American people willing to make dramatic decisions
Published 8:36 am Monday, April 28, 2008
By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
BENTON HARBOR – It remains to be seen if 2008 matches such "great historic elections" as 1932 or 1980, which chose presidents "we never would have picked had it not been for the circumstances."
Or, "Will we make a smaller decision and go with something more predictable?"
In 1932, Americans elected a "dilletante with a third-rate mind" who became "I think, one of our greatest presidents," Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Chris Matthews said Sunday. "The times demanded dramatic action by the voters. We had Herbert Hoover, a good man and a great engineer, who had been so successful at refeeding Europe after the war. He was considered almost a genius in business and management. He had all of the tools except the willingness to experiment. Republicans had ruled the country since the Civil War with the exception of the weird election of 1912 when Woodrow Wilson came in."
In 1980, which produced Ronald Reagan, "The country had not imagined electing a former Hollywood movie star and talk show host, yet the times demanded it. Double-digit inflation and interest rates and triple-digit embarrassment because of the (Iranian) hostage crisis. The American people said, 'We're going to try something tougher.' Most people would say we picked Reagan with success. We can argue about it. I was in opposition for eight years, but the American people are willing to make dramatic decisions and to pick the person they never would have picked had not the times required dramatic decisionmaking."
"The American people know how to make a change when we have to," Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball" Monday through Friday, and his own syndicated weekly news program produced by NBC News, "The Chris Matthews Show," told The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan at the Lake Michigan College Mendel Center.
"We're like a tough manager in a baseball dugout. He looks out at the mound, sees how the guy's doing and makes a change or decides to keep him in there. He does it ruthlessly, without regard to feelings or history. Is he throwing hard? Has he got his stuff? Or nothing? We Americans are ruthless democrats. We make decisions when we have to to make changes when we have to. When we have to make dramatic changes, thank God, the country has made dramatic changes with some pretty good luck."
Matthews wrote speeches in the Carter White House for four years and served with the Senate for five years on Edmund Muskie's and Frank Moss's staffs. For six years he was the top aide to Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip" O'Neill Jr., D-Mass.
Matthews spent 15 years as a print journalist, including 13 as Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner and two years as a national columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. His syndicated column appeared in 200 newspapers.
He also writes bestselling books, including "Hardball," "Kennedy and Nixon," "Now Let Me Tell You What I Really Think," "American: Beyond Our Grandest Notions" and, published in 2007, "Life's a Campaign."
Less dramatic, but significant, Matthews said, in 1952 Americans put in the White House after two decades of Democratic rule Republican Dwight Eisenhower, the general who received Nazi Germany's 1945 surrender.
"He went to Korea and six months later we had the armistice and that war was over. Ike did that bulwark against communism. He turned out to be one heck of a politician.
"Harry Truman did a lot of great things. The Marshall Plan and NATO were fantastic. He left office at 23 percent" approval ratings, even lower than President George W. Bush's 28 percent.
"It took (biographer) David McCullough to bring (Truman) back," Matthews said, "just like he brought back John Adams. In 1960, we made another decision and picked Kennedy, the youngest president we ever elected. He did well in big cities because he was Catholic. After giants like Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, this nobody, who had never done anything before? But (JFK) was a war hero."
In 1992, there was a sense that George H.W. Bush was too caught up in building a new world order instead of addressing the recession at home.
"We picked Bill Clinton with 43 percent of the vote," Matthew said, "Bush got 38 percent" and Ross Perot captured 19 percent. Perot "decided that election. He wanted to get even with the Bushes, and he did. It was some weird little Texas thing going on there."
Al Gore and George W. Bush matched up in 2000. "Gore was intellectual, perhaps to a fault," Matthews said. "Bush was clearly not an intellectual and proud of the fact. The election was a draw and poor Al Gore paid the price of Monica. He was the bathtub ring of the Clinton administration. And don't think he has forgotten it. We took Dagwood for president, a guy who goes to bed with his wife at 9:30 every night and doesn't even stay up for the news – which is sometimes apparent," Matthews, who said he voted for Bush, said, "because anything was better than this soap opera of Bill and Hill and the endless Bickersons stuff that goes on and on and to this moment hasn't ended. The Clintons are a waste of human intelligence to think about. To talk about them one more second is to commit the total sin of human existence. If we just stopped thinking about them, maybe they'd disappear. But we do because they're still there, coming at us."
"I do know this," he stated. "On issues that matter to people, the list keeps growing. Ever since the Sixties it seems like we have problems and more problems, but we never seem to resolve any of them. We've had a fiscal imbalance now for years. We borrow from overseas and run huge deficits. We're borrowing from the Chinese and people who aren't necessarily our buddies. These are not friendly loans. These are hard currency loans that we have to pay back. We keep borrowing because we have good credit and think we have money to pay for wars. The dollar gets smaller and smaller and when we travel, they don't want it anymore. We're running wars on behalf of the world and we're paying for what nobody else wants to fight, believe in or endorse. We have a debt now that nobody wants to think about anymore.
"We don't have a health care system in this country. I wasn't born yet, but Harry Truman talked about health care reform, yet my camera guy doesn't have health insurance. The energy crisis, we are more dependent now than ever on the Arab states, some of whom don't like us. Certainly their kids don't like us. My wife just got back from the Emirates. Seventy-story buildings and indoor ski resorts in Kuwait. Unlimited wealth because (oil) is $118 a barrel. Bush and Cheney don't want to do anything about it and the Democrats don't know what to do. Everybody who's sane knows climate change is happening. My point is, all these things just add up every year and the politicians just dicker around and don't do anything," Matthews told an audience which included U.S. Rep. Fred Upton.
Not since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has Congress "done anything," Matthews said. "I challenge you to name one significant thing Congress has done in 40 years that really matters to you. I think the war was a mistake. It's not in our national interest. The big thing we've got to deal with is how to get out of there. The American Army is in Arabia, surrounded by our enemies in a defensive deployment. If you've seen one cowboy movie you know not to go into a box canyon.
"Every promise was made to get us into Iraq, every fear factor was raised to warn us to not not go in there. We were told there was cheaper gas to come, that the reconstruction of Iraq would pay for itself, that we would be greeted as liberators, that the insurgency was in its last throes and that the mission was accomplished.
"Everybody's hero, Winston Churchill, said, 'The worst thing a political leader can do is to promise something and have it not come to be.' We were given many promises that didn't work, and so we have a war to pay for and three choices for president. Come Jan. 20, one of those three will be president. In my business it's all we talk about," he said.
The Philadelphia native predicted Hillary Clinton would take Pennsylvania by eight percentage points.
Indiana's May 6 primary looms "as the big one," Matthews said. "I think Barack's got to win it or it's going to go on to August. McCain's going to be in fantastic shape simply because he was not part of this mess, which is going to make Chicago '68 look like fun.
"Obama is ahead by 140 or so delegates still and by 500,000 votes. However, that said, if he can't win a significant election post Feb. 19, he's got problems. Since Virginia, Maryland and Wisconsin, he hasn't won anything. She's won all the big ones since then – Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas. If she wins Indiana, you've got to wonder where this guy's strength is. He's got some basic problems.
"Barack's got the young people, the wealthy people and the four-year college people. And, ironically, whites who aren't living in integrated societies, but far from blacks – Montana, Wyoming.
Hillary does better when there are white and black people living within sight of each other. She does Hispanics, women, Jewish people, unions. Based on that, she should win the following states going forward: Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico.
Barack should win Oregon, North Carolina, Montana and South Dakota.
"One thing Reagan taught us was to get in their and make your move because you've only got a year or so. We're going to see next year whether we have a great chance at being a great future power in the world. The choices before this country are enormous, so I hope we don't end up fighting about who can bowl and whatever else has distracted us too long," Matthews said.