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

  “This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger”: George W. Bush, memorial service at Washington National Cathedral, September 14, 2001.

  “We can’t hear you . . . I can hear you!”: Unknown crowd member and George W. Bush, at Ground Zero, September 14, 2001, The New York Times, September 15, 2001.

  It was first flown in December 1775: Stanley Godbold, Jr. and Robert H. Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), p. 142.

  Benjamin Franklin’s letter: “The Rattle-Snake as a Symbol of America,” Pennsylvania Journal, December 27, 1775.

  “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world”: King George III, from Garry Wills, Cincinnatus George Washington and the Enlightenment (New York: Doubleday, 1984), p. 13.

  Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796: from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.

  “I shall constantly bear in mind”: George Washington, letter to Continental Congress Governing Committee, January 1, 1777, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.

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

  “In a word, I want an American character”: George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1795, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.

  “No one better taught than Washington”: Wills, p. 226.

  “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen”: George Washington, letter to New York Provincial Congress, June 26, 1775, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.

  “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations”: Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, from the Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1, General Correspondence at the Library of Congress, 1651–1827.

  make the world “safe for democracy”: Woodrow Wilson, official biography from the White House, available online.

  “not nostrums, but normalcy”: Warren G. Harding, campaign speech in Boston, May 14, 1920.

  “I want to suggest that there is in America a dream of freedom”: Michael Wood, America in the Movies (New York: Basic Books, 1975), p. 28.

  “It might not have acquired its cult status”: Henry Allen, The Washington Post, April 12, 1992.

  Weinberger’s and Powell’s new criteria for overseas military involvement: developed in part from a speech Caspar Weinberger gave at the National Press Club, November 28, 1984, The New York Times, November 29, 1984.

  “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.

  “When the political objective is important”: Colin Powell, “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead; Enormous Power, Sobering Responsibility,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1992, p. 32.

  “to use all necessary and appropriate force”: Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress, assembled, S.J.Res.23, Short Title: “Authorization for Use of Military Force,” September 14, 2001.

  “We will direct every resource”: George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001.

  “axis of evil”, etc.: George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002.

  Just a few weeks later a high State Department official appended: Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Detroit Free Press, May 7, 2002.

  “tyrants”, “human liberty”, etc.: George W. Bush, Remarks at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy, West Point, June 1, 2002.

  Chapter 4. Action

  “Shift that fat ass, Harry”: George Washington, from A. J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 411.

  Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. Director Randa Haines. Performers Robert Duvall, Richard Harris, and Shirley MacLaine. Warner Brothers, 1993.

  “I desire to do pioneering or exploring work”: Ernest Hemingway, from Megan Floyed Desnoyers, Ernest Hemingway: A Storyteller’s Legacy, the John F. Kennedy Library, available online.

  “I can’t get away from the fact that you’re just a boy”: Agnes von Kurowsky, from Jamie Allen, “Hemingway Biography: From Illinois to International Celebrity,” A Hemingway Retrospective, CNN online.

  “Then there was a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open”: Ernest Hemingway from Alfred Kazin, “Hemingway and Fitzgerald: The Cost of Being American,” American Heritage 35, April/May 1984, p. 51.

  “If he hadn’t been in Paris when he was”: Michael Reynolds, from Allen.

  “I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty”: Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner, 1932), p. 2.

  “drank like his heroes and heroines”: Malcolm Cowley, from Jeffrey Meyers, “Memoirs of Hemingway: The Growth of a Legend,” The Virginia Quarterly Review 60:4 (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia, 1984), pp. 588–89.

  “the best I can write ever for all of my life”: Hemingway to Wallace Meyer, March 4 and 7, 1952, Outgoing Correspondence, Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library, cited in Desnoyers.

  “Let any of you decide for yourselves”: Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 21.

  “Ernest Hemingway became and remains”: Michael Reynolds, “Hemingway in Our Times,” The New York Times, July 11, 1999.

  “I went out onto the sidewalk”: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), pp. 29–30.

  “Lord Cornwallis once observed after Yorktown”: Winston Churchill, from James C. Hume, Churchill (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1980), p. 267.

  6 foot three inches and weighing 280 pounds: Langguth, p. 410.

  They were to kill any rebel they got their hands on: Langguth, pp. 425–6.

  “We’ve got the old fox safe now”: General Charles Cornwallis, from Langguth, p. 426.

  two thousand dead and injured . . . lost only six with 10 wounded: Joseph J. Tregle, Jr., biography of Andrew Jackson, Grolier’s/Encyclopedia Americana, available online.

  “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender”: Ulysses S. Grant, from David Donald, biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Grolier’s/Encyclopedia Americana, available online.

  “I can’t spare this man”: Abraham Lincoln, from Donald.

  “Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer of the political world”: Mark Twain, from Bruce Miroff, “Theodore Roosevelt, Heroic Leadership and Masculine Spectacle,” Icons of Democracy: American Leaders as Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters, and Democrats (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 159.

  “It is not the critic who counts”: Theodore Roosevelt, from Miroff, p. 161.

  “easy contempt?”: Theodore Roosevelt, from Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979), p. 63.

  “the fellowship of the doers”: from Morris, p. 63.

  “Finnegan hesitated for a second”: Theodore Roosevelt, Century magazine, from Miroff, p. 169.

  They included cowboys from his Dakota days, a quartet of policemen: Miroff, p. 170.

  “a permanent historical work”: Miroff, p. 169.

  “Shout hurrah for Erin Go Bragh!”: Theodore Roosevelt, from Morris, p. 616.

  “To the officers—may they get killed, wounded or promoted”: Theodore Roosevelt, from Morris, p. 616.

  “that damned cowboy”: Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in William H. Harbaugh, biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Grolier’s/Encyclopedia Americana, available online.

  “I do not care a rap about being shot”: Theodore Roosevelt, from Miroff, p. 166.

  It was Senator Henry Cabot Lodge: account of Lodge’s masterful engineering of the Eisen
hower presidential campaign from Herbert Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusade (New York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 46–56.

  “get this country moving again”: John F. Kennedy, fourth televised 1960 presidential debate, transcript from the John F. Kennedy Library, available online.

  It was John Hersey’s: “A Reporter At Large,” The New Yorker magazine, June 17, 1944, pp. 31–43.

  “World War II was their greatest campaign manager”: Sutton, from Christopher J. Matthews, Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 31–32.

  “I firmly believe that as much as I was shaped by anything”: John F. Kennedy, letter to Lady Nancy Astor, September 12, 1954 as quoted in Edward J. Renehan, Jr., The Kennedys at War: 1937–1945 (New York: Doubleday, 2002), p. 2.

  Chapter 5. The Common Man

  “For the first six months”: Majority Whip J. Hamilton “Ham” Lewis to Harry Truman, from David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 214.

  All Dave synopsis and dialogue: Dave. Director Ivan Reitman. Performers Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, and Frank Langella. Warner Bros., 1993.

  There were only thirty-eight in all: from A. J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 237.

  “At most,” he writes, “a handful of . . . militia fired at the British”: Langguth, p. 240.

  “four hundred grim farmers armed with muskets”: Langguth, p. 244.

  By day’s end, the British had seventy-three soldiers dead: Langguth, p. 250.

  the scene prompted Daniel Webster: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945), p. 45.

  “It was a proud day for the people”: Argus of Western America, March 18, 1829, quoted in Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (New York: Harper, 1988), p. 181.

  “shall not have died in vain”: Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, delivered at Gettysburg, Pa., November 19, 1863.

  “The Almighty has his own purposes”: Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.

  “the last, best hope of earth”: Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

  “I felt like the moon”: Harry Truman, comments to reporters, mult.

  “He was not a hero”: Mary McGrory, The Washington Star, December 27, 1972, quoted in McCullough, p. 989.

  “I thought two weeks ago”: McCullough, p. 204.

  Truman never did learn how to spell: McCullough, p. 220.

  “He was the kind of president”: McCullough, p. 992.

  “an object lesson in the vitality”: Senator Adlai Stevenson III, quoted in McCullough, p. 992.

  “America has been very busy”: Donald Spoto, Camerado: Hollywood and the American Man (New York: New American Library, 1978), p. 1.

  Chapter 6. Underdogs

  All Rocky synopsis and dialogue: Rocky. Director John G. Avildsen. Performers Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, and Burgess Meredith. United Artists, 1976.

  had submitted thirty-two scripts to Hollywood producers: Tim Dirks, review of Rocky (1976), from Greatest Films website, www.filmsite.org.

  “when they’re cheering for Rocky, they’re cheering for themselves”: Sylvester Stallone, from Daniel J. Leab, “The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky (1976),” American History/American Film (New York: Continuum, 1988), John O’-Connor and Martin A. Jackson, eds., p. 269.

  “public sentiment was for Liston”: George Plimpton, “Muhammad Ali,” Life, from Time online.

  “I don’t have to be what you want me to be”: Muhammad Ali, from Plimpton.

  “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong”: Muhammad Ali, mult.

  “Man, the USA is the best country in the world”: Muhammad Ali, quoted in Time, March 21, 1963.

  All When We Were Kings commentary: When We Were Kings. Director Leon Gast, Gramercy Pictures, 1996.

  “a solitary routine filled with daily farm chores”: George Mair, Oprah Winfrey: The Real Story (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1994), p. 10.

  “The reason I communicate with all these people”: Oprah Winfrey to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, CBS News, December 14, 1986, as quoted in Mair, p. 100.

  “What I’m trying to do with the show”: Oprah Winfrey to Larry King on Larry King Live, CNN, September 4, 2001.

  “Like many, many memorable guests before him”: David Skinner, “Matters of the Heart,” Salon.com, September 20, 2000.

  Chapter 7. The Lone Hero

  All The Searchers synopsis and dialogue: The Searchers. Director John Ford. Performers John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, and Vera Miles. Warner Brothers, 1956.

  His relentless pursuit: Garry Wills gives an insightful analysis in his chapter “The Fury of Ethan,” from John Wayne’s America (New York: Simon & Schuster), pp. 251–61.

  “God made us all, white, black and red”: James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer, quoted in McNulty, p. 49.

  “For whatever traits the Western Hero is admired”: Warren S. Walker, “Buckskin West: Leatherstocking at High Noon,” New York Folklore Quarterly, June 24, 1968, p. 102.

  “Hawkeye’s frontier spirit, his love of the wilderness”: Martin Barker and Roger Sabin, The Lasting of the Mohicans: History of an American Myth (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), p. 5.

  Cooper admitted: Marshall W. Fishwick, “Daniel Boone and the Pattern of the Western Hero,” The Filson Club History Quarterly, April 27, 1953, p. 128.

  Boone background: Fishwick, pp. 122–3.

  the Easterner was a “dude”: Wills, p. 311.

  “This perennial rebirth”: Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, 1920), pp. 2–3.

  “The frontier is the line”: Turner, pp. 3–4.

  “new order” where “immigrants were Americanized”: Turner, p. 18.

  “Steadily the frontier of settlement”: Turner, p. 35.

  All Taxi Driver synopsis and dialogue: Taxi Driver. Director Martin Scorsese. Performers Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, and Jodie Foster. Columbia Pictures, 1976.

  All Shane synopsis and dialogue: Shane. Director George Stevens. Performers Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon de Wilde, and Jack Palance. Paramount Pictures, 1953.

  Chapter 8. Pioneers

  “What do you say? Let’s try it!”: Charles Lindbergh, from A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998), p. 115.

  “Today some would say”: Address of Senator John F. Kennedy accepting the Democratic party nomination for the presidency of the United States, Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, July 15, 1960.

  “get this country moving again”: John F. Kennedy, fourth televised 1960 presidential debate, transcript from the John F. Kennedy Library, available online.

  “It was too crowded”: Marshall W. Fishwick, “Daniel Boone and the Pattern of the Western Hero,” The Filson Club History Quarterly, April 27, 1953, p. 123.

  “I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest”: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Racine, Wis.: Whitman Publishing Company, 1940).

  “With his native capacity”: Fishwick, p. 124.

  “Possessing a body”: William Carlos Williams, quoted in Fish-wick, p. 137.

  “Western democracy has been”: Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, 1920), p. 261.

  “He is no longer permitted”: The New Republic, quoted in John W. Ward, “The Meaning of Lindbergh’s Flight,” John W. Ward, American Quarterly 10:1 (Spring 1958), p. 6.

  “Captain Lindbergh personifies”: Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Ward, p. 9.

  “Charles Lindbergh is the heir”: Outlook magazine, quoted in Ward, p. 9.

  “I don’t think I got”: James Stewart, quoted
in Berg, p. 121.

  Account of Lindbergh’s flight: based on Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 101–12.

  Three hours later: Mosley, p. 107.

  “To plunge into these mountains”: Mosley, p. 107.

  “To millions of simple people”: Mosley, p. 104.

  “Where am I?”: Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), pp. 183–84.

  “So I accept these awards”: Amelia Earhart, acceptance speech for Outstanding American Woman of the Year Award, October 1932, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 6, 1932, p. 1; quoted in Lovell, p. 195.

  “Aviation had come close to me”: Amelia Earhart, 20 hrs. 40 min.; Our Flight in the Friendship (Putnam, 1928).

  “At no time during the flight”: Amelia Earhart, “My Flight from Hawaii,” National Geographic magazine, May 1935.

  “Why are you attempting”: Earhart, Last Flight, p. 55, quoted in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, Amelia (Brasseys, Inc., 1997), p. 167.

  “An eerie, intermittent croak”: “Soviet Satellite Sends U.S. Into a Tizzy,” Life magazine 43:16, October 14, 1957.

  “Artificial satellites will pave”: Christopher J. Matthews, Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 121.

  “I believe that this nation”: President Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961.

  “But why, some say, the Moon?”: President Kennedy, Speech at Rice University, Houston, Tex., September 12, 1962.

  “For the families of the seven”: President Reagan, speech on the Challenger disaster, Oval Office of the White House, January 28, 1986.

  Chapter 9. Optimism

  Happy days are here again: Jack Yellen, lyrics; Milton Ager, music, 1929.

  “and about noon had two bills presented to me”: George Washington, The Diaries of George Washington 6, July 12, 1790, Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds. (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1979), p. 94, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.