I think he might at least be trying not to show what I’m sure is an indecent amount of excitement. A preview of what we can expect from what I’m sure will be this hard-hitting, substantive, and tingle-tastic interview come Thursday:

Well, I’ll say this to the people watching from the White House, that if you watch Hardball, and the way that we’ve handled that issue and all the other issues to where we’ve put our focus, I’ll be doing that Thursday night. I’ll be talking about executive accountability and the strange way of this rollout as it has occurred. I think I would compare it, Andrea, to a brilliant writer perhaps, with a great theme, who turns in a paper with a lot of misspellings or bad handwriting. It’s a bad way to roll out something, with all the great strengths, potentially, of a national healthcare system along these lines, the way it was rolled out has hurt it. It hurt its reputation, it’s given the other side a lot of talking points to use against the president generally in terms of his competence, and I’m going to ask about that and focus on the things we have. But, also talk about political dysfunction in this country and the inability of the two parties to work together. … I’m going to talk about political dysfunction, executive accountability, and of course, the question of how we fight our wars, whether with drones or with ground troops and that kind of question the president has to deal with in terms of moral principle, but, it will be the big issues.

I’m not quite sure how one can, in the same breath, promise an interview largely about the president’s executive accountability on ObamaCare, and then compare the entire project to a brilliant if somewhat harried or careless writer, but there you have it. And, of course, Matthews will turn to the requisite discussion about all of the unfortunate political dysfunction getting in the president’s way. “The big issues.” Obligatory.