After 6 p.m., even the fiercest political rivals can get along. At least Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan supposedly did — former O’Neill aide and current MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews says the two men “put politics aside” after working hours, which helped them compromise during the day. He writes about how their amicable relationship affected public policy in his recent book, Tip And The Gipper: When Politics Worked (Simon and Schuster, October 2013). He’ll be discussing it and signing copies at Barnes and Noble in Bethesda on Saturday, December 14 at 12 p.m.
When Reagan (nicknamed “the Gipper” after a movie role) was elected president in 1980, 28-year Congressional veteran O’Neill became Speaker of the House. O’Neill challenged the president on his conservative initiatives, but Matthews writes that the differences between the two men “were not personal but political.” Behind the scenes, Matthews says they came to agreements on taxes, Social Security, and foreign policy that both sides could live with. This, he says, was “heroic behavior” that is needed instead of today’s “government by tantrum.”
The book is written partly as Matthews’s first-hand account working for O’Neill and the unlikely friendship he saw the Speaker forge with the President. Except some would call the friendship unbelievable and in fact highly exaggerated by the author. David Greenberg’s review of the book for the New York Times balked at notions that “Tip and the Gipper” bonded over their Irish ancestry, that they got along personally or privately, or that they came together to push through legislation.
No, they were not close friends, Thomas O’Neill III wrote in a 2012 New York Times column of his father and Reagan, but “historic tax reforms, a united front that brought down the Soviet Union — both came of a commitment to find common ground. While neither man embraced the other’s worldview, each respected the other’s right to hold it. Each respected the other as a man.” For what it’s worth, Reagan called the Speaker a friend “after 6 p.m.” in his memoirs.
Matthews cites many of his observations from notes in his old journals, so perhaps the exact takeaways are up to the reader. Tip And The Gipper is entertaining and has a moral we’d hope to be true, but as Greenberg quipped, “for those familiar with [Matthews’s] brand of confidently asserted overgeneralization, the book is about what you would expect.”
Matthews served on the staffs of four Democratic members of Congress, including O’Neill, and was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter administration. He has been called MSNBC’s “most conservative voice” on primetime, and he says he voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. After working in print journalism for 15 years, his talk show Hardball began in 1997. Tip And The Gipper is his seventh book.
The event is free and open to the public.
