May 6, 2021 • 42 mins
Successful political candidates—and more importantly, successful leaders—need to have a vision and a message that lets everyone see themselves as part of our shared future. James Carville and Paul Begala have been as good at crafting those messages as anyone in modern day politics.
In the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign, they helped give voice to Bill Clinton’s policy proposals which put people first and resonated with voters across every demographic—building an inclusive economy; expanding access to quality, affordable health care; improving education at every level and opening the doors to higher education to all; and protecting our natural resources. As a result, Bill Clinton became the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice; led the U.S. to the longest economic expansion in our history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs; and signed into law programs that are still helping Americans today, like the Family and Medical Leave Act, AmeriCorps, and the mapping of the Human Genome, which led to breakthroughs in medicine including the COVID-19 vaccine.
Although the political and media landscapes are constantly changing, James and Paul are still two of the most sought-after strategists and commentators. On this episode of the podcast, James and Paul join President Clinton to share stories from their lives in politics, analyze the current landscape, and discuss how we can continue to make the case for a more inclusive America.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In September, I went to Atlanta to give a speech
just a few weeks before I was going to formally
announce that I was running for president. And after the talk,
the then governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, invited me over
to the Governor's mansion, and I was pleased because I
really liked Zellen Shirley Miller, and we stayed up half
(00:23):
the night talking about policy, politics, you name it. Right
before I left, They'll said he'd support me, and then
he gave me two important pieces of advice. He said,
on the campaign trail, I'd have to give a lot
shorter speeches than what he's seen earlier that night. And
the second thing he said is if I wanted to win,
I needed to hire this up and coming duo of
(00:44):
campaign strategist would help him get elected to the year before,
James Carville and Paul Begala. I didn't always take the
first bit of advice, but I'll always be grateful that
I did take the second part. I arranged a meeting
with James and Paul and came away not only with
two of the brightest political minds in America, but two
of the best friends I've made so why am I
(01:06):
telling you this? Because politics is about people and the future,
and if you want to be successful, you have to
have a vision and a message that allows everybody to
see themselves as an important part of our shared future.
James and Paul are as good at crafting those kinds
of messages as anyone I've ever met, because they do
(01:29):
care about people, and they are interested in their lives
and stories. In my campaign, that helps us to develop
a strategy that's focused on issues that resonated with voters
across every demographic Building an inclusive economy where everyone could
share fairly in our prosperity, expanding access to quality, affordable healthcare,
(01:49):
providing family and medical leave, investing in an improving education
at every level, and opening the doors of college to all,
and protecting our natural resources for our children's few True. Now,
I know the political and media landscape for constantly changing,
but human nature hasn't changed very much, which is why
(02:09):
I after countless campaigns and news cycles, James and Paul
are still two of the most sought after strategies and commentators,
and not even though I'm not running for anything anymore,
I still pick up the phone and call them all
the time just to get their take on things. So,
(02:30):
James Paul, thanks so much for being here. I tell
you why saying that or recording is gonna be in
my family things I want my great grandchildren. I'm gonna
be just blunt. I loved every word of it, Mr President.
Play played for my mother's, my my my children would
(02:51):
enjoy it. My mother would believe it so well. First,
before I met you, how did you guys meet each other?
And what were your first impressions of each other? And
how did you decide to work together? I'll take that one.
We met uh the Tuesday after Labor Day of nineteen
(03:14):
three when I came to Austin. UH. I think it
the behest of Jack Martin to work for LAYD Dogget
and published in the room and it was on his meeting.
Then it's ten minutes ended the meeting. I said to myself,
I'm not going anywhere again without this guy. And you
know I never did. And I gotta tell you it
(03:35):
was the best judge, best judgment call I've ever made
my life. Well, that's very kind, James. I was the
gopher who picked James up at the airport. It was
Lloyd Dogget runner for U S. Senate. He was my
state senator and mentor. And uh, they sent me the
lowest man on the totem poles to go pick up
this out of state campaign manager. Of course, you know
Louisiana and Texas said that you can't bring a Louisiana
(03:57):
guy in to run a Texas campaign. You dn't. But
but Jack are who we all you know quite well,
believed it, had heard of James, believed in him. Dog.
It took the meeting. I picked up James the airport,
same thing. I thought, this is the smartest guy I've
ever met, my wife, but he's too crazy for Lloyd
to hire. Lloyd's very straight laced and Mr President, you
probably haven't noticed this, but James contend towards the profane
(04:18):
and eccentric. Lloyd very straight laced, And I thought, well,
Lloyd will never hire this guy, but I'm gonna glean
everything I can from him before they send him back
across the Red River. And I've been trailing in his
weake ever since. Not more was Paul was working on
the Clarksdale pottery list. There's one thing I know that
(04:42):
you do share in common, and that's the love of politics.
But how did you decide to make it a career
and who were your main influences as you grew up
and made that decision. I see main influence just uh, Well,
I grew up in Louisiana and I've worked in some
(05:05):
campaigns there, maybe Peter Hart and Mark Shields who consulted
on a nineteen seventy nine governors race in Louisiana that
I worked and we've got nine point eight percent of
the vote. But the basic concepts and then I actually
learned a lot in nineteen eighty four in Texas. Has
Phil Graham taught me a lot and beat the crap
out of us. But you can say what you want
(05:27):
about Phil Graham, he knew how to communicate and this,
you know, it's a good lesson when you get the
crap beat out of you. I think by eight five
eighty six, I would say I was a much better
political operative in nineteen eighties six, I mean, much better
than I was in nineteen eighty one. Paul, Yeah, you know,
(05:48):
I'd always been a little kind of student activist. I
was in student council and student body president high school,
and then I went up student body president college and
it was it was a couple of people. Lloyd was
my state senator, and he'd been studing by the president,
and so he kind of took me under his wing
and offered me an internship in his state Senate office
during a legislative session. Oh my god. I hardly went
(06:10):
to class, but I had a I got a graduate
degree in practical politics in the Texas legislature, working interning
for Lloyd Doggin. Uh. Then he decided he wanted to
run for U. S. Senate and brought me on. But
before that he was up for reelection. I forgot this,
and his campaign manager was a buddy of ours, Russ Tidwell,
and a big real estate guy was running against Lloyd
was gonna self fund, and he took a hard look
(06:31):
at it, realized he couldn't win, and dropped out of
the race. Well, I was in the headquarters and dog
It and tid Well are dancing. They're so happy because
now Lloyd's unopposed. And I sat in a corner and
I was on the verge of tears, and tid Well,
what's the matter with you? I said, Well, I just
lost the only job I'll ever get in politics. Russ,
I mean, who else is gonna hire me. And he said,
as long as you could walk and chew gum, somebody
(06:51):
in politics will hire you. And it proved to be prophetic.
That's the life for me. Well, I've been wanting to
ask you this for a long time. Tell me something
that happened during the ninety two campaign that I did
not know about. All right, let me let me go
(07:13):
first here. I almost I almost jinxt Us, Mr. President,
when we were on the Georgia bus tour, and we're
going through South Georgia and uh, you know, we stopped.
We spent the night in Valdosta. I remember we stopped
in Columbus, where James Carver was born, called him from there.
His father was at Fort Bidding in the army when
James was born. But we stopped in Parrot, Georgia, which
(07:36):
is a town at the time of a hundred and
forty souls, not not any bigger today, and it's about
seventy thirty white and black. And you drew a crowd
in Parrot, Georgia that was over ten times the size
of the town, and it was as representative as the town.
But you know, seventy thirty white, black and and Zel
(07:57):
was with US Governor Miller. Sam Nunn was with us,
I mean pure Howard, the lieutenant governor, a great guy,
was with us, and Jesus gave such a great talk,
and you talked about mud cats and moon pies and
everybody was noting, and everybody knew you were one of them.
And we spent the night in a motel in Valdosta,
and I called Georgie, George Stephanopolis, and this is really
(08:17):
for vote in a campaign. I would have never told
you this, but I said, George, we're gonna win this September.
We're a long way from home and I said, we're
gonna win this thing. And he said, what makes you
think that? And I told him what I had just seen,
having worked for Zel. So you're in Terrell County, Georgia.
By the way, you got fifty there, sir, You ran
up the score. And I just said, if if this
man can draw a crowd like that in a tiny
(08:39):
little cotton town like like Parrot, Georgia. And the message
there really was I care about you. I give a
damn about you, and those folks got it and that
so I know that was a jink, sir, but I did.
I I felt like this thing was over when you
turned in a performance like that in a place like that. God,
I wish I've known it. In September, I guess it.
(09:04):
Uh would have the morning phone call and if I'm
about saying anything and people don't, don't you're not exactly
a morning person, and so it's not to go through
the day. And of course it was like on a
speak of phone and you could be quite irritable and
people would say, which I said, just give it an hour.
(09:24):
It's just it's like a thunderstorm that comes through through
little rock. It you got a big rain burst and
then the sun comes do so I always had to
explain to the campaign staff that you're a different person
in that in the afternoon. In the morning, I guess
I said that behind you back well. D G. Wilhelm
(09:45):
who traveled with us, who's now a very successful lawyer,
but she she used to very most cheerful person in
the world, best person you can travel with. And James,
we would even d G. We trash you behind your back.
You and George, all the headquarters people because we are
on the plane, we had the most We had the
greatest job in the world. You guys were doing all
the hard work, but that's not how we saw it
at the time. It would be like eight or nine
at night and d G would say, well, James and
(10:07):
George and them are on their second cocktail. We only
have five more hours left in our working day. So
there was that tension back and forth. There isn't every campaign,
but I think seriously to spread the fact that you
had that amazingly talented war room with everybody from from
Jeans Spurling, Michael Walman, Mike Donalin who's now a top eight,
to President Biden and James and George, they did keep
(10:31):
us afloat. And I feel a little guilty James, that
we were resentful of fact that you got to sleep
in the same bed every night. Yeah, I was a
those George and I haven't dranks with Haunter Thompson and
Day And I apologize from my early morning irritability. You know,
I was always a workaholic, and I kept going late
at night and my mind would kick in, so it
(10:54):
took me a while to get going in the daytime.
And I'll thank you forgiving me, for forgiving me, James,
when in our war room you've famously wrote those three
memorable lines change versus more of the same. The economy
stupid and don't forget health care. If you were working
(11:15):
in a presidential campaign today or anticipating one, and what
would you ride on the wall? Not much different? And
health care. It seems to me today health care and
the economy two of the country. If we go and
(11:35):
you get an e K G and you look at
you full one k you view that as two separate events.
Most people view it is the same event, that their
economic situation is directly tied to the health cabine. How
many you know the people who get a toothache that
you know, wat a toothache before they go to tennis.
And if we've heard in focus groups and you're still
(11:56):
here today, I'm one disease away from bankrupts it I'm
one healthy event. So you know, if I was running
there was a Democrat, I probably wouldn't run on change
because we've had Democrats. We would have had the democratic
rule for for for four years. But I think that
the two are as say it today as there's ever been.
(12:20):
And I'm such a a fanatic on climate because I
think it's just such a gut wrenching I think the
two biggest issues we face of inequality and climate now
an equality you can put in as part of your
economic message, but I think it's it's a huge enough
ficial I know it doesn't rally as many people as
(12:43):
we would like, but I just think on a personal
level is just too big obitiative to ignore. We'll be
right back. I think we do have to make climate
change an economic issue for people, and I think President
Biden is trying to do that, and they put some
(13:04):
significant amount of money into this American Recovery Act. But
one of the problems that we have, and I think
it's led to a lot of the cultural lately nation
in the heart Land, is that we know that this
economy is very uneven geographically and therefore electorally. And I've
(13:28):
always believed having grown up in Arkansas when I was born,
our economy was just barely over half the national average
about but I didn't know anybody didn't have work and
who didn't believe they couldn't improve their situation. And that's
(13:50):
what kills people, is stagnation. If you look up in
the mirror every day and you think every tomorrow it's
going to be like yesterday, and you're not gonna be
able to take care of your kids and and you
feel insecure about things like healthcare. And we have to
find a way, it seems to me, to talk to
people together again and to be more welcoming and to
(14:14):
deal with the aspirations of ordinary people. And the problem
I see is that when we get into, you know,
demonizing one another, it may benefit us in terms of
turnout in local elections, that may help our progressives in primaries,
but it causes real challenges when you get out there
(14:34):
in the heartland. There's a great column in the New
York Times on the day that we're recording this about
how the biggest gains the Republicans made in the entire
country between we're in Texas south of San Antonio. We
did okay in San Antonio and Bear County, and then
you go further south into the small towns and rural
(14:57):
areas which were heavily Latino Mexico American, and we barely
escaped with a victory. So what's your take on that?
How much has the country changed since our campaign and
way back in ninety two? And do you think what
Biden is doing now is helping us get back together
(15:20):
a little? If I can start on that, James Um,
it's my favorite political statistic, Mr. President, When of course
George Washington gets elected, hundred percent of voters are white.
In fact, there weren't even voters who were just electors,
but it was a hundred percent white. Because we know
why two hundred and four years later you get elected.
(15:41):
Now we've had fift nineteenth amendments, we've had voter rights
Xcel Rights Act. It's a completely different country. But guess what,
that h percent had only dropped to eighty seven the
time from your election to Joe Biden's seven is dropped
to sixty seven. So you have had more demographic change,
more dilution in the white vote in the last twenty
eight years in the previous two hundred four And I
(16:04):
think how you react to that, particularly white people, kind
of determines which way you're going for. For For for
people on this in this interview, we think it's wonderful.
We think that this richness and diversity makes us younger, smarter,
We're able to compete interesting, better, food better. My doctor
is from Iran, my my my my dentist is from Brazil.
(16:25):
My neighbor across the street was a boat person from
Vietnam graduated top of a class of UV A like,
I look at this as a win win win. This
is just wonderful. And it's James like to say, I
like being in a country people want to come to.
I like it. Nobody's busting down the doors to get
into Russia. So I think that's terrific. But there's a
whole lot of people who don't. UH And economic stagnation,
(16:49):
certainly in a lot of urban areas, but principally or
terribly in rural areas. You put all that together, and
that's a tinder box that somebody can come in and demagogue.
And and I put most of the blame on the demagogues,
but some of it is on us too, is it?
When we don't acknowledge their pain? When we're losing over
(17:12):
forty thousand people a year to opioid addiction. The some
in the suburbs, some of the cities, but a whole
lot in the rural areas. When we don't give voice
to that and respect that and listen to it and
speak to it and acknowledge it, they're gonna be heard
and and they're gonna turn towards a wrecking ball. And
I think that what President Biden is doing is exactly right. Well,
(17:34):
in thirty one hundred plus county a county equivalents in
the United States in ninety six for whatever referred to
a super majority county is that is one of Party
one by more than fifty percent. In other words, of
went by seventy five, twenty five, and by two thousand
(17:56):
twenty it's probably over thirteen hundred. So there are people
in North Philadelphia that don't know a Republican. There are
millions of people in rural America that don't know a Democrat.
And the geographic separation I think has been profound. Uh
(18:23):
And you know, and you know, we were in when
Paul and I were running in New Jersey. I looked
it up Bush for a one one by eight in
Loudenburg one by eight. That doesn't exist anymore in American politics.
So we've had, of course, we've had polarization, but geographic polarization,
(18:45):
I think is a is a significant issue. I being
a son of rural America, I totally agree with Paul,
And I mean, you were very concentrate on rural America,
rural Arkansas and men as you go to these towns,
I took a drive about two weeks ago in the
kind of northern part of what they call the Florida
Parish is in Louisiana, and it's just hopeless. It's just
(19:10):
make make you cry to see the lack of any
kind of real I mean, the biggest employee everywhere as
the hospital. I mean, thank god, you know we we
we saved some of these royal hospitals. But man, you
go to buggal Loosa, Franklinson U kent Wood, where Britney
Spears is from, it is nothing like you remember it.
(19:31):
It's it's really it's really tragic. And they believe, and
I think with some validity. I don't think it's insane
when they say people have forgotten about us. People don't
realize there's a huge swath of Black America that's rural. Okay,
you know you've got to the Arkansas Delta, the Mississippi Delta,
even the Louisiana Doulta. I mean, it would talk like
(19:54):
and I think a lot of that a lot of
what hurts our turnout. Sometimes they feel like they left
out of the equation. It's not it's not just white
a market that fields left out. I was glad when
Tom Vilsack agreed to go back in service Secretary of
Agriculture because when President Obama was in office, Bill pack
(20:17):
and got you know, he's very low key. He never
gets credit for what he's doing. I thought he was
the most underrated member of the president's cabinet. When Obama
was president, he on his own initiative, because he understood
rural America, went out and talked to all these Republican
congressmen and convinced them to support the Democrats and allowing
(20:38):
him to consolidate a little a lot of these smaller
grants that are given by Congress to the Department of
Agriculture in the development funds, and the Agriculture Department actually
did create when Obama was president a quarter of a
million jobs in tiny places. And I think it's really
important because we can only win in the end over
(21:01):
the long run by having people feel comfortable enough in
the growing diversity of America that they don't do what's
happening now. So our only option is what the president
is doing for the right reasons, not for this reason
he is performance and we do have on economic issues.
(21:25):
The unity in the Democrats, it seems to me from
our centrist to the left right now that he had
to go big on this first Recovery Act and we
didn't have to deal with the filibuster, and none of
the Republicans voted for it, but it was the right
thing to do when you've got you haven't you're still
(21:48):
seven million jobs short, and you've got this huge hole
in the economy, and GDP dropped like ten or fift
It seems to me he did the right thing. But
we need to know that we've got a long way
to go before people think we give a roof about
them again. I do think this president is doing a
(22:09):
good job of that. He's not as partisan as I am,
thank god, but he is trying to explain to people
that that these votes have consequences, and that four in
your bank account was opposed by every living breathing Republican
in the House and every living breathing Republican the Senate,
which is pretty extraordinary. We have a giant, unsolvable problem,
(22:31):
and I'll tell you what's not, Jerry Mannen the United
States Senate. All right, eighteen per cent of the voters
in the United States elect fIF senators. There has been
academic research on the weighted value. It that gives enhanced
power to roll white. I hate to say that, but
(22:54):
it is just the truth. And a lot of my
a lot of people say, well that can change that.
It's not gonna change. Wyoming is not going to vote
or North Dakota are not going to vote that way
out of power, all right, that's just simply not gonna happen.
It looked like that that that that's a nonenda. So
we don't have any choice. We have no choice. If
(23:17):
you want power, you have no choice but to engage,
because if you don't, you're not gonna have any power.
How much do you think that changes in how people
get their information has driven the support that will continue
to do so. If you think the Senate is a
tough and insoluble problem, this is bigger. Um. You always
(23:43):
used to teach all of us, But to your staff
that that you've got to start with agreed upon set
of facts and that requires you to open your mind.
It maybe sometimes the other side might have some facts
that are relevant, interesting, important, and correct that's not taught
anymore their political leaders. Uh. And you can make a
lot of money lying to people, a whole lot because
(24:07):
the market segmentation. Uh. That that's one, having now spent
a couple of decades in cable news. Uh. And to
the algorithm in social media is so powerful and so negative.
And I don't know what's all in the black box.
I don't know if it's ever been publicly disclosed. But
here's a good little example, Mr President Lent. This year,
(24:31):
you know, I'm try to be I'm a faithful Catholic.
And my wife Sunday school teacher challenge me, I always
give up cursing, drinking, or Twitter, the three great sins
of my daily life. Uh. This year she challenged me.
She said, no, do something good positive on Twitter every
single day. So every single day between Ash Wednesday and
Easter Sunday, every single day I posted a tweet that
(24:52):
began with three words people are good. And then I
explained a link. I linked to a positive story a
girl skelt troup that formed itself in a homeless shelter
in De Moin and then set the state record for
cookie sales. Right. Stuff like that, kids who chipped in
to buy their janitor a car when he was out
of work because the school hood closed. Every single day
(25:13):
I did that. Now, when I tweet something mean about
the Republicans, thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, fifty thousand people
may like it. I rarely got a hundred people to
like any positive thing I did. And it's not that
people are bad, it's that the algorithm is. One of
my dear friends is Bill Burton, was President Obama spokesman,
and we talk all the time and we follow each
(25:36):
other on Twitter. And I mentioned this to him. He said,
I've never seen a one of your positive tweets, not
a one. And I said, how can that be? And
he said, the algorithm doesn't kick it up to me.
It doesn't promote it. It doesn't say, hey, Bill, here's
your buddy mcgala. Now I fire right something hateful. Boy,
it'll hit him right. So our our information platforms now
are designed to drive us into division and darkness, and
(26:00):
I don't know what to do about that. We'll be
right back. I know that. Look, politics has always been
a contact sport and people are always trying to rewrite history.
But I do think that there are things that make
(26:20):
me optimistic, and one of them is that there is
a real unity in the Democratic Party that at least
at this time, the only option is to have a
very active government taking a vigorous role to fill a
hole in the economy. And so I think, and the
thing I like about what Biden is doing is there's
enough money in there too, as you pointed out, give
(26:42):
the four check and some of the other support programs,
but there's also investment that will create jobs and have
a good multiplier. It's not trickled down economics. And I
think we have to hope that if people feel a
sense of mobile laity, that they hope that they feel
like we're going places together, that it will dilute the
(27:10):
identity wars. But I also think we should go knocking
on the other doors and uh and we ought to
look like we're having a good time doing it. It's all,
you know, we shouldn't be out there making people think
this is about destruction. They win those fights. We were
in the people business in ninety two, and we need
(27:31):
to be in the people business and the people business
and the future business. And you know, we're not gonna
melt those icebergs overnight. But before we finish, just give
us a you guys, say a couple of things about
what makes you optimistic about the future. Kids. I've taught
(27:52):
at Georgia for twenty years. Before that, I taught University
of Georgia, first semester University of Texas. And I've got
four boys in their twenties, so I know I knew
hundreds of thousands of twenty some things. They're the next
greatest generation. Uh. They're more public interested in public spirited
than I was there, more selfless. And the thing though,
(28:15):
sorry that I tried to imbuing them. This is a
good thing that they are challenging the system and that
they're impatient. But now I'm old, and what I tried
to tell them is something you taught me, which is
you've got to be in this for the long haul.
And and I'm watching this wonderful tension between people outside
the system and inside the system, within our own party
(28:37):
and within our own government. And if I can take
you back, this is one of the more important moments
I think in my life. April, You're at a fundraiser
in New York City, raising money for your for your
campaign for president, and in the middle of it, guy
named Bob Rafsky comes up to you. He was a
(28:57):
pr guy who became the chiefs e for Act Up,
which was I wouldn't say radical, but really it was
pretty radical AIDS activist group at the time. And he
got right in your face and he was screaming at
you where you is. He said, we're not so much
dyeing of AIDS as we're dying of eleven years of
government neglect and ascribe that to you. And your response was,
(29:18):
I know it hurts. And then you said for words
that that people always remember. I feel your pain and
our friends of the far I'd always mocked you for that,
but that kind of deep empathy. Here's what happened. The
next day or two, you met with act UP. A
few weeks later, you gave a major policy address during
a campaign on AIDS. A few months later, you had
(29:38):
Bob Haty, a man who is your environmental advisor but
who was living with AIDS, speak at the convention, first
time of Democrat either convention had had someone with AIDS
speaking about AIDS at their convention. You become president, You
create the Office of National AIDS Policy, the AIDS czar office,
you you funded, and you you do more for AIDS
than it have been done American his tree. You leave office,
(30:01):
and you set up what's now the Clinton Health Access initiative,
which is keeping millions and millions and millions of people
with HIV alive. So nine years ago, pain confronted power
and there was a confrontation, but it sparked conscience, but
even more important, constancy and commitment. So you've spent twenty
nine years and and poor Mr Rafsky has gone and
(30:24):
we lost him before we could have these anti retroviral drugs.
But you know, he yelled fire and you ran for
the host. And society needs both. And I keep trying
to tell, like my kids and my students that that
some people are more driven towards being on the outside
and pressuring and I respect that. And we're seeing a
lot of that and it has a good effect. And
people like me who are on the inside, I need
(30:45):
to respect that, but vice versa. People on the outside
need to understand that when the rally is over, a
good leader picks up that pain and translates it into purpose.
And that's the whole point of having power. And that
gives me huge because right now those young people are
really pressuring the system and I want them to. I
don't always like it, but I respect it. And and
(31:08):
then so the people in the power then have to.
They have to, and if they have a tenth of
the constancy of commitment that you've had to these causes
of your entire life, then they'll really change the world.
But it's not just about you know, sending out one
tweet and thinking you've done something. So, miss President, I'll
move to your friend. Alex Carp, the Volunteer CEO, tell
(31:28):
us the story that the Chinese love jazz, and so
they got a jazz com combo from New Orleans and
went to Beijing, and you know, a big auditorium was
just packed and they played for a couple of hours,
and of course they rushed the thing to talk to him.
And the main thing they wanted to ask was how
(31:49):
did you memorize those notes? All right? It in that
kind of creativity and that kind of energy when we
saw signs on this vaccine. But you still, I think
a hundred years from now, you're accomplishing. But you stop
the genocide. Uh, you know, for the surfaces, the best
(32:09):
income growth to any president since World War Two. But
the humans you don't project. I mean you you you
walk the walk. When we talk about science. You know,
everybody's now talking about science. Is science act that's the
foundational thing. I mean, your economies get good and they
get bad, and things like that happened, but the march
(32:29):
of knowledge goes on. And I think the combination of
that and the just the creative genius that people have, uh,
gives me great hope. But we don't have to memorize
the notes. Yeah, I agree with that. And we need
to have some more schools like Bria and Kentucky where
basically you can go for free and they don't have
(32:50):
any athletic programs, they don't have any they don't have
things that a lot of think people think are important
for college. But they send undergraduates to every high poward
graduate program in the country. And if you go there,
you have to work. You have to help serve dinner
and clean buildings and do all this kind of stuff.
(33:11):
But it's a community. We need to have enough models
here that work more like the community colleges, do you know.
I think that are open to everybody and that give
everybody some hope. And I hope that one of the
things will do. I agree with one of you mentioned
that one of the best things in Biden's economic plan
(33:33):
is finally we're gonna bring universal affordable broadband to every
place in America. Well, this notion of tying education to
service is something you did when you created AmeriCorps. And
and here's a very positive sign. Chris Coons, who has
Joe Biden's old seat in the US Senate from Delaware, Democrat,
(33:54):
has partnered with Roger Wicker, who's from Mississippi. He ain't
no Democrat, Conservative Republicans senator and UH Senators Coons and
Wicker want to take your AmeriCorps, which I believe serves
about young people a year. Yeah, I think we're off
now and take it to a million. I call that
a good start. It was like a huge difference. The
(34:15):
two things is that, yes, it would give a whole
lot of young people UH low cost debt free education
and skills, which is terrific. It also gives them life
skills that they learned as they're serving. But it integrates
us this big sort that we're talking about that you
and James were talking about before. You You you integrate
people when you have served with them. You know, James,
(34:38):
when when at their kids high school, Patrick, they all
had to do service. The first three all went to
Dominican Republic on their service trips. Patrick wanted to go
to to Lower Ninth, So he goes to New Orleans
and UH is serving in that community. And of course
the group coming from their school was about half white,
half black. And when you serve with people, and you
(35:01):
serve other people, you can't hate them anymore. And actually
they went over to St. Bernard Parish too, which is
I think James predominantly white, right, And they did service
in the Lower Knight and then over in St. Bernard.
And you can't hate people if you've served with them
and you you know them, And so it would I
think it would do a lot to stitch the social
fabric together. I don't know if President Biden's on board.
(35:21):
I imagine he is. I hope he is. But I
know that Senators Coons and Wicker and a bipartisan fashion
are trying to take your idea and bring it to scale.
I got before we ago, my favorite built President Clinton's
story and and I know people do this, you follow
all time to you, mis President, and I said, I
don't say what flordical advice youre for my career. So
(35:43):
we were in a little rock for one of the
reunions that we have and we'll I'll stand in line.
And Kaya Andrews, who worked for me in the All Run,
was actually from Mendon, Louisiana. It was a small town
in north Westernsiana, not very far Mordan saw. And she
had a daughter and I daughter was like fourteen, and
you were talking through and shaking his hand, being gracious
to everybody. And so Kyle, you look at you, said,
(36:04):
Mr President, this is my daughter. She's fourteen. She wants
to be president one day. What advice do you have
for And you kind of cock your head back and
your finger and it's most best flitic advice I've ever heard.
You said, two things, study hard, and meet as many
people as you can that are not like you. That's
the most profound political advice I've ever heard anyone give
(36:27):
a young person. And I mean that from the bottom
of heart. Well, thank you. Yeah, I think we've been blessed,
you know. And it's meeting people is and hearing their stories.
It makes it a lot easier to figure out what
can be done to make their stories better. And I think,
you know, I do a little bit of what Paul
(36:49):
was talking about with this leadership program at George W. Bush,
and I do where we pick sixty people a year.
It's a very diverse group, and they wind up loving
each other and loving the fact that they get to
work together. And I think part of it is they
actually get to know each other as people. The other
(37:09):
part is they begin with the end in mind, whereas
you know, so much of modern political life, not just
in America but everywhere else doesn't allow you to begin
with the end in mind and then work back to
what we can, what you can honorably compromise on to
get there. And for all kinds of obvious reasons, but
(37:31):
I'm grateful that, uh, you know, by the time I
left office, we'd already had more people in AmeriCorps than
had served in the Peace Corps in forty years. And
yet the impact of the Peace Corps on America has
been quite profound, just because of what people did with
their lives when they came back. And I think, you know, uh,
(37:52):
this is probably a good place to stop, because we're
all in a pretty good humor where the oldest continuously
existing democracy on earth. Periodically people have worried about us.
Even President Eisenhower during the McCarthy era worried about whether
we would have the discipline it takes to maintain a
free society over the long run. And so far, everybody's
(38:14):
bet against us has lost money. And I just think,
you know, we just got to keep growing and going
and I'm hopeful. I think Biden has been pretty much
pitched perfect so far, and but he's got a big
lot of stuff to do, and there are problems. Not
every problem has an instantaneous solution, but but the American
(38:36):
people are pretty smart about that too. We just gotta
let this thing flay out and keep working. But I
thank you, guys, and I hope you'll keep your voices
out there and keep doing what you've done. I'm very
proud of the lies that you've built, in the families
you've raised, and that we once got a chance to
(38:57):
do something that to make the country better, and how
from along their journey. Well, I love you, Mr President,
Thank you. I do too, And it's all because of
you that week what a turtle on the fence box
were both put there by you. Thank you? Actually exactly,
James and I would be pitching a Lieutenant Governor's racing
(39:17):
Kentucky if you had not, we'd still be it been
edn't been for you guys, I still be home doing
deeds and hundred dollar divorces too, So thank you, thank you, sorry,
thank you very much, thank you. Why Am I Telling
(39:37):
You This is a production of our Heart Radio, the
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(39:58):
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(40:54):
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podcast
In September, I went to Atlanta to give a speech
just a few weeks before I was going to formally
announce that I was running for president. And after the talk,
the then governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, invited me over
to the Governor's mansion, and I was pleased because I
really liked Zellen Shirley Miller, and we stayed up half
(00:23):
the night talking about policy, politics, you name it. Right
before I left, They'll said he'd support me, and then
he gave me two important pieces of advice. He said,
on the campaign trail, I'd have to give a lot
shorter speeches than what he's seen earlier that night. And
the second thing he said is if I wanted to win,
I needed to hire this up and coming duo of
(00:44):
campaign strategist would help him get elected to the year before,
James Carville and Paul Begala. I didn't always take the
first bit of advice, but I'll always be grateful that
I did take the second part. I arranged a meeting
with James and Paul and came away not only with
two of the brightest political minds in America, but two
of the best friends I've made so why am I
(01:06):
telling you this? Because politics is about people and the future,
and if you want to be successful, you have to
have a vision and a message that allows everybody to
see themselves as an important part of our shared future.
James and Paul are as good at crafting those kinds
of messages as anyone I've ever met, because they do
(01:29):
care about people, and they are interested in their lives
and stories. In my campaign, that helps us to develop
a strategy that's focused on issues that resonated with voters
across every demographic Building an inclusive economy where everyone could
share fairly in our prosperity, expanding access to quality, affordable healthcare,
(01:49):
providing family and medical leave, investing in an improving education
at every level, and opening the doors of college to all,
and protecting our natural resources for our children's few True. Now,
I know the political and media landscape for constantly changing,
but human nature hasn't changed very much, which is why
(02:09):
I after countless campaigns and news cycles, James and Paul
are still two of the most sought after strategies and commentators,
and not even though I'm not running for anything anymore,
I still pick up the phone and call them all
the time just to get their take on things. So,
(02:30):
James Paul, thanks so much for being here. I tell
you why saying that or recording is gonna be in
my family things I want my great grandchildren. I'm gonna
be just blunt. I loved every word of it, Mr President.
Play played for my mother's, my my my children would
(02:51):
enjoy it. My mother would believe it so well. First,
before I met you, how did you guys meet each other?
And what were your first impressions of each other? And
how did you decide to work together? I'll take that one.
We met uh the Tuesday after Labor Day of nineteen
(03:14):
three when I came to Austin. UH. I think it
the behest of Jack Martin to work for LAYD Dogget
and published in the room and it was on his meeting.
Then it's ten minutes ended the meeting. I said to myself,
I'm not going anywhere again without this guy. And you
know I never did. And I gotta tell you it
(03:35):
was the best judge, best judgment call I've ever made
my life. Well, that's very kind, James. I was the
gopher who picked James up at the airport. It was
Lloyd Dogget runner for U S. Senate. He was my
state senator and mentor. And uh, they sent me the
lowest man on the totem poles to go pick up
this out of state campaign manager. Of course, you know
Louisiana and Texas said that you can't bring a Louisiana
(03:57):
guy in to run a Texas campaign. You dn't. But
but Jack are who we all you know quite well,
believed it, had heard of James, believed in him. Dog.
It took the meeting. I picked up James the airport,
same thing. I thought, this is the smartest guy I've
ever met, my wife, but he's too crazy for Lloyd
to hire. Lloyd's very straight laced and Mr President, you
probably haven't noticed this, but James contend towards the profane
(04:18):
and eccentric. Lloyd very straight laced, And I thought, well,
Lloyd will never hire this guy, but I'm gonna glean
everything I can from him before they send him back
across the Red River. And I've been trailing in his
weake ever since. Not more was Paul was working on
the Clarksdale pottery list. There's one thing I know that
(04:42):
you do share in common, and that's the love of politics.
But how did you decide to make it a career
and who were your main influences as you grew up
and made that decision. I see main influence just uh, Well,
I grew up in Louisiana and I've worked in some
(05:05):
campaigns there, maybe Peter Hart and Mark Shields who consulted
on a nineteen seventy nine governors race in Louisiana that
I worked and we've got nine point eight percent of
the vote. But the basic concepts and then I actually
learned a lot in nineteen eighty four in Texas. Has
Phil Graham taught me a lot and beat the crap
out of us. But you can say what you want
(05:27):
about Phil Graham, he knew how to communicate and this,
you know, it's a good lesson when you get the
crap beat out of you. I think by eight five
eighty six, I would say I was a much better
political operative in nineteen eighties six, I mean, much better
than I was in nineteen eighty one. Paul, Yeah, you know,
(05:48):
I'd always been a little kind of student activist. I
was in student council and student body president high school,
and then I went up student body president college and
it was it was a couple of people. Lloyd was
my state senator, and he'd been studing by the president,
and so he kind of took me under his wing
and offered me an internship in his state Senate office
during a legislative session. Oh my god. I hardly went
(06:10):
to class, but I had a I got a graduate
degree in practical politics in the Texas legislature, working interning
for Lloyd Doggin. Uh. Then he decided he wanted to
run for U. S. Senate and brought me on. But
before that he was up for reelection. I forgot this,
and his campaign manager was a buddy of ours, Russ Tidwell,
and a big real estate guy was running against Lloyd
was gonna self fund, and he took a hard look
(06:31):
at it, realized he couldn't win, and dropped out of
the race. Well, I was in the headquarters and dog
It and tid Well are dancing. They're so happy because
now Lloyd's unopposed. And I sat in a corner and
I was on the verge of tears, and tid Well,
what's the matter with you? I said, Well, I just
lost the only job I'll ever get in politics. Russ,
I mean, who else is gonna hire me. And he said,
as long as you could walk and chew gum, somebody
(06:51):
in politics will hire you. And it proved to be prophetic.
That's the life for me. Well, I've been wanting to
ask you this for a long time. Tell me something
that happened during the ninety two campaign that I did
not know about. All right, let me let me go
(07:13):
first here. I almost I almost jinxt Us, Mr. President,
when we were on the Georgia bus tour, and we're
going through South Georgia and uh, you know, we stopped.
We spent the night in Valdosta. I remember we stopped
in Columbus, where James Carver was born, called him from there.
His father was at Fort Bidding in the army when
James was born. But we stopped in Parrot, Georgia, which
(07:36):
is a town at the time of a hundred and
forty souls, not not any bigger today, and it's about
seventy thirty white and black. And you drew a crowd
in Parrot, Georgia that was over ten times the size
of the town, and it was as representative as the town.
But you know, seventy thirty white, black and and Zel
(07:57):
was with US Governor Miller. Sam Nunn was with us,
I mean pure Howard, the lieutenant governor, a great guy,
was with us, and Jesus gave such a great talk,
and you talked about mud cats and moon pies and
everybody was noting, and everybody knew you were one of them.
And we spent the night in a motel in Valdosta,
and I called Georgie, George Stephanopolis, and this is really
(08:17):
for vote in a campaign. I would have never told
you this, but I said, George, we're gonna win this September.
We're a long way from home and I said, we're
gonna win this thing. And he said, what makes you
think that? And I told him what I had just seen,
having worked for Zel. So you're in Terrell County, Georgia.
By the way, you got fifty there, sir, You ran
up the score. And I just said, if if this
man can draw a crowd like that in a tiny
(08:39):
little cotton town like like Parrot, Georgia. And the message
there really was I care about you. I give a
damn about you, and those folks got it and that
so I know that was a jink, sir, but I did.
I I felt like this thing was over when you
turned in a performance like that in a place like that. God,
I wish I've known it. In September, I guess it.
(09:04):
Uh would have the morning phone call and if I'm
about saying anything and people don't, don't you're not exactly
a morning person, and so it's not to go through
the day. And of course it was like on a
speak of phone and you could be quite irritable and
people would say, which I said, just give it an hour.
(09:24):
It's just it's like a thunderstorm that comes through through
little rock. It you got a big rain burst and
then the sun comes do so I always had to
explain to the campaign staff that you're a different person
in that in the afternoon. In the morning, I guess
I said that behind you back well. D G. Wilhelm
(09:45):
who traveled with us, who's now a very successful lawyer,
but she she used to very most cheerful person in
the world, best person you can travel with. And James,
we would even d G. We trash you behind your back.
You and George, all the headquarters people because we are
on the plane, we had the most We had the
greatest job in the world. You guys were doing all
the hard work, but that's not how we saw it
at the time. It would be like eight or nine
at night and d G would say, well, James and
(10:07):
George and them are on their second cocktail. We only
have five more hours left in our working day. So
there was that tension back and forth. There isn't every campaign,
but I think seriously to spread the fact that you
had that amazingly talented war room with everybody from from
Jeans Spurling, Michael Walman, Mike Donalin who's now a top eight,
to President Biden and James and George, they did keep
(10:31):
us afloat. And I feel a little guilty James, that
we were resentful of fact that you got to sleep
in the same bed every night. Yeah, I was a
those George and I haven't dranks with Haunter Thompson and
Day And I apologize from my early morning irritability. You know,
I was always a workaholic, and I kept going late
at night and my mind would kick in, so it
(10:54):
took me a while to get going in the daytime.
And I'll thank you forgiving me, for forgiving me, James,
when in our war room you've famously wrote those three
memorable lines change versus more of the same. The economy
stupid and don't forget health care. If you were working
(11:15):
in a presidential campaign today or anticipating one, and what
would you ride on the wall? Not much different? And
health care. It seems to me today health care and
the economy two of the country. If we go and
(11:35):
you get an e K G and you look at
you full one k you view that as two separate events.
Most people view it is the same event, that their
economic situation is directly tied to the health cabine. How
many you know the people who get a toothache that
you know, wat a toothache before they go to tennis.
And if we've heard in focus groups and you're still
(11:56):
here today, I'm one disease away from bankrupts it I'm
one healthy event. So you know, if I was running
there was a Democrat, I probably wouldn't run on change
because we've had Democrats. We would have had the democratic
rule for for for four years. But I think that
the two are as say it today as there's ever been.
(12:20):
And I'm such a a fanatic on climate because I
think it's just such a gut wrenching I think the
two biggest issues we face of inequality and climate now
an equality you can put in as part of your
economic message, but I think it's it's a huge enough
ficial I know it doesn't rally as many people as
(12:43):
we would like, but I just think on a personal
level is just too big obitiative to ignore. We'll be
right back. I think we do have to make climate
change an economic issue for people, and I think President
Biden is trying to do that, and they put some
(13:04):
significant amount of money into this American Recovery Act. But
one of the problems that we have, and I think
it's led to a lot of the cultural lately nation
in the heart Land, is that we know that this
economy is very uneven geographically and therefore electorally. And I've
(13:28):
always believed having grown up in Arkansas when I was born,
our economy was just barely over half the national average
about but I didn't know anybody didn't have work and
who didn't believe they couldn't improve their situation. And that's
(13:50):
what kills people, is stagnation. If you look up in
the mirror every day and you think every tomorrow it's
going to be like yesterday, and you're not gonna be
able to take care of your kids and and you
feel insecure about things like healthcare. And we have to
find a way, it seems to me, to talk to
people together again and to be more welcoming and to
(14:14):
deal with the aspirations of ordinary people. And the problem
I see is that when we get into, you know,
demonizing one another, it may benefit us in terms of
turnout in local elections, that may help our progressives in primaries,
but it causes real challenges when you get out there
(14:34):
in the heartland. There's a great column in the New
York Times on the day that we're recording this about
how the biggest gains the Republicans made in the entire
country between we're in Texas south of San Antonio. We
did okay in San Antonio and Bear County, and then
you go further south into the small towns and rural
(14:57):
areas which were heavily Latino Mexico American, and we barely
escaped with a victory. So what's your take on that?
How much has the country changed since our campaign and
way back in ninety two? And do you think what
Biden is doing now is helping us get back together
(15:20):
a little? If I can start on that, James Um,
it's my favorite political statistic, Mr. President, When of course
George Washington gets elected, hundred percent of voters are white.
In fact, there weren't even voters who were just electors,
but it was a hundred percent white. Because we know
why two hundred and four years later you get elected.
(15:41):
Now we've had fift nineteenth amendments, we've had voter rights
Xcel Rights Act. It's a completely different country. But guess what,
that h percent had only dropped to eighty seven the
time from your election to Joe Biden's seven is dropped
to sixty seven. So you have had more demographic change,
more dilution in the white vote in the last twenty
eight years in the previous two hundred four And I
(16:04):
think how you react to that, particularly white people, kind
of determines which way you're going for. For For for
people on this in this interview, we think it's wonderful.
We think that this richness and diversity makes us younger, smarter,
We're able to compete interesting, better, food better. My doctor
is from Iran, my my my my dentist is from Brazil.
(16:25):
My neighbor across the street was a boat person from
Vietnam graduated top of a class of UV A like,
I look at this as a win win win. This
is just wonderful. And it's James like to say, I
like being in a country people want to come to.
I like it. Nobody's busting down the doors to get
into Russia. So I think that's terrific. But there's a
whole lot of people who don't. UH And economic stagnation,
(16:49):
certainly in a lot of urban areas, but principally or
terribly in rural areas. You put all that together, and
that's a tinder box that somebody can come in and demagogue.
And and I put most of the blame on the demagogues,
but some of it is on us too, is it?
When we don't acknowledge their pain? When we're losing over
(17:12):
forty thousand people a year to opioid addiction. The some
in the suburbs, some of the cities, but a whole
lot in the rural areas. When we don't give voice
to that and respect that and listen to it and
speak to it and acknowledge it, they're gonna be heard
and and they're gonna turn towards a wrecking ball. And
I think that what President Biden is doing is exactly right. Well,
(17:34):
in thirty one hundred plus county a county equivalents in
the United States in ninety six for whatever referred to
a super majority county is that is one of Party
one by more than fifty percent. In other words, of
went by seventy five, twenty five, and by two thousand
(17:56):
twenty it's probably over thirteen hundred. So there are people
in North Philadelphia that don't know a Republican. There are
millions of people in rural America that don't know a Democrat.
And the geographic separation I think has been profound. Uh
(18:23):
And you know, and you know, we were in when
Paul and I were running in New Jersey. I looked
it up Bush for a one one by eight in
Loudenburg one by eight. That doesn't exist anymore in American politics.
So we've had, of course, we've had polarization, but geographic polarization,
(18:45):
I think is a is a significant issue. I being
a son of rural America, I totally agree with Paul,
And I mean, you were very concentrate on rural America,
rural Arkansas and men as you go to these towns,
I took a drive about two weeks ago in the
kind of northern part of what they call the Florida
Parish is in Louisiana, and it's just hopeless. It's just
(19:10):
make make you cry to see the lack of any
kind of real I mean, the biggest employee everywhere as
the hospital. I mean, thank god, you know we we
we saved some of these royal hospitals. But man, you
go to buggal Loosa, Franklinson U kent Wood, where Britney
Spears is from, it is nothing like you remember it.
(19:31):
It's it's really it's really tragic. And they believe, and
I think with some validity. I don't think it's insane
when they say people have forgotten about us. People don't
realize there's a huge swath of Black America that's rural. Okay,
you know you've got to the Arkansas Delta, the Mississippi Delta,
even the Louisiana Doulta. I mean, it would talk like
(19:54):
and I think a lot of that a lot of
what hurts our turnout. Sometimes they feel like they left
out of the equation. It's not it's not just white
a market that fields left out. I was glad when
Tom Vilsack agreed to go back in service Secretary of
Agriculture because when President Obama was in office, Bill pack
(20:17):
and got you know, he's very low key. He never
gets credit for what he's doing. I thought he was
the most underrated member of the president's cabinet. When Obama
was president, he on his own initiative, because he understood
rural America, went out and talked to all these Republican
congressmen and convinced them to support the Democrats and allowing
(20:38):
him to consolidate a little a lot of these smaller
grants that are given by Congress to the Department of
Agriculture in the development funds, and the Agriculture Department actually
did create when Obama was president a quarter of a
million jobs in tiny places. And I think it's really
important because we can only win in the end over
(21:01):
the long run by having people feel comfortable enough in
the growing diversity of America that they don't do what's
happening now. So our only option is what the president
is doing for the right reasons, not for this reason
he is performance and we do have on economic issues.
(21:25):
The unity in the Democrats, it seems to me from
our centrist to the left right now that he had
to go big on this first Recovery Act and we
didn't have to deal with the filibuster, and none of
the Republicans voted for it, but it was the right
thing to do when you've got you haven't you're still
(21:48):
seven million jobs short, and you've got this huge hole
in the economy, and GDP dropped like ten or fift
It seems to me he did the right thing. But
we need to know that we've got a long way
to go before people think we give a roof about
them again. I do think this president is doing a
(22:09):
good job of that. He's not as partisan as I am,
thank god, but he is trying to explain to people
that that these votes have consequences, and that four in
your bank account was opposed by every living breathing Republican
in the House and every living breathing Republican the Senate,
which is pretty extraordinary. We have a giant, unsolvable problem,
(22:31):
and I'll tell you what's not, Jerry Mannen the United
States Senate. All right, eighteen per cent of the voters
in the United States elect fIF senators. There has been
academic research on the weighted value. It that gives enhanced
power to roll white. I hate to say that, but
(22:54):
it is just the truth. And a lot of my
a lot of people say, well that can change that.
It's not gonna change. Wyoming is not going to vote
or North Dakota are not going to vote that way
out of power, all right, that's just simply not gonna happen.
It looked like that that that that's a nonenda. So
we don't have any choice. We have no choice. If
(23:17):
you want power, you have no choice but to engage,
because if you don't, you're not gonna have any power.
How much do you think that changes in how people
get their information has driven the support that will continue
to do so. If you think the Senate is a
tough and insoluble problem, this is bigger. Um. You always
(23:43):
used to teach all of us, But to your staff
that that you've got to start with agreed upon set
of facts and that requires you to open your mind.
It maybe sometimes the other side might have some facts
that are relevant, interesting, important, and correct that's not taught
anymore their political leaders. Uh. And you can make a
lot of money lying to people, a whole lot because
(24:07):
the market segmentation. Uh. That that's one, having now spent
a couple of decades in cable news. Uh. And to
the algorithm in social media is so powerful and so negative.
And I don't know what's all in the black box.
I don't know if it's ever been publicly disclosed. But
here's a good little example, Mr President Lent. This year,
(24:31):
you know, I'm try to be I'm a faithful Catholic.
And my wife Sunday school teacher challenge me, I always
give up cursing, drinking, or Twitter, the three great sins
of my daily life. Uh. This year she challenged me.
She said, no, do something good positive on Twitter every
single day. So every single day between Ash Wednesday and
Easter Sunday, every single day I posted a tweet that
(24:52):
began with three words people are good. And then I
explained a link. I linked to a positive story a
girl skelt troup that formed itself in a homeless shelter
in De Moin and then set the state record for
cookie sales. Right. Stuff like that, kids who chipped in
to buy their janitor a car when he was out
of work because the school hood closed. Every single day
(25:13):
I did that. Now, when I tweet something mean about
the Republicans, thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, fifty thousand people
may like it. I rarely got a hundred people to
like any positive thing I did. And it's not that
people are bad, it's that the algorithm is. One of
my dear friends is Bill Burton, was President Obama spokesman,
and we talk all the time and we follow each
(25:36):
other on Twitter. And I mentioned this to him. He said,
I've never seen a one of your positive tweets, not
a one. And I said, how can that be? And
he said, the algorithm doesn't kick it up to me.
It doesn't promote it. It doesn't say, hey, Bill, here's
your buddy mcgala. Now I fire right something hateful. Boy,
it'll hit him right. So our our information platforms now
are designed to drive us into division and darkness, and
(26:00):
I don't know what to do about that. We'll be
right back. I know that. Look, politics has always been
a contact sport and people are always trying to rewrite history.
But I do think that there are things that make
(26:20):
me optimistic, and one of them is that there is
a real unity in the Democratic Party that at least
at this time, the only option is to have a
very active government taking a vigorous role to fill a
hole in the economy. And so I think, and the
thing I like about what Biden is doing is there's
enough money in there too, as you pointed out, give
(26:42):
the four check and some of the other support programs,
but there's also investment that will create jobs and have
a good multiplier. It's not trickled down economics. And I
think we have to hope that if people feel a
sense of mobile laity, that they hope that they feel
like we're going places together, that it will dilute the
(27:10):
identity wars. But I also think we should go knocking
on the other doors and uh and we ought to
look like we're having a good time doing it. It's all,
you know, we shouldn't be out there making people think
this is about destruction. They win those fights. We were
in the people business in ninety two, and we need
(27:31):
to be in the people business and the people business
and the future business. And you know, we're not gonna
melt those icebergs overnight. But before we finish, just give
us a you guys, say a couple of things about
what makes you optimistic about the future. Kids. I've taught
(27:52):
at Georgia for twenty years. Before that, I taught University
of Georgia, first semester University of Texas. And I've got
four boys in their twenties, so I know I knew
hundreds of thousands of twenty some things. They're the next
greatest generation. Uh. They're more public interested in public spirited
than I was there, more selfless. And the thing though,
(28:15):
sorry that I tried to imbuing them. This is a
good thing that they are challenging the system and that
they're impatient. But now I'm old, and what I tried
to tell them is something you taught me, which is
you've got to be in this for the long haul.
And and I'm watching this wonderful tension between people outside
the system and inside the system, within our own party
(28:37):
and within our own government. And if I can take
you back, this is one of the more important moments
I think in my life. April, You're at a fundraiser
in New York City, raising money for your for your
campaign for president, and in the middle of it, guy
named Bob Rafsky comes up to you. He was a
(28:57):
pr guy who became the chiefs e for Act Up,
which was I wouldn't say radical, but really it was
pretty radical AIDS activist group at the time. And he
got right in your face and he was screaming at
you where you is. He said, we're not so much
dyeing of AIDS as we're dying of eleven years of
government neglect and ascribe that to you. And your response was,
(29:18):
I know it hurts. And then you said for words
that that people always remember. I feel your pain and
our friends of the far I'd always mocked you for that,
but that kind of deep empathy. Here's what happened. The
next day or two, you met with act UP. A
few weeks later, you gave a major policy address during
a campaign on AIDS. A few months later, you had
(29:38):
Bob Haty, a man who is your environmental advisor but
who was living with AIDS, speak at the convention, first
time of Democrat either convention had had someone with AIDS
speaking about AIDS at their convention. You become president, You
create the Office of National AIDS Policy, the AIDS czar office,
you you funded, and you you do more for AIDS
than it have been done American his tree. You leave office,
(30:01):
and you set up what's now the Clinton Health Access initiative,
which is keeping millions and millions and millions of people
with HIV alive. So nine years ago, pain confronted power
and there was a confrontation, but it sparked conscience, but
even more important, constancy and commitment. So you've spent twenty
nine years and and poor Mr Rafsky has gone and
(30:24):
we lost him before we could have these anti retroviral drugs.
But you know, he yelled fire and you ran for
the host. And society needs both. And I keep trying
to tell, like my kids and my students that that
some people are more driven towards being on the outside
and pressuring and I respect that. And we're seeing a
lot of that and it has a good effect. And
people like me who are on the inside, I need
(30:45):
to respect that, but vice versa. People on the outside
need to understand that when the rally is over, a
good leader picks up that pain and translates it into purpose.
And that's the whole point of having power. And that
gives me huge because right now those young people are
really pressuring the system and I want them to. I
don't always like it, but I respect it. And and
(31:08):
then so the people in the power then have to.
They have to, and if they have a tenth of
the constancy of commitment that you've had to these causes
of your entire life, then they'll really change the world.
But it's not just about you know, sending out one
tweet and thinking you've done something. So, miss President, I'll
move to your friend. Alex Carp, the Volunteer CEO, tell
(31:28):
us the story that the Chinese love jazz, and so
they got a jazz com combo from New Orleans and
went to Beijing, and you know, a big auditorium was
just packed and they played for a couple of hours,
and of course they rushed the thing to talk to him.
And the main thing they wanted to ask was how
(31:49):
did you memorize those notes? All right? It in that
kind of creativity and that kind of energy when we
saw signs on this vaccine. But you still, I think
a hundred years from now, you're accomplishing. But you stop
the genocide. Uh, you know, for the surfaces, the best
(32:09):
income growth to any president since World War Two. But
the humans you don't project. I mean you you you
walk the walk. When we talk about science. You know,
everybody's now talking about science. Is science act that's the
foundational thing. I mean, your economies get good and they
get bad, and things like that happened, but the march
(32:29):
of knowledge goes on. And I think the combination of
that and the just the creative genius that people have, uh,
gives me great hope. But we don't have to memorize
the notes. Yeah, I agree with that. And we need
to have some more schools like Bria and Kentucky where
basically you can go for free and they don't have
(32:50):
any athletic programs, they don't have any they don't have
things that a lot of think people think are important
for college. But they send undergraduates to every high poward
graduate program in the country. And if you go there,
you have to work. You have to help serve dinner
and clean buildings and do all this kind of stuff.
(33:11):
But it's a community. We need to have enough models
here that work more like the community colleges, do you know.
I think that are open to everybody and that give
everybody some hope. And I hope that one of the
things will do. I agree with one of you mentioned
that one of the best things in Biden's economic plan
(33:33):
is finally we're gonna bring universal affordable broadband to every
place in America. Well, this notion of tying education to
service is something you did when you created AmeriCorps. And
and here's a very positive sign. Chris Coons, who has
Joe Biden's old seat in the US Senate from Delaware, Democrat,
(33:54):
has partnered with Roger Wicker, who's from Mississippi. He ain't
no Democrat, Conservative Republicans senator and UH Senators Coons and
Wicker want to take your AmeriCorps, which I believe serves
about young people a year. Yeah, I think we're off
now and take it to a million. I call that
a good start. It was like a huge difference. The
(34:15):
two things is that, yes, it would give a whole
lot of young people UH low cost debt free education
and skills, which is terrific. It also gives them life
skills that they learned as they're serving. But it integrates
us this big sort that we're talking about that you
and James were talking about before. You You you integrate
people when you have served with them. You know, James,
(34:38):
when when at their kids high school, Patrick, they all
had to do service. The first three all went to
Dominican Republic on their service trips. Patrick wanted to go
to to Lower Ninth, So he goes to New Orleans
and UH is serving in that community. And of course
the group coming from their school was about half white,
half black. And when you serve with people, and you
(35:01):
serve other people, you can't hate them anymore. And actually
they went over to St. Bernard Parish too, which is
I think James predominantly white, right, And they did service
in the Lower Knight and then over in St. Bernard.
And you can't hate people if you've served with them
and you you know them, And so it would I
think it would do a lot to stitch the social
fabric together. I don't know if President Biden's on board.
(35:21):
I imagine he is. I hope he is. But I
know that Senators Coons and Wicker and a bipartisan fashion
are trying to take your idea and bring it to scale.
I got before we ago, my favorite built President Clinton's
story and and I know people do this, you follow
all time to you, mis President, and I said, I
don't say what flordical advice youre for my career. So
(35:43):
we were in a little rock for one of the
reunions that we have and we'll I'll stand in line.
And Kaya Andrews, who worked for me in the All Run,
was actually from Mendon, Louisiana. It was a small town
in north Westernsiana, not very far Mordan saw. And she
had a daughter and I daughter was like fourteen, and
you were talking through and shaking his hand, being gracious
to everybody. And so Kyle, you look at you, said,
(36:04):
Mr President, this is my daughter. She's fourteen. She wants
to be president one day. What advice do you have
for And you kind of cock your head back and
your finger and it's most best flitic advice I've ever heard.
You said, two things, study hard, and meet as many
people as you can that are not like you. That's
the most profound political advice I've ever heard anyone give
(36:27):
a young person. And I mean that from the bottom
of heart. Well, thank you. Yeah, I think we've been blessed,
you know. And it's meeting people is and hearing their stories.
It makes it a lot easier to figure out what
can be done to make their stories better. And I think,
you know, I do a little bit of what Paul
(36:49):
was talking about with this leadership program at George W. Bush,
and I do where we pick sixty people a year.
It's a very diverse group, and they wind up loving
each other and loving the fact that they get to
work together. And I think part of it is they
actually get to know each other as people. The other
(37:09):
part is they begin with the end in mind, whereas
you know, so much of modern political life, not just
in America but everywhere else doesn't allow you to begin
with the end in mind and then work back to
what we can, what you can honorably compromise on to
get there. And for all kinds of obvious reasons, but
(37:31):
I'm grateful that, uh, you know, by the time I
left office, we'd already had more people in AmeriCorps than
had served in the Peace Corps in forty years. And
yet the impact of the Peace Corps on America has
been quite profound, just because of what people did with
their lives when they came back. And I think, you know, uh,
(37:52):
this is probably a good place to stop, because we're
all in a pretty good humor where the oldest continuously
existing democracy on earth. Periodically people have worried about us.
Even President Eisenhower during the McCarthy era worried about whether
we would have the discipline it takes to maintain a
free society over the long run. And so far, everybody's
(38:14):
bet against us has lost money. And I just think,
you know, we just got to keep growing and going
and I'm hopeful. I think Biden has been pretty much
pitched perfect so far, and but he's got a big
lot of stuff to do, and there are problems. Not
every problem has an instantaneous solution, but but the American
(38:36):
people are pretty smart about that too. We just gotta
let this thing flay out and keep working. But I
thank you, guys, and I hope you'll keep your voices
out there and keep doing what you've done. I'm very
proud of the lies that you've built, in the families
you've raised, and that we once got a chance to
(38:57):
do something that to make the country better, and how
from along their journey. Well, I love you, Mr President,
Thank you. I do too, And it's all because of
you that week what a turtle on the fence box
were both put there by you. Thank you? Actually exactly,
James and I would be pitching a Lieutenant Governor's racing
(39:17):
Kentucky if you had not, we'd still be it been
edn't been for you guys, I still be home doing
deeds and hundred dollar divorces too, So thank you, thank you, sorry,
thank you very much, thank you. Why Am I Telling
(39:37):
You This is a production of our Heart Radio, the
Clinton Foundation, and at Will Media. Our executive producers are
Craig Manascion and Will Malnady. Our production team includes Mitch Bluestein,
Jamison cat Sufus, Tom Galton, Sarah Harrowoodson, Jake Young, with
production support from Tyler Scott and I'll Ta You Young.
(39:58):
Original music by What White Special thanks to John Sichs,
Tina Finois, John Davidson on Hell Arena, Corey Gantley, Oscar Flora's,
Kevin Thurm, and all our dedicated staff and partners at
the Clinton Foundation. If you have an idea of suggestion
for the show, we'd love to hear from you, so
(40:19):
please visit Clinton Foundation dot org slash podcast to share
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I Telling You This? On the I Heart Radio app,
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to this podcast, you're helping support the work of the
Clinton Foundation, So thank you. Hi I'm Stephanie Street, Executive
(40:54):
director of the Clinton Foundation, where we work every single
day to advance President Clinton's can bitment to public service
and improve lives across the country and around the world.
President Clinton often reminds us that we're all in this together,
that we rise or fall together. That's why, in the
face of crisis, we answer the call we act. At
(41:16):
the Clinton Presidential Center, We've been proud to work together
with partners to serve hundreds of thousands of meals to
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