I don’t know if Hardball host Chris Matthews will run for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and challenge incumbent Republican Arlen Specter. I do know that it would be refreshing to have a fellow in the Senate with as much passion as Matthews. Sure, he peeved a number of people with his comments on Hillary Clinton during the recent presidential campaign. But last night, I was a guest on his show and watched Matthews eviscerate former Reagan administration aide Frank Gaffney on the question of whether the Iraq war had been justified. I had been booked to debate Gaffney on the subject. But Matthews tore into him more than I could.
I give Matthews plenty of credit–not just for being right on this issue but for devoting the first quarter of his show to the matter. He shoved aside Blago and Caroline Kennedy to discuss a war that the mainstream media does not sufficiently cover. There aren’t many television talk show hosts who still greatly care about whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of that crew hoodwinked the country into war. But Matthews does. He wants to win the fight over the history and make sure that the public does not forget how the soon-to-be-gone Bush administration misled the nation. I’m not urging Matthews to run–I enjoy appearing on his show and would be sad to see it disappear–but it would be heartening to see in the Senate a man who displays so much zeal on this front.
I have a feeling that in the coming years the Bush-backers and neocons will not give up the fight; they will relentlessly argue that the war was right and just. Even though the majority of the American public doesn’t buy that, the foes of the war will have to push back and do combat over and over on this point. Whether Matthews is on TV or in the Senate, he could be a valuable participant in that (alas) never-ending debate.
