Mary Matalin Defends Dick Clark; is Less Kind Toward Obama's Tax Policy; Might Have a Crush on the Mayor of New Orleans

Mary Matalin, breathing heavily after moving a chair, opening a shade, and lifting up the window to allow her cat back inside the house, explained in three words why she was so winded after performing relatively simple tasks: “I’m old now.”
 
And her husband James Carville is even older. Informed that Matalin had spent New Year’s Eve alone, listening to jazz on the radio and enjoying a glass of wine, Imus wondered where Carville had been. “If it’s after 9 o’clock, he’s in bed,” she replied.
 
Unlike millions of other losers, Matalin, a Republican strategist, did not watch the ball drop in Times Square, nor had she witnessed stroke survivor Dick Clark counting down to midnight. But she applauded Clark for appearing on television at all, given his diminished condition.
 
“If you’ve come back from something, or suffered from something, that would normally render you hidden away, for whatever reason, and you can come back, that’s an inspiration to others who are similarly afflicted,” she said.
 
Imus would prefer not to see Clark on display, if for no other reason than it provides his staff the opportunity to draw comparisons between the two aging broadcasters. Because as Matalin and everybody else knows, the world revolves around one person, and one person only.
 
“It’s 2011,” Imus said. “Suddenly it’s not going to be about me this year?”
 
As the new year rang in, sighs of relief could be heard among the wealthy, whose tax cuts were extended for another two years, thanks to President Obama, who compromised with Republicans in December, Matalin said, “Because he didn’t want to be blamed for not doing it.”
 
A better package, in her view, would have not only cut spending increases and left the estate tax where it was, but would have gone further to actually try to fuel the economy.   
 
“Stimulative taxes…would have been further reductions of the top rates, a reduction in the corporate tax rate, eradication of corporate tax loopholes and such,” Matalin said. Obama, by contrast, kept tax rates in place, which she said merely avoids exacerbating current recessionary problems.
 
A resident of New Orleans for three years now, Matalin is a big fan of the city’s new Mayor Mitch Landrieu, or as she calls him, “Mayor Mitch.” Though she gushed over how “wonderful” and “spectacular” he is, Imus had just one question.
 
“Has he been indicted yet?”
 
-Julie Kanfer