YouSaid · the spoken record

John Heilemann

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103

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2016-10-20

most recent

2016-10-20

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1

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1. “So Vanderbilt, there's tons of them, right? And they all, there are various interpretations for what those guys did. One of them is that they were, although they were robber barons, they also understood an obligation to give back and that they were building institutions that would outlast them as be part of their legacy, right? Another is that they felt some guilt over the sins they'd committed.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “The text, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a, you know, if you think about Rockefeller Morgan, you know, many of the great industrial titans of the early, financial titans, they have huge philanthropic institutions that still live on through today, the Rockflower Foundation, you know, the Morgan Library. There are these things, they endowed great philanthropic institutions. There is a theory.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “And so at the end of that, I really again kind of deviate from politics just a little bit, although the truth is the reason I got involved interested in the Gates thing was because I felt like I could tell the story from the political side because I was, I thought I could originally kind of came into that with the notion of writing about it from the perspective of Joel Klein and David Boyz in the United States kind of taking on Microsoft. And I did, and the intersection between Silicon Valley and politics was what got me interested in that. And then Gates became a very big figure. And I thought, you know, in a lot of ways, I remember there was one of the things in that book where he said to someone over dinner at one point, I'm more powerful than the president. And as soon as I heard that, I thought, like, I was interested in Gates already, but that made me like, I was like, this is a great story to tell, right? This guy who thinks he's more powerful than the president being confronted with the power of the U.S. government, that's an interesting thing to do.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “A lot of things happen, which will be too much detail for this podcast. I left, I worked for the Economist magazine in London and then in Washington. I ran that Washington Bureau for a while. I went to work in 96. I was working for both for the New Yorker and for Wired magazine at the same time, covering that campaign. I eventually moved to California to work for the New Yorker full-time and to write a book. And I wrote about, I wrote this book about Bill Gates. Yeah, right. And the Microsoft.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Guys who realized they were on the losing end and they were better off with a conciliator than with strident ideologue. That's how Obama put that together to become the editor of the law review.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Yes, of those things we use there. We did Yes, 100%. I mean, I wrote a piece about this New York magazine back when he first ran that was about actually about Hillary in law school in Obama in law school and how the ways in which they behaved in their law school careers would foreshadow the way in which their political character would develop going forward. And of course, the key thing with your guy was that he became the under the law review with support of the conservatives. He was the conservatives who were on that board looked at the Larview election coming up and that was polarized between a very, very liberal candidate and a very, very conservative candidate was clear that the Conservatives didn't have enough votes to elect their guy and that Obama was the one who had come to them and said, I will take you seriously and not marginalize you. And if I can get your support, you know, we'll have a better conversation than if you guys don't support me, though, this liberal's going to win. And so Obama, by knitting together a coalition of kind of left of center law review editors and the right law review.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “He was people who knew about this guy, and people assumed, I mean, you know, but this is like you got a hyper competitive environment with a lot of people who all think they're the best at what they are and they all think they're going to be a future Supreme Court justice or president or governor or whatever. He was a guy who people talked about as like, oh, that's someone people should pay attention to because he's in this class of rising African-American potential political talents and whether he does politics or not, he's impressive.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Right, where he went to law school. So a lot of us were 23, 24, and he was 28, 27, 28. And that matters in that context, right? Because you have a lot of kids at Herbert Law School who come right out of undergraduate. So the guy who's five or six years older and who was very, you know, he had presentational skills that were above average at that point. And so you heard a lot of talk about him. And then he became the editor of the law review, which was something that was covered in the New York Times. So I think for people.”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Became head of the FCC on a random day where the former future president bummed a smoke for me. So at the time, of course, it means nothing to you, except for the fact that he was in the two years that I was there was one of the years when he became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. So in the hyper competitive environment that is Harvard, and especially Harvard graduate schools, whether it's the business school, the law school, the Kennedy school, there are a lot of people there who are trying to make a name for themselves and have big plans for what they're going to do. He stood out and was a figure of conversation even then because of the fact he was a little bit older and”

   2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “I ran into the guy. It turned out he was actually a neighbor of ours, though. I didn't really know that he would live a couple blocks down from us in Somerville, was Barack Obama. The story has been told many times told by me many times because it's just sort of funny, but we were introduced by, I think Julius Janikowski later.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I researched it and I edited it and worked really closely with Bob on it for two years. So I made like, I learned, I just learned a ton about globalization, about the information technology revolution, because those are things Bob was really thinking about in the context of that book, and then all the stuff that I actually did in classrooms. But the point was do this and then go be a journalist, not do this and go into government. I was trying to on the maybe naive theory that it would be good as journalists to actually know something that I would try to know something.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yes, 100%. 100%. I went there entirely and they had a program then. There was a master's in public policy program that was like very wonky and quantitative. And then there was this other program that was weirdly called the Master's in Public Administration program, which had nothing to do with public administration, where you could basically design your own two years there and not only take classes at the Kennedy School, but also at Harvard Law School in the government department at MIT. And so I went and spent two years kind of focused on the intersection of race, politics, and poverty and sort of just did a deep dive into a bunch of history and a bunch of policy issues related to those things and took classes with some really great professors and ended up working on this book that Bob Reich wrote at the time that was called The Work of Nations that became sort of like the template for the whole Clinton economic platform when he ran in 1992, the Putting People First Agenda, Human Capital,”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Well, there was a, you know, I thought that, again, just being as kind of simplistic about this as possible, in the same way that I did actually think that having that year in Washington, like again, I knew I didn't want to do politics. I knew I wanted to do journalism. So when I went for the year, I thought let's do this as a learning experience and see what it's like kind of inside the halls of Congress and at a convention. And I also thought that learning about actual substance, you know, like that I would be covering public policy in some way. And so having so...”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Right. And the extent to which you have, again, this is not to be overburdened this experience with Eller, was that there were two things going on. There was the national message that really mattered, that what was on national television in that primetime slot. And then there was what all these people were doing to broadcast in us in a coordinated way whatever the big message talking points of that day were back to their districts because that was also a big thing. And the echo largely goes on under the radar now because, you know, it's not something you there's, so the two things are operating, but it's all about that. And all those speeches that go on.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Yeah, redundant. It's kind of too obvious to mention. To them, this will be also too obvious. But just understanding that the purpose of this event is a television broadcast. That's all it is. Yes, exactly. Everything that goes on in the hall, all these people who are all jazzed up to come, they're irrelevant. Utterly irrelevant. All the stuff that people fixate on is all bullshit.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Well, I think it's like one of the key things, and again, to the sophisticates who listen to Axe files, this will not be news.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Pretty valuable in the sense that I met a lot of people who ended up being sources later, some of the people I've mentioned are people that later, like I had at least some cursory contact with. And so they became people who I later talked to as I became a journalist for real. And also just think just like moving through those things you just, there are some things you just learn, right? It's like you come to a convention in a different way if you've seen what it's like from the inside. Not like in some profound, you have some profound insight, but just kind of get like what's going on behind the scenes a little bit better.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Yes, right under their feet. And Freddie lost in his primary in 88. So, like, I was with him for his last moment in Congress when, again, all these ethics charges and various forms of, he was both ethically compromised and also was more importantly was just in the pocket of a lot of industry. So there was like in a way that was not criminal in any way or even unethical, but was just kind of par for the course for the way those guys served their constituents.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “I mean, I don't know if Freddie was abusing the franking privilege, you know, like Rossinkowski was, but all those committee chairs, those are all the committee chairs because there are John Dingle not saying anything negative about Big John, but they were like the grandees, right? You had John Dingle, Dan Rossinkowski, Freddie St. Germain, Jim Wright as a speaker of the house. They were those old bulls. They had a generation of democratic.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “I wouldn't say Saint Jermaine was a criminal. He was just corrupt. He was corrupt in the way that Danny Rostinkowskowski was corrupt. He was corrupt.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “A lot of shit happened that year, and I won't even tell you about all the stuff that was criminal that happened in that time.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “So that was, and I knew I was going to go back to graduate school, and I deferred all these places. And so at the end of that year, my plan had always been I would go to somewhere and then I went in the fall of 88, I went up to the Kennedy school.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “You Yeah, so I sat there with Eller in this room while he smoked a cigar in a windowless room for like about a week, and it was one of the most, I mean, I'm sure I still have like, if I ever am diagnosed with lung cancer,”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Correct, right? And the guy who was running that operation who later became thought of as a kind of a savant in that area was Jeff Eller, who eventually went to work for the Clinton campaign. So I sat in a small room.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “So I sat in a room at the Democratic Convention, in a room about half the size of this room running the what was then a novel thing, the satellite uplink operations for a bunch of Democrat folks to connect up.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “political consultant later became involved in some very spooky endeavors but at that time he was the guy who ran a lot of convention stuff for democratic groups so for the like the association of state democratic chairs and the DSCC and the DGA so in addition to working for Frederi St. Germain and working in a bar I ended up going and spending a lot of the summer of'88 in Atlanta helping to get the convention at the convention kind of trying to like like working on the inside of this convention for this with this group of young I mean we were all like kids who were working basically for free it's like kind of like oh god”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “No, not to the reporters in retrospect. I got there and I was kind of like, I need a job. I did a little work for Gephardt on that presidential campaign, like just at a really, so I met Bigala and Stephanopoulos at a very, like when I was 21 in that context. And then I got this job on Capitol Hill because I needed to pay the rent. And then I was a bartender at Garrett's in Georgetown where I met a guy who was connected to this other guy named John Rendon, another name you'll know. Yes.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “No, no part of the part where as Freddy's career was falling apart, I was the press secretary who was like, what the fuck did I do? I signed up to work for this guy. He's horrible. It was a kind of nightmare. I got to help those.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Problem over plagiarism. So I came back and sort of said, well, let's go to DC. And I moved to Washington and worked on Capitol Hill for one of the most corrupt members of Congress in modern history, Freddie St. Germain, the former chairman of the House Banking Committee from Rhode Island, who was basically single-handedly responsible for the savings and loan crisis. I didn't really know which part of the party.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “She actually provided the clarity. She said, you know, I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to move to Washington, D.C. and go work on Capitol Hill. And I said, that seems like a good solution to this problem. I'm kind of befuddled by choice. I will just go to DC. I had had incredibly some interactions. I had written a profile in the Daily Northwestern in 1980, the late fall of 86 maybe, above Joe Biden. I spent a bunch of time with him when Biden was thinking about running for president. I met this guy named Joe Carey, who is the name you will be familiar with, who said, you should come work for Joe Biden. So actually, when I went away for the summer of 87, I thought I was going to come back after taking a trip to Europe and go work for the Biden campaign. And then there wasn't a Biden campaign.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “No, I knew I wanted to go to graduate school coming out of college. And then I got into a bunch of places and was a little confused about what I should do. And I had a girlfriend at the time who said she was confused.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “I did not. I went to, I had gotten admitted to a variety of, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do 100% at that point, but I had gotten into a bunch of, I applied to a bunch of different things, like some political science and government graduate schools and some journalism graduate schools. But not”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “The fact that there was about to be the first African American mayor in the city seemed obviously monumental, right? And I, again, you, I know, are covering that, right? Yeah, I was. So like understanding, I think one of the things that I took away, again, was a very rudimentary, again, because I don't want to overstate how much of a savant I was, but a rudimentary understanding of the way in which the African American base and the progressive whites in the city could make someone mayor. And that coalition was in some respects novel and was potentially really powerful, not just in Chicago, but in other places. And I know that's something that you learned from covering that and became, it helped inform your career when you got into the political strategy.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Right. I mean, I think I knew I did not know as much then as I do now about the history of, about the history of how racism got institutionalized geographically and economically in the city as I know now.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Incredible years to be our great city. I mean, Chicago is like one of my favorite cities in the world, but it was a great, the politics of Chicago in those four years was fantastic.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Internships. Yes. Well, that was part of the thing at Madill was the big thing they said was you're going to be here for your entire freshman year, you're going to take one journalism class out of 12. Your entire sophomore year are going to take one journalism class out of 12. In your junior year, your main thing is we're going to send you to a newspaper for a semester, for a quarter. So you'll get to work in a newspaper. And then when you come back in your fourth year, your senior year, you'll do like you can do some a magazine journalism class or a broadcast journalism class. But that seemed like a relatively light touch to me. It wasn't like anybody was claiming half of your classes are going to be journalism instructional courses.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “But I don't have any other professional. There's never been another profession that I thought I really want to do that, and there's never been a profession where I looked at it and thought, well, I'd be good at that. So this has been kind of monomaniacal. So to answer your question, I wanted to go, I had this kind of parochial sense that like getting learning how to do journalism, I now am very skeptical about journalism in schools. I am as well. But at the time, when I was 17, 16, it was like, there's this great school called Northwestern that has this esteemed journalism school called Medill. And as they explained it to me, they had a relative internal skepticism about journalism school even at Madill. So they were very encouraging at the notion that you should have a second major. And if you looked at all the journalism departments around the country, there was only one that was also attached to a top-notch liberal arts college, university. And Northwestern was that, right? Great liberal arts university with a great political science department and also this journalism school that gave you some kind of credential. So that was to me and the campus was beautiful.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Well, my torn rotator cuff and my sophomore year of high school was one reason meant probably, though I thought I was quite talented, probably a lack of talent too, but the injury gave me an excuse, kind of like Donald Trump talking about a rigged election, like when I didn't become a majorly baseball player, I could point to my fucked up shoulder. So, I knew I was going to be a journalist, and truly from that, from the moment until today, I believe it's like the only thing I've ever been interested in doing. And the only thing I could do, like I think if I wasn't doing this, either talking about talking on television or writing and interpreting, observing, reporting, analyzing, explaining, if I wasn't doing this, I'd be asleep in a bus shelter somewhere. I'd be like a junkie someplace. And I don't know that I have any other start.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Yes. So I was interested in all this culture stuff. I was interested in all this sports stuff. And I was also really interested in politics. I had like all these things I was interested in, but I knew I would end up writing about some of it, all of it, part of it. I didn't know what. But I thought I'd be a journalist. That was the only thing I thought was my, I had never had any other aspiration apart from to be a professional baseball player for a brief period of time. But professionally, that was clear to me. And what made you?”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Well, funnily enough, like the only thing I knew from coming out of high school was that I was going to write. It was the only when I very relatively early age, like maybe ninth grade, I had experiences writing some things for which that I was both proud of and that I was praised for. And that kind of, both those things were, I was into it. I enjoyed doing it. And then I got good feedback. And that's, you know, obviously the cycle that leads people towards things. And when I left, when I was getting ready to go to college, I didn't know what I would be a journalist about. I was really interested in music, film, television, popular culture, broadly speaking. I was really interested in sports. I had participated in sports and played a lot of bass. You sound like a website.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “But I went to Catholic school. I went to Catholic elementary school and I went to Catholic high school. When I meet Catholics, like Catholics who are really entranced by the mysticism of the Mass and are really deeply moved by that, I find it kind of inspirational and affecting to me. And yet I'm also really skeptical about people who are zealots about religion. And I myself find all of it like just a little bit, it's not appeal. It's not me. I'm not, I would never be that person, even though I can kind of see what's powerful about it to people that are that person. And obviously they sometimes go too far in various forms of religious extremism. But at the right level, I find it kind of both something I cannot participate in at all, but also something that I don't find wholly unadmirable. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Yeah, I think that's true. And I think, you know, one of the, it's not just institutions, although 100% skepticism without cynicism, and it's a tough line to walk sometimes. Towards institutions is really important. But I also find that true of true believers speaking of mentioning the book title of your, inherently when I meet people who are true believers, I am both intrinsically immediately skeptical and kind of like suspicious of people who are true believers. And yet not cynical about it and sometimes really inspired by those people. You know, it's like I'm a fallen, I'm a lapsed Catholic, right? Or at least I was a raised Catholic. I was never really a Catholic. Francis hasn't.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “A lot of reasons, but one of them is that the journalistic and the observational tendencies that you have exist in tension with the activists want to be part of it thing. That's part of what makes you an interesting, compelling figure. For most of us who are in the journalistic business, right, the observational outsider thing is just so predominant that I'm not a joiner. Like I'm not a joiner of anything, right? So politics is one big thing you can join, but I'm not that person. I'm a watcher.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “I did not. I mean, I was super interested in sports and I was super interested in politics. I wasn't active. I didn't like you. I did not unlike you. I did not go around and was not a leafletter or was involved in political campaigns or attend any of that stuff when I was a kid. No, well, I mean, you know, just, you know, there are kids who do that. And then kids who are more observers. And I think the people who have you're interesting because”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Very popular. It led the property tax revolt and obviously affected a lot of the politics of the state in a pretty profound way. And those are like the thing when I think about as a kid growing up, what are the things that stick in my mind politically? You know, that there was this family called the Browns that had run a lot of stuff in democratic politics and there was this kind of insurgent character named Reagan who was governor and now was running for president and that the property tax revolt was a big key to understanding why Reagan was popular in California and what the basis of his appeal was going to be to the country, which was, you know, I'm going to cut your taxes in a variety of different ways. Those are the things I remember from.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Of course, he still is, but yeah. So the brown dynasty was huge on the Democratic side, and Reagan was dominant as an idea and a person on the Republican side. And Proposition 13, which was the pretty...”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yeah. So they both picked up and moved to California and were classic Californian. They moved out in the late 50s, like 58, I think, and lived in Santa Monica for a while and then moved to the San Fernando Valley when it was just like getting built essentially. And there are incredible pictures of our house on the far west end of the San Fernando Valley when the tract houses had just been laid out there. As you know, it was like the valley was like Levitown in La La Land. Yes, yeah, yeah. And there were just all these tract houses, like five different, basically all the same size with like four different kinds of designs to them, but they're all like mirror images of each other, just lined up the street with no trees, no grass, just dirt. And the stuff had just been laid, like where they were just laying down the sidewalks and planting the saplings. And then that's where I was born and raised.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “They were not. They had just started dating, and he'd met her in Milwaukee a few years or about a year or so before he moved to California. And he basically moved to California, got there, kind of looked around and thought, you know, I think I'd like to have Betty here with me, picked up the phone and said, you should come out to California. We'll get married if you're into that. And she did. If you're into that. And she said, great. And so she, like him, the only person from her family who ever left to that point, whoever left the Midwest. And she was from a tiny, tiny town on the Upper Peninsula, tiny, like a town with like 75 people in it called Loretto that's like not very far from like Iron River and Iron Mountain and Ishpaming and all those places that I know you're familiar with given that you have”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “I do too. I do too. But just in the story of my father, that was it for him. And he's not voted for Republican since then. So that was his deal. And he's like the least likely person you would have thought that would say, fuck it, I'm going to throw all my stuff in the back of the car and drive to California when no one in his family had ever done that and no one in his family subsequently ever did. But he did. And just he was like, there's a job. And he moved to Santa Monica.”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Totally, a progressive Republican from Wisconsin, again, modest in his politics and in his aspirations in a lot of ways. And he had voted for Republicans up until Gore v. Bush, when he heard some interview with George W. Bush where he heard that George W. Bush would have preferred to be the commissioner of baseball than be president of the United States. And he thought that was disqualifying, not because he didn't love baseball, because he did, but because he thought, you know, if there's some job you'd rather have than be president, you shouldn't be president”

    2016-10-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 89 - John Heilemann · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source