Chris Matthews on JFK

Good evening everyone and welcome, thank you for your patience. I am Tom Putam, director of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and on behalf of Tom MCN, executive director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, members of the foundation's board of directors, many of whom are here. with us tonight and to all my colleagues at the library and the Foundation. I thank you for joining us tonight. Let me first thank the generous forum sponsors at the Kennedy Library, Bank of America Boston Capital, the L Institute, the Boston Foundation, and our media partners. The Boston Globe and WB also allowed me to recognize two special guests here tonight: the first, a member of the Kennedy administration, Richard K.

Dunu, and also the former chairman of the board of directors of the Kennedy Library Foundation and former United States Senator, Paul Kirk, and his captivating new biography, Chris Matthews. aims to answer the questions: what was JFK like, how did he go from being a rich kid and son of Joe Kennedy to becoming the man who saved the country during the Cuban missile crisis, what was the genesis of this unforgettable man described in title as an elusive hero in answering these and other questions, the book also gives us an insight into what Chris Matthews is like, we learn about a young Catholic who, influenced by his father's Republican leanings, cried on behalf of Richard Nixon when he died. announced the results of the 1960 election and about the man who readily admits that he has never gotten over the loss of John F.

Kennedy, thus initiating him into what he characterizes as a Knight of the Heartwarmers. The ideals JFK espoused serve in part as Mr. Matthews' Genesis. Service as a peace volunteer. in Swasiland, as a presidential speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, as a top aide to House Speaker O'Neal, and is one of the most respected journalists in the country. He is a hero to many in this room and across the country, although less so in this case. of an elusive idol than an effusive one; Indeed, one of the book's many attributes is how vividly it conveys Mr. Matthews' exuberant voice, a voice that throughout the writing of this biography rang through my office telephone when Mr.

Matthews wanted to try for first time a new theory. Tom, it's Chris Matthews. I think it all starts in the strangulation with LM Billings, that is the moment when Jack recognizes his own charisma and realizes how easily he can gain the loyalty of his friends. What do you think or to verify a fact? Tom Chris Matthews listen again, it was kind of superficial. that trip in 56 or to learn more about a source Tom, I'm Chris, explain to me the provenance of these Keno Donal oral histories, they are simply fantastic, we are honored to have you here in person, not separated by phone lines, to discuss this new better. selling a biography that is for sale in our bookstore.

Mr. Matthews agreed to sign his copies at the end of the Forum and nothing says Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah better than an autographed copy. Our moderator tonight is Marty Nolan, who was a legendary reporter and editor. for the Boston Globe from 1961 to 2001, during those 40 years he coined the term Joe sixpack to define the typical American voter, won a Pulitzer Prize for investigating the inconsistencies and testimony of a candidate for a federal judgeship supported by the Kennedy family and secured a place on President Nixon's Enemies List, which made me angry, one could have predicted the latter when Mr.

Nolan was a kid growing up here in Dorchester. It is reported that he asked his first difficult question at the age of 12 when he challenged a nun at his parochial school during more reactionary times sister, how do you know that Dean Atson is a communist sister? Mar Mr. Nolan has participated in past forms here from the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Nixon debates to discussions about one of his favorite pastimes, professional baseball, we think of him and another of his famous quotes from last September, When our hopes for the local team were dashed, the Red Sox killed my father, he once said, and now they're coming after me.

True story, one could argue that this same Irish wit helps connect John Kennedy and Chris Matthews and allows To give me a quick example of the last time Mr. Matthew spoke from the stage, his panel partner that day, EJ Deon , was explaining that a study suggested in the 1960 election that JFK received 95% of the Irish Catholic vote nationally and then joked that "no" It doesn't take a study to understand that JFK also received 120% of that vote in Chicago to which Chris Matthews without missing a beat responded that yes, it always went well with what we call the triumphant Catholic among the glowing reviews of Mr.

Matthew's new book was this comment. published online I have just finished reading Jack Kenned's elusive hero and there is a deep lump in my throat Chris Matthews captured in his biography what has been missing in so many other books about John F Kennedy his soul in short in this fresh and compelling contribution to the Kennedy Cannon achievement Chris Matthews is nothing short of triumphant ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Marty Nolan and Christopher Matthews to the k, well Chris, I was watching a lot of TV, all those guys running for president, you know to the Republicans and, uh, several of them said well, when I take over at Homeland Security, I'm going to trust my generals, I'm going to listen to my generals, I'm going to do what the generals think is a good idea and I thought Well, they have done it.

I didn't read chapter 14 of Chris Matthew's book about a surprise in October 1966 62 some of his generals had a different idea than the president, well you know, by the way, Jerry Do is here, I remember you from the days of tip. It's nice to see it. you so Paul Kirk of course Senator I forgot he was a senator Sorry it was great it was great it was unforgettable actually and jer is here and Connie castanic a lot of people I know and one of my heroes is here Marty noan um you I know George, I don't know how It is pronounced in French George es Clemens, so the French leader in World War I said that the war is too important to leave in the hands of the generals and every time I hear one of these characters say I'm going to wait. and listen to the generals on the ground.

Cain seems to like that formulation, if you don't know anything, it's good to learn something. I guess uh, um, and that's a pretty colossal statement, actually, U, uh, the news. I was able to bond over Miss Christ and we all grew up with it. My brother was at Holy Cross a year before me and he told me about the confession lines. This was a time when all of us who grew up hiding under those little desks at school. when the nun told us that it was 15 minutes until the first Flash and the general judgment would follow uh quickly um this was all related to our religion and it was all a big history class, religion, current events, when we got under those desks, I was always a smart guy back then, I said, "I guess they confuse the airstrike and the fire drill, but I'd be out there greeting the incoming ones or I'd be under the desks, whatever." Jack Kennedy, a guy who had learned the lesson of not trusting people during all those years of difficult operations and learned not to trust experts, thank God, he did it with experts, these guys were not experts, they thought the Nuclear war was like any other kind. of War MacArthur had come to him a couple of weeks earlier with an idea, you know.

I was really frustrated in the Korean War because I wanted to equip all my infantry men with holster-mounted nuclear weapons because that would give them a huge morale boost and Kennedy, of course, was spoiling the guy, he said, you know, let's get this straight, it would shoot 100 yards clear, 120 yards in front of you and then explode in a puff. I mean, even Kennedy in those days completely understood the reality of nuclear fraud. and nuclear material, you don't just shoot it in front of you and it increases if you don't hit the guy like a ray gun or something and yet this was the mentality of the new people around.

He Curtis L wanted a first strike, you know what a first strike was, that's when you hit the entire Soviet Union and all the satellite countries in one fell swoop and kill everyone, that was his preferred reaction to the situation. . Kennedy knew that they did move. about Berlin, that Christop had warned him if you go to Cuba, we are Cuba, we will go to Berlin immediately, he knew that we would be in the situation of first use, first use, so, which means we are going to Tactical because we are facing 350,000 . The Red Army troops surrounding our 15,000 NATO troops we had to use them for the first time so he knew all these horrible next steps in this golden R reality that we're facing and then he said, "Wait a minute.

I've read Barbara talk when you don't." They will take the first step, the next and we are there because leaders do what they have to do if they do not stop that clock in some way. The generals are simply thinking, "We have more nuclear weapons than them, so we will attack them." hard we will win relatively and Kenedy said we call ourselves civilized what are you talking about here and Bobby said I don't want to I feel like Tojo let's hit them first so it was a great example of why we elect our commander in chief it's an amazing system that the founding fathers discovered I wish, I wish the Tea Party types at the U would remind themselves of that or if they ever knew the central aspect of our Constitution, which is that it is us governing the country and the US deciding a war at peace, especially with the nuclear age upon us, and that's why I think Kennedy's story here is so overwhelming that this guy was able to stand up.

In fact, he took his first big step, Marty, when he said no, when he found himself surrounded by Dick Bissell and Allan Doas and LM Niter and those guys who are plotting against him in the Bay of Pigs to convince him once we put 1,500 Cuban exiles middle class people on that beach in the Bay of Pigs that somehow they would win, but the trick. Did they convince the president to go so far so that when it happened, he would be forced to bring our troops and confront the Cubans, which is what They wanted it to happen and it turns out that Kennedy made the biggest mistake if he could have made it, it was a learning experience, but it was horrendous.

All he had to ask was how many regular Cuban troops would be there on the first day to meet the 1,500 exiles. That's all he asked for. Yes, 25,000. This wasn't even a chance to set up. a beachhead and if they had come and told him they were just going to the mountains of escom or however you pronounce it and he said well the problem was that there are 80 miles of swamp separating the beach from the mountains, they lied to him about this. guy dick Bell a friend of his from the Ivy League and who he really liked but he wanted to cheat on him and he did a minute later he lied to him, they cheated on him and Kenedy at that moment said no I have made this big mistake to move on. with this but at this moment I say no, I am not going to invade Cuba because he said we have Russian troops there, I don't know how many we would have to kill, we are going to war with Russia and I know Cruz Jeff.

I just know all about Cruz Jeff, this guy would have to fight too, we would go to war, we have a World War and I think in 1989 when I was there in Berlin, the world changed when we saw the Berlin Wall come down, I said, we started to realize that we're over this, those of us who got hit under a desk because of Kennedy without a nuclear war, which we all thought, by the way, growing up, would happen sooner or later, let's remember that no one wants to remember that, but we all thought that sooner or later there would be a nuclear war, there had to be both sides of nuclear weapons, there was always a war, we had two world wars, we would have another, Kennedy stopped it, that did it. that's what I think Ted Kennedy once told me that U, his grandfather, honey, Fitz was a great man for taking the kids on walks around Boston to learn history and JFK must have been on that trip because several times he quoted Statues of Boston, the city on a hill, the phrase that Reagan adopted was originally John Winter, but he boarded the Arbella here and JFK used it to preach to the Massachusetts legislature and not to steal too much, you know, and um, so, uh , and I covered the The night of his big birthday party in the Commonwealth Army in 1962, when he was on his way to meet Kop for the first time and he said: "I'm serious.

I'm going to quote a line written in one of our statutes." in a statement by a vigorous and distinguished citizen of New England, William Lloyd Garrison, I mean it, I will not be wrong, I will not go back an inch and I will be heard in a great time and another monument that I believe he looked at was that of Robert G Shaw. Memorial right in front of the state house and I thought about that just today when I passed by there and I thought about the statement with the dedication of him. William James, the great Harvard philosopher, had the idea of ​​the moral equivalent of war in that dedication and said that we need a kind of civic courage, not the gregarious courage that the colonel showedsha as brave men and that made me think of the Peace Corps of which you are a student.

What did Kennedy say that made him sign up for the Peace Corps? I know, I think I think the Peace Corps thing was so good. I remembered myself in the Peace Corps when I could. What would Jack do? First of all, he would have some fun. That's a big part. I was in the Peace Corps. SC during the Vietnam War, so I had a lot of regular guys with me, do you think so? There was an alternative service and a lot of us chose that and it was positive, it was Pro American, it was patriotic and uh. uh, it was a lot of adventure and Kennedy must have imagined that there was a great moment that I found in the C house.

They were in that hotel on Market Street in San Francisco, the old one along Market Street there and, uh, they were. uh he was scared because Ike was catching up to him and he was helping Nixon in '60 and he was getting scared he said a sandbar and the tides are going out and they're getting me and this Ike is Nixon hit the panic button Liv working Ike was incredibly popular when he was retiring and his fact came up again in '60 and he said my God, this is close and they said, but I have to tell you about the speech I'm giving tonight at the Cow Palace and here these two guys who made G pass for a war together, close friends, talking about this, this new thing. where guys like him, instead of going to war, they went around the world and really tried to change it and um and I really thought that was a positive thing.

He always wanted to go to Africa. I always wanted to go out there, I mean. It probably goes back to Ramar in the jungle and Tarzan and the African queen and all that, but I want to go to Africa. I do not want to go. I applied the peace SC two or three times once they wanted to send me. to Venezuela I said boring and they wanted to send me to Afghanistan to learn farsy or something like that they would do that and I'm sure it would have prevented everything from going wrong there right and I and I said no, of course, I have a face I and I keep saying no, no , that's not my cup of tea, you know, and I keep saying no, how about something a little more African, you know, so I finally wanted to go to Cambodia because it was a neutralist country and I thought I'd go. a little bit to the left, so I thought about going there, but they weren't in that country and finally they gave me another country and I said no, no, no, no, and finally I got Swaziland and I was like, gut.

I'm a graduate school in North Carolina. Me and I think this is really doing something exciting and I have to tell you, it changed your life. Anyone here was at peace. Anyone here in peace. The score changed your life. The best thing that ever happened to you. my grandmother was an immigrant and from Northern Ireland and one time she told me that she had an accent, she was like Mrs. Dfire, only she was real, real in terms of gender and she used to do it really, she was formidable and she was her. she was one of those women who used to stare at you, you know, at the table and then she said that when I was getting ahead in Washington, I got a police job in Capital Hill, Capital Hill like Barnacle, when I was working and she, I know she was embarrassing, so uh and then he said it was Africa, right?

Then it changed your life, it bothers you and it throws you out of your routine and you start to look at your religion differently, you start to look at the world differently, you start to think about other people in the world who see things differently than you. and then you find the common and you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, the group of 17 African, black boys, you are a white boy, you are different from them and yet you know them all personally and you realize that the I have here. I am where he wanted us to be, we are connecting here.

He was teaching business and I'm sure all these guys are multimillionaires now, but I had uh. a motorcycle and I was wandering around Africa and you couldn't ask for anything better to do that for two years riding up and down the east coast of Africa and you were probably more dangerous than I was at Fort Dicks, but U, but I kept at the hordes of bull shic outside New Jersey. I was a B. I considered myself a bis CH gra. You know, I'm teaching C ISM and he's there teaching communism and I want to ask. He had a heroic notion of myself.

All the chapters in this book are all concise, there's one or two words that I like and there's one called Bobby and of course I covered Bobby a lot and when I was reading it I was thinking, you know, there's a big gap. Here in our perception of the Kennedy cabinet and this is because JFK appointed his brother. Now there is nothing wrong with nepotism. I know where I am here, but for his uh um, for this high position, he almost felt obligated to appoint complete strangers. State and defense and I wonder if that, if he regretted doing it, he quoted him as saying that JFK wanted to send Bobby to the CIA or somewhere else, but isn't that a thought that if he had people he knew? and trusted State and Defense, the Vietnam Enterprise might not have started, yes, well it had, it basically made a hot decision to keep Allan Doas in the CIA and I think that was pressure from the establishment and of course , it was almost like the Federal Reserve in those days it was not just that you know Hoover was there snooping around all those years since he dated inab Binga, but he was always sniffing around the Kennedys and everyone else and using things against them, but I think It was also mainly, there was never any internal motive, but I think it was the notion of a continuity.

He had won the election for nothing, basically it was a 50/50 election and it turned out to be a good win in the Electoral College, but a popular vote went even to Steven and I think he thought he should elect a couple of people like Doug Dale in an establishment cabinet member, a First Administration sub-cabinet member, by the way, Ike really didn't want that to happen. spread the word, no one join this guy's team and make it look bipartisan. I think he wanted to mcar there too, a Republican and a nominal Republican in the Pentagon, he wanted those two Republicans and they brought in D.

You're right, Rusk is a great. example of a guy who had no idea who he was and I think he was very sorry that he wasn't an admin, he wasn't a policy guy, he wasn't a brave guy and he never gave any advice, really, and he kept asking Rus for advice, no got none. I think he really liked mnea. He really liked him. She trusted him and loved Bobby, of course. there and bomb him, he was with the hawk and MC George Bundy was a hawk and uh, but he wanted to have both sides, I mean, he really was smart enough to handle a conflict of opinions.

I think he was totally different from W to be. obviously, I mean he was curious and he liked a good argument that he wanted to hear from academics, also like Lincoln, he wanted to balance liberal academics like Walter, how joint economics with Doug Dill and the established Wall Street types so he could listen to both. Kennedy was an instinctive conservative. Jack, I don't think Teddy was, but he was an instinctive conservative who had to teach himself liberalism and learn the arguments and expand on them. the thought of him, but inside I think he was a fairly traditional conservative in many things, especially communism, throughout his life, which brings me to the next question.

I remember JFK once said about rallying Americans for Democratic action throughout Cambridge and Manhattan. and Berk Cley said, "I don't feel comfortable with those people." The above biographer was an example. Perfect, he couldn't stand the dances and he couldn't stand the guys who gave these liberal speeches and when there's only two of you. in the room together Joe ra so why did you give me this speech yeah and he and he just couldn't believe they did it and he had a and he also had that period of Irish defiance from the academic intellectual or the establishment and he would support the underdog and he had kind of a very difficult tribal connection to figure out with Joe McCarthy, very difficult because the family connection, the old man connection, the sister connection, the connection of Bobby's children to him, Bobby has a strong affection for him, but I keep reminding people as I do in the book that Bobby wrote the censure resolution against McCarthy is not that simple, they were in a very difficult bind there, uh, in terms of this Commonwealth.

Kennedy's feelings about Bobby's dislike of Roy Conan, especially Roy's relationship with Roy, had gone too far. Sh with David shines that ridiculous thing that got completely out of control and McCarthy was completely involved in it and it was a total embarrassment as well as being outraged by the whole thing, Bobby didn't like that but he still stuck with Joe to the Serious. Bobby went to the grave, he went to the funeral and he went to the grave. Bobby was very loyal and by the way, if he's not a hero of this book, I didn't spell it right, but what a brother, I mean, he saved her life. at 51 in the Far East got Jack's second episode, at least one public episode of Addison's disease, temperature 106 and Bobby out of nowhere like a Saint Bernard comes out of nowhere and saves his brother and enters a military hospital and finally Jack who was a bit elitist with his younger K brothers said my God, he is not only pious and ecclesiastical, he is my protector and it was an incredible development for the brothers there and the real stimulus of the profile was facing the Ambassador and that It was Ken, he deserves all that credit because Kenny or Donald, who understood Kennedy, said it takes a Kennedy to challenge a Kennedy and that old Joe was winning too much in the campaign in '52, he thought of a lot of tricks and kicks in the ass, that's not how you beat, you beat Henry Kat.

You have to have a very sophisticated campaign that selects communities of people who left Boston, BC Law graduates, and Harvard Law graduates who were Irish or Italian had moved away. Beyond Boston they were very independent in their politics. those pockets of support you couldn't just run Boston against the rest of the Commonwealth or you'd lose, you had to puncture him, go right, he in the Cold War, go left and jobs for the moment, it took a sophisticated campaign that Kenny and Bobby had to fix himself and the old man wasn't capable of doing it and you're right, he had to keep him out of the campaign.

Previous JFK biographers would generally describe his changing positions as growth, remember growth. been James mcgrier Burns Arthur seser Ted s, you mean moving to the left, yeah, growing right, growing, yeah, today we would call it flipping, I don't think that's right, I mean, it's Arthur Arthur sler. I'd like to agree with me, but you know, but there was some core to The Done Dig Is Here and Dick Donu gave the best description of the reaction of ordinary mortal politicians to Theodore H. White the night before the election . It's in Teddy White's Making of the President. 1960 and Boston Gard is stuck.

I was there. I have a wonderful photograph that Ed Kelly took of the world Spotlight shining on Kennedy and J Donny, who says to Teddy White, look at all those guys that White described as these pasty pale predatory politicians who said and Dick says they're looking at Jack and they said he has some trick, right? If I can learn that trick, I can be president too, right, there was something that wasn't the trick now it wasn't growth, it was a compartment, well tell us what it was, what the trick was, well that's the elusive part um Jackie um um and of course you know Jack Kennedy from what I've been able to discover and the reason I thought I could write the book after I decided I wanted to try was because he was very loyal to the old friends that he was.

Not an overwhelmingly faithful husband, it was difficult, but Jackie was completely in love with him and a man who could earn love in a different way, but was a great friend. She could spare the staff like he had. but he was as loyal to the old PALS as Len Billings, who, as old Joe said, moved in with his tattered suitcase when he was a teenager and never left. He had a room in the White House. I guess he had a room. he was always there, they didn't even need a pass to get in, you know the guards knew him and he had red Fay, of course, and Chuck Spalding had this kind of chemical relationship with him and, uh, Charlie Bartlett and he didn't.

He doesn't like new friends, he had some details, but from meeting in Congress to the old one, basically in Florida, but it's actually a race track, but he liked old friends, as Jackie said in that incredibly revealing interview with Ted. White, in the week after Jack's assassination, told him what he knew about Jack Kennedy. He knew him, he loved him even with all the difficulties. He loved this boy like a boy and seemed to understand him almost objectively, which is an incredible love if you think about it. about that understanding a person despite all the difficulties and infidelity the ability to love a person just as they are she seemed to have that said this boy this handsome boy with the tan and everything that everyone thought he had, she knew that no Has he made her know that he was still inside the sick and lonely child, really lonely, who had been left alone and had spent so many months and years in infirmaries and hospitals thinking that he was not going to make it through his adolescence thinking that he had leukemia?

Bobby used to say that if a mosquito bit him, the mosquito would be dead. I mean, thisthat one, not that one. Oops, I thought it was a Catholic Church, it did that and finally Bobby tells me, Marty says, I think God is going to forgive you and me, but he's not going to forgive Bill Barry because we're not going to see eye to eye, you know, the loyalty I had to you. Some of that occurred to him. Bobby said that the big supporters of Kennedy's Army were not paid, yes, nowadays no one is paid. You'll be called before the Federal Election Commission for violating six McCain types.

Well, how dare you use loyalty in politics? We were supposed to hire someone, that was amazing and that was new because, as you quote Tip O'Neal, he said the Kennedy party, right, the Kennedy party was a great thing and I think it's great, Kirk is here, Paul Kirk here, I mean, you know it's it's about loyalty to family it's loyalty to this candidate it started out of necessity like most things in life when he ran in '46 he faced the O' crowd Neal, who was going to win Mike Neville's candidacy, was the big star in Cambridge Kennedy.

I had to put together a campaign that was once again intelligent, it was almost like Obama's campaign in 2008 against Hillary Clinton, you can't beat the big centers. I mean, Obama lost every state, every major state knows Prim, except Illinois, um, you have to do it. go around the edges like Kennedy is, so what he said is fine, I come second in each of the cities and I will win, that's right, and you know, it won't be Cotter it won't be Neville, but I will win second in all those places, sent Bobby to an Italian neighborhood and you know, and Russo, you know, he would have been second there, maybe a distant second, but he would do it and Bobby did that kind of hard work there, so it was all that stuff about forming your own party.

Now I had this apocryphal notion. I'm not even sure it happened, but I have this notion if you walked into a Kennedy store in Out of curiosity, someone would grab you and say, Why don't you start working here? We have to get you to work and start writing letters. I do not care who you are. Write some letters to the guy who was here yesterday thanking him. for coming in the name of the family or something, they knew the trick in politics, it's not a trick, it's yes, human nature makes people work, many, you get people to work, you make them invest makavelli discovered this ago 500 years, it is loyalty in politics, no it does not come from people who do you favors, people are generally ungrateful, it is because you have invested in something bigger than yourself that you are always loyal to, as an old man once told me police in the capit, you know why the poor man loves this country because it is always God and and when you have given to the Kennedys, whether it is the 60 campaign with the PT 109 tide pin or whatever it is that you feel that your whole life because you you gave something to something like a service guy or a service woman, the most important thing in your life is what you have given, not what you have received and then the Kennedys understood that and so they built a party based on giving, it is asking , no, it's that line, don't ask what you can get, what you can give and I think and in '52, Deor told him you have to do it yourself, thank you, I don't want to be linked to you, so Deor ran for re-election and Bobby and Kenny went out and formed their own campaign, and when Deor came begging. them, can we unite our campaigns?

They said nice try, in fact, typical Jack, he said, Bobby, tell him because since Jack Bobby was always getting the job, Jack said to go see Mike D and tell him to make his endorsement public, no more nonsense. get out of the hole if you're not going to do it he'd go and say keep me out of this and Bobby looked at him and said thank you Jack because Bobby had to be the ruthless one all the time and Jack was making the decisions now have you worked uh more recently since that you left Swasiland for Jimmy Carter and Tipo and that made them a lot alike, right?

Yeah. I was just thinking about presidential and congressional relationships because Jack got along well when whatever difficulties he said with John McCormack, they weren't that serious and he had a lot of friends at home like dip and others and um and Mike Mansfield Eddie Eddie Eddie Bowen, who was supposed to run Ohio, which Jack never let him forget, he said. the place where I get more applause and fewer votes than any other state um and I was thinking because you were there when O'Neal and Ronald Reagan were saying okay after 5:00 we're friends let's have a drink and we don't.

Look, not today, and I think it's U, you know, it's not a good time and I think it's just not to be sentimental, although I can tell you some good sentimental stories about Tip and Reagan, uh. The way it worked was this and it's the way it doesn't work now and it's kind of mechanical. When you win an election dramatically like they did, the Republicans did 80 and the tip could say all the time that the speaker oh, they did it. I don't want a mandate he used to always say it's not a mandate, it's not a mandate, it was just Carter ruined it, you know, U tip realized that the speaker realized that they had won the election.

They won the Senate. They effectively won the house when we had the Dix crats and then the bull weevil had the numbers so he said: "I'm going to oppose them but I'm not going to put up obstacles. I'm not going to spend a lot of time using parliamentary tricks to screw them over." I'm not going to play that game. The voters voted. We will have the elections. And we had the elections. So let's have some results here. That's what you show. Voters should know that if they vote a certain way. They get a reaction and then after he won the 82nd race and got 26 seats, Reagan approached him.

I haven't fully reported this yet, I mean Tommy O'Neal, someone told me that Reagan said, let's go for a walk. South Lawn and Reagan basically offered him a democratic solution to Social Security, so he knew that they both knew that when you win an election that means the next deal is in your favor, but there has to be a deal. The problem with the Tea Party people is that they don't want an agreement they don't want any agreement 10 to one nothing will work it's not going to be like that there will be no agreement and so on and so forth The idea of ​​coming to Congress is to reach an agreement.

They think the word agreement is bad. They think commitment is bad. They don't understand that that's why we have an assembly of people who come together so that there are 51, as Thomas Jefferson said, a majority. one is the majority and we don't want that majority to govern and that's what's really going wrong in the system and until the voters untangle this and say no, we want them to go there and make the best possible deal for the Conservatives. side, but we want you to make this government work and they have the voters who haven't told those people that yet, well, as Aboto said to Robert Deval at the end of The Godfather, you don't know anything personal, strictly business, right, any disagreement, they're doing business. right, they're not doing their job before we let these good people ask questions, you have to read the book, there's some great stuff about where the questions don't come from and there's other stuff, but tell us at the end of the book, eh, Chris . is based on two of the most beloved people to ever appear in Washington, Mary MCG and Daniel Patrick, point of hand.

I think the exchange was Mary said to Pat, well, we'll never be, we'll never laugh again and Pat says, oh. Of course we're going to laugh again, Mary, but we'll never be young again, and Pat told you that a young Under Secretary of Labor under President Kennedy made Pennsylvania really look Parisian, so what did Pat do with his very generous thanks? I tell you, Pat I, I love Pat Monan, I mean, Tim worked for him, Tim Russer, lucky to have that experience and I U, I met him once and I'm overwhelmed, by the way, he's the only senator who ever said that Call me Pat, most senators.

Say that title is fine, I'll live with that senator, it's true, you know, and I don't care if they earn it, but he said Pat was this, you know, Pat, the money says Pat, so I still call him Senator, but he showed up. for you one time we were talking about Dallas and he says we've never gotten over it, which I believe and then he looked at me and says you've never gotten over it, yeah, it's nice and um, it was kind of a nightlife district. kind of thing I felt like he brought me in and because it was a first degree relic of the Kennedy administration, he was there, it wasn't a first degree, but a third degree if you touch the person, yes, but he was really Look, Jack Kennedy did a lot of little things that I talk about in the book, that the melon bunny would like.

Rachel Melon, who was Jackie's close friend and who helped her restore the White House, said that Jack personally told her how she wanted the Rose Garden. made him go to the trouble of saying now I want a thousand people there I wanted enough thousand people I want to have three steps I want the top step so that the person I honor is above me here I mean, this is great, she He talked about how he He climbed up to the cap where she had taken her boat one day and began to talk to her about these things.

He had a firsthand interest in making Pennsylvania Avenue at Sean's a beautiful avenue for inaugural parades, not this Waffle. The Honky Tonk's firecracker shop and scrap pile, it was all those years of growing up, although when you're in high school you love that stuff because, hey, cool, let's stop here on the bus, you know, let's get some firecrackers, but I I mean everything. It was waffle shops and firecracker shops and uh now it's if you go there at night now it's absolutely beautiful a Pennsylvania Avenue it's almost French that the Bo Arts building the Willard is beautiful at night in uh and those buildings along there they're fabulous and and even the Reagan building fits in, it's always one of the great ironies of our time that Reagan has this gigantic bureaucratic building there, but he sure does, that was the morning, well, we're going to have questions from these nice people, they, GNA, will ask a nice, concise question. and, you know, if you start to filibuster, take a walk, ask, yes, come up to the microphone, there are two microphones in the hallway here, good evening, you talked about our legislators not compromising, not compromising and the electorate has to do it in the next elections. do it, could you describe how you think that process might happen?

I don't want to create headlines about the current U troop complement on the Republican side. I can't believe I live in a country where everything comes down to those two. on that side it's U it's amazing it's amazing it's U I guess it reminds me as a Philly kid of Jee Mock and the W and the kid geniuses g I mean, they get close and they got the magic numbers around two and they lose. 12 I mean, I don't know how Republicans can do this. I mean, you're familiar with that kind of thing up here too. I know, but I don't know how you start it like that.

I mean, it's going to be a Next year's election is very close and it's going to be close with a 9% unemployment rate. Any historian, anyone who knows, knows how close it will be. Pennsylvania is on the line, it's on the line and if they lose. In Pennsylvania, Democrats can't win 20 states, so I mean no one thinks people are willing to vote against an incumbent because they have questions about the opponent being wrong, this country treats politics like baseball, the guy on the mound is the one that has to deliver to the guy in the, you know, in the bullpen, we don't know what he's going to do, but they're really looking at the guy on the map so that Obama's people can make a lot of shots against opponents, but in the end the voter is going to judge the incumbent and whether he has it or not and what the next four years of this guy will be.

We have four more years of this. Making a decision is difficult for President Obama. It's going to be a tough re-election campaign. I don't know if he knows that. That's what I think is going to be very difficult. And yet they're putting those on his bench. It looks pretty good. , yeah, the problem is that all their stars are on the sidelines, yeah, and you know, Chrisy appeals to me like a guy, you know, he's a jerk, you know, I think people like him, they're in the same frame of mind that most people have. that kind of mood, yeah, it's none of your business, that's the mood most people are in, so the answer to your question is that this country is in a bad mood right now and, uh the republicans have they can run oh if they run nud and by the way I think they could run nud I don't know it looks like they can win this have you ever thought of n as a character that Mel Brooks invented in the sense that he is just really amazing me and Char who is the character?

Max bisto uh, who doesn't know what to do with success, you know he just knows that he can only handle a FL. This could be that they really want to fail on a show, he can only deal with one failure, you know, because no matter what, he never can, he never leaves, you know, he always F, you know he's a big critic from the Granted, he's a bomb thrower, but give him the sledgehammer and he doesn't know what to do with that thing. The answer to his question is that the Republican Party, unlike the Democratic Party, has been an organized party.

Usually there is a group of governors who meet and decide almost like in all large cities, not in the cities, but inthe whole country. Utah and Oklahoma, they basically get together about seven or eight guys in some club somewhere and decide how to handle these things and usually the governors say well, this year, whatever it is, we're finally going to go with Reagan and that kind of structure that seems missing in the game. Now, on the Republican side, it seems like they don't have a party anymore, they're just a bunch of guys who thought they'd like to be president.

No one would have said, "Hey, why didn't you run? Hey, Herman, how come you didn't run? This year no one would have thought of these guys who are running for Santorum Bachman, you said, I wish if Michelle had run ran this year God, everything would have been different. Nobody believes these people should be candidates now, of course, he wanted. It was decided that he wanted. He will be president probably when he is about 18 and he has been fine-tuning his policies since you know, but he's basically decided that, by the way, they call him a walking agenda wasp in formatting, uh, he just realized, you know.

He wanted to be president to find some way to get there, but I think for him it's all a question of tactics and, uh, he's willing to do whatever he has to do to get there and I understand that he has a particular goal. and I think he's a, you know, that's what he wants to do, but he's not an ideologue by any means. and yet nud isn't either, nud is a completely practical person about how he wants to get there, he will basically adapt and that's why they have these two guys who are not ideological ready to lead a Tea Party The Republican Party is so strange that the people in the country are so angry that they have beliefs that they don't like this they don't like that they don't like this these two guys don't particularly have those feelings that they would never go to a tea party can you imagine Mitt in a tea party reunion he's not going to blend in with those lowered eyebrows you know, I mean, isn't it, it's never going to happen I was thinking recently about 1980s New Hampshire?

Mostly, you remember the big scene with Reagan and Bush, but the lineup was interesting. Phil Crane, yes, well, but Phil Crane. Phil Crane looks quite solemn. In this crowd, I mean, uh, Bob, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Howard Baker, John Anderson, John Connelly. crane, I mean, it's true, they weren't Ringling Brothers, you know, I mean, that's and I mean that's a big change and Reagan was a guy they'd seen before and the Republicans like a guy they'd seen before, It is not like this? This year, I mean, the normal route for the Republican Party is whose turn it is, yeah, and the Democratic Party is the one with the hot hand, you know, the Democratic side is like a basketball court in the city, yeah , who's batting, give them the ball and they love it.

They love the rookies no, they like the rookies they like the Ries Republicans, the guys have been around like the Knights of Columbus, like whose turn, you know, it's like you know who's going to do it now, okay, I guess It's your turn, you've been very patient. Boring anyway, my turn, yes, it's your turn, does anyone on the political scene today remind you of John F. Kennedy? Wow, my God, right at the end of the pipe, just hit that one up there, right above the ground, that's why I wrote the book, no, uh, Barack Obama, uh. has pieces uh of course Bill Clinton has pieces U and Hillary Clinton has pieces there is there is uh Kennedy uh grew up and learned and Arthur Seser who I have come to respect more and more the more I read him what a beautiful writer, what a beautiful thinker.

He used to think he was pretty left-wing. He is not. He's a very relatively conservative guy. A journalist is very good and very thoughtful. Yes, and he said. I heard him say this at the brainstorming session. Teacher. He once said that politics is essentially a learning profession, mhm, and you have to learn it and you have to learn it like Kennedy learned it through the whole process, the retail business, the leadership stuff, the hardball, the backroom stuff. uh, the leadership when he found himself in the White House and realized that he was surrounded by people who were no longer his people, it was not a Kennedy party, it was a CIA party, it was a military party and he had to do all. work for him, so he had to keep learning.

Barack Obama's problem is that he is an inspired speaker. I mean, I've been ridiculed for saying how excited I was about his speech, but anyone who was in those 200-person rooms in New Hampshire, uh, back in '08 and, in fact, here in Boston in 2004, when I did my first comments on his launch rhetoric because he spoke about our country in such a stimulating and real way and, my goodness, here's a guy from a strange and different background and he can talk. about how great this country is better than us, a lot of us who grew up in more normal ways and here's a kid whose father ran away when he was two and has a name that sounds like a Middle Eastern badass and yet, All of this seems to still work, this is the country of exceptional exceptionalism and he is the proof of that and I still get emotional thinking about what he said about our country and yet there is a lot of that that you have to learn and that he He didn't learn about leadership.

You are not a leader if you are a speaker you are a leader if you look back and there are people following you that is a leader other politicians have to line up behind you you have to use intimidation sometimes you have to work You have to make them follow you, so I don't see that part of the Kennedy thing, maybe he needs a Bobby, but I don't see other politicians being afraid of him when someone of middleweight stature like Eric Caner can deliberately go into a meeting. with him with the idea of ​​gaining fame by destroying the president in his place in the White House you had problems because that guy did that with impunity that guy I'm not saying he's a squirt I'm saying it's fine I'll give him the credit for being a middleweight because I quoted calling him a squirt so I won't call him a squirt he's not a squirt but he's a middleweight that's the quote Eric Caner here's the full meaning Eric Caner is a middleweight who can walk into a room and trash, the president is a problem for the president, so I think there are a lot of things that this president has to learn and he still has to learn on the job and that's the challenge for him, but he has a lot of things to do. the tickets the appearance the education is certainly smarter, I think most politicians, including all the sweets he has, are some of the people with the highest IQ I have ever met, of course that is probably true for some of the types you don't know. like uh but uh today I don't have heroes like Kennedy and uh and I think we've had a fall in class for all these years of garbage and government public service, what we've gotten from In the Whirlwind we don't have anyone to risk has been earned his ass and wants to risk his ass by entering public life.

It's just the type of people that are coming in. I think we've lowered the U. The standard. There are people in the Senate. today, uh, I can't imagine Tim would say I'm not going to quote him, but some people from the South especially, but not just the South, I go, they're in the U.S. Senate. I can't believe some of them are, I grew up where Bob Do was a middleweight, yeah Bob Do is a giant compared to these people. Musky was at light heavyweight. Musky is historic. I think he is historic compared to these people.

And uh and uh, the fact that we had a composite senate. of Humphrey and Le ever durksen and Jack javitz javitz was amazing and Hatfield and U Percy and U I mean everyone even the light heavyweights were incredibly good and in New England you had them and uh and Teddy of course was a yo I say Something about Teddy in this and his brother thought I wasn't going to be serious and he, but if he could have chosen the best senators of our time and he could have looked forward, he would have chosen his brother and I think. that was one of the great and wonderful developments in the Kennedy family, the brother was the youngest, he ended up being the great historical senator, yes, you know, the last question before Mr.

Matthews signs his books, the last question , okay, hi Chris, I'm Sally Fay, hi. Oh yes, it's nice to see you, Sally, you're in the book. I know because I saw you in that wonderful thing where we both had part of the family photos, the family movies, Ken and you said how great it was every time, Jack. Kennedy called your house and how excited the family was when Jack Kennedy called the Fai family and another movie made reference to your dad being able to sing for Hollywood. I know he wishes he was here to do it, he would love to do it for this crowd and for history.

He says it turned out to be Ronald Reagan's first film role in a Hollywood hotel which is from Adelante, so good, there has just been so much written about the president and so many wonderful sources and we have all known so many things about him, what were the most surprising things you discovered, what was there, something, okay, I'll tell you quickly how I wrote the book, first of all, I wanted to write it and I wanted to write about a guy, not about a historical figure. but one person, I wanted to find it in him and I wanted to find the answer to the question that Marty started with tonight, which was what is he like, because when I was a kid, even when I was a Republican teenager with a Republican family, he always said To me , that's the guy I want to meet, not Goldw or Ni, and this is the guy I find interesting.

It's incredibly interesting today. I have about three people. I will read anything about Hway Hammer Churchill. If I see the names, I will read everything. Okay, so you only knew him, you only knew him as a distant figure and I wanted to answer that question and I and I were lucky enough to dig into Cho's archives and I got the Irish by way of getting hold of Cho. He's cool, so I was able to get to the snotty stuff. Lorraine Connelly was the head of public relations there and our son goes to Holy Cross and that's how things work and uh and uh what else uh and the principal.

My name is Ed Shanahan, so I was able to get in there, um, uh, Howen Odonna was wonderful about giving me. She transcribed many of her 64 tapes of her father in the Sandy van Ocher interviews she did years ago, who are incredibly rich now there's too much there for anyone to swallow it's like a fire hydrant unless you're a real political nutcase like me, but everything about every detail, so you had to listen to it and read it all to find the fabulous things, uh Your father's book, The pleasure of his company is spectacular. I hope you can reprint it.

I mean, I stole a lot of stories there. They are very good because they are about a boy who is friends with another boy. They're going to see Sparticus it's my favorite story The president who sneaks away America calls his red friend Fay from the D says let's go see the movies on Friday night these two guys are going to the movies I want to see Sparticus so they go Se He went to a neighborhood movie theater in the United States and your dad got the tickets and then they go to the movie theater. He arrives a little late.

By the way, the best credits of any movie. By the way, Sparus gives the best credits to K Douglas. he comes into the movie late and finds out that the Secretary of Agriculture AG is the Freeman type or Freeman who helps sit in front of them, so those were the days when they used to change the reels at halftime of the movie, you know? intermission, so they go back to the office of the guy who runs the theater and this is typical Jack Kennedy. He tells the guy who runs the theater that he gave them a bunch of alcohol and food and everything they didn't want and he says U, so what would you think?

What kind of actor do you think this guy would play Red, Fay, this was your typical Kennedy? He had this guy, what do you think what kind of actor would you be about to be and this guy just? forced to be completely nonsense, you know the president of the United States anyway, I love that stuff, yeah, it has a lot of meaning. I love your dad's stuff and he was great to me when I wrote my first book about the rivalry. He talked about the Kennedy Nixon rivalry. He was great. I recommend I like your book, we need to meet Sally, he's available, he doesn't have writer's cramps yet, so get in line, thanks Chris C.