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July 2009 |
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Carville, Matalin dissect ‘incomprehensible’ period of U.S. history |
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Written by Tom Chapin
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Thursday, 02 October 2008 |
Republican political strategist and consultant Mary Matalin (left) opens the first-ever First Commonwealth Endowed Lecture at IUP Wednesday in Fischer Auditorium while her husband, Democratic political strategist and consultant James Carville, looks on. (Photo by Tom Chapin/The Punxsutawney Spirit)
INDIANA — Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican strategist Mary Matalin don’t agree on much when it comes to politics, but the dueling husband-and-wife team agree on one thing about the 2008 presidential election.
“When you try to talk about this race, people say it’s historic, it’s fascinating ... it’s incomprehensible,” Carville said during a presentation he and Matalin gave Wednesday night at Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Fischer Auditorium.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Matalin said. “There’s nothing to anchor it on, no templates and no models. We don’t know what we don’t know about this cycle.”
Indeed, Carville pointed out that the race has already brought about an unprecedented number of characters, and the fact remains that come Nov. 4, Americans will elect either its first African-American president, or the first president elected over the age of 70.
Taking the podium first, Matalin — a former assistant to President George W. Bush and counselor to Vice-President Dick Cheney — said, “Every case of conventional wisdom went wrong” — in the pundits saying that Sen. John McCain could never win, and that Sen. Hillary Clinton could never lose.
Polls represent a drift, but not a dispositive for Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama, and that polls reflecting concern over the economy don’t just move constituents, but also the whole race.
What is “indisputably true,” Matalin said, is that this year’s race favors Obama, because it favors Democrats in this “change election” that is anti-incumbent and anti-establishment.
Then why isn’t Obama running away with the race?
That’s because there are still concerns about Obama’s leadership experience and abilities, Matalin said, citing three mitigating circumstances in favor of McCain.
For one, she said, McCain is a “maverick, a reformer,” and that likening a McCain administration to the present Bush administration is wrong.
Secondly, while the Obama camp believes it will win the race, that thinking gives McCain “an opening ... He sees an opportunity, he assesses it, and he acts upon it,” Matalin said.
Finally, candidates can promise change all they want, Matalin said, but asked, “Change to what? That is the dynamic to this election: Change to what?”
As for vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — who will debate Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden tonight — Matalin said she is “one of these characters that evokes deep emotions ... Love her or hate her, there’s nothing ho-hum about her.”
As for advice she would give Palin in tonight’s debate, Matalin said Palin should think of the people to whom she has already talked and with whom she has connected. Matalin said every president decides how he wants a vice-president to execute, and that will be no different if McCain is elected.
“She should define the job as it has been defined to her, not as it was defined to Dick Cheney or Al Gore,” she said.
Leaving the podium for her husband, she referred to Carville as “a soundbyte master, because he has an attention span of 30 seconds.”
“He’s great at what he does, except for when he tries to spin me,” she added.
Carville removed his jacket to make his case, saying that the American economy has entered a new chapter: Chapter 11.
He also said the 2008 presidential election is history in front of everyone’s eyes.
“There is more history going on here than any other time in this country,” he said.
It goes beyond the candidates: Obama has raised $66 million, a total that cannot be compared to totals raised by any other candidate. And the Republican National Convention was the highest rated ever.
“All of this is going on in front of us,” Carville said.
He said the last time a sitting president or vice-president was not running in the presidential election was 1928.
“We are living through history like no one else in history,” he said, adding that with every glimpse of the TV or turn of a newspaper page, “It’s something else you can’t believe.”
About tonight’s vice-presidential debate, Carville referred to the Democratic veep candidate as “Hurricane Biden, he can speak 200 words a minute, with gusts up to 250 mph.”
He described Palin as the political version of NASCAR: People want to see her crash, not just go around and around.
Carville said the United States is made up of many areas: Red states, blue states, coastal states and southern states, among them. He said he doesn’t believe that people’s voting behaviors will change, but the electoral college will change, especially if voters between the ages of 18 and 29 come out to vote.
Carville said if the voting patterns were similar to those in the 2004 election, then a McCain victory would be likely. But he said he doesn’t see those similar voters coming to the polls, which is why he predicts an Obama-Biden victory.
That said, however, Carville added, “He who looks in a crystal ball eats glass.”
Carville said he believed a bailout bill would pass — which the Senate did, last night — and that despite worries about the economy, everything would be OK.
He said the worst year in American history was 1862, as Americans were killing each other in the Civil War, which was losing support, and unity was in shambles. It was believed that the United States would live as two separate nations, one free and one slave.
Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont introduced the Morrill Land Grant College Act in 1862, which was passed to “shut him up,” Carville said. From that act — which allocated land based on the number of senators and representatives each state had in Congress to each military tactics, engineering and agriculture — more Noble prize winners from the United States than all of Europe have emerged.
“When we thing we are facing a challenge, or we despair, we’ve gotta look at our history,” Carville said.
Carville and Matalin’s presentation was the inaugural First Commonwealth Endowed Lecture at IUP.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 03 October 2008 )
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