I have a Chris Matthews problem. I want to like the guy, and in fact, in person I do. Years ago, I met Chris at the San Francisco Examiner, where he broke into journalism after serving as a congressional aide for Tip O'Neill. He was the Washington columnist for the Examiner, where I worked as the editor of the Sunday magazine, and I occasionally assigned him political features. Chris is an utterly charming guy to hang out with, a voluble and genial political junkie, in that Irish-American way, who can babble away forever on the ins and outs of the great electoral game. The problem with Chris, I found out, is that when you try to edit this babble, you quickly discover there is not much there, except for the fleeting Beltway wisdom of the moment. I discovered you don't go to Chris for deep thoughts b

This sort of Washington chatter is fine when it comes to jawing about polls and campaign personalities and other ephemera. But when it comes to the major issues of our day, Beltway pundits like Matthews -- and the guests he stocks his show with -- have been consistently wrong, again and again and again.

When lynching Bill Clinton for a consensual sex act was all the rage in Beltway circles, Chris was among those baying the loudest for his blood. When Iraq seemed like a cakewalk, Matthews got all weak in the knees over Bush in his flight suit. (Of course, when the war didn't look like such a slam dunk, he shifted with the political winds.)

Matthews revealed more of his bone-headed Beltway-think on Sunday, when he devoted a segment of his CNBC talk show to the book by his "friend David Talbot." (Note to Chris: "friends" donb

The show's only voice of reason was that of Josephine Hearn, a 20-something reporter for The Politico, who sharply disagreed with Sullivan's "I'm too young and cool to care" line, saying that she has been fascinated with the mystery of Kennnedyb

But the confederacy of dunces had the last word. Matthews let fly another blast of conventional Washington wisdom. JFK was a Cold War hawk, he insisted, so Brothers must be wrong to suggest that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy that came out of hard-line national security circles. (This militant version of JFK is held with religious-like conviction inside the Beltway -- including among conservative Democrats like Matthews -- which is one reason the book is causing so much consternation in these circles.) Fineman, for his part, scratched his head over the fact that most Americans reject the lone-nut theory of Dallas, and lamented the loss of public faith in "the powers that be." (And, he left unsaid, in media windbags like him.)

In the ad for his show, a gritty Matthews promises "not to let anything get by me." But the Beltway press has let EVERYTHING of importance get by it b