Video: Yeah, Obama is inexperienced, arrogant … and?

Chris Matthews led a roundtable discussion yesterday on Barack Obama’s experience, and just to cut off the jokes, it lasted longer than 10 seconds.  In fact, Matthews himself was in rare non-tingly mode as he pressed his panel on what exactly Obama has done in his extraordinarily brief time to support his claim to bipartisanship.  Not much, as everyone around the room agreed:

Matthews himself called the question, “What has he done?”, a show-stopper. No one could point to a single effective action he has taken to cross the aisle, while everyone acknowledged that John McCain has taken actual risks to do so.  David Brooks tells the room that Republican Senators and staffers insist that Hillary Clinton works across the aisle and keeps communication open, but Obama has never bothered to do that, and both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill agree on his arrogance.

David Gregory delivers a couple of laughs while out-spinning Matthews (easy to do in this clip) by saying that Obama will have such a mandate that it won’t matter if he’s an arrogant partisan.  Hope and Change in action!  One panelist notes that Obama “hasn’t done a huge amount of anything, frankly,” which is the best assessment so far of Obama in any show conducted by Matthews.

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