Chris Matthews and Jay Leno, November 18

(Screen grab/NBC)

Larry the Cable Guy was Jay Leno's first guest on Tuesday's Tonight Show.

He was funny. The show was going along smoothly, and then the entertainment came to a screeching halt.

Chris Matthews was Guest #2.

I think Matthews has an unhealthy obsession with Barack Obama. Couple that with his severe case of Bush Derangement Syndrome and you have one seriously mentally unstable guy.

So, Leno's guests were Larry the Cable Guy and Matthews the Unstable Guy.

Obviously, Matthews was giddy over Obama's election.

He deemed Obama to be like Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln. Obama's been president-elect for two weeks and Matthews thinks he's another Lincoln. How utterly ridiculous!

Matthews made many stupid comments.

Among them:

MATTHEWS: I think [Obama's] a remarkable political reality, and we, the American people went for him. And the stunning thing is, we all thought that people wouldn't vote for him because he was black, and a lot of white people would say they're gonna vote for him and didn't. You know what happened? It was the other way around... Almost 1 in 10 of the people [in Pennsylvania] didn't say they were gonna vote for him, and at the last minute said, 'I wanna give this guy a shot.' And they didn't brag about it, didn't say 'I'm a big liberal' or anything, they just did it quietly. And I think that's the remarkable thing about our country. We're better than we think. You know? I think it's stunning.

Correction: We're better than Matthews and his Leftist comrades think we are. They don't know the American people very well. Matthews underestimated us. It's that "bitter clingers" notion Obama promotes.

Also, Matthews defines being "better" as voting for a liberal, or voting for a black candidate, a LIBERAL black candidate. Very myopic on his part.

MATTHEWS: I think [Hillary Clinton] wants to be secretary of state, totally. And it's a big question, you know. One thing about this, the guy promised us unity, and we thought all that's gonna be great. Well, sometimes unity's tough to take. You gotta put everybody in the tent, and he's trying to bring McCain in and work with him. It doesn't make you real happy 'cause you're used to the fight and you sorta like the fight. And he's saying, 'No, I'm bigger than this.' He's like Abraham Lincoln again. 'I'm gonna bring everybody in the tent.' Well, it's dramatic stuff. We'll see if it works.

No. Obama is not another Abraham Lincoln.

God willing, another long, bloody civil war won't tear apart the country, and we won't need Obama to be another Lincoln.

MATTHEWS: We've had a bad time in this country for a long time now, a lot of hatred and meanness and wedge issues. So we use the gay marriage issue and we fight over that. We find something to fight over every time, and maybe this time around it's gonna work.... This could click.

In a way, I agree with Matthews. We have had a bad time in this country for a long time now. We've had a lot of hatred and meanness -- directed at President Bush and his administration.

One of the command centers for that hatred and meanness is Matthews' MSNBC. Matthews and his MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann have served as high profile henchmen.

MATTHEWS: Can you imagine this great scene? Sometime in the next couple months, somebody point this out, Air Force One, this gigantic 747 is gonna land somewhere with 'United States of America' on the side of it, and out of it's gonna come, whether its Paris or London or Africa somewhere, out of it's gonna come Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. Us. The emblems of American life to the world, and how stunning that's....

And I think America has surprised the world again. I think it's not Asia. We're not Africa. We're not Europe. We're different. We do surprising things. This is the only country in the world where every ethnic group that's ever come here, has done better here. And in many ways he's an immigrant story. His father was from Kenya. There's an immigrant story there, too, as well as the fact we will not put up with mediocrity. And we've had it for too long.

The American people would not put up with this team we've had. This country has not been well served. We've not had good leadership. The President looks like he's already in the locker room with a towel around his neck. It looks like he's taken off, and we need a president pretty soon.

Matthews is so hung up on race. Give it a rest.

Matthews talks about Obama and his "immigrant story." He doesn't mention Obama's Auntie Zeituni, the one loving in public housing in Boston. He doesn't mention Obama's half-brother George, the one living in a hut in the slums of Kenya on less than a dollar a month.

Obama isn't spreading his own immigrant success story around to assist his relatives.

I'm sick of Matthews and those of his ilk bashing President Bush. In spite of the "mediocrity" of the Bush administration, they managed to keep the American homeland free of terrorist attacks after 9/11. That was a monumental feat, a job extremely well done.

Note to Matthews: The United States is never without a president. We have President Bush until noon on January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president. And we have an order of succession. We're never without a president.

MATTHEWS: By the way, I'm getting worried because it's about another couple months before we get a president. And I'm worried about this country falling between the cracks. Because we've got one president who's sort of already retired and we got another president who's politely tip-toeing around the job. Who's leading us right now? It scares me.

...No, it's a real problem because you know they used to have presidents sworn in in March and they moved it up to January. But now we got... I think we've got too much time between elections and taking over.

How lame!

Matthews really is mentally unstable. He's not kidding about being worried. He has no reason to be troubled.

Unless a president is elected to a second term, we always go through this period of transition between administrations.

There isn't too much time between the election and the inauguration. A smooth transition takes time. It's impossible for a new president and an entirely new administration to come in and take over the reins of the country quickly. We need an orderly transition, and President Bush intends to make this transition as seamless as possible.

Matthews needs to get a grip.