Look out, Luke Russert -- there's another child in the NBC family making a name for herself in Washington.
Twenty-one-year-old Caroline Matthews, daughter of "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, is focusing her summer on the national debt. She's an intern for President Obama's federal deficit commission and, this week, she's biking from Philadelphia to Washington to "break the debt cycle" for an organization she helped found, Concerned Youth of America.
"I'm biking, but I'm also fighting the national debt cycle," she said, noting the pun. On her three-day trek, she plans to meet with Govs. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Martin O'Malley of Maryland and also Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., when she peddles back into the District Friday afternoon.
The University of Pennsylvania senior told us she tried to avoid the political bug.
"I think growing up I was reluctant to get involved in politics because my parents are so much more into that world," she said.
But she got really interested in the deficit as a freshman in college and became a founding member of Concerned Youth of America, a nonpartisan group whose members travel around the country talking to college students about the deficit.
Now, she said, she hasn't crossed out the idea of a truly following her father, from politics into political media. "I don't know," she said. "There's definitely something there, I just don't know what it will evolve into."
The younger Matthews said she learned how to ask the right questions from her dad.
"My dad, as you know, is tough on everyone," she said.
Being humble, the MSNBC host isn't taking credit.
"I think she did this on her own," Chris Matthews told Yeas & Nays earlier this week, at the 20th anniversary of lobbying firm Manatos & Manatos. "I had nothing to do with it."
