Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan and former White House Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, Ambassador to China, David Axelrod joins me to talk about his career in public service and politics, including his time as the White House chief of staff to President Clinton.
00:00:52.880In about six weeks from now, the president's going to sit down with Xi, president of China.
00:00:58.860The second is he's going to go in in a weakened position, which is what everybody knows that because of Iran and a series of things.
00:01:05.680If you just take kind of let's take a landscape, you've irritated a 30 year project for the United States, which is bringing India closer to our bosom, both of what you've done with Pakistan, what you did degrading Modi.
00:01:19.040Second, you removed our THAAD and our aircraft carrier from both THAAD from South Korea and
00:01:26.500our aircraft carrier out of Okinawa and other assets that have come out of the region that
00:01:31.760are a deterrent and add credibility to our deterrent.
00:01:35.000While you have been focused all on Iran, China, after five years of not building another island0.55
00:01:40.460in the South China Sea off the Philippines coast, they finally built another one, which
00:01:43.760is dangerous because they're claiming that as their water is not an international waterway.
00:01:47.32040% of the GDP, maritime GDP, goes through that water.
00:01:50.740Lastly, the biggest economic crush on China was deflation.
00:01:54.480People were talking about entering a possible lost Japanese-like generation.0.94
00:01:59.520And now they finally, for the first time, you gave them inflation, which is what they
00:02:03.200wanted, which is higher energy prices.
00:02:05.360And prices are up now for their products.
00:03:08.380Remind people, I want to start with the domestic picture and American politics.
00:03:13.760Remind people of all the roles you have served for our government, because there are many levels.
00:03:20.860For President Clinton, I was his senior advisor for policy and politics and replaced Stephanopoulos in that position.
00:03:27.320First term, I was director of special projects, doing the crime bill, the assault weapon ban, welfare reform, immigration policy, to name a couple.
00:03:36.120I was a congressman from the 5th District in Chicago.
00:03:39.640Second term was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help not only take the House back for the Democrats, but make Nancy Pelosi the first woman speaker.
00:03:47.320And then I was fourth, I was caucus chair.
00:03:49.080I served, get elected four terms, serve only three, become President Obama's first chief of staff and help him pass the ACA health care bill and the financial reform, the Recovery Act and the auto industry bailout and saving.
00:04:01.220I then run for mayor of the city of Chicago, served two terms, most probably left with Sean Ritter at Stanford calling it the single best education system of the top 100 in America, when it was once called by William Bennett the worst in America.
00:04:16.200And then I served as our ambassador to Japan for the United States, and in that process brought a historic meeting together between Japan and Korea and the United States that culminated at Camp David.
00:04:27.060So the goal is not titles, but results.
00:06:46.080You had the seal of the executive branch behind your desk, if memory serves.
00:06:51.020but uh are we past this this social justice hysteria and um identity politics or or is the
00:06:58.960party ready to double down on it and lose again emphatically in 2028 well um so the answer is
00:07:06.400an ambivalent yes and no in this sense i'm a for i mean i said it when i came back i'm i don't
00:07:12.280want to but this point was stop talking about bathroom access and start talking about classroom
00:07:17.640excellence. 50% of our kids cannot read at grade level. And you are arguing about a bathroom and
00:07:23.840a locker room access when you should be focused on how do we improve reading scores? And that's
00:07:30.420why I went to, I don't know if you know this, but I went to Mississippi because they have this
00:07:33.420miracle, the first national leader to go down. I said, okay, the science of reading and all the
00:07:37.420other type of parts of that should be the national model. The answer is right there. You just got to
00:07:42.340have the courage to take it. Yeah. What is the miracle there? They turn their education system
00:07:46.140around? So let me finish the first question. So do I think as somebody also that said, you know,
00:07:51.840we weren't really good in 2024 when we talked about the kitchen table, the family room,
00:07:56.960the only room we did well was the bathroom and it's the smallest room in the house.
00:08:00.220Do I think that's dead? I think people know that there was a consequence getting caught
00:08:06.100in what I call a cultural cul-de-sac. We declared and wanted to bring the cultural wars to our
00:08:11.600schools and we lost that. Do I think people are conscious of that? I think they were aware. And
00:08:17.160I, and I, somebody that in 2016 as mayor of Chicago assigned bathroom access, but I never
00:08:21.880lost my focus on graduation rate, 3D scores and math scores. So we can be a culture and we are
00:08:26.620as a party, rightfully, a culture of acceptance. We became a culture of advocacy and that's where
00:08:31.900we crossed the line. As I like take the issue, I've said this before on boys playing in girls0.75
00:08:37.720sport, I'm not undermining Title IX. The reason we're winning in soccer worldwide, the reason
00:08:42.320we're winning in hockey worldwide, the reason we're winning in swimming worldwide is Title IX.
00:08:46.560I don't think the party should be in the business of undermining one of our great accomplishments,
00:08:50.380as an example. So I do think there's been some sense that that was a mistake. Does it mean that
00:08:55.960everybody buys it? No. Now, what Mississippi did, and I want to also repeat, they did this 20 years
00:09:03.140ago. In Mississippi, they don't call it a miracle. They call it the marathon. Alabama, Louisiana,
00:09:07.620Tennessee replicated it and all seeing massive increases in reading scores. One, it was a mandate
00:09:13.460statewide. You couldn't opt in or out. This was required. Every teacher got retaught on the phonics
00:09:20.500or science of reading. They got coaches for each school to keep the teachers and the principal
00:09:25.540focused and trained constantly. Third, kids going all the way back to kindergarten and first grade
00:09:34.100were prepped for their third grade reading test. They got three times to pass at the kids. If they
00:09:40.760didn't, they were held back. So there were standards, there was accountability, there was
00:09:44.420support. If kids were showing challenges, they got extra tutoring time. Each child got, I think
00:09:49.600i'm doing this by memory an hour and 15 minutes minimum every day on reading they went from 49th
00:09:56.840in mississippi on reading scores across the country to ninth if you account for demographics
00:10:01.720they're beating massachusetts now so with a result like that what's controversial about this project
00:10:06.820well there's a professor called 25 years ago out of columbia university who taught people got a lot
00:10:14.180school districts to go into what the art of reading, not the science. If you like the letter
00:10:20.220of A, you can use it. If you don't like the letter A, don't use the letter of A. And
00:10:23.840rune degeneration. And when I find that, professor, you don't have to do any forensics for what the
00:10:30.060physical body harm. I did it. It's unbelievable what they did at runing. So what got controversial,
00:10:35.840and this is, one is some people don't like the accountability part, the testing,
00:10:40.560As one principal in Hattiesburg told me, you need those tests to help improve what you're going to do, not only for that student, but for the next class, the second grade's coming into third grade. You can't be scared of accountability and standards. I want to come back to that in a second.
00:10:55.760On the other side, which is Mississippi did not abandon their public schools with some other fancy thing called vouchers.
00:11:03.240They invested in their public schools.
00:11:04.940It was all started, by the way, by Mr. Barksdale from Netscape.
00:11:09.960And he came from Mississippi, put his money into it, put the first $200 million.
00:11:13.800So public schools were supported with public resources and accountability came with those resources.
00:11:19.760Around the country, Republicans are advocating a way to abandon public schools, and Democrats
00:11:24.320advocated and succeeded in abandoning standards, and our kids are falling through the cracks.
00:13:17.800So, and what's happened, it's a contributor, it's not the only thing.
00:13:21.360What has happened is we abandoned measurements, and I get you back to the principal in Hattiesburg, who took a school of the nine in Hattiesburg last to first.
00:13:32.320Accountabilities and standards are our friend.
00:13:34.380we have to be open to him, receptive to him, know how to find that sweet spot between measurement
00:13:40.060and using it to improve our teaching. All right. Well, I'm going to ask you about
00:13:45.300a standard of moral sanity here. I don't know how we test for it, but
00:13:48.780we've seen an explosion of anti-Semitism on both the left and the right. We can come back to the
00:13:54.040right if you want, but on the left... Yeah, we're going to come back to it because it's a
00:13:58.060generational thing. Yeah, but it's a, I mean, this is sort of confirmed horseshoe theory,
00:14:02.800at least for the Jews, because the far right and the far left seem to agree that they are the
00:14:07.000problem. 77% of Democrats think that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Only 11% don't
00:14:14.820think that, right? And then they're the undecided. This seems to me is going to be an issue in the
00:14:20.460Democratic primary. How would you navigate this question? So let's, you did it, you started up,
00:14:26.240so I don't mean to do the Talmudic version of the question around the question, but I'm going to do
00:14:31.420that to you. That's all right. I'll get back to the question. No, I know the question. I'm gonna
00:14:34.900get to the question too. There's three questions that are out there, not one. Okay. Okay. First,
00:14:40.320you start about antisemitism and then you went to Israel. So as somebody that had been a target
00:14:46.160of antisemitism in his public life, that's separate and distinct, but it's attached to
00:14:51.420what's happening in and around the prime minister and Israel. I would say to you,
00:14:56.180It was very ugly in my campaign for Congress. It was seen, if you know, Chicago as the Polish seat. Dan Rosankowski, Frank Annunzio Roman-Buchinski were all predecessors. Got very ugly. And I said then, as I said, there's only 2% in the district and they elected Rahm Israel Emanuel and I was running against a Polish woman who was a state rep.1.00
00:15:16.000I know the people of the city of Chicago, good people with good values.1.00
00:15:18.680They were going to see through this ugliness.
00:15:20.800When Amy and I, when you came to visit, when we were ambassador in Japan, I was ambassador
00:15:24.200and we were living, somebody sprayed Nazi insignia on our fence.