James Carville - Featuring Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel

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0:48That's why over 200 ,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. In August, after the Democratic National Convention, I was at a breakfast meeting in Los Angeles when James Carville suddenly joined our table. James is a legendary political analyst, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, and a former campaign manager to President Bill Clinton. The title of his new documentary says it all, Winning is Everything Stupid.

1:35James and I might seem very different. After all, he's from Louisiana, and I'm from upstate New York. He cooks gumbo, I cook Ligurian fish stew, but we're also pretty much the same, passionate about people, passionate about food, passionate about politics. With the inauguration approaching on January 20th, there couldn't be a better time to hear what James has to say. And for this episode, we have a special edition. Emily Maglis and John Sopel, hosts of the News Agents podcast, joined us for what was a really interesting discussion. Thank you. I'm just delighted to be here with you. I think you and I may be born in the same womb.

2:18We certainly think a lot about a lot of things. I think so. We have a lot to talk about. But before we do, you know the drill. Right. So the recipe that we chose was Ligurian fish stew. Liguria is on the coast. It's a part between Genoa and Pisa. And this came from our first cookbook. It's pretty simple, but I thought you might like to read it. You can read it any way you want. Let me preface it by saying I think my favorite foods in the world are these fish-based things like, you know, gumbo, bouillabaisse for sure, Ligurian fish stew for sure. or any of these kinds of things that really capture the sea.

3:00All of it is a little bit of the same. I mean, it's a little different cooking techniques, but let's go ahead and let's get started here. You can meet it any way you want. Three red mullet fillet, scaled and clean. You got to scale and clean, that's true. 500 grams of monkfish or turbo fillets, 1.5 kilograms of mussels, 12 langoustines, am I saying it? Langoustines are like the... Like a little shrimp almost. Yeah, they're the long ones, like baby little scampi. 150 millimeters of white wine, one fresh chili, seeded and chopped, 1.2 liters of fish stock. Yeah. Okay, that's the key ingredients in all of these kind of seafood things.

3:4412 small new potatoes, peeled and boiled, one liter of tomato sauce, and 175 millimeters of olive oil. Put mussels in a large saucepan with olive oil, white wine, and chili, cover in steam over high heat, shaking until all shells open. When cool, remove half the mussels from their shells and strain juices into the fish stock. Okay, I want to make an editorial comment here. This is important because you're adding flavor to flavor. You already made your fish stock. Never throw away oyster liquor or bacon grease. because any time you get into trouble, bacon grease is going to save you. Okay. So then we bring the fish stock to a ball and the langosines, poach.

4:27Add the fish stock. Now, when you poach in this, are you reducing a little bit too? Reduction is a big thing when you're doing things because you want to extract more flavor out of it. Add the fish stock and the tomato sauce and bring to a ball. Add the mullet, monkfish, or turbo, and scallops. stirring cooked potatoes, mussels, and langoustines. To make crostini, toast the bread on both sides and rub with garlic. Place on top of the soup and serve. There you go. Pretty simple, yeah. But it's simple, but when you have fresh ingredients, you want stuff to enhance, not overwhelm the ingredients.

5:07So if you're going in trouble with getting fresh fish, shellfish, you want that flavor to come through. And I think what's brilliant about this recipe, it accentuates the flavors more than anything else. Of course, we all know you as the political strategist for, you know, you won the election for President Clinton. Did you want to go into politics yourself? Since I was a kid, I've always loved politics. I've never really wanted to run for office. Why not? I don't know. I always wanted to be the man, the man for the man, okay? I said, maybe one day I'd, like, know a governor and work for him. And then I didn't have my first electoral victory until I was 42.

5:54Your first major campaign was Clinton, or what did you do? Well, major being described as, like, statewide races. I was in Louisiana. My first statewide was a Senate race in Texas. We lost. That was in 1984. I did a Senate race in Virginia in 1982, and we lost. So I was a loser. And there was a guy who ran for governor of Pennsylvania, and he lost three times before. He went to Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, the three-time loss from Holy Cross. And he couldn't find anybody more than to run his campaign, So they ended up calling me, and I didn't have to, but I had to send the money for the plane ticket.

6:41Well, ultimately won. Then I won a race in Kentucky and New Jersey and Georgia, and so I became noticed by President Clinton. So I became his chief strategist. And then... This is for the first election. First election, 1992. 1992. 1992. And then after that, I started doing foreign consulting. Did you go with him to the convention? Did you know him before the convention? Yeah. So you were part of the strategy not just to win the election, but to get the nomination. Right, to nominate, yeah, yeah. Yeah, which was quite incredible, wasn't it? Because he came from Arkansas. Nobody really knew who this person was.

7:23Yeah, he was so unbelievably talented. Yeah. I mean, he was, when you just look at the man, I was with him a week ago. He is, people, when people say he's smart, I say, you don't have any idea. You think you think he's smart? You have no idea. You have empathetic understanding, explaining things. And what about the food? Let's go back to food. So when you were with Clinton, he liked it. He's a food person, isn't he? Did he care about food or not? I don't. No, Clinton is a, so he was so intense. Yeah. So one time we were on a campaign plane, and he would do the New York Times crossword puzzle, and he literally would never take his pencil off.

8:16And so they bought him salad and a coffee. and I actually had to watch him put the thousand hours dressing in the coffee cup and the cream on the salad and he didn't know the difference. But you always knew you wanted to be a Democrat? Yes, I was always, because it all related to civil rights and race. I just thought black people were getting a terrible deal and I probably grew up with some element of white guilt Okay, I didn't obsess on it, but I knew that I had one life and they had another life. And I just thought that was kind of unfair. Let's start at the beginning. Where were you born? So I was actually born in Fort Benning, Georgia, because my daddy was in the Army during the war.

9:07I grew up in Louisiana, which is called the River Parachute, which is more black than the other parts of South Louisiana. And my grandmother was from New Orleans, and my mother was from Avalds, which is way north. And there are very distinct differences in Louisiana cooking. It is not one thing. It's like Italian cooking. So your father's mother was from New Orleans. And your mother— And my mother was from Avalds Parish, which is probably 150 miles from New Orleans, that's very far north, both Catholic, both French-dominated, but very different cuisine. If you think of New Orleans as being kind of Parisian and the rest being provincial, it's a good shorthand.

9:57It's a little different. In New Orleans, they put tomato in the gumbo, which is heresy to my mother. She just couldn't believe that. I mean, little things like that. But when you were growing up, did your grandmother live near you? So you had these two different ways of eating? Yes, my paternal grandmother lived a mile, exactly 1.6 miles from me, and I would stay with her all the time. Why is that? Because she spoiled me. Are you a grandfather? I'm a grandfather. Don't you think we have a completely different relationship with our grandchildren? We never say that. Someone said the reason that grandparents and grandchildren get along so well, they have a common enemy.

10:38And I think everybody understands that. Always take the side of your grandkid. Yeah, absolutely. I often say that people who come here and talk about food, they talk sometimes more about their grandparents' cooking than their mothers' cooking. They'll talk about their grandmother's food more than their mothers'. Especially people who've emigrated from other countries. They'll do that. How many? We have brothers and sisters. I'm an old man of eight children. Eight? Eight, yes, yes. You have seven brothers and sisters. We do. We'd have gumbo in the wintertime on the stove. And she'd do this delicious shrimp and corn soup when the corn was fresh.

11:18And, you know, we'd have that sometimes in the summer months. But we always came home from school. We always had a pot on the stove. Did she work? Did she have a job? She did. She sold encyclopedias. She did not, but we had too many kids. Yeah, eight children. So she sold encyclopedias. Wow. And she was quite good at it. Door-to-door type of thing. Yeah. She would prospect. So she taught me, like, targeting customers. She said, we want to see two things, a bass boat and a bicycle, because that's going to tell us that these people have children and they have some income. And so that's how we target our book.

11:58You would target those houses. Target that house. What's a bass boat? It's like a fishing boat. Okay. But you have to have some affluence and be in the yard. It would be like on a thing, a trailer. Yeah. And so she would go in, and I was like 12 or 13 years old, and she didn't, you know, this was a couple of Louisiana coaches in the late 50s and 60s, and she started talking to the lady at the house, and she'd say, son, what's the capital of Vermont? I said, Montpelier. They'd go, oh, God, he's a goddamn genius, you know. And then she'd go, she said, what's the capital of Oregon? Salem. Oh, my God.

12:34How could anybody be that smart? And then she'd say, well, what's the captain of Finland? I'd say, Helsinki. And he'd go, no, he got this knowledge by having these encyclopedias. And so the lady at her house would say, well, this sounds terrific. Let me get my husband in. And so they'd inevitably bring the husband in, and he was kind of polite. He said, well, Miss Carvey, I know you've got a great product here, but, you know, with school, we're just a little short now. Why don't you come back maybe after the first year? We'll take another look at it. And so, you know something, sir, I find something about you that's interesting.

13:09You can afford a bass boat for yourself, but you can't afford educational materials for your children. God was done. He was signing anything. And would every night you'd sit down to have a dinner, or would everybody kind of? She encouraged it. But, you know, with kids, I think she fought a losing battle. She thought that meals were a communal thing. And, you know, she had dementia. And the only thing that she would remember is my sister, who was a bar in who took care of her, would say, Mama, what did Grandma say at dinnertime? And she would say approach, which is approach. That until Grandma said approach, you couldn't approach the table.

14:01Table, wow. All right? And that was the last thing that everyone remembered. A posh. She was a pretty sophisticated cook, actually. Sounds like it. She made something called crawfish bisque. I'm sure the recipe is now. I'll single it out for you. But it's one of these dishes that is really hard to make alone. So she would make it with, like, three of my sisters. Okay? No one should ever shell beans alone. That's a communal thing where you get together at a table and everybody's talking. You know, or no one should peel shrimp by themselves. It should be done with a cold beer and newspaper and you're peeling the shrimp and you're sitting there.

14:44There's certain things in home cooking or crawfish bisque because they had to make a stuffing and then they would like stuff. It was a very complex undertaking. Very good, though. But you wouldn't, it was really labor intensive. You grew up in this household. You had seven brothers and sisters. Your mother was cooking for you when she wasn't selling encyclopedias. And your father was? He was a postmaster. Post, yes. And we had a country store, a general store. So if you wanted a ten-penny nail, a pair of boots, a dozen eggs, sliced lunch meat or something like that, we got a can of it. So we were the kind of central point of a rural place.

15:30And, you know, old guys would come and they'd sit out and drink beer. And, of course, it was no, when I grew up, everything was segregated except for us because we didn't have anything. There were no public facilities. There was one when I was a little boy. They had a movie theater. They called it the Ballerina. And the whites had to sit in the balcony. Because it was so few of them. It had to be segregated, but in most places, the blacks had to sit in the balcony and the whites got to sit in the bottom of the theater. Where I was, it was so overwhelmingly black, we had to sit in the balcony. And that was when I was, that probably closed when I was five or six years old.

16:16Okay, it was a so-hate thing, it didn't last. But it was, and then what really made us international is we were the location of the most sophisticated and best place for the treatment of Hansen's disease, which you know of as leprosy. So that really, and the public health service ran that. So medical people from all over the world would come to Caulfield. So I had this window on the wall that you would not get anywhere else in the rural south. And I think that very much shaped, I became very much wanting to be a citizen of the world as much as I wanted to be anything else. I came to love the whole world.

17:01It sounds kind of like a rant, but it's true. And so that journey from going from being a citizen of this small, small town to being where you are now included then when you left home and then you went to university. Did you know then that politics was what you did the whole thing? Yeah, I kind of knew it. And I wasn't a very diligent or good student. I did go to law school. And you went to the Marines, did you say? Yeah, in the middle of college. I got flunked out, to put an honest expression on it. Where were you when Martin Luther King was killed? I was in the Marine Corps. It was in April of 1968.

17:44My question is, where were you when Martin Luther King was killed? I had a friend, sounds so trite to say it, but I had a black friend, okay? Of course, if you were in the military, you did. And he said, the news came off that King was killed. He said, man, I'm depressed. I got to go back to the barracks. I said, I'll cover for you. Don't worry about it. Okay, never forget it. Never forget it. And then the day I got out of the Marines, Bobby Kennedy was shot. So, I mean, I knew turmoil. And the Vietnam War was a utter disaster. I mean, people think that they're living in the most turbulent times you can imagine.

18:28Well, they are turbulent. It's terrible, but I lived in turbulent times too.

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20:31Hello, come on in. Come in. Excuse me for not getting up, but I'm eating. You are your biggest fan. Oh, come on. We're going to have a terrible night. For this episode, Emily Magnus and John Sopel, hosts of the News Agents podcast, joined our table. Ruthie's like the greatest connector in the world. And so we talked about we've been to New Orleans, we've been to the Marines, we've been through Clinton. We've been everywhere, haven't we, Jack? Yeah, we've been here. But we were just... We wouldn't listen to the conversation. We were just beginning to talk about the movie. It's called Carville, Winning is Everything Stupid.

21:08based on the economy stupid, okay? And my belief that political campaigns exist to do one thing, and that's to win. If you don't win, you haven't done anything. It's kind of useless. Where can people see this film? It's going to be on CNN? It's on HBO Max. Okay. We were live on CNN twice. We've been to all of the big film festivals. Huge, huge success. was the idea that it had to come out after the election. So you do it all not knowing. It's very interesting because we were trying to figure out when do you release it? And then all of the events that happened, he had to change the ending four times because once Biden got out, he had me on tape years before saying this guy can't run for re-election.

21:58He's too old. People used to say, aren't we worried about his age? And I was one of the people who'd say, I'd rather have that glass of water than Trump. And you're talking about him being old? I'm just a citizen. I didn't know the inside story. I wasn't the person. But I thought anybody who said we're worried about Biden's age was really a Trumpist. I thought they wanted to vote for Trump and they just wouldn't say it. Until the debate. You said if he got out in 23, in the summer of 23. We would have won going away. The implication being that it would not have been her. You think there was somebody better than her?

22:34Oh, yes. Go on, who? I know. Well, I hate to give names because somebody's going to say I'm going to exclude them. We're just doing his friends. Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Gretchen Rittman, Raphael Warnock, J.B. Pritzker, Jared Polis. Not he's. Not he's going to do it. All these people, and I've left some out, all these people are Mitch Landry. Mitch Landry might be as good a communicator as Bill Clinton. Yeah. You know, in politics, the most underrated, I think, attribute is, drum roll please, charm. Charm counts. People, white people who can charm people, they just do. Isn't there a saying, you know, never play golf with the president?

23:23Because if you're a journalist and the president asks you to play golf, you come away and you say, you know what, he had a sense of humor. You know what? He's kind of charming, you know? And maybe, again, as a citizen, we're talking about policies maybe? Or Richard used to say that in his office. He said if somebody was lovable, they could get away with so much, and if they weren't, they couldn't. Yeah, you have no people. Okay, so once you're president, but there's some people that walk into a room and the room changes. Did Kamala have that charm? Not overly, no. No, it doesn't make good. You understand, Harris never ran office outside of California.

24:06Okay, so she never had to walk into the lion's den. It was a heavily Democratic state, so she didn't have to cultivate hostile audiences. Better politicians are able to do that. Could she have won it? If Biden would have gotten out in the summer of 2023, we would have won easily. So could she have won? So Biden gets out on July the 21st. The Democratic Commission starts on August 17th. So she has to take his campaign manager, his campaign staff, his campaign headquarters, and everything. the country for whatever reason I disagree with it wanted something different than Biden she refused to be different they would ask her what would you do different she says I can't think of anything so we would have definitely want Joe Biden stands over this disaster like a colossus and I like him.

25:13Okay, and it's unfortunate because he's had a really remarkable life in political career. But he's just going to be remembered for this for a long time, and it's really a shame. We have not had an inspirational candidate since 2012. Most people in politics, it's an emotional business. You see somebody, hey, I love John Kennedy. Hey, I love Bill Clinton. Hey, I love Obama. Hey, I love Ronald Reagan. Hey, I love Margaret Thatcher. Whatever, okay? It's very much not a rational business, but an emotional business. I was going to ask you about your domestic life. When you created a home with Mary, did you meet at the White House?

26:05No, she, there was a story about me. She worked for Lee Atwater. She was the chief of staff at the Republican National Committee. And Lee said, go out and date this guy. Basically, go see what you can find out about him. Oh, as a spy? Yeah, she was set out as a spy. That's pretty romantic. Yeah. Literally, that's what happened. Wow. Did you have suspicions that she was spying on you? Well, first of all, she's really nice-looking, well-dressed. and we were spying, but an hour and a half and four drinks later we were. There you were. The rest is just. That's a very cinematic thing, isn't it, where you find out the person that you think you love and then it turns out that.

26:49She's very kind of open about it. She was sent to a spy on me. Yeah, that's very romantic, I'd say. So this was when you were with Clinton in the White House, is it? Yeah, we started dating on January the 1st, 1991. So he won the election in 92. But she was the head of all field operations, the coordinator for the Bush campaign. Wow. And then in November of 1991, as you talked about in the movie, I went to work for Clinton. So she was the top Bush person. I was the top Clinton person. and God help us, we survived it.

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