James Carville & Mary Matlin in the Age of Clinton
Democratic political guru James Carville is in the news again warning that his party has a 'wokeness' problem. Here's a dual interview with him and his Republican wife Mary Matalin from 1997
James Carville on CNN, May 1, 2021: The woke are tired of being woke.
Strange Bedfellows
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November, 1997
Mary Matalin is 100 percent conservative Republican.
James Carville is all liberal Democrat all the time.
But in many ways the two halves of America’s most politically mixed-marriage are a perfect match.
Both are heavily bemedaled veterans of big-time political trench warfare. Both are used to working for, advising, or hanging out with presidents. Both are fierce, smart, often funny and highly partisan defenders of their political causes and creeds.
Both also are savvy multimedia stars, whether it's writing a bestseller together about their work for opposite camps in the 1992 presidential race, guesting together on "Meet the Press" or appearing live on stage to raise money for cancer research, which is what they'll be doing at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Heinz Hall.
Matalin, who in 1992 worked in the highest reaches of President Bush’s re-election campaign while her then-not-yet husband was directing Bill Clinton's challenge, is now host of a daily afternoon talk show on CBS radio.
Carville, whose skills helped Bob Casey become Pennsylvania's governor in 1986 and Harris Wofford win his U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania in 1990, is currently the president's senior political adviser.
Their Heinz Hall act — which will not include a pie fight — is a fund-raiser for research at the newly established Richard M. Cyert Center for Molecular Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
Matalin — who was at her home inside the Beltway — and Carville — who was in Milwaukee and sounded road-weary — were interviewed last week. We wanted to see what would happen if we asked each of them the same questions.
James Carville
Q: How do you define your own political position?
A: I would say I'm economically progressive, socially traditional.
Q: Who are your major political influences — the people?
A: Oh, maybe in Louisiana, a little bit of the Longs. My political philosophy sort of evolved over a period of time, but I can't say that there was one person who was responsible for it in sort of the political sense. It was more by reading and observing and thinking. The biggest defining thing in my political persona was the Civil Rights Movement and the way blacks are treated in this country, which basically made me a national Democrat. And the book "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Q: How so?
A: It just sort of opened my eyes to what was going on, in addition to just being a wonderful book. It clarified and crystallized what a horrible thing that racism was and I was young, 14 or 15 years old.
Q: Is big-time national politics really the dirty business many of us in the hinterlands think it is?
A: No. I mean, I've been in probably more emotional fights and literal fights in local politics than you get in national politics. Believe me, politics isn't played any rougher in Washington than it is in Allegheny County or Beaver County or Washington County or anywhere. Sometimes I think that local politics is somehow more personal.
Q: What's your definition of a Republican?
A: Well, you know, I mean, you've got Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum. I mean, heh heh heh, they both call themselves Republicans. I always like to let people define themselves.
Q: What happened to the Republican Revolution of 1994?
A: Obviously, the country didn't want to go where it wanted to take them. I think they got smarter and at the end of the '96 session, they started passing the minimum wage and things like that. It just wasn't where the country wanted to go and they figured it out. I think they misinterpreted what the 1994 election was about, but I think they have recalculated and recalibrated.
Q: What's the nicest thing you can say about President Clinton?
A: He's a good guy. He's a brilliant man. He's just warm ... you know. Just a warm brilliant guy. He's a good guy to be around.
Q: What's the best thing Clinton's done in office, from your point of view?
A: Well, from history's point of view, it is that when he took over there was a $220-billion deficit and now it's down to about nothing, which is I think going to be viewed as an incredible, remarkable achievement.
Also, I think when you look at the totality of America today and totality of America in 1992 — and I'm talking about everything from school test scores to teen-age pregnancies to the crime rate to anything — we're just a better country. It's not just that our economy is better. But I think that by most ways that we measure the country, we're just a better country today.
Q: What's the worst thing Clinton has done?
A: Sure, there's been some things. I thought that the nomination of Henry Foster for Surgeon General was brilliant because it was really going to get the country's attention on the problem of teen pregnancy. I would have liked for us to stay in and fought that harder. With smoking and AIDS, which all seem to be intractable problems, you could really make a difference if you use that office right. I don't think his nomination should have been pulled out nearly as quickly as it was.
Q: Who do you want to be President in the year 2000?
A: Well, heh heh heh whoever President Clinton tells me to root for, heh heh heh. Once we get through the '98 congressional elections, I'll get in the middle of the 2000 presidential election.
Q: Do you have any idea who will win?
A: Right now you would say that it would be the vice president, but it's really too early to tell. I think any of this kind of stuff is speculation I really don't know the answer.
Q: There are some names I want you to respond quickly to: Al Gore?
A: The Al Gore you see in public and the Al Gore you see in private are not that far apart. He's a very meticulous man. He thinks things out. He's got a good sense of humor, a self-deprecating humor, which, I think if you see him in public a lot, you see sort of manifested.
Q: How about Dick Gephardt?
A: A guy who would rather put peoples' heads together rather than knock heads together. A pretty skilled politician and a real, real good family man.
Q: Bill Bradley?
A: Thoughtful. Smart. Spends as much time thinking about things as anybody I've known. You really don't like to talk to Senator Bradley if you're tired or not alert, you know? He gets to the root of the matter very quickly in a conversation.
Q: Dan Quayle?
A: I said in my book, I think Quayle did one thing that was right: He brought some attention to the fact that there were consequences to homes without fathers, and I gave him credit for that in my book. I think in the forest of presidential timber, he's kind of a splinter, not a toothpick.
Q: Liddy Dole?
A: Talented woman. Very gracious. Very smart, very able, but I don't think she's going to run for president.
Q: Steve Forbes?
A: Personable, but very wrong.
Q: One last question. A hundred years from now, how will Bill Clinton be remembered by history?
A: I can only tell you that if his term ended now, I think he would be remembered as a President who led the country in about every facet from the deficit to the economy to crime to education to make America a better place, particularly a better place on things that people really care about.
I also think that he will be viewed by historians as the victim of the greatest political dirty trick in history, and that's this entire sort of scandal -- Whitewater foolishness, which has amounted to nothing and will always amount to nothing.
Mary Matalin
Q: How do you define your political self?
A: I'm more libertarian. Since the '92 campaign I've had a lot of time to study, since I haven't been working in campaigns. And I have to do a lot of study for the radio show and the TV stuff. I've done a lot of reading and visited with a lot of scholars. I'm increasingly libertarian. Not in the "let's legalize drugs" sense, just the basic first principles.
Q: Which are what?
A: Which to me are liberty and self-reliance. There are very few things I can be persuaded that the government can do a better job at than I can, and those things are what our founders thought they would be: security, domestic and national. And some interstate business, pollutants, and that kind of business.
Q: Who are your major political influences, the people?
A: Well, they are these days fewer politicians and more thinkers. I've been enjoying this Dinesh D'Souza book on Ronald Reagan "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader." I like some Democrats. I like Sen. Joseph Lieberman. But I'm thinking more of authors and scholars now, who are having an influence on me. Some are old Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek — God! That's the kind of stuff I'm reading now.
Q: How can you live with someone as partisan as you, or even more so?
A: I'm more partisan than he. I adhere to more tenets of conservatism-slash-libertarianism than he does of strict liberalism. He's more of a traditional values guy and an economic liberal. So on good days we can discuss it. On bad days we can't. We worked in politics 20 years before we met each other. It's not like we never had to talk to people from the other side, so you know how to do it. We also have a life. We have a kid and a kid on the way. We have 22 cows. We've got two dogs. We have a working farm. We work hard during the day. We come home at night; we're not going to talk about Fast Track.
Q: Is big-time politics really the dirty or sleazy business many of us in the hinterlands think it is?
A: No. No, no, no, no, no, no it isn't. I think this is a masterful accomplishment by the Clinton administration. . . . They have convinced America that everyone violates campaign finance laws, and they have made contributing to a candidate or an idea synonymous with corruption. It's just not the case.
Q: What's your definition of a Republican?
A: . . . There's no quick answer to that today. There are a least five different kinds of Republicans, and the victorious Republican is going to be the first one that figures out how to unite those factions, which Governor-elect Jim Gilmore just did in Virginia. But it's a tough coalition to keep together. Ronald Reagan did it.
Q: What's your definition of a Democrat?
A: Some days Clinton is a New Democrat. Some days he's a Republican, as he was in the 1996 elections. Some days he's an Old Democrat, when it comes to affirmative action and those used-up, unworkable Clinton social solutions.
Q: What happened to the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994?
A: It's still going on. The press doesn't like to cover it. But let's not forget that seven of the 10 items in the Contract for America were set into law. I love the President calling it "The Contract on America” on Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" show. He signed seven of the 10 items into law and took credit for them in his acceptance speech in Chicago. '
Everything in politics is, "What have you done for me lately?" and the press, particularly the Washington press corps, has no memory whatsoever. But it was half a dozen years ago or fewer that we were not even having this kind of debate. Think back. We didn't talk about balancing the budget or tax reform. We were talking about government take-over of the health care industry. That's very different.
Q: What's the nicest thing you can say about President Clinton?
A: I think President Clinton — I don't dislike President Clinton, I disagree with him — is a very empathetic man. He's just an unguided guy. He just doesn't have any core principles; therefore, he can't lead.
He can't lead you anywhere because he doesn't really know where he's going. He's going where the polls lead him. He's always betwixt-and-between. But having said that, once he gets on something, and it's confirmed by the polls, he's the best persuader in modern American presidential politics.
Q: What is the best thing he's done in office?
A: Boy, that's a tough one.
Q: OK, what's the worst?
A: I think he and his ilk have de-dignified the office itself. They just asked Bush last week at the dedication of his library, "What's your legacy?" And he said, "I hope I brought dignity to the office," and he did. I think the office is resilient, and I think Clinton's not the first one to have trampled on its dignity. But it's sad to watch, particularly if you've been in and around it.
Q: Who would you like to see become president in the year 2000?
A: I'm supporting, if he gets in, Texas Governor George W. Bush. If he doesn't get in, I like a whole bunch of these guys. . . . You have an embarrassment of riches. I like everybody from (John) Ashcroft to (John) McCain to (Steve) Forbes. There are lots of good ideas.
Q: Who do you think will win in 2000?
A: Anybody who tells you they know that now, you just know how stupid they are.
Q: Can you give me quick responses to these people? Al Gore?
A: I think he's a phony and a lightweight.
Q: Dick Gephardt?
A: He's going to give Gore a run for his money.
Q: Bill Bradley?
A: I like Bill Bradley. I think he's authentic. I don't agree with everything he says, but he's authentic. And so is Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who's the other guy who might get in.
Q: How about Dan Quayle?
A: He has a lot of grass-root support.
Q: Liddy Dole?
A: I love Liddy Dole. She's a can-do conservative. She's going to surprise people if she gets in. She's very substantive.
Q: Steve Forbes?
A: I love him. He's the first guy in years to have a new idea and actually champion it, and he's smart.
Q: And that idea being?
A: Proportional taxation — the flat tax, which actually Ronald Reagan talked about 40 years ago.
Q: A hundred years from now, how do you think Bill Clinton will be remembered by history?
A: Minimally.