Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American

by Matthews, Chris

  For Ben Franklin—and for me also—America is and should be a shining beacon that attracts newcomers from all over the world. But Franklin also wisely understood that the American way of life would not be easy.

  In “Information on Those Who Would Remove to America,” which he wrote in 1784, Franklin warned potential immigrants that they would not be accorded any special regard or position because of some inherited European rank or title. He advised that, instead, they cultivate virtues like thriftiness and common sense.

  A century later Robert Ingersoll, an agnostic, would look back on the historic coincidences that drove the new country into existence.

  There were the Puritans who hated the Episcopalians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics; and the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them all in contempt.

  There they were, of every sort, and color and kind, and how was it that they came together? They had a common aspiration. They wanted to form a new nation. More than that, most of them cordially hated Great Britain; and they pledged each other to forget these religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that there should be only one religion until they got through; and that was the religion of patriotism.

  Abolitionism

  The notion of America’s historic destiny was the driving argument against slavery. How could a country blessed with an exceptional mission as role model, guarantor of rights and opportunity, defend such an evil institution? The belief that America was driven by a national ideal, whether religious or secular, drove the early-nineteenth-century movement to end slavery.

  Abolitionism carried with it not just a moral but also a national appeal to Americans, a call to bring their society into conformity with its grandest notion of itself.

  We hear that appeal in the words of Frederick Douglass:

  We wonder how such saints can sing,

  Or praise the Lord upon the wing,

  Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,

  And to their slaves and mammon cling,

  In guilty conscience union.

  Even in the turmoil of civil war, Abraham Lincoln reminded the people of their country’s exceptional mission. In his Second Annual Message to Congress he spoke of the Union as “the last, best hope of earth.” In his great Second Inaugural he questioned how any American could be asked to defend slavery. “It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.”

  With the “peculiar” institution of slavery dispatched at the cost of six hundred thousand American lives, the country was now itself free, free to embrace its notion of itself as an exceptional country.

  In the 1960s, the movement for civil rights in the South took on the same grand purpose. Once again, how could this country—feeling itself inspired by God, or the very best in man—defend Jim Crow laws that so debased such a large segment of the American people? That was the point President Kennedy raised in his June 1963 televised address to the nation. He called civil rights “a moral issue . . . as old as the Scriptures and . . . as clear as the American Constitution.”

  Kennedy asked how a country could defend its reputation as a beacon of individual liberty when it allowed so many of its own people to be robbed of it. “Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it.”

  Two months later, Martin Luther King appealed from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—the closest we have to a national shrine—for America to come alive to the ideals on which our great nation was founded.

  This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

  And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

  But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

  Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

  When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

  With the new century, I believe, America is confronted by new concerns arising from its own exceptionalist notion. Even as we defend ourselves against terrorist infiltration, we must guard those individual rights that stand at the heart of our national mission. Even as we pursue those who had a hand in the attacks of September 11, 2001, we must guard our history as a country who fights only to defend itself.

  America also suffers from a pair of self-inflicted problems. Look around—we use an outrageous share of the world’s fossil fuel on our highways. We have also permitted a revolting greed to invade the highest corporate offices. It was as if, starting in the 1990s, families pegged their status to the size and fuel-inefficiency of their SUVs. At the same time, too many CEOs had pegged their status to “compensation” packages inconceivable to most Americans.

  Such behavior is neither exemplary nor sustainable. One leads to massive foreign oil dependence and the wars needed to protect it. The other stirs the sort of Jacksonian rebellion we saw in the 1820s. The average person will respect capitalism only as long as capitalism respects him.

  That said, I believe that America exceeds the great notions it set for itself two centuries and a quarter ago. American democracy and human rights benefit from the best “word of mouth” in the world.

  Though we are often criticized for seeing the world in black and white, it is the United States that still gets called upon to rid the world of its Hitlers, Stalins, Milosevices, and bin Ladens. Despite all the hostility of the Islamic world over our support of Israel and the oil potentates of the Persian Gulf, we remain the one country where most people want to study and to live. We are still the place where a person can arrive, learn English, change their name if they wish, and confect the work, identity, and lifestyle they choose.

  Every national or ethnic group that comes to America enjoys immensely greater prosperity here than it did in the old country. That includes all the immigrants from Europe, Asia, the Mideast, and the Americas.

  The best sense of our national purpose can be found in the hearts of most Americans. When the attacks of September 11 came, the country united. We returned in spirit to the notions of our youth. We cheered the firefighters, were made proud by the go-for-broke passengers of Flight 93.

  When many of us men were five years old, we wanted to be firemen when we grew up. We wanted to be brave for people. Girls that age wanted to be nurses for the same reason. A Gallup poll taken in December 2001, after September 11, asked people which professions held the highest moral prestige. The results were Number 1, Firefighter; Number 2, Nurse.

  When the corporate scandals broke in the spring and summer of 2002, Americans were disgusted and outraged. They wanted those traitors to free enterprise put in jail where they belonged.

  This is the good news: we are still Americans.

  The same spirit that built this great country continues to rip across it today, the same destiny lures us, and the same optimistic, rebellious nature drives us that did even in those early, scary days when our country’s body was small but its soul was large.


  EPILOGUE

  So this is why we’re different.

  We’re rebels, loners, reluctant warriors, pioneers, and optimists. We believe in the man—or woman—of action, trust in the merit of the common individual, root for the underdog. We are a self-made people who see our country assigned to some great mission.

  I found a joy in discovering these grand American notions, a confidence in not discovering them alone. Venturing back into America’s past, I realized I was tagging along with a rather impressive posse. For two centuries we have constructed our national character on the raw material of our country’s roots.

  James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye owed his exploits to Daniel Boone, his rustic’s pride to the age of Andrew Jackson.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby was not the first American to believe in the second chance. Thomas Paine saw the country itself as an opportunity to “begin the world all over.”

  Frank Capra’s Jefferson Smith was but honoring the call of his great Virginia namesake for “a little rebellion now and then.”

  President Kennedy’s gutsy drive to the moon was a conspicuous salute to the spirit of “The Lone Eagle,” Charles Lindbergh.

  Senator John McCain’s brazen 2002 assault on “crony capitalism” is tribute to that earlier Republican reformer Teddy Roosevelt.

  Colin Powell’s description of war is precisely what George Washington once said. Both generals called it a “last resort.”

  We are a people raised on such grand American notions. They comprise the most vital, most provocative, most consequential self-portrait in human history.

  Bringing that self-portrait to life in these pages has been a grand experience. Other writers might have chosen different movies, different books, different snatches of history. What you’ve read here reflects my upbringing, my tastes, my sentiments.

  I don’t claim to be impartial about my country. I confess to being in cahoots with my subject from the beginning.

  Remember that smile of Jay Gatsby’s? How he looked at Nick Carraway with an irresistible prejudice in his favor, how he saw him just as Nick himself hoped to be seen at his best?

  In these pages, I hope I have cast just such a smile at my country.

  ALSO BY CHRIS MATTHEWS

  Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think

  Hardball

  Kennedy & Nixon

  NOTES

  Prologue

  “France was a land”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Swimmers,” Saturday Evening Post, October 19, 1929.

  All Casablanca synopsis and dialogue: Casablanca. Director Michael Curtiz. Performers Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Warner Bros., 1942.

  “permanent alliances”: George Washington, Washington’s Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.

  “I want an American character that the powers of Europe may be convinced”: George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1795, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.

  “War should be the politics of last resort”: Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), quoted in The Washington Post, October 7, 2001.

  All Mr. Smith Goes to Washington synopsis and dialogue: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Director Frank Capra. Performers Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Claude Rains. Columbia, 1939.

  rot at the top: Robert Reich, Tales of a New America (New York: Times Books, 1987), pp. 11–12.

  “a little rebellion now and then”: Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787, from Julian P. Boyd, ed. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 11 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 93.

  “This great nation will endure as it has endured”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933.

  “a city upon a hill”: John Winthrop, “Modell of Christian Charity,” sermon for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630.

  Chapter 1. A Self-Made Country

  “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island”: Gatsby, p. 104.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with you?”: Graham McCann, Cary Grant: A Class Apart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 3.

  “Cary’s the only thing”: McCann, pp. 3–4.

  “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be”: Cary Grant, The New York Times, December 1, 1986.

  “I cultivated raising one eyebrow”: McCann, pp. 62–63.

  “Listen!”: His Girl Friday dialogue, from McCann, p. 65.

  “It was a knowing wink to the audience”: McCann, p. 65.

  “I don’t know how I consider death”: Cary Grant, The Washington Post, December 1, 1986.

  “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant”: McCann, p. 4.

  “pedestal waiting for a monument”: Pierre L’Enfant in his report to George Washington, June 22, 1791, from Hans Paul Caemmerer, The Life of Pierre Charles L’Enfant (New York: Da Capo Press, 1950), p. 152.

  “monumental concept”: Bob Ellis, “Washington: Who Cares About Their Capital?,” Bonjour Paris, January 1999.

  “begin the world over again”: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 53.

  “I would have accepted without question”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 54.

  “I’ll tell you God’s truth”: Gatsby, p. 69.

  “I wouldn’t ask too much of her”: Gatsby, p. 116.

  “I’m going to fix everything”: Gatsby, p. 117.

  “It was one of those rare smiles”: Gatsby, p. 52.

  “Gatsby was not a character”: Alfred Kazin, “Hemingway, Fitzgerald: The Cost of Being American,” American Heritage 35, Apr./May 1984, p. 64.

  “heightened sensitivity”: Gatsby, p. 6.

  “You have got to get rid of that terrible twang!”: Robert Lacey, Grace (Thorndike, Me.: G.K. Hall, 1995), p. 62.

  “It takes a trained ear”: Lacey, p. 62.

  “When Grace Kelly pronounced the word ‘rotten’ ”: Lacey, pp. 62–63.

  “Gracie’s new voice”: Lacey, p. 63.

  “British accent”: Lacey, p. 63.

  “I must talk this way for my work”: Lacey, p. 63.

  “She got away from home early”: John B. “Jack” Kelly, from Lacey, p. 56.

  “My look is not really European”: Ralph Lauren, quoted in Freedman.

  Americans will “pay to transform”: Neal Gabler, “Molding Our Lives in the Image of Movies,” The New York Times, October 25, 1998.

  “cunningly cinematic”: Elizabeth Grice, The Daily Telegraph (London), May 6, 1999, p. 25.

  Chapter 2. The Constant Rebel

  “I hold it that a little rebellion”: Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787, from Julian P. Boyd, ed. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 11 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 93.

  All Mr. Smith Goes to Washington synopsis and dialogue: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Director Frank Capra, Performers Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Claude Rains. Columbia, 1939.

  “Dear Mr. Cohn”: Joseph P. Kennedy, cable to Harry Cohn, from Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 292.

  The critics: Kansas City Journal, Variety, Hedda Hopper of Esquire Features, Inc., Cincinnati Post, Los Angeles Times, from Capra, pp. 279, 290.

  “Government even in its best state”: Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, 1776).

  “Man did not enter into society”: Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, being an answer to Mr. Burke’s attack on the French Revolution (Dublin: [s.n.], 1791).

  “Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments”: Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787, from Julian P. Boyd, ed. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 11 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 93.

  “triumphantly establis
hed Jackson”: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945), p. 115.

  “Jackson was widely acclaimed”: Joseph J. Tregle, Jr., biography of Andrew Jackson, Grolier’s/Encyclopedia Americana, available online.

  The platform: People’s Party Platform of 1896, adopted at St. Louis, Mo., July 24, 1896.

  “Cross of Gold” Speech: William Jennings Bryan, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Ill., July 9, 1896.

  “I’m a small fish here in Washington”: Huey Long, from “Huey Long: Every Man a King,” the Social Security Administration website, available online.

  “Every Man a King”: Original phrase from Bryan’s 1900 Democratic presidential nomination address. “Behold a Republic: Whose every man is a king, but no one wears a crown!”

  “How many men ever went to a barbecue”: Huey Long, speech to Senate staffers, Washington, D.C., December 11, 1934.

  “rot at the top”: Robert Reich, Tales of a New America (New York: Times Books, 1987), pp. 11–12.

  “The struggle is only occasionally and incidentally”: Reich, pp. 11–12.

  “I knew that every prisoner”: John McCain with Mark Salter, Faith of My Fathers (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 235.

  “It was hard to take”: McCain, p. 254.

  “In prison, I fell in love”: McCain, p. 254.

  “I still shared the ideals of America”: McCain, p. 255.

  “Trust was sacrificed”: McCain, quoted in The New York Times, July 12, 2002.

  “Storms of spontaneous applause”: The Hollywood Reporter, November 4, 1942, from Capra, p. 292.

  Chapter 3. The Reluctant Warrior

  All Casablanca synopsis and dialogue: Casablanca, Director Michael Curtiz. Performers Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Warner Bros., 1942.

  “Let’s roll!”: Todd Beamer, onboard United Airlines Flight 93, September 11, 2001, The Associated Press, September 20, 2001.