Mary Matalin Tries to Jog Imus's Memory; Also Waits for Pigs to Fly

Though he’s not Catholic, Mary Matalin suggested Imus give something up for Lent anyway. She had nothing specific in mind, but luckily, Charles had an idea for something Imus could go without for 40 days. “How about breathing?”
 
Matalin, a Republican strategist, watched half of last night’s Academy Awards ceremony with her husband James Carville, a Democratic strategist, before they went to bed. “Were you drunk, or did you just want to have sex?” Imus inquired. Following a brief pause, Matalin admitted it was probably both.
 
Along those lines, she has no problem with Michelle Obama promoting breastfeeding, as long as it does not become a mandated program. “I don’t like the government telling you what to do, what to put in your food, where to smoke,” she said, identifying this theory as federalism. In fact, Matalin believes that whichever potential Republican candidate for president in 2012 best explains federalism will stand out from the pack. “The government that does the least works best,” she added.
 
Some politicians are already practicing what they preach in this regard, and Matalin pointed to Govs. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Mitch Daniels in Indiana, and Chris Christie in New Jersey as examples. As it happens, Christie first caught Matalin’s attention during his candid appearance with Imus just prior to his election in 2009.
 
“It was after Corzine made that horrible spot insinuating nasty things about Christie’s weight, and he said, ‘Man Up!’” Matalin recalled. “It was like—holy cow! He just took off after that.”
 
That moment was pivotal for Christie, in Matalin’s view, and his continued honest, blunt demeanor has drawn attention from both parties and led to rumors—that he has outright denied—that he will run for president next year.
 
Matalin believes Christie when he says he will not run, because, as she put it, “If you don’t have it in your heart, and your mind, and you’re not ready for it—“
 
But Imus cut her off before she could finish the sentence. “You were going to say gut, weren’t you?” he asked his guest, who insisted otherwise. “You were going to say, ‘He doesn’t have it in his gut,’ and I was going to say, ‘No, but everything else is there.’”
 
Then, in a rare moment of clarity, Imus noted the difficulty any Republican will have in 2012 against Obama, who has finally started to seem presidential. “That’s exactly what the challenge will be,” Matalin said, audibly proud of her friend Imus for being so astute. She further observed that having 15 Republican candidates “running around in a circular firing squad” during the primary will only work to Obama’s advantage.
 
Instead of expounding on whom she’d like to see on the Republican ticket in 2012, Matalin marveled at Imus’s forgetfulness. “We just had this conversation,” she said. By “just” she actually meant a month ago, which might as well have been he 1970s as far as Imus is concerned.
 
“You could have been on Friday, and I wouldn’t have remembered,” he admitted.
 
-Julie Kanfer