Several folks have sent me various links to online videos of last night's verbal scuffle on Hardball between Chris Matthews and Zell Miller. (It's tough to link to some of these online videos. Your best bet is to go to the Hardblogger page and see if there's a link there.) Before I viewed it late last night, I'd read a dozen accounts on websites that made it seem like a World Wrestling Smackdown. It isn't that big a deal. Some said that Miller embarrassed himself while others said he effectively bitch-slapped Matthews. I think both views are wrong, though the first is closer to the truth. Either way, you can decide for yourself. It did seem to me that a lot of the problem was that Miller couldn't hear Matthews very well and misunderstood a couple of the questions. And of course, there was also Matthews' annoying habit of asking a question, rephrasing it and asking it again, repeating it one more time, then asking a follow-up question…all without leaving air for the interviewee to respond to any of it. It all made for a nice seven minutes of two grown men in suits and ties making a lot of noise while saying nothing.
Even more embarrassing for Miller, I thought, was his exchange on CNN where he didn't seem able to defend certain points in the speech he'd given not half an hour earlier. He'd attacked Kerry for voting against certain weapons but couldn't respond to the fact that Dick Cheney had opposed a lot of the same expenditures. (Actually, I think the whole Talking Point that Kerry voted that way is a case of his opponents misrepresenting the actual vote…as Fred Kaplan explains here.)
Then, after Miller faulted Kerry's priorities on national defense, we were treated to this sad exchange…
GREENFIELD: Then why did you say in 2001 that he strengthened the military? You said that three years ago.
MILLER: Because that was the biographical sketch that they gave me.
In other words: "I'm not responsible for what I said then. I just said what someone told me to say." It sounds like things haven't changed.