A Conversation with Chris Matthews:

I think we can all stipulate that we are at a precarious moment in the relatively short history of American democracy. Even among those not following it on an hour by hour basis via an addiction to cable news, people are anxious.  So many, on both the left and the right, are using millions of words to comment on the moment.

But perhaps the only way to really understand it is through the sharp lens of contemporary American political history. Particularly the years since the end of WWII.

Our divisions no matter how profound and how powerful, do not stand alone. They exist as a link in the broad scope of our contemporary political story.  Without grasping that history, this moment is just noise.

Sure we can study history. Many great books have been written about these times. But those that have lived through all of it, who have paid attention to both the players and the events of this 75 year period are best qualified to try and figure out where we are today. Chris Matthews is certainly on of these.  He writes about it in his new book This Country: My Life in Politics and History.

My conversation with Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews on Bobby Kennedy

Forty nine years ago, on June 5th 1968, the world shifted on its axis. The assassination of Bobby Kennedy, after his victory in the California primary, changed politics forever. It’s might not be too far fetched to say th
at had Bobby survived, our politics and our country might look very different today.

Sydney Schanberg, the great reporter, once told me in an interview that he thought Vietnam and the 60’s represented the end of consensus politics in America.

Since that time we have been searching for the politician or the leader that could bridge that divide. The irony has been that in a time of polarity, it’s been impossible for that leader to emerge. So we look back to what might have been. And when we do, the image, the mythology and the reality of Bobby Kennedy rises as an apparition from the body politic.


Why? What was it about Bobby that made us think he was different?

This is where Chris Matthews takes us in Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit.

My conversation with Chris Matthews:

When Politics Worked

Our founding fathers created a system of government that respected opposing points of view and was designed to work even across differences. Throughout most of American history it has worked. One time it did not was in 1861 when Abraham Lincoln, said the following:

“What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum."

After the Civil War and for 150 years the system worked. Today we are in danger of what Lincoln called “the end of us.”

Perhaps it is necessary to look into contemporary history for what was perhaps the last time that our system of government worked as it was intended. That would be in the 1980’s. It was in part the personalities of people like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil and it was also a different time and a different context. Chris Matthews is one of our keenest political observers. He sorts through it all in his new book Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked

My conversation with Chris Matthews:

Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero

The playwright Arthur Laurents, in his film The Way We Were, talks about his handsome hero, saying that “in a way he was like the country he lived in; everything came too easily to him." For decades we thought the same about Jack Kennedy. He had that cool, romantic, Gatsbyesque detachment and it somehow seemed to come easily to him, as to the manor born.

Today, as a result of a beautiful and insightful new biography Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews, we know a lot more about how that heroic Renaissance man detachment came to be. It came not from ease, but from pain, study and yes, even loneliness. The kind of pain that builds character and makes great leaders and great Presidents. In a way he was like the country we all used to live in, and less like the one we live in today.

My conversation with Chris Matthews:

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