> MATTHEWS: Christopher, before we get to your reporting on your
>recent return to Iraq, do you sense, talking to your colleagues in
>this country, that the-that the-sort of the dispensation of the war
>and the war effort is off now for George W. Bush, that Clinton
>haters are out in panic again?
> CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, "VANITY FAIR": I wouldn't say it was
>panic, no. I think the feeling they have for him, by the way, is not
>hatred so much as contempt. You get this played back a lot, too,
>from European media into the American discourse. They think he is
>stupid. They think he is bigoted. He has had it too easy. Is he a
>child of privilege? As a result, it seems to me they consistently
>underestimate him.
> I mean, here is a guy who took on their most popular Texan,
>Ann Richardson, made pretty short work of her, who with the help of
>Karl Rove and others moved Texas from the blue to the red column-I
>mean the other way around. Red always seems left to me. I...
> (CROSSTALK)
> MATTHEWS: I know. It is ominous.
> HITCHENS: I will get it right one day. It is an old tradition
>of mine. And you know, managed-whatever you think about the
>election, the last presidential election, Al Gore was running as an
>incumbent, and it is out of peace and prosperity, so it seems to me
>whether or not Bush won, Gore certainly lost.
> MATTHEWS: Let me go back...
> HITCHENS: He didn't carry a single southern state including
>his own. So I think people are underestimating the president very
>gravely. There's an element of snobbery in the way the Democrats
>approach him.
> MATTHEWS: I think you are right. There has been a pattern...
> (CROSSTALK)
> HITCHENS: And as to the war, look, what people discovered on
>the 11th of September of 2001 was that we have been living in a
>fool's paradise...
> MATTHEWS: Yes.
> HITCHENS: ... and that there was a serious attempt to make
>war on this country from without and from within. And no one that
>reminds them of that serious is ever going to look silly. Of people
>to try and act as if it shouldn't be true or shouldn't be true,
>can't always be, not just made to look weak, but, it seems to me,
>reveal themselves as people who are weak and not up to the challenge.