MR. OLBERMANN: Senator Chris Dodd, of course, ran for president this year. After leaving the race, he endorsed Senator Obama. He joins us now from Washington.
Thank you for your time tonight, Senator.
SEN. DODD: Thank you, Keith.
MR. OLBERMANN: We've been asking a lot of people about the historic quality of this night. You know it from several different aspects. I was just thinking about the view your father would have had as not just a long-standing public servant in this country but from his role as a prosecutor at Nuremberg, perhaps the exact opposite society.
It's never been better expressed than perhaps tonight, where someone from a perceived minority group rises to this penultimate stage on the political scene, as opposed to the horrors of what your father prosecuted in Nazi Germany. Is that a worthwhile comparison tonight?
SEN. DODD: It could be, but I'll take you even a step back further. Before he went to Nuremberg in 1945 as a prosecutor, Keith, he was a prosecutor with the Justice Department and tried several civil rights cases in the South and actually won them in the 1930s. In 1940 he actually prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina and won that case -- (inaudible). So he and my mother were escorted out of the state of Arkansas by the state police; it was such a huge issue at the time.
Thinking about my parents in the 1930s and where the country was, not to mention, as you say, in Nuremberg, where you had tremendous, of course, not just discrimination, but you had efforts, of course to -- the Olympics of 1936 where Jesse Owens demonstrating to the world the United States could put athletes up to do very well, but simultaneously wouldn't allow Jesse Owens to serve in the same military units with white soldiers. It took Harry Truman.
So to think about those periods of time and to realize the Civil Rights Act was only passed in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in '65, it's just amazing to me how far we've come, how good it is to see in America, in which we embrace everybody by the basis of their talents, their character, to use the lines of Dr. King. This is an incredible evening for our country.
The outcome, I hope, will be to elect Barack Obama, and I'm confident that can happen. But it also says a lot about who we are as a people. And we've come a long way from only a few decades ago. So it is an historic moment, yet to be completed, because I think the work is going to be done in November. And then the real work begins in January.
MR. MATTHEWS: You know, Senator, I remember being at the '64 Democratic Convention. I was a bus boy in Ocean City that summer. And I remember going over there after all the hoopla and picking up a Tom Dodd for Vice President placard off the floor and thinking, "This is interesting," because I always remembered he was a very tough anti- communist and a real patriotic kind of guy.
Can you run for vice president? I mean, that's what seems like you've got to think about after Hillary Clinton's comments today with that New York delegation.
SEN. DODD: Well, you don't run for it. And I've always found, Chris -- and, by the way, you should have kept that. On eBay that would have been worth a lot of money. (Laughter.) I wish I had that thing. It lasted about an hour. I remember the great story was -- just a little bit of history -- he walked into -- of course, Hubert Humphrey was going to be the nominee, and Lyndon Johnson was remembering that in 1960 my father seconded his nomination at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. They'd been friends since the 1930s when they were both state directors of the National Youth Administration in Franklin Roosevelt's administration.
But the point is, I think about vice presidential nominees, it's not about how you win an election. It's about -- the date is not November 5th that's important in that choice. The date is January 20th. You don't win or lose elections with your vice presidential choice. You govern well with a vice presidential choice. And I've never known, except a vice presidential candidate's family, that will walk into a voting booth and vote for the president based on who the vice presidential candidate is.
MR. MATTHEWS: A stunning verdict on all that we've been talking about.
SEN. DODD: You know, I remember, I started to tell you that my father walked into that Oval Office with Hubert Humphrey and he said, "In the words" -- my father said to Johnson, "In the words of Samuel Goldwyn, include me out." That was the -- (laughs) --
MR. OLBERMANN: Senator Chris Dodd, one of Senator Obama's supporters, as ever, great thanks for your time, sir.
SEN. DODD: Thank you, Keith. Thank you, Chris, too.