I’ve often wondered what is a professional talking head does all day. For example, what’s Chris Matthews’ schedule like? He’s on the air, arguing and pontificating, quite a bit, but what about when he’s not in front of the camera? As a media professional covering a presidential race, Congress, a war, and various political controversies, Matthews presumably has to spend an enormous amount of time reading about complex policy issues. In turn, he’s able to share his expertise with a national television audience. That is, presumably, what he’s paid (handsomely) to do.
But it’s worth remembering from time to time that Matthews, like too many pundits, apparently have only the most superficial knowledge of what’s actually going on.
During the March 11 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, guest Chris Matthews asserted that in order to “get something done in this country,” politicians need to “do the surprising move that grabs the center” and that “if a Democrat were smart, who gets elected president, they wouldn’t go back to the old Canadian model … single-payer model.”
In fact, neither Sen. Barack Obama nor Sen. Hillary Clinton has proposed a health-care plan that resembles the Canadian health-care system or a “single-payer model.” Matthews also suggested that the Democratic candidates should “take something that looks practical out of Massachusetts with [former Gov.] Mitt Romney [R] … and put [their] name on it” and “try some kind of mandated benefit.” However, Obama’s and Clinton’s health-care proposals both include “mandated benefit[s],” and Clinton’s plan has drawn comparisons to the plan Romney implemented in Massachusetts.
Media Matters has the video, which is unintentionally hysterical.
My favorite part is when Matthews argued that Dems, if they were “smart,” would embrace a Romney-like plan: “You know why? ‘Cause it would pass. And you’d have national health insurance. But if you keep pushing from your ideological end, you never get there.”
Amazing.
Matthews is criticizing Clinton and Obama for failing to embrace a healthcare policy that they’ve already embraced. Matthews insisted that a Romney-like plan “would pass,” unlike the Dems’ plan — which is a Romney-like plan.
If Matthews hasn’t bothered to actually learn what the candidates have proposed, several months after their plans were unveiled (and discussed at length in multiple debates — including debates aired on Matthews’ own network), that would merely be professional malpractice. It would be humiliating, of course, but Matthews is a poor excuse for a journalist.
But for him to go on the air and emphasize the fact that he hadn’t bothered to keep up on the presidential candidates’ healthcare plans is hilarious. If Matthews were merely ignorant, that’s bad. But why, then, talk at length about a subject he’s confused about? Why suggest Clinton and Obama support single-payer plans when the facts plainly show otherwise?
As Yglesias put it:
It’s a good thing Matthews has no familiarity whatsoever with the health care proposals of the major Democratic Party presidential candidates. What he’s advising Democrats to do is exactly what Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have proposed, it’s similar to what Barack Obama’s put forward, and it’s identical to what Ron Wyden is working on legislatively. Indeed, there’s a prohibitive (and, I think, wrong) consensus in left-of-center health policy circles that abandoning single-payer in favor of something like what Matthews is proposing is the way to go. Most interestingly of all, Matthews goes on television to talk about politics for a living.
And that last point is the one that gets me. Matthews is a media professional, tasked with taking on certain responsibilities, such as, say, reading about Clinton’s and Obama’s healthcare plans, and then talking about that on the air.
But that would be hard, so it doesn’t happen.