Election Fervor Puts Friends at Cross Purposes : Politics: A match made in heaven it’s not: opposites wed to Bush and Clinton--and dating each other.

No self-respecting matchmaker would have steered Mary Matalin toward James Carville.

A dating relationship between a rock-ribbed Republican and a fierce Democrat hardly seemed destined to run smoothly. And that was before the two ended up on opposite sides of what is expected to be one of the hardest fought presidential elections ever.

Matalin, who looks like a fashion plate even in her habitual jeans and cowboy boots, is political director of President Bush’s campaign. Carville, whose taste runs to 1960s campus tatters, is a senior adviser to Democratic front-runner Bill Clinton.

Things were simpler when Matalin was chief of staff at the Republican National Committee and Carville was advising a variety of Democratic clients.

“We would talk some politics, but not that much,” Carville said.

“We always got into full-blown fights about things like gin rummy, how to cut garlic, whether to use Italian or regular parsley. There are enough other significant issues to discuss besides politics,” said Matalin. “And, how could we discuss anything? We disagree on everything.”

No kidding.

“It’s rare, but possible, to be a Republican and be a good person,” Carville said, referring, one presumes, to Matalin.

“The nerve! The nerve!” Matalin said to this remark. She added: “It’s hard to be a Democrat and not be a proponent of the disintegration of American society.”

“Wow!” Carville says upon hearing her response.

The man nicknamed the Ragin’ Cajun sounds positively gentle as he speaks of how his friends like Matalin better than they like him. “I think she’s brilliant,” he said. “I’m real proud of her. Everything Mary’s gotten, she’s gotten on merit.”

Matalin’s father worked in a Chicago steel mill. Her mother ran beauty schools and eventually bought one. Mary held jobs from age 11 and put herself through college working in a day-old bread outlet, cutting hair and raising golden retrievers.

“Mary,” said James, “is probably the only person at the whole Bush campaign that’s ever been 30 days late on a Visa bill.”

Matalin carried a triple major at Western Illinois University--English, history and political science--then helped her mother clear up regulatory problems at her beauty school.

“The state government was butting in,” Matalin said. “It was unbelievable to me . . . how much government intrusion there was.”

As Bush’s political director, Matalin said, she is in charge of the ground game--the nuts and bolts of organizing, setting up the mailings and phone banks and playing peacemaker when things fall apart.

As a strategist, she’s as tough as her mentor, the late Lee Atwater. She strongly urged, for example, that the campaign take aim at protectionist GOP candidate Patrick J. Buchanan with a devastating ad about his driving a Mercedes-Benz.

Carville, 48, is sometimes described with the phrase head bar-bouncer Patrick Swayze used to his subordinates in the movie “Roadhouse” -- “my way, or the highway.” An exaggeration, he says, but allows that “I’ve always been served better by being aggressive than passive.”

Carville’s father owned a general store in Carville, La., a town named for his grandfather. His mother sold encyclopedias to put her eight kids through college, and recently published a popular Cajun cookbook.

Carville’s cooking specialty is gourmet Italian. His credo for both campaigns and sauces is “reduce, reduce, reduce.” On the campaign trail last year in Pennsylvania, that translated into a handful of simple and winning themes for Sen. Harris Wofford, who defeated former governor and U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh.

For Clinton, Carville takes the daily pulse of America based on soundings from his siblings and whoever else he can find. He twists arms if a favor is needed. He’ll help with fund-raising or preparing for a debate. He is chief spinner of the press and a sometimes bullheaded strategist.

He insisted that Clinton focus on Georgia’s March 3 primary and let Maryland go, lest a merely modest Southern victory fuel doubts about his home-turf strength. The Georgia victory was huge.

Early this year, about a year after becoming an item, Matalin and Carville entered relationship limbo. They are in sporadic phone contact but dodge questions about whether they are still seeing each other.

Reports of pressure notwithstanding, each says no one has asked that they end their relationship.

“I see who I want when I want,” Carville said.

“If they didn’t trust me to handle it, they wouldn’t have given me this job,” said Matalin.

They’re both uncomfortably aware that the stakes are exponentially higher now than in the gin rummy days.

Carville said he is like the woman married to the coach of one team who has a son on the other team. She wants her husband’s team to win but hopes her son plays well.

“I hope we win, but Mary plays well,” he said.

“That’s quite gracious of him, but I hope he loses,” Matalin responded.

“I don’t want him to lose,” she said later. “I want his campaign to be blown to smithereens. But I want him to stay intact. Nothing personal.”