Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9501060013
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is a peculiar trait of human beings - that we willingly get our own blood boiling. Some liberals satisfy this need by tuning in to Rush Limbaugh. Conservatives subject themselves to Michael Kinsley or Ellen Goodman.
"All's Fair," the he-said, she-said account of the 1992 presidential election written by spin doctors James Carville and Mary Matalin, is more than enough to raise the hackles of people on both ends of the political spectrum, and many in between. It goes a long way toward explaining how political operatives function. And it answers the question that the Carville-Matalin pairing raised on both sides: "How could (s)he?"
The question ought to have been, "Why didn't these two find each other sooner?"
Carville, a Louisiana-raised Democrat, and Matalin, a pro-choice Republican, who carried on a courtship during the '92 campaign and married shortly afterward, share the ability to justify and rationalize some highly questionable ethical behavior. Guess that's how - as impassioned as they purport to be about their respective parties - they manage to ignore each other's politics sufficiently to have a relationship.
They share the compulsion to "spin," and are so good at it, that they even delude themselves. After all, the most adept liar is the one who doesn't believe he or she is lying.
Take, for example, Carville explaining how if he were George Bush he would have answered a question that Bush muffed during the Richmond debate. A woman asked "How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?" What she'd meant to say was "recession," not national debt, and not only was Bush supposed to know this, Carville writes, but he should have pulled a letter out of his pocket from a regular Joe from somewhere in America. Bush should have conceded that he was raised with advantages, but that he shares the pain of regular Joes - like the letter-writer - everywhere. "I would have tried to speak very haltingly, from my heart," Carville writes.
Oh, really.
He's a perfect match for Matalin, who gives a long-winded account of how she tried to keep Bush on the high road on the issue of Clinton's draft record. Some on the Bush team wanted the president to finally go after Clinton during a speech to the National Guard in Utah. Matalin claims Bush knew that to do so was beneath the dignity of the presidency, but there was much internal debate about what he should do.
The "Clintonistas," as Matalin dubbed them, got wind of the rumor and were thrown into chaos, trying to prepare to respond to a Bush attack. But Bush gave the "non-attack speech," Matalin writes, and "It was the coolest strategic fakeout we did in the entire election."
Fake-out? Sounds like more of the White House staff-Bush campaign staff conflict that she argues - convincingly - really hurt the campaign.
Carville and Matalin's accounts are a bit too full of the minutiae that only other political operatives might find fascinating. Stuff like who sat where on Air Force One. Where the War Room folks were most likely to eat dinner and what they ate. But they also provide an interesting - sometimes funny - insiders' look at what the rest of us saw through the media prism.
Here's Matalin's description of a supposedly "spontaneous" Bush appearance at a bingo hall somewhere in Georgia:
"The motorcade had been driving around in circles. The presidential limousine, flying the seal of the United States, followed by a fleet of immaculately polished follow cars full of dignitaries, with an armada of press buses in tow, making rights and lefts in small-town Georgia. Finally, forty-five minutes later, they found the place.
This was a "spontaneous event," and for obvious security reasons the advance men weren't allowed to say the president was coming until only a few minutes before he arrived. So when George Bush showed up the reaction among the nonvet locals was, 'Hey, you're breaking up our bingo game.' There was mildly scattered applause but it was more like, 'What the hell is he doing here?'"
"All's Fair" is a good read - a great read for political junkies - and takes the mystery once and for all out of the Romeo and Juliet story of the '92 campaign. It isn't necessary for Carville and Matalin to ignore each other's belief systems in order to have a relationship. To them, politics is just a high-stakes game that they both play remarkably well.
by CNB