Mary Matalin and Torie (short for Victoria) Clarke, press secretary for the Bush campaign, are the Bonnie and Bonnie of the GOP, two in-your-face, at- your-throat ”chicks” (their word), who get away with murder.
They call each other Thelma, from the movie ”Thelma and Louise.”
”We both want to be Thelma,” says Matalin. ”We both want to have the gun in our hand.”
Clarke, 32, who was formerly press secretary to Carla Hills, the U.S. trade representative, and before that, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), was one of the few Bush officials who defended Matalin after her fax attack. She told the press, ”It`s the truth, pal,” and bought Matalin a T-shirt that reads ”No apologies.”
”Torie`s a real fighter,” Matalin says. ”We came together and stuck together. She`s very much a kindred spirit.”
So kindred that people think of them as a unit.
”I`m now getting obscene phone calls addressed to Torie and Mary,” says Matalin. ”We`ve arrived.”
Clarke is known to the Washington press corps for giving quotes with attitude. When George Bush recently hopped aboard a lime-green firetruck, she said, ”I think he looked a little more studly than Dukakis in the tank,”
referring to Michael Dukakis` unfortunate choice of vehicle during the 1988 campaign.
Clarke said that if Pat Buchanan wanted to address the Republican National Convention in prime time, ”He has to get down on his hands and knees and grovel in broken glass with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out-and then we`ll talk.” She said it the day before the poor man was scheduled for heart surgery.
Like Matalin, Clarke is involved with a Democrat. When asked why she couldn`t find a nice Republican man to settle down with, she said they were all ”galoshes and C-Span guys.”
”She`s got a great sense of humor; she`s excellent at putting out the spin, glib with great quotes,” says Rita Beamish, who covered the White House for The Associated Press. ”She`s with-it and hip, with a punk haircut. If you saw her, you wouldn`t think, `There goes a Republican.` ”
What one reporter says he thinks when he sees her is ”legs.” She`s nearly 6 feet tall and wears very short skirts. She`s the Twiggy of the campaign.
The Republicans wanted a woman in the out-front role of press secretary and they had to ask Clarke three times before she would take the job. She told The Washington Post that she finally took it because ”I didn`t want to find a dead horse head at the bottom of my bed.”
But seriously.
”It really came down to, how often do you get an opportunity to work for a presidential campaign? And the dead horse head.”
