Hotline After Dark -- Are You There God? It's Me, Chris

"World News" led with ABC's recent poll on the economy. "Evening News" led with Pres. Obama's economic agenda. "Nightly News" led with Obama's economic agenda.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews was heard saying "Oh, God" as LA Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) approached the camera to deliver the GOP response to Pres. Obama's speech 2/24. He addressed his comments on last night's "Hardball."

Matthews: "The party coming into power has a leader and is proud to say so. The party that lost power did its best to deny last night it ever had power and put forth a spokesman who spoke as if the main perpetrator during the past eight years of budget deficits, untamed spending, Jack Abramoff and an unpopular war was not the very party he was representing. Add to that the peculiar stagecraft of the opposition party, that seen in the Louisiana governor's mansion, Governor Bobby Jindal walking from somewhere in the back of this narrow hall, this winding staircase looming there, the odd antebellum look of the scene."

More Matthews: "Some people heard my reaction at the time. What was the message in all this? Was this a mimicking of a president walking along the state floor to the East Room? And at the same time, that the Republicans are so far from Washington, they can't be blamed for anything?"

Ex-House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), in response: "Listening to your introduction, somebody's going to accuse you of being biased" (MSNBC, 2/25).

After the jump, more Matthews, Jindal's future, Obama's budget and interviews with Geithner and Pelosi.

(KATHERINE LEHR)

FNC's O'Reilly: "On the far left MSNBC network, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was openly mocked. ... Another shameful display from NBC News. Now we called the guy in charge at MSNBC, General Electric boss Jeff Immelt, ... and asked Jeff for a statement on the disrespect showed Governor Jindal. As usual, Immelt is hiding under his desk. He is quite a guy. ... With this exception of MSNBC, which you know, is now almost a caricature, the media played it straight last night. They weren't cheerleading, they weren't jumping up and down" ("O'Reilly Factor," 2/25).

MSNBC's Olbermann, naming Politico's Calderone one of the night's worst persons in the world for speculating that Olbermann was the one who said "Oh, God": "Compare this to the website RealClearPolitics.com, which reported only what it could confirm, quote, 'an MSNBC producer or host was heard off-camera muttering, Oh, God.' Mr. Calderon, you guessed. You guessed wrong. You pretended you got it right. You owe me an apology. And to Mr. Harris and Vandehei, who run Politico.com, if you let your columnists guess, you will become known as a website full of not experts, but guessers. In this case, bad guessers" ("Countdown," 2/25).

IT'S JINDAL'S WORLD, WE'RE JUST LIVING IN IT

As for Jindal, how did his speech impact his WH '12 run and the future of the GOP?

Newsweek's Wolffe, on GOP WH '12ers: "They are all trying too hard. At some point, you just have to take stock and say, 'What do we stand for,' as opposed to saying, 'Who is going to be the next candidate?' The election is too far away. This was too personal a pitch for Jindal, saying, instead of responding to the policies, trying to make a pitch for himself. ... If you are not ready for primetime and these people surely meet that definition, then you can actually ruin a career that had some promise and potential. I think Governor Jindal probably did have some potential. That's all gone" ("Countdown," MSNBC, 2/25).

Dem strategist James Carville: "He missed some opportunities, but you know, you get started in this and look, we all have a bad night. He probably didn't have the best night he ever had but he seems to be a tough guy and he'll come back" ("Situation Room," CNN, 2/25).

Time's Scherer: "I don't think this rules Jindal out in anyway. We're a long way away from 2012. Jindal is already a celebrity among the right. They already know him. They already have great respect for him. The issue for Jindal is introducing himself to the rest of the country. If this is his first introduction, it is a problem. Over time, he is going to have to find a way to get beyond it. It doesn't mean he can't get beyond it" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 2/25).

GOP strategist Tucker Eskew, on Jindal admitting GOPers have made mistakes in the past few years: "First step in recovery. I think that's the right thing to do. We've got more to do than that. We've got to back our credibility on some of those issues and we've got to restore new ideas in the party. ... We've got some time to do it. The election will be in four years. ... I think the Obama record will be out there for everyone to judge. And it will be against the effective Republican opposition. I think Bobby Jindal laid out some good ideas yesterday. It's just the start of a process yesterday. We've got a long way to go" ("Situation Room," CNN, 2/25).

BY THE NUMBERS

Meanwhile, the WH is scheduled to release its budget today.

Ex-WH adviser David Gergen: "I think a lot of people are now going to look at this and say, we need to focus on the recession first. We need to stabilize the economy. Once we have done that, let's then see where we can go on health care and energy and these other issues. One of the surprises ... [is] that people in the White House are saying [that] working on the recession over the next six months is not all that important. What's really important is to do health care and energy. That is not the view of the country. So, you know, we went up to the mountaintop last night, very successful speech. Today, we get down to some hard realities. There are going to be a lot more questions ahead" ("AC 360," CNN, 2/25).

Ex-Rep. John Kasich (R-OH): "This budget that he has coming, I have no idea how he's going to pay for all this increased spending. He says he's going to, you know, downsize Iraq and raise taxes on the rich. There aren't enough people to raise taxes who are rich to pay for all of this" ("Hannity," FNC, 2/25).

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), on reports the budget includes $634B for health care: "Most of the estimates of what health care reform will cost in the short term are higher than that. On the other hand, hopefully there's a recognition here. We simply can't afford to put a whole lot more money into a health care system that is already spending $1 in every $6 in this economy for health care. That's twice as much as any other industrialized country in the world. So, adding a whole lot more money to this system may have to be done for a little while to make the transformation, but longer term, we've got to save money" ("1600," MSNBC, 2/25).

And Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner spoke to PBS' Lehrer about the idea of nationalizing the banks.

Geithner: "I think that's the wrong strategy for the country, and I don't think it's a necessary strategy. What we need to do is to make sure that these institutions have the resources necessary to perform their critical function on an ongoing basis in our economy as a whole, these major banking institutions. Now, there may be circumstances in which we have to provide, for the benefit of the economy as a whole, exceptional levels of support."

More Geithner: "And when we do that ... we're going to be very careful that that comes with conditions to make sure our support is helping support lending, that it comes with conditions to make sure these institutions restructure so they are stronger, so that there is accountability, and so that we make it more likely, not less likely, that private capital comes in and replaces the government's capital as soon as that's possible."

Lehrer: "But the government is not going to be running these banks in exchange for propping them up financially, if it becomes necessary?"

Geithner: "I think our system works better if these institutions are managed and remain in private hands. But, again, we're going to have to make sure that they have the support necessary to get through this and plays a critical role, and we're going to do that" ("NewsHour," 2/25).

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

During her interview with MSNBC's Maddow, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about leaked details of Obama's purported Iraq plan.

Maddow: "I know we're expecting a major statement from the president on Friday in North Carolina. You describe the '06 election in which you became speaker of the House as a referendum on Iraq. And you said right before those elections that absent a Democratic victory, we could be in Iraq for 10 years. I wonder if you are disappointed by the prospect that we might be looking at 50,000 American troops still in Iraq essentially beyond seven years into Iraq, beyond that 16-month timeline that we'd heard from candidate Obama."

Pelosi: "Well, in the House of Representatives, I want to be clear, we have ended the war in Iraq six or seven times. ... I don't know what [Obama]'s saying because he hasn't made the statement yet, but certainly, that the war would be over by 2010. What is important about this is that we are on a path to ending the war. Some might want a few months shorter or something a bit longer, but nonetheless, the time will go by and the war will be over."

Maddow: "Fifty thousand seem like an awful large residual force?"

Pelosi: "It does. I completely agree with that. ... The president hasn't made the statement. So, I don't know what he's going to say. I know what the rumor is. And I don't know the justification is for ... a presence of 50,000 troops in Iraq. I do think that there is a need for some, and I don't know that all of them have to be in the country."

Pelosi was also asked about Senate Judiciary Cmte chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announcing that his cmte would hold hearings on creating a new "truth commission" to investigate allegations of crimes committed by Bush admin. officials.

Pelosi: "[The proposal] is a good idea. What I have some concern about there is it has immunity. And I think that some of the issues involved here like the politicizing of the Justice Department, and the rest, they have criminal ramifications and I don't think we should be giving them immunity. But we'll find a way to go forward, because the American people want us to go forward, but also making sure that the Constitution is respected."

More Pelosi: "And that's what our issue is whether you are talking about separation of power, whether you're talking about Karl Rove, Josh Bolten and the others at the White House not responding to subpoenas by the Congress on the subject of the Justice Department politicizing. And, so those issues are still alive. We are in the courts on those. We are in negotiations with the administrations, both the Bush administration and the Obama administration, about how the executive branch responds to the legislative branch honoring our Constitution. ... I want to go forward, but as we try to have reconciliation, I'm a little hesitant to have immunity" (MSNBC, 2/25).