"I was told that they wanted the contributors to be more available -- essentially, closer to Washington," Ragin' Cajun Mr. Carville told Politico, noting that it was the network's decision. "I'm not always available, I don't live there." The couple primarily resides in New Orleans.

The ideologically opposite couple have been a topic of interest (how do they do it?) and inspiration (if they can make it work despite different political outlooks, maybe there is hope for all of us) since they married after they worked against each other in the 1992 presidential campaign. Although Mr. Carville's candidate (Bill Clinton) won against Ms. Matalin's candidate (George Bush I), ultimately, it was a victory for love.

In honor of their departure, we found a 2009 CNN interview outlining their secrets to successful compromise within a marriage.

"I don't have a position on anything domestically. So I just say yes, and then go on and do it," Mr. Carville said, in response to a viewer's question about their marriage. "I would say the three ingredients to successful marriage is surrender, capitulation and retreat."

"Spoken like a true liberal. What a martyr," Ms. Matalin responded. "Faith, family and good wine. That's how we do it."

If politics make strange bedfellows, we suppose punditry make even stranger ones.

Clip below:

Karl Rove is great at impressions (Buzzfeed)

Case in point: who knew that Karl Rove, former political strategist to President George W. Bush, was so good* at impressions? During today's live interview with Politico's Mike Allen, Mr. Rove did his best Ragin' Cajun voice, which could give Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader's James Carville routine a run for its money.

Karl Rove as Carville, whom he is besties with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MovOe-bSpiU#!

Very subtle. "Bleh bleh bleh! Ableh bleh bleh!" It sounds like a middle schooler's impression of the teacher who just gave them detention for blowing spitballs at nerds.

Bill Hader:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-HQvutGFsQ

It might be more accurate, but come on, you know Mr. Rove nailed it. Maybe he can break his contract at Fox and start doing work for Lorne Michaels.

*Terrible

On the Dan Patrick Show this morning, Mr. Carville said he "overindulged" after the win, but--like a true New Orleanian--wasn't feeling a hangover.

So how did last night compare to 1992, when Mr. Carville helped Bill Clinton derail 12 years of Republican dominance and unseat an incumbent president?

"I think it was a bigger high, oddly enough, when the Saints won, because I kind of knew we were going to win before," he said, and admitted he had shed a few joyful tears.

Mr. Carville--who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008--said he wouldn't be going to the White House to show the Saints around. And his only regret was not being in New Orleans for the big win yesterday--and the big win by Mitch Landrieu in the mayor's race on Saturday night.

"I think that Saturday and Sunday are the two best days New Orleans has had since 1815 with Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans," Mr. Carville said.

Next week, Mr. Cooper will return to the wellspring of his emotional outrage. CNN announced today that all next week AC360 will present a series of reports on how New Orleans is faring some four years after the destruction.

The reports will culminate on Thursday, August 27, when Mr. Cooper will anchor his show from New Orleans, including a special walking tour with Democratic strategist and Louisiana native James Carville.

Keep some tissues handy!

More from today's release:

As part of an in-depth series titled After the Storm, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° will air special segments throughout the week on the city of New Orleans and how a city plagued by corruption and still known for turning its back on its citizens is rebuilding after Hurricane KatrinaBeginning August 24^th, Anderson Cooper along with CNN correspondents Sean Callebs, Drew Griffin, Gary Tuchman and CNN’s senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will bring viewers the latest on the state of education, healthcare, the levees and the justice system in New Orleans.

Doree Shafrir has the tale of the tape on several heated media feuds, including Jared Paul Stern v. Ron Burkle, Buzz Bissinger v. Will Leitch (thankfully resolved), and Leon Wieseltier v. Andrew Sullivan. Plus: Barbara Walters' memoir.

Will the Commission on Presidential Debates play nice with Web 2.0? Felix Gillette looks ahead to the general elections and talks to James Carville who says, "That commission has run its course... I think Google and YouTube and other people are seeing a kind of vacuum, and they’re moving into it. I can’t imagine a presidential candidate not wanting to participate in this debate.”

Is Murdoch lieutenant Robert Thomson filling the void left by Marcus Brauchli's departure from The Wall Street Journal? Mr. Thomson tells John Koblin, "there is uncertainty and thus it is proper for me to stand in front of our journalists and take the tough, challenging questions." Plus Out's Aaron Hicklin.

Plus: Meredith Bryan swills with internet wine critic Gary Vaynerchuk and flies among the Society Superheroes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual Costume Institute Gala; Doree Shafrir attends a book club; Spencer Morgan takes a bath.

'How come the guy who calls himself chief strategist doesn't have a strategy?' said Begala, channeling Carville, according to the attendee.

"That's all well and good," said Wolfson. "In my opinion the remarks of Gordon Fisher are very much in keeping with the campaign Senator Obama is running. So I don't know why he would apologize."

And after three attempts by AOL reporter Tommy Christopher, Wolfson said that James Carville should speak for himself about whether he regrets comparing Bill Richardson to Judas, but, added, "If I had said it, I would apologize."

“Only 39 days until the Iowa caucuses,” Tim Russert gravely intoned over the dramatic John Williams “Meet the Press” score. “The Democratic race: too close to call. The Republican race: too close to call. Which issues, policies, strategies will resonate?”

If Mr. Russert really wanted a thoughtful and provocative discussion of that subject, then why did he—yet again—hand over half of his show to James Carville and Mary Matalin, two of the four panelists whose punditry monopolized Sunday’s one-hour broadcast?

This is not an issue of disclosure. Mr. Russert correctly noted in his opening that Mr. Carville “helped put Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House in 1992” and that Ms. Matalin supports Fred Thompson, and later pointed out that Mr. Carville has also donated money to Hillary Clinton’s ’08 campaign.

Instead, it’s a question of quality, fairness and basic respect for the intelligence and time of the viewing audience. Does Mr. Russert, the host of what is supposed to be the preeminent news discussion program on television, actually believe that Mr. Carville and Mrs. Matalin provide viewers with objective analysis? And why does he continually include them—on a regular panel that also features Republican Mike Murphy and Democrat Bob Shrum—without offering a similar platform to any of the other candidates’ prominent supporters?

It took about 14 seconds on Sunday for Mr. Carville to show his stripes, when Mr. Russert used the first question of the show to ask Mr. Carville to analyze the latest Iowa numbers, which show Mrs. Clinton trailing Barack Obama, 30 to 26 percent (with John Edwards at 22 percent). Released last week, the poll prompted a round of Is-Hillary-Suddenly-In-Trouble stories in the press.

Mr. Carville’s response could have been written by Howard Wolfson: He immediately downplayed the significance of what is inarguably a negative development for his candidate.

“It says that Iowa is very tight,” Mr. Carville said, “and this poll and every poll has shown that it’s very tight. Also, Iowa polls are unreliable over a month out. John Kerry was running third, Bill Bradley, at the time, was way ahead of Al Gore in Iowa.”

He went on in this spirit, but let’s stop right there, because Mr. Carville, in those few sentences, already mangled history in a way that is conveniently conducive to Mrs. Clinton. His claim that Bill Bradley “was way ahead of Al Gore in Iowa” at any point during the 2000 campaign is false on its face. In fact, eight years ago nearly to the day, an Iowa poll showed Mr. Gore throttling Mr. Bradley, 54 to 32 percent. Mr. Gore led Iowa wire-to-wire in 2000. New Hampshire was the volatile state that year, not Iowa.

Maybe this was just an innocent misstatement by Mr. Carville. After all, his broader point has the ring of truth: The Iowa leaderboard, the 2000 example notwithstanding, can change in a hurry. Any pundit in the country could have made that observation. But because of his personal devotion to the Clintons, it can’t be assumed that Mr. Carville’s motives in making it were pure. Actually, his entire answer raised several questions, including:

* If the poll in question had shown Mrs. Clinton—and not Mr. Obama—opening a lead, would Mr. Carville have been as quick to point out, as he did, that it’s still early, that other polls have produced different results, and that surveys at this stage can be unreliable?

* Was his inaccurate statement about the Gore-Bradley race an understandable error, or was he—like any master of spin—guilty of intentional exaggeration and overstatement in an effort to amplify his Clinton-serving argument?

And this was only the first question of the show. The next time he spoke up, it was to point out that Mrs. Clinton had “performed superbly” in the Democratic debates and to echo her attack that Mr. Obama’s health care plan “doesn’t have the mandate, leaves 15 million people uninsured.”

Good lord. Where was the competing, pro-Obama “analyst” to point out, say, the massive campaign contributions that Mrs. Clinton has gobbled up from the health insurance industry?

Even Mr. Carville’s “criticisms” of Mrs. Clinton could be seen as subtle efforts to blunt attacks on her and to bolster her campaign. For instance, Mr. Russert pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s pilloried performance two debates ago and asked if “her answer on the driver’s license immigration issue and on other issues, or her reluctance to answer, hurt her with the honest, trustworthy questions that were asked in this poll?”

Mr. Carville’s responded that he “did not think that that was (her) best performance”—something Mrs. Clinton herself had said publicly—and then quickly added that “anybody that looks at her performance over the course of the debates says that this a competent, thought-out campaign.”

During a discussion of Mrs. Clinton’s recent effort to claim credit for the domestic economy during her husband’s presidency, Mr. Carville—as if it represented some stunning admission on his part—offered his opinion that “ her argument is actually not a bad one, in this case.”

It was no better when the talk turned to the Republicans, with Ms. Matalin, an advisor to the Fred Thompson presidential campaign, assuming the role her husband filled on the Democratic side.

Confronted with Iowa numbers that are downright atrocious for her candidate—a distant third place, nine points behind Mike Huckabee—Ms. Matalin, just like her husband, sought to downplay them.

“Oh, the dynamic hasn’t changed,” she said. “The numbers have changed. He’s down from his peak, but Rudy’s down from his peak. Rudy’s substantially down from his peak … the national polls, Fred Thompson remains in second place. In South Carolina, a more pivotal state than the first two states, he’s tied for first with Romney, who’s been all over TV for two months.”

If the conversation had been about any candidate besides Ms. Matalin’s, does anyone actually believe she would have been so quick to thumb her nose at such damning polls numbers?

And in the next breath, she took it one step further, matter-of-factly hauling out talking points aimed squarely at Mr. Huckabee, who just so happens to have emerged as the chief strategic threat to Mr. Thompson.

“He’s horrible on immigration, he’s for benefits for illegal aliens,” she said. “He’s terrible on spending and taxes, right? Historic tax increases in Arkansas, government spending increased by 50 percent, government employees increased by 20 percent.”

She argued that pointing this out is imperative for Mitt Romney’s campaign, since it is Mr. Romney whose Iowa lead is now threatened by Mr. Huckabee, which is true enough. But what she didn’t add is that the Thompson campaign—her campaign—is counting on Mr. Romney defeating Mr. Huckabee soundly in Iowa, so that Mr. Thompson will face Mr. Romney, a Massachusetts Mormon, in South Carolina—and not Mr. Huckabee, a fellow Southerner.

Mr. Russert has convened this same Carville-Matalin-Shrum-Murphy panel several times. But he ought to consider what it’s supposed to accomplish. If he wants objective and detached (and occasionally unpredictable) analysis from political pros, Mr. Carville and Ms. Matalin need to go. They are shills.

And if he really is interested in dueling recitations of campaign spin, he should simply replace Mr. Shrum and Mr. Murphy with spokespeople for the rest of the candidates.

Last week, CNN provoked a firestorm of blogospheric outrage when its post-debate analysis featured James Carville, without disclosing that Mr. Carville -- who helped elect Bill Clinton president -- is now actively supporting Hillary.

Now, Jon Klein says his network will do better in the future. "He's not on the Hillary payroll, but he's on the Hillary bandwagon, and that should be disclosed as much as we can," Mr. Klein told The Times. "I wasn’t comfortable with it myself as I watched it."

But he was at his most passionate, by far, when talking instead about the 2000 campaign, and denouncing the way it was covered by the country’s two leading national newspapers.

The New York Times’ coverage of that race “was borderline criminal—and The Washington Post’s was worse,” said Mr. Carville, joining a growing list of commentators who have argued lately that the media was overly focused on superficial issues, and exaggerated Al Gore’s flaws while giving a pass to George W. Bush. Mr. Carville went on: “You couldn’t defend [Post reporter] Ceci Conolly if you tried,” and also singled out Times scribes Kit Seelye and Frank Bruni, who covered Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush respectively, for scorn.

When Mr. Rather observed that the targets of his interlocutor’s ire weren’t there to defend themselves, Mr. Carville shot back: “They don’t need to be here, they need to shut up.”

Explaining that he’s not over the 2000 election, “and I’m not ever gonna be,” Mr. Carville declared of The Times and The Post: “What they oughta do is just apologize to the country for what they did, and we’d all be over it.”

Mr. Carville—who parlayed a key role in Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign into a near-constant presence as a Democratic political analyst on cable television—also offered some surprising, and characteristically colorful, insights into the current race. Asked whether Mr. Gore, in the wake of his Nobel Peace Prize win, might still jump into the fray, he observed that “running for president is like sex: you don’t do it once and forget about it.” Still, he said he thought Mr. Gore would run only if Barack Obama’s campaign collapses entirely—and perhaps not even then.

Since the start of the year, most commentators have described the Democratic race as a three-way contest between Hillary Clinton, Sen. Obama, and John Edwards. But lately, Mr. Edwards has been dogged by anemic fund-raising, and declining poll numbers, and Mr. Carville confirmed that, barring an intervention fom Mr. Gore, it’s essentially a two-person contest. “John Edwards is not gonna be the Democratic nominee,” he told the audience.

Like most observers, Mr. Carville thinks his party is well-positioned. “I’ve never seen the Democratic party more unified than it is now,” he said. Still, he said he frets about another challenge from Ralph Nader, who could siphon key votes from the Democratic candidate, as he did in 2000. “I really worry about the Nader stuff. It’s something to be concerned about.”

Mr. Carville had a surprising answer when asked who Sen. Clinton might pick as a running mate, should she win the Democratic nomination—he named Kathleen Sibelius, the popular centrist governor of Kansas, as a “dark horse.” “They can’t take one woman? Hell, give ’em two,” he said. “You heard it here first.”

As for the GOP, Mr. Carville predicted that if the party nominates Rudy Giuliani, the current frontrunner, the Christian right will run an alternative candidate. He also advised the crowd not to discount Mike Huckabee, the socially conservative governor of Arkansas.

And he floated an intriguing possibility. Senior G.O.P. figures could decide in the coming months, Mr. Carville suggested, that the only figure capable of uniting the party is Jeb Bush—and they might urge the Florida governor to join the race.

Still, said Mr. Carville, “It would be a remarkable feat if the Republicans were able to win this election.” Because of rifts within the party, “this thing is going to get very dicey and very problematic for them,” he said. “It’ not just gonna sort itself out.”

Mr. Carville wasn’t the only star on stage, of course. For the most part, Mr. Rather—who in 2005 was forced out of the anchor chair at CBS News after airing a flawed report on President Bush’s National Guard service, and recently announced he’s suing his former employer for $70 million—played the neutral interviewer. But, towards the end of the evening, he seemed to refer obliquely to the controversy that marred his final months at the network, telling the audience to “hold the press accountable—particularly the people who own and operate the major media companies.”

Since announcing his lawsuit. Mr. Rather has suggested that his efforts to corroborate the National Guard story were stymied by CBS executives. And on stage, he asserted the need for journalists to continue to conduct aggressive enterprise reporting, even in the face of obstacles. ‘There are powerful people,” said Mr. Rather, “who are going to look at that coverage and say: ‘you know what, that coverage is dangerous to our interests, and we need to get in there and choke it off.’”

It wasn’t hard to guess whom he seemed to have in mind.