Matthews - Hardball – How Politics Is Played Told By One Who Knows The Game

Thank you for downloading this Free Press eBook.

Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Free Press and Simon & Schuster.

C LICK H ERE T O S IGN U P

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

We hope you enjoyed reading this Free Press eBook.

Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Free Press and Simon & Schuster.

C LICK H ERE T O S IGN U P

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

Praise for Chris Matthews and Hardball

The best in the business!

Thomas P. Tip ONeill, Jr.

Brilliant! God may take care of fools, drunks and the United States, but Chris Matthews has the goods on how Washington politicians take care of the rest of us.

Sam Donaldson

Chris Matthews hits a political homer with Hardball. For political sagacity and humor, this ranks with the work of George Washington Plunkitt.

William Safire

In Washington, everyone says they practice politics, and develop policy. But to succeed they know they must play hardball. This book smartly captures that central truth!

Tim Russert

Free Press

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1988 by Christopher J. Matthews

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Free Press trade paperback edition 2004

FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Elina Nudelman
Cover photograph by Kelly Campbell

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Touchstone edition as follows:

Matthews, Christopher, 1945.

Hardball: how politics is played, told by one who knows the game /

Christopher Matthews.1st Touchstone ed.

p. cm.

A Touchstone Book

Includes index.

1. Politics, PracticalUnited States. 2. PoliticiansUnited States.

3. United StatesPolitics and government19451989. 4. United

StatesPolitics and government1989 I. Title.

JK1717 M33 1999

324.70973dc21 99-045398

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-84559-3

ISBN-10: 0-684-84559-8

ISBN-13: 978-1-416-56261-0 (eBook)

In all my wardrobe, I could not find anything more precious than the knowledge of the conduct and achievements of great men, which I learned by long conversation in modern affairs and a continual investigation of old.

A wise man ought always to set before him for his example the actions of great men who have excelled in the achievement of some great exploit.

Niccol Machiavelli,
The Prince , 1532

Like the great Machiavelli, I owe much of the wisdom in this book to long conversation in modern affairs. Here are some of those who deserve to be acknowledged:

Martin Agronsky, Donn Anderson, Lee Atwater, Ross Baker, Michael Barone, David Broder, Patrick Butler, Joseph Canzeri, Margaret Carlson, David Cohen, Charles Cook, Kenneth Duberstein, Peter Emerson, Thomas Foxwell, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jeff Greenfield, Peter Hart, Robert Healy, Sven Holmes, Congressman William Hughes, Albert Hunt, Edward Jesser, Mark Johnson, Michael Johnson, Larry L. King, Michael Kinsley, Paul Kirk, Jack Lew, Frank Mankiewicz, David Maraniss, Congressman Edward Markey, Harry McPherson, Charles Mellody, Congressman Robert Mrazek, Martin Nolan, Robert Novak, Scott Pastrick, Congressman Claude Pepper, Michael Pertschuk, Jody Powell, Gerald Rafshoon, Steve Roberts, Tim Russert, Jeffrey Sachs, William Safire, Robert Schiffer, Jeff Shesol, Mark Shields, David Shribman, Roger Simon, Michele Slung, Richard Sorensen, Theodore Sorensen, Robert Squier, George Stephanopoulos, Terrance Straub, Paul Taylor, Sander Vanocur and James Wooten.

My thanks to Barbu Alim, Marcel Monfort and James Bethea of the Library of Congress for their tremendous and timely research assistance; Ellen Boyle, Lee Pendergast, Judy Bartee, Annette Nielsen and Jill Eynon for supporting me in that most political of all terrains, the office.

For making Hardball a TV show I owe CNBC President Bill Bolster, Bruno Cohen, David Corvo, Bob Reichblum, NBC News President Andy Lack, NBC President Robert Wright and, for his daily brilliance, Hardball s executive producer, Rob Yarin.

For their long-standing support and friendship I thank Phil Bronstein, James Finefrock, Paul Wilner, Gail Bensinger, Cindy Myers, and my other colleagues at the San Francisco Examiner as well as Charles Lewis, chief of the Hearst Washington Bureau.

I want to express my particular gratitude to those who opened the doors of Washington to me: Congressman Wayne Owens, Senator Frank Moss, Mary Jane Due, Senator Edmund S. Muskie, President Jimmy Carter, Richard Pettigrew, Congressman Tony Coehlo, Martin Franks, and the Honorable Thomas P. ONeill, Jr., Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. For representing me in the television world better than I can say, I thank Richard Leibner.

Finally, I am grateful to Barbara Daniel, my masterful executive assistant of the past decade; Hendrik Hertzberg, who made me not only a presidential speechwriter but a journalist as well; Kirk ODonnell, who taught me the use of political rules; Bob Woodward, who coaxed me over a tape recorder at a critical time; Brian Richardson for his inspired research efforts; Dorothy Wickenden, who gave style and shape to my manuscripts; Timothy Dickenson, who expanded my vision even as he sharpened my prose; my dynamic agent Raphael Sagalyn; James Silberman, the editor who triggered and directed this explosion of words and battle-hardened wisdom; and both Dominick Anfuso and Airi Dekidjiev of Simon & Schuster, who recognized the enduring nature of these truths.

To Kathleen

Be warned. This is not a civics book. It is not about pristine procedures, but about imperfect people. It is not an aerial judgment of how leaders of this or any country ought rightly to behave, but an insiders view of the sometimes outrageous way they actually do. Its subject is not the grand sweep of history, but the round-the-clock scramble for position, power and survival in the city of Washington.

Let me define terms: hardball is clean, aggressive Machiavellian politics. It is the discipline of gaining and holding power, useful to any profession or undertaking, but practiced most openly and unashamedly in the world of public affairs.

When the preceding words first appeared, I had no idea this book would become a classic, that many hard-nosed politicians would employ it as their bible, that CEOs would be caught carrying it in their briefcases, that young people set on bright careers would cherish their tattered copies as if they were treasure maps, that political science professors would assign it as required reading, that the word hardball itself would so penetrate the countrys vocabulary.

More important to you, the reader, is how the basic rules of Hardball have proven true. The wisdom I gleaned from the gamesmanship of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, then witnessed first-hand from Ronald Reagan and rival Tip ONeill sparkles with even greater clarity today. Bill Clinton has given us frequent lessons in spin. South Africas Nelson Mandela has shown the advantage of getting ahead over getting even. Less fortunate leaders like Newt Gingrich have been taught to only talk when it improves the silence.