Chris Matthews says he has been a political junkie since childhood. And his career path would seem to back that up.
With a degree from Holy Cross, graduate work at the University of North Carolina, and a teaching position at Harvard, Matthews came to Washington while in his 20s and went to work on Capitol Hill.
And it was his years under some of Washington’s most powerful figures that he learned the tradecraft he calls hardball. It is, he says, not only how politics gets done, but how everything in business and elsewhere gets done..
After politics Matthews became a columnist, and ultimately a popular cable TV talk show host. A few years before he made that transition, he wrote his first book, which he called Hardball. That’s when I first met him.
And stick around for the second half of this interview as we talk about his predictions for the 1988 presidential race – and why we all need to master Hardball.
So here now, from 1988, Chris Matthews.
Chris Matthews will be 80 in December. He retired from his TV show in 2020 although he still appears from time to time as a guest commentator.