A Star-Crossed Pair of Natural Born Politicos? : They were in opposing camps in 1992. But strategists--and writing partners--Matalin and Carville are now a team.

They’ve been called the Romeo and Juliet of American politics, the Tracy and Hepburn, the Hatfield and McCoy.

Bonnie and Clyde’s more like it.

Although they worked as hired guns for rival candidates in 1992, Mary Matalin and James Carville reveal themselves in their new book to be tactical soul mates, with a zeal for political combat matched only by their mutual affection.

“All’s Fair: Love, War and Running for President,” co-published with great fanfare by Random House and Simon & Schuster, doesn’t break much new ground for those who followed the campaign or saw the Clinton-camp documentary “The War Room.”

A meld of dueling diaries, put together by collaborator Peter Knobler, it’s no heavy breather and it doesn’t dish dirt.

But it does show that Carville, Bill Clinton’s principal political strategist, and Matalin, political director for President Bush’s re-election effort, seem to have been made for each other.

“When I’m running a campaign, I always say I want the people I’m running against to catch the clap and die,” writes Carville cheerfully.

“This guy is not killing us but he’s a gnat, let’s just take out the fly swatter and squash him,” enthuses Matalin about Bush’s early Republican challenger, Pat Buchanan.

That shared ability to shoot from the lip has brought Carville post-election success as an after-dinner speaker and Matalin a devoted following for her quirky CNBC show, “Equal Time.” Financial security for the first time in their rough-and-tumble lives has also brought them the wherewithal to finish a picturesque retreat in the Blue Ridge mountains an hour west of Washington.

Interviewed on their deck there, as a cool breeze rustled the Gregorian wind chimes, they displayed a softer side and declared their days of mortal political combat over.

Baseball Hall of Famer “Willie Stargell said (that) every time he got three hits, he would throw away the bat,” said Carville in his distinctive Cajun drawl. “There are only so many hits in a bat. There’s only so many campaigns in a person.”

To run a campaign properly, he continued, “you have to be single or . . .”

As he searched for a phrase, Matalin, like good spouses everywhere, finished his sentence for him: “. . . have an awfully accommodating mate.

“All of that’s a windy way of saying, we couldn’t do it the way we did, but we’re not out to pasture yet,” she said.

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A steady couple for nearly four years--with the exception of the 1992 campaign--and married for almost a year, Matalin and Carville exude a genuine affection for each other that belies the catty thought by some Washingtonians that their relationship is largely an act.

Indeed, what keeps coming through, in the flesh as in the book, is how very well-suited this supposed odd couple is.

Both are tall--he’s 6 feet 1, she’s 5 feet 8--prefer blue jeans to blue suits and exude more sexual dynamism than usual in this uptight capital.

Both are products of close ethnic families--his, Louisiana Cajun; hers, Chicago Irish-Croatian--and were rambunctious, underachieving youths.

Both took seven years to get through college, found their calling relatively late in life and slogged their way to the pinnacle of politico heaven--top jobs in a presidential campaign.

They didn’t set out to oppose each other.

It just worked out that way when Carville and his partner, Paul Begala, hot from masterminding the victory of Sen. Harris Wofford in Pennsylvania, got wooed by all the Democratic presidential hopefuls and picked Clinton.

Matalin, who got her start in political life as the rear end of an elephant in a Lincoln’s Day parade, worked her way up in the Republican National Committee and finally earned a senior job in the Bush campaign.

Ironically, Matalin said in the interview, the fact that both she and Carville achieved such prominence simultaneously probably made their relationship succeed.

“What would have wrecked the relationship would be if one was doing it and the other not,” she said.

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Nowadays, they no longer fight--they tease.

They bicker amiably over what to put in a salad. He wants green pepper; she prefers onions. She wins.

They would very much like to have a child (she has had two miscarriages) and have tamed a manic schedule so that they can spend four-day weekends at their mountain home.

They will promote their book together in a well-paced 10-city campaign that begins this week in New York and ends at Thanksgiving on their first anniversary in the city where they wed, New Orleans.

Their unique relationship--there have been other mixed political marriages in Washington but none so high-profile--has spawned many a punch line by other products of the capital’s political hothouse.

“Bedfellows make strange politicians,” cracked Tom Korologos, a lobbyist here for over 30 years.

The couple bristled at some early reviews suggesting they pulled their punches in the book to avoid offending potential clients or guests on the Matalin show.

“If there was something I knew that was not favorable to the President, I wouldn’t say it,” Carville conceded. “They (Clinton and Bush) have been just gracious. What kind of people would we be if we would do anything to embarrass these people? We would be sorry scum.”

One new nasty crack by Matalin, who became notorious for calling Clinton a “philandering, pot-smoking draft-dodger,” is her comment that Bush White House Chief of Staff John Sununu “had the political acumen of a doorknob.”

Bush, on the other hand, comes off as more of a regular guy than the awkward patrician he sometimes seemed.

Matalin, recalling a train trip through Ohio and Michigan in late September, 1992, wrote that then-President Bush, who stayed on the platform of the caboose to wave at potential voters, called her back excitedly to tell her that an entire family had just stood along the tracks and mooned him!

“I was aghast, he was laughing away,” she wrote.

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Such anecdotes aside, the book may well increase public cynicism, if that’s possible, about the manipulative nature of political campaigns.

Carville reveals how he “spun” the “quote sluts,” the supposedly independent analysts whom reporters call for comments.

Matalin brags about her side’s “coolest strategic fake-out,” when they got Clinton to address a National Guard Assn. convention in Utah--a state not important to his campaign--because he was misled into thinking that Bush would attack his draft record there.

“It’s not a pretty business,” Matalin said in the interview with a certain nostalgia.

Those outside the Beltway may be surprised to learn that Carville and Matalin are not really very far apart politically.

How else could they both count among their friends such seemingly diametrically opposed figures as Ron Brown, the former Democratic Party chairman and now commerce secretary, and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh?

“Rush is a very personable guy,” Carville said.

As for he and Matalin, “our principal differences are on some economic issues,” he said.

She trusts capitalists over bureaucrats. He has a more benign view of government.

Both are populist and support legal abortion.

“Mary’s a little more liberal than she lets on,” said Jane Wallace, her former co-host on “Equal Time” and now star of a show called “Under Scrutiny” on the new Fx cable network.

As for Carville, Wallace said, “He adores her. I think if Marilyn Monroe was reincarnated and walked naked through the room, he wouldn’t notice.”

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Indeed, Carville, whose unusual physiognomy inspired Matalin’s favorite nickname for him--Serpenthead--said, “I’m always scared Mary is going to dump me because I’m not even a challenge.”

“I think the essence is that we’re exactly the same,” Matalin said. “We are not control freaks but we both want to run things. That’s been our adjustment--who gets to run the show.”

Both got defensive at comments from colleagues--who in good Washington fashion asked to be quoted “on background,” i.e. anonymously--that they are “cashing in” on their relationship.

“I like that term, cash in ,” Matalin fumed. “Like I’m 39 at the end of the Bush campaign, I have three months’ savings in the bank, no job and no prospects. I meet him (she gestures toward Carville). At 47, he owns one thing--a Schwinn. It’s not even a 10-speed. And when someone breaks into his apartment, they steal a bottle of Wild Turkey ‘cause that’s the only thing there worth stealing.”

Two years later, they have matching Jeeps, his and hers exercise machines in the loft bedroom and twin air rifles on the deck to shoot pellets at plastic juice bottles in a sport Carville calls “air-gun golf.”

Still, they seem a little sheepish about the fuss, even if it is of their own making.

“Everything I used to hate in candidates I’ve become,” Carville said with a sigh.

And if the public tires of their shtick and they have to find another way to make a living?

“When this era of our life is over and we’re flat on our backs, we’ll stand on a street corner with a sign that says, ‘Will bicker for food,’ ” Carville said.