records, good credit are having trouble getting financing to expand and invest because the financial markets are all screwed up.  The only way we deal with that is to make sure that people aren’t having their homes foreclosed on.

And you know, so I’m working with Chris Dodd to put together a program where the Federal Housing Administration helps borrowers and lenders negotiate to settle on a fixed mortgage that home owners can pay and allows them to stay in their homes so we’re not continuing to see home values drop.  That’s step number one.

We also have to have better oversight in the financial markets. 

That’s been a disaster, something this administration has not done...

MATTHEWS:  How about the previous administration?  How good was President Clinton in regulating the hedge funds?  Did he give them a free rein?

OBAMA:  Well, I—here’s what I think.  I think there’s been a general tendency for the banks and the financial institutions to set the agenda in Washington and to...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  The Democrats, too?

OBAMA:  ... Democrats and Republicans.  And what’s happened is that they have constantly pushed for deregulation.  Some of that deregulation is useful.  Some of it allows for the kinds of predatory loans that have been getting us into trouble.  So we’ve got to get the housing mark set.

Then what we have to do is start ending the war in Iraq, reinvesting in infrastructure—roads, bridges, locks, dams.  That puts people to work...

MATTHEWS:  Like I-95 out here.

OBAMA:  Absolutely.

MATTHEWS:  They got a little problem, you know, out here.

OBAMA:  And that puts people back to work.

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

OBAMA:  Especially folks from the construction industry that have been laid off because of the housing slump.  And then what we have to do is get our tax code right, stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, invest in companies that are investing right here in the United States of America.

And the last point—the possibility of new jobs in new sectors like energy.  I went to a steel mill that had closed and now has been converted, and it’s making something big, those big windmills that are producing green energy for America.  Those jobs are not being shipped overseas.  And you’ve got unionized steel workers in those plants, making jobs.  That’s got to be the direction that we move on in the future.

MATTHEWS:  That’s out in Bucks County, right?

OBAMA:  Absolutely.

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you—when we come back, I’m going to ask you

that’s the day job for the president.  I want to ask you what you’re going to be like at 3:00 o’clock in the morning when we get right back.

More with HARDBALL and Senator Barack Obama when we come back on the “College Tour,” West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  You’re watching the “HARDBALL College Tour” here at West Chester university, only on MSNBC!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  You’re watching the “HARDBALL College Tour” here at West Chester university, only on MSNBC!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  You’re watching the “HARDBALL College Tour” here at West Chester university, only on MSNBC!

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