>> this is "the chris matthews show." >> ask not what your country can do for you. >> tear down this wall. >> i can hear you. chris: 11 great years. we've been with you before the iraq war, from the early george w. bush days to the rise of barack obama. we've looked at countless characters, but we're looking back at the biggest, the most fascinating characters of this show's 11 great years. time travel. it's something to look back to what reporters have told me that i didn't know. those insights and predictions on this show, things we discovered together thanks to our top flight correspondents. you'll love seeing what we thought would happen to those 11 fascinating characters before the biggest events and elections of the past decade. and finally, here comes the

funny stuff. from of our favorite bits from yesteryear. >> today, highlights of this show's 11 great years. chris: hi, i'm chris matthews and welcome to this special highlights edition of this show. we're looking back at how this show reflects the history and especially politics of our 11 breaking news coming into the nbc bay area news room. are bart workers going on strike in the news conference underway shortly in oakland. we hope to have a live shot of that for you. let's take it live. >> the members and workers at bart and the riding public and they have been completely unresponsive to any of our concerns about safety. we expected an economic proposal from bart that would do more than give the workers exactly

one dollar a year more than they currently make for each of the next four years. if you look at bart's proposal as we have very closely, they expect these workers who have had a wage freeze for each of the last four years, and who have made $100 million in concessions for all of the last four years to in fact make -- have an increase of four dollars in four years from now, a total of four dollars in four years from now, so clearly, bart management never intended to negotiate a contract with us fairly and squarely. they have created a terrible situation here for the riding public and for our members and we want to let the riding public know that this union and our members are deeply concerned both about them and their families and the impact this

will have on all of our communities and on the workers and their families and we demand that bart management address our deep concerns and come to an equitable and fair contract. i want her to make a statement. she is the vice president chairman. >> on behalf of the 1400 maintenance and clerical workers and professional workers for bart i'd just like to say i'm really deeply disappointed it's come to this. and tonight we're going to be going on strike. we will make sure that everybody gets home safe and that all the trains are put to bed before we go out and i pledge that we'll do the best that we can to come

to a quick resolution and keep the bay area moving. we're just really disappointed. >> i want to ask him to make a statement about our concerns about safety and safety training officers. >> it's unfortunate that today we never have received any return proposal from the district concerning safety. safety is our number one priority. that's the reason we get our passengers to and from or destination safely. we have a very good safety record but we want it to be safer. the demands we put on the table were never met in kind. we want the management to take ore proposals safely. >> we have been hearing the words that certainly all day it

seemed we would. the bart strike is on. as we just heard they will be putting the trains to bed, meaning finishing the runs tonight. they end at 1:30. tomorrow morning there will be no bart service for the bay area, 400,000 people who ride those trains every day will have to find some other way to get around and we were talking about it a short time ago, a bart strike several years ago back in the 1990s really set the bay area on its ear and now with 175,000 more riders per day it's going to be worse. so the bart strike is on. i'm not going to rehash both sides. everyone calling the other one a variety of names a different planet is one of the bart leaders put it. we heard the bart workers saying they were offered one dollar per year more and it wasn't enough. bart saying they doubled their

offer just yesterday. it wasn't at all what bart union workers were looking for. live reports beginning tomorrow, 4:30 a.m. on today in the bay. we will keep you posted on what's going on then but it's i can tell you it's going to be a very wild commute tomorrow extreme extremely slow moving. try to avoid commute hours. bart is going on strike. this has been a special report from nbc bay area news. would be to use a little bit of humor, not anger. anger is something he absolutely cannot afford, let's face it, a black man cannot be seen as angry. chris: the obama elitism we were discussing there was the notion behind this in the spring of 2008. there's been a lot of talk this week about barack obama's bowling in altoona, trying to do what the locals do. he bowled, by the way a 37 in seven frames.

i asked him about it in "hardball." what are the perks, senator, of being president of the united states is you have your own bowling alle ysks. are you -- own bowling alley. are you ready to bowl from day one? >> obviously i am not. chris: and back in 2003, up in new hampshire, john kerry gave it his best roll. even though it was not so hot, he tried to show his wife, teresa, how to get that ball down the lane. >> ooh. chris: four years before that george w. bush went bowling in new hampshire, no strikes there. back in 1992, bill clinton bowled frames in clinton. hillary didn't join him. then there was the senior george bush, just the thought of the older bush bowling was enough for dana carvey. >> going to go down in that area, got that thing here, roll her down, get her right in that baby, cradle it in there, pin here, pin here, there's the

ball sitting right there, call it, pin fell down. didn't have a chance. chris: here's the real senior george bush giving it his all in 1984. let's take a look at that again n slow-mo. >> oh, yeah. chris: why can't yankees bowl? never have figured that one out. our next most fascinating character in 11 years is john mccain. we had this take on one of his biggest challenges, running with george w. bush's record in june of 2008. there's a lot of history tying john mccain to george bush, the history of war and peace. let's begin in 2000 when both were seeking the republican presidential nomination. everything was swell until mccain, the upstart, whacked bush in new hampshire, and then bush advocates went after mccain in ads and phone calls that most say went over the line.

mccain responded. >> let me tell you what really went over the line, governor bush had an event and he paid for it, and stood next to a spokesman for a fringe veterans group. that fringe veteran said john mccain had abandoned the veterans. can don't know if you understand this, george, but that really hurts. that really hurts. and so five united states senators, vietnam veterans, heroes, some of them really incredible heroes, wrote george a letter and said apologize. you should be ashamed. >> let me speak. chris: of course bush triumphed in the nasty south carolina primary, sending mccain's campaign to a death spiral. mccain finally got behind bush but was far from a glowing endorsement. > i endorse governor bush. i endorse governor bush. i endorse governor bush.

i endorse governor bush. i endorse governor bush. chris: four years later when the republicans were on the verge of losing a white house, mccain was a good soldier, even to the point of going to a rally in florida and there you see him hugging george bush. this year with things even worse for republicans, bush and mccain have stayed cozied up and all reminds me of dean martin and jerry lewis. they were a huge hit, in fact the greatest nightclub act in history but they also had a huge personal falling out. they could barely stand each other for a while there but even when things got really rocky between them, they still managed to turn on the magic. >> martin! >> what is it! >> i'm in trouble. >> oh, what's the matter? >> look. chris: what a classic act. when we come back, why john mccain picke next most fascinating character, sarah palin.

be right back. >> "the chris matthews show" i out there owning it. the ones getting involved and staying engaged. they're not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is "how did i end up here?" i started schwab for those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives.

>> you can always catch chris matthews five nights a week as he delves into the big news wee nights on msnbc. chris: welcome back to our look at highlights of our 11 years on the air. we've been looking at the 11 most fascinating characters in those years. in the 2008 campaign, john mccain was stuck running with the george w. bush legacy but his chosen running mate was a self-inflicted wound, sarah palin. our next fascinating character in our 11 years. our group sized up the palin choice. here are john and misha on why he picked her? >> it's a place -- play for the west and working class voters and it's a play for avan get a s -- evangelicals, and way to put excitement in his campaign. >> to give some element of the

future. i think the problem with the pick in a lot of ways, a, it looks really political and for mccain whose slogan is country first, this looks like a politics first pick and also think it makes voters think about his age more because they have to confront the question, there's a good chance something could happen to him in office, are we ready to have this woman with her qualifications and lack thereof. chris: you say she's ready to be president? i haven't heard that yet. >> that's the question. chris: soon after that sarah palin's tv ability was put to the katie couric test and "saturday night live" tina fey came on with her spot-on impression of palin. >> sarah palin gave john mccain a boost coming out of the republican convention but then came the network interviews especially the one with katie couric. her troubling answers made her an object of ridicule on late night tv. >> ultimately what the bailout does is it helps those who are concerned about the health care reform needed to help shore up our economy, to help -- it's

got to be all that for our economy. ris: things have only gone downhill from there in the latest nbc poll, the republicans listed sarah palin as the biggest drag. plus or minus all told? >> short-term plus and long-term minus. that term was nine days because it has been one bad news episode after another. >> did she pick them or did they pick her, the handlers of john mccain. i have a feeling she had a hand in this? >> she was very active for promoting herself for several months and that was coming together of like-minded people and shows how shallow cynical the choice was to a lot of critics. >> are you ready to be president? it takes us a while to get to it. chris: of course sarah palin's biggest task was taking on joe biden in their debate and biden is our next fascinating character and in one of our economic bits we picked on biden's sweet spot, his

tendency to say exactly what is passing through his mind. we look back at the time he was still in the senate and his notorious questioning of supreme court nominee samuel alito. biden said some sort of record for the longest question on the history of the planet. take a look, and remember, this is one question. >> i understand, judge, i'm the only one standing between you and lunch, so i'm sorry to make this painless. judge, i'd like to say a few very brief things at the outset. the question is, sometimes some of the things you've said and done puzzle, at least puzzle me, and i'd like to -- and one of the things, it's not part of the line of question i wanted to ask, but again, this is just by way of, you know, why some of us are puzzled, because if i was aware of it and i didn't even like princeton, no, i mean, i really didn't like princeton. yeah, i was an irish catholic kid who thought it hadn't changed like you concluded it

had. i mean, you know, i admit, i had little -- one of my real dilemmas is i have two kids who went to ivy league schools, i'm not sure my grandfather finnegan will allow me -- forgive me for allowing this to happen. all kidding aside, it's important to understand, at least for my questioning, that's the context in at least i want to ask you my questions. what the l me difference is -- explain to me how that test is distinguishable from just plain old discrimination? chris: it came in under 12 minutes, actually, a little over 12 minutes. that was all one question. wow. and when we come back, our last

chris: welcome back. mitt romney rounds out our list of the most fascinating characters in our 11 years on the air. romney was hardly mr. excitement but we found a lot of humor in that now legendary story how he tied his irish setter to the roof of the family car. the obama campaign plans to appeal to dog owners by playing on his story for several years. back in 1983, he strapped, or lashed, you pick the verb, shamus, the family's irish setter to the roof of the station wagon as the family drove 12 hours north to canada for their summer cottage. the romney kids protested, the dog protested in a doggie way d mitt finally had to stop

and take -- hose shamus' protest off the back of the car. f.d.r. used his scotty in a speech to mark his opponent tom dewy when he attacked the family, including the pooch. > the republican leaders are in contempt with attacks on me, , no, ife, or on my sons not contempt in that, they now include my little dog. chris: best speech ever given. and of course the master, richard nixon's checkered speech when he used the cocker spaniel to counter comments on his business contributors to save his spot on the eisenhower ticket. >> help me out with this mitt romney thing, tied shamus, the family dog, to the roof of the

car, i guess he just lashed him up there. how is he going to deal with this? >> the funny thing is this story didn't come out as investigative reporting. mitt romney used to tell this story,ening -- thinking it was an endearing tale of family togetherness. chris: when we come back, more about our 11th fascinating look at 'em.

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chris: welcome back. we've been taking a look at some highlights of our 11 years on the air and some serious discussions, war and politics and some funny takes on our political leaders. we round it out with this, our take on mitt romney's biggest problem, his elitism. before we break, the republicans have given us one long series of flubs. mitt romney, frontrunner, hasn't had the fatal flubs others have but romney wandered in thickets with his elitism challenge have been on full

display. >> i also should tell my story, i'm also imported. chris: romney got stuck at a tex-mex stop and a fan asked him for a buck, $1 and had to search his wallet and found nothing smaller than $100 bills, bad timing and got andrea mitchell's attention. >> there was an iconic moment that occurs in these campaigns. mitt romney at a mexican restaurant, trying to trade a dollar bill with a young boy and all he could find in his wallet were $100 bills. brian, you can't make it up. chris: what kind of a.t.m. does he use? last month romney had this exchange about rising gasoline prices. >> i paid $3.45 a gallon on my way over here to fill up my car to come see you. >> where did you go for that? it's too high. chris: it's high. here's jimmy fallon about his skit at romney's delight at his

flubs that brought down his competition. >> remember he was going to be rick perry, bad debater, he speaks fast and then burns. remember this? he crashed and now i want to see his birth certificate. you're the best, the absolute best. this guy. the c.e.o. of godfathers pizza. he made some ladies an offer they couldn't refuse. and that's two medium crashes and one burn. look, i'm going to be the republican nominee because i know one thing they don't, if you let somebody talk long enough, they'll say or do something stupid. eventually they'll go on and on and let down their guard just as it was written by joseph smith in the book of mormon. chris: jimmy fallon as mitt romney. that is part 2 of our highlight show looking back on our 11 great years.

thanks for watching. i hope you'll join us here next week. we'll have a group of 18 of our all time great panelists here to look back at the biggest issues we debated on our 11 years on the air. it promises to be a very special show. see you back here next week. [captioning made possible by nbc universal] .

>> hi everyone, welcome to "on the money." tod today, we are coming to you where the movers and shakers of the market has gathered. what is different this week? a rare conversation with the former treasury secretary. and a look back at the stressful days of the financial crisis and a look ahead at where the economy is headed now. and reknowned celist? how does he make a living? "on the money" begins right now.