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Original Source: HARDBALL
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Tonight, big stakes for President Bush. If his numbers keep dropping as they are dropping, how he can lead on the war or the economy? And he`s the only president we have got.
Let`s play HARDBALL.
Good evening. I`m Chris Matthews.
President Bush will address the country tonight at 9:00 Eastern from the French Quarter in New Orleans. His aides say he`ll show compassion by talking about helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina and by decrying the years of racial injustice that preceded it. But is the real audience tonight those who voted for him since last November, but have lost confidence in him, because of Iraq, high gas prices and the troubling response to Katrina?
A new NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll shows the president`s lowest job approval ever. He has even lower approval for the handling of Iraq. And less than a third of the country now believe that our country, the USA, is headed in the right direction. According to the same NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll, gas prices, no surprise here, now rate the biggest economic issue facing Americans.
The challenge for the president tonight in his speech from New Orleans, the percentage of Americans who rate him as a very good leader now is for the first time down to its pre-9/11 levels. In other words, the bounce he got out of 9/14, that wonderful speech at the rubble, where he embraced the firefighter, is lost now.
To continue prosecuting an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq and to meet whatever economic challenges lie ahead, including possibly higher gas prices, he needs to get those numbers up on job approval.
We begin with "Newsweek"`s Evan Thomas and MSNBC`s chief Washington correspondent, Norah O`Donnell.
Evan, you talked in your article this week. And I have to say, it`s an anecdote that everybody now knows about. When the president was on vacation, right through the beginnings of the horror of Katrina, including the breaking of the levees in New Orleans, he wasn`t watching television. He wasn`t really visually aware of what everybody else was watching. And one of his top aides had to give him a DVD to update him on the way to New Orleans.
EVAN THOMAS, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR, "NEWSWEEK": And that was on Thursday. I mean, that was late in the week.
He -- look, he says he doesn`t read the newspapers. He claims not to -- he doesn`t want to listen to what the chattering classes are saying. He doesn`t want to listen to what you`re doing here. And that has always been a matter of pride to him, of strength, that: I don`t listen to the noise. I know what I want. I know my gut, and I follow it.
But, in this case, he had -- he just didn`t know what was going on.
MATTHEWS: Norah, what is the White House reaction to that news story? Are they saying anything about the president`s inattentiveness to the situation as it developed down in the South?
NORAH O`DONNELL, NBC CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think they recognize that they mishandled this. And whether it`s top officials at the Republican National Committee or those in the White House, acknowledge that they mishandled the response to Katrina, as well as politically handling the response.
And so, the first step is doing something that the president rarely does, which is admitting responsibility, taking accountability. That`s what we saw the president do in the East Room and what he`s going to do again tonight. And then, only then, after he takes some responsibility, takes some of the blame, if you will, after resisting assigning blame to anyone, can talk about moving forward with the massive reconstruction of New Orleans.
It`s not -- White House officials say they are not going to name a specific number tonight that he will talk about, but it will be big, and the president is going to pledge to move forward on that tonight.
MATTHEWS: Let`s look at the president`s political challenge. And I think that`s one of the reasons why he`s addressing the country, if not the reason. President Bush`s job approval now is at 40 percent.
In January, when he came into office the second time for the second term, it was around 50 percent. Obviously, they voted for him. How does he get back that 10 percent, because that`s what he`s after?
O`DONNELL: Well, this is going to be difficult for him.
And what`s noteworthy, Chris, if you look inside those numbers, that that`s not just fallout among Democrats or swing voters. There`s actually been a significant drop among Republicans, the president`s base. And when the president starts to lose members of his own base, the Republican Party, that`s where there`s real political problems.
A senior official who is very close to this White House, however, told me, though, they believe the slide has stopped. They believe that it`s not going to get any lower than 40 percent, that, at this point, they are sort of on the upward trend. But I think Americans have got to regain confidence not only in this president, but that he can fix it, that he can make it right, and that, if there`s another disaster, another attack on the United States, that we are prepared.
And the president just the other day in the East Room couldn`t answer yes when asked the question, is America prepared for another attack? And that`s scary.
MATTHEWS: Well, that`s also showing up in an NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll. It shows that 51 percent of the people don`t have real faith in the war on terrorism anymore, which has always been Bush`s strong suit.
THOMAS: Well, he`s got -- competence is ultimately the issue.
And Bush did a pretty good job of convincing us after 9/11 that he was a competent guy, that he was a leader. And that -- faith in that has eroded. And this was a bad bump, because it -- they look like they didn`t know what they were doing. And that`s -- that`s a terrible thing for a leader.
MATTHEWS: OK, that gets to an issue which we talk about a lot on this show.
Norah, let`s take a look at this number. It`s an NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll number. A whopping 58 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the president has handled the war in Iraq. The horror in Iraq does keep seeping through in the headlines. It hasn`t been completely blacked out by the problems in Katrina land down to the south. We`re hearing about a war which has turned bad. It`s not just the insurgency.
The real bloodiness of the past couple days has come from the outside people, the al Qaeda people there. The president seems to be in trouble on his handling of terrorism and Iraq.
O`DONNELL: Well, you know, Katrina is almost like what Iraq was during the campaign. And I say that. Remember, whenever things were going badly in Iraq, it would pull all of the president`s numbers down.
Now Katrina, in many ways, is pulling all the president`s numbers down on every other subject, including Iraq. Yes, it has been increasingly deadly in Iraq, with 160 killed just last night or this morning. That being said, I think also Americans are looking at the large financial contribution that needs to be made to repair New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama, and then looking at how much we`re spending in Iraq.
And I think that`s been where people are making a choice about where our dollars should go, and there`s that setup, that contrast.
MATTHEWS: I think you`re so right, according to the poll. Norah, you`re right on the nail there, because it isn`t his response particularly to Katrina that`s bothering people. That`s about even, 48-48, according to the NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll; 48 disapprove; 48 approve.
I think a lot of that, however, is -- I want to ask you -- a lot of that is just Republican-Democrat slit and white-black split.
THOMAS: Yes.
MATTHEWS: The people that sympathize with those people down there tend to be Democrats. Those who may not may be Republicans. The president may try to change that tonight. But the first look at this says, you know, a lot of people aren`t really upset about that.
THOMAS: I think people resent the idea that the president was somehow racist. I mean, the charge, which was made certainly on the left and by a lot of people, that somehow he overlooked the poor blacks of New Orleans, that -- people -- a lot of voters resent that charge and think that is just...
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