Eric Garcetti
The Diplomat
People, composure and the difficult conversation held well.
Eric Garcetti is the former mayor of Los Angeles, known for his focus on community engagement and collaboration across diverse groups. This interview reveals his leadership style as one that seeks to bridge divides and foster understanding, particularly in complex social issues.
“Well, we see, I think, at the national level, one thing that our president gets, which is universals, people do yearn for identity. They want an emotional connection. I think what we're sold, though, is a very perverse identity that is an exclusionary one. But we can't just talk to people simply about economics and jobs and policies.”
“But then the third thing, which is more important than either of the first two, is they want to then go, okay, you care about my problem. You have some ideas about my problem, but do I trust you to actually see it through? Do you have the guts to get something done? And it was the cliche after the election.”
“Not really. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which is everybody's seen it on TV. It's literally where the Brady Bunch was filmed in Sino Little League, right in the middle of things. It was very kind of middle class everywhere, anywhere existence. We had the GM car factory that shut down when I was growing up.”
“I think we need to be a lot less obsessed with a message for the Democratic Party and more obsessed with an agenda for American people, and we get caught in this trap of who cares who the chair of our state party is or our national party, even though Tom Perez is a dear friend.”
The Axe Files with David Axelrod — Ep. 199 - Eric Garcetti
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE