A source tells me the MSNBC floor director figured this would happen, which is why he wisely put down the splat mat and drool bucket underneath Chris’s area at the desk before the show:

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” raved about a speech President Obama made to American troops during his surprise visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

“I imagine being a soldier over there — this is what you want to hear,” Matthews said, as if he was wearing military fatigues.

Matthews also likened the leadership of President Obama to that of Henry V of England.

“It was right out of Henry V actually, a touch of Barry, in this case, in the night for those soldiers risking their lives over there,” Matthews said.

“Well that’s great stuff. I was so proud of the President there, I must say. This has nothing to do with partisanship; this is the Commander-in-Chief meeting with the troops,” Chris Matthews gushed on his program today.

Did Henry V address his men by saying “I’m in the house”?

“This has nothing to do with partisanship; this is the Commander-in-Chief meeting with the troops.” Which is why Matthews heaped praise upon President Bush whenever he visited the troops in Afghanistan. Wait, I never heard Tingles do that, did you?

First, here’s the ad if you missed it:

Bill Clinton in the ad:

“Suppose [the SEALs had] been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him [Obama].”

Horrible for Obama? Silly me, the first thought that popped into my head is how horrible it would have been for the SEALs. People like Clinton and Obama are indeed singularly focused — on how events affect their ongoing desperate attempts to cling to power. Or in Bubba’s case, get a blow job.

Team Obama had a legitimate chance at a tempered bragging right, but they ruined it. Obama is, as Tim Stanley wrote at The Telegraph, “so politically tone deaf that he makes Joe Biden look like Machiavelli.”

Update: Obama spoke to the troops Tuesday in Afghanistan, and with his custom humility, he gave himself a shout-out:

From the New York Times:

The strongest such outburst came Friday. “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons,” Mr. Karzai said, apparently holding back tears at a meeting with relatives of the massacre victims, and clearly referring to the United States and the Taliban in the same breath. “There are two demons in our country now.”

He doesn’t seem to mind “demons” putting their lives on the line to protect him:

Karzai wants US troops out of Afghanistan, and it’s probably time he got his wish. At which point I have a feeling he’ll get a subsequent harsh lesson in “be careful what you ask for.”

I was shocked… that they had the actual flag above the Obama flag (these Dems will probably get some hate mail from lefties for that egregious breach of prog protocol).

Not surprisingly, a group of veterans took issue:

The Lake County Democratic Headquarters in Tavares has been flying two American flags outside their office. The first an American Flag and the second the altered flag.

A veterans group arrived late this afternoon with the media in tow and demanded that the second flag be taken down. Don Van Beck, executive director of the Veterans Memorial at Fountain Park asked that the altered flag be removed, explaining that it was in violation of federal flag code. He offered a POW/MIA flag to fly in its place.

Nancy Hurlburt, the Democratic Party Chair for Lake County, said she would research the issue but didn’t take the Obama flag down immediately, prompting Van Beck to declare that they would take the flag down for her.

“No, you will not. This is private property,” Hurlbert responded.

After a short time spent ‘researching’, Hurlbert relented and took down the flag while the veterans looked on. She did not accept the POW/MIA flag offered as a replacement.

Those Democrats sure do know how to win over veterans, don’t they?

When the veterans said the flag was inappropriate, I expected the Democratic Party Chair to agree and take down the top flag, but that didn’t happen. Baby steps…

From ABC News:

Vice President Joe Biden says that President Obama put his job on the line when he authorized the covert raid into Pakistan last year to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

“This guy’s got a backbone like a ramrod,” Biden told a crowd of campaign donors in Washington, D.C., Monday night. “He said, ‘Go,’ knowing his presidency was on the line. Had he failed in that audacious mission, he would’ve been a one-term president.”

Had the mission failed we wouldn’t have heard anything about it.

I don’t blame Obama’s people for game planning the Bin Laden kill during the campaign as automatically as Tom Brady going to Wes Welker. Bin Laden is just about the only card in Obama’s hand that’s worth anything.

The bad news for Sheriff Joe is that Obama will probably be a one term president in spite of Bin Laden being removed from the life pool. Obama’s biggest problem is that he and his cohorts have also ordered the double-tapping of the economy and the constitution (by the way, the projected ten-year cost of Obamacare is now $1.76 trillion — almost twice the amount they lied about when they passed the bill).

Biden’s used that “Obama has a backbone like a ramrod” line on a few occasions in the past, and overkill like that is dumb because it breeds skepticism. Being an unflinching “gutsy call” decision-maker is like Margaret Thatcher’s definition of being a lady: If you have to tell somebody you are, you aren’t.