#387 — Politics & Power
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Summary
Ambassador Rahm Emanuel is currently serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Before that, he was the mayor of Chicago and served as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff. He also served as a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois and as a key member of President Clinton s administration, ultimately serving as his senior advisor for policy and politics. In this episode, Rahm talks about his time in the White House, his ambassadorship in Japan, the state of the world and American politics, and what it's like to be an ambassador for the United States. He also talks about why he thinks it's a good idea to live in public housing, and why he doesn't think it's better than Section 8 housing, even if it's on the lower income level. And, of course, he talks about what it means to be a sistersoldier in the political sphere, and how important it is to have a sister soldier in public service. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore are made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. If you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming a supporter of what we re doing here. You'll also get access to our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts to anyone who can t afford a full-time college education. There's no ads, and we don t run ads in the podcast, and therefore, you won't be missing out on the benefits that you get when you become a subscriber. Thanks to our sponsorships! Sam Harris - The Making Sense Podcast is made possible by the support by our sponsors, and the support we re making this podcast possible by becoming one of our listeners, you'll get a better experience and a better chance to listen to more episodes of the podcast. - Thank you, and you'll be helping us build a better podcasting experience for your podcasting opportunities. This is a podcast you can be a better listening experience, and a podcast that's better at listening to more of what they know what they care about, and they'll be able to do more of the things they're listening to the podcast because they're making sense of it, too. Thank you! - Thanks, Sam Harris, making sense, and more of you can help us make sense of things they care more of it? Thanks, and that's the Making Sense - Sam, too, and it's making sense.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
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Today I'm speaking with Rahm Emanuel. Rahm is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Japan,
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where he is just wrapping up his term. He was also the 55th mayor of the city of Chicago,
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a position he held until 2019. Before that, he was President Obama's chief of staff.
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He was also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois. And prior to
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that, you might remember him as a key member of President Clinton's administration, ultimately
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serving as his senior advisor for policy and politics. I happened to be going to Japan and
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realized I could talk to Rahm in person at the embassy, and there was a lot to talk about.
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We generally discussed the state of the world and American politics. We talk about his
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ambassadorship in Japan, the mystery of Japan's economic health, U.S. competition with China,
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possible conflict over Taiwan and the Philippines, the significance of the South China Sea,
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the history of the U.S.-Japan friendship. And then we turn to U.S. politics. We discuss how the
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Democratic Party lost its way, immigration, whether Vice President Harris needs a sister-soldier moment,
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whether she should explain her changes of position better than she has. And then after we cover that
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fraught territory, we turn to the happy topic of the Middle East. We discuss the standing of Israel
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in the eyes of the world, anti-Semitism, the Abraham Accords, Hamas, settlements in the West
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Bank, the influence of the religious right in Israel, a possible war with Iran, Netanyahu and
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Israeli security, a two-state solution, whether a Harris administration would reliably support Israel,
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Israel, and other topics. Anyway, the conversation was a lot of fun, and now I bring you Ambassador
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So I'm here with Ambassador Rahm Emanuel. Ambassador, thanks for joining me.
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We'll see if I can get through complete sentences here, because I've been in the country for
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We were thrown together by the incomparable Michael Kivas.
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And yeah, so we owe him the credit of this conversation.
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Well, we'll see at the end of the show whether he gets points or demerits.
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I mean, I want to start with your current post here in Japan, but we're going to wander
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Yeah, we're going to, because obviously you've touched, you have so many areas of expertise.
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So just to remind people, you have served in two presidential administrations.
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President Clinton, senior advisor, President Obama's chief of staff, and then ambassador for
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President Biden, or for the United States, so you could say.
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Forgive me, I didn't really think of an ambassadorship as, is it technically?
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You could say, but your appointment, you know, there's two types of appointments I don't
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There's a career appointment, and then there's political appointments.
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And then the political sphere breaks down donors or formerly elected officials, like Senator
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Mansfield, majority leader, ambassador here, former Vice President Walter Mondale, ambassador
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here, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, ambassador here.
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On the list of countries where you can be an ambassador, this is-
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Well, you haven't seen the house, but this probably will get me in trouble, but it will
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never be referred to as Section 8 public housing.
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But if you're going to live in public housing, that's the way to go.
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But the job is actually, on a serious note, the job itself at this moment in time between
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the United States and Japan is like everything every other ambassador wanted.
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Japan's ready to break out, do things and do things from real energy and time, et cetera.
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And I think they've surprised themselves, I could, about how much they've gotten done
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We're in the middle of redesigning our entire Indo-Pacific strategy from a hub-and-spoke
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to this lattice war because of my background and experience.
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I've been intimately involved in the trilateral with Korea, Japan, and the United States,
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And then also the one with the United States, Japan, and Philippines.
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And so it has been from a work product, from kind of that intellectual energy that comes
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from really kind of putting your thumb on the scale, totally fascinating.
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From a quality of life, it's a culture and experience that I feel like it's a gift to
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And then on a personal level, there's things about the society I find.
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For a lot of people, sometimes inside, they feel it's oppressive.
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So you could feel that about our society on certain things.
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But you know, as a former mayor that a city of Chicago that created safe passage routes
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for kids to walk to school, my staff always tired of hearing that.
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They accomplished that in Tokyo, from what I can tell.
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Yeah, you have five-year-olds walk just eight, nine blocks to school, just put their hand
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The respect for life, I mean, you then realize how much we have stolen children's childhood
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So from a lot of levels, I find this to be professionally rewarding and personally a gift.
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I want to thank him for giving me the opportunity to experience a whole new culture.
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So there are two mysteries that confront the novice in Japan.
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Neither one of us would refer to ourselves as novice.
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And so from what I can tell, there has been an impressive amount of economic stagnation
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I mean, if you're looking at the stock market index, you look at the, I think if you had
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put a dollar in the Nikkei in 1989, you'd have exactly a dollar today or something close
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Depends what the end trades at that moment, but yes.
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Let me just complete this thought because it's not as invidious as it sounds.
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And yet it's obviously an incredibly prosperous society, right?
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It's just impeccable on so many levels and it's not showing, at least from what I can
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tell, the signs of economic dysfunction that you would expect if you just looked at that
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You know, one of the things I've read a little and I'm very persuaded.
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I don't think the analysis, oh, the lost decades is really, it's a top line.
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So if you lift the hood, if you go to the manufacturing side of the economy from a productivity
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measurement, et cetera, it's incredibly productive.
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Japan got a head start on the decline in population.
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The top four robotic companies in the world, two of them are Japanese.
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Of the top seven, depending on how you want to count it, are eight automation companies.
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So from the manufacturing side, which is a bigger piece of their economy than for the
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United States, quite productive and stayed at world-class standards.
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Now on the service side, your description is accurate.
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The cloud is just coming here as a kind of a metaphor for a bigger kind of stagnation
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in the tech, in the service side and technology adoption, et cetera.
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But the economy is a very export oriented and it's highly world-class economy.
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They stay to the office till 10, 11 o'clock at night.
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We can't get people in America at 10 or 11 in the morning into the office.
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Great universities, highly safe and secure modern infrastructure system.
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You can get anywhere in the Indo-Pacific daily multiple times.
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So there's a lot of advantages to that part of the economy.
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And in the areas, I'll give you like, take semiconductor space, it gets a lot of notoriety.
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I could refer to Japan as the supply chain of the supply chain.
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So there's about 18 companies that are dominant in the materials and packaging,
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which is so essential, that have anywhere from 40 to 70% of worldwide share market in their space.
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And when you think of the people that make machines for the semiconductor,
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there's ASML in the Netherlands, Tokyo Electron here.
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And so they have a lot that is a specialty, but you could get overwhelmed and biased from the writing.
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And it's in kind of early stage velocity now back.
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There's a much higher debt than we're carrying in the U.S., right?
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On the other hand, you know, they do have that we don't have, $22 trillion,
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So while their debt is extremely high from a GDP standpoint,
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The bad news, it's earning, up until this point, zero interest rate.
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And it's sitting, as our grandparents would do, in the mattress.
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There was no 401k, no savings type of, no allocation of capital.
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I sound like I was listening to Larry Summers when I was at the White House.
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But the use of capital is not the most efficient.
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So from your perch here, how are you viewing our growing competition with China?
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Increasingly bellicose noises coming from the other side of the Pacific.
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You know, here's what I would, I think we have to have a more, not, I wouldn't say a
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nuanced view, but, and this is one of the things I've enjoyed working on in the sense
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Go back 10 years with Wolf Warrior and Maritime or other type of aggression to every country.
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You saw it just the other day with the Vietnam on their fishing.
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And they just got the last couple of weeks in the sense of territorial, both aerial and
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I wouldn't call it aggression, but kind of violation.
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That has made our job of organizing much easier.
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They try to isolate a country like the Philippines is doing now.
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And we have been able to, through our lattice work system that President Biden has really
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put together, to take China as a strategy of isolating a country and make it the isolated
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And so on a political side and a security side, I think we're in a better position than
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And I think China, which is why they always complain, they're being contained and we're
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They do a pretty good job of containing themselves because everybody in the region right now is
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trying to figure out how to make sure that the United States is anchored here as a counterweight
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Where I think we are a beat behind the music, I think we're doing a great job, if I may say,
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A really good job in updating on our security alliances and bringing, like given what Japan's
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doing, the ROK is doing, India is doing, others a lot.
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I think China is making the same mistakes with their economic coercion, their mercantilism,
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And we are just in the early stages of responding to that in the way that it took us about four
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years ago to figure out how to use their tactics against them, their own tactics against them.
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And China is, and I would say this, we made a mistake as a country, all of us, we're all
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We called them a strategic competitor, believed what we were saying.
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China, when Xi comes in, decides the United States is a strategic adversary on their backheels
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because of the financial and banking and problems.
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They adopted a policy that we were an adversary, and we just caught on to who they are and what
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That said, they also are in the beginning stages of losing a decade.
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But we have to make the most of that time and move with due speed and smart, not just urgency.
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What do you think, we're going to get to U.S. politics, but what do you think the implications
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are of the U.S. election for our future with China?
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Well, it depends, first of all, what happens in the election.
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And if you think you're going to be relevant in dealing with China, either on the security
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angle, the political angle, the diplomatic angle, the economic angle, you need allies
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And so if you are not good with your allies, then you got a problem here because you can't
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do anything in the region without a Japan, without a Republic of Korea, without an Australia,
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without a New Zealand, without a Singapore, without an India, without the Philippines.
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So I got to be careful there so I don't get outside the Hatch Act of U.S. being partisan.
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I think it's pretty clear one candidate's really strong about alliances and allies, believes
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And if you don't give allies trust and confidence, they'll do the bare minimum.
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And let me try, if I could illustrate one point.
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You know, for 30 or 40 years, presidents have tried to bring China, or rather Japan and Korea
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And for a lot of historical reasons, we all have, we have a complicated history of Japan.
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We actually also have a complicated history of Korea.
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That said, given where they were, given where their countries were, given their trust in
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the United States and specifically trust with the administration, both President Yeun and
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Prime Minister Kishida went beyond just clearing the bar.
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And the end result was probably one of the bigger, bolder moves we made in the region
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Now, if you don't work with your allies and give them confidence, they're not going to
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Unlike Duarte, he is taking a step of trust with the United States.
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You don't treat an ally with that kind of respect.
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Something that's really, really important to the United States can slip through our fingers.
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So, I think our election, and again, I got to be careful.
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Remind me of the implications of that, Jack, just how tongue-tied will you be?
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The cost of it is I lose a job and then I become your roommate, and that's really kind
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No, you can't violate, and there's some attorney at the State Department that's like, I don't
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So, if you ask me about what it means here, you have to really believe in alliances if
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If you don't, and you want to basically say, well, we're might equals right, and that's
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China's right, and that's their backyard, that's a different stake.
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I think you will find our allies taking a different strategy to the United States after that.
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Let me say this, the Hatch Act applies to U.S. politics.
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Sometimes people don't think it applies to, I'm joking, my involvement in Japan.
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Is this something, perhaps you can't comment on it with full transparency, but what do you
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understand our policy with respect to Taiwan to be?
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So, strategic ambiguity is our official policy?
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Well, yeah, it was established when Kissinger and Nixon came up with the one China policy.
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But, you know, so look, there's three flashpoints right now.
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There's the Taiwan Straits and Taiwan, and then there's the 38th Palo Alto with North Korea
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And so, not wrong to ask about Taiwan, but everything you're thinking about Taiwan is playing out,
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not just Taiwan, but in real time, we're playing, something's playing out right now in the South
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And I always remind, you know, you have a sovereign nation, the Philippines, the international
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court in 2016, China versus Philippines ruled in favor of the Philippines.
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China has summarily dismissed it, not even listened to it, and they are a treaty ally of
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So, while a lot of people, you know, rush right to Taiwan, my view is, I don't know why you're
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passing up what's going on with the Philippines, because this is everything we're talking about.
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And whether the islands, the fishing rights, et cetera, and the international court rules
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established by the court, interpreted by the court, matters, and whether a small country
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Is it your understanding that we have the same policy with respect to the Philippines as
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In fact, we have a stronger policy because they're a treaty ally.
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I mean, if something was to happen, and Senate President Marcos has indicated this and said
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something, that he would consider this as, you know, something that would happen to the
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Philippines from a security standpoint for their military, could trigger that alliance
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and that commitment in the war to the United States.
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Now, I try to remind people, the South China Sea that, you know, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia,
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14% of the world's entire fish stock and catch is in that water.
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Massive amount of undiscovered oil and natural gas reserves there.
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They, their Coast Guard, they went after the Vietnamese fishing boats, said that those are
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And it's very clear they're Vietnamese islands.
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They're doing it with the Philippines, et cetera.
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Now, we don't have a treaty ally with, we're not, Vietnam's not a treaty ally.
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We have a commitment to their, there's not only their sovereignty, but their military safety.
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Does the UK have the same commitment with the Philippines or?
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So you mentioned the complicated history between Japan and the US and Japan and Korea, et cetera.
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That's actually the second mystery I wanted to ask you about.
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So for anyone who even has a passing understanding of what happened during World War II in the
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Pacific, it seems frankly miraculous that we found in Japan a friend of such durable goodwill
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as has persisted for the last 60 some odd years.
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I don't know when the friendship started, if you can place it on the calendar, but it was,
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Well, I do think it's a testament how the bitterest of foes can become the best of friends.
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Yeah, I mean, it offers some hope for the world, one would hope, but it does seem,
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frankly, miraculous when you try to map it onto other conflicts that we're going to talk about.
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When I listen to the Japanese, they have a change.
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There is, and you read history, this is my reading of it, so other people say he doesn't
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There's no doubt, and it's over in our, the residence for the ambassador is where General
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Now, our big moment at the end of the war, end, is the signing on the Missouri.
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That's our, that's our moment, that's our kind of trigger point.
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The meeting with the emperor and the acceptance of the emperor will stay as the emperor is a
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trigger point for the Japanese as my, as I read history, as I witness history, as I witness
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And the way the emperor then talks about the United States, and that is the first step on
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a journey to a different place from enemies during war to building friends.
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The second piece is, I think it's really, really, nobody ever told me about this, and
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maybe I'm, I'm guilty of not talking to the right people or whatever.
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I think I talked to a lot of people when I was, what I call in the Senate COVID quarantine
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So we all know George Kennan's long memo about the Soviet Union containment, et cetera.
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I mean, this is later in his career, early in the late forties, and he writes an equally
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valuable memo about the role Japan will play as an anchor in this post-49 to communist China
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and an anchor for the United States in the Pacific, Indo-Pacific, it wasn't called Indo then,
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And it's, I happen to see it just once referenced in a book, so I pulled it up.
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Now, so you can date 62 and the military alliance, et cetera.
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But I would literally, if you ask me, okay, what was the first step on that journey to
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The receiving the emperor, us embracing the role of the emperor, which allowed Japan to
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It's pretty also clear in the days of both Hiroshi of Nagasaki, we were more explicit where Secretary
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of State Burns is not, that we would, which is what Stimson was arguing for, that the
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The judgment, it's a judgment call, it's an interpretation.
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And I'll tell you the other thing, and I say this about the President Biden when he held
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the ROK and the Japanese Prime Minister and the ROK President in Camp David.
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It's pretty ugly in Ukraine, pretty ugly in the Middle East, a lot of conflict in the
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world, Sudan, and you look at the rest of the certain battles in Africa.
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There was a place in Camp David where it shows what diplomacy and dialogue can achieve versus,
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I'm not saying that sometimes conflicts don't have their own logic, but I thought that was
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a hopeful sign in a pretty dark time that we're living in.
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Yeah, I mean, as I say, it would be wonderful if there were a deep analogy between what we
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accomplished here, given just how horrific World War II was, and the current crises that
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Now, we're going to get to the Middle East and Iran because I-
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But we're going to go through, let's go through U.S. politics and see what the Hatch Act
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You have a deep knowledge of democratic politics, obviously.
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And also you were a mayor of Chicago, which gave you a special view of the local implications
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I don't think I've been tempted to vote Republican, but I have often thought in the last few years,
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certainly since what appeared to be a kind of social justice moral panic that took over
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the Democratic Party in around 2020, that I would campaign for Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney
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Just give me a normal Republican and I could get behind that person.
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And if you know my history and, you know, castigating the theocrats on the Republican
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side, you would know just how far a pendulum swing that is.
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But that is in response to a sense that the Democratic Party has really lost its way.
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Certainly it seems to be executing a kind of pivot, however, unacknowledged in the campaign
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But we're talking about a party which seemed for years at a stretch, again, I would date
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this to the 2020 campaign, to be, I mean, pick your ghastly policy, defund the police.
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People should have their reputations destroyed for doubting whether they're more than two
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I mean, there was an activist takeover of the conversation that I think has done great harm
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to our politics if for no other reason than it has given real motive force to the personality
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And there are many single issue voters now who are not.
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Which of the 42 questions do you want me to answer for us?
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Respond to the claim that the Democrats lost their minds for a few years there on issues
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And what is politically necessary now in the final stages of this campaign?
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So, well, that's this campaign, but it's that question is about a bigger than just this election.
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So, let me try to unpack a couple things that there's a lot in there.
00:26:37.180
Not one that ever believed in or supported defund the police.
00:26:41.140
And even when those who advocated said, well, it doesn't mean what it says, well, then my
00:26:46.240
Because if it doesn't mean what it says, you're confusing a lot of people.
00:26:49.940
But you have to back up as a mayor that also had to work with and should have worked with
00:26:58.920
We had a lot of, every Chicago, New York, LA, every city of any size had safeguards in.
00:27:04.220
The truth is they atrophied and the police departments needed to be better managed from
00:27:10.460
the responsibilities they had to both serve and protect.
00:27:15.760
A lot of, and as a mayor, you're accountable for that.
00:27:19.280
But the police department's oversights, while you had checks in the system, they really weren't
00:27:24.280
working and we had a confidence in them when they weren't working.
00:27:27.020
But when you put into the mosaic of what you're talking about, not just on the policing
00:27:32.120
side, I don't think the Democratic Party could endorse today, or I think it could now, but
00:27:38.560
in the period of time you were talking about, what Senator Kennedy and Senator John McCain
00:27:44.180
And that was only 10 years ago from an immigration policy.
00:27:47.600
President Clinton had advocated, which is my kind of North Star about this, that we're both a country
00:27:53.280
of immigrants and a country of laws, and both have to be respected.
00:27:57.680
I actually think the American people are more welcoming about immigrants, but they don't like
00:28:04.480
And they don't like a sense of out of control or somebody cheating a system into something else.
00:28:10.120
So they're actually, when you look at communities around the country, actually quite receptive
00:28:17.140
It's a sense that the law is not being abided by.
00:28:20.680
And we went as, I don't want to say we, there were big voice, loud voices.
00:28:26.440
Now, those voices didn't mean that they were loud.
00:28:29.180
It doesn't mean they represented a lot of people.
00:28:31.500
So as I have a rule in politics, sound is not always fury.
00:28:37.280
Like, sometimes sound is fury, but sometimes it's just sound.
00:28:42.760
But the fact is, those voices did not, like people that would talk about Latinx or et cetera,
00:28:49.240
weren't representing where the country was or even where the communities are.
00:28:56.160
I think as a son and a grandson of an immigrant, I can say this, not the ambassador, but as a son
00:29:02.240
And I consider myself a child of an immigrant father.
00:29:06.740
Obviously, President Trump's rhetoric about immigrants is really harsh and ugly.
00:29:12.300
Yet, he's doing better among Hispanics than almost anybody since George Bush 43.
00:29:17.940
So it tells you the voices that thought they were representing the immigrant community didn't
00:29:21.680
really know where the immigrant community, quote unquote, was.
00:29:24.120
And it's pretty clear that even in the Hispanic community, there's not a respect for just
00:29:31.080
crossing the border and being as an undocumented, or you want to use the term illegal or not
00:29:37.980
Pretty clear there's a respect also for the law and for the law being followed.
00:29:43.880
And I thought our party and voices in our party, rather, were too much about a permissive
00:29:50.160
culture and not much about a value-based culture.
00:29:58.140
And if you look at working class, because it's not just white, that's 2016 Trump.
00:30:03.360
You look at 2024 Trump, it's not working class whites, it's working class.
00:30:08.240
There's an economic piece to this, but it's much more cultural.
00:30:12.440
And our party, when you look at the success of Roosevelt, you look at the success of Kennedy,
00:30:19.380
you look at the success of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and not to draw others out, or
00:30:26.120
It was the whole package, not just the economics, but also the sense of a value system.
00:30:33.020
Remember, the most famous line, or one of the most famous lines for Bill Clinton is 92 acceptance
00:30:38.000
speech at the convention in New York, was to the families and the parents that work hard,
00:30:44.980
play by the rules, pay the taxes, raise your kids to know right from wrong, I'm going to
00:30:53.040
That is not, here's, I mean, he had his middle-class tax cut, et cetera.
00:30:56.080
But in the same sense that when President Obama appealed to a sense of hope, and that
00:31:02.360
there were blue, there were individuals in red, there is no blue or red America.
00:31:07.040
There are only Americans of many different stripes and colors.
00:31:11.240
And I think our party loses its way when it doesn't actually understand the cultural component.
00:31:17.440
I believe firmly people are more and vote more than the totality of their wallet.
00:31:31.980
The things that happen in their community is a big piece.
00:31:39.500
And it's ironic because the times we have succeeded and created, not just in one election, but a
00:31:44.960
lasting legacy, is when we respect the, what are termed cultural and societal issues.
00:31:51.300
And we hurt ourselves when we veer off of that.
00:31:59.800
You can see it not only manifested in elections, you can see it very quickly also within the party.
00:32:08.680
And I don't know if you think those, let me, I don't, I'm cutting you off.
00:32:11.620
I apologize, but you are talking to an Emmanuel.
00:32:14.740
I don't think that those voices ever really represented the Democratic Party.
00:32:20.060
They intimidated a lot of people in the Democratic Party, trying to shut them down.
00:32:26.560
The polling, only polling, or the only research I know of on this point suggests that it was
00:32:31.300
8% of activists or 8% of the party, but they captured the institutions, right?
00:32:39.940
They captured the New York Times, they captured Harvard, they captured medical journals.
00:32:43.580
No, but what they, whether you want to say, you're saying captured, I say they silenced
00:32:48.640
a lot of other, intimidated a lot of other folks.
00:32:51.980
Either way, they have done, but they didn't, that's why I always say about politics, sound
00:32:58.780
They did not represent, they never even got close to a majority.
00:33:09.880
I, as the words tumble out of my mouth, I can't believe they're real, but this is, I
00:33:14.160
have this fact checked, at least by CNN, that when asked, I believe by the ACLU at some
00:33:19.860
point in 2020, Vice President Harris said that she was in favor of offering gender reassignment
00:33:27.000
surgery at taxpayer expense to incarcerated illegal immigrants, right?
00:33:33.360
She checked that box, call it whatever you want, that most of America perceives that as
00:33:42.580
And that's riding atop of, let me just take this one issue, and I realize this is plutonium
00:33:52.940
It's, you have some number of people left of center in our country, and they certainly
00:34:00.960
seem to be a majority from the point of view of the New York Times and the establishment
00:34:05.760
where that began to castigate anyone who would use the term woman in a context that could seem
00:34:14.320
I am, look, I'm not going to sit here and not say, I'm not...
00:34:18.020
Something happened, you're admitting that something happened.
00:34:19.760
Oh, no, no, there's something, rationality got snapped for a second.
00:34:23.260
I also happen to think it snapped back, but that said, and I'm not saying that either whether
00:34:28.220
it's the New York Times or other institutions lost their center of gravity and their balance.
00:34:37.620
And, but I also think that you can't, well, look, you said you've only voted down.
00:34:42.300
I grew up in a home of, my grandfather was a socialist, became a Democrat because of
00:34:47.900
I mean, I think a Democrat was one of the 10 lost tribes of the Jewish people.
00:34:52.400
I'm not, I will never vote for a Republican, can't vote, but now I just crossed the Hatch
00:35:00.320
But here's what I do want to say is, you know, we're spending time because, and legitimately
00:35:05.360
care from a center slash progressive set of politics because it matters.
00:35:11.200
But you actually would, if you would ask me what is amiss, and I got to watch myself here
00:35:16.720
and I'm not doing a good job self-policing as a second ago showed, what happened, what
00:35:21.140
has happened over the last 20 years, the last 10, 15 years in the Republican Party and the
00:35:27.700
For all you want to say about the, some things in the Democratic Party, I think it's important
00:35:32.400
to remember there's, the Democratic Party center has held.
00:35:37.220
I'm not saying that we've had bad moments of where the shrill has silenced people or intimidated
00:35:45.640
On the other hand, you said you would vote for Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney.
00:35:59.120
Jeff Flake, who's a good friend we served together in Congress, was ambassador to Turkey.
00:36:03.080
He just endorsed again, second time around, he endorsed President Biden last time, this
00:36:08.420
time Kamala Harris, because there isn't a home.
00:36:15.340
I probably twice have gone offsides and the ref is going to call to blow the whistle and
00:36:28.700
But if it's, if the pendulum has swung back, if.
00:36:32.420
So just take this narrow case that I just gave you.
00:36:36.280
Does Vice President Harris, candidate Harris, need to acknowledge the change of opinion
00:36:43.080
or just, well, no, it's just, it's going unremarked.
00:36:48.040
I mean, she's, she's acting like someone who never thought this.
00:36:51.400
Should she say, listen, our party went a little crazy in 2020, right?
00:36:57.460
Now, put your, put your political hat on if you can.
00:36:59.580
And acknowledge the, she's trailing three or four things of that sort that have a kind
00:37:06.280
of, you know, you can't unring this crazy bell that rang in 2020.
00:37:11.560
There, there's, there's one with, um, I don't think to defund the police can be hung around
00:37:16.880
her neck, but there's, uh, there's a couple of other.
00:37:20.100
Like when you look at her record as both a district attorney and attorney general, no
00:37:25.840
And it's not an accident that while she, uh, in the coming out of the box as the candidate
00:37:32.220
for president, she leaned on that voice and that experience.
00:37:39.500
She has something around not making it a crime to come to the country illegally.
00:37:44.900
There's the, there's, there's a reboot in her brain clearly around issues of immigration,
00:37:50.020
if not crime, socially polarizing issues like the transgender debate.
00:37:56.040
So I'll just give you the perception from the center and the center right is she's carefully
00:38:02.740
avoiding any conversation that would provoke questions on these kinds of topics.
00:38:07.900
And she's just hoping to get into the end zone in November without ever having to address
00:38:14.320
I worry that again, I worry as someone who desperately wants to see her be the next president.
00:38:19.140
I worry that there's enough of the country who thinks she is a stealth candidate who will
00:38:29.880
If you, if you only gets the chance because she hasn't acknowledged just how clearly the spell
00:38:36.560
Well, no, again, I want to, let me ask you, I'll give you one more way to sharpen it up.
00:38:42.780
Shouldn't she have a sister soldier moment of some kind on these issues politically?
00:38:46.860
Yeah, but see, that's what, not what you were earlier asking.
00:38:51.660
You were saying she has to deal with herself and say something about where she, Kamala
00:38:58.120
Well, no, but no, but she would have, so if she had a sister soldier moment on one of these
00:39:02.080
topics, someone's going to say, well, wait a minute, you said in 2020 X, now you're
00:39:06.020
saying why, and she's going to have to have the conversation.
00:39:08.440
Let me make a general rule of, let me just give you a general assessment without making
00:39:13.680
Two rules I've had about presidential politics and campaigns.
00:39:18.060
To be a contender that wins, you have to project strength, confidence, and optimism.
00:39:23.500
And in a public mind's eye, they got to be, see you as sitting, being able to fill the
00:39:37.220
More importantly for the president than for a senator or a congressman, a little less for
00:39:43.380
But if you're a chief executive, and I may be biased because I'm from Chicago, you can't
00:39:49.740
That's, that's a big office and they want a big person for it.
00:39:53.580
If you go back through presidential history, at least in the, take World War II forward,
00:40:00.020
the candidate that has projected the strength, the confidence, and the optimism has won.
00:40:05.060
Whether it's, you are using shorthand, I happen to know what you mean by a sister soldier moment.
00:40:10.460
But be able to be seen as strong enough to stand up and call a friend wrong when they're
00:40:17.240
wrong, is what you're looking at, as a tactic to achieve that kind of larger purpose that
00:40:25.260
Again, I'm sitting 8,000 miles away, 14 hours away.
00:40:28.600
But I do know what you have to, what in 2008 and in 1992, at least those are my experiences,
00:40:35.780
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's first election.
00:40:37.440
But they, in a comparative basis against both Bush 41, John McCain, they, they won that
00:40:45.300
fight, strength, confidence, and optimism, and big enough, ready enough for the office.
00:40:50.480
Well, remind me, I don't know if it had political implications, but did President Obama ever explain
00:40:59.220
Now, remember, he's president then, not presidential, okay.
00:41:05.740
I mean, his biggest thing in 08 was his change of heart and running for president.
00:41:10.200
He had to explain that, and he changed his view.
00:41:12.700
And I think, you know, you've got to, as a, one of the things, look, I mean, you and I
00:41:18.000
are doing this interview, I think 36 hours after the debate, I thought the better, one
00:41:23.340
of the better moments was when, I mean, he's, I call him Tim, the vice presidential, Tim
00:41:29.740
You know, when he said, hey, that was a knucklehead move.
00:41:34.420
And people can relate to him and relate to that.
00:41:40.100
And you got to be, you know, when you're, you know, when you've done something wrong,
00:41:45.300
You're saying change of heart and say, look, with more information, I got it.
00:41:49.820
But your questions, if I may, I don't, you can, you're the, you're doing the podcast
00:41:54.320
so you can ask whatever you want, is so much where she has to come clean about something.
00:42:10.340
But to take a, a, a, a peculiar example, but nonetheless, an influential one.
00:42:19.040
I'm kind of wishing we'd go to the Middle East real quick.
00:42:25.980
But you take a peculiar person like Elon Musk, right?
00:42:28.660
Who's a blowhard derival, all blowhards at this moment, but he has a megaphone that 200 million
00:42:36.260
Honestly, he's a single issue voter on this kind of topic, right?
00:42:40.920
I mean, like he, he got radicalized on some of these cultural war issues.
00:42:44.220
And he is treating her like a stealth, far left democratic activist, right?
00:42:52.300
And he's effectively doing that to an audience of some tens of millions of people who, if
00:42:57.540
they're not persuadable, they're not persuadable.
00:42:59.060
But what I'm imagining is that there are some, whoever the undecided voters are out there.
00:43:04.940
And if I may, which is, I think a challenge for the party and not just for her, we've allowed
00:43:10.140
a few shrill voices in our party to become a caricature of our party.
00:43:14.800
And they are, they are first shrill, B, they don't represent anything but themselves and
00:43:20.900
C, we've allowed them because we haven't used our own voice to become a caricature as
00:43:27.940
So if those sentences came out of her mouth, what would be wrong with that?
00:43:36.520
But to me, to me, those are the perfect sentences.
00:43:39.280
I just want, I want them to be coming out of her mouth.
00:43:41.480
I know what you want, but I keep trying to steer you.
00:43:44.240
It's not about her saying what, I understand what you're saying.
00:43:48.040
And for my money, and again, I'm at a distance, it's being able, you said sister soldier, what
00:43:54.720
I think is, look, you got to be able when one of your own friends or fellow travelers is
00:44:02.140
And when you disagree, have the confidence, whether that's her or any candidate.
00:44:06.320
Now, yours, the sister soldier moment, having been part of the 92 campaign for President
00:44:11.720
Clinton, it was a, even his end welfare as we know it, or putting 100,000 cops or his
00:44:18.600
immigration policy, we're a nation of laws and nation of...
00:44:21.700
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