James Carville is the legendary political consultant who rose to prominence after he helped Bill Clinton win the presidency in nineteen ninety two. He is a colorful character with a shrewd grasp on how to craft a political campaign and how to communicate a message. Matt Turnauer is another great communicator. He has written for Vanity Fair for years, profiling cultural icons and moguls, myself included. He now makes documentaries and
episodic series about all kinds of fascinating subjects. Valentino, Roy Kane, and Nobu are a few. His latest film tells the story of James Carville's work and his famous marriage to the Republican operative Mary Madeleine, and follows him over eighteen months of the incredibly divisive and consequential twenty twenty four presidential campaign. I am very glad to have both of them join me today on my podcast. Welcome James, Welcome Matt.
Thank you, thank you, Arthur, thank you.
Excited So James, the title of this film is winning Is everything stupid?
Right?
What in your forty plus years as a consultant on campaigns from Clinton to now are the keys to winning well?
First of all, thank you and delighted to be here. The point I'm trying to make is is that winning is everything, and the primacy of politics, it trumps everything else. Political power is more important in cultural power. Political power is more even more important in financial power, all the different religious power. Of all the different sources of power, the one that affects the most lives the most directly is political power. And without winning, you have no political power.
It's a pretty straightforward argument that we make it.
And it's extremely worriesome at present.
Isn't it. It's worsome, but r out of the level will stay out on a limb. I think there are reasons to think that we can win this. We're gonna winness.
Today, Okay, And Matt James was the subject of the nineteen ninety three documentary The War Room. What propelled you to make a documentary about James Carrville at this time?
The War Room is a very memorable film.
I think it's a great film, but it's more than thirty years ago, and that was really the beginning of James Carville's fame. Since then, he's had more than three decades of being a household name. And as Paul mcgala, his former partner as a campaign strategist, says in the movie, He's the smartest son of a bitch who ever did
this for a living. So my thought was that I started this more than two and a half years ago, was that it would be amazing to hear from James and do a film about him and show how politics has transformed in the thirty years since he, in essence, taught Democrats how to win again. They've been in the political wilderness for a quarter of century elements by the time he spirit Clinton into victory.
But what happened was that he inserted himself into the twenty twenty four race in a really profound way while I was making the film and the entire kind.
Of arc of this change when James began very early on in the spring of twenty twenty three, after seeing an ABC News poll that showed really scary numbers for president by to try to persuade the incommon president to step aside.
And I mean, I'm leaping ahead here, but the rest is history.
No one thought this quick sonic idea he had would ever work.
I did. I thought, so, oh really O good? Oh yeah, I did, and I knew it was going to happen. Why did I know. I'm not involved in any personal personal way other than observing, but boy, I knew he had to drop out.
Well, the pressure and I'll let you and speak to this, because it was really on him. The pressure for him to shut up about.
This was enormous.
And even I was getting texts from powerful democrats and donors saying, you're with James Carblobat, tell him to be quiet because there was a collective ostriches with heads in the.
Sand thing happening, if you recall. But James was really feeling to keep because he was the one out on the limb.
But I also kind of thought that George Clooney had something to do with it.
Did he work with you people?
Did George Cooney work with you at all? James on that decision?
No? Both, No one did. And George wrote about Ed Peach. I was thinking early July. I don't think he was probably there before, but people, I think have an impression made it. I'm more at Hoka impulsive, and before I did this, I really thought about it and thought about it deeply, talked to a lot of different people, and I've been at it for almost two years.
I wish, and we all look in hindsight, I wish that we could have done that before a couple of months before an election. It would have been it would have been so much fairer to the new opponents, wouldn't it have been.
I wasn't surprised about any of it. I wasn't even mad about any of it. I knew this is gonna happen. But I felt it in my bones, or you felt in your bones. There were other people that did also. I mean, it wasn't like I was some Cassandra and it was the only person thinking this, but there were way too few. And the people that came aboard may because you know, we could argue with this late or not, but right now, for thirteen days to go, who cares.
I mean, we're just where we are. And I really am a kind of person that lives in the present. Because the philosopher one said the past, we know the present, But I sure I just live in the president right now. The president is we got to figure a way the complish thing together and save the country.
Well, you're so eloquent about all of this, and what was it like to see your life as observed by Matt and his collaborators in this new film.
I'm supposed to say, all sharks, I'm just a Cajun boy, you know, a poor time. But it was actually quite flattering, and I hope that the message that people take from this, and particularly young people, is that, hey, this is not a profession that people go around wearing Hairsharks actually had a good time. They laughed a lot, they were happy a lot. They you know, slapped each other's back, they
high five, they did all of the other things. And if we keep demeaning the profession of politics, we're going to continue to have not very good people decide to pursue this as a career choice. And I think that's unfortunate. I think that if we are honest about politics, yes, it's like any other business. It's got ups and downs and good people and bad people, but in the whole, it's an old business. And I do think that kind of came through in the documentary. But that I'm great.
Are there parts you don't agree with?
Well, I I kind of agree with Bernie Sanders called me a political hack. I don't agree with John Fetterman that should shut the cup, but that his request. But you know, it's not I could go through and Matt will tell I didn't watch it, Mary and I didn't watch it, till tell you right, because I just felt I feel like, if you have a creative you know, if you're cooking a dish and you're sitting the table, you know what you're doing. You don't need somebody looking
over your shoulder. You're you know, doing a telling people how to arrange flowers and tell people how you greet people. I mean, that's what you do better than anybody that's ever lived. And we had Mary and I had a lot of confidence in back. We had a lot of confidence in his storytelling ability. And you know it was it had some like anybody else has had a life. I've had some rough spots and things I wish I could take back and come of course kind of gitting
husband to take the truth. But on the whole, I think it was a portrait of a life in politics, and to the extent that people see it and want to get into politics, I encourageable.
So he got a lot right in your mind, that's that's wonderful. How did Matt convince you to let him tell your story? Was it or was it the other way around.
It was some friends of the origins of it were some friends of mine and they went to Matt he can take the story. They asked him to recommend a director, and he said, yes me. So it's always good if you got something that's going to do a project about you, you'd rather there somebody do it that's enthusiastic of U. I said, well, I don't have any work right now. My schedule is vacant for the next fourteen months. You're not going to get the same product, all right, And
he didn't say I got several things going on. I'm going to try to jam this thing through and you know, work over time. He said, I want to do it. And that's the you know, that's the most important thing that you're doing anything, is to have somebody do something that they want to do, as opposed to talking them into doing.
How long did it actually take from start to finish for you, James.
I'd have to go back get the timeline. It was Susan mque who was Ferry read Sheep as the f when she was thirty years old. It was a post pandemic. It had to have been like late twenty one or early twenty two. Said, I was a student at Rutgers and I saw this and it motivated me. The moilroom, the nineteen ninety three film motivated her, and she said, we should make another film about you to motivate other
young people. And I thought it was kind of flattering, and you know, kind of mos Yeah, that's a great idea, and I didn't think any more about it. And the next thing, you know, she'd call Matt. She'd called some big fundraisers and she said, we got to go meet with these people. I'm raising money for the movie, and we got a director, and you know, I just I didn't I don't know if I ever, Like most things in my life, some strong woman made a decision for
me and I just went along with it. If it was my mother and my sister, my wife, you know, somebody, a couple of more than two people have come in it that they've washed it with their wife, and they said, people think it has real strong feminist undertopes. So really, I don't know if there was ever a point just one strong woman said we're doing this, and the next thing, you know, I was doing it.
That's good, Matt. The action of the film covers the history of Carville's career with a focus on the current presidential campaign. How did you decide what the arc of your story would be? Is it the timing because it's so close to a new an election, a very very very important election.
It kind of changed.
We worked on it for two and a half years. I'd say these things sometimes take a year to add it. It's seen him a very tee for the most part, which is I think the highest form of documentary filmmaking, you know, following someone being a fly on the wall. But I think any director who starts at Verite Film and tells you that they know how it's going to end, he is lying to you. I mean, that's actually the
joy of the process. It's a little like the journalistic process, where you might have a conception about where you're going. And I told you a bit about what I thought I was doing at the outset of the podcast. But when James began to show what kind of political muscle and influence he has in real time by getting on his platforms. He has a podcast himself, He's welcome on MSNBC and CNBC at will, He's quoted in all the major political follows. This is a guy with really important platforms.
But he's also someone and this we started doing from the outset, who works the phones every morning with the same group of people since the nineties.
It's extraordinary. It's like a hidden political think tank. Really.
So we're talking about George Stephanopoulos, Paul mcgalla, and Grenwald who was the media consultant for Clinton and illustrious career ever since. Thence Dan Greenberg, the launted Polster to the Blue and Fall, Rob Emanuel.
This is a phone chain and a phone tree.
I guess that has been going on for more than thirty years, and they're all are the most informed people about politics. And James gathers information like the kind of central intelligence sort of political, not spy, but sort of you know, like intelligence master. And he's not just a TV talking head. He pushes political strategies out that he has considered very carefully, and you see him in process
doing that in the film. And actually, you know, you mentioned, Martha that I did a couple of profiles of you and one of the things that fascinated me about you was that you're all about process and you explain process, and I like to.
Do that in my film. So I thought I'm going to show how this guy does it because he's a.
Master of the craft, and too for the person who's interested in politics and wants to know how it works. That you're seeing it here in the film as we cover James doing that then leaving ahead, he sees this whole and he sees the future. He sees around the corner, he sees that Biden's numbers are terrible and probably insurmountable, and then he uses the platforms to push an agenda, and you see him become, in my opinion, the elder statesman of the Democratic Party. He's not elected to anything.
He's not a Washington lawyer like Bob Strauss and Riven Jeordan. He's not a lobbyist. He's James Carvill. So he uses his fame and his intelligence and his persuasiveness to change the world. And for a filmmaker, if you have that happening live in front of your cameras, that's lightning the bomb.
Well, James, I've always enjoyed listening to you and to hear your opinion about current events and what's going on in politics. Did you ever consider going into politics yourself?
No, ma'am, I wouldn't that. Well, Okay, it wouldn't. It would not be a very pretty picture. And you know, some things about I have two daughters, one twenty nine and uh one twenty six, and there are things about their dad's life would as soon leaving the dust bit of history. And one thing when you get into politics. But I was a very late bloom. I didn't win
my first campaign. I was in my forties, so and I never wanted to be I actually was thinking about this, Martha was actually watching a movie and watching the part about Carville. I actually grew up to be the person that I really wanted to be, and not many people get to do that. Yeah, all right, whatever dreams I had is sitting on the levee, you know, throwing rocks in the river, whatever idle fourteen year old boys did.
I actually ended up leading the life I dreamed of, which is and that's a pretty remark alcable thing to say as you approach eightieth birthday. But I got to be the person I wanted to be, and I never envisioned myself. You know, every supposedly Louisiana, every boy grows up wanting to be governor. I mean that's you know, Russell Longs I was thirty years in the Senate, and he just always wanted to be governor, but circumstances didn't
provide way he could. I never wanted to be governor, but I did dream of being the guy behind the governor, or the friend of the governor's or whatever it was. It turned out very that's the most fortunate thing.
You can say, well, with your analytical mind and your and your perspicacity, if you want to use that word, you really have done what you set out to do. And I applaud that, and I think that I like, I like hearing that because as I have already reached the eighty eighty year.
Mark, I up there.
I feel I feel like I'm reaching more of my my potential now too, and it's it's good. It's really a good feeling. But when you look back, I have so many questions for you that are not in my script, and Heather's Heather, my producer is going to start cringing over there. I just thought it would be kind of interesting just to ask you just a couple of questions that have bothered me that are not really covered in the in the documentary, but your opinion of Obama and his presidency.
Obviously it was enormously historic. Feather Obama have something that is rare in a politician. He pretty gagged impression he didn't much like politics. That it was like somebody that wanted to have children but didn't like sex. Okay, I mean, and I mean that in a very respectful way, that President Clinton loved relish politics and relish being there. President Obama. Gay, I'm not going to a critique at all. I think he governed the country exceedingly well. He was good at it. Okay,
but you don't. You didn't You didn't have that that what do we call him? These other Okay, he didn't have that about.
Well Clinton Clinton, I totally agree with you. He loved politics, He loved loved his job.
People would complaining about Clinton. I said, what pissed you off the peace of the prosperity, because that really got under your skin, was that that you were making money, you weren't getting shot at.
No, that none of that bothered me.
What I have come to learn is most good politicians, or I'd say no, both great politicians really try hard. But you never see him sweat. You never saw Reagan sweat, You never saw Clinton sweat. You never saw Obama sweat. They were really you.
Know, Trump is sweating a lot, by the.
Way, that's all he does, sweating. But you know, stink, sweat, stink, that's what he is, you know. But the classic exam Bobby Jenda was the man who tried too hard. He just had to. They give you the impression to something said. Although I think he was a great man, was write about more things than by my life. Al Gore always gave you the impression that he was really trying. I used to say that Bill Clinton could look better missing a free throat than Al Gore can look making a
free throw. And just some people, and it's kind of one of the marks of great politicians. They trying hard. They're competitive to the core, but they never let you know that. And that's not an easy thing to do in life.
Well, let's let's keep on with the documentary. First, Can you both talk about what it took to build the trust in each other to let this story come out so beautifully?
Okay, Well, I'm pretty good at this after doing him for so many years.
I mean, in Vanity Fair.
I wrote long form profiles. You spend weeks and weeks and weeks of people. It was a great training ground for this, and I think the stories I wrote at Vani Fair were almost like paper documentaries that were very observational. They included process, Like I said, I love writing about you because I had to spend time with you and see your process.
And did James Carvill know? Does he know what what happened as a result of that profile?
Well? I did too.
The first was uneventful. The second I'll leave it to you Martha.
Yeah, so James. After the second profile, when when Matt reported that I took a walk from my house down to my stable to look at my horses, the parole officer gave me another five months of home confinement because I went outside the perimeter of my home on my own property.
You know, our can address the restaurant in your Orleans. We had a party at a one of one of my best friends, one of our dollars to the film, who was a victim, and personally they decided that they were going to pursue it. And I saw it happened because of Clinton. People have to understand it. We have a government that sometimes can get way ahead of itself and way too enthusiastic about things. And I think that, but you fat you clearly fall into today.
But that parole officer reading van is the most He was the most unread person on earth. Somebody gave him that article.
I used to I used to teach my students. The one thing you never do in life is argue with minor power. You better off arguin with a federal judge and your parole officer. Okay, if you don't ever argue with the immigration and Customs guy, Okay, because you do, you can. You can tell a sentence that you know, go f yourself and that's going to be fine. But but always don't argue mind power, but don't want to go back to the movie. One of the things that sold me on Matt from beginning is he had been
around politics. He was actually like a driver in the eighty four Mondale campaign, he was like Susan Estrich's administrative persists or whatever you call it. In the nineteen eighty eight Do Coccus campaign, he profiled any number of people
in politics. So if you're doing something like this, it's important as a director understand at more than a rudimentary level of what this is and what it entails, because if you just have a voyeur come out of an English professor or or engineered that decides I want to do a documentary about politics, and they have no no matter how smart or how talented they are, if they don't understand the rudimentary things that you're trying to accomplish
and communicate, they're not going to be able to do that. So that's why I was kind of pretty comfortable with Matt doing this from the get go, because I kind of knew who he was before, obviously, not that cavalier person that I didn't, you know, look him up and look at his body at work, and you know, look at some of the things that he did in life, and that gave me a great deal of credit that he it matters, not the kind of coastal person that
looks down on political people. He actually worked at it. He knows him, He knows that we have the same strengths and flaws and quirks and people that everything and everything else has. But that was an important thing to Marry and I that we had somebody that knew something about it that didn't start from zero.
Yeah.
No, And it's obvious in the finished film. It's such a fantastically well put together film. So you were shocked, James, by that Trump Biden to be which shocked all of us and made us so uncomfortable. Uh, And I mean it wasn't as bad. In my mind, it wasn't as bad as it was made up to be by every single person that was reporting on it.
Did you think it was that bad the first thing? It was bad. It was bad, it was, but the first fifteen minutes couldn't be very worse.
No, that's true.
Yeah, but it kind of didn't matter because the work at the point I'm making in the film, in this one hundred per cent certain of the worst thing can happen to you in politics is you confirm an existing suspicion. And the entire suspicion was that Biden was who o and this is akimulis. This is not instinct, This is people, hundreds of focused groups. But people were would say bid they just buried their facing their hands and.
Run to run the country.
Yes, right, in the first fifteen minutes, and I was getting texts like, oh, James, that was daddy eight years ago. All right, everybody knew this it's aging is in the film was very I thought, very You can't deny it. You can't prove it, you can't triangulate it. I mean, yeah, you can exercise and you can keep your blood pressure and your blood sugar, you know, under control, but you're not going to in the end, it's gonna it's gonna bite you no matter what.
But what about a thirty seven or thirty nine minute swinging to ave Maria and during a during a public appearance in front of a huge crowd just the other night on Trump's part? Is that is that a little bit of a slip? Why and why hasn't more been made of that?
Okay, so let's let's do political campaign in one on one. So Martha, you are the chief strategiest. So Matt comes in and says, we got to make more of Trump, that he's not cognitive with it at all. He wonders, he's just losing it. He's just an old man. And James says, we got to say that General Millie, General
Kelly has said he's fascist to his bone. We got to say that Dan Coats, who was of twenty years of Republican senator, was Trump's DNI it's called Director of National Intelligence, which is the highest of it, says that he is convinced that Trump is a Russian agent, an agent in a criminal So if we say that he's cognitively out of it and can't do and then you say he's the fascist, people say, well, he's too out of it to be one. So you got to be
very that. That's the hardest thing in political strategy. To do one thing is to choose not to do another. We hate making choices. We can have love and prosperity, and you know, we can have all of We can be peaceful and tell you he got to thirteen days ago in a race that's forty eight forty eight. You got to pick a side. Okay, In picking aside, you have to ignore all of the other stuff, and you can't come in with contradictory messaging.
Are they listening to you?
You know? I think some of the stuff they do agree with him. I think the worst answered that she gave was when they said what's the difference between you and Biden? And she couldn't think anything, which is something you should have gone in. I would be critical about that. That was you know, every campaign makes mistakes, all right. You can't do one hundred things in a day and not do ten of them.
Wrong.
But she's who cares? Who got thirteen days to go? Get on the stack, Create momentum, Create people have a stake in the election. Create a choice, stick with it, go with it, don't look back.
Do you have any sense of how Donald Trump feels about running against Kamala Harris versus Joe Biden? I mean he is he more unsure of himself or what do you think?
I think he's a scared old man, knows that he's losing it. He can't control his memory loss.
Well, here's a question that's also been bothering me for a couple of months now. Why did they delay his sentencing after he has been convicted of a crime and was due to be sentenced. Why did they delay that sentencing.
I think that the judge felt like if he did it, it might even aneure more to Trump's benefit. I don't know. They shouldn't have. And the idea to Supreme Court from every from the time I was before the first grade, you learn that you know in America and no one is above the law. The reason that we broke off from the britiship because the king was above the law and which kind of lived under that is the foundational principle of the United States, and then the Supreme Court says, Haha,
you're wrong, he's above the law. I mean, how andy, AMERI can you possibly be so? And there's a lot of things I'm distressed about. There's a lot of things I'm concerned about. But right now we got thirteen days to go. We have to pick a side, We have to pick a message, and to choose one thing to do one thing is to not choose to do fourteen other things. We got to pick.
One good advice. So maybe you could give us, like, well, that's your one piece of advice. What is that one thing that you would advise them all? To say?
That? He would end the Constitution of the United States as we do it, whatever, the order that millions of Americans died to protect, sometimes not even knowing the reason that sets us apart, and he wants to destroy. And I know it doesn't quite match the price the price of a dozen eggs, but I think there is a majority art the people in the United States that quite patriotic. May not be able to articulate it, but kind of like the idea of us having a constitution that evolves.
So what hopes our ideas remain as true to you today as when you first got into politics. Besides saving the Constitution, I mean what I think.
I think that I've always thought and still do, that government condull the sharper edges of capitalism. A By that, I mean some people do better than other people. I think that the people that do well have some obligation to people for whatever circumstances don't. I do think that there are people in the United States that start out with more advantages than other people. I'm not saying that we have to, you know, be some kind of socialist thing, but we can also wreck I said, We're only as
good as people do. And I've seen in my lifetime. In nineteen sixty five, I was what twenty one years old, the elderly populy rate in the United States was thirty one percent. Today is nine. That's that's because we had government intervention. We're now in nineteen sixty five, segregation was the law of land all right. Now It's decidedly not now. I mean, are there's still inequalities and imperfections that exist. Sure, When I was in nineteen seventy, I guess it was
or somewhere around there. The cyugar Ribbon. Cleveland started burning because it was so polluted. Now they tell me you can swim in it. You know why? That was because of government action. And if we're going to solve the mega problems we have, if it's climate, if it's inequality, if it's access to health care, if it's anything is dealing with he's horrible foreign adversaries is to government, just gonna do it for us. Get over it. That's just the way we are. That that would be a cool message.
And how can we get more people to speak as clearly as you speak? Do you give seminaris to newscasters?
That's why I made this movie?
You, I know, how do we how do we get it? Is it airing?
Yeah, it's in theaters.
James is a masterclass in synthesizing a message and getting it across concisely, and it's an immortimous skill and talent. He does it better than you've heard it for the last half hour. I mean, I just sit here and all I've been listening to it for two years. He's a genius at it and everyone in communications needs to learn from this. But the thing is, and this is the whole point, is do it for good, do it for good, and we have a real decision point here
that is life or death of the Constitution. I'll be quiet now and let him saying more, because he's better at it than I am, and he's more learned. But the movie does show you that it is a masterclass in that.
Yeah, well, thank you, Matt. I think that people become enamored with showing that other people are smart they are. The way that you generally did ad is through language. And I think the Democrats, not Democrats, certain part of the Democratic Party, certainly not much Democratic voters decided that they were going to change the way that people communicated with each other, and they were going to change nouns
that we use previously. And of course they did no such thing, and it all blew up in the stupid faces. But they were well menting people, all right, there's nothing that beats what time is it? Well, it's one fifty five Central, Okay, you know, we always I would tell my student. Yeah, some people what time it is? They tell you what time it is. Other people will tell you how you make a watch, and then that people
that tell you how to build a Swiss village. Okay, just go with the people and tell you what time it is. And it's always people wanting to explain in depth a simple thing. And what you want to look for in politics or in anything in marketing is you want something sticky, right so, and you want to get visual images like in a movie. Once you see these poll numbers, they're like seeing your grandma neck it. You can't get it out of your mind. Well, everybody can
relate to what I'm saying because good communications. I always tell my students words are visual. You think that words are not. It's a visual thing. And Matt can tell you and people that you know study radio, and the people that were good at radio knew the or in
a visual art. There wasn't just in an audio art, so you had to like envision, you know, people would our parents would huddle around of radio and listened to Saint Louis Cardinal's game and you felt like in the good announcements made you feel like you were in the stadium exactly, that you could actually see baserunners advance, and that I think that's a really really important thing to
remember when you're communicating, that audio is visual. And I think adding a film has maybe made verbal communications we rely on video images or that to substitute sometimes for what we say that people can remember that. I don't know, you know, it's a kind of different.
But I totally agree with you and the audio visual is the most expressive way of dealing with all all of this that we are facing at prison time. And I'm really appreciative of your your loud voice, James, keep it loud and clear. And Matt, can you just talk about what projects you're working on now for more stuff for us to look forward to, hopefully in a happier era.
Yeah, I've just as you know, I just finished a film about Know Who, Matsuhisa.
I loved it. I loved it. I loved Nobu so much, and I really loved seeing him and his life portrayed as you have as you have chosen to portray it.
Fascinating fact.
I want to Know Who for the first time with you and Susan mcgreno.
That's where I met you.
It was so long ago now that I never read right when it opened. It was a revelation away. I ended up making this movie about him. You were so important in his career, championing champion, meaning his incredible Cuisy so that's the next one. And then I'm finishing a film about Sam Bankman freed and that mess.
Oh boy, did you have full access to him?
Well, he was not available.
Uh, they don't. They don't let him come out for a day to talk.
Well, he and he and P Diddy are together, I think, uh, lots lots of time to converse. Refrectional facilitation. That's another fascinating story.
Thank you both, gentlemen, for your frankness and for your openness. And and James, get a rest and keep going. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and happy thank you, thank you, thank you.
Bye bye bye, guys.