James Carville is having a moment, and that’s good for the nation

Earlier this fall, the most quotable man in politics showed up on Fox News wearing a purple LSU baseball cap and a NOLA hoodie. The Democratic strategist James Carville, who turned 80 this past week, is beholden to no one, let alone Sean Hannity, the conservative bulldog whose fine suits and New York upbringing stood in sharp contrast to the slouching “ragin’ Cajun” on the split screen.
But the only thing more surprising about seeing Carville on “Hannity” is seeing him on TV at all. He has, after all — passed the traditional age of retirement, he’s got adorable grandkids he could be puttering around with, and for a while, he seemed to be retreating from public life.
But Carville is having a moment, with a new documentary about his life that reveals his influence in the decision for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race, and a political podcast on which he partners with journalist Al Hunt.
And that moment couldn’t come at a better time for America.
That’s because during a week in which political infidelity has been a topic on social media and cable news, it’s helpful to remember that love can exist outside of politics. Contrary to the language of the family court system, a couple can have irreconcilable differences that don’t wind up in divorce, and maybe even bring an intellectual richness to the relationship. But that would depend on two partners — or friends — being honest about their political leanings.
Something else has been advocated in an ad for the Harris/Walz campaign produced by Vote Common Good, an advocacy group working to get religious voters to vote Democratic. Voiced by Julia Roberts, the ad says, “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know.” It shows two women voting, and locking eyes in the voting booth. One woman’s pen hovers over Trump/Vance on the paper ballot, but she winds up voting Harris/Walz. Later, when a man asks her, “Did you make the right choice?” she answers, “Sure did, honey” — the implication being that he was expecting her to vote for Trump.
While well produced, the ad is disconcerting, and to me, stomach-turning in its implications, which is that it’s fine — even admirable — to deceive our partners about our political leanings. And it’s surprising that such a message is being marketed explicitly to evangelicals and Catholics.
This a message that is also being put out by former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who said, in an event with Harris, “If you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”
The ad has prompted news coverage about people concealing their votes from their spouses; the Miami Herald reported today that in one survey, nearly one-quarter of Americans say they have lied about their vote to people they are closest to. (The number is highest among Gen Z, 48%.) On Fox’s “The Five,” Jesse Watters made headlines this week by saying he’d consider it infidelity if he found out his wife had secretly voted for Harris while leading him to believe she had voted for Trump. “That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said, while the other panelists laughed, clearly finding the statement ridiculous.
The discussion is more evidence of how fraught the current political climate is, with many people exercising their right to a private ballot out of fear of how other people will react if they knew who they voted for. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with not telling people how you voted — and even choosing not to talk about politics at all. My closest friend is politically different from me, but our relationship has spanned nearly 40 years with nary a political fight — because we sense where the fault line is and instinctively know not to cross it. Our love and respect for each other is built on things other than politics.
That also seems to be the case with Carville and his wife, who famously fell in love while both were working as political strategists for opposite parties. While some skeptics have questioned whether they’re as politically opposite as they seem, the documentary makes clear that there was real tension at points in the relationship and that tension caused both of them significant pain.
Still, “It never occurred to me that your love interest and politics would be a determinant in a relationship, but a majority of people don’t want to date somebody from the other party,” Matalin says in the film. “So a majority of people just want to, like, think like they think and be validated 24-7. I think that’s sorrowful. I don’t have to agree with him, but he makes me think.”
At another point, Carville notes, “There are tens of millions of people in the United States who don’t even know anybody from the other party.”
It is something of a balm to watch the two of them together, knowing their professional history, and to hear them talking about why they are still married. Matalin at one point confides that it felt like a slap across the face to learn that Carville had signed on to work for Bill Clinton, and that he stopped speaking to her for a while after she joined the Bush-Cheney administration. They say they moved on, but we get the sense that there might still be some residual emotion there.
Still, he said, “I never thought about ending my marriage. It never crossed my mind.”
And she said, “We were not going to divorce each other. We could torture each other in perpetuity, and we came perilously close, but we were not getting divorced.”
Ten years ago, Matalin told U.S. News & World Report that the couple doesn’t talk about work at home. “We have pretty vigorous and active lives. We like to fish. We like to cook. We like history. We like church. Talking about the impact of the minimum wage is just not something that is high on our list of fun things to do.”
Matalin and Carville are both Catholic, and it’s possible that “liking church” has something to do with the strength of their commitment to their marriage. Fewer Americans have religious commitments to help them weather secular storms these days.
Still, it’s heartbreaking that so many people in the country are ending relationships over politics, or threatening to do so, and engaging in duplicitous behavior that has the potential to undermine a relationship, when we can actively choose to value people over politics — even when politics is your profession. Not only are Carville and Matalin still making it work after more than three decades, but Sean Hannity introduced Carville as “my old friend” on his show. There are lessons here for us all.