Carville James - Love & war: twenty years, three presidents, two daughters and one Louisiana home

A PLUME BOOK

LOVE & WAR

JAMES CARVILLE is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. He gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. Carville was a cohost of CNNs Crossfire until its final broadcast in June 2005, and is currently a Fox News contributor. Carville is the author of several books, most recently Its the Middle Class, Stupid! (coauthored with Stan Greenberg). He teaches political science at Tulane University.

MARY MATALIN served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations and as counselor to vice president Dick Cheney. She is a bestselling author, television and radio host, and currently the cohost of the national radio show Both Sides Now with Arianna Huffington. Mary and husband, James Carville, were 2013 NFL Super Bowl Host Committee co-chairmen and Loyola University of New Orleans Centennial co-chairmen, where Matalin was recently appointed Visiting Distinguished Lecturer.

Praise for Love & War

A solid memoir of political lives from both sides of the spectrum.

Kirkus Reviews

Compelling... The voices are the glue for and the animating features of an ultimately tender book that shines a light on their successful union, not to mention the Crescent City, and shows how big and small a role politics plays in our lives.

USA Today

ALSO BY JAMES CARVILLE

Its the Middle Class, Stupid! (with Stan Greenberg)

40 More Years

Take It Back (with Paul Begala)

Had Enough? (with Jeff Nussbaum)

Stickin: The Case for Loyalty

Buck Up, Suck Up... and Come Back When You Foul Up (with Paul Begala)

... And the Horse He Rode In On

Were Right, Theyre Wrong

Alls Fair: Love, War, and Running for President (with Mary Matalin)

ALSO BY MARY MATALIN

Letters to My Daughters

Alls Fair: Love, War, and Running for President (with James Carville)

PLUME

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First published in the United States of America by Blue Rider Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2013

First Plume Printing 2014

Excerpt from Questions They Never Asked Me from Epilogue from Signposts in a Strange Land by Walker Percy. Copyright 1991 by Mary Bernice Percy.

Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Confessions by Saint Augustine; translated with an introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick (1991) c. 144 words from page 201 by permission of Oxford University Press.

Copyright 2013 by Gaslight, Inc.

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THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE BLUE RIDER PRESS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Carville, James. Love & war : twenty years, three presidents, two daughters and one Louisiana home / James Carville and Mary Matalin.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-14046-2

1. Carville, James. 2. Matalin, Mary. 3. Carville, JamesMarriage. 4. Matalin, MaryMarriage. 5. Political consultantsUnited StatesBiography. 6. Married peopleUnited StatesBiography. 7. New Orleans (La.)Biography. 8. United StatesPolitics and government19932001. 9. United StatesPolitics and government20012009. 10. United StatesPolitics and government2009 I. Matalin, Mary. II. Matalin, Mary. Alls fair. III. Title. IV. Title: Love and war.

E840.6.C37 2014 2013042532

324.092'2dc23

[B]

Cover design: Gregg Kulick

Cover photograph: Jody Horton

Version_5

AFTERWORD

MARY

SO HERE WE ARE at the updated paperback. To my profound pleasure, and I suppose shock, Love & War was treated fairly by the critics. More importantly to me, since I plan never to pen another, readers received this book in the exact way I had intended and hoped.

That is to say, the interest in and appreciation for New Orleans dominated the response to it. Of course, we got the mandatory queries on contemporary politics, but they were largely perfunctory. Certainly the well-documented, near universal fatigue with all things political played into that response, but the nature of the questions about New Orleans suggested a gravitational pull to positivism and optimism.

JAMES

AND HERE I GO agreeing with my wife again out of the gate. I have to say that traveling around the country this time for the book tour, I was particularly impressed with this sense that most people would like the country to get back together. Theres this feeling that in politics, people used to get along much better. Theres a nostalgia for Ronald ReaganTip ONeill collegial relationships among people from both parties. They pine for a day reminiscent of the time when people from both parties were willing to compromise.

That certainly is what drives some of the curiosity about Mary and me. And I think it too is what is so appealing about what is happening in New Orleans. Weve sort of put down some of the ideological arguments for a more pragmatic and practical sort of politics. Some of that is certainly driven by necessity given what the city has been through, but on the whole, thats been good for the innovation thats happening hereon education, health care, government reform and more.

MARY

AS WE TRAVELED, audiences of all political persuasions genuinely wanted to understand how the Big Easy moved on from such monumental difficulties. Not just moved on, but improved, excelled and became a national prototype for urban resurrection. How did we clean up city hall corruption; improve and expand health care, education, entrepreneurship; restore and exceed our traditional beauty; preserve our unique heritage and culture? And how on earth did we fix all those potholes?

To repeat the central message of Love & War, when individuals come together with elbow grease, faith and determination in their communities, magic happens.

We reelected our great mayor, Mitch Landrieu; we expunged hundreds of crooked pols; we rebuilt our infrastructure; we established a lively business and family friendly environment. We kept on task. We rewarded success and eschewed failures, no matter what or how much political force was brought to bear.

And we had (and are having) a lot of fun in the process. If you have been among the thousands of visitors who helped us garner the designation from National Geographic or Travel & Leisure as one of the top places