Famed TV and radio commentator and political campaign director Mary Matalin -- wife of Democratic campaign manager James Carville -- is yet another prominent opinion leader becoming more sympathetic to libertarian ideas. She's not all the way there yet, but she's definitely heading in the right direction, as this excerpt from a late 1997 interview in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shows:

Q: How do you define your political self??

A: I'm more libertarian. Since the '92 campaign I've had a lot of time to study, since I haven't been working in campaigns. And I have to do a lot of study for the radio show and the TV stuff. I've done a lot of reading and visited with a lot of scholars. I'm increasingly libertarian. Not in the "let's legalize drugs" sense, just the basic first principles.

Q: Which are what??

A: Which to me are liberty and self-reliance. There are very few things I can be persuaded that the government can do a better job at than I can, and those things are what our Founders thought they would be: security, domestic and national. And some interstate business, pollutants, and that kind of business.

Q: Who are your major political influences, the people?

A: Well, they are these days fewer politicians and more thinkers. I've been enjoying this Dinesh D'Souza book on Ronald Reagan ("Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader"). I like some Democrats. I like (Sen. Joseph) Lieberman. But I'm thinking more of authors and scholars now, who are having an influence on me. Some are old -- Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek -- God! That's the kind of stuff I'm reading now.

(Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / Tony Shepps / Jim Cox -- from the Liberator Online, Dec 1997)

Quotable

''I'm more libertarian.''