Where my faith in Lawrence O'Donnell's "The Last Word" is completely restored... (VIDEO)

So far, Lawrence O'Donnell has been getting some really good, high-profile interviews to kick off his show. He doesn't seem shy about not doing these things live. He gets what he can get, when he can get it, and broadcasts it the same day. Good for him.

You may recall yesterday I was a wee-bit miffed that ideological ally, and full-time moron, Adam Green was allowed on the show to...well, display his awesome room-temperature intellect. (Now, all of what I just wrote isn't fair, not a bit. At the same time,while like Mr. Green wishes the President would "fight more", I wish he'd stop going on T.V. and sounding like an idiot.)



Anyway, during Lawrence's interview the Axe (David Axelrod), Lawrence showed some insight about Mr. Green and his philosophy (at about the 7:58 mark):

David, you have the President out on the road and the buck-up-and-stick-with-me Tour, trying to hold on to Democrats' power, and we had on this show last night, one of the leaders of the groups that the President's talking to, Adam Green. He's the leader of the Progressive Change Campaign committee. He was encouraged by what he heard in Wisconsin yesterday. Primarily because he heard the President use the word: “fight”. And his point was, he doesn't think that you and the President, when it comes to legislating, when it comes to governing are fighting, and I guess someone has to break it to Adam Green and others that no one fights. These guys in neckties who go to work in the White House and Congress do not fight. They ask each other to do things and they are empowered to say no, and their outcomes are not controlled by campaign rhetoric or by the image of the presidency. Who's going to break that to the people who are disappointed in what the President's achieved?

Translation: Spoken like someone who's never had to get a tough vote in his life.

Axe's answer was pretty good, too:

Well, Lawrence, let me say, first of all, that on the first point, we have achieved a great deal. As I said, you've been around a long time. When you consider the things that we've gotten done under a very difficult circumstances over the last two years, health insurance reform, financial reform, landmark education reform, doubling the use of renewable energy, putting us on that path. Raising Fuel Efficiency standards for the first time in 28 years, and a whole host of other things. You know, those are things that we ought to embrace, we ought to celebrate, and now we have to protect because the Republican Party wants to roll back all of that, and go back to the very same policies that punished the Middle class, exploded the deficits and plunged our economy into the catastrophe that we faced when we walked into office.

So we have a fight on our hands right now, and we need all hands on deck in that fight. That's the point the President's making, that's the point that the Vice-President made the other night on your show. And by the way, anyone who thinks that it didn't take a struggle to do some of these things wasn't paying attention. Obviously health care was an epic battle. I don't think there's been a legislative battle like it in our generation. Financial reform was an epic battle. The Capitol was awash with lobbyists from wall street and it was an extraordinary victory that enabled us to move forward with the kinds of reforms that we did, that put Elizabeth Warren in the position to do the things that she can do for consumers now, and so on. I think we have a lot to be proud of. And we have a lot of work ahead of us. What we can't afford now is to have these intramural debates, while there's so much at stake. That's the point the President is trying to make all over this country.

So, Mr. Green...I'll stop calling you a moron, when you're willing to admit you haven't been paying attention.

That's what I've been counting on for this show. That's what I wanted, a more inside baseball look and how things have to work (not how they should work, how they oughta work, but how they have to work). Thank you, Mr. O'Donnell (no relation to the dim-bulb-tax-avoiding Senate Candidate from Delaware) you have a viewer for life.

Lawrence was not without his criticism. I will say his criticism comes off as educated and smart, and thus very legitimate:

It seems to me what you've come up against is the politics of campaigning and the politics of governing. In the politics of campaigning you can say anything, and you can use the word fight and say I'm going to provide health care to all Americans. And the politics of governing are limited by other people's interests. In the campaign where I never second guessed you once. People would criticize the Obama campaign at different points, I never did. I was watching a flawless campaign that was running better than I could have ever imagined. In the politics of governing, I think there have been some mistakes. During the campaign, people would say, who's right on Health Care, Hillary or Obama? I would say that It's not up to them, it's up to a guy named Max Baucus who you've never heard of, and that turned out to be true. There was an over-promising in the campaign, heated rhetoric in the campaign which can never ever be delivered in the processes of Congress, and the disappointed base has yet to come to terms with that.

This is what criticism of the Obama Administration should sound like. Clear-eyed, explaining the full view of the terrain that has to be dealt with, yet with an explanation of what was actually done, and not imagined.

On the other hand, this is what criticism sounds like when it comes from morons.