CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Bob, tell me something I don't know.

BOB WOODWARD: That the White House has a secret plan to win the election and it's complex and it's secret, but it--look, Barack Obama wants to win so badly, as I understand it, everything in the White House is driven by the election and that level of commitment will take them to a point where he's going to show some leg in a way that people are going to say, wow, he really wants the job and this emotional connection could take place.

MATTHEWS: Wow. I do--I am impressed by that.

The discussion got somewhat confused along the way, as this segued into a discussion of the entirely unrelated phenomenon of Republican political candidates who do not like to speak to journalists.

Then the Washington Post's Bob Woodward weighed in with a solution. He explained that you can get in good with politicians--I mean, do investigative journalism--if you follow his simple advice: Tell your subjects exactly what you're going to ask them ahead of time, giving them time to come up with answers, and then print their answers.

WOODWARD: I think the survival of the so-called mainstream media has to do with quality. And if you assemble a bunch of questions and go to a candidate and say, "Look, I'm serious. I really want to ask about this," and you take them as seriously as they take themselves--and believe me, they all take themselves seriously.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

WOODWARD: And you've done your homework, they--and you're fair minded and neutral, they are going to engage. When I've done these books on Bush and Obama, I send in--I hate to disclose trade craft here--20-page memos saying this is what I want to ask about.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

WOODWARD: People say, well, you're telling them--you're tipping them off. And I say, yes. I want them to do some homework themselves. I want them to be fully engaged. And I think you can do that with lots of work. And--but if it's just we like to come in and chat about the news of the day, we'll get stiffed.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, they don't need--it's too wild, it's too crazy.

WOODWARD: Yeah.

Today the Washington Post published a tribute to David Broder that featured a few former politicians recalling how Broder was remarkably interested in talking to them. All agreed that Broder was the kind of reporter who wanted to know what they were thinking.

That's a great way to make friends with powerful people. Whether it produces good journalism is another matter entirely. The same can be said of Woodward's advice, which is particularly strange coming after a discussion of the media's Iraq failures. Getting too close to official sources was exactly the problem then; it's unlikely to be the key to the corporate media's "survival." But it's worked wonders for Bob Woodward.

MARK SHIELDS: Just one little point of personal privilege on Joe Biden, who did take a hit for not being able to say dictator, but in United States politics, I mean, it's always been, if someone is on our side, he is a strongman.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: If he is on the other side, he is a dictator. I mean, that has sort of been the nomenclature throughout. All of these guys who were such stalwart anti-Communists, I mean, the Marcoses of the world, they were--they became dictators when they fell.

DAVID BROOKS: Hey, strongman is a bad word, too. But this was--the policy, I mean....

MARK SHIELDS: No, I'm not arguing with policy. I'm just...

DAVID BROOKS: I mean, I'm not blaming Biden. They told him what to say.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

Laughing about U.S. support for dictators is one thing. Expressing outrage that the U.S. is abandoning a dictator in his hour of need is another. But that's what MSNBC host Chris Matthews appeared to be saying on Morning Joe today (2/7/11), as he explained that all dictators want to hand off control to their children:

It all comes down to the same thing. They want their oldest kid to replace them. And what was the plan for transition for our friend? Did we ever talk to him about it? Did we talk about it, encourage him? That's my view. Character and planning. And I don't see--I feel shame about this. I feel ashamed as an American, the way we're doing this. I know he has to change. I know we're for democracy, but the way we've handled it is not the way a friend handles a matter. We're not handling as Americans should handle a matter like this. I don't feel right about it. And Barack Obama, as much I support him in many ways, there is a transitional quality to the guy that is chilling.

I believe in relationships. I think we all do. Relationship politics is what we were brought up with in this country. You treat your friends a certain way. You're loyal to them. And when they're wrong, you try to be with them. You try and stick with them.

So on the one hand you have public TV pundits chuckling about U.S. support for dictators--this is just the way the world works, apparently. And on the other hand, a host from the supposedly liberal cable news channel is "ashamed" that our government is not doing enough to support Mubarak.

Chris Matthews and NBC's Andrea Mitchell went back and forth about whether this was an actual "Sister Souljah moment" or a "mini moment." But Helene Cooper of the New York Times summed up the conventional wisdom best:

I think President Obama just had a really good week. If you just look at the trajectory of how this week started, on Monday and Tuesday everybody is writing, everybody's talking about he caved in to Republicans. By Wednesday he's out there, he's gone and done this press conference and he's looking very much as if he's standing up to his own party. He's moved towards the independents. He's being, you know, he's very much appealing to the independents that he's going to need in 2012. And now he sees he--we're writing about him standing up to Democrats. And for him that's exactly the place that he wants to be right now at this stage in his presidency.