Chris Matthews: Plays Well With Others

I confess to a guilty pleasure: I like Chris Matthews. Okay granted, somebody must or he would have lost his MSNBC slot. But it’s not that easy to find people who will confess to it publicly. He’s too brash. He’s too loud. He’s insufficiently respectful.

And of course, he’s way to partisan. Or so they say. Indeed he seems to have achieved the kind of partisan hostility so much desired by the mediocre journalist: everybody hates him. Google “Chris Matthews” and “right-wing hack” and you get 694 hits’; substitute “left-wing hack” and you pick up another 280. Of course Googling is not an exact science; some of these hits are just accidents. But it is almost comically easy to find attacks on him from both ends of the spectrum. “Funny that anyone on the right would hate him,” grumbles a commentator at Democratic Underground, “given that he's just another right-wing hack” (link); cf. (link), (link). “Mathews is a left wing hack of the first order!” grumbles a commentator at the Politico (link); cf. (link).

Of course this kind of thing as an easy way out for anybody who isn’t doing his job right; maybe what they hate you for is not your independence, but your sheer incompetence. As I guess, I'd say I’ve made clear, that I don’t think Matthews is “incompetent.” But I’m not sure “independence” captures the right nuance, either. In Matthews’ case, it is more of a jaunty insouciance—a sense that this, too, shall pass, and that lots of things in life do not matter as much as they seem to matter—together with an old-fashioned love of process.

For many in politics, a love of process is an indifference to substance and so itself a kind of philistinism, if not nihilism. But I think it may be—what I think Matthews appears to convey—is that process itself is a kind of substance. For Matthews, a love of process is, inter alia, a love of conviviality, of good food and good booze in good company, friendship in the Epicurean sense. It’s also a recognition that the process of politics is a craft, and that the able practitioners are much to be admired.

His love of conviviality comes through never more clearly than in his enthusiasm for House Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan. I have to cut Matthews a bit of slack here: I am one of a seeming handful of people on the planet who never found Reagan personally likable (so far as I can tell, Gore Vidal is the only other). But I have to be won over by Mattews’ account of their affection for each other—who can resist the picture of O’Neill at Reagan’s bedside, reciting the 23d Psalm?

Matthews’ love of craft shows through in his admiration for Reagans’ sometimes Chief of Staff, James A. Baker. Baker is, shall we stipulate, a Republican, but he is hardly everybody’s model of a good Republican. Matthews admires him as the ultimate safe pair of hands, the grownup who we hope is in charge when the kindergarteners start throwing their GI Joes at each other. It explains also, I think, his reserve about Barack Obama. Hillary fans believe Matthews has sold out to Barack, but listen closely and you won’t be so sure. I think Matthews likes Barack’s warm-heartedness, and his optimism, and his ability to connect. But I think he sees him as an untested item, not at all demonstrably ready for the hard work of high office.

I think it is a fair cop on Barack. Sadly, I suspect (and I suspect that Matthews suspects) that maybe nobody else is either. Heaven send us a safe pair of hands: somebody who understands that politics ain't easy; that it takes wisdom, foresight, craftiness, empathy and heaven knows how many other qualities always in short supply. Or as Matthews himself might say: Tip O'Neill, where are you when we need you?

Update: I wrote this before I saw this. Well, can't please 'em all.