On Monday's edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews raised the notion of luck rather than skill to account for the success of the Navy SEALs in rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips from the Somali pirates.
Transcript
MATTHEWS: Well, let‘s stick to the day-to-day. I‘m fascinated by process, what it has to do with execution, because I‘ve seen presidencies fail. Desert One failed. It was an operation to get those hostages out of Iran. It failed.
TODD: Right. It failed.
MATTHEWS: It was tragic, what happened, tragic for the people involved. Let me ask this about luck.
TODD: Yes.
MATTHEWS: People who have a reputation for luck are easy to follow into battle. People with bad a reputation or with those who—clearly bad luck don‘t get followed into battle. Is the luck of this, with the three snipers—or the snipers hit the three targets just directly and lethally going to be part of this story, just the fabulous execution, literally, of these pirates?
TODD: Well, let‘s remember what you hear a lot of folks say about luck is that you got to work hard in order to get to a point where luck goes your way. It‘s not as if you get lucky when you do—when you‘re not prepared for something, so—and obviously, these Navy SEALs, they trained for this. They operationally were planning for this. The fact that they convinced these guys in negotiation to be towed out to—farther out to sea—which, by the way, should have been the first sign that these pirates had that you know what, their goose is cooked...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TODD: ... the minute they were sort of agreeing, and suddenly, you‘re allowing—you‘re allowing the SEALs to have more time to assess their target and start studying this thing and just actually having an actual tether to be connected to these guys—that was certainly a big step.
I think, in some ways, it‘s unfair to the Navy SEALs to just chalk this up to luck or unfair to the president to chalk it up to luck because there was a lot of preparation that was put into putting them in a position where everything could go their way.
Even lib Chuck Todd can't bring himself to chalk up to luck the successful killing of the pirates to secure the safety of Capt. Phillips. He's willing to give the SEALs credit for their remarkable skill.
Maybe Matthews' intent wasn't to diss the Navy SEALs as much as it was to elevate Obama. He's a god to Matthews. Perhaps he wanted to emphasize Obama's divine nature and highlight the miraculous things that happen when Obama's will is done.
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