YouSaid · the spoken record

Jake Sullivan

lines on the record
79
first
2018-01-04
most recent
2018-01-04
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “In the competing arguments over who owns change that fell to an argument that basically said You've been in Washington a long time. You're part of the system. And also, by the way, you're running for the third term of an incumbent. And we want something that looks like a lot more radical change than that, either in the form and the primary of people who supported Bernie Sanders or in the form of Donald Trump. That was a real wave, and it was hard to hold that wave back. There's no doubt about it. It's unfortunate because from the perspective of actually of a kind of sincere being able to look someone in the eye and say, can I make your life better? Can I change your life for the better? I thought that she had an effective story to tell and that we didn't always serve her well in helping her tell it effectively.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “You know, it's interesting Bill Clinton had a great riff on the campaign about kind of theories of change. And at the end of the day, the kind of change people were looking for in 2016 was a kind of upend the system, you know, throw out throw the bums out. Let's get something totally new and fresh and different in, which was hard for someone like her because of her history and background to contend with. But I thought she had, and Bill Clinton put it very well, a real case to make that throughout her career there was no one who had proven year after year job after job the capacity to actually make change that made a difference in people's lives. And Bill Clinton would go back to her days as first lady of Arkansas and walk through the change that she was making on the ground for people and the time at First Lady and Center and Secretary of State. But...”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “One of them and in the context of 2016 particularly with the mood of the country and the sense of dislocation and disaffection with Washington and with politics, that kind of approach just didn't resonate the way that the more visceral approach of a Sanders or Trump worked. But that was Hillary. That's who she was. That's who she has always been. And it's what made her so effective in government. And, you know, at the presidential stage, it was something and she acknowledged this in her book that made it harder for her, especially in a context like 2016.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Steps. Yeah, no. But this is, you know, at the end of the day, these campaigns, staff matters and strategy matters, but the candidate in a way matters most of all. And Hillary, who as First Lady, as senator, as Secretary of State, was, I think, profoundly effective at making policy change and policy impact. When it came to the campaign, she would consistently say, look, I think this is a job interview. I'm being put up for job, and I need to explain to people what exactly it is I am going to do for them. And she felt this very passionately. And so it meant that her stumps speech was less about values and narratives and stories and more about, let me walk through the major agenda items of my platform and explain to you each other.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “When people, it was more about the politics of anger than the politics of answers and diagnosis to a certain extent mattered more than the specific prescriptions, it didn't suit her style or the way that she approached these issues as well. And so she'd be frustrated, you know, Bernie would make sort of graham pronouncements, and Hillary would say, you can't do that. You know, this is how you have to do it. And I think.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “No, in fact, you know, there was, I thought one of the best moments in her convention speech is when she sort of took this on directly and said, you know, it is true that I sweat the details. That's what I do. And it's because her ethos is whether that one extra kid gets the health insurance or you bring the cost of prescription drugs down by some marginal amount. That matters to a family or it matters to a community. And for her, when she thinks about politics, she thinks about policy in those more incremental terms, that you make change kind of person by person. When you put that on a stage of a presidential campaign, it is harder to have it add up to a grand vision. And it is harder to make a case for sort of sweeping change as opposed to incremental change. And I think in 2016 in particular.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “In some ways, you know, Hillary liked debating more than I felt Obama did. She enjoyed the give and take. She felt it was actually a place that she just felt really comfortable because this was operating on her terms, on her ground. She was getting to talk about these issues and, you know, do so in a way with sort of passion and conviction. I think President Obama found the whole exercise a bit more artificial. And in prepping him, he would constantly push back against all of us who were trying to say, you know, There's a bit of stagecraft here and a bit of theater. And he'd sort of say, I know it's all fake. This is not a real way to actually have it. That continued into 2000.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, Hillary, even in debate, felt that this was essentially an exercise in kind of fighting out policy disagreement. I think President Obama saw the debate process as a clash of visions to a much greater extent. And so Hillary, on any given answer would think, how do I take the question in its literal form and give the best answer to that question on point, on topic, and win if it's on tax reform or it's on immigration, I'm going to make sure that people see I've got a better case to make on this issue than the other guy. President Obama would hear the question and think, how does this relate to the larger argument at play in this election? And how do I ladder up to that?”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Right. Me and another guy named Chris Wiedemann helped Greg so that he could be the best possible John McCain against then Senator Obama. And then I was also helping these incredibly thick debate books that Tom and Ron produced. A lot of that was my initial handiwork that then got worked over as we went.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “The kind of outside debate advisors to join you guys in that effort. And they sort of brought me in as the junior partner, as the guy to be the engine room in the prep process.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, so I think it was 25, including three in a single week at one point and just an incredible schedule across the country stretching from April of 2007 was the first one in South Carolina to April of 2008. So a whole, I mean, this was a year-long slog. So I thought this would be somewhat of a, you know,”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So I was working for her in the Senate when I got a call from Richard Holbrook, actually, who was. But ultimately, it emerged that he was looking to hire a foreign policy person for Hillary's two thousand eight campaign and was probing whether I would be up to the Holbrook standard as someone for him to put forward to the policy team on the campaign. And he said, would you be interested? And that to me seemed like just an extraordinary opportunity. And so I went and met with the campaign. They ultimately decided they didn't want me to do foreign policy. They wanted me to do the debate prep. They wanted me to be the person to kind of lead the effort to prepare Hillary. And as you remember, there was something like 2020. 28 or 20.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Experience. I think the Supreme Court is one of the few places left. A, that doesn't leak, you know, there's no leaks coming out of there. B, where everyone treats each other with basic respect and civility, and C where you can actually get some unusual results. People will change their minds on things and surprise you in ways that doesn't seem to happen very much anymore in Congress or elsewhere.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Painting on a larger canvas of the great traditions of liberty in Europe and elsewhere, this whole issue of that Lawrence V. Texas was a case about whether or not sodomy could be a crime. Sex between two consenting same-sex adults could be a crime, which at this point seems crazy. But back then, the lower courts held that that would be just fine and there was a prosecution in Texas. And we were trying to make the case that not only was this outside the bounds of the American constitutional tradition, but it was outside the bounds of a deeper set of traditions elsewhere. And actually some of our work was cited in the ultimate opinion that Kennedy wrote in that case. And I was proud to be a very small part of the effort that has made such profound progress since then. And then from there, I ended up going and spending a year clerking at the court for Justice Breyer, which was just an incredible experience.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Well, actually, I worked on Lawrence just before I went to the court. Oh, I see. So I worked with a group of people on a brief that essentially made the case that if you look around the world at the way in which norms are evolving with respect to due process and equal rights, that treating people differently because of who they love was becoming beyond the bounds of what advanced societies think of as consistent with liberty and dignity. So it was an attempt actually pointed mostly at Justice Kennedy to say”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Well, Amy Klobuchar was running for Senate shortly after she started running for Senate shortly after I moved back home and started work at a local law firm. And I had known her before when she was the district attorney in Minneapolis. And she knew something of my debate background and asked if I would help out with these debates that I was talking about before. And then when she won, she asked if I would just come out for a few months to DC to help her with the transition and get up and running. And so I moved out to DC while staying at the law firm, keeping my office, keeping my artwork on the wall, thinking I'd be back sometime in the summer of 2007.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So you had a big Yeah, you know, I was kind of torn between two very different models of public service all the way through college and law school. One model involved going back home to Minneapolis, being rooted in the community, having a career in law, and pursuing some form of public service. And the other was either going to Washington or going out into the world and working on foreign policy and international relations. And as I went through law school and then through clerking, I kind of saw these as two different paths and had a hard time choosing which one to go down and actually ended up My first choice was to return home to Minnesota and to join a law firm. And that's where I thought my career was headed before that particular plan got derailed and I ended up back out on the East Coast.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I feel like almost everyone who's a high school and college debater thinks really seriously about going to law school. I don't know if it's just because you get paid for arguing. Yeah, exactly. It becomes a, hey, it becomes a career, not just an extracurricular activity. I had thought for some time that I wanted to go into law because I really did feel like that being an advocate and learning the law was a way to effectuate change and to but interestingly.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “These different kinds of personalities could actually win out in the end because people didn't just kind of stick strictly to certain partisan lines.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “And then Jesse Ventura was elected and elected governor. Yes. It was like, this is a state with the highest voter participation rate in the country, with the strongest ethos of community engagement anywhere, where people took their politics very seriously.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So they, you know, they would over those months in 84. The People's Democrat. In fact, I saw somewhere in the halls here his campaign poster, The People's Democrat. There's still something occurrant that runs pretty deep in DFL politics that is a legacy of Hubert Humphries and Walter Mondale carried that forward. And then in 1990, Paul Wellstone wrote the green bus around Minnesota, and I followed that race in the papers every day and actually had the opportunity to work on his 2002 reelection campaign. But even as a young person, the excitement of a guy coming from the grassroots, knocking off an incumbent, it really made me feel that politics could be all about positive change. And then interestingly, through the 90s and the 2000s, Minnesota was a kind of strange but wonderful environment for politics because at once you had the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, Paul Wellstone, and one of the most conservative in Rod Grahams.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “You know, my earliest political memory was actually watching Walter Mondale at the 1984 convention and having my parents tell me that he was definitely going to be the next president to the United States. So I also learned disappointment in politics early on too. But in the context of that campaign.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “You know, I actually think that being able to take ideas and figuring out how to make the best case for both sides of an argument recognizing that whatever position you hold, whatever you believe, your argument's going to have some weaknesses and blind spots, and you've got to be able to acknowledge them. And the other side of the argument is going to have some good points, and you've got to be able to acknowledge those too, that that's always been an ethos of mine that was sharpened through debate. And coming into the policy world or into politics generally, I've tried to hold on to that, that even in a really polarized time, you're never going to be own 100% of the truth or have a completely impregnable argument and debate reinforce that for me in a really big.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, I did debate in high school and in college, and I spent a couple years at Oxford and debated with the Oxford Union, which was a fascinating experience. And then Minnesota actually has a really big debate tradition for its statewide races, its governors' races and senate races. So I worked with Amy Klobuchar on her debate. She had eight debates in the closing two months of the campaign, including the kind of debates where you stand on bales of hay at Farm Fest and then some of the more formal ones as well and kind of cut my teeth in political debate by helping her out.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “She was. She was a teacher. And then after I left high school, she actually became the guidance counselor at the public high school I went to in Minneapolis. So to this day, I still run into people back in the Twin Cities who she got into college or advised what to do next. And so she left a mark on a lot of young people in South Minneapolis”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, it was, although, you know, I would, you know, I try to help them make some money by putting me up for prop bets on geography quizzes and the like. It is a good earn my keep.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, yeah. I had four siblings of the five of us would come home after practice, whatever it was and sit around the table. And I made it a habit of just kind of studying the various continents. At one point, learned the capital of every country in the world and then would go annoy people.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Sad story, a defining story in a lot of ways. So he's somebody who's had to actually learn about all these whole, you know, these new social media outlets and platforms.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “So he mostly worked on the business side, but his specialty was the economics of media organizations. And so once upon a time, that was kind of a sleepy backwater. And over the course of the past couple decades, it has become one of the sad.”

    2018-01-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 205 - Jake Sullivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source