.. income, david axelrod, advisedder in the obama white house. in his new book he writes about his 40-year career working in politics and government. david axelrod sat down with an interview with david frump. this is an hour.

>> host: let's just jump into the most controversial passage of the book you generated. you tell a story that is has drawn a lot of attention, concession call from governor romney to president obama after the 2012 election. one in which you say the president was offend by what he took to be a racial undercurrent in governor romney's concession. one of governor romney's aides, his bodyman, garrett jackson said it was his phone on which the call took place, has said the story is untrue and has been very angry about it. how can those who weren't in the room assess which of you is right? >> guest: i don't know. there were five people standing around the president when he talked to governor romney, and several of them have already come forward and said their recollection was completely the same as mine, which is that the president got off the phone and related the fact that governor romney in the course of this call had said, we had really

surprised them with the way we were able to get the vote out in places like cleveland and milwaukee. i good night the the sense governor romney was trying to be ungracious. i think he was trying to pay a compliment to the campaign and it more about the different lens through which they saw the election. the president's view was he thought the election boiled down to more than what happened in cleveland and milwaukee. and that was his frustration. i actually was surprised at the reaction. i always applaud loyalty, and i applaud the loyalty of governor romney's body man but i think he blew the thing out of proportion and as i said i don't have any reason to believe the president got off the phone and told the five of us something that didn't happen. >> host: let me talk about your role in the obama white house. people who don't pay attention to the details of the white house staff may not appreciate how new a thing it is for a

president to install basically a chief political adviser as a staffer. george h.w. bush did not put leewater on the white house staff. i think this began with president bush, who kyle karl rove, and then president obama trusted you. what does it say about our government that this trend is occurring? do you think it will continue? >> host: first i want to distinguish my role from karl rove's and i don't pretend to understand exactly what his role was. i would jibe my role is a something more akin to what mike deaver did for president reagan. i hey before involved with the president and his message from the beginning of our relationship in the senate race

in 2004, and i worked very much with him on the message and messaging approach to these campaigns, on speeches, on policy rollouts, on communication, and communication strategy. i don't think that is that unusual in white houses. i don't think that began with karl or with me, and i think it goes back some time. so that's the role i played. what it says is that presidents wasn't someone around who understands their message and understands them and can help represent that point of view to others in the white house, so that there's some message consistency and the message reflects the values values and opinions the president wants to make.

>> host: president obama has had an ambivalent or unhappy relationship with the imperatives of politics and you write about that in the book. were you there to remind him you don't get to govern unless you get elected? did you have conflict over the need to listen to people like you rather than for him to follow his more ideological instincts? >> guest: you know everybody's strength is their weakness. his great sting is -- strength is he believes there are more important things than winning electionss' and once you get elect doing the things that you think are important to advance the country and so we often had conflicts about the need to have some of the techniques and conformities of campaigns in the -- in his presentation.

so a good example is, just the discipline of how you answer questions, and getting your message out front keeping the answers short, making sure that you're punching through the point you want to punch through. he viewed interviews, town hall meetings, as much more of a discussion and that he wanted to answer thoroughly and often times he'd get to the point, seven minutes in, and that would be a frustration to me. >> host: the book is subtitled "my 40 years in politics" you have had many candidates for whom you worked not only presidents senator obama as we was before. one of the themes that runs through the book you wrestle with the problem the ethical responsibilities of a campaign consultant? i'll quote something you say about a competitor. you said about the other firm

they used the tools of our trade to propel into high office a man who would prove himself thoroughly unsuited to it. about governor rob buying boyogoch. what is your responsibility to the general public beyond the candidate? >> guest: david, first of all i should say that the subhead i wanted on the book but was too long for the book cover, was "how my idealism survived 40 yours in politics." as you know, having read the book, my interest in politics goes back to when is was five years opened and john f. kennedy came to the little community in which i grew up in new york and fired my imagination. i didn't quite understand what he was saying but i thought it seemed important. everybody was watching and it just seemed very important to me and that was the beginning of it.

so i approach politics from that place. on the other hand when you're a campaign consultant you're hired to help get someone elected, and what you try to do is choose carefully the people that you work for, but i mean i confess here in the book that i didn't always choose right, but once you're doing the race then your job is to get that person elected. you operate within certain ethical and moral parameters and doing, or you should but -- i left campaigns where i thought -- where i became disillusioned with the candidate and didn't think they were the right candidate. i quit. but there are those ambiguous situations where someone is less than you hoped but not so egee yous that you are going to -- that you can't -- you're going

to walk away from it. i found persuading myself that whatever they were they were better than the alternative and that's how i'd motivate myself to go forward. >> host: what happened when turned out to be true? michael white the longest serving mayor in cleveland history, and you deliver at the end of that quite a negative verdict on his major join. you've say i didn't keep in close touch with him after the election although i knew his long tenure did not entirely live up to the great promise. the promise was interesting. it's here he first road-tested a lot of themes hope, change, and unity, that would appear in the obama campaign then you continue ideaistic as his campaign wants governing is more difficult than campaigning, and in the end he was tarnished by corruption charges by one of his closest friends and allies. and cleveland was heading into

trouble before michael white but he punched it much deeper. when you look back and say -- michael white is the man responsible and yet he owes a great degree his you're to you. how do you -- his career to you. how do you feel when you look back? >> guest: well, first of all would put the emphasis on the word "entirely." he did some things that were really important for cleveland. a lot of the iconic structures that have brought back downtown cleveland, revived downtown cleveland, the stadium, the rock 'n' roll museum, have their roots in his efforts to bring those things there, and the did other things in cleveland that were quite positive. you may have overstated time and there were problems at the end involving an associate but i would not be one to suggest that either cleveland's demise was his responsibility or that he didn't do anything good for

cleveland, and i am realistic about the fact that no one is all good or all bad, all accomplished and without flaw. that's not in the way it is. i actually think he was an idealistic guy, not a perfect guy, but he helped get some important things done for that city and inspired people in an important way. so, that's not one of the campaigns i would say i was sorry that i did. i was happy i did that race. i might have advised him to leave also earlier than he did, but i think he did important things for cleveland. >> host: let's widen this. this is still your prewhite house phase. let's widen the list. you were one of the most important if not most important of the democratic consultants in the state of im. you were there for a long period of time and worked on many

campaigns, generally very successfully. illinois now is in a pretty rough economic situation. it's rated 50th in its credit rating. the city of chicago has the worst credit rating of any major city other than detroit. suffered heavily was one of the top three states for unemployment during the great recession and is now in this desperate pension situation where today they're called on -- >> a lot of the thinks are tied together. the pension situation is one of the reasons why the city -- the state pension system is filtered down. the city has its own pension issues trying to fight its way out of it, but their state centered problems associated with the city's finances that have contributed to their problems. >> host: it's not just -- there's no doubt there are legacy problems here and they

are -- i can say the result of both republican administrations and democratic administrations, making unaffordable deals, honestly, with public employee unions. and the result -- and we went through an era of two governors who went to prison and some irresponsibility, particularly on the part of governor blagojevich in terms of expanding the state's obligations without raising the revenue -- >> host: but governor blagojevich was one of your candidates at the beginning. >> guest: i didn't work for him when i ran for governor because i had concerns what kind of governor he would about. >> host: what is the role -- >> guest: -- he asked me if i would work for him and i said

why too you want to be governor? he said you can help me figure that out. i said if i have to help you figure that out you shouldn't run for governor and he shouldn't have been. >> host: this is not by one man but by lots of people many of them clients of yours and i just -- again -- >> guest: many of them not. >> host: they governor, you get them elected. as you look back on the political choices of the state of illinois in which you did so much to shape, do you look back on that and say, that was good work or do you look back and say, don't know my talents -- -- >> guest: let me ask you. which of my clients do you think were responsible? i'm curious about that. >> host: most of. >> guest: most of the time when i was involved in illinois politics, the governors weren't my clients, the state legislative leader weren't my clients. i mostly worked for mayors of chicago, and the two i worked

for wore harold washington, who served briefly in the '80s and i think did a lot in terms of reforming the patronage politics of the city, breaking down racial barriers and rich daley, who remade the face of the city was considered a model mayor and, yes, at the threatened were fiscal issues and perhaps the discovery committed in trying to do the things he did and let the fiscal -- some fiscal problems for mayor emanuel. but i'm proud of working for those guys. i'm happy to respond if you have a particular politician you think was responsible for the state's problems, but i'm kind of curious who that would be. >> host: as i was saying i don't think it's one person. it's the handy work of many and as one looks back on it a career in illinois politics, how does one -- the state is in such a -- the spire state. this is maybe related

question -- >> guest: by the way the eiconnic candidate of mine from illinois was paul simon who was the essence of integrity and probity, i'm proud of him. i chose my clients carefully. i knew the illinois political landscape very well. i chose my candidates pretty carefully. >> host: do you think it's a fair stereo type or characterization -- you heard a lot as an epithet -- politics in illinois or chicago is lest ethical than politics in other parts of the united states. is that a slur or does that capture a genuine problem? >> guest: i think there's been corruption endem mick -- emdemmic to chicago politics for some time. i think that institutionalized corruption corruption from the top, is not the problem it was

at times in our history. yes, we have had problems with corruption there and one of the reasons why i so gravitated to barack obama was because he was on the reform side of the fight. the first piece of legislation he passed in the legislature was the first campaign finance reform bill that had been passed in illinois in a quarter century. i think paul simon may have been involved in the previous one. and what it did was it immediate it illegal to take campaign contribution for your personal uses. ing in barack obama came along you can raise money and use it as your own personal income if you pay tacks on it, and he ended that practice. so illinois and chicago has had its problems. then you have people who have come along and tried to address them. those are the people i try to

gravitate to. >> host: you were disappoint. you worked for carl moseley brown and was accused of medicaid fraud and danny -- >> guest: i don't know that carol mose mohammed mossadegh can carol mostly brown was -- there was never a public finding of any kind. i worked for dan ross -- tenkowski. he was one of the most powerful people in washington. don't know anybody who more relished the law and working across party lines to deal with big questions and he went back to the advent of medicare and was close to people in both parties including the first president bush, were closely up to -- i think eight or nine presidents, and loved it. on the other hand he got

prosecuted for what i consider unconscionable penty ante stuff. cashing in stamps for cash, which may have been the government issued stamps which may have been the practice in the 1950s but certainly the norms that changed, and he didn't. >> host: what is it -- if it's true that it's michigan in chicago and illinois, what is it? is it the fact that it's a great transportation hub and so there is money that flows through that didn't belong to local people and that it could be siphoned off without feeling like you were taking from your constituents? the ethnic politics -- >> guest: don't know the sociology that led to some of the corruption problems.

endemic to illinois, and there i'm not saying there aren't other state and localities that have not experienced the same. i do think things are much different now in the city in particular. we don't have a vast patronage machine we once had. the mayor -- i haven't heard any information about rahm emanuel that he has done anything but tried to promote the interest of the city. so this is a vestage of the past but you do a disservice to the city by saying this characterizes chicago today. there are pockets of corruption in this cities as in other cities itch don't think it defines the city. certainly not the city i know today. >> host: one of the things that really runs through this book is that like an artist or writer, there are themes that run

through your campaign. there's some -- the phrase, i think originally change and hope before you improved it to hope and change themes about middle class economics. those are partly you're dealing with issues 0 our time and also seem to be sort of your approaches to things. they all converge in the work you did with president obama. how much of the obama campaign was waiting in your head for him, and how much of it was brought to you by him? >> guest: well, i think the real question is, how is it that we came together? i -- you mentioned the blagojevich -- i've known barack obama for 20-some-all years. i was introduced in 1992 by a woman named betty lou salzman part of progressive politics in chicago, and she had met him and asked me to -- say, i met this

most impressive young man. i said happy to meet anybody you want me to meet but why him? she said, think he could be the first african-american president of the united states. this is when he just returned from law school. and i always say i take betty lou to the track with me because she knows how to spot a winner well in advance. what i found when i sat down with him was we shared sensibilities. he had been president of the harvard law review and could have written his ticket at any corporation or law firm in the country, and there were all going after him. he came back to chicago, where he had been a community organizers to begin a voter registration drive and it was clear to me he was someone who wantedded to make a different for the right reasons, and didn't view politics as a

business. he considered it a calling and we became friends, and in 2002, when i became very disillusioned because i saw that blagojevich was going to get elected governor, what i considered to be a very cynical campaign was becoming very disillusioned and wondering whether i wanted to continue doing what i was doing and barack called and he had just lost a congressional campaign and he said he had one more race in him' he was going to run for the senate. we hooked up around the race. but we shared a lot of sense seat ibilities, about politics and an approach to politics itch don't know whether -- i think it was a little of both. what he brought to and it what i brought to it. it was a really productive partnership, and really helped to animate the message, and my view when you're building a

campaign message, if it's going to be successful it has to be authentic and built around who someone is. barack obama from the time he was working as a community organizer, before he went to law school was someone who cared a lot about how the economic worked and didn't work for large numbers of people, and wanted to help impact on that. and he was someone who believed that politics was a noble calling, someone who was more apt to summon people's hopes rather than their fears-someone who saw a change as something to embrace, and steer rather than something to fear. so he was a natural proponent of the message. were there lots in my previous campaigns? yes, in bart because i gravitated to this candidates. the tag line for paul simon when he ran for president in 1988

was, isn't it time to believe again? because i do believe in this. hence the title of the book "believer." and i believe that politics, public service is a way to grab the wheel of history and turn it in a positive direction. and obama shared that view. so i think it was a happy partnership between two people who shared sensibilities. >> host: how to much of your career, the great defining theme of american politics, domestic politics, has been the american middle class frustrated by the increasing difficulty of getting ahead, even maintaining its position struggling with memories that things were different a generation ago, the 35 years or so after world war ii when middle class people -- you just -- itch you continued to stay at your same position in american society you got better and better off. you didn't have to be anybody

special in order to get better off, and -- >> guest: well, and wages rose with the gdp. >> host: right. now they really don't seem to and haven't for a while, and that's been the arena in which you played politics. and advocacy for the middle class has been one of your themes. there's a big article you may have seen imsure you sue by john judith a democratic leaning writer who hailed the democratic majority in an important book published in the early part hoff the decade that inspired a lot of the obama campaign thinking. i don't know about the president. he just suggested that he may have oversold his argument and there's an emerging republican advantage based on the disillusionment of middle class with the experience of the past six years. this isn't a homework assignment. but if you heard these things

how do you react to that? -- >> guest: let me -- >> host: -- from the democratic party. >> guest: i think that this issue of the depression of wages, the increasing gulf between growth and wages, and the struggles of the middleless and those who are trying to become middle class, so economic mobility has been coursing through our politics for decaded and created disenchancement against whomever the incumbent party is because it is a constant theme and a function of forces larger than policy though they require some policy answers, but it's a function of changes in our economy, of fast advancing technology, globalization, we see the same issues in other advanced economies, and so it has been a

persistent theme in our politics, it continues to be a challenge, and each succeeding party has born some of the brunt of disenchantment about it. but obama -- and obviously we just came through a massive economic crisis that was in full fury when obama took office that helped exacerbate the problem, depressed wages even further and made the problem of disparity even greater. so, we have come through some tough years. i think, though, of you ask the average person who is fighting for the middle class who cares about the middle class who has made the middle class their focus and asked whether that was the president, or the republican opposition i think that you'd get a pretty healthy margin in favor of the president. one reason why he won a fairly

substantial re-election in 2012 governor romney got some points for economic literacy proficiency, but when it came to fighting for the middle class, he lost that overwhelmingly. >> host: -- >> guest: so i don't know -- i think it's a misplaced theory to suggest that the republican party is going to inherit the benefit of that disenchantment, unless the republican party comes up with a compelling answer to it. what i do find interesting is that while the republican party generally was dismisssive of arguments about the middle class inequality economic immobile in the past all the republican candidates now are speaking to it which suggests to me what a powerful and pressing and

enduring problem it is. >> host: i'm looking here but we're only virtually talking but i'll share it with you. a chart we might put on the screen. a study by henry aaron and -- for -- in 2014. henry aaron is one of america's leading healthcare economists gary one of america's economists on economic distribution neither a conservative, and they an lied the economic impact of the signature domestic initiative of the obama administration, the affordable care act and found the affordable care act confers great benefits on the poorest 20% of the american population. it confers -- is hard to compute -- you have to look at the value of the insurance guarantees but they've run this now with four or five different computations and come us out basically depending on how you look at it, either the bottom 20% or the bottom 30% win. the top 70 or the top 80% lose,

and the heaviest losses are actually in the middle of the economic distribution, not at the top. i think very few people will know these figures, but it does explain a lot of the unhappiness with the kaz kaz -- in the affordable care act. you look at other things the administration has done. the president's initiative about calling for free community college, while taxing the savings vehicles that middle class families use to pay for four-year colleges and his big speech in kansas 2010, the most important economic speech of his presidency, where he really announced a strategy of public sector-led growth. the big idea. more public sector projects paying higher wages to government workers and contractors and will somehow trickle out to the rest of society. you look at this and say is this a middle class strategy or a strategy for the beneficiaries and providers of public services at the expense of the rest of

society? and is that the cause of the recent political difficulties the democratic party has had? a long question but you can chew it. >> guest: a little offtoppic of my book but i can address it. i have not seen the study you're referring. to i assume it applies to the distribution of subsidies under the -- >> host: and the guarantees and the taxes and the internal subsidies within the insurance market. now you're odd a disadvantage. i would have given it to you before the interview if we were in person ' and maybe you dispute their conclusions. >> guest: i can't dispute their conclusions because i have not seen the report. i came on here to discuss my book and not their report. but since i haven't seen it, let me just comment on what i know which is that the ability of people generally under their insurance plans, because the

affordable care act a has certain guarantees for people under their insurance plans, to not have annual caps or to not have lifetime caps is vitally important to people who get seriously ill, and i know something about this because just getting back to my book for just a second i dealt with the healthcare system and had a child with significant healthcare concerns. that is a tremendous sense of relief. i also dealt with the notion that i couldn't get another insurance policy because my child had a preexisting condition. that is no longer a concern. that applies to people up and down the line. the security of knowing that you can get insurance at an affordable rate if you lose your job or if your employer drops your insurance is a security that is important to everyone.

so i can't, david, comment on the economics that are imputed in that report because i haven't read it but i'm very certain that the security that the affordable care act affords not just to the bottom 20% but people who have insurance, is going to be -- is important now, will be important in the future. >> host: this goes to the book's great theme because you're a believer and you are a themeatic thinker. you come up with broad themes and they're tremendously powerful and sway one or two national elections. how do you reality check your beliefs and say, i know i'm writing the music. there are people in the executive office building writing the lyrics.

this is the reality check of my music against their here ricks -- lyricses. >> guest: my concern obviously is not just in the music but also in the impact of the policies and i'm not an economist but there are problems that i think are important, that more importantly the president felt was important, the country felt was important, and the question was, are those problems going to be addressed? one thing i say is that part of the role of the president is to set for the challenges and set forth the problems and provoke debate and discussion. i see the republican party now introducing five years later, but an alternative to the affordable care act, but there's an acknowledgment that there were significant flaws in the

system. we're having debate now about this issue of the viability of the middle class in this economy and what we can do to help secure a broader inclusive prosperity. that is a step forward for this country, and republicans and democrats are participating in that process. maybe they have different prescriptions, that's the nature of democracy, and we have to fight those out. but at least we have -- immigration reform is another. there are people who are unhappy that the president took the steps but i don't hear people suggesting, at least the main stream of american politicians and voters, saying let's go back to where we were. so part of leadership is identifying big challenges and moving the country forward, and it may propagate debate there may be imperfections in the approaches taken, and they have to be perfected over time. there may be alternative ideas.

but at least you're talking about the big challenges facing the country and what the obama campaign was about in 2008 as much as anything was to try and tackle these things. you may not like his prescription for health care but you have to at least give him credit for taking it on because the was no political calculus that made -- that provoked him to do that. in fact the political calculus was on the other side, and in the book i write about this, and my own discussions with him about what the difficulties were in moving forward on health care, yet he took that on. and i admire him for doing that. he took it on pause he felt that the healthcare system would implode if he didn't. this is something that was urged not just by people concerned about the uninsured or underinsured but by our budget people who feared if we d'didn't fix the sim, the system would implode, and he took on the

political risk to do that to intervene and that is nothing chapter -- another story in the book to save the american auto industry at a time it was on the verge of collapse. it was controversial then. i it was unpopular then. it's not unpopular now. people don't look back at that as a mistake because the auto industry came roaring back. the book -- shifts -- >> host: the book is a very personal book you. talk about the pain in your early life about the challenges you faced raising children. you have talked -- you have some self-examination about whether you allowed your ambition to damage the marriage and you play very generous tribute to your wife who spoke up wasn't just you speak and i salute but who -- you give her great credit

for accommodating and making sacrifices for you. at the same time it's intensely personal, it generally a pretty tactful and circumspect book but every once in a while you lift a veil on some of the issues in the white house that those outside he heard reverberating, conflicts, and the famous story about the tension between valerie jarrett and the staffers you worked with on the president's senatorial and earlier campaigns. i want to ask you, as you look back on that now, you tell the story that rahm emanuel in particular was eager to get valerie jarrett into the senate and that led to the downfall of rod blagojevich. largely in order to get her out of the white house, because as you explain, rahm emanuel feared that to have such an intimate friend of the president acting as a serious seniored aser was a formula for trouble. since then there's been trouble and she is one of the most

controversial members of the administration although the administration internally has circulated and leaked a little memo about her magic that would have bun credit to the court -- done credit to the court of the kim family in north korea. was rahm wrong or do you think he was on to something? again, i think -- >> guest: i think rahm had legitimate concerns and they were based on his experience in the clinton administration it's hard to manage -- if you're the manager it's hard to manage people on the staff who have an independent personal relationship with the president, with the first lady and i've said before that has its challenges. i will say also that there is benefit and many presidents would say the same, there's ben photo having someone around you with whom you have long history, who is a fundamentally loyal and

is unquestionably in your corner and he has that relationship. they go back a long time. and there's value to that. so i understood rahm's concern. and he did work very hard to persuade valerie to run for the senate seat that obama was giving up in order to become president. at the end of the day it was the president who wanted her in the white house and i've not heard him ever suggest that he regretted that decision. >> host: how has it been for subsequent chiefs of staff? have they also found it is a difficult to manage that relationship as rahm emanuel feared? >> guest: i think every one of the chiefs of staff have dealt with that relationship in their own way, but they all recognize

what the value that the president feels that valerie brings and they work with her and with him to make it work. >> host: we're recording at a time when there's great controversy over a pending invitation to israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu to come address congress. and the president has been very open about his disapproval of this invitation. the relationship between the president of the united states and the prime minister of israel probably has never been worse than it is today, and the relationship between the united states and israel has rarely been under more pressure than today. you referred a couple times to paul simon elected to the senate from illinois in 1988. you ran that campaign. >> guest: 1984. >> host: thank you. one of the big themes hurricane defeated a republican named charles percy who had been a critic of israel and one big theme was you used the israel

issue -- you and rahm emanuel used the issue of israel against percy and for paul simon. the david axelrodin' 1984, how would he analyze the crisis in the u.s.-israeli relationship today. >> guest: first of all we didn't use the issue as a messaging issue, as least as a macro messaging issue. it was a source of a lot of fundraising for senator simon, who was viewed by aipac and the organized jewish community as a stronger supporter of israel than percy was. i told the story in that book after one of the aipac leaders who was very central to the campaign offered to subsidies me in business to put me in business as a consultant and i said that i -- obviously a great

offer to a young guy who had no other means to start a business but i asked if that meant that if there were a republican who -- or any candidate who was good on israel but bad on everything else, couldn't work against that candidate. they said you can't do that. i opted out of that. so i'm uncomfortable with that kind of an arrangement where one issue, however important that issue is, just so dominant that's how someone is evaluated, but in terms of the current situation, i would dispute one thing. there's no doubt that there's been friction between president obama and prime minister netanyahu, and i don't think that's news. it is important to note that in terms of mill tar assistance and -- military assistance and support military to military

cooperation and so on, this is far from a bad time. this is -- the level of cooperation is as great or greater than it's ever been and people on both sides would say that. president obama believes and believed when i was there still believes i'm sure, that it's highly important to resolve the issue between palestinians and israel for the long-term security of israel as a jewish democratic state and at time he was frustrated because he felt that prime minister netanyahu was more consumed by domestic political concerns there than pushing the peace process forward, and it created friction between them. >> host: i view it more than friction. has there ever been a presidential prime minister relationship as bad as this one? >> guest: well, i don't know.

i remember that netanyahu lost the prime ministership once before because of his poor relationship with president clinton so it's not new for him to have a testy relationship with an american president. >> host: this time he may win the prime ministership because of his bad relationship -- >> guest: he may but it's close enough that this visit to the united states congress is very much part of that campaign. i think that he was looking for this visit and this event to try to help him in what had not been a campaign that was moving in the right direction and there's still great controversy about it, as you know, because you're a student of the israeli press as i am. there's tremendous amount of disquiet about what is happening to the relationship and many israelis view his trip here as a needless provocation and a

violation of the kind of nonpartisan relationship between the two countries. >> host: when netanyahu got into that crisis with president clinton in 1997, it damaged netanyahu very much because israelis trust evidence bill clinton as a friend of israel. today a recent poll for the jerusalem post fines that 60% of more of the israelis think that president obama will sign any deal with iran no matter how bad. and when the prime minister gets on bad terms with this president it doesn't hurt him the way it did when he got was with bill clinton. >> guest: there's a great deal of concern about the state of the relationship between israel and the united states in part because of the actions of the prime minister. so again, we can debate about this stuff. i hope that we can talk a little bit more about my book while i'm here. >> host: we're talking -- i think we're talking -- we're

talking about the campaigns. here's a question drawn from your book. one thing you talk about -- but you talk a lot about your opposition to cynicism, and your convictions how you remain a believer in the best of politics despite -- and yet we are in a cynical time and sometimes you have used that cynicism you found in the voters as a political tool. i want to ask you bat story -- one thing i did find a little disturbing. you worked for the re-election of john street in 2003, the mayor of philadelphia at that time. he found a bug in his office, and you master minded a campaign based on -- an fbi bug department of justice bug and you master minded a campaign to re-elect him using this bug place bid the fbi and saying john ashcroft, then the attorney

general, was trying to pick the mayor of philadelphia. and john street won in a landslide. the fbi investigation continued. 15 people were sent to prison on corruption charges. brother went to prison on tax evasion charges, and of course as you know, the attorney general doesn't decide who the fbi investigates, and cleaning up municipal corruption is -- >> guest: well, first of all david, that was a partisan race between a democrat and a republican. the justice department practice has been not to surface these investigations in the final weeks of an election. so i don't think it's a -- and it is, i think people around the justice department would tell you, if they're going to place a listening twice in the office of a high public official, that rises to the level of the attorney general. so, let's set that issue aside.

john street was never prosecuted, was never convicted of anything and it was a tremendous disservice to him for that story to surface a month before the election. but -- >> host: he was one the who helped it -- >> guest: it was going to be surfaced. it was going to be surfaced. once the bug was found it was going to be surfaced and so i'm just -- my view of john street -- and that race in philadelphia was there was a guy who was instrumental in saving the city from financial disaster in partnership with ed run dell, guy as mayor who fulfilled some significant promises to get abandoned cars off the street, afterschool programs and do many 0 of the things that were desperately needed in that city. so i battled as hard is a could

for him. it actually was his opponent who ended up in legal difficulties after the election and ended up having to pay some $2 million fine for the things he was involved in. so if the question was probity, street was the one who never wound up under indictment or any sort of legal sanction and -- >> host: his closest friend and fundraiser the person being investigated, died before he could be charged, probably would have been charged and maybe -- we don't know of course, put -- >> guest: so like i said street was never indicted, never convicted, of anything. and his opponent had some legal problems, but that's probably not on your -- in your research. >> host: one of the things you write a book like this -- you have a lock life ahead of you.

you have told many stories -- the book then retains a life that is going to go on. you move. the book remains in place. and so you're moving now and you have this distinguished new academic career, an important man in democratic party politics. the party is converging on the person you and your campaign beat in 2008 and you tell the story of how your campaign beat hillary clinton and beat hillary clinton's operation, and you quote from a memo you wrote at the time about what was her vulnerability in 2008. all of her advantages she is not a healing figure. the more she tries to moderate her image the more she compounds her expose sure as an opportunityist and after two decade odd the bush-clinton saga making herself a candidate of the future will be a challenge. those wordses on paper how do they fit with your life in the

new era of the democratic party 0. >> guest: every period in presidential politics is different. i don't think hillary clinton was in a strong position in 2008 in part because she supported the war in iraq and supported president bush's decision to go into iraq, and that was a defining issue within the democratic party very hard to be the nominee of the democratic party, having taken that position. she also -- people were looking for someone outside of washington, outside of the sort of day-to-day tug and pull that was going on there. obama stood apart from all of that and that made him a strong candidate inch that race people were looking for someone who would challenge the system in a way he was willing to challenge the system. i think that every election, no matter whether president is popular or unpopular, every election is defined by the

outgoing incumbent and never do people choose he replica of what they have. they always choose the remedy. barack obama was seen as the starkest recommend dito george w. bush because he was more nuanced in his thinking, because of the polltysy positions the took, like iraq because he stood apart from a system that people were unhappy with. i think in 2016 people will be looking for someone who can manage the system. there may be less of a belief that someone can come in and thoroughly change the system in washington but they want someone who can manage the system move the country forward who they feel is skilled and equipped and experienced enough to do that. i think that's a circumstance that favors hillary clinton. so if 2008 wasn't the right environment for her, think 2016 is. i think, by the way that may be a benefit that flows to governor

bush and perhaps other governors who are seen as people who are good mechanics in terms of dealing with the political process and might be able to work within the system better than they perceive that the president has. >> host: to step outside the book for a moment and talk about the next chapter in your life. you're at the institute of politics in chicago. this is a choice that people in politics used to make a lot go to the academy and teach. much more typically nowdays they make a choice to cash in and i'm sure with your record of success that the opportunity to cash in are enormous. you said no to that. that's unusual. why? >> guest: because i've done well enough in life that i don't feel like i need to do that. i never viewed this as a business -- politics as a business. i viewed it as a calling. i thought the best use of hi time would be to try to inspire

young people to get involved in the political process. there's a great deal of skepticism -- not cynicism but skepticism among young people about politics because of the nature of the kind of grinding we have seen in washington, and because, frankly, they've come up in a generation when if you see a problem, you create an app, you organize people on social media. by the way, things that a government should look at as a potential way to approach some problems in a different way. but they're very skeptical about politics and about government and the value of it as a means to solve problems. i always say to these kids that congress is going meet with them or without them. as our state legislator, city council, governments overseas and they're going to live with the consequences of those decisions, and the decisions that are made are going to be

very consequential, affecting all the equities they care about, from right to left. i have students at the university of chicago, across the political speck truck. we're going to be a better country if they invest their effort and trying to steer the country through the political process. not necessarily the candidates. doesn't have to be that. but at advisers, at journalists commentators-but be in that public arena. that's what is the best use of my time because, look, for all it's messiness -- and believe me, while we talk about the fractious nature of our times, you're a student of hoyt you. know the history of this country is replete with examples itch sit here in new york city as we speak, and across the river in new jersey a sitting vice president shot and killed a former treasury secretary over what was largely a political dispute.

so we -- so i want to encourage these kids to make a difference within the political arena and make this a better and stronger country, and that to me is more -- that's more inviting than making a bunch of money, trying to trade on my profile or my connections. >> host: last half minute. you're a writer, began as a newspaper man. this book is your work and nobody else's. will there be another? what's next? >> guest: well, david, you're a writer too so you know you write a book and it's a little like my wife describes, child birth to me, very very painful when you go through and it you can't imagine do it again but then you're pretty happy with the product and over time the memory of the pain recedes. so, i'm not making any predictions about what i might do next in terms of writing but

i'm pleased to have had the opportunity to reflect on my life and my career and share those reflections in this book. >> host: and it is very personal. i think people will find it very illuminating, and you cover a lot of ground over a lot of time. thank you for your generosity with your time today. >> guest: all right. thanks, david. ...