Playboy Interview: James Carville

a candid conversation with the president's fire-eating, trash-talking campaign wizard about whining democrats, two-faced republicans, sex, politics and the art of the spin

"He was sitting in my office, glowering and scowling," pollster Mark Mellman once told a reporter. "Then he stood up and walked around on top of the furniture. Then he started screaming as he was pacing. And I thought, Oh my God, I'm in the presence of a lunatic. Genius walks that fine line, I guess."

He is known as the "ragin' Cajun," "Serpent Head" and a host of other unfriendly terms--by his friends, no less. The Republicans, meanwhile, have their own word for him: intimidating.

But James Carville isn't just a jumble of temper tantrums, emotional outbursts and colorful turns of phrase. He's a serious man with a serious job: to persuade millions of people to like someone well enough to give him their votes. This year that someone is an old client: the president of the United States.

Carville is generally credited as the masterful engineer behind Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential victory. From the primaries down to the wire, that race introduced--and, in some cases, perfected--a new brand of campaign warfare, including cranked-up opposition research, hit-and-run attack ads, quick-response rebuttals (sometimes within the same 24-hour news cycle), tag-team spin doctoring, town meetings and bus caravans.

While campaign watchers had come to know Carville fairly well in the months that led up to the election, the rest of America received a crash course on the man in the swell of publicity that followed Clinton's win. Carville became a favorite on the talk show circuit, delighting audiences with campaign tales spun in his spitfire Cajun dialect. He was extolled as the brains behind the campaign's muscle in the Academy Award--nominated documentary "The War Room," which tracks the Clinton crusade from behind the scenes.

Carville's celebrity was given another half-life when he married his onetime nemesis, former George Bush campaign strategist Mary Matalin. It was perhaps the unlikeliest romance in D.C. history: top dogs on opposing political campaigns, facing off in an election for the country's highest office. (When Clinton won, Matalin told Carville: "You make me sick. I hate your guts.")

Once again, Carville is helping steer Clinton's campaign bandwagon--and not only on the stump. His new best-seller, "We're Right, They're Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives," is Carville's attempt to sway--or perhaps bully--the electorate into seeing the world the way he views it: as a place where one can be politically progressive, socially traditional and outrageously outspoken all at once. One critic even compared the book to Thomas Paine's "Common Sense."

Writes Carville: "People who have sucked from the government sugar-tit all their lives, and now want to make sure it runs dry for everyone else--it's them versus us. Ours is the morally superior position."

Carville is a confessed late-bloomer (the Clinton triumph occurred when he was 48) who embodies the loser-made-good persona. He is a hard-talking, scrappy fighter who learns from his mistakes yet stubbornly continues to make them. He will mercilessly jab at an opponent, then quickly back off and assess the damage with a healthy measure of detached Southern charm.

Those who have watched Carville at work say he is the best spin doctor in the business, effortlessly twisting a rival's words or complex policy--or even the truth--to suit his immediate needs. He is also known as a bit of an oddball. "A lot of people who don't know him well think he tries hard to be eccentric," says friend and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. "But those of us who know him know that he actually tries very hard to be normal--and never quite gets there."

"I'm like uranium 235," Carville concurs, with pride. "Not quite stable."

On the way to his success, Carville has alienated a lot of people--and not just Republicans. His histrionic eruptions are widely known. When he exploded during a White House meeting with Hollywood producers, launching into a what-do-you-rich-folks-know-about-life routine, producer Gary David Goldberg dubbed him "Anthony Perkins playing Fidel Castro on acid." Others have accused him of dancing closer to the edge than even Republican strategist Lee Atwater, to whom Carville is often compared.

His over-the-top zeal isn't the only thing that sets him apart. He is also wildly superstitious. For luck, he wore black woolen gloves during the Clinton campaign. In other races, he's worn the same pair of underwear for at least a week, though he insists he washed them out each night. He also spent one election day "in the fetal position."

But beneath the drama and superstition is a masterful mind that runs on all cylinders during a campaign--prodding his candidate, intimidating the opposition, searching for that one message to inspire the electorate. (In 1992 it was the oft-repeated "It's the economy, stupid.") At the same time, Carville is a sucker for the underdog. "If you are on top of the world," White House aide George Stephanopoulos once said, "James doesn't have much time for you. But if the world's on top of you, he's right there."

Yet until his remarkable turnaround in the mid-Eighties, Carville considered himself "a stoned-ass loser."

Born in Louisiana in 1944 to a postmaster and his wife, and raised in a town on the Mississippi River that bears the family name, Chester James Carville Jr. had a happy childhood. Even ordinary boyhood upheavals took on a cheerful, optimistic spin. "When my dad pulled me aside and broke it to me that there was no Santa Claus," Carville remembers, "it was nothing compared with the glee of being the one who knew something that my younger brothers and sisters didn't know. Plus, I got to help my father put the stuff under the tree."

In 1962 Carville entered Louisiana State University, where he concentrated mostly on partying. ("I made John Belushi look like a scholar," he told "People.")

Exiting LSU early (some accounts say he was asked to leave), Carville joined the Marines, where he stayed for two years. He then returned to Baton Rouge, where he taught junior high while finishing college. He then earned a lan degree from LSU. After an uneventful stint at a local law firm, Carville found politics. He worked mostly on losing campaigns, including Gary Hart's abortive 1984 presidential run. Things started to pick up in 1986, when Carville helped escort Democrat Bob Casey to the governorship of Pennsylvania. Then came the winning streak: In 1987 Carville engineered Wallace Wilkinson's come-from-behind victory in Kentucky's gubernatorial race; the next year, he managed Senator Frank Lautenberg's successful reelection bid in New Jersey. And in 1990 he took Zell Miller to the governor's mansion in Georgia.

But Carville pulled out all the stops for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. The process was captured in detail in "The War Room"--as were the emotions that ran beneath it: In one scene, Carville breaks down during an impassioned farewell speech to his followers after Clinton's victory. It is a moment that defines James Carville, both his political passion and his soul.

These days, Carville is living a more comfortable life--emotionally and financially. Together he and Matalin chronicled the crazy days of the Clinton--Bush contest in the 1994 best-seller "All's Fair: Love, War and Running for President" (Random House/Simon & Schuster), an extended two-for-one interview that reveals as much about their love affair as it does about the campaigns. The couple also tours the lecture circuit, commanding upwards of $20,000 for a few hours of political banter and well-honed arguing. And last year Carville and Matalin became parents--the first time for both--when Mary gave birth to Matalin Mary Carville, whom they call Matty.

To uncork Carville, we sent Brian Karem, who last interviewed Gordon Liddy for Playboy, to Memphis, where Carville had a small part as a right-wing prosecutor in director Milo? Forman's film "The People Versus Larry Flynt." Karem reports:

"Trying to gain insight into Carville's life is like trying to decipher the plot of a movie using a single frame of film. To wit: We began this interview as a casual chat on a commercial flight from Washington, D.C. to Memphis; we continued our talk in fits and starts on the set of 'The People Versus Larry Flynt' (where I had to share James' time not only with Forman but also with co-stars Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and James Cromwell). We wrapped up the interview with an intense session on a private jet flying from Memphis to Oregon, where Carville and his wife had a speaking engagement.

"In Portland, I got a true glimpse of the man. As subtle as a clenched fist, Carville hyperkinetically orbited his wife upon seeing her. And despite the much-discussed political chasm between them, their affection for each other appears genuine. 'My God, honey, you've got a great figure,' he drawled when he saw her. And then to me: 'Hey, you ever see a woman look so fine so soon after giving birth?'

"The couple pulled no punches while picking on each other onstage that night. But when an audience member asked the pair if they bickered at home about the president--specifically about Clinton's alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers--Carville responded quickly. 'Look at that woman,' he said, pointing at Matalin, dressed smartly in red. 'If you were married to something as fine as that, would you go home and talk about Gennifer Flowers?'

"The audience roared its approval, Matalin smiled and, in that one moment, James Carville was unmasked: At the age of 51, the unabashed defender of the left, the doggedly loyal Clintonite, had become domesticated.

"Does that leave the Democrats without their loudest, most articulate voice against the Republicans in this presidential election year? You be the judge.

"We began our conversation by talking about Carville's new career as an actor."

[Q] Playboy: You've been on the set of a movie for two days now. How do you like working with Hollywood people?

[A] Carville: It's like I've been telling them: If you were to put all the people in Washington in Hollywood and all the people in Hollywood in Washington, the rest of the country would never know the difference. Or put it this way: Being in the Marine Corps and working on political campaigns is perfect training for working in the movies. Everything is late and screwed up.

[A] But, no, it's fun. It really is.

[Q] Playboy: Some people would say there's something wrong with mixing politics and Hollywood. Some would even charge that, in an election year, you've compromised your credibility by acting in a movie.

[A] Carville: Yeah, most of the people who say that are admirers of Ronald Reagan [laughs].

[A] You know, I'm not a philosophical person or anything like that, but politics touches people's lives in many different ways all over the world. Is there a case to be made against those in political life who choose to become celebrities? Yeah. Am I the person to make that case? No.

[Q] Playboy: So maybe you're just proving that there's no difference between show business and politics.

[A] Carville: [Grinning] That's right. Politics is show business for ugly people.

[Q] Playboy: The Chicago Tribune once said of you: "Carville is all nerve endings and attitude, a brash and profane Cajun with a mobile face, a weakness for scotch whiskey and a mother named Miss Nippy."

[A] Carville: I take serious issue with that. I have a weakness for bourbon whiskey, too. And gin and red wine.

[Q] Playboy: You once said you would never run for anything but the state line. Now, this is the Playboy Interview, James. Are you letting us know there's something secret in your past?

[A] Carville: Hmm. Do you think I never bounced a check? Or made a forward remark to a subordinate? Or inhaled?

[Q] Playboy: Whoa. We know about your check-bouncing days, but what about that subordinate?

[A] Carville: Well, that's all in the past. I'm happily married with a daughter now.

[Q] Playboy: Fair enough. Let's move along. You have a pretty famous temper, especially when you're dealing with the media. Sam Donaldson once said--

[A] Carville: [Smiles] What did my old friend Sam have to say?

[Q] Playboy: He told Larry King that whenever you are asked a tough question you don't want to answer, you go into a rage, saying: "How can you believe this bunch of junk?" or "Is this all you have to do with your time?"

[A] Carville: Certainly there are some questions I don't want to answer, but there's an old saying and it's true: There are no bad questions, only bad answers. There's also a sense that if vou are big enough to play in this league, you're big enough to take the questions. And of course, the appropriate answer to questions such as the ones Sam asks is, You're spending too much time on X--it's irrelevant to what people want to know." That's what is called "turning the question." And where is it written, anyway, that the interviewer has to be in total control of the interview? The interviewee can try to turn the interview to his or her agenda.

[Q] Playboy: We'll try to remember that.

[A] Carville: Sam is a damn good reporter--a tough reporter--and he understands that a good interview subject isn't just going to sit there and answer his questions word for word.

[Q] Playboy: Cynics would call that dodging the truth.

[A] Carville: Some people would say that. Others would say it's cynical for the media to keep asking the kinds of questions people consider irrelevant.

[A] As I see it, the larger point here is that in a political discussion, neither the interviewer nor the interviewee is on a higher moral plane. If you're being interviewed and you're constantly evading, the ultimate arbiter of that will be the listeners, the viewers or the readers. And they'll say, you know, "That guy is just full of shit." If the question being asked is fact-relevant, then it requires a fact-relevant answer. But if the question is irrelevant, the interviewee has the right to point that out.

[Q] Playboy: But you do admit that part of your job is to "spin" the truth?

[A] Carville: Certainly. If you're interviewing me on television or in Playboy or in a newspaper, I'm going to put the most faithful light I possibly can on the president. I can't think of anybody who has been better to me, nicer to me or has given me more of a chance to be at the top of the world than President Clinton. And I hope I don't let him down. Does that mean I agree with everything he does? No, I don't. But, you know, he's not there to please me. He has to do what he thinks he needs to do.

[Q] Playboy: But we're spinning off the topic again. Do we, as Americans, lose something important if we can't count on people like you to tell us the plain truth?

[A] Carville: No, because people know. If somebody reading this magazine is too stupid to understand that I have the president's interests at heart, then he's probably too stupid to get this far in the interview. I mean, if you're looking to me for objectivity, then put the magazine down, OK?

[A] I am not an objective guy. I am a guy with a point of view. I represent the interests of those I work for. People understand that. I don't pretend to be an impartial observer. I'm not. There's an adage in politics: If your guy is in trouble, throw water. If the other guy is in trouble, throw kerosene.

[Q] Playboy: In November 1992 you watched as your finely tuned campaign transformed into the office of the president-elect. How is running a campaign different from the actual art of governing, once you win?

[A] Carville: On election night, when you win, you get to breathe the most rarefied air on earth. The thing that makes political campaigns different from any other endeavor is that one moment, election night. Most other things go on. This magazine, for instance, is going to put out an issue in July. Then it's going to put out an issue in August. And, of course, its goal is to be around in the year 2006, too. A political campaign, on the other hand, builds itself up, explodes and then ends. That's the aphrodisiac of it. That's why when people start working on political campaigns, it's hard for them to do something else. That's how you get the term political junkie. That's why you say the [political] "bug" bites somebody. You need a fix. And that is completely different from governing, which is a process that goes on and on.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever done anything in a campaign that you later regretted?

[A] Carville: Well, when the end of my life is approaching, I'm sure there will be lots of things I will seek redemption for. But in terms of the kinds of campaigns I've run and the relationships I've had, when the great scorer comes to my name, I think he'll say, "Hey, you did more good than bad." But did I ever try to drive a story a certain way? Sure. Have I ever been manipulative? The answer is yes.

[Q] Playboy: Like the Bob Casey--William Scranton gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania in 1986? During that election you wanted to put a commercial together saying your opponent had smoked pot. You even leaked that to a reporter.

[A] Carville: No. No. No. It's a little more complicated than that. Casey said he would never bring up our opponent's previous use of drugs. So another guy and I were sitting around, and I said, "Well, let's just tell somebody that we want to make the commercial, but our candidate won't let us." And we got the story in the paper. [Laughs] I mean, yeah, it was manipulation.

[Q] Playboy: And unethical?

[A] Carville: I don't know how unethical it was. If you ask me if it was my finest hour, then no, it wasn't. And in all honesty, it didn't turn out to be a huge story. Still, it was a close race. I don't think it won the election for us or anything like that. And given the number of questions I've had to answer about it, if we had it to do over again, we probably wouldn't.

[Q] Playboy: In any case, that was your first big victory. Then you got on a hot streak, and in 1992 you hooked up with Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

[A] Carville: And he gave me my big chance.

[Q] Playboy: But the campaign got in trouble early. You actually coached the Clintons on their 60 Minutes appearance in which they addressed his alleged marital infidelity.

[A] Carville: Let me give credit where credit is due. The impetus behind that was the president and first lady. They both said, "We need to get in front of this." And it just so happens that 60 Minutes was on right after the Super Bowl.

[Q] Playboy: That must have been a particularly tense time.

[A] Carville: You have no idea. I felt like I couldn't win. I had no idea how tired I would get--how tired everybody was. There's just no way to make people understand how much you go through during something like that.

[A] That whole New Hampshire primary in 1992 was something. Whenever you said, "I can't take any more of this," there was always more to take.

[Q] Playboy: What did you ultimately learn from it?

[A] Carville: You got a year? I'll tell you, I believe that, basically, my whole life had been a preparation for that. The one thing my folks drilled into me was: Don't be a quitter. If you get into a bad job, don't quit. If you start to work on something, go all out for the team. Don't quit.

[Q] Playboy: In the Academy Award-nominated documentary The War Room, you break down and cry during your speech to the victorious Clinton campaign workers. What brought on the tears?

[A] Carville: Knowing that I started working toward something when I was 38 years old, and ten years later, realizing that I was at the top of what I set out to do. Remember, I had lived and worked with these people--some of them for ten months. It just hit me. I remember when I got up to give the talk, there was a lot I wanted to say, and I wanted to be eloquent. But I couldn't get any of it out. And I'll never forget when I sat down, I said to myself, "I blew it." But when the president saw the movie, he called me to say how proud he was of me, and how I had raised the truth in that speech.

[Q] Playboy: And now you have essentially made yourself a national figure by helping deliver the White House back to the Democrats. But let's discuss the opposition. Someone once said, "Republicans are sore losers, but they don't even have the sense to admit when they've been defeated. And for that they are to be both loathed and admired." True?

[A] Carville: Well, I loathe them and admire them, too. But I will tell you one thing I truly admire about the Republicans: They work their butts off.

[Q] Playboy: Really?

[A] Carville: Look, I'm tired of the Democrats whining and complaining about Rush Limbaugh. I don't agree with Rush Limbaugh, but he gets up every morning and goes to work. He throws his boots on and he's got a job to do. Then the Democrats whine and complain about the Christian right. Well, the Christian right raises its money and does its thing. I don't want to whine about them--I want to fight them. Understand? I think they're wrong, but I don't say, "Oh my God, they're here! They're here!" They go out and organize as hard as they can, and they're beating us not because their ideas are better but because they're outworking us.

[A] If you want to see the whiningest, complainingest bunch of do-good weenies, look at the liberals. My message is: Quit complaining. Get off your butts and organize. Get out your checkbook. Write letters to the editor. Do the things Republicans do.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying you admire the way Republicans run for office?

[A] Carville: I don't admire the way the Republicans twist the facts. But, yes, I admire their work ethic. As I've said, the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans go about doing the wrong things in the right way, and the Democrats go about doing the right things in the wrong way.

[Q] Playboy: Let's run through some of the president's critics, starting with Bob Dole.

[A] Carville: I don't know about Bob Dole. I don't think he's a bad man--I guess I can grow to dislike him. But his time to be president is gone. He reminds me of what I once said about George Bush: When I look at an old calendar, it reminds me of Bob Dole.

[Q] Playboy: Newt Gingrich.

[A] Carville: You know, I've tried to work up some human feelings for Newt Gingrich. I've really tried. And what I've come up with is being within a centimeter of feeling sorry for him. And then I remember him saying that I--and the people who believe as I do--caused [convicted murderer] Susan Smith to push her children into that lake, when, in fact, she had been living with a Republican official who was a member of the Christian Coalition and who was molesting her. Then I got mad.

[A] And as if that weren't enough, Gingrich then said that this horrible case in Chicago--where somebody, I think, ripped the unborn child out of a woman--happened because of people like me and my friends and those I work for.

[A] So deep down inside I just can't muster any sympathy for Newt Gingrich. I don't wish him ill health, I don't wish ill of his family and I hope his daughters and wife love him. Other than that, I can't think of anything I wouldn't like to visit upon him.

[Clearly agitated] I mean, I would like to see him defeated. I would like to see him politically disgraced. I would like to see him run out of town.

[Q] Playboy: You're angry.

[A] Carville: This is something I've really struggled with. That man has been so callous and has never once apologized. Never once expressed any remorse about what he's said about the president and Mrs. Clinton. And then he talks about having family responsibility. Hell, his own church took up a collection to take care of his kids. He served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery. But I want to be clear: I don't wish him any unhappiness in his family life. Other than that, let the rain fall.

[Q] Playboy: Is Gingrich a secret weapon for the Democratic Party?

[A] Carville: He's not very secret.

[Q] Playboy: Let's move on. Pat Buchanan.

[A] Carville: Like most people in Washington, I'm torn about Pat Buchanan. In one sense, I find him to be a personable enough guy, and I like his sense of personal values. But I'm probably closer philosophically to Newt Gingrich than I am to Pat Buchanan. [Laughs]

[A] I will say this for Buchanan: He understands more than any other Republican what has happened to the workingman in this country. Still, we have entirely different ideas about how to solve the problem.

[Q] Playboy: Is political dialogue in this country getting more or less rancorous?

[A] Carville: It's definitely filled with more rancor. I think it's gotten real bad. But I hope the political marketplace will work its magic. We're already seeing signs that people are tired of politicians' mudslinging. Again, look at the Republicans--I've got to keep coming back to this. No Democrat ever blamed a Republican because someone drove her kids into a lake or ripped a fetus out of somebody. I mean, it was a Republican in Kentucky who had the first lady hung in effigy at a rally. It was a Republican who said the president better have a bodyguard to come to North Carolina [for]his personal safety]. Senator Jesse Helms said that.

[Q] Playboy: What does that say about the state of our national debate?

[A] Carville: Well, it certainly doesn't say anything for Jesse Helms. I hope the people of North Carolina will get rid of him next term. That will say something nice about the people of North Carolina.

[A] But, no, the problem with the Republicans is that they want everyone to live life the way they want to. As long as you think the way they do, you're OK. Me, I think the best way to have a happy life is to take what the Republicans say and do the opposite. But in the end, the more people involved in the process of democracy, the better. I mean, the founding fathers were fine and everything, but they weren't perfect. You had to be a white male property owner to vote. Those were the good old days? We should get as many people educated and involved as possible. That's democracy. I think it's a great system. I love it.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk a little more about the media. Do you think the press has been fair to President Clinton?

[A] Carville: No.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Carville: I'm not sure they've been fair to any president, but I'd say they have been more unfair to President Clinton. I think most of them actually believe it's wrong to be fair. I'll give you my favorite example: Every news organization in this country reported--and every American believed--that President Clinton held up air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut. That was totally fabricated. And when I tell people that, they look stunned. Now, I have to give Newsday credit: Someone went back and got the FAA records and discovered that no commercial aircraft were held up for any length of time. Someone at the FAA even said, "All they had to do was ask us." It's not even the way the commercial aircraft system works.

[Q] Playboy: So how does a story like that get started?

[A] Carville: Exactly how they said it got started: The reporters were sitting on the ground and the president made them wait. They wanted to go home, so they got mad and decided to burn him. But the point is, after the media became aware of what the real story was, only three or four [newspapers] bothered to correct it. No network did.

[Q] Playboy: None of this is new. Many politicians claim that the press is out to get them. But look at it from the other side: Why would the press want to pick on Clinton like that?

[A] Carville: At the time, the press had decided that President Clinton had gone Hollywood and that he'd sort of lost interest in the people who elected him. So this story fulfilled their prophecy. Of course, they weren't interested in the accuracy of the story--only in fulfilling their prophecy. That's the real weakness of the press. They decide on a point of view and then look for information to back it up. And they ignore any facts that show otherwise.

[Q] Playboy: If that's the case, why do the conservatives believe that all of us in the press are nothing but bootlicking liberals?

[A] Carville: There is no liberal bias in the press. There's sort of a "bad-news bias." Like my friend Sam Donaldson once said: No one ever reports that a thousand airplanes landed safely today. My point is, if you're going to report a crash, there actually ought to have been a crash. Don't make one up.

[A] Let me give you another example: the famous Gennifer Flowers tape. All three networks reported on [the taped telephone call with Clinton's alleged former mistress] Gennifer Flowers. When the media found out that the tape was edited in 12 different places, not one of them mentioned that. And if you ask them why they didn't, they look at you like you're crazy: "Why would we do that? That would make us look bad." That's not fair.

[Q] Playboy: Another topic the president is frequently forced to address has nothing to do with his job performance. Rather, it's about his wife. On one hand, Mrs. Clinton has been criticized for everything from her handling of health care to her hairdos. On the other hand, and I'll just quote my grandmother here: "Hillary Clinton ought to tell her critics to go to hell and mind their own business." Do you agree?

[A] Carville: Well, I have to make a confession here. I'm a big admirer of Mrs. Clinton. And I think your grandmother sees something in her that a lot of people who don't know her well don't see: She is a very soft, caring lady. That doesn't mean she can't be tough. A lot of people don't understand that when Mrs. Clinton came along, women were bursting into the professional workplace and, by and large, had to be tough. I mean, they didn't have glass ceilings then--they had steel ceilings. Nowadays, people tend to look at these women and say, "Gee, they're kind of abrasive." Well, these women are abrasive for a purpose. They have had to be.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't it also the issue of how men are perceived versus how women are perceived? Hillary Clinton appears abrasive, but if she were a man, she wouldn't seem that way.

[A] Carville: Right. And I don't find Hillary Clinton abrasive at all.

[Q] Playboy: Cold?

[A] Carville: No. I think that, for good and compelling reasons, she limits the number of people she trusts--and because of that, she is misunderstood. It feeds on itself to some extent. If people would take the time to understand her, they'd see she's warm and very pro-family. In fact, she's a lot more conservative on certain social issues than one might think.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us one thing you know about Mrs. Clinton that the rest of us should know.

[A] Carville: OK, I'll tell you something. You have all of these pontificating, lecturing, holier-than-thou Republicans screaming how pro-family they are, how moral they are, how people ought to accept responsibility. Then this great freshman class of 1994 came to Washington to change things. Well, the only thing they've changed is their spouses.

[A] Now, what did Hillary Clinton do when she was first lady of Arkansas? She moved her parents to Arkansas so they could be closer to her and be part of her family. Yet all these great Republicans want to put her down--they get on the pulpit and preach about Mrs. Clinton being antifamily. It's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. Absolutely absurd.

[A] And I'll tell you another thing--and my wife, who as we know is a Republican, agrees with me on this: We both admire the way the Clintons have brought up their daughter, Chelsea. They have done a magnificent job of raising her.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the president's performance after the election. One of the first big issues he tried to tackle was gays in the military, but his strategy backfired, and he was roundly criticized for it. Was it a mistake to bring up that issue so soon?

[A] Carville: It hurt the president politically, so, yes, it was a political mistake. But I still believe he exercised some moral authority on the issue, even at his own cost. And I don't think we've seen the final chapter on that yet.

[Q] Playboy: How so?

[A] Carville: Let's say that one day something happens and we need a president who can speak to the issue of discrimination. I think President Clinton can use his moral authority to say, "I have stood up and fought discrimination. Even at a cost to myself." I don't know. Maybe it will happen after his second term in office. Look at President Carter. His insistence on human rights was vehemently criticized throughout his presidency. It affected his foreign policy and hurt him politically. But now he has the moral authority to represent his country on those issues. So, the act hasn't played out yet for President Clinton. We don't know where it's going to end.

[Q] Playboy: We will ask again: Is this spin control?

[A] Carville: That's not spin. [Pause] Well, that is spin. But it's fact-based spin.

[Q] Playboy: OK. Another early problem in the Clinton administration was universal health care. It failed miserably. Why?

[A] Carville: Because we didn't do a good enough job explaining it to people. What happened there was simple: People didn't believe the truth.

[Q] Playboy: What was the truth?

[A] Carville: That universal health care would have been cheaper. It is cheaper to insure everyone.

[Q] Playboy: So what was the problem?

[A] Carville: We said we could insure more people and it would cost less money. And that is, in fart, what would happen. But the problem is, we were asking people to believe something that rubs against the grain of what they think.

[Q] Playboy: Let's be honest, James. Even people well versed on the subject of health care would need a Harvard expert to decipher the plan the president put forward.

[A] Carville: OK, but you need a Harvard expert for the current system, too, and people still can't figure out how it works. Look at Hawaii. About the only thing cheaper than sunlight and pineapples out there is health care. They insure just about everyone. The reason? It's cheaper to insure everyone because the costs go down as the benefits go up.

[A] But the central question is: How do you view health care? Do you view it like food--where, you know, some people can afford to eat at a fine restaurant and others can afford only fast food? If so, should we be satisfied with that? Can we take the huge discrepancies in the amount and quality of health care we receive? If my baby were to get leukemia, would she have any more right to live than someone who can't afford health care? I don't think we're willing to accept that in this country.

[Q] Playboy: Certainly no sane person would accept it.

[A] Carville: Well, that's not the way the insurance lobby looks at it. The insurance lobby is out of step with what most Americans want and need.

[Q] Playboy: But getting back to the point, you're saying the failure of the president's universal health care plan wasn't his fault--it was the fault of those responsible for getting his message out?

[A] Carville: The truth is, I don't know if it's the fault of the White House and people like me who are supposed to get the president's message out, or the fault of the people in the media who are supposed to report on what's going on in this country. Like most things, I assume it's a combination of both.

[Q] Playboy: Can the same thing be said for Whitewater?

[A] Carville: No. [Angry] Do you know there have been more hearings on Whitewater than there have been on Watergate, Social Security and Medicare combined?

[Q] Playboy: Apparently this is another hot button for you.

[A] Carville: People should understand that the Republican Party is using congressional power and spending time and money on something you shouldn't care about--i.e., Whitewater--when things you should care about--i.e., education and health care--are ignored. Let me tell you: If the Republican Party spent a little more time educating people, keeping this environment going in the right direction and bringing more health care to people, we could be a long way toward solving those problems. But the Republican Party isn't doing that, because it has a singular interest and obsession, and that's Whitewater.

[Q] Playboy: That sounds an awful lot like what the Republicans said about the Democrats during Watergate.

[A] Carville: Exactly. So why don't they just admit that this is payback time? They're not doing very well right now, this is an election year and they need the fuel. I can understand that, so let's get on with it. I mean, does anybody in America believe that senators such as Al D'Amato are going to give one hoot about Whitewater after the November elections? Of course not. D'Amato is Dole's national campaign chairman, so they ought to make the Dole campaign pay for the Whitewater hearings. No, this is a purely political thing being dragged out just to help the Republican Party.

[Q] Playboy: Then again, with or without opposition, how effective can a president be? Dennis Miller recently said that the president--not just President Clinton, but any president--doesn't really make a difference in how things turn out. The office, he said, is nothing more than that of a PR flack. A lot of younger voters believe that.

[A] Carville: Dennis Miller. I mean, so what? My gut reaction is that Dennis Miller is just somebody else with an opinion. But I believe this president has made a difference. Ask the 44,000 felons who've been stopped from buying handguns. Ask the hundreds of thousands of people who have family and medical leave today if the president has made a difference. Ask the 15 million people who get a tax break under the earned-income tax credit. Ask the hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are not victims of crime because the crime rate has gone down--ask them if the president has made a difference. So you have some bigmouth flapping his jaws on national TV. So what? I mean, Dennis Miller doesn't know what's going on in America any more than he knows about flying to the moon.

[Q] Playboy: But getting back to his point, there are a growing number of young people who seem to believe that one person, even the president, can't make a difference.

[A] Carville: I know, so I try to change the people's minds so they know just how much President Clinton has done since he's been in office.

[Q] Playboy: So tell us what he's done.

[A] Carville: I already mentioned some of it, but Bill Clinton is also the first president since World War Two to reduce the deficit three years in a row. Also: 8 million jobs created, a sustained economic recovery, a record number of small businesses started, the Brady Bill, the assault weapons ban, the first--albeit mild--increase in students' test scores, and family and medical leave, which means people can go home and take care of their children and their parents. Then look at the rest of the world. Democracy has been restored in Haiti, nuclear weapons have been turned away in the Ukraine and we're working on peace in Northern Ireland. So far we've stopped the war in Bosnia--a war that has killed 250,000 people. Yes, in this process others may be killed. But I hope very few will be Americans.

[A] Look, the accomplishments are there, the record is there, the performance is there. And the more we accentuate that performance, the more people will see the job our president has done.

[Q] Playboy: OK, let's take a break and talk about the really important issues, like sex. Your character in the roman a clef Primary Colors certainly got laid a lot.

[A] Carville: Yeah, I wish it were true.

[Q] Playboy: So that means, no, you didn't get laid a lot during the 1992 campaign?

[A] Carville: [Laughs] No, I didn't. Because I'm not as needy as all that. And besides, a presidential campaign is a lot of hard work. You don't have time.

[Q] Playboy: Then explain this: In one of the more memorable scenes in the book, your character pulls out his dick and shows it to a campaign worker, and she says, "I have never seen one quite that old."

[A] Carville: That happened, but it was my shirttail.

[Q] Playboy: You whipped out your shirttail?

[A] Carville: [Laughs] Yeah. I kind of stuck my shirttail through my zipper and said to this woman, "Hey, look-a-here." And she was a real cool-comeback person. She said, "Gee, I've never seen one so old." It was actually nothing but a shirttail. Hey, there's a lot of horsing around on a campaign, just like there is on, you know, movie sets or anywhere else.

[Q] Playboy: So in reality, the campaign pretty much messed up your love life with your future wife [former Bush campaign strategist Mary Matalin].

[A] Carville: Put it this way: If anybody can figure out a way to have a love life when one person lives in Little Rock and the other person lives in Washington, D.C., let me know.

[Q] Playboy: So how has life been for the Carvilles since the 1992 election?

[A] Carville: Very good. My wife is a really cool woman. She's fun, she's nice-looking, she's very supportive of her husband and has a real sassy flair about her. I mean, every now and then I'll be watching her at some social event or something and I just stop and think about it. Then I get this smile on my face and say, "Goddamn, you old coon ass, (continued on page 151) James Carville (continued from page 60) you married you one hell of a cool lady." You know what I mean? She's really got it. Of course, that's not to say she can't rag on you pretty good and drive you crazy. But she has a joie de vivre about her. I really admire that.

[Q] Playboy: You, the great Southern orator, actually had a hard time popping the question?

[A] Carville: [Laughs] Yeah, well, my wife wound up telling me that I was going to do it.

[Q] Playboy: She did?

[A] Carville: Yes. She ordered the ring, and when she got it she told me, "You're going to ask me to marry you. This is where you're going to ask me, and this is what you're going to say."

[Q] Playboy: Like if she were running a campaign.

[A] Carville: She runs me pretty good.

[Q] Playboy: The wedding was in New Orleans, with Sonny Bono and Rush Limbaugh in attendance. Sounds like it was a sideshow.

[A] Carville: Yeah, Timothy Hutton and Al Hirt were there, too. I'll tell you one thing: Nobody had more fun at that wedding than I did. It became known in Louisiana as Da Weddin'. D-A W-E-D-D-I-N. Man, we had a great time. It started with a cocktail party, then when it was time to get married we just opened the doors and people carried their drinks into where the ceremony was. After the wedding we had a parade--and you know New Orleans loves a parade. We had a brass band, and everybody just kind of marched down Bourbon Street. People were throwing things and jazz music was playing. A lot of fun.

[Q] Playboy: Do you consider yourself a lucky man?

[A] Carville: I sure do. I don't know what I did to deserve all this--probably very little. But it's like Jack Benny said: "I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that, either." [Laughs] So I'll take it.

[Q] Playboy: As we speak, your new book is ranked number three on the best-seller list--and rising. With the election approaching, the timing is certainly fortunate.

[A] Carville: Well, I cannot tell a lie. I planned it that way. And it seems these liberal books are starting to catch on with the public.

[Q] Playboy: Why, do you suppose?

[A] Carville: I think people are sick and tired of hearing the Republicans and their people distort the facts, and now they're looking for--

[Q] Playboy: The Democrats to also distort the facts?

[A] Carville: [Laughs] Well, they're looking to us to straighten the facts out. I think this book goes to the heart of that.

[Q] Playboy: How did you come up with the title We're Right, They're Wrong?

[A] Carville: Well, you know how they talk about how rancorous today's politics are, right? Actually, I got the title from a speech Harry Truman gave in 1948. He said: "They're wrong and we're right and I'm going to prove it to you." So I put my own little spin on that.

[Q] Playboy: Naturally.

[A] Carville: And I did that because Democrats have become so timid--and progressives have become so scared--that we are afraid to fight back. We don't take pride in any of our accomplishments. We're timid about our philosophy that work itself is sacred and noble and an inherently worthwhile thing. The Republican ideal has become a chic fad, and we've forgotten the workingman. I want my message to the Democratic Party to be, "Don't just sit there--fight the Republicans. Fight for what we believe in."

[Q] Playboy: Let's discuss your career. You hit rock bottom while working on the Gary Hart campaign in 1984. You were heading back to your hotel in Maryland. You were standing on a curb on Massachusetts Avenue in the middle of a rainstorm when your garment bag broke and all of your belongings fell into the muddy street. The story goes, you had about $6 to your name and just sat down in the rain and cried.

[A] Carville: That happened. I could take you right now and show you the exact spot where it happened. I was 38 years old; I was trying to work my way into the campaign and didn't have much money. I wouldn't have known what a health insurance policy looked like if someone hit me on the head with one. But I did have more than $6--I think it was something like $36. And I called a friend and said, "Man, I can't live like this no more. You got to send me five grand. I can't leech off people like this. I'm just out." He sent me the money. I healed up.

[Q] Playboy: How did you eventually rise above that?

[A] Carville: I have self-confidence, and I got that from my family. Even when I was a stone loser in life at 38, I never lost a sense of confidence. And I'm not talking about the confidence to solve a calculus problem or any such thing as that. I know my limitations. But I'll tell you what: I've never wanted to be anybody in life other than myself. And that was before I became the husband of Mary Matalin, and the subject of documentaries and an actor in movies.

[Q] Playboy: You credit your parents for your confident streak. What was it about growing up in Carville, Louisiana that made you so self-assured?

[A] Carville: I had a very happy childhood and just assumed everyone else did too. I can say that with every shred of honesty I have. I cannot remember an unhappy moment as a child.

[A] I was lucky: I had a horse when I was six years old. My grandparents lived down the road--I could stay with them if I wanted to. I was loved and never wanted for anything. And to tell the truth, I was kind of oblivious to what was going on in the world around me.

[Q] Playboy: Until you read To Kill a Mockingbird. Then everything changed.

[A] Carville: It's just that I had never really thought about things like race. I mean, you had white folks and you had black folks, and white folks got things and black folks didn't. Thus it was, thus it is, thus it shall be. And I didn't question it; it was sort of a benign world I lived in. I didn't pay attention to the fact that some people are robbed of their dignity.

[A] But then I read To Kill a Mockingbird and what happened to Tom Robinson, and I knew instinctively that (a) it happened to a lot of other people and (b) it probably happened to people right around where I grew up--and that it would happen again. And that caused me to question what I'd always accepted. I was 16 years old, and that started a process that changed my view of the world.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get back to the issues. You're one of the few people we know who would argue that the federal government has done something right. Why, then, do most people believe that we should shrink it, weaken it or do away with it altogether?

[A] Carville: Look at all the good the federal government has done. In the past 30 years, 50 percent of the money spent by the federal government has gone to three things: defense, Social Security and Medicare. We won the Cold War; the federal government did that. The poverty rate among the elderly in this country has gone from 27 percent in 1965 to about 11 percent today. In terms of Medicare, the only health statistic that the U.S. beats the world in is life expectancy. These are historic, societal achievements. And in a country known for health care that lags behind its prosperity, the way we deliver health care to our elderly is the finest in the world.

[Q] Playboy: Still, some would say those gains have been made at the cost of our future. The deficit is at record levels, people believe we're taxed too much--

[A] Carville: Hold on. As a fraction of our economy, we have the lowest deficit of any industrialized country in the world, with the possible exception of Norway. And we've had the lowest taxes of any industrialized country in the world, tied only with Japan.

[Q] Playboy: Then why do Americans think the federal government is failing us?

[A] Carville: Because the party that has created these programs and ought to be standing on a mountaintop taking credit for them--the Democratic Party--has turned into a bunch of well-meaning weenies who apologize for everything we do. I don't apologize for my party's giving us the healthiest elderly population in the world--I celebrate it! I don't apologize for the fact that the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore--I celebrate it! It was a Democratic president who came up with the policy of containment. And it was a Democratic Congress--

[Q] Playboy: Wait a minute. Most people credit Ronald Reagan with winning the Cold War.

[A] Carville: First of all, Carter started the defense buildup. And if you go back, it was Truman's policy of containment that did the Russians in.

[Q] Playboy: That's not an easy sell.

[A] Carville: Fine. I'll be glad to give some credit to the Republicans. But, by and large, the Democratic Party came up with the strategy, and we ought to take credit for it. We ought to fight to be recognized for it.

[Q] Playboy: More spin control?

[A] Carville: That's not spin control. That's just history. Facts.

[Q] Playboy: Then maybe the Democratic Party should speak up more, because the majority of Americans believe the federal government is screwed up.

[A] Carville: Can you believe the environmental successes in this country in the past 25 years? Who beat the Mafia? I mean, who basically drove a spike through the heart of the Mafia? Who built the interstate highway system? Who funded the research that eventually defeated polio?

[Q] Playboy: Let's guess.

[A] Carville: The federal government. There were two things I was scared of when I was a child: nuclear bombs from Russia and getting polio. My child does not have to be scared of either one. Who the hell do the people think did that?

[A] There's a mentality in this country--and it's fueled by the Republicans and ignited by the press--that the federal government has never done any good. That's just damn crazy! That is totally, totally wrong.

[Q] Playboy: In this year's State of the Union address, the president challenged Americans to take greater responsibility for their own lives. At the same time, though, he recommended the introduction of the V chip--a device in television sets that will block out certain programming--as well as uniforms for schoolchildren.

[A] Carville: But those are examples of how you can--

[Q] Playboy: Wait a second. Our question is, why do we need either one of those things? If we're taking responsibility for our own lives, why do we need the federal government butting in? Everyone knows it's impossible to legislate people into being more responsible. They'll either be more responsible or they won't.

[A] Carville: You know what? That's the same thing they said [about integration]. "You can't legislate putting together people of both races." Shit, you can't, but what you can do is legislate to empower people to exercise responsibility. It's just another tool. All the V chip does is let parents program their TV so their kids can't watch certain programs. That gives you, the parent, power to exercise more responsibility over your children. Shit, I may not want my child to watch, you know, Jerry Falwell on TV. Well, now I can V chip him right out. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: If I'm a responsible person, I'm going to be that way no matter what you legislate. And if I'm not, there's no way you can legislate me into being different. So why waste time with things like the V chip?

[A] Carville: All the V chip does is give you another tool--an on/off switch if you're not around to turn off the television set. With the V chip, you can still be responsible for what your children watch.

[Q] Playboy: What about school uniforms?

[A] Carville: That was just a recommendation, because the federal government doesn't really have anything to do with what children wear in various school districts. But if I were on a school board, I would be for school uniforms.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Carville: It runs deeper than you think. One of the things we're losing as a nation is a sense of commonality, a sense of national purpose, a sense of experiencing the same thing. We're becoming increasingly fragmented by income in this nation, and that's a distressing trend.

[A] When I was a schoolteacher, everybody was roughly the same economically. But not anymore. School uniforms take a lot of pressure off children. They may not be for every school district, but they will work for some.

[Q] Playboy: You're talking about treating the symptom of the problem rather than the cause.

[A] Carville: Sometimes you have to treat the symptom. I mean, you can have an infection that causes a headache, so you take an antibiotic and an aspirin at the same time. In fact, people do it all the time. But, no, you're right. The best way to address the cause is to help kids do better in school and to enhance their education. School uniforms help in a minor way. Do I think they're a panacea? No, I don't.

[Q] Playboy: Gordon Liddy told us the difference between a liberal and a conservative is that "a liberal is someone who wants to do good for other people with your money, not his. A conservative believes the best thing you can do for most people is to leave them the hell alone."

[A] Carville: Well, I'm a liberal and I pay taxes just like conservatives do. But you know, Gordon Liddy and people like him who say they want to leave people alone also want to make it illegal for women to have abortions. They want to make it illegal to buy certain kinds of books or magazines. The truth is, they want to have individual freedom when it suits them, but not when it doesn't suit them. So I don't know where Gordon Liddy gets off thinking he pays any more taxes than I do.

[A] Listen, I think we ought to help one another out. We ought to provide opportunities. We ought to have public education. We ought to make job training tax-deductible. We ought to secure people's retirement.

[Q] Playboy: But, what's wrong with those who say, "Hey, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps--why don't you?"

[A] Carville: Yeah, I've heard that argument. But how many of those who say that have actually pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps? Phil Gramm likes to talk that way, yet I don't think he's ever earned a dollar that didn't come from the taxpayers. With the possible exception of money he got from investing in porno flicks, the man has been living off government paychecks his whole adult life. He's so hypocrifical.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying the self-made man is a myth?

[A] Carville: No. Look closely. Some people are self-made, but not many of them are Republican officeholders. That's my point. A lot of them went to public schools and got public funds. If they're all so self-made, let them turn down the mortgage-interest deduction. Let them say they don't want it.

[A] No, I'm not saying the self-made man is a myth. I'm saying damn few self-made men are Republicans.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about a few social issues. In We're Right, They're Wrong, you take a pretty strong position on single-parent families. Tell us about that.

[A] Carville: The two biggest mistakes we made in this country--mistakes that have long-term consequences--are: (a) promoting the idea that two-parent families are somehow irrelevant to raising children; and (b) Reaganomics--which, of course, we'll be paying for for about a gazillion years.

[Q] Playboy: The Republicans are clearly responsible for Reaganomics. But don't liberal Democrats have to take responsibility for the former?

[A] Carville: Let me just say it right out: That sort of Seventies movement--which was basically a movement among a lot of liberals who said a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle--was just flat-ass wrong.

[Q] Playboy: And yet it became quite fashionable in the late Sixties and early Seventies to try on a marriage like you would a sweater--and if it didn't fit, you got rid of it.

[A] Carville: Right. Well, this philosophy was created by the liberals. And I must say that conservatives practice it more than we do. [Laughs] They take advantage of it. Still, the people who thought it up were well meaning but wrong.

[Q] Playboy: You're sounding an awful lot like a conservative yourself.

[A] Carville: No. I am a traditionalist. There's a difference. When you say social conservative, to my ear that's someone who is, like, antiblack or antigay, you know? A social traditionalist, however, is someone who, as I say in my book, believes that two-parent families aren't always possible but are almost always preferable. That's my opinion, anyway. Liberals must take responsibility for this whole single-parent movement. We were wrong. OK? Admit it. There. Move on.

[Q] Playboy: You also call yourself a fiscal liberal. Care to explain that?

[A] Carville: I believe government should invest in its people. After all, the most valuable, most sacred thing you can give--other than your life--is your labor. And the government has a responsibility to see that people can make the most of themselves. So the programs that are most sacred to me are the ones that reward work, the ones that give people an opportunity to enhance their ability to work and the ones that give people security after they retire.

[Q] Playboy: But how do you answer the Republican charge that a lot of people take unfair advantage of these programs--that they are stealing from the government?

[A] Carville: Hey, I'm not going to say there's not waste. I'm not going to say there's not some corruption. But you don't get rid of the federal government because of it. You fix the things that don't work.

[Q] Playboy: You have coined a phrase about all this. You call Democrats who believe as you do "5-65 Democrats."

[A] Carville: That's right. I had a nephew who busted out of school and didn't have a job. And my mother said, "Look, there are only two acceptable things for a human being to do between the ages of 6 and 66, and that is to have a job or be in training for a job." Now, I didn't want to use those numbers because I didn't want to get a bunch of devil-worship calls about, you know, 6-6-6. So, I just arbitrarily changed the spread to 5--65.

[A] Look, there's nothing that makes a statement about us as a people more than our national government, and that government should tell people that acquiring a job and performing labor is sacred and important. That government should provide the tools that we need to perform.

[Q] Playboy: And the Republican answer to that is: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

[A] Carville: I know that. And I agree. But you ought to keep the pond full for the horses that want to drink. And we ought to tell everyone where the pond is. And if they don't want to drink, well, then we deal with that.

[Q] Playboy: One of the things you talk about a lot is "a national sense of purpose." After he was elected, President Kennedy gave us a sense of purpose when he challenged us to get to the moon, thereby starting the space program. Why can't we have a president who will do something like that again?

[A] Carville: I hate to be a Johnny-one-note here, but if the economy were growing at four or five percent instead of two or three percent the past 30 years, maybe we could do that.

[Q] Playboy: But what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Maybe we could stimulate growth by investing in something like the space program.

[A] Carville: I think there's a widely held belief among Americans that we just can't afford those kinds of undertakings right now. We still have NASA and some remnants of the space program, but it's certainly scaled back.

[A] I like the space program. In my formative years, I felt proud to be an American because of it. I watched The Right Stuff--and actually read the book. I think John Glenn is an unbelievable hero. I loved Apollo 13. Realistically, though, I just don't think we're in a position to do much at this time.

[Q] Playboy: So how would you like to see the future of our country play out?

[A] Carville: If I had my way? I'd like people to be more tolerant. I'd like people to have a greater sense of public responsibility, a greater sense of compassion, a greater sense of taking their lives into their own hands. The clash of ideas is not necessarily a bad thing. I just think we could be more civil about it. The fact is, we tend not to confront the big issues sometimes--the role of federal government, how we deliver health care.

[A] In a democracy, particularly a democracy as mature and as great as this one, we ought to take the time.

[Q] Playboy: All of that sounds wonderful, but how do we get there? And how do you and President Clinton plan to play a part in it?

[A] Carville: I'd like to see the number of children growing up in two-parent families increase by 20 percent in the next 15 years. I'd like to see a significant expansion in educational opportunities for everybody, which would lead to a wage growth in real terms of one-and-a-half percent a year. As modest as that sounds, it would take care of more problems than any of us can imagine.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that just those two accomplishments would satisfy you?

[A] Carville: Yes. Those are my two biggest dreams for America. I'd put up with all the negative commercials, all the congressional bad-mouthing, the special-interest money and anything else I had to tolerate just to get there.

Did I ever try to drive a story a certain way? Sure. Have I ever been manipulative? The answer is yes.