All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President by Mary Matalin and James Carville, with Peter Knobler (why these two very articulate people needed a ghostwriter I don’t understand, but maybe they were busy), Random House, 1994.
Love & War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home by Mary Matalin and James Carville, Penguin Books, 2013.
What could be more appropriate reading during this deeply divisive campaign than the story of a married couple with profoundly different political views who have managed nonetheless to stay married and passionately connected for over 20 years?
Maybe not everyone who’s reading this knows who Mary and James are. Both were high-ups in the 1992 campaign, Mary for George H. W. Bush and James for Bill Clinton. Somehow they met, and before long James was bringing Mary tuna sandwiches and flowers to her office at the Republican National Committee while working maniacally to defeat Bush. They ended up getting married in 1993. I read Love and War back when it was first published in December 2014 and found it to be both amusing and amazing: I couldn’t believe how willing this couple was to share the details of their life together. (So James says that Mary lets the dogs–and maybe the cats–get up on the kitchen counters and eat the butter. It drives him cuh-razy. Made me feel better about all the times that I’ve accidentally left the butter out and the cats have gotten to it.)
It tickles me that All’s Fair is described as a penetrating look at a Presidential campaign, with insiders dishing the dirt, and my recollection is all about the romance. Guess that shows where my priorities are! The later book is available on audio; the problem, once again, is that the audio is on CD. Sigh. Now I have five books on CD that I’d like to absorb and I still haven’t figured out how to rip and download CDs to my phone. I refuse to listen on a CD player. Anyway, whatever your political persuasion, it’s always good to be reminded that people who belong to different political parties can still be friends!