Transcript here.

Some highlights:

MATTHEWS: Howard Dean, this is what Senator John Kerry, who is running against you in Iowa and New Hampshire said, “Howard Dean has zero, no foreign policy, military, national security experience.” If that’s true, where does your expertise come from?

DEAN: Well, John Kerry and the other Democratic candidates and I all get advice from the same kinds of people, and in many cases the same people. Most people will advise many of the presidential candidates. And they do, and they’re very good people. People like Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger. Most of them from the Clinton administration, some not.

...MATTHEWS: Was Clinton on the right track?

DEAN: Not only was Clinton on the right track. The first thing I’m going to do if I get to be president of the United States is call Bill Clinton and ask him to go to the Middle East and represent me so we can have the presence of an American president trying to bring peace to that region.

Apparently eight years as President was not enough time.

MATTHEWS: Travel, the Democrats’ Ted Kennedy was part of that deregulation, the deregulation of radio. There are so many things that have been deregulated. Is that wrong trend and would you reverse it?

DEAN: I would reverse in some areas. First of all, 11 companies in this country control 90 percent of what ordinary people are able to read and watch on their television. That’s wrong. We need to have a wide variety of opinions in every community. We don’t have that because of Michael Powell and what George Bush has tried to do to the FCC.

MATTHEWS: Would you break up Fox?
(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: I’m serious.

DEAN: I’m keeping a...

MATTHEWS: Would you break it up? Rupert Murdoch has “The Weekly Standard.” It has got a lot of other interests. It has got “The New York Post.” Would you break it up?

DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but...
(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?

DEAN: I don’t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously
(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, how about large media enterprises?

DEAN: Let me-yes, let me get...
(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: The answer to that is yes. I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country. We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP.

MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You’re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?

DEAN: What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.

MATTHEWS: Well, would you break up GE?
(APPLAUSE)

DEAN: I can’t-you...

MATTHEWS: GE just buys Universal. Would you do something there about that? Would you stop that from happening?

DEAN: You can’t say-you can’t ask me right now and get an answer, would I break up X corp...

MATTHEWS: We’ve got to do it now, because now is the only chance we can ask you, because, once you are in, we have got to live with you.
(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: No.

MATTHEWS: So, if you are going to do it, you have got to tell us now.
(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Are you going to break up the giant media enterprises in this country?

DEAN: Yes, we’re going to break up giant media enterprises. That doesn’t mean we’re going to break up all of GE. What we’re going to do is say that media enterprises can’t be as big as they are today. I don’t think we actually have to break them up, which Teddy Roosevelt had to do with the leftovers from the McKinley administration.
(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... regulate them.

DEAN: You have got to say that there has to be a limit as to how-if the state has an interest, which it does, in preserving democracy, then there has to be a limitation on how deeply the media companies can penetrate every single community. To the extent of even having two or three or four outlets in a single community, that kind of information control is not compatible with democracy.

MATTHEWS: How-how far would you go in terms of public policy?
(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: This is not-what you describe is not laissez-faire. It’s not capitalism.

DEAN: It is capitalism.

Anyone who thinks that one's news outlets are restricted in any way has not been paying attention. Hell, I don't even get most of my news from TV. I think we know what this is about: people have plenty of choices in what they want to watch and listen to. They're just making choices the Left doesn't like, and they plan to do something about it given half a chance.

DEAN: Iran is a more complex problem because the problem support as clearly verifiable as it is in North Korea. Also, we have less-fewer levers much the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons. That is also a country that must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons much the key to all this is foresight. Let’s act now so we don’t have to have a confrontation which may result in force, which would be very disastrous in the case of North Korea and might be disastrous in the case of Iran.

If Bush had spent five minutes calling Russia "The Soviet Union," it would be weeks before you heard the end of it. Let's see if anyone catches Dean out on this.

Notice the outstanding decisiveness of Dean on many issues.

And wow, is Matthews an idiot, or what?