Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I'm here with Rahm Emanuel. Rahm, thanks for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I didn't have to travel this far this time. There's no jet lag, or maybe you've got some jet lag.
I've adjusted. Just kick me underneath if I start the dose.
Yeah, we were just talking off mic about you wrapping up life in Japan and... My expectation that things are going to get pretty interesting there from a foreign policy perspective pretty soon. What's your sense? We're going to jump into all of it, the war in Iran and everything else, but what's your sense of that?
In about six weeks from now, the president's going to sit down with Xi, president of China. The 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.
If you just take kind of a, let's take a landscape, you have 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.
Second, you removed our THAAD and our aircraft carrier from both THAAD from South Korea and our aircraft carrier out of Okinawa and other assets that have come out of the region that are a deterrent and add credibility to our deterrent.
While you have been focused all on Iran, China, after five years of not building another island in the South China Sea off the Philippines coast, they finally built another one, which is dangerous because they're claiming that as their water is not an international waterway. 40% of the GDP, maritime GDP, goes through that water. Lastly, the biggest economic crush on China was deflation.
People were talking about entering a possible lost Japanese-like generation. And now they finally, for the first time, you gave them inflation, which is what they wanted, which is higher energy prices and prices are up now for their products. So I can go on and on.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of Rahm Emanuel's potential presidential run?
And I think our allies, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, are holding their breath because they don't believe the president knows how to stand up to Xi and is desperate for Xi's affirmation and therefore will give away the store to the region. Remember, our goal is to communicate. We are a permanent Pacific power and presence. You can bet long on America.
And the one thing you know about our president is he punches down, kisses up. He is always seeking Xi and Putin's affirmation. And I think he's going in weakened. He knows he's going in weakened and he's desperate for Xi's affirmation. And Xi has another card on him, which is I helped get your chestnuts out of the fire in Iran and you owe me.
So at every level, I think this is a very bad situation for the United States and the Indo-Pacific and a very bad situation for our allies. who not only rely on us, we rely on them.
Maybe we'll come back to that. That'll be a sidebar for the moment. Remind people, I want to start with the domestic picture and American politics. Remind people of all the roles you have served for our government. Because there are many, many levels.
For President Clinton, I was his senior advisor for policy and politics and replaced Stephanopoulos in that position. First term, I was director of special projects doing the crime bill, the assault weapon ban, welfare reform, immigration policy, to name a couple. I was a congressman from the fifth district in Chicago.
Second term was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help not only take the House back for the Democrats, but make Nancy Pelosi first woman speaker. And then I was fourth. I was caucus chair.
I 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 savings.
I 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.
And 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, the United States, that culminated at Camp Davidson. So the goal is not titles, but results. I'm a results-driven. I don't need titles.
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Chapter 3: What strategies could improve U.S. policy towards China?
They got coaches for each school to keep the teachers and the principal focused and trained constantly. Third, kids going all the way back to kindergarten, In first grade, were prepped for their third grade reading test. They got three times to pass at the kids. If they didn't, they were held back. So there were standards. There was accountability.
There was support if kids were showing challenges. They got extra tutoring time. Each child got, I think, I'm doing this by memory, an hour and 15 minutes minimum every day on reading. They went from 49th in Mississippi on reading scores across the country to 9th. And if you account for demographics, they're beating Massachusetts now.
So with a result like that, what's controversial about this project? Well, there's a professor, call it 25 years ago out of Columbia University, who taught people, got a lot of school districts to go into what the art of reading, not the science. You like the letter of A, you can use it. If you don't like the letter A, don't use the letter of A. And rune degeneration.
And when I find that, professor, you don't have to do any forensics for the physical body harm. I did it. It's unbelievable what they did in runing. So what got controversial, and this is... One is some people don't like the accountability part, the testing.
As 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 grades coming into third grade. You can't be scared of accountability and standards. I want to come back to that in a second.
On the other side, which is Mississippi did not abandon their public schools with some other fancy thing called vouchers. They invested in their public schools. It was all started, by the way, by Mr. Barksdale from Netscape, and he came from Mississippi, put his money into it, put the first $200 million.
So public schools were supported with public resources and accountability came with those resources. Around the country, Republicans are advocating a way to abandon public schools and Democrats advocated and succeeded in abandoning standards and our kids are falling through the cracks. Yeah. We're at a 30-year low. 50% of our kids can't read at grade level.
I don't know what makes you think fourth and fifth grade are going to be okay. If they're third grade, they're failing. And nobody seems to think this is worth worrying about. Now, there are other reforms along the way.
Every place that has adopted the whole program, not just science and reading, the support for teachers and the support for students with standards of attachment, as I said, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee being the most kind of comprehensive in adopting the Mississippi model, all seeing rapid increases in reading scores.
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Chapter 4: How does wealth inequality shape political discourse?
Publicly, he called me a self-loathing Jew. Is this when he came and addressed Congress? No, that was 2015. This is 2009. Okay. My disagreement with him, and it's gotten pretty direct, was over housing in the West Bank because I thought he was destroying a two-state solution. If you destroy that, Israel was on a course to endless wars.
A lot of other people thinking about running for national office were lip-syncing his stuff. I was 20 years ahead. I knew where this was going to go. So we got into it, he and I. to the point that publicly said I was a self-hating, self-loathing Jew was attacked. And the prime minister and I have always, I disagree with his approach.
And I think, in fact, with this is the first year in Israel's history, there are more people have left than came. He has led Israel in a way that the endless wars that he's doing is destroying the fabric of the country. And I don't think it was good for Israel. I don't think it's good for the Jewish community of Israel. And for a host of reasons inside Israel. And I was upfront about it.
I didn't need, again, as I want to say. Let's bracket Netanyahu and his political problems. It's hard to do with the longest serving prime minister to say that he isn't the face of that country.
But swap in the perfect prime minister. How differently would he or she have navigated the October 7th moment? Well, what should Israel have done on October 8th?
So there's three things. I'm not saying, look, I give no pass to a country's self-defense, nor to any of the people of the world. But even elements of the IDF, Israel Defense Force, were telling him we're just killing for the sake of killing. The opportunities of security have to be enhanced by diplomacy and politics.
He has never seized that in the way that Yitzhak Rabin did, the way Menachem Begin did, the way Golda Meir did, or the way that Ben-Gurion did. And as somebody that participated in both Oslo Accords for President Clinton, the Y Plantation Agreement, the agreement in Aqaba between Israel and the state of Georgia, in all those processes, he has isolated the state of Israel.
Not only has he lost world opinion for Israel, he's losing in the United States. So I can't, what he didn't do is, you know, as Yitzhak Rabin famously said, you make peace like there's no terror, and you fight terror like there's no peace. He has never extended himself politically on the diplomatic front. Now, there's three chapters to Israel.
There's one, which was Egypt, Jordan, and the Abraham Accords making peace with stable governments and parties. Second was unilateral decisions on Lebanon and Gaza that gave you Hamas and Hezbollah. And then third, the divorce attempt in the West Bank. And now what they're doing, which is violence.
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