Tonight on Hardball Chris Matthews has been hammering on Palin's debate performance throughout the show. His outrage at the way she is being graded on a curve while running for the second highest office in the land finally reached a boiling point near the end of the show, and he let loose with a classic rant!
Here's the video, with transcript below:
No, it's not. The job of the Vice President is to be with the President and counsel him or her on what the wise choice of action is...that's what I'm talking about. That's what this is about - picking the next Vice President of the United States. This is not Jeopardy. This is not a TV Quiz Show. It's not the Dating Game. It's about whether this person should be one of our top leaders.
...Who's leading this country? Bush aint. Who's running the country tonight? Chris Dodd and Barney? I mean who's calling the shots today? It is a little scary. We're in an airplane right now that's in turbulence, this country. We don't know what's going to happen to the stock market next monday. We don't know how many more plant closings there are going to be. We don't know what's happening to our currency in the world right now. This could be Zimbabwe in a couple of years and we don't know it, and we're trying to pick leaders.
And we're going through some Spelling Bee way of picking them. It's a little scary. Sure she can memorize the material that she's taught. But what does that teach us, about her? That's all I'm asking.