Announcer: He's been a key player in the halls of power, from the West Wing to the Capitol and he's become one of Washington's best known journalists, Chris Matthews.

MATTHEWS: Hi. I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to the show. It's been an explosive week. Let's take a look at it.

Whole Lott-a trouble. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott trys to douse a political bonfire. Even the president raises the heat.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: Recent comments by Senator Lott do no reflect the spirit of our country.

MATTHEWS: The church acts. Boston's Cardinal Law, the senior Catholic priest in the US, is out, but will this cure the church in crisis?

The dangerous world. UN weapons inspections. Have some in the Bush administration already given up?

Also, troubling news about nuclear programs in Iran. And North Korea, how should we deal with these threats?

We talk about these issues with our roundtable. And later, I'll have some thoughts about this wonderful country and its pioneering spirit.

Interview: Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune, Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, and David Gregory, NBC, discuss this week's remarks and apologies by Senator Trent Lott CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: First, this was the week that the moderate Republican Party went to war with its past over the issue of race. Let's go inside. I'm joined by Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, Peggy Noonan, the former speech writer for President Reagan, now a Wall Street Journal columnist, and David Gregory, NBC News White House correspondent.

First up, whole lot of trouble. Senator Trent Lott is reeling from his comments more than a week ago at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party.

Senator TRENT LOTT: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had fallen our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either.

MATTHEWS: Well this week Senator Trent Lott continued to make several apologies.

David, it seems to me the most climatic moment of the week is when President Bush weighed in on this before that black...

Mr. DAVID GREGORY (White House Correspondent NBC News): Yeah.

MATTHEWS: ...minister's group in Philadelphia.

Mr. GREGORY: Well, he's talking about his faith-based initiative, one of the biggest outreach measures he has to African-Americans. And it took him a week, but finally he broke the silence. The White House, its political operation, every bit of the operation, felt that Lott's problem was becoming Bush's problem, it was becoming the party's problem. It was time to inoculate himself from that, inoculate the party from it, and say, `Trent Lott was wrong.' He called his words offensive and wrong. And he said he apologized, and rightfully so. But he said that he still supports him as leader of the Senate.

MATTHEWS: Clarence Page, this doesn't seem like the usual sort of skirmish we're used to, the usual suspects of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, they're not the key players in this fight; other people are.

Mr. CLARENCE PAGE (Chicago Tribune): Well, sometimes bone-headedness is bipartisan, isn't it? You know what happened this week, Chris, is this odd paradox. You've got Democrats publicly expressing outrage over what Lott said and secretly being delighted at the great sound bite he's handed them for the 2004 campaign, while Republicans were publicly trying to support him, while privately hoping he would just go away, that the problem would just go away. This is...

MATTHEWS: What a great tribute to honesty you've just given us.

Mr. PAGE: Absolutely, but this--this is the--the reality of the situation. Look, no--Lott got caught up in nostalgia here, the kind that the party does not want to have. It's a big tent party. It has worked hard, and quite successfully, since the--the mid-'60s. They're trying to expand, first, to the old Southern Democrats, the old segregationists, and then to the northern cities, to the, what I call, the Archie Bunker Bungalow Belt vote, the--the--the swing suburban vote. They got this big tent, but they don't want to be portrayed as a racist party. They--they are not but, like any party, they've got some racists in it and this is the kind of rhetoric that Bush didn't like and you can tell in the anger in his voice.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

Peggy, I heard a lot of voices this week, beginning with Bill Kristol, one of the smartest young conservatives in the country, a lot of people--Laura Ingraham, people like that spoke out immediately, Jack Kemp. This wasn't liberal--black vs. white, conservatists vs. Republicans.

Ms. PEGGY NOONAN (Columnist, Wall Street Journal): I know. I know.

MATTHEWS: It was intraconservative.

Ms. NOONAN: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: It was about the party you're in, the Republican Party.

Ms. NOONAN: This is a big, big part of the story and maybe it is the story. In the past a Republican has stood up and said something maybe awkward, maybe stupid, maybe ill thought through, Republicans, knowing that the person who stood up is going to be smeared by Democrats, smeared by the media. Republicans would come forward and defend him. That has not--this is--this is like "Sherlock Holmes and the Dog That Didn't Bark." What is amazing is what didn't happen. Republicans didn't come forward and defend Trent Lott. They sat, they read it, they looked at it, they talked about it to each other, and one after another, Republicans, most of them--it's almost generational, under the age of 50, came forward and said, `This is unacceptable and it personally offends me.' And you've got the--the essential conservative punditocracy here, National Review, Wall Street Journal, individual columnists...

MATTHEWS: Krauthammer, all those guys.

Ms. NOONAN: Krauthammer, myself, many of--many of those of us who were--who are not necessarily quick to be angry at conservatives, came forward with anger. I do think, in part, it's generational. And I think, in part, it tells you about a new--somehow, in terms of the aesthetics of the Republican Party, a new party being born.

MATTHEWS: Right. A more--a more liberated party, more liberation party.

Ms. NOONAN: To tell you the truth.

MATTHEWS: Do you want him to go, Peggy? I'll put you on the spot. Do you want Trent Lott to step down as leader of the party, the Senate?

Ms. NOONAN: Yes, I do. I must tell you--I'm sorry to say this, but I--I am personally tired of being embarrassed by people who, in the old cliche, do not get it, who don't get what the history of race in America is, what integration has meant, what segregation was. I'm tired of being embarrassed by Republicans, mostly not conservatives, Republicans who don't get it.

Mr. GREGORY: But here's the question, did Bush do enough? I mean, everybody agrees that his words were very powerful, they were well written, they were--they were uttered with conviction. They did the job. He is, in essence, by saying, `Every day that we lived through segregation we were unfaithful to the founding values of this country.' It's all true. But at the end of the day, he didn't do it personally, but he had his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, say, `But there is no reason for Trent Lott to resign as my top guy, the top Republican in--in, now, the--the Republican-controlled Congress.' So did he--did he go far enough?

Ms. NOONAN: Oh, I got to tell you...

Mr. PAGE: But what has happened behind the scenes though?

Ms. NOONAN: Guys--yeah, you got to wonder.

Mr. PAGE: I mean--I mean, that's the kind of endorsement I do not want to hear from my boss, let me tell you.

Ms. NOONAN: You got it. Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. PAGE: But--but--but what--but--but remember, W. Bush is not a member of the club. He's not a senator or an ex-senator. It's hard for him to tell the senate what to do, even...

Ms. NOONAN: Yes.

Mr. GREGORY: Right.

Mr. PAGE: ...though he is the Republican president.

Ms. NOONAN: Yes.

Mr. PAGE: But he sent the signal. And you saw John McCain jump right out and say, `Well, Trent Lott...

Ms. NOONAN: You got it.

Mr. PAGE: ...he's made a mournful accounting,' and maybe that's the hole in the bag, so to speak.

Mr. GREGORY: Right. But here's the bottom line.

Ms. NOONAN: Yeah, I agree.

Mr. PAGE: Maybe that's what we're going to hear from other senators.

Mr. GREGORY: The real problem that the White House and even moderate Republicans had was the way that Trent Lott tried to apologize. He called in to a conservative talk show host, Sean Hannity up in New York, it was rebroadcast on Fox News. He talked, in essence, about, `Look, I was just trying to--to pump Strom--pump him up a little bit. You know, what was I going to say, that I didn't support you for president? It was his 100th birthday.' It wasn't strong enough, not in the estimation of the White House.

Mr. PAGE: Mm-hmm.

Mr. GREGORY: He didn't say he was sorry enough.

MATTHEWS: I want to get into the heart of one question here, which...

Ms. NOONAN: It wasn't thoughtful enough. It just wasn't thoughtful.

MATTHEWS: ...is beyond the politics to historic moment here.

Ms. NOONAN: You know, it was thought free.

MATTHEWS: There's a lot of history being discussed in this conversation.

Ms. NOONAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: This isn't just the usual week of Chandra Levy or whatever else.

Mr. PAGE: That's right.

MATTHEWS: It seems to me it's not about the daily tragedies, it's about an historic tragedy of slavery and Jim Crow. Does George W. Bush feel in his gut that he's a Northern, Yankee, Lincoln, Republican, or does he identify with the more Saudi-buster South, the more gritty, the Cause. We were talking about before the show that old cause of the--of the Confederacy. Where is his heart, with the old cause of the Confederacy, or with the Yankees here?

Ms. NOONAN: Oh, man. No, no. In--well, look, in a way if I--if I stick to your definitions, he's like a Greenwich cowboy, do you know what I mean? He comes from a certain...

MATTHEWS: Well put. Well put.

Ms. NOONAN: He come from a certain kind of Republicanism, the old lovely liberal Republican Bushism of his--of his grandfather and his father.

MATTHEWS: The abolitionist backgrounds. They come from the abolitionist-type people.

Ms. NOONAN: So there's all that, but he's also a Texan and he's a--and Texans often think of themselves as both Westerners and Southerners. But, look, I would think--I'm going to say something that makes it sound sappy but I think is at the heart of Bush. Bush feels that he is a Christian and he came to Christianity in a serious way late in life. And one of the things he absorbed as part of his Christianity is we are all equal, we are all God's children, nobody is better, nobody is worse. Therefore, this old ugly racial history of segregation, of civil rights battles that, in a way, never should have even had to be fought...

Mr. PAGE: I like that.

Ms. NOONAN: ...is just bad stuff.

MATTHEWS: I'll tell you a difference between these two guys.

Ms. NOONAN: Bush's heart...

MATTHEWS: Trent Lott said this week that he hired a few African-Americans from Mississippi as his interns.

Mr. PAGE: Right.

Mr. GREGORY: Right.

MATTHEWS: Here's a guy who's trusted his national security program to Condoleezza Rice, trusted his world--his position in the world to Colin Powell.

Ms. NOONAN: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: Just in terms of human trust and comfort, there's a big difference there between the Bushes as a family and a president and Trent Lott.

Mr. PAGE: Yeah, but--but--but...

Ms. NOONAN: And it's not symbolic. These are just the people Bush is comfortable with.

Mr. PAGE: Right.

Ms. NOONAN: These are the people which...

MATTHEWS: Oh, I believe it.

Ms. NOONAN: ...Bush came to the party with, you know?

Mr. GREGORY: Well...

MATTHEWS: Let--let Clarence in here first.

Mr. PAGE: But let's go to the big tent. I was talking about the Bushes, for example, you know. I mean, W. is bicultural when it comes to being a Republican. But remember, his father was the head of NAACP campus chapter at Yale.

MATTHEWS: Right.

Mr. PAGE: His father stuck his political neck out in favor of open housing in Texas in the late '60s, you know.

Ms. NOONAN: Oh, that's right.

Mr. PAGE: I mean, Bush is...

Ms. NOONAN: And took some hits.

MATTHEWS: Whereas Trent Lott fought to keep...

Mr. PAGE: But--but--big look, this is years before.

MATTHEWS: ...his--his fraternity lily white nationwide.

Mr. PAGE: Right. Right.

Mr. GREGORY: That's right.

Mr. PAGE: This is years before Willie Horton.

MATTHEWS: Right.

Mr. PAGE: Now, you know, there's all kinds of battles are going on within the Republican Party around issues of race. This is what Trent Lott doesn't get this is 2002. This is not your--your grandfather or Trent Lott--or, excuse me, Strom Thurmond's old Republican Party. Even Strom Thurmond has renounced the Strom Thurmond that Trent Lott was endorsing this week.

Mr. GREGORY: Peggy talked about his heart...

Ms. NOONAN: Right.

Mr. GREGORY: ...let me talk about his political head. This is somebody who's working Karl Rove to move this party into a new direction that attracts African-Americans and does it in a real way.

Mr. PAGE: Mm-hmm.

Mr. GREGORY: He didn't really accomplish that in 2000. He wants to accomplish it in 2004, wants to expand it to Hispanics as well. This is a huge setback and as much as Bush was offended by this, those close to him say, `He thought it was monumentally stupid to do...

Mr. PAGE: Yes. Yes.

Ms. NOONAN: Yeah.

Mr. GREGORY: ...to articulate something like this. And so I think that this--this speech yesterday was as much to--to stand up to that notion as well.

MATTHEWS: Is this the sister soldier moment...

Ms. NOONAN: Yeah, politics is a game about additions.

MATTHEWS: ...when he stands against an extreme in his party, like Bill Clinton did against what he perceived as an extreme in his party.

Mr. PAGE: Yes, and he hates being put in that position.

Mr. GREGORY: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mr. PAGE: Lott put him in that position. He shouldn't have to have a Sister Souljah moment right now.

Ms. NOONAN: But he hit the bull.

Mr. GREGORY: But that suggests that Lott...

Ms. NOONAN: He--in his moment he did OK.

Mr. GREGORY: ...was more in the extreme, which is to--to articulate that is hardly mainstream.

Mr. PAGE: Well...

Ms. NOONAN: Can I say one thing?

Mr. PAGE: OK.

Ms. NOONAN: That what I think of--forgive me for jumping in here, but I think the biggest thing that happened in the past week over the whole Trent Lott thing is this, Trent Lott stood up, it's a party, for Strom Thurmond, he turns 100 years old. Trent Lott's talking to a big group of people, staffers, Capitol Hill folks.

MATTHEWS: Right.

Ms. NOONAN: You know, Chris, when he said, `Strom Thurmond's a great guy. I like him. He's an old friend. He flirts with girls, he's a riot,' everybody laughed and applauded. But it was the moment when Trent Lott said, `And if he'd been elected president in 1948 we never would have had to go through any of this garbage,' do you know what...

Mr. GREGORY: That was it.

Mr. PAGE: Nothing.

Ms. NOONAN: ...happened in that room? That was a historic moment. It was another dog that didn't bark.

MATTHEWS: I believe you're right.

Mr. GREGORY: Right.

Ms. NOONAN: That silence spoke volumes about how America has changed.

Mr. GREGORY: Well, and that's what I think...

Ms. NOONAN: Nobody picked up a coded message, do you know what I mean?

Mr. PAGE: Yeah.

Mr. GREGORY: ...yeah, there was going to be a mainstream thought.

Mr. PAGE: Yep.

Ms. NOONAN: Do you know what I mean?

Mr. PAGE: Absolutely. I mean, he gave...

Ms. NOONAN: No one received the code.

Mr. PAGE: ...he gave the same line in Jackson in 1980 at a Reagan rally. Now, I wasn't there, but I bet...

Ms. NOONAN: And it got applause, I'm sure it did.

Mr. PAGE: ...in '80 it got applause.

MATTHEWS: The president, will he sleep better next week if Trent Lott decides to leave in the near future, say, the next couple of weeks and tells him so?

Mr. GREGORY: I think he won't be disappointed, but I don't think he's going to be the one to push him out.

Mr. PAGE: Mm-hmm.

MATTHEWS: OK, I think it's Bill Frist's move right now. The guy's got to challenge him. I'll be right back with a look at the fall of the most senior Catholic bishop in America, Boston's Cardinal Law, and we're going to talk about that scary nuclear program in Iran and the other one in North Korea. We'll be right back with the show.

Announcer: The CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW brought to you by...

Profile: Peggy Noonan discusses the resignation of Catholic Cardinal Bernard Law and the documents released from Boston

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Welcome back to the show. Next up, the church acts. The nation's most senior cardinal, Bernard Law, resigns over his handling of the church sex abuse scandal, but what about the problem he tried to cover up? Peggy:

Ms. PEGGY NOONAN (Columnist, Wall Street Journal Columnist): Wow. What a mess.

MATTHEWS: Well, we're both Catholics, we might as well come out and be open about that.

Ms. NOONAN: Wow. Listen, here's an amazing thing. Cardinal Law, he's an American cardinal of the Catholic Church of a major diocese. He was just essentially forced to step down by scandal, even though he had asked to. There isn't an American Catholic from one end of this country to the other who will say to you on Sunday, `Isn't it sad about Cardinal Law?' Everybody wanted him gone. They are embarrassed at what happened in the Boston Archdiocese. They are humiliated and--and quite appalled about what is happening in the Catholic Church, what has been covered up, what Law was, in part, involved in covering up.

MATTHEWS: But it's still there, isn't it? The problem is still there.

Ms. NOONAN: It's not only still there, but I have a feeling--you know, this 2,000-page document that's been done in which essentially the Catholic Church is telling us--in Boston, is telling us about the whole history of--of a sexual scandal, hitting on kids, men and women, men and dogs, whatever, it's very colorful and it's very awful. I have a feeling...

MATTHEWS: You were kidding about the dogs part?

Ms. NOONAN: Yes, I was.

MATTHEWS: OK, good.

Ms. NOONAN: I have a feeling the document dump itself, this 2,000 pages is going to ultimately be worse for the church and on this issue than anything we've heard in the past because it is going to paint a picture of a Catholic Church in the United States that has decided over the past 50 years to systemically allow and to cover up for abuse. It is remarkably dangerous and awful for Catholics. And I think we're only at the beginning of this story. I think it is going to lead to changes in the American Catholic Church that are going to be stunning.

MATTHEWS: I think if those changes don't come we're going to see an American Catholic Church make some independent decisions about its future.

Profile: The panel weighs in on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iran and North Korea

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Anyway, next up the dangerous world. Inspectors in Iraq are conducting up to 13 inspections a day, so why are some on the Bush team apparently giving up on the inspections process?

David, it seems like the president is ready--especially his people in the Pentagon, the senior officials like Paul Wolfowitz, they want to go.

Mr. DAVID GREGORY (White House Correspondent NBC News): Well, they've never been for an inspections regime. There's got to be a certain amount of, `I told you so,' from--from the vice president on down...

MATTHEWS: Right.

Mr. GREGORY: ...saying, `Look, we told you he'd play around with these inspectors. Hans Blix is not going to find what he's got.' But the president and his staff have made very, very clear that the burden of proof is not on Han Blix--Hans Blix and his team to find what Iraq is trying to hide. They knew that this Iraqi declaration would be full of holes and incomplete truths. And that's what they'll seize on eventually.

MATTHEWS: But--but, Clarence, it seems to me the president is almost like saying, `I'm going home. It's my ball,' you know? Like the kid who doesn't like the way the game's going.

Mr. CLARENCE PAGE (Chicago Tribune): Well...

MATTHEWS: The game is going in favor of Saddam Hussein, the Hans Blix people, for whatever reason, aren't finding any pay dirt.

Mr. PAGE: Right.

MATTHEWS: Isn't the world community going to say, `Those were the rules. If you can't find this stuff this guy's clean?'

Mr. PAGE: Well, that's the real question, what is the world community going to say? Is Saddam Hussein in material breach of the UN resolutions? `I think he is.' And that, in itself, is...

MATTHEWS: Based on--your evidence is based on CIA reports, right?

Mr. PAGE: ...reason enough to go back. Just what we've been hearing--everything we've been hearing indicates...

MATTHEWS: Right.

Mr. PAGE: ...that just the basic report itself isn't even answering the questions left by UNSCOM, the old inspections regime.

MATTHEWS: Here's the big thing...

Mr. PAGE: Now will the UN get off the dime now and go back to that question that Bush asked, `You know, are you going to be a United Nations, or an old League of Nations?'

MATTHEWS: Right. Well let's talk about the US, not the UN, for a second. On the question of proof, what does the president have to show the American people about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein? The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 79 percent of the Americans believe the US should show evidence that Iraq has illegal weapons.

NBC NEWS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL POLL, Dec. 7-9
U.S. Show Evidence of Iraq's Weapons?

Should have to show evidence 79%

Should not show evidence 15%

MATTHEWS: Does the president realize he has to come up with, like, a smoking gun, a picture like Adlai Stevenson had back in 1962 with the missiles in Cuba?

Mr. GREGORY: Right.

Mr. PAGE: Mm-hmm.

Mr. GREGORY: I don't think--I don't think that exists. I think there's two things, there is a circumstantial case here and there is a--the very bold case to be made about preemption, which is, `America, do you want to wait for there to be an actual link? Do you want al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein to get together'? Because when they do that and when we can put it on the bumper sticker you may already be in too much danger to do anything about it.

Mr. PAGE: I'm hearing conflicting polls here because there was a poll about a week ago said about 75 percent of Americans think there is a link. There's no evidence of a link.

MATTHEWS: No, the point--let's get back to the point...

Mr. PAGE: I mean, all the evidence presented, but...

MATTHEWS: ...about weapons of--of mass destruction and the inspections. Does the president have to go on television with a pointer or send down Wolfowitz--I'm sorry, Rumsfeld or somebody and say, `Here is the evidence of weapons of mass destructions, evidence of this man's villainy and deception?'

Mr. GREGORY: I think he does. I think he will. I think that he will certainly do it with the American people and I think you're going to see him do it in a much more engaged way with the rest of the world. Whether the forum is the UN Security Council is not a foregone conclusion because this administration does not appear willing to wait for everybody to get onboard.

MATTHEWS: Speaking of the administration getting onboard, it looks like the axis of evil is acting up. We've got a developing nuclear program in North Korea, we have two nuclear sites that have been spotted in Iran, we've got the trouble we've been talking about in Iraq. Is this the speech writer's dream, that the speech the president gave in his State of the Union now has come alive to end the year to our horror? Peggy:

Ms. PEGGY NOONAN (Columnist, The Wall Street Journal): No. I--I don't think so. I think it's something of a nightmare. I think--my impression that--when peop--is that when people are watching the news these days and seeing Iran has nucs, Iraq has nucs, this one has nucs, Korea has nucs, they start to think, `I think I'll stay home tonight and have a beer and watch TV.' It's like, `Put off the news.' It's like, `I can't handle this.'

MATTHEWS: I agree.

Ms. NOONAN: It is getting a little bit too big and confusing for people. On Iraq, I--I must tell you I think two things are at play in an interesting way. One, is that more and more in America when people talk about Saddam Hussein and people in the world, they seem to be saying--even his biggest defenders, or those who are against an Iraq in--invasion actually begin their comments about Saddam Hussein by saying, `Now, granted, he's crazy, vicious, evil and terrible and must be stopped. However, and then they tell you why Iraq shouldn't be invaded.'

MATTHEWS: We all grew up in a world filled with...

Ms. NOONAN: So that's very interesting.

Mr. PAGE: Well--well, there are those of us those...

MATTHEWS: ...people like that.

Mr. PAGE: ...though, who say, `Granted all that,' and we'll tell you how we ought to do the invasion. It should not be unilaterally, it should be multilaterally. The man has no friends, why are we always in such a hurry to make a unilateral assault? I think David's absolutely right...

Ms. NOONAN: I understand.

Mr. PAGE: ...that President Bush needs to show the American people why we are going to war.

MATTHEWS: Do you see any doubts in the White House?

Mr. PAGE: To do otherwise would be taking a big risk.

Ms. NOONAN: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: Covering it--excuse me, covering the White House every day, David, as you do, do you sense any self doubt in this administration about the coming war, or does it look like it's just matter of time?

Mr. GREGORY: I think it's just a matter of time.

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much for a holiday wish, and thank you for that. Anyways, thank you.

Ms. NOONAN: Merry Christmas, Chris.

Mr. GREGORY: Merry Christmas.

MATTHEWS: Great group. Clarence--Clarence Page, Peggy Noonan, David Gregory, great to have you.

I'll be right back with a celebration of our American pioneering spirit. As we go to break, you know the holiday season is here when the first family gets into the act. For 50 years, presidents and first ladies have sent Christmas cards from the White House to their many friends and supporters. The list has mushroomed in recent years and the political parties have footed the bill. This year the Bushes licked, catch this, a record one million envelopes. That's a million merry Christmases.

Ms. NOONAN: My gosh.

Profile: Commentary on America's pioneering spirit

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: This Tuesday, December 17th, my birthday, is also the day 99 years ago that we human beings learned how to fly. It was just 12 seconds, that's how long the Wright Brother's flying machine stayed up in the air. But what a moment! Imagine the 20th Century without airplanes. What happened in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on that one December morning in 1903 was, let's agree, vintage Americana. A couple of guys who made bicycles for a living decided to shoot the moon. They built themselves a flying machine. That drive to push into the future to open up new territory, the leap out to the frontier, to tinker, to try, to triumph. We're talking about the right stuff in the pioneer American character. President Reagan, just as John F. Kennedy before him, knew the pride this country takes in its pioneering spirit, he spoke of it even after the tragedy that struck the space shuttle Challenger.

President RONALD REAGAN: (From file footage) It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted, it belongs to the brave.

MATTHEWS: And it all began, just as it does today, with a couple of guys hovering over a machine in a garage or a bicycle workshop, thinking and tinkering and rethinking, then tinkering again, trying to push the envelope, trying to see if it will fly, like Wilbur and Orville's machine did on that wondrous December morning.

That's our show. Thanks for watching. See you next week.