Questions and plan to end this event right around noon. [applause] lets start with where the book starts and ends, new orleans. You both decided you wanted to leave d. C. At the same time or was there a lot of discussion about this move . That is the great place to start and a great place to talk. Summertime ernie els a have a son, todd lorenzo, who is here. Thank you for coming out. Saturday afternoon in the rain. New orleans is playing the new orleans saints, playing the Seattle Seahawks today. I want to hear something. Okay. I bring that up because that is what we play. He is saying we are 8 point under dog and i say we are going to win. I was in new orleans 20 years before i met James Carville but after katrina when he said sugar, we are going to become a sliver on the river, as i am from chicago, anybody from the midwest, you know that if you are all women any words that follow sugar, you are going to melt. Value anywhere, honey. The issue, kids were 10 and 12, we built our careers, i was nervous about having the children to be in proximity with his academic record of 11 years at Louisiana State university. So i will let you pick it up from there. Thank you very much. When it became public, a reliable section, they called me and said i am like an old jew going back to jerusalem. After the events of august of 2005 i had always lived up river from new orleans and spend a lot of time there. My grandmother from there. I was used, abused, par take the culture and assumed it would always be there for my use and pleasure whenever i wanted. And then the story started coming in whether people were going to come back, and a thousand trumpets were lost. And this kind of thing, understand the things that sets new orleans off from every other place in the United States, we were not economically significant area in terms of political power. 380,000 people. What we are is one of the most culturally significant places in the world. We have an identifiable culture you know when you see it, what the food tastes like, what the music sounds like, what a carnival crew is, what a funeral is, what architecture looks like, the idea that this whole thing could go, it was terrifying to me. My wife when we got married, she always loved the sound, the fragrance, the church bells, the rumbling of the streetcar, sounds like no other place, but it is very very fragile. Environmentally fragile, politically fragile, culturally fragile, and i didnt know what, but i just couldnt profound deep freshen. If we were down in 2007 and just like and she was as much as i was and fought and schemed and plotted and a couple other things to get to washington, i liked it here, i loved the airport and the park, and it was not funny, and the data, june 13th, i put in the book, going to lincoln stein, if any of you have been there kind of luxury, and never got the worst you can imagine. It was almost like you want to leave, kind of open the book. And we look back and talk about it sometimes. In some ways it turned out great. It is one of the Great Success stories and now that it is doing better seemed like a cool and smart thing to do. A gamble we took moving our children, but very young, and like a place with a culture, it is hard to break into it if you are a child, not the easiest place, we had two girls. It wasnt the easiest thing and one of the things is if you arent there or what i call the engineering failure of 2005, like you didnt fight the battle, and they get fined, but there was an allotment of risk involved here. They were still stacked up from the storm, nowhere near where we are today. It is like you walk into a casino and put 10,000 and it shows up black and it was really stupid to do that, thank god i hope that was a metaphor. While we are in washington which we still do love, where the girls came back to school on the grounds that mother you dont provide enough structure for me, i want to Say Something good about politics. Rock bottom after we were after katrina, you cant have the luxury of having the kind of disputes we have. You got to come up with solutions and we literally, Mary Landrieu did not want to run and james did what he could and i said i couldnt support everything, but these issues that were practical conservative applications, i would be in league with three republicans in new orleans. And to watch politics and policy work and work quickly was such an inspiration. This sense of loss of confidence in all of our institutions and the sense of the kline and all that things can change that if people want to change them. People want to protect something they love which they did in new orleans, we went from 15 feet underwater to redeye the time of the super bowl we were number one. And in Silicon Valley south wore no. One entrepreneur, i could go on and on but this changes certain progress there is a way while i am here i want to talk about coastals restoration and the everglades. You actually care about coastal restoration. 40 of the sea food and energy and 40 of your food comes up and down the mississippi and to the extent that coast is eroding is going to impact the economy of the entire country. There are a lot of issues there that we agree on politically met except for this 8. We like being on the same side of things. Lets talk about something we are not on the same side of, cats. I just have to say this. This is my motto. The presence of many cats is not proof of crazy cat ladyism. I take the point that cat hair in the butter is not pleasant. Met but one day, i came down and my favorite cat, i have 12 of them. This is a black cat. Hard to name cats creatively when you have 12. He was black. Half of his face was chart of. What happened . He was getting near the butter and somehow the stove turned on and burned half his face off. There are instances of kitty pyromaniac in the house and we have a few dogs and pet rats and birds but most of them are rescues. It is a good rescued place, the society in washington. So seriously about animals, we have brought some animals and people who had a difficult time socializing, you may remember when the dalai lama was here, one domestic place, battered womens shelter where we brought women together, since to do the program, a version of the program at walter reed so i have a larger interest in animals and i am going to agree with you that we should put a lid on the butter. I could ride a horse before i could rise a bicycle. And not 4 h club, call me weird, i do not like animals in food prep area. Maybe that is just some kind of cuckoos thing, and but when i see a cat licking the roof, it turns me off. I am fine. I can still get on a horse today. I had the best childhood you could imagine but i was really young. My grandfather grew rice. How you grow rice is nothing but mud and water and Nothing Better for a 5yearold going around in mud and water. He is not an anti hero. He knows what the animals mean to me, they mean nothing to him, they are not allowed anywhere near him and he doesnt know their names but every time we go to the e emergency that, why cant these bastards learn how to cross the street . Just has the whole animal kingdom. Reporter you gave up working and u. S. Elections and only work on 4 in elections. Explain why you made that decision. When president clinton was 48 i just couldnt want to be some guy in center field. And go back to that time, is clinton sending somebody in, what does that mean . The real truth is the United States wants to become a famous person, being the famous person. 22 different countries, if i like it, getting a little last trip i took was to indonesia, went to singapore, they just canceled which was one. I enjoyed doing that. I do it much more subtle now. I had run, really involved in u. S. Politics for a period of time and what i did was i was a Campaign Managers so i didnt have a firm. Direct mail, tv spot, i Just Got Paid for working 20 hours a day. And you couldnt it was a decision that i made and i look back on ad that i made bad decisions in life and that was not one of them. The game passes you by. When we did the 92 campaign the cellphone was as big as george stephanopoulos. So i am reading this stuff about social media, the big battle and everything, and that is good. There is something to be said for overstaying your time. You and i have a common affection for sports and there is nothing worse than to see a former great athlete trying to take another year or two, you got to what is ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything and it was a time for me to do it. Can i add to this . Not to but in to your question, but i think because there is an emerging perception that people in politics, political operatives, whenever, okay . When we got into it and i am happy to be a woman of a certain age, why cant we say i am 60 . I am happy to be 60. I wish i was 60. He is almost 60. Very upset that girls are both gone, his life is over, i am chopped liver, i guess. In our day, it wasnt when we got married we had nothing. He had a bike that i bought him. He never had a car. Maybe he had a horse. Since getting out of domestic politics, involved in politics, care about what it is a political system is trying to deliver. So at my respect, the state departments request, joins me in how to do it, in jordan to teach the iraqi women how to fight human rights in their constitution. You claim to get there because right after the revolution i didnt know the husband but the wife worked for reagan, volunteered to do these things because freedom throughout the world is important, politics as a sport, as a career, a lot of people involved in it. And did not understand a word that james is the same except he said one thing he got, a you finish this the hardest thing a lot. One of my favorite stories is an old friend of mine, asked to meet with a man who was running for president of afghanistan. So talking to him, Richard Holbrooke at the state department, is there any problem with me in the u. S. Working for this guy . James is the finest man i know. Doing little investigation, a fine guy. I know he cant pay me, cant pay my air fare. You are a member of the kennedy generation, you have to go. John kennedy, i guess i got to go. So i told him. I go to kabul and try to stay in his house and write a Campaign Plan and on the way out gives me a rock. Two weeks later i got reimbursed for my effort which was not a bad deal. At least i wasnt out 13,000 grand for the ticket. You want to hear me fight about you would think a guy who was going to cover where his wife had been, had been all over afghanistan in an armored vehicles, snipers, would have asked me something about the kid. He is driving around in some little bus, i e. D. S everywhere, this is pretty scary when the traffic starts. Sometimes it was after i left, totally blew his house up it was a different thing, a kind of Campaign Plan for afghanistan, was really different. 1 is what we were predicted to get, a great guy, great experience. Cant win them all. What is the old saying . People say they lost races and Political Consultants and people said they never lost a race and call those liars. It is 1992, the election is over and you dont have a job, you dont have much money and you end up on what you call the first check fight show. And you also write that fish show was great until it became a hit. Explain what you mean by that. I never wanted to be on tv. I dont like being on tv to this day. I like radio. I have a face for radio. When george h. W. Bush who i adored was losing, this happens on campaigns, nobody wanted us to go out and defend, start jumping ship, and the worse the numbers got, the more i went out there so i became the face of defense of losing this campaign and he became the hero, thinking about the mind. So not only did i have no job but i had no prospects for a job because i was a loser. I had no money coming in. I have a mortgage. I can to live in an apartment. Somebody called up and said do you want to do a tv show . I hate tv. You are good on tv. On a topic. Anyway i had to pay the bills, i didnt think anybody was watching us. It was waynes world on estrogen, like being in a basement, all we did is have a bottle of wine before the show and just talk about what ever and the next thing we knew it was, this was before there was political tv, cnbc before it was cnbc. When i say it was such a lowbudget show, our furniture had to go out in the hallway, pull in one of these tables, we did our own makeup, our own hair, and all of a sudden it became this cult hit. Who knew . We found out people started spending as furniture, and senators and Congress People dont follow this stuff but their staffers do so we started getting great guests and then it became when you have a hit and all of a sudden everybody gets involved and give you, fix your hair and get different clothes and do real interviews. So i quit. My favorite moment of the show, tony cornhouse was a regular guest and marion james was singing into hair brushes, he didnt have their hair rushed. And we were singing going to the chapel and tony is like where is my hair rushed, never stopped, the hair cut, tony insisted on going there to he went and got his beard done and eyebrows and hair done, i forgot about that. Tony, if you are watching you know it is true. 2222 this year and san diego. San diego covers it, 10 point dogs, gone to the top of the mountain and peeked over, 2322 again, the spread. Id tell you the number of people that i run into in washington, i heard you picked tonys radio show. It is like released pending the kind of thing i didnt silence everything when i was here. The weather was going to be horrible, cant think about 4 30 kickoff. And we still have nationals tickets. That was happening last year. Sports have always been a big part of my life. It is great because i am home, going to games of the pelicans. Lets talk about something else. Lets go to my last question before we go to the audience question. This isnt really from the book but i have one political question. What is one piece of advice each of you would give to your own party that there not doing currently that would improve that party . I dont like doing tv but i am on tv enough to be not saying this for the first time and not the last time i will say it. Republicans have to be republicans. They cant be a lesser version of democrats. I grew up as a democrat on the south side of chicago and became a conservative when i started reading and paying taxes. I know why i am a conservative. I know what the constitution is. I am and in paris this and at burke, we have a long history of what works and what doesnt work and good intent is not the equivalent of good outcome and why republicans cant in a full throated way say what the alternative to Good Intention politics is or call people who have empirically done successful and turnaround and be for exactly what they call the wacko bird, i dont think that is going to work so what we need to do for the midterms, and Everyone Wants to jump to 2016, 2016 is going to be under 2014, as is always the case and i think in 2014 we will look at the records of a lot of governors who were elected in the 2010 tsunami and look at the records. It is not a party thing. Was in new orleans. Look what happens when you incentivize business by lowering taxes, regulations that are understandable wendy will be enforced, balanced budgets. I dont think we talk about that in of. We too defensive, too much time defending straw men, the obama people, the democrats accuse us of hating women and then we spend all the time saying no, no, we really love women. That is a waste of time. It is just not we need to quit being so defensive about things that not true and say what we really believe in and what really works. Let me start by saying an unbelievable differential between Economic Performance on democrats and republicans in the last six years, is not even close. I agree with carey harry truman, if you want to look like a republican, vote like a democrat. [applause] we have in my opinion, and before this, we have a terrible problem in this country and it is going on for a long time, all the sudden the deficit was going to kill us, then Health Care Costs were going to kill us, that did not tell us, then Energy Dependence was going to kill us. The things we have been unable to do, and unable to do for a long time is grow in comes. We go and got every other thing we do and chase everything that comes and every deal we can and where is the joint committee on Income Growth . Where is the foundation the books in to this . Where is the zillionaire to say 80 of the people in this country over a longer period of time is stagnant . When they give the bank credit, we know how to create wealth but dont know how to distribute it. With the democrats should do is be succinct, we have done a lot of research, it is not an overnight, no one thing youre going to do to getting comes to grow again. Their air some things you can do to help so, this i think the emphasis on the argument about inequality misses the mark a little bit. If your income hasnt gone in 20 years is not so much that the 1 present income has grown 300 , yours hasnt grown. If your is grew 20 , that would be much better. And so it is not to get back to it, it should say this is the assignment, this is the job, the president can easily say we have an economic process to deal with, Bank Failures and a lot of things but now our charge for the future of this country is to somehow or another bring the prosperity across the country and the more we tell that story, the simpler we tell that story, the better off we are going to be. So everything we do, go before congress, speeches, talking, that should be the defining mission of the democratic party. [applause] last place that will come from to quote a former democratic president , the era of Big Government is over. If we want to do what he is saying, it has to start locally. And trickledown if i can use that term. Now we are going to your questions so there is the microphone there and microphone there. Just alternate as people get to them. So we start here. Good to see you, thanks for what you are doing. What do you both think of Kenneth Starr now in retrospect . And the other thing i want to ask you is when you were strategizing, this is what we were asking ourselves, talking about campaigns when you are both involved how did you protect the confidence . Did it ever get broken . Did you by accident conveyed to your team the strategy of the other person . How would you protect that in your conversations if something needed to be done and it is suddenly conveyed to the other side . Let me say i always liked Kenneth Starr but i have not thought about him in ten years. At the time of that whole recent unpleasantness, i had my second day being post partner and all i cared about was my husband was out there defending a lie. I said how could you defend this why . He said sugar, if i did some things that stupid with the girls that young i would lie about it too. [laughter] that is as far as i wanted to go with that. As for the other larger issue of honor, integrity, when we got married he was 49. I have been doing politics since i was in college and i know where i am, a conservative, jekyll and hyde. We are jekyll and hyde. I am not mary matalin the beloved and dearest wife you will ever have, mother of your children, then there is mary matalin, attila the hun. There has never been an issue, we have never, ever accidentally or on purpose, we call it the burden of knowledge. Even if it is something i dont care about, i am not going to tell you because you dont need the burden of knowledge. We also have physical constraints. I have my fox news fair and balanced through that he has his espn room, his own closet, his own bathroom, his own space. There is never any fear of accidentally sharing any confidences but in the larger sense strategies arent secret. Messages arent secret. The campaign that is keeping their message secret is going to lose. By all accounts he is doing a heck of a job at bayless. Athletically doing great and doing a great job, glad he is in waco and i concur. Glad he is in waco. To the back to that in this room people remember that. I will be honest. Of everything i have done in my life the thing im most proud of is i was the first person out there defending clinton. Not because i really do like him but because i was offended at the overstepping that went on. This is absolutely a true story. I am fortunate enough to give a lot of speeches. I was in boca raton giving a speech to a group and it was a high income, republican raspberry vinaigrette kind of crowd. This was in early january of 99. Got a standard question. Mr. Carville, i got a question. You and your wife and two precious Young Children on meet the press during the holidays. Yes pledge how old are a . I said one is 3 and one is 1. She said this is my question. They are not going to be little girls forever. They are going to grow up. They are going to find out all of the sorry things bill clinton did and the things he did in the oval office, discussed in. Not just that, they will find out how their daddy went out and defended him and call people names and they are going to go to you one day and ask why did you do that . And i want to know what you are going to tell them . I said you damn bitch. You have a right to ask the question. I said girls, one time in your daddys life we had a good friend that the bad thing and he thought about it and said i am going to forgive the bad thing and stick with my good friend. Sometimes in your life you will be in a situation where you will have a good friend does of bad thing. I want you to pause, think about it and think of sticking with your good friend but let me tell you the main thing. You are good girls and daddy knows that. Daddy knows sometimes in life even good girls do bad things. If that ever happens to you the lesson i want you to take from this is a failure daddy first, he will be the first to forgive you. It is over. History rendered its judgment. The public rendered its judgment. For those of us who were there for it, you know, we will remember it forever. And i am glad it is over and i am glad he is doing well. He is probably happier that he is there. Can i add he is the best daddy in the world but when they do bad things, the first thing they say is dont tell daddy. Name one thing you would change about Chris Christies recent press conference. We dont talk about policy. You dont want to do that at night. We can talk about strategy. We agree on strategy. If i could have changed one thing i would have changed the duration and i would not have talked about my pajamas and after that, i think what i said, Kathleen Parker coming out, we were on the train coming back, my us to and intelligent with james had, james was like this for hours and all kinds of strategies and got to go on and talk about it so take it away. A couple of things. First, the thing about a scandal, this was true in the Monica Lewinsky thing. Everyone understood it. It didnt everybody understands this completely. This is not a fixed Interest Rate kind of thing. This is a direct deal. I was asked, what i would have done is not go to the mayor. I would have gone to the people of fort lee and said directly to them, and whatever we know now, we are going to no more. It is the nature of everything. It is hard to get all of the information out, what he needs right now best thing to do would be get a federal investigation, lets wait till that comes out and just shut down. And people it has become a standard thing. No reason you cant talk to investigation but we cant say anything because and finding criminality is one thing to find wrong doing so hopefully it the u. S. Attorney comes back and says we are not charging him with a criminal act called fine now. That is where he is but right now the more you say the more trouble his is the best idea he skipped over, he said Chris Christie should have gotten dressed in a tollbooth uniform and gone to a toll booth and let people get in and out of fort lee. That was a good idea. I would have worked the toll booth and had Bridget Kelly scrubbing commodes at the restaurants on the turnpike. People understand this. When you think about it, you go dam, man, they really shut that bridge down. Can you tell he has adhd . Many doctors in the room . A little hyper. What advice do you give young people who are thinking of getting into politics . Honestly, there is a chapter in the book, i wrote everything and i was going to cut, cut, cut and the publisher left it in. You and never going to be more idealistic than you are at this age. You cant help it. The beauty of age is wisdom but the terror is realism. Dont be afraid to fail. Dont be afraid to do anything including dry cleaning, coffee, be fair, learn, take a mentor, dont be afraid to ask, people our age who have done it want to teach you and think outside the box. We dont know about twitter. My best friend Donna Brazils says we need to get a twitter account, if you are over 30 and like a glass of wine after 10 00 you dont need a twitter account. We need people like you and james teaches at tulane, we work with young people, we are so that is why we are so optimistic. You are a much better generations and we deserve. Dont judge the current politics. Bring your idealism to it. A lot of times i politely i want to do what you do. What advice do you have for me . You are you. You follow your passion and you make the way you want to. You cant look to me who is 69 years old, who came up in an entirely different time. One of the great women of washington was sally smith who had two kids that were learning disabled and decided it looks like a college now. Like a lot of those children i have learning disabilities and sally was very clever. She would bring people in and have a big banquet and it was myself and Clarence Page and kelly mcgill less, the actress, and whatever. And bring you in and raise a lot of money and it was a really cool thing and you were glad to do it and get with these kids and we were sitting up there and asked how many of you want to grow up and be like us . No. No. You want to be like you. There is nothing wrong with you. Dont aspire to be another person. Be yourself. Because if you