Last week, Mary Matalin spoke with the Center for Individual Freedom’s Renee Giachino, who hosts the radio talk show "Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" on WEBY 1330 AM in Northwest Florida, about her recently released book, Letters to My Daughters, and about our current political climate.

What follows are excerpts from the interview.

GIACHINO: My first guest has been described as "a great woman, a great American and a great mom." Undoubtedly, the first two descriptors are well-deserved based on her illustrious career as a Republican media advisor and a former White House aide, serving as assistant to President George W. Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. She is well-known, as well, for her many media roles as a television and radio talk show celebrity, including host of CNN’s "Crossfire," co-host of "Equal Time" and most recently a Hollywood star in "K Street." Current news reports label her as an informal media and political advisor and part-time spinner for Vice President Dick Cheney and re-election advisor.

But, I think like many accomplished women, she may consider her most rewarding achievement to be motherhood, and may be most proud of being labeled a "great mom." Already a best-selling author, having co-written the book All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, with her husband James Carville — by now you have guessed who my guest is, I’m sure — it is my extreme pleasure to welcome to the program Ms. Mary Matalin to discuss her recently released book, Letters to My Daughters.

Ms. Matalin, thank you for joining me today. Is that a fair introduction, Mary?

MATALIN: Renee, oh, my goodness. What an introduction. I would like to point out that I am only 50 years old. You are making it sound like I have done all of this stuff. Thank you for saying that. Who calls me a great mom?

GIACHINO: I believe it was David Rosenthal of Simon & Schuster who referred to you as a great mom in an interview on CNBC.

GIACHINO: I want to share with my listeners information about your book, Letters to My Daughters, a book commonly referred to as a mom’s coffee klatch book. I want to start reading a short paragraph inside the cover that describes the book as "[f]illed with warmth, common sense, a belief in the values that keep families strong, and her trademark sense of humor, Mary Matalin’s letters will inspire, guide, entertain, and inform. They’re the perfect companion for any mother looking for a smart, sensible fellow traveler on the road to raising good daughters."

And, Mary, here’s where I have to disagree with that description because I am also the mother of two daughters, but I also have a son. I disagree because I think this is not just a guidebook for mothers of daughters, but I think it is for any parent because the love letters — and I think it is only appropriate to refer to them as love letters — you have written for your girls and with perhaps young girls in mind as the audience, could certainly be very valuable to people like me, the mother of a boy, because I want to teach my son to grow up to become a good husband, and also to be a more civic-minded and less self-absorbed American. Don’t you think that would be a good result from the book as well?

MATALIN: Yes. I did not write this flap copy, and I agree with you. I did not mean it to be literally taken. My audience was my girls. This is a real indulgence for my publisher to let me do this. But I understand it to be, and I have been told by so many moms that it’s universal advice. There’s nothing gender specific about being true to yourself and living out the golden rule and being a good citizen and all of that business. And I think girls should know how boys think and boys should know how girls think. So I do agree with that.

And the other thing that I think the flap description doesn’t capture is what it ended up being to me — inasmuch as it is love letters to my daughters, and you are exactly right about that — was a real deep understanding of what my mother meant to me and what mothers can mean to their kids. It just ended up being a tribute to, in my heart, my mother.

GIACHINO: I think you do acknowledge that somewhat in the book, when, at the end, you state that it "started out as a way to connect [your daughters] to your roots, to pass along bits of family wisdom." And mostly, that you wanted them to get to know your mother. If your mother were still alive, do you think that you would have or could have written the same letters to your daughters, many of which include your mom’s "momisms" as well as some very hard realizations about her insecurities that made you some of who you are today?

MATALIN: Well, that’s very insightful of you. No, I would not have. As my mother said, "for every door that shuts, another opens." When she died, the door that opened was out of pain. To escape my pain and my grief, I launched this high voltage career, which I think I would not have done had I had a better understanding of how to deal with grief and loss. So that’s a very good insight, and one I did not understand until I wrote the book. And also, I didn’t realize — remember, I am now 50 and my mother died when I was in my mid-20s —- that until I was going through it. And no, that book could not have been written, and I could not have been who I was, and that’s another good, if not painful, lesson. As my mom said, "out of all bad comes some good." However tragic that loss was, my mother had given me the strength or the guidance or the guts or whatever to push on. Very interesting insight, Renee, that you have picked up on.

GIACHINO: Later in the book you write about the struggles that your daughters face growing up in a family with two celebrity parents and how it can be difficult for them when you go out to do every day tasks with you — go to the movies, go to the dry cleaners, whatever it is, because you are approached by every John, Dick and Susie who wants to talk to you and pretend like they are your best friend. Remarkably the book shares some very private moments and memories, for example the pain that your entire family experienced with the loss of your husband’s brother, or the chapter discussing your marriage proposal.

MATALIN: Goodness, Renee, you actually read the whole book!

GIACHINO: I did, and I enjoyed it. My question is, understanding their strong desire for some anonymity in your lives, have they been okay with the openness of this book?

MATALIN: I don’t think they know yet. They are too young, and they may not be when they get there, but by that time I will be passed. I mean, I sort of have the sequencing in my mind that the book would be out of print by the time they are old enough to be embarrassed by it.

But, there is a lot of stuff that is not in there. And I also think that I wanted to make this point to the audience and my daughters, that not discussing things with your children, of whatever gender, does not mean that they are not going to pick up on your private feelings. My father thought it was way too open and that I should not have done it. But, that’s his generation.

GIACHINO: Have they read the book? I ask this question because I am also a mother, as I mentioned, and my oldest is 10 and my youngest is six and throughout the book, you really give your daughters, and all the readers, a great snapshot of what it was like to grow up as Mary Matalin at the time that you were doing it. For example, in the letter titled "Getting Your Ya-Yas Out," you write about your run-ins with the law and the few moments you spent in jail, and in another letter you write quite openly and frankly about boys and sex, all different forms of sex. And, those are issues that I really, as a parent, have had a hard time addressing with my children. You know, they will ask me very pointed questions. The "mom did you ever do X?" or "mom would you ever do Y?" Have your pre-teen daughters read all the chapters, and have you always been that open?

MATALIN: Well, let me make it very clear to your listeners that the reason I could be as prudish as I am about sex is because I didn’t fool around when I was a kid. And I hope I make that clear in there. I don’t understand so many of these teenagers, and the things they do in junior high. And we didn’t do it. And the reason we didn’t do it was because my mother threatened us with convents. It was a different time, and there were different issues involved.

And also my run-ins with the law were very minor. The point I was trying to make there was that at some point, though times were different, I was actually a kid, and I did do a lot of kid things. The point of those chapters is not to be driven by what I did, because I wasn’t a bad kid, but to understand that there are consequences for your actions and particularly if you are a girl, no matter what they say, "You play, you pay."

And I know you want to have a responsible son, and we all want to have responsible sons, but it is the girl who has the control. If you want to make a choice, choose abstinence. That’s kind of my pitch there. The stuff I was doing in college was hardly the stuff of a criminal, but I was a kid and I did have fun.

GIACHINO: It sounds like you did.

One of my favorite chapters is titled "A Grand Old Flag" in which you write about our civic duties as Americans and the political divide that obviously exists in your home. In closing that letter, you write that our partisan battles are really just "a big fight over directions" and that although they may take different roads, "they all want to get to the same place." "The point is," you write "gaining freedom, maintaining freedom, using freedom are all the result of individual effort or the concerted action of many individuals brought together by the same values." And I love how you end it with the P.S. that says "Vote early and often!"

Mary, do you care to make any predictions or comments about our upcoming November 2^nd elections? I know you have been quoted as saying there’ll be a lot of surprises in this election. Can you elaborate on that?

MATALIN: Yes, I think that much in the way that there were surprises in the mid-term, I think George Bush will win and I think by a surprising margin. Everyone thinks it will be close to the end, but I think it will cut his way because people are not quite mentally accepting the fact that we don’t have any choice here. We have to fight a global war on terror. You can’t put it off because we did for 20 years and the result was 9-11, and you cannot narrow it to the mountains in Pakistan and Afghanistan because it is larger and it is global and the objective of the extremists is to change our culture. We just have to wrap our brains around that and how much you are going to have to sacrifice to do it and just buckle in for the long haul. I don’t think we are there yet but I know that for many decades this has been a problem. The first leader that has done anything about it in an aggressive way has been this President. We can rest safer and sleep better because this team is going to keep working on it, and the other team does not offer an alternative. They just keep saying he’s not doing it right. Well, it’s unchartered territory and not doing it exactly right every day, every hour, is a whole lot better than doing nothing, which was the case previous to George Bush and looks like it might be if he is not successful. But I think he will be. And you add that to his other successes and what are his goals for his second term and I think we are going to win it.

What’s going to surprise people, I hope — maybe I’m more prayerful than a prognosticator — is that the nation and outside of just the target states, which of course Florida is, will all engage in this big debate. We are going through historic times. I think Americans will engage, whatever state they live in. I love this election. I know everyone complains it’s negative, and actually the coverage of it is more negative than the spots the actual candidates are running — the independent spots are more negative — I love that it’s divided. There are big divisions in democracies when we live in consequential times as it was for FDR, for Abraham Lincoln, as it was for Ronald Reagan. Great leaders inspire that kind of emotion and debate, and that’s what we need right now. So, I’m just thrilled, no thrilled is not the right word, I’m optimistic, but I’m feeling very privileged as an American to be able to be in this role.

As for my kids, I believe that the conservatives have a better vision, or I wouldn’t be one, and I believe that the proof is in the pudding and that throughout history their policies have been better for this country. So I don’t question the motives of the liberals, I just question their evidence, their empirical data, their thinking. I think, of course, they want a great country, but they don’t really look at the data incoming from proposals they put in place in the past that weakened our country. I want my kids to look at all the facts. I want them to get all the data themselves and make up their own minds. I don’t want to brainwash them.

GIACHINO: And you do a wonderful job of spelling that out in a letter in one of the chapters to them.

I purchased my book locally. Is there a website for people who don’t want to venture out to buy the book, Letters to My Daughters?

MATALIN: You know, thank you for saying that and for having me on to talk about the book. I know Amazon has it and it is on other sites. I love to go to bookstores, and I love to take my girls to bookstores, and we probably do that once or twice a week.

GIACHINO: I struggle as to where people might find your book because I sort of call it part autobiography, part self-help, part political, and part motivational. Where do you put it, Mary?

MATALIN: That is a really good question because in my browsing, our local bookstores have it up front, but I was in an out-of-town store and I could not find it anywhere and my publisher said they put in either relationships or self-help. I don’t think it fits in any of those categories. I think you just have to go to the desk and make them look it up. It’s probably easier to get it off the Internet.

GIACHINO: Here’s a burning question. Would you ever go back to the White House? I know that in one of the letters that you write that you say that during your days at the White House you "just didn’t fit in" because you said you’re not a "meeting" or a "memo" person. Did you really feel that way?

MATALIN: I didn’t feel that I didn’t fit in with my colleagues, personally, it’s just that I’m too old, I have too much to do and with my kids being little I knew I couldn’t contribute what I am now contributing to the Vice President, by going to his house once a week, or being on conference calls. I knew I could do my job a different way other than sitting there 14 hours a day because the other thing is that the more you are there, the more extraneous stuff you get sucked into. Institutionally, constitutionally, I am not a meeting person. I’m not as effective in those time draining situations as I am in get it done situations. But I do think I contributed and I was privileged to do so in the post 9-11 White House, much of which was spent in undisclosed locations. But I am still helping, and I am doing it in the way I just described and dealing with my kids and they’re the priority. And I love it. We got the conventions coming up and then the sprint to the finish. Then Halloween, you know everything mom, you’re doing it all.

GIACHINO: Well, I think that Barbara Bush would be very proud. In the book, you talk about how you never liked or wanted kids. It made me chuckle out loud. And then you said at least not until the moment you refer to as your "awakening," when you credit the former First Lady and now First Mom Barbara Bush with waking up your biological clock when she told an audience of young female college graduates that "at the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent." Isn’t it amazing, and I know I count my blessings all the time, did you ever imagine that your life as a mother and wife would be more exciting and challenging than the political roles you excelled at?

MATALIN: Well, I think not expecting that is what makes it even more incredible. Every day is a joy that is unexpected to me. It just makes it sweeter by virtue of how I don’t even have a place for it in my mind. It is always just such a surprise for what a joy it is because I hadn’t envisioned myself all wrapped around like that. In the end, as you know, at the end of the day, no matter how successful you are, it’s not as reciprocal. At some point you cross over into some self-absorbed world, which can’t be as rewarding as watching your kids do what they do every day, in increasingly amazing ways.

GIACHINO: I have one more question, and I know you have to run off to a birthday party, and I want to thank you for staying on longer than we had originally planned, but I think it is really important for people who read Letters to My Daughters by Mary Matalin, that in your mind, in the chapter titled "The Virtue of Virtues," you describe it as perhaps the most important letter in the book to your daughters because you write about how Americans need to value their citizenship and the role they have in our democracy. Do you think that has eroded; do we have any chance of salvaging that again, Mary?

MATALIN: I hope it’s not eroded, I think it might be quiescent. I think we take for granted who we are, what we are and how we became who we are and what we are. Maybe 9-11 made us think about it. It is not an accident that we are the world’s superpower and greatest country in the history of the world. That was the easiest letter for me to write. People with values and integrity and ethics and a vision and wanting to leave a better place for their kids made this country what it is. America is a unique DNA; it is the most generous in giving and thinking and forward and freedom-loving country in the history of the world, and I think we should think about that more. That we don’t talk about it more doesn’t mean that feeling has been eroded. My generation was sort of anti-American. I never was, but it was sort of the generational message and it’s wrong and it’s a bad one and I don’t think it’s reflective of where most of the country is. If there is any silver lining in any of this, I always say that it gives us a chance, and we will do that in this election, is to sit back and understand how great we are.

GIACHINO: And I think if they read your book it will give them a lot to think about. Well, Mary, thank you so much. Mary Matalin, Letters to My Daughters. You can get it at a local bookstore.

MATALIN: Well, thank you Renee for being such a great mom, and thank you for all this time, I appreciate it. Thank you.