Alter Hints Carville Chilly to Obama for the Money

Jonathan Alter has had enough of James Carville not being a team player and boosting Sen. Barack Obama and he has a working theory that centers around a cynical, quasi-conspiratorial view of the Carville-Matalin marriage. 

From an August 27 Stumper blog post at the Newsweek Web site.

John McCain is the least popular person at the Democratic convention. But if bad-mouthing by Obama forces is a way to keep score, James Carville, the ragin' Cajun, is a close second.

[...]

No one should expect Carville to be an Obama cheerleader. That wouldn't be good TV anyway. But Carville was totally misreading the mood of the convention, as the overwhelmingly pro-Obama roll call showed. And the question is why.

The Obama campaign is already furious at Carville's wife, Mary Matalin, for editing and pushing "The Obama Nation," Jerome Corsi's bestselling hatchet job. (Matalin has her own conservative publishing imprint.) Obama supporters don't want to be quoted on the subject, but they believe that Carville and Matalin are looking at the demise of their long-running, lucrative road show if Obama wins. In effect, this takes their strange cross-party act to a new level--one that is angering a lot of convention-goers. It's one thing for Mary to work for President George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney; it's another for his wife to participate in the Swift-Boating of the Democratic nominee (Corsi co-wrote the book, "Unfit for Command," that sunk John Kerry with a fusilade of falsehoods in 2004).

I've always liked James, but the contradictions of his life have finally caught up with him.

Yes, you read correctly. Alter offers to readers, without criticism, the notion that Matalin and Carville are an act, a political marketing gimmick bent on nothing but self promotion and money-making, and that Carville has sold his political soul for the sake of that gimmick.

What's more, Alter entertains a decidedly unfeminist sensibility by suggesting that Carville should have forbade his wife from her campaign work in 2004.

Oh the things that devotion to Obama will do among the media.