Tweety: Bush "an effective commander" who "won the war," Obama "a Vatican Observer"

Chris Matthews has come a long way since the infamous thrill up his leg.

The MSNBC anchor, once so enamored with Barack Obama that he admitted a campaign speech sent a thrill up his leg, has now told Jay Leno that Obama scares him.

"The President scares me," Matthews said of Obama's response to the Gulf oil spill disaster. "He's been acting a little like a Vatican Observer here. When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn't want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, 'I'm in charge,' he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It's in our interest."

Matthews described the oil spill as "the scariest thing I've ever seen" and used the opportunity to make a dig at Dick Cheney.

"I don't know where to start," he said. "I mean, Halliburton, sound familiar? Cheney was the head of Halliburton. When he got to Vice President, the oil company gave him a $34 million signing bonus to become Vice President of the United States."

WATCH: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/21/chris-matthews-tells-leno_n_584708.html

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically ..., the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That ... if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take that away from him.

<...[br />MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was that the best picture in the 2000 campaign?

http://mediamatters.org/research/200604270005