The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – This Country: My Life in Politics and History by Chris Matthews

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

This Country: My Life in Politics and History by Chris Matthews A sweeping memoir of American politics and history from Chris Matthews, New York Times bestselling author and former host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. In This Country, Chris Matthews offers a panoramic portrait of post–World War II America through the story of his remarkable life and career. It is a story of risk and adventure, of self-reliance and service, of loyalty and friendship. It is a story driven by an abiding faith in our country. Raised in a large Irish-Catholic family in Philadelphia at a time when kids hid under their desks in atomic war drills, Chris’s life etched a pattern: take a leap, live an adventure, then learn what it means. As a young Peace Corps graduate, Chris moved to DC and began knocking on doors on Capitol Hill. With dreams of becoming what Ted Sorensen had been for Jack Kennedy, Chris landed as a staffer to Utah Senator Frank Moss, where his eyes were opened to the game of big-league politics. In the 1970s, Matthews mounted a campaign for Congress as a Democratic maverick running against Philadelphia’s old political machine. He didn’t win the most votes, but his grit put him on the path to a top job in the White House. As a speechwriter for President Carter, Matthews witnessed the triumphs and tragedies of that administration; from the diplomatic brilliance of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty to the disaster of the Iran hostage crisis. After Carter’s defeat, Chris became chief of staff to legendary Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, a perch that gave him an on-the-job PhD in American politics during the Reagan years. Chris then leapt to the other side of the political matrix as a columnist and reporter. For the San Francisco Examiner, he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa, the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and every American presidency from Reagan to George W. Bush. Chris would go on to pioneer cable news with a fast-paced, no-nonsense television program. His show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, would become a political institution for twenty years. As Chris charts his political odyssey, he paints an energetic picture of a nation searching for its soul. He reflects with grace and wisdom, showcasing the grand arc of the American story through one life dedicated to its politics. About the author Chris Matthews is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, Jack Kennedy—Elusive Hero, Tip and the Gipper—When Politics Worked, Kennedy and Nixon, and Hardball. He is the former host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys being with us today be sure you refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives tell them to sign up for the Chris Voss Show podcast.

You can also go to all the groups we have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those places where all the kids are at these days. You can go check them out and all that good stuff. Just look for the Chris Voss or Chris Voss Show. You can find multiple groups out there. Go to Goodreads.com. See what we're reviewing and reading as well. You can check that out uh we have a storied author and journalist and uh television celebrity yeah i guess you call

him uh on the show today chris matthews of uh the old show hardball if you remember him from msnbc and of course he has a story career we're going to talk about uh all of his life just a magical sort of thing of him witnessing all these brilliant events his new book that's uh come out june 1st and uh you're going to want to check this baby out it's june 1st 2021 this country my life in politics and history and it's going to blow your mind i just saw the stuff that's in it and all the stuff he's accomplished i think there are a few people that can go through their whole life and have so many magical things happen to them. And this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, ifi-audio.com.

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Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Bobby Kennedy, A Raging Spirit, Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero, Tip and the Gipper, When Politics Worked, Kennedy and Nixon, and Hardball. He is the former host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. Welcome to the show, Chris. How are you? Thanks, Chris. It's great to be on. And everything you said is true. That's a good start.

Well, I hope so. I hope so. It's on Amazon. So there you go. But congratulations on the book. Congratulations on all the work you're doing lately. What are your plugs for people who can find you on the interwebs and order the book up? Well, I just think Amazon and Barnes & Noble and your local bookstore. It's out there.

I've checked it around. People keep sending me pictures of the book on shelves. So, you know, I like to support local bookstores. if you want to do it fast amazon there you go there you go there's also costco my wife and i were in costco the other day and they have stacks of my books there but oh wow so you don't know how many book buyers go to costco but they're there they bought a ton of books from yeah well hopefully they buy them in bulk right well i know they bought like over 20 000 books you know there you go that's nice that's good yeah and hopefully they'll keep buying more i think they will it's a it's a book it's amazing book and it's amazing life that you've taken and lived uh so what motivated you want to write this book you've

written a lot of great books too if you want to plug those out about the Kennedys and different things we were talking about before the show. But you've written a lot of great books. What motivated you to write this one and whatever else you want to cover? Well, I got to the end of Bobby, and a lot of people love the Bobby book. And I wanted to write, I guess I began at the age of 70-something. I began to realize that I'd done a lot of, I was sort of like Forrest Gump. I was in so many events. and they weren't Photoshopped. I actually was there.

I mean, starting in all those years in Africa, I mean, teaching business, but basically, you know, communicating with people, and people older than me who treated me like a son, and I'd be riding around on my motorbike, my 120 Suzuki, out in the middle of the African bush, the only guy that looked like me, the only person that looked like me, skinny white guy, if you will, among people who are rural farmers, small business people, very small. And then hitchhiking by myself from Swaziland, if you look at the map,

it's Eswatini now, the name of the country, all the way up to Kilimanjaro by myself, just a thumb. I mean, wild things that, you know, going to having a black mamba trying to jump in my car window, frightening thing. And that's something not to laugh about at the time. But, oh, my God, I was glad. It was right in my window. I was looking in the window.

It was frightening. You're dead in 15 minutes. The hitchhiking over Victoria Falls, seeing that amazing wonder of the world. But mainly it comes down to being comfortable in a far-off place with a different language, different culture, different look, different way of living. A lot of subsistence farmers, people that you'd wonder, how do they get from the beginning of the year to the end of the year on a very small crop of corn or maize? How do they do it

with their cattle? I guess a lot of them would sell cattle once a while, make some money and pay for more maize. But then coming back to Washington and knocking on doors, I didn't know anybody, knocking on a couple hundred doors, and I finally got a job as a Capitol Police, a patronage job. And I was that for three or four months. And then I got the job as legislative assistant to a senator, Frank Moss from Utah, the last liberal senator from out there. And then working my way up to working as a speechwriter for President Carter with him to the very end. I mean, I was on Marine One when he went to vote in Plains, Georgia, knowing he was going to lose by about 10 points.

He'd gotten the poll results. Because we got the poll results about 1 in the morning in Seattle, the last speech. And just seeing the pain on the guy, the good guy, knowing he was going to have to go tell it. He said, don't tell my wife, I'll tell Rosalyn. That's all he said to us, don't tell my wife, I'll tell her. Because then he had to tell her when he got down there.

I remember looking up at the old train depot in Plains, Georgia, and there they were, the two of them, where they had started the campaign five years before the first campaign. And he was telling her, and I averted my glance. I said, that's a private moment. You know, this guy has to tell his wife that it's all ending up with a defeat. And then working for six years with that incredible legend, Tip O'Neill from Massachusetts, the speaker,

who went day to day battling Reagan, occasionally cutting deals, but battling him every day. I was his wartime consigliere, basically. And he hired me. He said, all dogs can learn new tricks. And we worked. I'm older than him. I'm older than he was then now, but

he had six years every day. Went up against Reagan, this movie star, good-looking, political glamour guy, and he's this old local political guy from Massachusetts, and he took him on. He's a street corner pilot, and he took on this movie star. And every day he showed the courage to do that.

And then when he retired, I went into journalism. I started with the San Francisco Examiner, the old Citizen Kane newspaper, actually. This is the beginning of the Hearst Empire. I'm very proud of working for the monarch of the dailies. Is that a great name? The monarch of the dailies. The monarch of the dailies. Great. But I monarch of the day the monarch of the daily great and uh but i went back and watched citizen kane on an airplane the other day it's still what a great movie it holds up my god is it a great movie and um doing that and then

covering everything the berlin wise over there interviewing the east germans as the wall was coming down and asking what was going on why is this happening and they tell me about how to treat us second rate citizens by their own government and couldn't go to the local hotels. Their currency was a joke. They had had it. And also one guy asked him, what's freedom mean to you? And he said, talk to you.

They just wanted human freedom. Wow. And to be able to talk about any subject, I imagine. Yeah, well, one woman said, you know, we want to talk about capitalism and socialism, but we want to make the decision what we want, what kind of government we want. They were open to the conversation. They weren't anti-socialist in principle, but they knew that their government sucked. It was terrible.

The Politburo had all the advantages advantages but the idea of socialism did appeal to east germans the idea of they said they didn't want to have a sharp elbow society as they called it they didn't want people fighting with each other over money they liked the idea of sharing i mean it's a pretty idealistic christian idea and they wanted the ideal still but they also i think some of them were headed towards reunification with the West. But they definitely hated that wall and hated the Iron Curtain. I mean, they were prisoners of it. By the way, I went to Cuba a couple of years ago and it's very similar situation. Really? The way that government is run, the way that government is run is run the way the East Germans.

Maybe. Yeah, just a Western version of that. And then to go to South Africa, I served in a small country, Swaziland, it was called then. And we weren't allowed to cross the border into South Africa, which was three quarters of our border for South Africa. And they thought we were reds. I mean, the nicest thing they said about us is that we were do-gooding intellectuals. They pronounced that South African accent, do-gooding intellectuals. I didn't know if any of us were intellectuals. Maybe, maybe a few of us, maybe. But they're pretty regular people in that Peace Corps group. And but and then they go back in 94 and see, and I've been back a couple of times, been back with an African-American delegation from Congress when they went over to argue with F.W. Bota about his form of government right across the table from arguing about the very notion of apartheid. thanks to Mandela, Nelson Mandela, who insisted he wouldn't leave prison unless they legalized his party, the ANC, and the Communist Party. He wanted a true election. He wanted democracy.

And over there, thanks to him, I was able to watch people lined up to vote from one horizon to another. It was astounding. And I was walking around with Archbishop Tutu, his ally, as he went to vote for the first time. And, you know, these experiences, not everybody gets them. And I wanted to share them. He asked me why I write the book. I mean, I try to answer, and I've been to speeches that are effective, but they tend to be, or books. And Jack Haney once, what was the guy really like? Or, you know, what was the the situation like what was it like to be there and i tried to write that but this is the first book i wrote it wasn't about somebody else but it's about my experiences and i had i figured it's about time i wrote it and yeah we'll see

it's definitely about time and then and then you have to write the next one for the next 75 years. Easy for you to say, young man. Well, thank you. Easy for you to say. So you've lived this story life, 20 years of witnessing politics and commenting on it on MSNBC. Everyone loved you. Well, you know, most everyone loved you. I mean, that's one of the problems. No, I had my critics on the left, on the hard left and the right.

Hard left and right. So I'm stuck somewhere center left. I'm not stuck. That's where I chose to be. I feel center left. I always figured I would be one of the conservative members. There was a block of them in the British Labor Party who were on the right, center right. I would feel comfortable with them.

I mean, not with the real lefties, but allied with them. Yeah. Does Mika Brzezinski still miss the hardball opening? You're getting cute. I know her as a colleague. I don't know that fact. I know that she's been very supportive of me in the last couple of years. And her dad, I do write about her dad in the book.

It's a big, I pronounced it right. It's always a hard one, but Zabig. And he was national security advisor to Carter. And he was a very important guy. I mean, like one of the heroes of our operation. I mean, you didn't mess, you didn't talk to him. He's still up there. And I remember going over to get his approval for a speech one evening.

And it was about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. And I was writing a speech about physical fitness or something. And it turns out that it was right after that invasion. So Carter would have had to put in his opening remarks something about that attack on Afghanistan by the Russians. By the way, the second country in history to know don't invade afghanistan the british were wiped out the russians were we all saw charlie wilson's war they were thrown out by helicopter by those uh those shoulder-mounted missiles that stingers that got them out of the sky in fact they'd be telling jokes of the air that movie on the radio you could hear the pilots telling jokes and there he is the guy with a stinger missile blowing them away it's pretty pretty rough stuff but i remember getting and trying

to get permission from ruginsky we had to clear our speeches with the top guys and and i said the russians the barbarous behavior by the Russians. And he looks at the word and he says, barbarous? You expect me to? And he's in black tie. I'm in black tie because we're both going to some press dinner. And that made me feel really important. I'm going to the same dinner as him. And this guy, he said, I'm supposed to approve that on the run?

Barbarous? So I had to go back the next morning, but he approved it. Carter used it so so you've had a great life i i brought up mika because mika and joe uh you so he's talking about the show about how she always wanted to stay up to be able to hear your opening hardball you know delivery of whatever the opening line was and so uh that's five-year-old kids like it you know my audience is old of of course. But there was some kids, grandkids, probably of the regular viewers who would go.

They loved the way I said, let's play hardball. Yeah, that one. Let's play hardball. It was the speed. Most of my viewers were my age and they're very affectionate to me when they bump into me. All the years that you put in an airport someplace, a woman would come up to me and say, maybe a woman in her 60s, maybe younger,

say, my husband watched it till the end. I mean, it was very personal. People, you don't, you'll get to learn this. Yeah.

People aren't just listening to you. They're your company. You're their company. Yeah. And you, you know, I watched Johnny Carson for years you guys johnny carson was a gift of good company for us because if you came home on school vacation

and you didn't have any of his social life you get a coke some uh peanut butter and crackers you know cheese and crackers and there's johnny carson waiting for you to give you the party of your life oh yeah i grew up like you did on carson uh and uh my grandma used to watch him religiously i think it was before or after the lawrence wilk show oh yeah my grandma would be because watch that too and uh number one number two yeah and uh i could just see him doing it. The bubbles are in the back and shit. You know what? You reminded me of a great story. I'm up in Montreal the week that Bobby gets killed, right before the primary date, Tuesday.

And a friend of mine, we're wandering around trying to find a TV, because in those days you had to find a TV to watch in a bar usually. And we're trying to find some bartender who would turn on the debate between Gene McCarthy and Bobby. And, of course, the nationalist Canadian guy goes crazy. You come in here and you want us to watch your shows? You know what he was watching? Lawrence Welk. So that was his idea ofadian nationalist and you know i watched

johnny carson a lot to learn how to be a better host i don't know if it's working or not but i watched him a lot on how he deals with stuff he's he's one of my favorite hosts to watch and and see how they do stuff so let's go back to your history you you grew up as an irish catholic uh in philadelphia kid uh you grew up like I did under the desks of the USSR. You're worried about the USSR nuclear bombs, figuring those old stuff out. I did it before they even had missiles. We thought they had something. We thought the nuns thought, I guess it was airplanes.

They thought these bombers would come over and drop what we used to call atom bombs on us. And they said 15 minutes, there'll be a flash of light we think and then the end of the world yeah and that was the old ussr i mean i still every now and then we'll refer to russia as the ussr i think of it as like a giant thing i said soviets yeah the soviets it's like by the way could we be on to something could we be on to something could be on to something that putin is no different than the old kgb officer he was that this his national and how much of the cold war was really about russian nationalism how much was ideology and how much would russia just want to protect itself and or rule the world i mean what were they doing why were they so supportive castro so supportive of ben bell in algeria why were they

arming the uh mozambicans and the angolans why are they so keen on that was this idealism or is it expansion of their power of their empire you know what do you what do you see in that because the empire of america almost seems to be fading if if you will. I mean, China is definitely rising, you know, under the last regime, I think is the correct word. You know, we saw a lot of, you know, America really consolidating and shrinking from power and its influence in the world. And, you know, there's a lot of interesting things going on and dynamics going.

What do you see as the future of America and the empire of America, I guess? Well, I don't think we've ever been, since Teddy Roosevelt, territorial about it. But we like the idea. Some people do. It's like we're number one. I never really thought that was that important. But number one, what? It depends.

I do love American exceptionalism in the sense I wrote about it in the book, which is we're the only country you can come to to become an American. You know, it's not like the French or the Japanese, especially Japanese. We really can't become a Japanese. I don't remember everything I've read. But that's why it's very difficult for those war babies. You know, what are you going to do with a war baby? You know, it's two races, a mixed race, not well accepted kind of thing at all. It's always a challenge there. But I think.

I think the Chinese did something that was remarkably dangerous for us. They they figured out they could deny political freedom, but allow capitalism, state capitalism, that they could really produce like we do. I don't think they're ever going to be good at producing novelty or innovation. I think you have to have a – I just believe you have to have a free society to be innovative. And every dictator in the world, the bad guys in the world come here when they're facing death.

They all come here for our health care. We don't have a great distribution system, but we have an amazing ability to produce the best medicine, the best surgery. And they all come here, every one of them, the Shah, everybody. So we are good at state-of-the-art. It doesn't surprise me that we invented most of what we live with in the world. I think the COVID-19 success there, I think we're able to produce it faster than anybody thought. That was a combination of mixed capitalism, part government

in the case of Moderna and the others, and part pre-enterprise or capitalism. I still think that's the magical formula. Mix it up. But the Chinese figured out that they don't have to have freedom to have economic success in terms of production. They can produce. When I was growing up, you had to buy your trousers or your shirts from something

that was made in the carolinas because you know the textile industry moved from new england down to the south because of labor costs now it goes to china for labor costs no big surprise but you could now you can go into a gap and you can buy a sweatshirt or a pair of levi's or i mean a pair of khakis or you can buy uh any kind of shirt it's already cut for you 17 and a half 34 you know it's there you take it home with you put on your that night in the old days you had to take your trousers you had to turn them over to some somebody a tailor to put the right hem in or the right cuff in or not cuff. It was very, men don't like that.

Men like to go to the store, get it, put it on. They do not like fussing around with some tailor and talking about it. You want to get in and out. So that created all cotton, by the way, all cotton. Everything comes from China and Vietnam and a place like that. It's cotton. Of course we love cotton. More the cotton, the better it feels.

Actually, it's true. I was inspired to buy a shirt in Washington when I was a first adult. I bought these shirts. They're really great-looking blue shirts with button-down collars. They're $8.75 or something. I said, these are great. These look really good. I took them out.

This is August in Washington. You don't want to wear those shirts. This is out of Edgar Allen Poe stuff. These shirts don't breathe. These are taken from the dead, these shirts. They were horrible. But they were what you got to buy in those days. Open trade, free trade has hurt the working person in this country,

but it has allowed the consumer options they never had before. Cars are better because of the German and the Japanese and the Korean competition, without a doubt, better cars. They used to have a car, you'd buy a car every two years or every year because they're planned to be obsolescent. Trade has been good for quality, but it has enhanced the Chinese ability to compete with us. There's no doubt about it. And by the way, what are they doing with that money, that traded surplus? They're going into Africa and buying everything under the ground. And they'll build a highway or a train station, a train line.

And then all they'll ask for is rights to the subterranean wealth for the next 50 years. These people, they're good at it. You could argue they're ruthless, but the poor governments over there to have nothing assistance income they have very little tax base and they have to give their people something to keep them alive yeah and and and so the chinese come in and offer them capital developments they offer them trains everything and they bring their own workers in they feed and house them and then they take them back to china so they all the only cost was the was the uh the currency that they picked up from us because we're borrowing from them all the time and then they've been repossessing ports and doing all

it's like they'll repossess parts of a country which is kind of what would be interesting uh chris to get into their their central planning board with these guys sitting around and they plan the year 2040 or the year 3000 and they're sitting there playing by then we will own africa by then we will have um of course they're going to have some foreclosures where they like it or not not everybody's going to make it on these bets they might just say you know you had your 20 years digging our gold. You're getting out of here. I would assume certainly the debtor countries will stand up to them.

But what are we going to do? We're still borrowing trillions. And to my understanding, they have the largest naval military now. They have the Exocet missiles, equivalent, where they can knock out any one of our ships, warships. What good's a battleship? What good's a cruiser? What good's any ship if one

hit? It eliminates it. What happens if they make a move on Taiwan? We don't know. Will it be a subtle move like an embargo of some sort of somewhere just put their big arms around Taiwan and say, you're back home, and what do we do? Probably not much. Yeah, especially with them owning the South Chinese Sea.

Well, they started building these islands. Yeah, it's crazy. They were building military bases where there was no dirt there in their building. I've been teaching. I'm an distinguished professor now at Fulbright University Vietnam. I've been doing that this year and last year and teach American politics and American media, bringing a lot of my colleagues in to help me. And I think they've got their eye on what's going on in Hong Kong, what's been going on. I think they've got their eye on what's going on potentially in Taiwan. I think all those Asian countries have to think about what you raised the issue a few minutes ago, which is China.

It's not just us. The joke is China only had two bad centrists. Haven't you heard that one before? I haven't heard that one before. They were colonized they were exploited yeah but uh beaten up by the japanese but uh the long-term look at china is it's amazingly productive culture yeah it's going to be interesting how it all plays out i mean especially with the population growth uh slow here slow in china they just expanded that.

Um, the three, the three babies. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to get back to you. They also have their population growth of poverty, which we don't see.

We see the bourgeoisie, but we don't see the back country of the immense people living in an earlier age. Yeah. And the, and the Uyghur, um, concentration camps, basically. I mean, it's an extraordinary thing

that we're having to, we just sit back and watch. Well, that's what we did with Russia. They called it the nationalities issue. Remember nationalities? Everybody wanted to be treated better than they were. And the country,

the empire, the Soviet empire came apart. It started with Jewish immigration and the refuseniks. Andviet empire came apart started with jewish immigration and the refuseniks and the word get out hey if they can leave why can't we leave yeah seriously they want to how come they get out we can't get out give me out you know uh one of the things you talk about your book your your storied history you started out in politics uh as a cap Capitol police officer. And you said something really beautiful on The View.

A cathedral of democracy is what you referred to the Capitol police who protect that beautiful building that was sieged on January 6th. What were your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, Chris, think about is there any other place in America? I mean, I do think about the Lincoln Memorial having that sort of reverence for me and everybody. Washington is a pretty secular city. You know, it's really about democracy. And I think about Lincoln giving his second inaugural address at that Capitol, maybe the greatest speech in history, which tried to explain the loss of 600,000 casualties in the Civil War with people shooting at each other across the field.

They didn't even have foxholes. They were shooting each other's chest. Americans, the same religion. Most of them were Christian, Protestant, Catholics. They were always Jewish, I guess. And they were all Americans, and they were all killing each other. And he tried to explain it in biblical language, that this is what God has brought back, what was taken by the whip.

And he understood it was the whip. It wasn't something in lost, gone with the wind. There's nothing kind and pleasant about slavery. And he understood that, and he said that it will be paid for by the sword. And trying to justify the hard that America had gone through and was still going through, to try to explain to America there was some biblical justice in this. It wasn't like some terrible mistake. It was ground out of our history.

And I think that, and I think about debating slavery itself in that building, the civil rights bill coming out of that building with mostly Republicans for it, Everett Dirksen, and the history. The British trying to get in there. I remember I talked to some, one of the shows I did, I talked about when I was a cop that I would show people, even later, I did a big job there. I'd take people to the holes and show the bullet holes in the steps going up to

the first floor of the Capitol for the basement. We can see the British muskets had fired their way in. It's not their way in. You know, you don't want to get really think about it. Think about the fact that those guys on the airplane over Pennsylvania. You said, let's roll. And they charged into the cockpit and the plane went down. And that plane, most people think, was headed for the Capitol.

It made sense. One for the Pentagon, one for the Commercial Center in New York, and one for the Capitol. And they never made it because to them. So we've had enemies that have been trying to destroy that Capitol. And I felt defiled. I felt like, you know, I actually spent some of my life, a short part of my life, defending that building.

And more importantly, I spent my life walking through it. It's a great place to work in the summertime, by the way, because it has like a – you're working in – what do Eskimos live in? England. It's like in England. It's totally cold. It's totally cold in the summertime. And I had a parking place out front, and I was an aide of the speaker. And I had a nice desk, and I'd sit there like a Mandarin,

dealing with people that came in and working for him. And so much of my life, I loved that place. And the cops I worked with were a lot of them were country boys, ex-military guys, probably a lot of Trump voters even today, I would expect just unculturally and yet I think one guy said I'd die for this place when we were just talking and he said

of course I wouldn't do anything for that riverboat down the street so there's a competition among buildings in Washington there's one you will die for and one in hell of that place it's an interesting tribalism but I learned from those guys so yeah

i love that line though cathedral of democracy that was just such a beautiful line it's yours yeah it's all of ours yeah now uh let me ask you this uh you ran for office. If you had won, how would that have changed your life? Well, you know, I grew up in the era when I'm 75. I grew up in the era when running for Congress was a roadmap to running for president. Jack Kenney was a congressman. Jack Kenney was a senator. But nobody would be talking about him today if he was a senator. But he went on and became a president.

And so, yeah, it would all be about promotion, advancement, ambition. I know in Philadelphia, if I had beaten the machine, the old organization, which is still there, pretty powerful, I would have to keep fighting it until somehow we assimilated to each other and they accepted me. No, it would have been a challenge. Of course, I know I immediately started thinking about the Senate. I just know how I'd be taken. And I thought about it again big time to go for the Senate when I got well known back in 10, because I'd just come off of the Obama campaign,

which I loved. I'm open about it. I wasn't just thrilled at my leg. I was thrilled everywhere. I just thought that was the greatest campaign. And I would go around following him in places like Philly. And the whole crowds were cheering him. And when they saw me, they cheered me. I mean, I just was caught up, especially African Americans. And I go, oh, my God, I have a following on you. And I thought this is doable. And I'm like, Obama, I believe in what he believed in. I'm a moderate Democrat. And I thought this would be a great career. But I hadn't been home since before college. And it took a big job. I also couldn't make the leap because you'd have to quit one job, be out of work for X many months, and then go for the House the house for the senate job it's kind of hard to do that yeah because

i find that i have a five minute or 20 minute conversation with someone next thing i know it's all about social media everybody just can't wait i mean you're gonna ask them what do you think i should write okay hey christmas is they gonna run you know and so i was top of the fold what i thought i've inquired matthew's thinking of running very positive piece and then Matthew decides not to top of the fold again but I try to I don't know maybe I think hey look if you played it one way I could have won the Senate I would have been one of the candidates for president who knows I think about that once

in a while but not too often I was glad I think I'm better at following politics that was going to be my next question for you do you think if you think that the path you ended up on with having the career at MSNBC and being on for 20 years, you were a pioneer in that too as well.

Do you think you accomplished more or did more with that show and that path than you would have maybe if you would have ran for the House and then sent it? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I said better this way is a good way to grow up. Always say the decision you made is the right decision but uh i was chicken i i think i think if i remember bobby kennedy as i wrote the book he once said

his problem of his campaign which was very erratic in 68 before he was shot was i don't have a bobby kennedy jack had bobby and then having a brother like bobby is one of the greatest things you could before he was shot, was I don't have a Bobby Kennedy. Jack had Bobby. And then having a brother like Bobby is one of the greatest things you could ever imagine, to have a brother who's so devoted to you that he would do anything for you. And he was brilliant and ruthless and unbelievable as a brother. He is the guy you want. He was Michael in The Godfather in the sense that he was like,

God, don't get in this guy's way. This guy is going to win and he's going to be not too concerned about the feelings of those on the way. He's just going to get it done. And Jack wasn't like that. Jack always wondered, does that guy not like me? How come he doesn't like me? Bobby

didn't care. But Jack was always worried. Doesn't he like me? Why does he not like me? Bobby, those two brothers are very different. Jack never wanted but Jack was always worried doesn't he like me? why does he not like me? Bobby those two brothers are very different Jack never wanted to be alone for example

he would he wanted me to go to bed at night he had Dave Powers stay with him until the very end he didn't read in bed like I do he wouldn't let him leave

he'd say turn out the light Dave if they're you know Bobby and Eddie they love being alone they're very different personalities our brothers are like that turn out the light. Bobby and Eddie love being alone. They're very different personalities. My brothers are like that.

Well, Bobby had like eight kids or something, didn't he? Or ten kids? He had a lot of kids. He probably enjoyed some alone time. I don't know if Jack wanted that many. I don't think Jackie wanted that many. That was a hell of a lot of kids. But so did their old man. They came from nine.

Did I say Jack or Bobby? I came from five. Did I say Jack or Bobby with eight kids? Bobby. No, you got it right. I got it right. So let me ask you this. I mean, Ethel was always pregnant.

I mean, she was always having babies for years. He had a lot of kids. That's probably why he enjoyed some quiet time, you know. I think he liked to be Papa Bear. I think he liked having all those kids around, it seems to me. So you worked for Carter for a long time. Is Carter really an unsung president for us? I mean, he seems like such a great humanitarian.

I mean, you see him. He takes these falls. He gets these bruises on his face. He's out still doing the Habitat for Homes. This seems like this probably should be one of our most treasured presidents. And what a really good human being he is. Well, I think he had great values. And let's see he was concerned at the time about energy and conservation and his answer was conservation i did more wells but conservation

which is not a popular american notion you know put the sweater on live a little colder uh be a good person about it don't try to rape the continent or rape the planet. He didn't say more, more, more drilling. He did push for human rights, but there's always going to be exceptions like the Shah of Iran because we had all that oil we needed over there. Or we thought we did. And with gas lines, people were thinking only about gas lines, but he really

did push human rights like in Russia. He was serious. He thought to do that i think non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is a huge issue yeah not that they had to fall in the hands of wacky people and killers we're still been lucky just think about it since hiroshima and nagasaki no nuclear weapons have been used in war it's just you know thatcher was right about that thatcher said it saved us from third world war nuclear weapons because they used in war. Thatcher was right about that. Thatcher said it saved us from Third World War. Because they're so horrendous.

If so, but Carter was good on those three where he probably shouldn't have been president in these times is that he didn't, he was a pacifist. I really do think he was. And I don't have any judgment about that except for being president and a pacifist.

It's hard. What are you going to do with this military establishment? What do you do with it all? You have it, and the world knows you have it, and you have situations develop like the hostage-taking. I'm not sure there was a military solution unless you go to war. I think another president might have gone to war. They would have said, you took our 50 hostages.

That's an act of war. Let's go at and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed right i think reagan might have i'm not going to knock reagan anymore but a certain kind of president w might have done it um w especially uh dick cheney would have definitely done i was going to say do you mean president dick cheney yeah I think Dick Cheney would have been the one. You know, don't touch my stuff or I'll kill you, like the stripes. Remember the stripes? Don't touch my stuff or I'll kill you.

But Carter said, no, I care about his getting the hostages back. And he, I don't think he ever fully appreciated the mortification most Americans had. I had a guy throw a part of a beer at me one time at a bar during that. He was so angry. He's a friend of mine, too. They were so angry at

the humiliation of having our guys trooped around, you know, every night on Nightline, held hostage. It was called every night, humiliating. He watched the blindfolded Americans, the flag being burned. They were fighting words. And people

hated it. And Carter kept talking about getting the hostages back. And I think he missed the moment, but I'm not sure there was whatever it was, he couldn't handle the hostage crisis. And they knew it. They played him.

But Reagan, the one thing Reagan did was fire the air traffic controllers when they went on a wildcat strike and broke their contract with the government. And that apparently, according to Tip O'Neill, he had found out his buddy Dwayne Andrews of Archie Daniels Midland was over in Russia. And the Russians were impressed by that. They said, this guy's not Carter.

This guy's tough. And they usually try to size up their enemies on their toughness. And they usually figure out. Russians love knowing one American. In this case, it was Wayne Andrews. They let me get their American. He tells them what's going on over here. But I think you got to send the word.

I was an RA in college. I loved it. My favorite job. I'm an ra i had a hall maybe another guy had room in my head hall hallway to keep away from drinking beer and all that this is a holy cross i'm a booster and i my strategy was from the beginning keep aloof i don't fraternize laugh at them once in a while but really don't do anything that shows that we're equals so they know that i would i would get them if they broke the rules. So I never had to screw anybody. I wanted to know right up front, I'll turn

you in, you'll be out of this school. You're drinking beer on this car, which is pretty strict. But I knew that if I scared them, one of the kids said to me, you never got us in trouble, but you scared us all the time. And I figured it was better to scare them than to hurt them. So, I mean, that was my minimal example of power. There you go. When I really had some power. What made you want to get into politics?

What drove you to this field? You know, I think it's brain soup. You're just born with it. I was interested. Yeah. And it was long with it. I was interested. Yeah. And it was long before Kennedy and all that stuff. I mean, I was fascinated by it. The human drama of it, the competition, the exposure.

I mean, I remember sitting in our rec room. Everybody had a rec room in the 50s. Just a basement, really, with a TV set. That's our rec room. That's our rec room. 50s. Just a basement, really, with a TV set. And we're watching the results of the 58 midterm elections with my dad.

And we're watching Averill Harriman, the governor of New York, the Democrat. You know, old money, rich guy. Losing. And he gave his commencement address. His concession speech. And my dad, who was a middle-class Republican, moderate Republican, I guess, was really sad for him, even though he was a rich

Democrat. And I think that drama of winners and losers, of personal stakes, Nixon versus Kennedy, God, there was nothing like that growing up. It was so personal. It was like heavyweight boxing where there's one person and that's another person. Very exposed. And boxing, by the way, was huge growing up. The Gillette fights every Friday night.

The Schmidt beer fights on Wednesday night in Philly. Boxing was considered okay back then. Now it's kind of just horrific. But you watch these ads for boxing. But I think it's the one-on-one competition, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, you know, by world sports. I think it's that. Also the fear of the Soviets, as we talked about a while ago. The stakes were so high in politics. It wasn't about local politics.

That never interested me. It was the national question, where do we stand in the world? How do we protect this country? What kind of a country should it be? Should it be a country of a lot of social programs or should it be a country of laissez-faire, of less government, more individual liberty? And that issue of individual versus social authority was a big part of my growing up. Obviously, that debate was a big part. In fact, I followed that all the way through the Berlin Wall coming down. I asked the same questions that he was asking in a library in Worcester,

Madison, when I worked a summer in Worcester. I want to know the difference. What's the natural order, socialism or pre-enterprise? And I sort of came up to the conclusion that it could be socialism if everybody felt they were being treated fairly, if everybody felt they were getting their piece of the action. And it wouldn't be if they were getting screwed. And I think that's still true.

I think maybe in some countries like Sweden, people obviously haven't overthrown those governments. So they like the big tax you know the big tax burden but all this social responsibility for health and everything about education if you could sum up the whole of your life because you've been witness to so many grand events i mean there's about eight different adventure moments you you uh listen the book it's a movie christ i think it's a movie. Who's going to play you? Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon's going to play you? I think that's good.

I mean, you didn't want Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington might be good too. He's a great actor. I like those characters. They don't mention the ethnicity. They just never mention it. He's a great actor.

He's great. I saw him give the commencement address for my daughter which graduated from the university of pennsylvania he was a writer he told one of these numbers where i think he did the orson welles trick he walked out and dropped his entire speech from the from the lectern all over the place yeah that's what that's what orson welles did the night he did war of the worlds did he walked out into the studio in new york i guess and he dropped his entire script on the floor right as they're going on the air and then he had another one in his pocket so it was

apparently some technique he had for getting everyone to relax that's when he talked about the world being attacked by aliens which is one of the most without doubt the most memorable broadcast in history oh yeah people were jumping out of windows or whatever what was going on totally so if you could sum up your whole life in in one sentence or one word everything you've experienced everything you witnessed what would that phrase adventure adventure there you go i just try to uh put them in the book i uh i wish i had more but i have a lot you know i do like i i mean i do feel like zealot or somebody sometimes what am i doing there at the wall coming down what am i because i went there because i knew it was coming down i was in south af Africa because I got GMA, ABC to pay for it. They sent me over.

I was at Belfast because MSNBC sent me over. I was at CNBC. I went to the Pope's funeral in the first part of the century, which I didn't talk about yet, but that was a fantastic experience, being up on Gianicola above St. Peter's Square, listening to that incredible music and watching 5 million people wait in line to view the former, the late Pope. And learning things.

Like, I always try to learn something. Why was he Pope? He's a Polish Pope, the first non-Italian Pope for centuries, I guess. And one reason he was popular is that he took the job of, the role of bishop of Rome seriously, not just as a title. And he would spend every weekend. He did about 170 of these weekends where he would go to a parish in Rome.

There are like 225 parishes in Rome. And he would go to a parish, have dinner with the priests, get up and say mass the next morning and then go to the right like the the the town that what they call the town the church hall and and meet with the kids like the ccd classes and um and they all felt like he had been a pastoral figure in their lives he'd done it and i kept thinking and then i saw the poor people coming in from poland my god poverty poor people coming in uh to pay tribute to him the romans always look great they dress well they look they know what they're doing they're just they're stylish as hell

but the polish people came in a different kind of love of this guy for he brought down the iron curtain in many ways that's that's pretty awesome so what's next for chris matthews uh are you working on maybe well i'd like to uh the next couple minutes will be spent encouraging people to buy this country my life of politics that's the next couple minutes we've just been through that now so after that i don't know i i think i better take a break to keep some comedy in this household. I mean, too much focus on me. You said, would you run for office?

I don't feel comfortable. Yes, I do. But I don't like feeling comfortable with being comfortable with ego. Yeah. Like, let's talk about me. Let's talk about me. I'd rather root for somebody. And people know that.

I just like rooting for people that I look up to, whether it's Winston Churchill or it's Barack Obama. They probably didn't like each other, by the way. I'm not sure he got rid of that bronze in the White House. I have heroes. I mean, look, Johnny Carson was a hero of mine and Steve Allen before that. And Sid Caesar was a huge hero of mine. I love Sid Caesar. So, I mean,

I love Cary Grant movies. You know, I was watching a Cary Grant movie the other night and bringing up Baby with Kate Hepburn. And this is where this thing about critical race theory comes in. Why does he in the middle of the movie, apropos

of nothing, this is a Hitchcock, no, it's not Hitchcock, later Hitchcock, apropos of nothing, say to somebody, that's white of you. Why did a script writer put that in? Just to take another punch at the African Americans, just bring them down a little, knock them

before they stand up again. And why in all the Hitchcock movies are there no blacks on Fifth Avenue when they have the big street scenes? They must have gotten them off the street. And the only African-Americans who show up are these guys. They're always comical figures as Pullman car conductors on the train. And they're sort of that's portrayed as grownups. The way they do it, it's diminishing. Why do we have to

constantly find ways in show business where people should just be having fun? They say, here's a chance to take a shot at them. I think it was fear or it was triumphalism or what the hell it was, but it is not imaginary. It was going on. I mean, the mummers were great.

The mummers were in, I didn't know this when i was a kid they were in blackface up until the early 50s and what was the point of that yeah yeah i learned a lot about john wayne i grew up idolizing john wayne as a as a uh you know as a as a way to be a man and you know i i had to learn a lot from j Baldwin. Eddie Glad Jr. was on the show. We talked about it. Uh, someone wrote Jesus and John Wayne, uh, Kristen, uh, uh, Dume. I was on the show recently. And, and so, you know, there were all these things and it's interesting because you've lived a lot like I have, where you've gone from the USSR and hiding under your desk to where now kids are hiding under the desk for a different reason.

And, you know, the USSR is still the same, but not. And, you know, the world is shaped so many different ways. I mean, you look at the arc of it and how far we've come and we've had to progress and change how we think about things. And it's quite a journey, isn't it? Yeah, on race, I think we're on the journey we're on the journey and i think everybody would say we're on the journey uh yeah we i was never told growing up but i'm a history buff about tulsa i learned about it last week yeah so what's that tell you yeah i uh but i'm lucky because of course it's a better word. When we were in Peace Corps training down in Louisiana, down in the backwoods of Louisiana, backwater, poor whites, white-only signs on the laundromat.

When I was in grad school in North Carolina, I saw the white-only signs in the waiting areas and how they phrased African-Americans. And this was our waiting area. And we saw we were in college week. We'd drive overnight to Florida for college week. And we would see the white-only signs in the men's rooms, gas stations. So we did stay. I remember going to the slave quarters as a kid at Mount Vernon. But our attitude towards it was, isn't this curious?

Isn't this odd? Isn't this quaint? It was like the quaintness of it more than the horror of it. It was quaint that they have these signs and we felt a little superior because we were northerners.

We wouldn't do that. But did we have many black people in our neighborhood? No. I had one after-market guy in my class in high school. And that was one. None in grade school. Not in my grad school class in North Carolina. This is four years after civil rights, the bill.

So I think doing nothing has been a problem for us i think it has doing nothing is i don't think it's being you know simon legree is one thing but everybody likes to have simon legree and go with the wind because then you can say there's just one bad white white guy yeah he takes the heat you know seeing that confederate flag inside the capitol was the seminal moment for me that's just burned into my memory. Seeing that flag in, in, you know, what you described as the Cathedral of Democracy was just horrific and extraordinary to me on top of still floors me to this day. But seeing that we have not resolved that issue after, you know, 200, 450 years of all this crap of white exceptionalism and nationalism, just really just, I mean, we still have so far to go. Well, I was at the Lee Mansion

a couple years ago. Custis Lee Mansion in Arlington. And I went over there to see the Kennedy grave. We wanted to go see Teddy's new grave and Bobby's in Jackson. So we went up to see the Lee Mansion. I'm standing under the portico. There's big columns,

antebellum columns in front of the good-looking old building and uh there's a guy there standing here i don't know where he's from south somewhere and he was another guy and he says keep up the fight and my afterwards my wife kathleen said to me those guys didn't come up here to see the kennedy graves they came up here to see robert e lee's oh wow oh wow keep up the fight this is this thing this is the thing with the oh wow post vellum thing that trump has ignited it was there before him he's not a creative thinker all the stuff trump does are uncreative it's all about just ripping a scab off and saying, oh, it's about the immigrants.

It's about the blacks. He just knows, or it's the Chinese. It's always a tribal thing. Big surprise. And he's ignorant of history, but he knew enough about race that he could work it. And he knew exactly what he's done. And now he's gone out and said, it's

Benedict Arnold's stuff. He's Benedict Arnold, or maybe he's worse than him. Benedict Arnold, at least for a while, was a good guy. Then he became a bad guy. When was Trump a good guy? I mean, the idea that after having elections every two years for Congress, going back to 1788 for president since that year, every four years. Our great pride is our electoral system. The pride of that electoral system is what guarantees freedom.

I've thought this through. Freedom and free elections work together. If you have the free elections, you can keep your freedoms because you won't get away with much. People still vote. And you won't get elections unless you have freedom to have the elections. And you've got to have both. And that's why the Constitution is so good. And we have to realize that these public officials swear no to the Constitution and to that Capitol building. Not to anybody. Not to

Trump. But they think they made an oath to Trump. They are confused. About a quarter of the country might fit this category who believe there's going to be a reinstatement in August of this guy.

That happens all the time, right? Where's that word? You can't find that. You can Google that word. You will not find it in the Constitution. There is no reinstatement. Reinstatement. Isn't that Article 5 of...

No, you're right. The fact that he would come up with a totally new word that has nothing historic about it. What's he going to do? There's probably going to be trouble before august that or after august i mean it's it's quite extraordinary um when you you know we had tom hartman on the show shortly after uh january 6th the big radio guy and he he said uh he said to me something that just threw me out of my chair he goes you know what they call january 6th don't you and i go what he goes rehearsal practice

oh great yeah and if you you know you study the the what was it the the hitler bars uh thing where he first tried started to try to raise it yeah yeah and you know so basically you look at this you look at everything that's going on the attack on election rights are you worried about where we're headed for 2022 2024 the progression he comes out of the election two days later he says he won then we find that two-thirds of the republican party reason he won then you find that January 6th, where people went in there, committed civic violence, killed people

to get in that building. Then we find a general who says we should have, should, good word, should have a military coup. This all is a line of progression because once it said that the election was fraudulent, once you accept the first time in history This all is a line of progression because once it said that the election was fraudulent, once you accept

the first time in history an election is a fraud, that he's not legitimate. You know, I'm going to write something about this. Whatever you say about Nixon, and I see him as a mixed bag, complicated, maybe mostly bad, but a mixed bag. The week after he lost the election to Kennedy

and he had reason to doubt what happened in, and he had reason to doubt what happened in Chicago. He had reason to doubt what happened in Texas, because Lyndon Johnson was known as Landslide Lyndon. That's what Jack called him. There was no Republican Party in Texas at that time worthwhile. Nobody doing checking on what

happened that day. So he could have said there was problems. Kennedy was worried he was going to say that. But when Kennedy called him up and said, let's get together, Kennedy said, yeah, let's get together. He sat and drank Cokes at the Key Biscayne Hotel in front of all the press. Nixon verified the election

and made it clear. He did not want to mess up our side during the Cold War. There's patriotism there. Whatever else you say about the guy, he did the right thing. Back when he died, Teddyedy paid tribute to the fact that how nixon accepted kennedy's victory yeah and he had much more reason to complain than trump ever did trump has nothing trump will say arizona and pennsylvania but there's no case yeah and but nixon had a case you know dick daly the mayor of chicago was burning all of his ballots. There's no way

to recount it. They're burned a couple of hours. I mean, with the help of a few good friends, I always wondered about that line. Was that mob? I mean, Ben Bradley overheard it, but this means mob. But Nixon didn't complain. He did the one thing everybody should do is when I talked about concession speeches, the great religion of our country is that you play square. In the end, when the other guy or woman wins, you say they win. They're the next leader. I'm walking. And that's it.

But the founding fathers didn't allow for the fact there'd be somebody like Trump coming along who wouldn't even admit the obvious. It's always been, I mean, Adlai Stevenson gave a great speech when he lost. Al Gore gave the best speech in his campaign when he lost. Hillary Clinton had to get up the next morning after being shocked in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and walk over to the cheaper hotel, by the way. She had to go to a cheap hotel because they didn't have the money at that

point. The Pennsylvania hotel, you know, it's not exactly exclusive, right across the street from Penn Station. And she had to give a big speech to all her followers. I've lost. He's president. John McCain had to do it. John Kerry, Mitt Romney, they all had to be capable. And maybe they cried backstage.

I mean, it's an emotional shock, as I said at the beginning of our conversation, to lose, to be rejected face-to-face by people who know you pretty well. We know you. We don't like you. And you have to be able to take that. And I don't think you should ever run for office unless you can just size yourself up and say, can I do that when the time comes? Can I face this country and say, okay, I i'll live with that i think it's probably even

worse isn't it if you won the majority vote but you lost like for example four million votes yeah well maybe that would be a sad though and now gore won about almost a half million a little more than a half million yeah i think that that's that's strange but that may hurt you more thinking about it months later. If I'd only gone to Wisconsin that second trip, if I'd only gone to Pennsylvania, why didn't I go to Erie, Wilkes-Barre? What happened to us? Why didn't we go there?

I love the SNL joke. I mean, Frank Boss, my first boss, lost his real accident in 76. I had gone out there to help him. And when he lost, he stood up there a little bit teary-eyed with his wife and he looked down at the crowd of us and he said i'm sorry i let you down he was sympathetic to the people that worked for him for a couple months you know i mean that's a that's a gentleman a good person yeah and uh trump doesn't even have the imagination to know that the people that worked very hard for him

and lost he should have said i'm sorry i let you down instead of lying to them yeah you know he knows you lost you've seen this through your history and and you know we talked about dick cheney earlier in in the presidency of dick cheney uh yeah i'm afraid you're right by the way that's why the second term of w wasn't it wasn't really accompanied by Cheney's influence. I think W finally learned a lesson. A little late. 200,000 dead Iraqis and 4,000 dead Americans. But I think he finally got the message he'd been taking.

Yeah. But it was interesting to see almost what looks like a changeover to Republican Party from the Cheney Party to the new Trump Party when they put Liz Cheney on the street from her things. What do you think about that? There's the same problem with docility there. Docility. I thought the horrible thing about the Iraq War was we were led into it by not a great leader, a great orator, a great mind. A sort of humdrum W. He talked us into a war.

I said, how did he do that? And then I go back and look at the polls. And the polls said, yep, there's hardly any casualties that were for the war. That's how narrow it was. And yet Biden, Hillary Clinton, John john kerry they all did they all went into that that was the easy that was the easy vote oh yes sir that's an easy vote and they could have said no we don't attack other countries we're not the aggressor the aggressor is the bad guy this country never attacked us why are you we were encouraging that fight between them and the Iranians.

What are we kidding? I think we were rooting for the Iraqis. I mean, WMD was bogus. It was a bogus discussion. I don't care. It's not whether they had them or not. We're going to war because of some of the country's arsenal. I don't think we've ever done that before.

And now we've been in it for 20 know 20 plus years or whatever it is now oh yeah by the way you know the simple lesson of vietnam which nobody learned we're coming home yeah we're not the brits we're not going in there to stay you know when you're in the peace corps in africa you're very different than the british are still there. The British are putting on one-act clay contests in Gilbert and Sullivan. They're there for the haul. They've got their clubs. They're settling in. The American guys just went, when's the movies coming this weekend? When are we getting a movie, and when are we going home?

And that's when every time I see a war movie, anytime, Americans like it in America. You don't have to go live somewhere else. And the Brits wanted to get out of that little island of theirs and go there. It's like in Lawrence, Arabia. You have a love of desolate places. Remember that?

There you go. You British have a love of desolate places. Yeah. I mean, you've seen, you've watched the fading of the empire. So let me put you on the spot here. Who's the better speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi or Tip O'Neill?

On discipline, Nancy. Ah, there you go. I've watched her shepherd that flock pretty well. And she has a good way of bringing the ones who want to be known for breaking out from the pack, like AOC and the squad, they want to be known for the ones that are standing out. They don't want to be fitting in. So she understands their politics. She hasn't made enemies of them.

She tries to give them a balance of the action and she knows we had we the speaker had in our day had 40 more southern democrats they're all gone now the dixiecrats they're all republicans now those districts so we had people that already settled on the other side and uh for the years of the kennedys and johnson's and all, they always voted with the Democrats once in a while, and Social Security, Medicare, things like that. But generally, they were Southerners. They voted with the Republicans. And the party always looked bigger than it was.

Just remember, go back and look at the civil rights bill. It's very instructive. The civil rights bill was passed by mostly Republicans. That's just a fact. The South had 22 segues in the united states senate segregationist out out and out segregationist roosevelt had them look at spark when he ran with adlai stevenson in 1952 a segregationist from alabama the democratic party has something that's something to answer to here they definitely have it was interesting how it flipped

between the republicans and civil rights and stuff during lyndon johnson well the republicans have a habit now picking up where the democrats drop somebody if they're not loyal to working white people the republicans are going to grab a hold of them and marry them and if they're not happy with that if the democrats don't like southern segregations the republicans are all too glad to jump come on aboard we'll take you you know it's not you know i think uh uh if they feel that they don't like some of the gender equality they're gonna go over the republican side you know it's like the republicans pick up the uh the fallout yeah well they i mean nixon did that with the southern strategy and he realized that the unions

weren't gonna go for him so they they went after the the corporate money in this and this just remember he started affirmative action to get to the philadelphia plan you know about the philadelphia plan no well it's basically forced the italians and the irish to break up with the construction trades to black people oh really yeah because everybody's getting a job from their uncle yeah you don't get in the guild you don't work anymore so the next one says here's where i could be a civil rights leader and screw the democratic unions at the same time and he gave us the drug war which we still have with tippo neil what would tippo neil thought of nancy pelosi tearing up the state of the union speech that was you're cruel he wouldn't have done it but you know i mean he wouldn't have done it but he uh What did Tip O'Neill thought of Nancy Pelosi tearing up the State of the Union speech? That was –

He wouldn't have done it. But, you know, I mean, he wouldn't have done it, but he – If he had seen it, what would he have thought? He's like, okay, this is his relationship. Maybe you'll get this. I think you might, judging by your personality. I'm figuring you out here. So he gets a call from Tip Reagan.

And he gets a message out on the golf course somewhere on a weekend somewhere, and he sends the message back to Reagan. Tell him I'll call him when I'm finished my round. Don't you love that phrase? When I'm finished my round. The other one I liked was tips in the office during the week. He's in his office watching some Big Ten football game. I don't know, Michigan, Wisconsin.

And Reagan calls. And Tips would yell, did you see that play? Did you see that play? Reagan says, what are you talking about? It's the Michigan game. Can't you see what's going on here? Reagan says, what channel is it on? So Reagan tries to keep up

with them on the sports stuff you know it's just fun i mean that's where he would talk to reagan it was like that it was not he would never publicly do that is that you know are you writing the book about how there used to be you know this thing where people could get along work together they could they could um they could uh you know make things happen together even though they're on opposite yeah do we i don't want to i didn't rose that up i think they do when they had to like saving social security uh dealing with the hell going on in northern ireland ending the cold war uh dealing with arms reduction the ground reduction it wasn't like let's have fun it was more like oh god we got to deal with this thing we got to do it do you see us ever getting back to that or we just can continue i mean we're headed towards fascism the way we're going and the way the january 6th practice oh god i uh i don't know i i think this

is a tough time i don't see this administration getting anything done okay and i i say that because if you don't get rid of the filibuster and they don't have the 50 votes to do that then they'll demand 60 votes for everything and that means voting rights police reform immigration reform i mean everything they want to do infrastructure the only thing i can see getting through and therefore that's a good thing to get to this i might disagree with the left but in the end the hard left will say better something than nothing because if you get nothing the hard left will be mad about it i mean they will and they're not going to say good work you didn't do anything so in a way they have to have a nancy policy compromise with the squad i think we get

something like suppose five republican senators have agreed to infrastructure to something short of a trillion dollars, say $800 billion. Biden, the president will then have to decide and Manchin will have to decide and Sinema, Arizona. Those two senators have to decide whether that's enough bipartisanship. Because remember, Joe Manchin is not saying I want a better bill. Joe Manchin is saying I want bipartisanship. So if that's enough, it might be knowing a good lobbyist would say, let's try Manchin with five Republicans, maybe a few more. But we're going to do this to reconciliation. So we will have enough votes to do it.

And he will join us in reconciliation. So then you get a bigger get a big spending bill through. Then what do you do next? I don't know. Yeah. But in my day, when we were fighting with the Republican leader over this infrastructure, he was dumping all of the Democrats for spending all this money. I called up the chief engineer in Peoria, Illinois, and I asked him to give me a list of all the bridges below safety code in Bob Michaels' district.

The tip went on the floor of the house, ran in the well, and read the names and addresses of all the bridges that his opponents, the Republican leaders' district, had bridges falling down. He turned Bob Michaels' face red. He goes running to the back of the room. He passed the bill. I got to tell you, that's the way to play hard turned Bob Michael's face red. He goes right in the back room. He passed the bill. I got to tell you, that's the way to play hardball. It's clean politics. I don't know why they aren't mischievous like that. I mean, I used to be like that.

I would dig up. I would organize rallies and stuff like that with labor units and typically come up to you and say, is this one of yours? I don't know. Is this one of yours? So it also, when I screwed up, he'd say, another great tribute he got me, if I screw up one of these things, he'd say,

fix it. I loved it when he'd say that, because then he figured I could do it. Fix it. I don't know if we have a hard out with you, but I don't want to keep you all day, but I could talk to you for days. Who came up with the name Hardball for your show and why well my book 1988 my first book was hard ball how politics is played told by one who knows the game it was a word used by uh well it comes

from uh mr dooley the old the irish bartender in chicago i guess it is. And he would say, politics ain't being bad. That's where it comes from. It's hardball. It goes way back to that Finley, whatever his name is, that Irish writer. That's cool.

And that's where it came from. And Pat Buchanan did it when he was being probed during Watergate. And he would go through, there's dirty tricks, there's this, there's hardball. He would show the different categories

of degree, matters of degree of how bad sometimes it's just hardball and sometimes it's dirty tricks and sometimes other. I say it was clean Machiavellian politics, which was in other words, clever politics, but clean and acceptable and yet you win. Yeah, there you go.

So that's what I, and on the show i used to mean i'm going to ask the person three times for the question three times i'll go a little further than a normal person or any civilized person i'll just keep asking the question until they answer it even if i become obnoxious and doing it and i succeeded in becoming obnoxious that didn't work people did not like their own people they hate it when i went after a liberal for example and i said come on come on come on, come on, come on. Let's play this. Let's get this out of here. But, you know, I was like,

I'm here for the people watching and listening. I'm here for them. I'm not here for the guests. I'm here for the person who wants to answer the question and I get to ask. So I'm very lucky. But I did have a life besides hardball and television. That's what I want to do.

There you go. Anything more you want to have you. But I did have a life besides hardball and television. That's what I want to do. There you go. Anything more you want to plug on the book before we go out? No, it's $26 now. I just checked. Are you refreshing the page to see it? I've always been on the best star list. I want to get better on it with this one. I think it's a heck of a book.

Yeah. It's the best I could write for 70 years of life. And I wrote for two years on this baby, two years of just writing it and getting it right and shaping it down. So it's, it's the least amount of time to learn the most. There you go. Well,

we'll just have to look forward to the next book in the next 70 years. So do that. You know, the great line, Frank Bankless line, somebody said, just so a guy dies at 84 and somebody says that's not a bad run and frank manquist kennedy's guy said not if you're 83 there you go there you go well chris it's been wonderful to have you in the show and you're

welcome back anytime we'd love to have you i i think so many people miss you on the i want to speak for a lot of people a lot of us miss you on msnbc we miss the show so thank you so much for being part of our lives and everything and and thank you for being on our show you've got a great name by the way are you christopher well christian boss i think is the birth god that sounds very but i like i like christmas better it's ironic it's ironic because i'm an atheist you could be a ski instructor with that God, that sounds very Nordic. But I like Christmas better. It's ironic because I'm an atheist. You could be a ski instructor with that. Well, I think it's our German that we have in us. So there you go.

Well, I'll be understanding. I'll be understanding. There you go. That's the slowest material. You know, we left in the 1800s, so we skipped the whole Hitler. I took a Fyriarian gymnasium whole Hitler. I took a theory in gymnasium. Yeah. I took a lot of German.

Well, it's been a storied life that you've lived, Chris. Thank you very much for being on the show. We certainly appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you very much. And for all your story career and all the stuff you've done to uplift us and keep us. Yeah, just the opening of Hardball was just always fun to tune into let's play hardball yeah there you go nika brzezinski loves it yeah she she always talked about like like joe would always be like she always has to watch the opening line she's she tunes in every time so check it out guys this country my life

and politics and history by chris matthews uh you can check out all of his extraordinary library books he's written as well this one just came out on june 1st 2021 check out the other ones order it up because it sounds like he's refreshing to see it shows number one bestseller in r&b soul artist biographies on my screen so uh who knows where that came about i don't know i'll take it r&b and soul artists biographies you're up there with uh i don't know somebody in r&b uh maybe maybe you'll be you know you'll be up there with uh beyonce anyway thank you very much chris for being our so we certainly appreciate continued success my friend thanks for tuning in Go to youtube.com

for just Chris Foss. Hit the bell notification. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Foss. All of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all that good stuff. Thanks, my honest, for tuning in. Be safe, and we'll see you guys next time.