Chris Matthews: Last Week Was 'Best Week Ever For The Country'

What would you say was the best week in American history?

If you're a man named Chris Matthews who gets a thrill up his leg for Barack Obama, you would say the week in which Osama bin Laden was killed by a Navy SEAL team in Pakistan (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Riding high.

Let’s play HARDBALL.

Good evening. I’m Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight: Never been better. That’s bin Laden of course. Best week ever, I’d say, for the country. President Obama is coming off the best week of his presidency, certainly. Osama bin Laden’s been got, the economy’s creating jobs, the Republicans look, let’s face it, less and less able to find a presidential hopeful to even give a uniform to, much less put out there on the field.

And all that is giving the president a boost in the polls. Our new tonight NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll has the president’s job approval up to 52 percent -- it’s tough to get higher these days -- with just 41 percent disapproving. But that’s our top story tonight.

So, killing an unarmed terrorist, the unemployment rate rising to 9 percent, and Republicans seemingly not having a presidential candidate to oppose the current White House resident is what MSNBC's Chris Matthews views as the best week in American history.

Maybe I'm a tad biased here, but I would think: the week the Declaration of Independence was signed; the week the Constitution was ratified; the week the Revolutionary War ended; the week the Civil War ended, and; the weeks VE and VJ Days happened would all be far ahead of last week in historical significance.

But then again, I'm not in the business of making Barack Obama's presidency a success.