As if MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews had done enough fawning over liberals in President Obama on Tuesday night, he dialed up the eye-rolling worship once again with the help of former Salon columnist Joe Conason to tout the latter’s new pro-Bill Clinton book and oozed praise for how the Clintons are driven by their desires “to change the world” for the better.
Matthews kicked things off by ruling that the former President has “revolutionized what it means to have a post-presidency, really up to day to day right now” before welcoming on Conason and plugging his book.
“[T]his is something that is just total People magazine stuff. He's still a young guy by post-presidential standards. He's still generally healthy it seems. What does he do every morning? Does an alarm clock go off? Does get up, go to the office? Does he take a shower? Have breakfast? Lay about? Go to work? What does he do every day,” an enthralled Matthews asked.
The man who once suggested that Dick Cheney was an “agent of the nation’s enemies” mundanely responded that “[t]he days are different” for him as some “are travel days for him, especially in the campaign season, he's traveling around the country a lot now for Hillary's campaign” while others are plotting the next moves of the Clinton Foundation.
A few moments later, Matthews continued his streak asking questions that indeed appeared to be more catered to People than a cable news show as he brought up the sheer number of elections the Clintons have ran in (as a positive) and pondered to Conason what “drives them”:
18 elections, starting when he ran for Congress out in Arkansas, than ran for attorney general, then he ran for governor, and he lost it and ran one five times in a row then lost and ran for president a couple of times. He won both times. Hillary Clinton has won now for senate twice. Ran for president, a second time now. They both, I think, ran for student office. What drives them, in terms of elections? Why do they run so often? What drives them to run as politicians, for their whole lives, really?
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Like true liberal and Clinton devotee, Conason informed everyone that he doesn’t “have a cynical view of them” because “I think they really want to change the world” having “wanted that since they were kids and it goes through various permutations of what kind of change they think should happen and at what pace and in what ways, but I think they've always felt they wanted to make things better.”
“I think they like the power and the — you know — he likes campaigning. She’s — you know, as you know, she's wonkish. She likes the issues, she likes the study...I think they both find aspects of politics that are rewarding to them,” Conason concluded.
As MRC president Brent Bozell explained in his book Weapons of Mass Distortion, Conason subscribes to the notion that any idea of the media possessing a liberal bias is a “palpably ridiculous argument” and once refered to Bozell himself as the “belligerent, red-bearded Bozell, a nephew of William F. Buckley Jr., scarcely pretends to be anything more than an instrument of the Republican Party’s conservative leadership.”
Further, he’s a sampling of what he really thinks about the Clintons litany of scandals thanks to a Bozell and Tim Graham column from June 9, 2015:
Joe Conason, a leftist author who’s been dismissing every Clinton scandal for decades in books with titles like The Hunting of the President, is at it again. This time he's produced “The Fake Clinton Scandals Are Back: The right’s newest crusade has an old fake villain.” Conason should be easily dismissed by the editors for criminal ignorance -- or downright deception. One can downplay things like Benghazi. One cannot deny they are scandals -- or at the very least, serious controversies.
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on September 13 can be found below.
MSNBC’s Hardball
September 13, 2015
7:36 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: But what is Bill Clinton, the man who revolutionized what it means to have a post-presidency, really up to day to day right now? I find that question somewhat fascinating. The former President and possibly the first gentleman of the United States sat down with the author Joe Conason for multiple interviews for Conason's brand-new book, Man of the World. Conason gained access not only to the former President Bill Clinton, but also to Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, friends, colleagues, aides, and supporters. He got in the door. Joe Conason joins us right now. Joe, thank you. Good luck with this book out there. It's a nice cover, although his head's cut off. The strangest thing, at top. Let me ask you about Bill Clinton.
JOE CONASON: Thank you, Chris.
MATTHEWS: And this is something that is just total People magazine stuff. He's still a young guy by post-presidential standards. He's still generally healthy it seems. What does he do every morning? Does an alarm clock go off? Does get up, go to the office? Does he take a shower? Have breakfast? Lay about? Go to work? What does he do every day?
CONASON: The days are different, Chris. You know, there are travel days for him, especially in the campaign season, he's traveling around the country a lot now for Hillary's campaign. There are, I think, work days at the foundation, especially now because as I said in the book, they've been considering for months what to do if she does become president, with the foundation. They know they have to.
MATTHEWS: What does work mean for Bill Clinton? Work. When he says, I've got to go to work today, what does that mean?
CONASON: Well, work means the work of the foundation, overseeing the work of the foundation. It means, at different times, it's meant things like writing books and you know what that's like. You sit in a room and he's usually working with an aide, doing something like that. Work means going out and raising the money for the foundation. They raised, you know, an endowment that's a quarter of a billion dollars over the last few years. So, there's a lot of different kinds of work.
MATTHEWS: You know, I just did some checking. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton together have ran in 18 elections, actual elections. November, you know, the whole thing, campaigning, doing the whole things. 18 elections, starting when he ran for Congress out in Arkansas, than ran for attorney general, then he ran for governor, and he lost it and ran one five times in a row then lost and ran for president a couple of times. He won both times. Hillary Clinton has won now for senate twice. Ran for president, a second time now. They both, I think, ran for student office. What drives them, in terms of elections? Why do they run so often? What drives them to run as politicians, for their whole lives, really?
CONASON: I think, you know, I don't have a cynical view of them. I think they really want to change the world. I think they've wanted that since they were kids and it goes through various permutations of what kind of change they think should happen and at what pace and in what ways, but I think they've always felt they wanted to make things better and I think they like the power and the — you know — he likes campaigning. She’s — you know, as you know, she's wonkish. She likes the issues, she likes the study, she likes to get into it. She's not a natural campaigner like he is, but I think they both find aspects of politics that are rewarding to them.
MATTHEWS: Well he’s an interesting guy and you’ve written an interesting book. Man of the World, that's your book, good luck, Joe Conason. There it is. The cover with that little bit of head missing up there at the top.
