When you are as outspoken as I am, and you dish it out a little, you have to be able to take it when someone takes a swipe at you in the press. I've been called a lot of things in my time. To name a few, I've been called a court jester, a clown, a comedian, serpent head, gamecock, a slimy little worm, a hatchet man, an attack master, and a bottom-feeder. For some reason animals, and particularly dogs, tend to suffer in comparison to me: I've been called a rabid dog, an attack dog, an aggressive pit bull, a junkyard dog, a presidential Doberman, and a political rottweiler. I'm called a totalitarian, a loyalist, a foul-mouthed bore, a hack, and a sight to behold. And instead of saying "Carville said such-and-such," people write that I "spew," "snipe," "crow," and "froth."

Now, I am a grown man and I don't mind most of this. Some of the labels I find funny and get a kick out of, like when I'm described as "the aging enfant terrible in midlife crisis" or "the charismatic love child of Danny DeVito and Mr. Clean." Some of the labels even come from a member of my own family. And others come from the most venerable and reputable of sources. I was called a "buffoon" in the paper of record, the New York Times, and the Washington Post described me fondly as "Clinton's gunsel,* his button man, the odious James Carville."1 I am proud of these distinctions.

[* Whatever the hell that is. I'm sure I am one, I just don't know what it is.]

Amidst all of these insults is the word "loyalist." These days the word "loyal" and its variations is used as the coup de grâce of insults, as if to point out a weakness of mind or character. Or it's used when they can't think of anything good to say -- "yes, but he is very loyal." You know what I'm talking about.

Now why is this? At what point in history have we gotten to where loyalty is not a positive thing, where it is not valued? To me, it's key -- loyalty is one of the essential attributes a person must have and must demand of others. Now you may think the old Cajun's just Ragin' again, but I'm serious, and I think there's something badly wrong with what I see around me. Where I come from and what I believe strongly in is that loyalty, though a complicated and many-splendored thing, is still a virtue. In history and in literature, the snitch has always been a comic or pathetic figure, so when did the snake-in-the-grass become so revered and the tittle-tattle so venerated? Why is nothing more beloved than a turncoat?

I think we can look to the nation's capital for a clue. Nowhere in the entire world is disloyalty more rewarded and rewarded well than in Washington. There is simply no faster way for you to join the ranks of Washington society or the media elite than by running to the press with a backstabbing story -- and recently, it's no secret, that means you need to be a rabid Clinton-hater. Heck, if Brutus lived today, there would be a monument to him on the Mall. If you go on television to say something negative, hateful, and Clinton-bashing, by God your mailbox will be filled with black tie invites and requests for cable television appearances.

I think the problem is at its worst in Washington and this is where we must tackle it head-on. To some extent, disloyal, unprincipled backstabbers are encouraged by a media Beast that can't get enough treachery and deceit in its diet. What I call the Commentariat is sneaking around all the time trying to smell a rat so they can interview it on background. The Beast has to be fed, and there are plenty of people with conflicting kinds of agendas shooting off their mouths. It's a difficult enough place to do business without having to worry about watching your back every minute of the day.

Until I started being called "loyal" in the media, and started getting letters about it, I'd never really thought that much about my sense of loyalty one way or the other. If someone is going to be calling you something, it might behoove you to think about it a bit. Gamecock and Doberman I can figure out, but loyal is something else. So I thought about it a bit and this book is the result. Some people came up to me and said, "I don't agree with Clinton, but I admire the way that you stuck with him." This is the way most people talk about this, so I'm going to call my book Stickin'.

As it turns out, loyalty looks pretty simple on the face of it. Setting yourself aside, sticking has to start with the family, right? I'm from a big family, the oldest of eight children, and the first thing you learn is, you don't go and rat on your siblings to your parents. That's basic. You're loyal to your brothers and sisters and to your family as a whole. The stickin' starts at home and you take it from there.

That sounds pretty simple, yes? Well, it's really not so easy. Dogs are famously loyal -- and that's probably one of the "negative" connotations of calling someone a junkyard dog. I have three dogs and they're very loyal to me, but that's not real loyalty; that's obedience. Nor is it the "omert\\a135" stuff you see in Mafia movies. People don't seem to appreciate that there's a difference between being loyal and being a sycophant or an idiot. The sycophant has an easy job. He or she just determines who's in power and then sucks up to them. In our campaigns we had a name for a sycophant: "Ditto." "Ditto" is not being loyal, that's being an opportunist. (Ditto Boland was a character in The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor, which, in my opinion, ranks second only to All the King's Men as a political novel.)

And an idiot's just an idiot.

Genuine loyalty has to be based on something substantial. To begin with, you have to be true to yourself and your own principles -- who could disagree with that? But is loyalty one of your principles? That's the question. (I'm not saying that principles are never applied in Washington. People resign "on principle" all the time. But for the life of me, I can't recall hearing about someone in a tough spot who stayed out of principle.)

Where loyalty comes into play is through difficulty. Loyalty not taxed is really not loyalty. If you loan a friend money you know you're going to get back, that's not a demonstration of loyalty, that's an investment. If you loan them money and you hope you get it back -- that's loyalty.

There's a quote about this that has been attributed to a bunch of people. One version has a politician saying to the nineteenth-century British prime minister Lord Melbourne, "I will support you as long as you are in the right." To which Melbourne said, "That is no use at all. What I want is men who support me when I am in the wrong." (Some say Sam Rayburn said it. Others, Earl Long, governor of Louisiana. I am loyal to my home state, so I give credit to Earl Long. It's a good line; maybe they all said it.)

Now I really believe people in America have a yearning to stick with something. They themselves want to stick with someone, or see others stand up for somebody even when they are wrong once in a while rather than stabbing them in the back. The world can be a harsh and lonely place and you need something you're connected to. So we need to step back here and look at what does connect us.

It's easy to see that we are quickly becoming a less rooted society. Not so many years ago, three and four generations of families lived together and looked after each other from cradle to grave. Like in Carville, Louisiana, where I grew up and where my great-grandmother was the postmistress (oops, maybe I should have said "postperson"), and my grandfather and father were postmaster. There, an entire family lived in what is now the same zip code. Nowadays people are more mobile and families break up and move apart. You'll go to college out of state and move to the city to find a job. And when you are employed you'll find that companies don't hire people for life anymore -- they "outsource" and hire temps and the like. One half of all jobs last less than one year.

If you do go back to your hometown, you probably won't recognize it. The corner stores are gone and there's a mall where the park used to be. You don't even have to go to a bookstore any more, let alone a library.

My family used to run a country store in Carville. We were definitely aware of the people that shopped there and the people that didn't. Over time, you develop relationships with local merchants and the tradespeople who work out of your hometown, so if something goes wrong, people are more inclined to take care of you. They help you and you help them. You stick together.

In the Shenandoah Valley where we live now, we try to trade with the smaller, local stores. I usually go to Ken's True Value Hardware store. They can help you find whatever thingumijig or whatyoumicallit you need. At one of those giant mall stores, lots of luck. There's a level of friendliness and service there that takes me back to our country store in Carville.

But I feel we've moved away from that type of living, and we've lost the sense of community that was its greatest benefit. There are busted connectors all over the place. The everyday stuff that we had in common often isn't there anymore. People stay in touch by e-mail. I have as much chance of turning on a computer as I have of flying a 747. And e-mail's not a real connection to me. It's words on a screen.

I do think you need a group of relationships so you can live and thrive. You need things that you feel you belong to. Things you want to stick with. I think Washington has it wrong: People really do want to reconnect to places and each other. And people respect someone who sticks with someone or something through rough times. Or, as Barry Goldwater might say, opportunism at the expense of loyalty is no virtue. What I want to try to do is make a case for loyalty for all the people who want to stick with things.

But as I said, it isn't easy. People are going to have conflicting loyalties and there are no absolutes we can point to as moral guidelines that must be followed. It's not a 100 percent thing. Also, it's easy to see that you can be extremely loyal to something bad. Loyalty is not a virtue when it is misapplied -- I'm sure a lot of Nazis thought they were very loyal people. Nor do I want to set myself up as an icon of loyalty. I'm not writing this book because I am a shining example of a loyal person, because I'm not sure that I am. I can think of times in my life that I've betrayed or let down people I shouldn't have.

What we are going to be able to say is that untested loyalty is just a bromide. For it to be meaningful, you have to put something at risk. We are going to talk about different things that we are loyal to. We are even going to delve into a few things out of literature and a fine book on loyalty written by, believe it or not, a Columbia University law professor.

By and large this is a book about stickin', and we are going to try to stick to the simple things and some of the things that you are going to confront in your life. If you stick with me in this book, we'll try to get into some lively things about this subject. And for those of you who have stuck with me in the past and bought my other books, you know that you will get a recipe or two, a few anecdotes, and not a lot of highfalutin philosophizing.