Washington's Power Couple Surveys Political Landscape

The need for primary care physicians will steadily increase as medical care becomes more complicated in the years ahead, said Republican strategist Mary Matalin, who, alongside her husband, Democratic strategist James Carville, delivered the keynote address at the Oct. 3 opening session of this year's Scientific Assembly.

"There needs to be more of you," said Matalin, responding to a question about health care reform. "There needs to be affordable health care."

Matalin noted that family physicians treat the whole patient, improving quality and reducing costs by providing the right care at the right time.

She told audience members that her father has battled cancer for several years, and, like many cancer patients, he has several physicians. But he does not have a family physician, she said, and so his care is not as coordinated and integrated as it could be.

"We want what you are delivering," she told Assembly-goers.

Matalin credited her husband with making health care reform a national issue in the early 1990s as the chief strategist for the Clinton/Gore presidential campaign. Back then, the main issue was health care access; it is now health care affordability, she said.

Health care now ranks as high as terrorism in the minds of voters, meaning the issue will play a prominent role in the 2008 presidential campaign, she said.

Matalin and Carville are known as the "odd couple" of American politics. Matalin is a conservative Republican; Carville, a liberal Democrat. They joked about their 15-year relationship, with Matalin saying she's learned not to listen to her husband on the subject of politics, even when he appears on television or on radio talk shows.


"I didn't read his part of a book we wrote together," she quipped.

Not surprisingly, the two provided different perspectives on the current presidential campaign. But both agreed the campaign is unique in American history. For the first time, a woman, an African-American, a Hispanic American and an Italian American are viable presidential candidates.

Carville pointed out that one Republican candidate has been married three times, and only one candidate on the Republican side has been married just once. Moreover, three Republican candidates have been diagnosed with cancer.

"The presidential field is literally starting to look like America," said Carville.

There is no clear Republican presidential front-runner, creating the possibility of a long and divisive primary process that could split the party, Carville speculated.

He compared the roster of Democratic hopefuls to a major golf tournament where the field consists of Tiger Woods and "everyone else." At this point, the Democratic field comprises Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and everyone else, he said.

Carville added that the Democrats are in an excellent position to capture the White House in 2008. "We literally have to talk our way out of winning this," he said, adding, with his famous grin, that Democrats are capable of doing just that.