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Time - Man of the Year
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1993-04-08
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U.S. CAMPAIGN, Page 33Star-Crossed Lovers
It sounds like something from a screwball comedy: two
sweethearts coo at each other by night and then turn around and
try to demolish each other by day. But that's the life of Mary
Matalin, George Bush's campaign field director, and James
Carville, Bill Clinton's chief strategist. The two are in love,
and at war, at the same time.
The relationship was Washington's most talked-about
liaison long before Matalin sparked a political fire storm last
week with a scathing personal attack on Clinton. Contrary to
George Bush's no-first-sleaze rule, Matalin drafted a sophomoric
memo that mocked Clinton's girth, branded his campaign "lower
than a snake's belly" and noted his problem with "bimbo
eruptions." Carville, who serves as one of Clinton's top
strategists and phrasemakers, quickly fired back, calling his
inamorata's memo "new evidence that the Bush campaign is out of
control." Carville, obviously pained by the situation, added,
"You can hate the sin and love the sinner."
A gravel-voiced, tough-talking street pol from Chicago who
learned her trade under Lee Atwater, Matalin, 38, oversees the
Bush campaign's links to 50 state operations while helping to
hone its message machine. Carville, 47, is a Louisiana Cajun
with a taste for the jugular. According to an article in Vogue,
when Carville informed Matalin at a Washington dinner party
that he was going to work for Clinton, she excused herself and
promptly threw up.
But the two aren't really the odd couple that they seem.
Each is the closest thing either campaign has to someone with
street smarts. Just as Matalin is politically more liberal than
Bush, Carville is more conservative than Clinton. Both are
up-by-the-bootstraps white ethnics whose rough-cut personalities
don't always fit neatly in a business that has been dominated
by slick schmoozers. Both love to cook and jog and escape to a
mountain hideaway near Front Royal, Va., on weekends. Says
Matalin: "We have plenty of things besides politics to argue
about."
Being a woman in what are still male-dominated G.O.P.
political circles, Matalin has suffered far more for the
relationship than Carville has. Last year several top
Republicans pressed Bush to dismiss her lest pillow talk undo
his re-election. But the President stuck by Matalin and gave her
a big hug after last week's tempest passed.
No one knows what the pair said to each other in private,
but Matalin's biggest fan in the Clinton camp sent her a large
bouquet of flowers. Said Carville: "She'll be O.K. She's always
O.K."