Here's Chris Matthews tonight, dismissing the relevance of a thesis written by Bob McDonnell, who is currently the Republican nominee in the Virginia governor's race, when he was 34:

It's hard to build a whole campaign on somebody else's term paper. He's [Creigh Deeds, McDonnell's opponent] going after the other guy for writing some right-wing stuff about 25 years ago.

Emphasis very much Matthews' -- his voice dripped with contempt as he spat out the phrase “term paper.”

Now, here's what Chris Matthews said about the thesis -- not “term paper” -- back on September 1:

MATTHEWS: Here's a guy that said as follows. In his thesis, he wrote, of federal money for child care programs -- quote -- “Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching status quo, the entrenchings of status quo, of non-parental primary nurtured children.”

In other words he's saying that, if you give tax cuts or tax breaks for people for child care, you're encouraging the wrong pattern in American life, women in the workplace.

MICHELLE BERNARD, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

MATTHEWS: That's a bad thing.

BERNARD: Yes. Yes, from his perspective -- or at least from his perspective when he was 34 years old. Here's the dynamic you have to look at. Sometimes, you might say, well, you can't say that somebody believes the things that they wrote or that they have not evolved if they wrote a thesis, say, at age 21 or 22. He was a 34-year-old -- 34-year-old man when he wrote this.

MATTHEWS: This wasn't the indiscretion of youth.

BERNARD: Exactly. It absolutely wasn't the indiscretion of youth.

Second question, then, is, did he write this because he thought this would be appealing to the teachers at Pat Robertson's school, a very far- right conservative school, or did he write this because he actually believes it? Women are one of the most important voting blocs in the country.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of the character of a person who writes something that the teacher might like in a major essay, a major thesis? This isn't something you knock off in a pop quiz.

BERNARD: Yes.

MATTHEWS: This is something you devote yourself to for at least a year.

BERNARD: Well...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Anybody in grad school knows what I'm talking about.

It's a major commitment of -- of who you are. You write something you believe is useful to the academic discipline, something you believe, or else why write it?

That was September 1. Now, McDonnell looks likely to win, so Matthews dismisses the thesis as a mere “term paper.”