ames Carville worked on Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey's reelection bid in 1990.

Lopez: What kind of man was he?

Carville: Every adjective that you've every heard about him was a lot truer than anyone ever realized. They said he was tenacious — you have no idea how tenacious he was. They said had a deep sense of probity — you have no idea what a deep sense of probity he had. Whatever. He was remarkable. Another word often used to describe him was that he had a lot of depth.

Lopez: What kind of Democrat was he?

Carville: A pretty damn good Democrat. The media is too stupid to think beyond one issue, so because he was pro-life, he was always thought to be a conservative Democrat. The truth of the matter is that he tried everything he could to get universal health coverage. He was very sympathetic to labor. Even in the middle of a recession, he always got more money in the WIC programs.He was kind of the ultimate manifestation of what they call "seamless garment Catholics," who were sort of viewed because they were sorta pro-life that they had an enhanced obligation to people on the fringe of life.

His whole water program — he put a lot of money into clean water. He was put a dollar in, spend a dollar. You know, he didn't spend money he didn't have. But the money he had, he wanted to delegate as much as he could to the people who needed it the most.

I think much of the coverage of what he was is highly, highly superficial. The national press can never get beyond abortion, because it defines everything else.

Lopez: In the nuts and bolts of the campaign, did abortion hurt or help him?

Carville: It probably hurt him. I don't know. We saw that it hurt you on the polls, but we did better — my definition of Pennsylvania was always Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. Literally, if you go to a dinner party or a cocktail party, people are hand over foot to say that they are social liberals but economic conservatives. That's the most au courant, cutting-edge thing you can be. And the truth is, Casey was neither. And so, therefore, they never understood him. They shunned him, and the only thing they ever thought about him was that he was pro-life. It sort of ended and the beginning was there because he was just the kind of person that made the whole Washington establishment completely uncomfortable, that they could never understand him.

Lopez: Was he principled in a way Washington just isn't?

Carville: Yeah. I can't tell you the number of people who go out of their way to say I'm a social liberal, but I'm an economic conservative. He was neither.

Lopez: Is there such a thing as a Casey protégé? Are there any Bob Caseys in politics today?

Carville: Paul Begala. But he's not a politician. He's the only social conservative, economic liberal I know. Yeah, there are some, a lot of them you would find mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan.

There's always been this strain. Labor's never been comfortable with the whole gun-control-law thing. The Republicans have always had the strain between the economic conservatives and the social liberals. And we've always had a strain between the social liberals and the kind of economic liberals. Our social liberals — the Hollywood liberals, the gay coalition, never had a whole lot in common with labor, people who look to the government for some kind of protection against what they perceive as the harshness of the marketplace.

Lopez: What if he had run for president in 1996?

Carville: He would have probably had the same fate as a Democrat that Specter had as a Republican. Look, basically, the Republican party is not going to put Ridge in. They're not going to have a pro-choice veep. We're not going to have a pro-life veep — much less president. It's just the nature of the parties.

Lopez: Does abortion hurt your party? Casey certainly thought it did.

Carville: As much as I respect him, I would disagree with him. If we had a pro-life Democratic presidential candidate, there would be people leaving our party in droves. Same thing if the Republicans had a pro-choice presidential candidate, people would leave it in droves. It's just one of those issues. But who knows in the end — you try to do it by surveys. Who knows? What always struck me is how people say, you know, it's not the greatest thing in the world, but I wouldn't outlaw it.