On Thursday evening I blogged about how Chris Matthews clumsily used the phrase "crack the whip" when asking a black actor about why, in light of the recent rioting in Baltimore, the Congressional Black Caucus doesn't do more to push their agenda items in the U.S. Congress.
Today I discovered that Matthews used similar language in an interview with President Obama from December 2013, so I dug up the relevant video, which you can watch below.
And here's the transcript via Nexis giving the remarks in context:
MSNBC
Hardball
December 5, 2013
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And let's talk about a lot of these young people came here to study government and how it can be run.
There's all kinds of theories of how to be president of the United States. There's the spokes-of-the-wheel method, which Kennedy used, where he had direct contact with his Cabinet secretaries, his speechwriters, everybody all the time.
Then there was the strong chief of staff, sort of the military command system of General Eisenhower as president. And, of course, Ronald Reagan did it superbly with a great chief of staff, a strong one, Jim Baker.
What concerned -- Zeke Emanuel, who worked with you on health care, said the other day is there should have been a CEO assigned by you personally with unique personal responsibility to oversee the rollout of health care, and there wasn't.
When Secretary Sebelius appeared in that hearing and she was asked by Marsha Blackburn...
President BARACK OBAMA: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: ... who's in charge, it took her awhile to answer. And she final got to the chief operating of CMS, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare.
And it didn't seem like there was a strong top-down authority system from you. Did you have -- or do you have now -- let's look forward here. Do you have a relationship with your Cabinet that you have a system of cracking the whip, that they follow through, they execute as you envision they should, or do you work through a COO like McDonough?
What is your system for management?
