Chris Matthews Proudly Touts Poll Showing Obama, Clinton & Carter More Popular than Bushes

While he was anchoring live coverage of the Roland Burris Senate drama on MSNBC this morning, anchor Chris Matthews interrupted his discussion with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter to narrate pictures of Barack Obama being driven to the White House for a luncheon with all of the living U.S. presidents.

Matthews celebrated the moment by proudly announcing poll numbers that showed Obama and the ex-Democratic presidents having higher approval ratings than the Republicans, particularly the "kid" George W. Bush.

Matthews announced at 11:24am ET:

This is Barack Obama coming from the transition office, which is down around 6th Street, near the Capitol, coming down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where he'll meet with the President and with the other former presidents, George Herbert Walker Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

And by the way, we're going to have -- I want to have you stick around for this Jonathan -- we have the latest poll numbers on these presidents, just to run them through everybody right now. Barack Obama's at 82 percent right now in public approval. Bill Clinton's at 69, Jimmy Carter's at 64. Bush I, George Herbert Walker Bush is at 60 and his kid, the President, is at 27. So it's better to be a past president today.