June 2008 - Posts
by Chris Matthews
He was a character right from Mark Twain. You know, the first kid to go barefoot in the summer, the first to wear shoes in the winter. He was a colleague, a role model—and let’s be honest this day—a rival. You couldn’t keep up with the guy. He heard it first. Better yet, saw it first. Saw what it meant and saw the path where this new bit of news led.
Like Huck Finn, Tim Russert knew things about life that were in nobody’s notebook. He got the story first because he just “got it.” That’s how he exposed David Duke as a racist by simply asking him to name the leading employers in the state. This guy had been trying to say his campaign for governor was “about economics.”
He saw that Clarence Thomas would make it past the confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court because his accuser—Anita Hill—testified in the afternoon and Thomas got to testify in primetime.
He knew on that horrid morning of September 11th that the hijackers had grabbed the transcontinental flights because they’d have enough fuel to melt the girders of the World Trade towers.
He was like that other Mark Twain character, Tom Sawyer. He got us to think it was fun to whitewash the fence because he was having so much fun “doing” it. As a newsman, Tim managed to make Sunday morning a hot news spot. As a fan, he made Buffalo cool.
He was, of course, Irish. Being Irish, he tended and fought for his turf always with pride whether for his hometown team or his show. “If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Press”—you can’t do better than that.
More than that, he defended his country. It was something watching him catch the pretense behind the pander, the trace of charlatan that graces the best as well as the worst of our politicians. And because he could, we could see the truth behind that well-guarded hedge.
People ask me, will now ask me as long as I live, what was he like?
To them, to you right now, I say: Trust your instincts. He was the guy you saw—tough, regular, hardworking, delighted with what he was doing, and something else you probably figured: great company. We will miss him, this man of sterner stuff.
by Chris Matthews
Ever since I was in first grade, I've been aware that the heroes of the two parties are not necessarily the people who win the presidency. Think Adlai Stevenson. Think Barry Goldwater. Compare them to some of the lesser lights who've gotten to the Oval Office.
I see another prospect for this list:
The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking has Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain 51 to 38 percent among women.
You can attribute much of that growing edge to the gutsy, gung-ho campaign ran by Sen. Hillary Clinton. She achieved two big results in all these hard-fought months: she energized older women voters and she heightened the vitality of women's issues.
Clinton's hard-charging candidacy guarantees that her women supporters will be more politicized than at any time in memory. A new poll by Peter Hart shows that half the women voters in battleground states don't know that McCain wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Once they learn that fact, expect a substantial shift toward Obama. If Obama speaks to their concerns - health care, education, child development and abortion choice - with more authenticity and passion than his Republican rival, he will have the strongest chance for their support in November.
Some of the greatest political figures never won the presidency. The pantheon of truly revered Democrats of modern times includes Stevenson, who lost twice, and Hubert Humphrey, who lost three times. On the other side of the aisle, the beloved Robert Taft and Goldwater stand at the highest level of party respect.
Clinton may have earned her membership in this list of greatness even if she didn't win the election this year. Certainly she has a big role to play in who will. The new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll has her leading McCain among "suburban women" by 14 percent, Obama trailing McCain with that group by 6 percent. Here is a prime case where she holds sway with a big category of voters where Barack Obama needs help.
by Chris Matthews
I was in Montreal forty years ago tonight. I turned on the radio in the middle of the night to find out who won the California primary.
For several minutes I thought I was listening to a re-run of a broadcast five years before, about an assassination, about a Kennedy being shot. And then I realized I was listening to real life in real time. Incredibly, Robert Kennedy had been shot just as his brother had in November 1963, a day none of us would ever forget, forget where we were, what we felt - everything.
I remember flying back from Canada the next morning, back to Chapel Hill, where I was going to grad school. I remember sitting a few days later all day long on that grim, grey day as that train rolled down from New York to Washington. And the feeling of that day, not the stark, gothic technicolor tragedy of the JFK loss, that a prince had died, but something closer to earth, closer to home, something just downright sad, something without the offsetting grandeur, like the loss of a family member.
Two memories linger in the mind tonight. The picture of people watching along the train tracks in New Jersey: the black faces and white faces, in grief but with pride at their fallen compatriot.
And I think of something I will not easily forget, what I just read of Bob Kennedy in this new book by Thurston Clarke. It was as he lay dying on the floor of that hotel kitchen in Los Angeles.
"Is everybody else all right?" he whispered. "Is this guy okay? Is everybody all right?"
I don't think any of us has gotten over it.
Watch video of Chris Matthews, CNBC's John Harwood and author Thurston Clarke discussing the life, death and legacy of Robert F. Kennedy.
by Chris Matthews
I think our colleague Ron Allen said it best: “Every time I look at my Blackberry, it seems another superdelegate has gone over to Barack Obama.”
It’s been exactly five months to the day since voters in Iowa went to the polls on January 3 and opened the primary and caucus season. Tonight, South Dakota and Montana close the curtain on the voting. No more caucuses, no more primaries.
There are two big questions for tonight. The first is, will Obama win enough delegates tonight to win the Democratic nomination?
The second big question, what will Hillary Clinton do? Will she bow tonight to the impossible math confronting her or will she keep on fighting at least for a few more days? And of course, if and when Hillary does get out, will she press for number two? Late today, the Associated Press reported she told Democrats, “I am open to it.”
A moment of personal privilege here: Everyone remembers when the bad things happened in America. We all remember when JFK was killed, when Martin Luther King was killed, when Bobby Kennedy was killed. Everyone remember the tragic moments, especially with it comes to the civil rights struggle in this country, and the tragedies regarding race. Race relations is the San Andreas fault of this country.
Whatever you think of Barack Obama as a future president, whatever you think of Hillary Clinton or John McCain, the fact is, now, America is verging on being the first Western nation, white nation, if you will— not Australia, not Canada, not New Zealand, not England, not France, not any of the European countries— the first one in history to have an African-American real black man as a real 50-50 shot. Barack Obama will be a candidate of a major political party, and this is a stunning historic development.
I just don't want it to get caught in the weeds. I've always been a huge fan of Archbishop Tutu of South Africa. He got South Africa through apartheid, he's a great man. Here‘s an article on what he said the other day to “The Chicago Tribune.”
Unlike in South Africa's apartheid era, he [Tutu] said, where blacks were treated as "nothing," in America, "You say to them, 'You're equal, and the sky's the limit.' And they keep bumping their heads against this thing that's stopping them from reaching out to the stars."
Tutu is a tough critic—and yet he acknowledges that America has been able to produce a Barack Obama. Where else in the world would you ever have had anything like that? An African-American being not just a credible candidate but one who has galvanized people. Look at the number of young people who have come out and said, "Yes, we think it is actually possible to have a different kind of society only here." Tutu is one of the toughest guys and he's been on the racial front his whole career and whole life. And he says, "Yes, we got serious problems in this country. We got a wall of racial prejudice that's still out there in different places, and yet we've done something nobody else has done."
All this is still a few hours off. But I think we've got to think about this -- and it's got nothing to do with partisan politics: Americans should salute themselves and say this is one of the nights where people will want to ask, "Where were you when this happened?"
Chris Matthews discusses the importance of this historic night with Keith Olbermann.
