Red/Blue Running Mates

The Brangolina of American politics enlivened yesterday’s Meet the Press. Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat James Carville, side by side, engaged in connubial zinging about the ’08 scene.

Carville on Al Gore: If he runs for president, it’s like having sex. You don’t do it once and forget about it...anybody that has ever wanted to be president still wants to be president.

Matalin: My husband rightly always says about me, “I think like I think.” We think in red and blue. The country’s not red and blue. The country really is purple and who makes the difference are purple people.

Carville on Hillary and Obama: I reduce everything to Louisiana cooking--I say Mama needs more spice, Obama needs more seasoning.

Matalin on Hillary: She’s not Bill. Bill was built for speed, she’s built for the long haul. Let her be ambitious. You go, girl.

Carville: Fred Thompson is now, to use a sports metaphor, the “great white hope” of the Republican Party. But, of course, in the Republican Party, hope comes in one color, and that would be white. And one gender, that would be male.

Toward the end, Tim Russert rendered Carville speechless by quoting bar-hopping dating advice he had offered as a bachelor: “Go ugly early.”

Pressed to explain, Carville could only stammer that he was 49 when he married and keep repeating “I did pretty well later.”

Matalin was impassive. “Neccesity is the mother of invention for this one,” she drily.