Chris Matthews said the current state of bipartisan politics is driving the nation in a downward spiral in a speech Tuesday night at American U.

Matthews, the Kennedy Political Union’s first speaker of the year, said the Democratic and Republican parties need to put their rhetoric aside and work together.

“Excessive partisanship, excessive commitment to the notion that anything goes, that anything you can do to win is OK … disrupts the system. It ruins it in many ways, and nothing gets done,” he said. “The pettiness between the parties [is not] even strategic — it’s just crankiness.”

He went on to explain that the key to solving our problems in American politics is to elect good leaders without looking at partisan issues.

KPU Director Josh Levitt agreed with Matthews’ assertion that the two parties need to work together.

“As Obama said, we cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down,” Levitt said.

In an interview before his speech, Matthews said he hopes students attending his speech could come to fully understand a few key problems in the country and find ways to change them.

“I hope that people understand the question, which is ‘what’s wrong with politics today?’ ” he said. “Why is it so cranky and unproductive? Maybe [they can] begin to set some standards to change it.”

Matthews, who spent many years in politics and government, transitioned to print journalism working as the Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner from 1987 to 2000. He is currently the host of “Hardball,” a daily news show on MSNBC and “The Chris Matthews Show,” a weekly syndicated public affairs program.

“I’ve watched politicians from the inside, and if you do that you’re able to understand what they’re doing,” he said.

Matthews said he knows how politicians speak and work because he worked as a presidential speechwriter for former President Jimmy Carter. He uses this knowledge of politicians to better understand his guests and inform his audience.

“I think I know what the politicians are up to better than a lot of other people,” he said. “I watched politics from the inside, and if you do that then you are able to understand what they are doing from the press releases, the speeches, the positioning, the dodging.”

Matthews covered the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the first post-apartheid presidential election in South Africa in 1994, the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland in 1998 and the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005.

“Those were great moments for me, and of course all of the presidential elections are fun,” Matthews said.

Matthews believes Democrats are demoralized and disappointed with their own party, but Republicans are angry and energized by the current state of politics.

“Fear makes people angry, and this election this November 2, it’s going to be an explosion of anger,” he said.

Matthews pointed to a rise of unemployment, overflow of government spending and the national debt as a few problems currently facing the nation.

Matthews said there has been speculation in the past that he may return to politics and possibly run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, but he said he does not want to give up his jobs as a news commentator and a reporter yet.

“I thought a lot about it in this [election] cycle and it would have meant giving up what I have spent years developing,” he said.