http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11484
Chris Matthews of MSNBC's 'Hardball' on “President of the World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon” which will air on Monday February 21 at 10PM on MSNBC.
CHARLIE ROSE: Chris Matthews is here. He is the host of MSNBC’s "Hardball
with Chris Matthews." He also has his own weekly news program on NBC
called "The Chris Matthews Show." His latest project is a documentary
about former President Bill Clinton. It is called "President of the World:
The Bill Clinton Phenomenon." Here is a look at the documentary.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Bill Clinton’s post presidency is unlike any before.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had always said that Bill Clinton would run for
president for the rest of his life. Not literally but figuratively. And I
think I underestimated him. I think he has been running for president of
the world for the rest of his life.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Following the former president is a little like going on a
concert tour.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god. It’s .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Different cities, different countries, exuberant crowds.
Always the same feeling, that wherever Bill Clinton arrives it is an event.
A happening, to be experienced and remembered.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Always the superstar, isn’t he?
BILL CLINTON: You can do it here, I can figure out how to put it
everywhere and get it funded for you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.
BILL CLINTON: I will really help you out.
CHRIS MATTHEWS (on camera): Did you ever have a pause where you thought I
don’t know what I’m going to do next? And then this began to develop, this
almost global role you play now? It is global.
BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, in the middle of my second term
as president, I began to think about what I would do. And in general, I
thought two things. I thought number one, I want to keep being very active
in the things I cared about as president, where I can still have an
influence. And the second thing I wanted to do was to try to explain the
world we’re living in to my fellow Americans and the people around the
world. So everything has sort of grown out of that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: This special on Bill Clinton airs on MSNBC on Monday
February 21st at 10 p.m. I’m pleased to have Chris Matthews back at this
table, welcome.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right before CHARLIE ROSE. We squeeze it in there, an
hour of greatness.
CHARLIE ROSE: Very good. So how did this come about?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I had the idea, I guess if you want to go the inner scenes
-- my son worked for the Global Initiative about four years ago. He came
out of Brown. I guess he was inspired to go in the Peace Corps, but he had
a girlfriend, he is married now. And he wanted to go several months, but
not two years. So he found the Clinton Global Initiative and he went over
to Rwanda. And I was so impressed by what I learned about the Global
Initiative firsthand, that we went over and visited. We went to see the
guerillas in fact, in Rwanda, with him. They get things done. It’s not
like AID.
CHARLIE ROSE: The Global Initiative does?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes. They make sure, they say look, they go to a country
like Rwanda and say, look, make sure none of these cocktails, these
HIV/AIDS cocktails .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: . get out back to the European secondary market, the black
market. We want to guarantee the donors that it gets to the people who
need them, the victims. And then they have somebody in the country to make
sure that gets done, a quartermaster, my son. And I said this thing really
works. This isn’t the old thing where you get a certain percentage, that
the minister gets it for his money sold off to Europe or the black market.
And it’s the kind of stuff like that that impressed me in the beginning.
That is the first thing.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. But may I ask you how did this happen? So you were
impressed by the Clinton Global Initiative and you began to ask questions
that you wanted to answer about Bill Clinton?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I said this is -- Nobody is covering this story. Sure, we
had Monica, sure we had the impeachment, sure we had Marc Rich. We covered
all the good, the bad and the ugly of his administration and we covered it
incredibly. I covered it as much as anybody, I can tell you. And then I
said, wait a minute, this guy has been out of office, eight, nine, years --
it’s ten years now. And nobody has covered that. It’s all been good.
It’s been basically international more so than here. And I get the feeling
maybe he’s one of those figures like Winston Churchill who is bigger
overseas, and bigger around the world than we even appreciate. We don’t
get it -- remember even Nixon was popular in France. And are we missing
that story?
So I started to look around. The producers dug up the tape of where he is
traveling. And we started interviewing people. And I went traveling with
him to Ireland and watched the Global Initiative in New York with like
hundreds of CEOs, 160 CEOs of big corporations and worldwide leaders to
treat him better than they themselves feel they should be treated. Going
around the world and arriving in a country and being bigger than the
current host country head of state. And he’s bigger than that person when
he arrives. And that has never been like that before.
CHARLIE ROSE: And he instantly cooperated. He said I will do it, it’s
great.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, you know this business. First of all .
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I had to make up for being tough on him.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: So I had to call up Doug Band, his chief of staff .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: .. and I said why don’t we go to Sylvia’s up in Harlem
where they work? And I guess he’s tired of going up there to dinner. He
said, how about Michael’s, of course, in midtown. So we met and had lunch,
about an hour and a quarter lunch, he was grilling me. And I said, look, I
want to focus on the Global Initiative, the substance of what he is doing.
You know, this isn’t exactly an investigative piece, this is about the
substance of what he has done for ten years and nobody has covered this and
it is a heck of a story. And I want to travel with you guys, and I want to
get inside. I don’t want to get committed to this, to spend a couple of
hundred thousand bucks and you have to say, you said to me, you’re not
going to get in the door. I want time with this guy, overseas, traveling
with them. I get back about two weeks later, and Band says OK, he said
yes, or I assume he said yes because Band said yes. And we got on the trip
.
CHARLIE ROSE: No conditions.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: No conditions, none, absolutely none. I mean, I had the
time -- I got to see what I got to see.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you say anything critical in this hour?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I make sure I touch all the bases. I remind you as if you
need reminding of Marc Rich, of the impeachment problem, I go all the
bases. I do at one point compare .
CHARLIE ROSE: What’s (inaudible) you touch base on the same thing--
(CROSSTALK)
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I cover the past but I focus on the new.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And if I could find anything new that was bad, I would
have covered it. It’s good. What I have been able to find is good. The
Clinton Global Initiative is really, really good.
CHARLIE ROSE: So was this in some way you taking a second look at this
guy?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: No, it is a new chapter in his life. I think Fitzgerald
is wrong. I think there are second acts in American life. This second act
is very much different than the first act. And let’s face it, that guy has
been wrong for a long time .
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, you got a second act.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Fitzgerald has been wrong .
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: .. for about a hundred years now.
CHARLIE ROSE: Certainly.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think he was talking about if you drink yourself to
death in 30 years old, you are not going to have a good second act.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Here you spent the time with this guy.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: You know, this .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Traveling .
CHARLIE ROSE: President of the world.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, you are on the plane with the guy and it is almost
like Daddy Warbucks, he is flying around the world. He’s got his big
satchel of books next to him, his neat-looking bag -- I’d like to get the
bag -- and he starts pulling out all the books he’s reading. He’s reading
Yates, he is reading all this other stuff. He’s giving me -- I’m reading
this, I’m reading that, he is what do you think of this, what do you think
of this poetry. He starts reading this poetry. And then finally spends an
hour a day studying economics. I mean it’s "Wall Street Journal"
economics, business economics, because the great thing about him is when he
gives a speech now it is not Joe Garagiola (ph), you know, yesterday’s
stories about the old days. He never talks about the past. It is very
interesting. Bill Clinton talks always about what is happening right now
in the economy, in the world, what people care about. He keeps himself
current.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what new did you learn?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: What new did I learn?
CHARLIE ROSE: About Bill Clinton?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: That he won’t quit.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s new?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, it’s current. It’s new .
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Come on. Hello?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Give me a break. I can only follow what I follow. The
guy does not want to leave .
CHARLIE ROSE: He doesn’t quit is new?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Charlie, you are ahead of me all the time. I think it is
an amazing story that the guy -- how many people do you know, you probably
know 10,000 people firsthand. I’ll bet you Bill Clinton knows 100,000
people firsthand, and he knows them all around the world. And I keep
coming across this, he knows all these people. He comes up to you in a bar
in the Shelbourne, in the Dublin, OK, it’s midnight. He has spent the
whole day, the morning with the Protestants in northern Ireland .
CR: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: . talking to the business guys, giving business advice.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Then he goes and spends the afternoon opening up his
institute at City College of Dublin -- his own institute. Then in the
evening he puts on the black tie and spends the whole evening -- what you
and I would consider the end of the evening, black tie dinner for the
American Irish and the American Ireland Fund. Then he goes, puts on his
jeans, puts on this very hip new zipper sweater -- his staff, by the way,
all wear the same costumes .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: . which is the amazing. By the end (inaudible), you know,
the Shelbourne bar in Dublin, beautiful old bar. He sets up court down
there, he’s surrounded by a phalanx of people, and he’s invited --
everybody knows in the British Isles to meet him like a dance card. They
each get their turn, and the guy just won’t quit. OK, now you think this
is normal. I think it is a phenomenon. The guy has been president now
what, ten years ago and he’s still being president around the world. He’s
as big -- you know those stories he could get elected president of Ireland
tomorrow. No, he could.
CHARLIE ROSE: He could get elected president of the United States?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Oh, yes, easily.
CHARLIE ROSE: Easily?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Not now, but the job is not open now .
CHARLIE ROSE: No, I know.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I mean it would be totally conceptual.
CHARLIE ROSE: But if he didn’t have that .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He is politically a genius and his ability to work with
people.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tony Blair says that, says he is the most captivating
politician that he has ever met.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And he talks about .
CHARLIE ROSE: He said that to you.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He talks about .
CHARLIE ROSE: Hello?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He talks about that in the doc, he talks about that going
down to Blackpool remember where they had to -- Brighton or wherever it
was, where they had their conference and how he just took over the place.
And that’s what he does. And the Kevin Spacey story that is in the doc
about him showing up somewhere in central Africa and the word gets out that
he is going to the Grand Marche, the big market, and he shows up and there
is like 10,000 people there yelling "peacemaker! Peacemaker!"
CHARLIE ROSE: So what is his genius in your judgment?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think it’s -- remember you used to talk about that thing
you have when you’re a kid, the big plastic thing filled with air but with
the sand in the bottom that you would punch that would come back up again -
- that’s him. And he said that before. I get down. I’ve -- He got
knocked out of the governorship, his first term. Blown away. He is
finished down there, he is in his 30s. He’s gone. Comes back and wins
five terms. He comes out on national television, 1988, remember, he gave
the terrible speech that went on for like an hour down in Georgia.
CHARLIE ROSE: At the convention in Atlanta?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah. Laughed at, Johnny Carson killed him.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: A week later he is on Johnny Carson playing the sax, he
won us back. He comes back and wins the presidency in ‘92 when everybody
said way ahead of time. He gets all screwed up, too elitist between ‘92
and ‘94, Hillary and ego, too far, they didn’t know how to handle health
care politically. Next thing he’s blown out of office. He gives a speech
saying I’m still relevant. He had to say the era of big government’s over
-- all the, you know, all genuflections, he comes back, beats Bob Dole by
nine or eight points. You know .
CHARLIE ROSE: He leaves government - he leaves .
(CROSSTALK)
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He leaves at high -- and 60 some percent popularity when
he leaves, even with the problem of impeachment, he left with a very high
number. So he is able to keep coming back. And I think he had to come
back after Marc Rich, to be -- to answer your larger question. I think
part of this motivation for this incredible commitment to goodwill and good
efforts around the world, good work, I think a lot of it is to leave on a
very positive way. Who wouldn’t want to do that? It makes -- that’s part
of him that does make pretty easy sense, I think.
CHARLIE ROSE: And his ambition is?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Keep it going. Don’t turn out the lights. Don’t go to
sleep. Keep it going.
CHARLIE ROSE: Keep it going.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think -- and remember, and this isn’t a moral or amoral
judgment about him, but remember the day that Bush gave the inaugural
address .
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: There he is, down at the Capitol, giving the inaugural
address. Split screen. Bill Clinton’s giving a speech out at Andrews.
He’s not going, remember.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, we show that in the clips too. He said I’m still
president, you know, I’m still here.
CHARLIE ROSE: He also said to you I think that no one, other people might
have -- no one loved the job more than I did.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think it is a great honest line.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He is there talking about the burden and the loneliness --
wasn’t lonely for him. I mean, his whole thing with Hillary as the
secretary of state -- and by the way, the serious part of this, which we
don’t really get into, but we all have to look and see if it holds is the
coalition between the Clintons and President Obama. That is to me the key
political fact in the country today, that coalition. If that weren’t
there, Hillary Clinton if she were still senator from this state up here in
New York would be the lightning rod for every Middle East problem that the
president had, every economic problem. She would be the way Ted Kennedy
was back with Jimmy Carter. The party would be split. And the fact that
it is not split I think is key to its success, right, and its possibility
of winning a significant re-election. If they weren’t united as they are,
I don’t think they would be winning next time.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think if she was in the Senate now .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: There wouldn’t be .
CHARLIE ROSE: The things that have happened, she might be positioning
herself to challenge?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Not to challenge, but even if she didn’t, she would be
positioned to inevitably play the role of critic because it would just come
to her. It would be the automatic role for somebody like that. And as it
is, because she’s part of the team and done this perfect job so far, Bill
Clinton’s part of the team -- it’s really that, I don’t know if I said this
before to you, but I think it reminds me of Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits on
"West Wing" when he offered the secretary of state job to the guy he beat.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I mean it’s art -- It’s history imitating art. And it was
-- that moment made me cry.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s team of rivals too.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: That made me cry.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s team .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It does, this stuff. I mean he said .
CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, I know.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And that would be you. When he said who is your first
choice, and Jimmy Smits said, well, that would be you. I’ll break my
heart. I love that stuff.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, you do.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It’s the (inaudible)--
CHARLIE ROSE: What is it about you that loves it so much?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Did I ever tell you the story about Tip O’Neill and Ronald
Reagan?
CHARLIE ROSE: No.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Reagan has been shot. He’s lost half his blood supply.
And the bullet was actually much closer to the heart if you read the
clinical reports. And Nancy Reagan was very concerned, of course. She is
a good friend of mine and yours too probably now and she is a wonderful
person. And she was worried about her husband surviving and she wanted to
keep him alone. But after a few days, the doctors did a fantastic job and
he was beginning to convalesce and get better. And she said with Jim
Baker, it’s time to let somebody in to see him, to let the country know he
is still there. So they followed protocol. They wanted to do something
really miraculous, said why don’t we bring in the leader of the opposition
to be the first guy to see him, the speaker of the house, Tip O’Neill?
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: His bete noir.
CHARLIE ROSE: So I didn’t know this story, because nobody .
CHARLIE ROSE: During the day.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Nobody knew about this. It was during the day.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Because you know the rest of the story. So Max
Friedersdorf, who was head of congressional relations, was stationed in the
other corner of the room when Tip came in -- here is this big guy, comes in
the room.
CHARLIE ROSE: And by the way, you worked for Tip.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I was his top guy.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: So he walked in the room and went over to -- over to
Reagan. Nobody else knows about this. And I never said this on national
television, actually, Charlie, this is for you. And he knelt down next to
Reagan, this is the leader of the opposition, held both his hands and
together they recited the 23rd Psalm together, these two old guys, two old
Irish guys.
CHARLIE ROSE: That will make tears come to your eyes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And then he kissed him on his forehead after they’d done
praying together. He said, I want to keep you, you need your rest. And
just walked out. Nobody saw this. It’s chilling, but nobody saw this. It
was never reported, Tip never came back. I don’t think he told his family.
Reagan never told any of this. I got this in a letter from Max
Friedersdorf. Originally tipped off by David Broder about this story. And
it’s just -- it is a wonder of American politics at its best, to me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Did you, but you knew Tip so well. Did you talk to Tip
about it later?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I never knew about it, he never told us about it. I did
speak a lot of times, we would have late afternoon conversations where he’d
just sit there for hours and tell me about Curley and the old days, James
Michael Curley and amazing stories about the old days. I mean, he would
say the things to me like Curley was crooked by the standards of those
days. And I would say and that was his mentor, and I’d say, this the great
-- the purple shamrock, the old mayor of Boston, who went to the can. And
I said personally corrupt? He said personally corrupt. I mean we had
great conversations. I learned a lot from him sitting in the back room.
CHARLIE ROSE: You were fascinated by three people.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Winston Churchill.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: John Kennedy and who is the third?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Ernest Hemingway.
CHARLIE ROSE: Ernest Hemingway?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Because all of them are avatars, they all lead you to what
you want to be. And they all take you in your life. If you think about
who made Paris great for you, Charlie. I mean, come on, I don’t care what
you say, it was Hemingway, the ‘20s. It was the period, you know .
CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Morley Callaghan, and all that stuff. We all got into
that stuff. You know, George Plimpton, we all got caught up in that.
CHARLIE ROSE: You’d be a good shrink, wouldn’t you?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And then Africa, when did Africa became cool -- when
Hemingway said it was cool, and bullfighting.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. And Cuba?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And Cuba, and bullfighting and marlin fishing .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And Kennedy -- who made politics just glamorous? Before
then it was three piece suits and boring guys and stuffed shirts and Taft .
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, no, it’s not -- that’s not true.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It was Taft ..
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Before that there was Teddy Roosevelt.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Charlie, this is before television. Didn’t count. Just
kidding, yeah, before that there was one exciting guy, and the Roosevelts,
of course. And the other is Churchill, of course, because here was this
little guy with a lisp who had really nothing going for him except in May
of 1940, when they hadn’t even saved the troops at Dunkirk, even they had -
- even before Dunkirk, even before they evacuated the expeditionary force,
when they were finished, Churchill just said to his larger cabinet, of
course we’ll fight no matter what happens. And they all stood up and
applauded. And that saved the honor of the west. Just that one move.
CHARLIE ROSE: Back to JFK. What do you know about his early youth? I
mean, he was the second son.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: He was never intended to be the public son.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: No. He was a writer. From the time he was sick -- I
think Jackie had one thing really important about him that she said
afterwards to Teddy White. You got to remember, he wasn’t this glamorous,
good-looking character that we all got to know, the tan and the lifestyle
and everything. He was a really sick kid his whole life. He was really
sick. He had scarlet fever. He thought he had leukemia as a kid. He had
a stomach problem his whole life. He had a back problem that was
congenital. He had serious problems his whole life, and they never really
went away. Those crutches were always in the Oval Office, as you know.
And he was always in pain.
And yet we never saw that because he kept that away from us. But as Gene
Smith (ph), you know, said to me one time, the great thing about him and
separated from all the rest of the Kennedys was because he was sick so
much, he read a lot. He was a real reader. I’m not going to go so far as
to say an intellectual, but he read so much in his life, and he had so many
heroes like Churchill. Imagine knowing a kid who read "The New York Times"
every day in high school, every day. Imagine knowing a kid in high school,
I don’t anybody like this, imagine a kid who had read Churchill’s history
of the First World War before he got to high school.
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: But part of .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: So he was -- he was this self-made guy. Very much like if
you read "Gatsby", in Gatsby, he’s writing lists like self-improvement
lists like I’m going to come up with -- you know, needed, needed
inventions. He was very much like that.
CHARLIE ROSE: That was (inaudible) young John Kennedy.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Very much a Gatsby.
CHARLIE ROSE: And he made himself into what?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Into Jack Kennedy, a separate person from the Democratic
Party, from the liberal party, from the Johnson party, from his dad. His
dad was an anti-Semite, bad guy in many ways. He was a loving father, but
a bad guy in many ways, all totally wrong about World War II. Just he
thought it was a business, you could negotiate with a guy like Hitler. And
he said, he never had a sense about the moral horror of Hitler, where Jack
did. And if you look about it from the time he was a kid, he wrote about
(inaudible), and he understood that he couldn’t make that defense of
appeasement. You had to understand that there were reasons that in his
case, Neville Chamberlain wasn’t able .
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just go back, he created JFK. I mean, he created .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think so.
CHARLIE ROSE: First. And then he created JFK, I mean you’re saying he
created two things.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He created Jack Kennedy.
CHARLIE ROSE: He created Jack Kennedy.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And then he created the guy that could be president. But,
you know, I’m working on it. It’s in progress. November. I’m working on
it very hard.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Let’s say a bit about .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I’m very -- Charlie, when you don’t see me, and I’m not
sleeping, I’m doing this.
CHARLIE ROSE: Running around with the president. Let me talk about
Washington today. Give me a sense of Boehner versus Obama.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think Boehner is approaching a kind of waterfall. In
the next week or two, they are going to be I think a government shutdown,
and it’s going to be one of those mano y mano kind of things, a Hemingway
kind of moment where he is going to have to come up against a very cool
customer, President Obama, who you know does well in the clinch. He has
that sort of, you know, in the movie "The Godfather," when he lights the
cigarette out in front of the hospital and you realize this guy was born
for this, I don’t want to go up against that guy. And I think Boehner is a
little more nervous.
He’s an average guy, in terms of temperament. He does get nervous, he gets
choked up, as we know. I don’t know whether he is ready for this fight and
I don’t think he wants this fight, but I think he’s taking it on because
the Tea Party people behind him want to cut government spending so much in
the current fiscal year, right now, they don’t want any more continuing
resolutions, that what is going to happen is there is going to be a moment
in the next week or two when they’re not going to be able to reach
agreement between the House led by the Republicans and Harry Reid on the
Democratic side of the Senate. And you’re not going to have a deal. So
the government is going to stop. And I think we’re coming up to that .
CHARLIE ROSE: What does that mean, the government stop?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Things like Social Security checks don’t go out. That
matters. I mean, Howard Fineman on the other -- checks don’t go out.
People say, oh, I didn’t get my check. It’s not like you can’t get into
Yosemite that night. That’s important to the person who is waiting outside
in the station wagon, but for most people it’s that check that’s not
getting through. And all of a sudden people say, you know, I like the
federal government more than I thought I did. I sort of like that check.
And it is serious business.
So if things stop performing, and I’d realized from last time, there is a
big difference between a legislative leader like a Tip O’Neill or Newt
Gingrich and a president. The country only wants one president. And they
don’t like the other side grabbing .
CHARLIE ROSE: But they clearly are aware of the lessons of Gingrich versus
Clinton.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah, well, they eventually cut their deal. And I think
with luck, what I think Obama is up to, to answer larger questions, he came
in with a pretty minimal effort to reduce government spending, his budget
of his last week. What he is trying to do is euchre the Republicans into
an iterative process, back and forth, a Ping-Pong thing, as they call it
now, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, over a couple of
years, where both parties begin to show their hand. And eventually you
have a kind of a situation you had with Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan in
‘83, where they went on another big story, Tommy O’Neill tells the story
that his dad went to the White House one day at the end of ‘82 when Reagan
had lost that election, lost 26 seats, and Reagan said to Tip let’s go for
a walk. And they went on a walk on the back lawn and came back with a
Social Security deal.
So I think it’s going to take a while to get there. As Obama said, Jack
Lew, I worked with Tip -- who is now budget director, said we’ve learned
from history that the person who sticks their neck out on Social Security
and Medicare and offers to do something doesn’t get it, they just get
killed. Nothing happens because the other side springs into action and
says gotcha.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think Obama understands this?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think he knows that. They’ve said he does.
CHARLIE ROSE: And therefore that’s .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Therefore he is waiting for the Republicans to show
something.
CHARLIE ROSE: Therefore he’s not speaking to the deficit commission
report.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Exactly. And you can say that it’s irresponsible, or you
can say he knows tactically you are not going to get there, if that is
where you want to get, until both parties inch forward. So these guys are
like sumo wrestlers, they’re like doing this. And one of these days
they’re going to get closer and they’re going to engage, and he is saying
it will take that engagement of the two parties for it to work. It will
not work if I try to do it alone, because inevitably, you know the press,
you know the White House press corps, the second he calls for a Social
Security trim or a higher retirement age, that second they will say he hit
the third rail. He has ignited trouble. President taking fallout. The
whole story for days in ahead, excuse me, will be how the president made a
mistake.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what does this say about Barack Obama’s political skills?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He’s learning. I think he’s learning.
CHARLIE ROSE: And .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: This isn’t something you come to the office with. You
have to talk to people like Jack Lew who have been through it in the ‘80s,
have been through it in the ‘90s with Clinton, and say how does this work.
And you have to listen to people who tell you don’t make a quick move.
This isn’t about initial success. It’s about ultimate success.
CHARLIE ROSE: How much do you think he is being counseled by Bill Clinton?
You must have asked that question.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think he is counseled by his record.
CHARLIE ROSE: No, no, no. I mean .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I don’t know -- I don’t know. I don’t the answer to that.
CHARLIE ROSE: You pick up the phone and you say .
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I don’t know.
CHARLIE ROSE: President Clinton, it’s President Obama calling.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I know Bill would like that call.
CHARLIE ROSE: He would like to get it more.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Who wouldn’t? I think I don’t hear anything like that.
So I don’t know if it is going on.
CHARLIE ROSE: And then when he reads that, you know, the Obama’s real
political model is Ronald Reagan.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: That stuck it to him, and he did that early in the
campaign. He said he was a transformative president and I want to be a
transformative president. He belittled. And he made a mistake there a
couple of times, he belittled the Nixon presidency. Whatever you think of
Richard Nixon, he was not, you know, a transitional president. He did a
lot of things. He ended the dual school system in the South, as you know.
He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He ended the gold
standard. He did a lot of things. Wage price controls. He did a lot of
things that were positive.
CHARLIE ROSE: I thought it was the Supreme Court that ended the dual
system in the South.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, he executed it. No, Pat Moynihan. I go by the God
(ph), Pat Moynihan told me it was Nixon who did it, because he actually
carried out the court’s instruction.
CHARLIE ROSE: Amazing Pat Moynihan, wasn’t he?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Miss him.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know what he once said to me? I was on a plane with
him. And he sort of -- you know, he was one of the -- he was an outer rim
of the knights of the round table with Kennedy .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He was assistant secretary of labor. And actually he did
Pennsylvania Avenue. He carried out Kennedy’s plan .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right .
(CROSSTALK)
CHRIS MATTHEWS: . to making Washington beautiful like the Champs-Elysees.
And Pat once said to me, he was a wonderful man. He was so generous.
CHARLIE ROSE: What did he say?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He said, you know, we were talking about the Kennedy
assassination. He said we’ve never gotten over it, and he looks at me and
says you’ve never gotten over it. That was -- that was inducting me. I
will never forget that.
CHARLIE ROSE: This documentary, are you going to do more of these?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I hope so, I hope we have done a couple, we did one on the
rise of the right about the Tea Party.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: And we’re going to keep doing them. I think the
commitment which I will say on the air they made a commitment to let me do
two a year. Now I’m going to make it official. I love doing them. They
take a lot of work. I work with some people like Tim Smith and Kate
Hampson of Peacock Productions at NBC and we’ve turned out some good stuff.
CHARLIE ROSE: Great to have you here.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Thanks, Charlie, it’s great. Thank you.
CHARLIE ROSE: Chris Matthews, his documentary is 10:00 on MSNBC on Monday
night.
Monday, February 28, 2011
King's Speech highlights stuttering
King's Speech highlights stuttering
Academy Award winning movie highlights the speech impediment that affects millions.
Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update
Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update
Feb 24, 2011 at 9:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.
New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results
The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today.
Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.
While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January.
Officially, Not Aimed At Content Farms
Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. The company specifically declined to confirm that, when I asked. However, Matt Cutts — who heads Google’s spam fighting team — told me, “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”
Well, there are two types of sites “people” have been talking about in a way that Google has noticed: “scraper” sites and “content farms.” It mentioned both of them in a January 21 blog post:
We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.
I’ve bolded the key sections, which I’ll explore more next.
The “Scraper Update”
About a week after Google’s post, Cutts confirmed that an algorithm change targeting “scraper” sites had gone live:
This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.
“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.
In short, Google said it was going after sites that had low-levels of original content in January and delivered a week later.
By the way, sometimes Google names big algorithm changes, such as in the case of the Vince update. Often, they get named by WebmasterWorld, where a community of marketers watches such changes closely, as happened with last year’s Mayday Update.
In the case of the scraper update, no one gave it any type of name that stuck. So, I’m naming it myself the “Scraper Update,” to help distinguish it against the “Farmer Update” that Google announced today.
But “Farmer Update” Really Does Target Content Farms
“Farmer Update?” Again, that’s a name I’m giving this change, so there’s a shorthand way to talk about it. Google declined to give it a public name, nor do I see one given in a WebmasterWorld thread that started noticing the algorithm change as it rolled out yesterday, before Google’s official announcement.
How can I say the Farmer Update targets content farms when Google specifically declined to confirm that? I’m reading between the lines. Google previously had said it was going after them.
Since Google originally named content farms as something it would target, you’ve had some of the companies that get labeled with that term push back that they are no such thing. Most notable has been Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who previously told AllThingsD about Google’s planned algorithm changes to target content farms:
It’s not directed at us in any way.
I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”
I guess it all comes down to what your definition of a “content farm” is. From Google’s earlier blog post, content farms are places with “shallow or low quality content.”
In that regard, Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.
That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn’t confirm it was targeting content farms, but Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they’re being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.
More About Who’s Impacted
As I wrote earlier, Google says it has been working on these changes since last January. I can personally confirm that several of Google’s search engineers were worrying about what to do about content farms back then, because I was asked about this issue and thoughts on how to tackle it, when I spoke to the company’s search quality team in January 2010. And no, I’m not suggesting I had any great advice to offer — only that people at Google were concerned about it over a year ago.
Since then, external pressure has accelerated. For instance, start-up search engine Blekko blocked sites that were most reported by its users to be spam, which included many sites that fall under the content farm heading. It gained a lot of attention for the move, even if the change didn’t necessarily improve Blekko’s results.
In my view, that helped prompt Google to finally push out a way for Google users to easily block sites they dislike from showing in Google’s results, via Chrome browser extension to report spam.
Cutts, in my interview with him today, made a point to say that none of the data from that tool was used to make changes that are part of the Farmer Update. However, he went on to say that of the top 50 sites that were most reported as spam by users of the tool, 84% of them were impacted by the new ranking changes. He would not confirm or deny if Demand’s eHow site was part of that list.
“These are sites that people want to go down, and they match our intuition,” Cutts said.
In other words, Google crafted a ranking algorithm to tackle the “content farm problem” independently of the new tool, it says — and it feels like tool is confirming that it’s getting the changes right.
The Content Farm Problem
By the way, my own definition of a content farm that I’ve been working on is like this:
Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)
Generates content specifically tailored to those searches
Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content
The problem I think content farms are currently facing is with that last part — not putting in the effort to generate outstanding content.
For example, last night I did a talk at the University Of Utah about search trends and touched on content farm issues. A page from eHow ranked in Google’s top results for a search on “how to get pregnant fast,” a popular search topic. The advice:
The class laughed at the “Enjoyable Sex Is Key” advice as the first tip for getting pregnant fast. Actually, the advice that you shouldn’t get stressed makes sense. But this page is hardly great content on the topic. Instead, it seems to fit the “shallow” category that Google’s algorithm change is targeting. And the page, there last night when I was talking to the class, is now gone.
Perhaps the new “curation layer” that Demand talked about in it earnings call this week will help in cases like these. Demand also defended again in that call that it has quality content.
Will the changes really improve Google’s results? As I mentioned, Blekko now automatically blocks many content farms, a move that I’ve seen hailed by some. What I haven’t seen is any in-depth look at whether what remains is that much better. When I do spot checks, it’s easy to find plenty of other low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.
Cutts tells me Google feels the change it is making does improve results according to its own internal testing methods. We’ll see if it plays out that way in the real world.
Feb 24, 2011 at 9:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.
New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results
The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today.
Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.
While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January.
Officially, Not Aimed At Content Farms
Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. The company specifically declined to confirm that, when I asked. However, Matt Cutts — who heads Google’s spam fighting team — told me, “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”
Well, there are two types of sites “people” have been talking about in a way that Google has noticed: “scraper” sites and “content farms.” It mentioned both of them in a January 21 blog post:
We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.
I’ve bolded the key sections, which I’ll explore more next.
The “Scraper Update”
About a week after Google’s post, Cutts confirmed that an algorithm change targeting “scraper” sites had gone live:
This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.
“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.
In short, Google said it was going after sites that had low-levels of original content in January and delivered a week later.
By the way, sometimes Google names big algorithm changes, such as in the case of the Vince update. Often, they get named by WebmasterWorld, where a community of marketers watches such changes closely, as happened with last year’s Mayday Update.
In the case of the scraper update, no one gave it any type of name that stuck. So, I’m naming it myself the “Scraper Update,” to help distinguish it against the “Farmer Update” that Google announced today.
But “Farmer Update” Really Does Target Content Farms
“Farmer Update?” Again, that’s a name I’m giving this change, so there’s a shorthand way to talk about it. Google declined to give it a public name, nor do I see one given in a WebmasterWorld thread that started noticing the algorithm change as it rolled out yesterday, before Google’s official announcement.
How can I say the Farmer Update targets content farms when Google specifically declined to confirm that? I’m reading between the lines. Google previously had said it was going after them.
Since Google originally named content farms as something it would target, you’ve had some of the companies that get labeled with that term push back that they are no such thing. Most notable has been Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who previously told AllThingsD about Google’s planned algorithm changes to target content farms:
It’s not directed at us in any way.
I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”
I guess it all comes down to what your definition of a “content farm” is. From Google’s earlier blog post, content farms are places with “shallow or low quality content.”
In that regard, Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.
That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn’t confirm it was targeting content farms, but Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they’re being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.
More About Who’s Impacted
As I wrote earlier, Google says it has been working on these changes since last January. I can personally confirm that several of Google’s search engineers were worrying about what to do about content farms back then, because I was asked about this issue and thoughts on how to tackle it, when I spoke to the company’s search quality team in January 2010. And no, I’m not suggesting I had any great advice to offer — only that people at Google were concerned about it over a year ago.
Since then, external pressure has accelerated. For instance, start-up search engine Blekko blocked sites that were most reported by its users to be spam, which included many sites that fall under the content farm heading. It gained a lot of attention for the move, even if the change didn’t necessarily improve Blekko’s results.
In my view, that helped prompt Google to finally push out a way for Google users to easily block sites they dislike from showing in Google’s results, via Chrome browser extension to report spam.
Cutts, in my interview with him today, made a point to say that none of the data from that tool was used to make changes that are part of the Farmer Update. However, he went on to say that of the top 50 sites that were most reported as spam by users of the tool, 84% of them were impacted by the new ranking changes. He would not confirm or deny if Demand’s eHow site was part of that list.
“These are sites that people want to go down, and they match our intuition,” Cutts said.
In other words, Google crafted a ranking algorithm to tackle the “content farm problem” independently of the new tool, it says — and it feels like tool is confirming that it’s getting the changes right.
The Content Farm Problem
By the way, my own definition of a content farm that I’ve been working on is like this:
Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)
Generates content specifically tailored to those searches
Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content
The problem I think content farms are currently facing is with that last part — not putting in the effort to generate outstanding content.
For example, last night I did a talk at the University Of Utah about search trends and touched on content farm issues. A page from eHow ranked in Google’s top results for a search on “how to get pregnant fast,” a popular search topic. The advice:
The class laughed at the “Enjoyable Sex Is Key” advice as the first tip for getting pregnant fast. Actually, the advice that you shouldn’t get stressed makes sense. But this page is hardly great content on the topic. Instead, it seems to fit the “shallow” category that Google’s algorithm change is targeting. And the page, there last night when I was talking to the class, is now gone.
Perhaps the new “curation layer” that Demand talked about in it earnings call this week will help in cases like these. Demand also defended again in that call that it has quality content.
Will the changes really improve Google’s results? As I mentioned, Blekko now automatically blocks many content farms, a move that I’ve seen hailed by some. What I haven’t seen is any in-depth look at whether what remains is that much better. When I do spot checks, it’s easy to find plenty of other low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.
Cutts tells me Google feels the change it is making does improve results according to its own internal testing methods. We’ll see if it plays out that way in the real world.
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