Politics & Power Quote by Chris Matthews

Matthews isn’t praising Obama so much as narrating a kind of media rapture - and in doing that, he accidentally indicts the moment he’s part of. The jump from Reagan’s chest-thumping “America” to Obama’s supposedly post-national “we stand for something” isn’t political analysis; it’s a conversion story. Reagan is framed as brand management: patriotic, legible, bounded. Obama becomes metaphysics: “above the country…above the world,” a leader whose appeal is treated less as policy than as transcendence.

The telling word is “sort of.” Matthews senses the blasphemy of what he’s saying, but can’t resist the escalation. “Parochial,” “chauvinistic,” “provincial” form a neat rhetorical staircase: three synonyms that signal sophistication while also flattering the speaker and audience as worldly grown-ups. It’s MSNBC-era cosmopolitanism as self-image, with Obama cast as the proof that the nation has matured past its uglier instincts.

Context matters: late-2000s Obama coverage often carried a “restoration” longing after Bush-era war fatigue, polarization, and international embarrassment. Matthews is channeling that relief - the desire for a unifying figure who doesn’t just win elections but dissolves conflict. Calling him “God” reads less like literal belief than like the language of celebrity politics colliding with messianic hope.

The subtext is both adoration and anxiety: if Obama’s power comes from being “above” everyone, then disagreement becomes heresy, and politics turns into faith. Matthews captures, almost too honestly, how quickly a charismatic candidate can be lifted out of democracy and into myth.